tomorrow night?’
‘Oh yeah, it’s a totally hot date. Me and Josh and both of our families… Anyway, he might not even come – his mum said he might have some rugby party or something.’
‘Whatever. I would do literally anything to get Josh Green in my house on a Saturday night. And I mean anything.’
‘Urgh, Shim! Stop doing your sexy face about Josh!’
‘Besides,’ Nathalie speaks up, giving Shimmi a sideways look, ‘it’s not like any of us stands a chance, is it? Not unless we suddenly turn into leggy blondes and become friends with Amie Bellairs.’
As this sad-but-true fact has always existed, Nathalie sounds surprisingly vexed about it. So, I might as well take a deep breath and drop a bombshell.
‘Yeah, when I saw him at Easter, he told me he’d got drunk and kissed Lexy White at some house party…’
The gasps that follow this revelation are hardly unexpected, and I cover my face with a pillow as I prepare for the onslaught.
‘Lexy White? That skanky bleached-blonde halfwit?’ Shimmi is indignant. ‘How could he?’
Nathalie just sounds bruised: ‘But Easter was weeks ago. Why didn’t you tell us, Sorana?’
I weigh it up and decide that I might as well be honest. ‘I didn’t tell anyone because, at the time, I was so upset about it. You know, that was when I was completely crushed-out on Josh, and it was like he was rubbing my nose in it – I just didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Urgh, I don’t blame you,’ Nathalie mutters.
‘Anyway, I’m totally over it now so I don’t care.’ And I really am over Josh. I’m sure I was only ever in love with him in the first place because he’s practically the only boy I know in my age bracket.
‘Yeah, but still…’ Shimmi won’t let it lie ‘I can’t believe that bitch Lexy White. Her and her friends think they’re so great. One day, those girls are totally going to get what’s coming to them…’
It’s never going to happen, but it makes us feel better. So, after talking about boys, bands, and – let’s face it: mostly – bitching about our much cooler classmates, we settle down to the serious business of the evening. Ever since we stayed up late to watch Psycho and The Birds with my mum’s boyfriend Pete at my house a couple of months ago, we’ve been obsessed with really old, creepy horror films.
We drag our sleeping bags down to the sitting room, switch off the lights and crack open the Häagen-Dazs, and watch at least two, sometimes three, scary movies. We all scream out loud at regular intervals, make a big show of clutching each other dramatically, but then refuse to admit it when none of us wants to go up to the bathroom on our own afterwards.
Sometimes I think I wouldn’t actually want to go to The Crown on a Friday night, like the A Group do every week without fail, even if I didn’t look like a skinny twelve year old and probably won’t be allowed in until I am actually eighteen. What, and miss all this?
‘Hey,’ Shimmi says, her eyes gleaming in the dark, ‘maybe the Johansson twins are like those freaky girls in The Shining!’
‘Nah,’ I interrupt. ‘Definitely Village of the Damned!’
‘“Come and play with us, for ever and ever and ever and ever and…”‘ Shimmi intones in a spooky voice, until Nathalie actually looks like she’s going to wee herself with fear.
Then we all burst into hysterical laughter, and we can’t stop.
Even though it’s totally worth it, waking up at Nathalie’s is always rubbish – it’s freezing in her enormo-house first thing in the morning. Nathalie and Shimmi are both still fast asleep. I switch off the TV, which has been on silent all night, and pad quietly into the kitchen to ring my mum. Unlike Shimmi, who’d move into Nathalie’s house and be adopted by her parents if she was allowed, I like staying over at Nathalie’s, but then I like to go home and be in my own house.
Usually someone in my household is up and about, and prepared to give me a lift on a Saturday morning. Unfortunately, I am still a way off driving, and even further off a shiny car of my own like a large proportion of my classmates are automatically given on their seventeenth birthdays. Daisy answers the phone; of course my mum’s there but still asleep, so Daisy and Pete will come and get me. The two of them are already up and watching cartoons, apparently.
Almost no sooner than I’ve changed into day clothes and packed my little overnight bag – actually an ancient old-lady vanity case that I found in Oxfam last year – I hear Pete’s crazy sports car growling up the driveway and I slip out through the ludicrously grand electric gates. Nathalie and Shimmi are used to this disappearing act, so I don’t have to wake them up.
‘Morning, Sorana, you dirty stop-out.’
Pete always says this and thinks it’s funny. He’s sweet, and tries really, really hard to get on with Daisy and me, so I don’t hold it against him.
There are only two seats in Pete’s car, so Daisy squashes up on my lap – she loves going fast, so wouldn’t have missed this early morning ride for all the chocolate in the world.
‘Don’t tell your mum,’ Pete says automatically.
Mum hates Pete’s car, and especially hates Daisy and me going in it when Pete breaks the speed limit, which we encourage him to do as much as possible. We take a slight detour to stop at Krispy Kreme on the way home; Pete gives Daisy the money to run in and get a mixed dozen to share for breakfast. Yep, Saturdays at my house are all right.
By the time we get home my mum is up, still wearing her dressing gown and singing along with Radio Two in the kitchen. Basically, it’s no wonder Pete’s so desperate for the seal of approval from Daisy and me, because my mum is stupidly pretty and really quite cool for a mum. She looks like me, but somehow really beautiful in a way that I’m most definitely not. This would give me hopes of improving with time, if not for the fact that I’ve seen photos of my mum when she was my age – sadly, she was already a full-blown hottie.
I make myself the world’s weakest coffee and pretend to enjoy it in between scarfing down bites of chocolate-cream doughnut. Mum’s already demolished an apple-cinnamon when she sits down and reaches across me for a second one.
‘How was Nathalie’s?’
‘You know, palatial. The usual. How was your evening?’
‘You know, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll. The usual.’
‘Ha ha, very funny. The sad thing is your night probably was more rock ‘n’ roll than mine!’
‘Well, we did have a kitchen dance party to Santigold – so let’s call it a draw. Now, what are you doing today?’
‘Um, dunno?’
My mum rolls her eyes, grins and fake-throttles me out of what she calls my ‘clichéd teenage ennui’.
‘Well, I’m taking Daisy into town for summer school sandals, if you want to come with us?
