sat directly to my right, huddled into Dougie as his arm carelessly hung around her shoulders. In the fluorescent overhead lights, I could see that her eyes were thickly rimmed with black liner. It made her eyes look smaller than they were. Debbie had told me that Izzy only started hanging out with them last year, that before that she was ‘Isabel’ and too popular to even acknowledge them. I had asked Debbie why that was, but all she said was Izzy had ‘had a bad year’. Then one morning she came to school and she was different. It was as if she’d woken up and decided to become a new person. Soon she started going out with Dougie, dyed her hair black, began organising student rights protests about better food sourcing for the cafeteria and became fixated on the 1970s era. Now she looked like Deborah Harry, with her thick make-up and dyed hair cut short with a heavy long fringe resting on her eyelids. I don’t know why she picked the 1970s. Perhaps she didn’t know that it was a period heavily shadowed by the Vietnam War and social propaganda.
‘You hungry, Sam? See anything you like?’ she asked, a wide grin stretching across her face. Did she see me looking at her?
I quickly looked away, before Dougie saw me staring too. ‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled. Honestly, I didn’t know if I was hungry. I was only hungry if everyone else was and I would only order a drink if someone else did. But the waitress approached me first.
After a few moments of silence and an exchange of glances around the table, the waitress finally snapped. ‘Are you going to order something or not?’ she said.
I looked to Dougie for some sort of cue to what I should order, but he was staring across the table at Debbie and Neall with a smirk and a slight gleam in his irises.
‘Well?’ the waitress hissed, her pink lipstick smearing across her front teeth.
‘Um… I… just a bowl of cornflakes with milk,’ I eventually stammered. I hadn’t looked at the menu and didn’t even know if cereal was available, but at the time it seemed like an appropriate choice. It wasn’t. The whole table erupted in laughter and my face burned red. When I looked away from my sweaty palms in my lap, I saw that the only one who wasn’t still laughing was Dougie.
‘Make that two bowls of cornflakes,’ he added, still smirking.
The laughter faded out as the waitress scribbled down six more orders of cornflakes before tearing off the sheet and begrudgingly handing it through the open hatch to the kitchen. She looked back over at our table, and rolled her eyes contentiously the way my brother used to whenever Dad tried to talk to him after a few beers. After a while, the only person Charlie talked to was me. And soon that stopped too.
After a few minutes of steady silence, the waitress came back over and slammed down seven individually wrapped boxes of cornflakes, seven bowls, spoons and a jug of milk. Quietly everyone began pouring their cereal, sneaking small smiles back and forth. Finally, Dougie slammed his spoon down on the table, and with cornflakes falling out of his mouth, he yelled, ‘You’re so weird, Sam. I love it!’
Soon several chaotic conversations ensued, my eyes darting back and forth hungrily consuming all of them. Dougie and Max were talking about a music band I’d never heard of, and Debbie was showing Izzy her newly tattooed wrist, which was covered in tiny blue stars. On top of that, Debbie would intermittently interrupt Max to chime in with her opinions of the depiction of women in music videos, while Izzy and Dougie shared the occasional inside joke and stolen exchange. Worm and Max competed for the best impersonation of John Major, while Neall talked even louder to block out Debbie’s voice.
I’d never been to a tennis match but I would imagine that it would be close to what I was experiencing. After a few minutes, my neck ached so I started counting through my pennies to pay the bill. I immediately wished I had brought more so I could have paid for the whole bill, rather than just for my measly share. Maybe they would want to hang out with me again if I paid the whole bill. I would remember that next time. A dull ache suddenly grew in my belly – would there be a next time?
I was still kicking myself for not bringing more money when I noticed that Izzy was lagging behind the group on the walk home. She seemed to have slowed her steps to walk with me, but I knew there had to be another reason. She occasionally glanced up and smiled, before eventually nudging me. ‘I’m really glad you came tonight.’
When I looked up, I noticed tiny dimples in the corners of her smile. Her eyes were bright even in the darkness. ‘How are you enjoying Knightsbridge?’
‘It’s OK,’ I mumbled. Maybe she did want to walk with me. My palms started to sweat and I resisted rubbing them on my trousers in front of her.
‘I went to nursery with Noel Taylor and he hasn’t changed one bit,’ she laughed. ‘He’s an idiot, and he enjoys making people’s lives miserable so don’t worry about him. He’ll get bored soon.’
‘Yeah, she should know. She went out with him!’ yelled Debbie from in front of us. ‘Sam, why are you sixteen and in our year? Did you get moved up or something?’
‘Yeah, Pembrook moved me up,’ I said, feeling a stare from Dougie.
‘You must be really smart. Cool. Why did you move from…?’ she continued, quickly trailing off before she got elbowed in the ribs by Max. ‘Sorry, Sam. I forgot –’
‘– It’s fine, really,’ I shrugged, not knowing what else to say.
‘Have you checked out the old art theatre yet? It got refurbished last year, only just opened,’ Izzy said, eyeing up Debbie who was still blushing from embarrassment.
I slowly shook my head. ‘What do they show there?’
‘Old films, foreign films. In the lobby they sell retro sweets. Do you like Roman Polanski?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Of course I was lying. Was that a retro sweet or had I missed the transition into another topic?
‘Maybe we can all go see a film sometime?’ she asked, a genuine smile beaming across her face.
I hadn’t watched a movie since Pembrook, but I didn’t know whether that was because I was so preoccupied with my own thoughts, or whether movies just seemed frivolous to me now. There was more violence, drama and tragedy in my life. I didn’t really need to watch a movie. I could just turn on the news and see the latest Charlie report.
Before I could tell her that I’d love to go to the cinema with her, Worm jumped in a puddle and sent sprays of muddy water towards Debbie. Screaming something about a vintage skirt, she stormed off. When we got to the bus stop, she was sitting on the bench wiping mud streaks off her skirt. Leaning against the doorway of the bus shelter, I glanced at Izzy and noticed that she was staring back at me and smiling.
I hadn’t really responded to her question. And even though it unnerved me not knowing who I was or what I liked any more, I still went to bed early that morning with her words burning sweetly into my thoughts. And when I awoke early in the afternoon, I discovered both a broken framed photo of Charlie at the bottom of the stairs, and that my parents hadn’t even noticed that I had gone out the night before.
‘6 Underground’ (Sneaker Pimps, Autumn 1996)
Peering over the top of my notepad, I saw Dr Albreck’s almond-shaped hazel eyes flitting from my
