office telling myself that joke that isn’t really a joke because it’s true: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach – what she’d said got into my head. I’d remembered it, anyway.
I thought about Dr Bhatt’s hands pressed together and his worried eyes looking into mine and I thought, I’m going to do it. I’m going to forget about you and I’m going to live in the real world and not let myself imagine stuff anymore. I’m going to lose weight and become so gorgeous that no one’ll even believe it’s me. So gorgeous that even I don’t believe it’s me. Because more than anything, I wanted to feel like the sun was coming out.
The next day was Saturday and I decided to walk into town, even though the insides of my thighs were still sore with angry red spots on them from going up and down the wooded path looking for you. My plan was to get a Diet Coke in McDonald’s, then look in some shops and walk home again. I put loads of talcum powder on my legs but they were already stinging by the time I got to Deacons Hill.
It’s a lot further into town than it seems on the bus and by the time I got there my feet were killing me and my stomach was like a cave. I stood in the queue in McDonald’s feeling the coins in my pocket and staring at the menu board. I was thinking I should’ve only brought the exact money for a Diet Coke and that I definitely was not going to get a vanilla milkshake and a McChicken Sandwich with large fries, even though I had enough, when I got the feeling I was being watched.
Sophie reacted with a shriek when I looked over, then ‘hid’ behind the collar of her denim jacket. She was with Alice, Katy and two boys that aren’t from our school. She’d been telling them what a legend I am, I expect.
I took my Diet Coke into Gap across the road and went upstairs to the little kids’ section. I stood by the window between the rails of doll-like dresses, chewing the end of the straw and sucking tiny amounts through it, waiting for them to come out.
I’d never seen Alice out of school. She was wearing faded skinny jeans, flat pumps and a long, pale blue cardigan. Her hair was in a loose plait over one shoulder. She looked effortless – that’s the best word I can think of – like that, even though all the world was hers, she’d chosen to set it free.
She was laughing, her arm draped over one of the boy’s shoulders. He was black – really black – and doing all the talking. He kept covering her hand with his, then taking it off again to gesture round, like it was no big deal that she was touching him. It’s only because she’s so nice that she didn’t mind. I thought it was pretty rude, though. I thought, who does he think he is?
They headed down the High Street then, so I went back downstairs. They were standing outside Waterstones, looking in at the display. Alice was telling them something, about a book, I suppose. I imagined it was The Poems of Robert Browning, even though I knew his book wouldn’t be in the window because he’s really old – dead, even. I hate English, but the poem of his we did in class was brilliant. It’s about a man who’s Porphyria’s lover (they had funny names then). He knows he can’t have her, even though they’re in love, because she’s upper class and rich, so to make sure she’ll always be his, he kills her. He says:
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her.
I love imagining the two of them in his little cottage in the forest: him pressing her soaked crimson dress and ample tits against his shirt as the storm lashes at the windows, possessing her with his mouth as he twists her hair into that long, wet rope.
Anyway, it wasn’t The Poems of Robert Browning in the window. When they walked on down the High Street, I stopped in the same place they’d stood and looked at the books. There was some crappy-looking vampire trilogy, a book with a shiny black cover called The Doll and, up on a plinth, Alice in Wonderland – a big hard-back. Probably a new edition or something, seeing as it was in the window.
I thought Alice’d probably been telling them something about that one – like that maybe when she was little, her parents told her that she was the Alice in the story. She did look a bit like her. The Alice on the cover was kneeling and looking down into the rabbit hole at me, as if I was down the hole already and would be going into Wonderland with her. She had a funny expression on her face, though, like she might decide to bury me there instead.
I kept a good distance behind when I carried on down the High Street, and I made sure there were always people between us so that I’d only catch a glimpse of one of them every few seconds. Then I thought I’d lost them till I passed the cinema and saw them inside. They were queuing to get tickets.
I didn’t go in: I wouldn’t know what they’d all be going to see and anyway, I didn’t have enough money. I hung around outside, finishing my drink and thinking I should go home. Then I saw them disappearing into the gloom of the foyer and went up the steps. I watched them hand their tickets to a girl and go into Screen 4.
I was so hungry the smell of popcorn nearly made me faint, so I counted the change I had and got an extra large box – sweet, because the Odeon hasn’t caught onto sweet ’n salty yet. I asked the boy serving if he could do half ’n half, but he looked at me like I was out of my mind, so I left it.
I went to the loos. I was still in one of the cubicles (thinking it would’ve been cleverer to go for a pee before getting the popcorn) when some girls came crashing in, laughing and screeching and going, ‘Quick, we’ll miss the beginning’, and that kind of thing. I hate it when girls get all lairy, so to avoid them, I went back out to the foyer without washing my hands. Just as I was heading for the steps to the street again, though, they suddenly burst out behind me, all cackling idiotically, one of them saying she couldn’t remember which screen they’d come out of. Then her friend pushed her sideways, saying ‘4 you idiot’ and holding four fingers up in her face.
And I went with them. Just like that.
I turned round and stuck close behind. The girl taking tickets looked at me like she didn’t remember me from before, but then she looked at the popcorn in my arms and didn’t say a thing.
It was dark inside. The film had started.
I headed up near the back and shuffled in past a few people to a seat in the side block. It took me a while to find where Alice was because it was pretty full in there. When I did (they were in the centre block in front of those VIP seats), it was Katy I saw, only she wasn’t looking at the screen, she was twisted round and looking at me. Then the boy that was sitting the other side of Alice – the black one – turned and looked at me too.
I concentrated on the shapes moving on the screen. I ate my popcorn. I told myself it wasn’t a crime to be watching a film just because it happened to be the same one they were watching. When I dared to glance at them again, though, they were still looking. Not Alice; the other two.
Then the boy got up. He jigged sideways along the row, his hands held in fists like a boxer, hood bouncing. I thought he was probably going for a slash, but when he got to the aisle, he clocked me again and started up the steps.
I felt my skin burn and prickle, my heart start to thump.
‘Hey, Yasmin!’ he called when he got close enough for me to hear.
I
