Remix (14 page)

“Sounds good to me.” Kaz stands up. “Ruby?”

My lip curls with so much disgust I think I actually pull a muscle. “A band called Ivory Lace? They sound shit.”

Kaz stares at me for a second, completely expressionless. “Because it’s best to judge bands by their name rather than the music they play.”

“I fancy the Heavy Tent anyway.” Where I can go and legitimately hurt people without getting into trouble. Shame Lauren won’t be there. “What about you, Kaz?”

Is she serious?

“I just said I’d go with Lauren to watch Ivory Lace.” I point at Lauren in case Ruby has momentarily forgotten who she is as well as what she just said.

“We don’t have to…” Lauren starts to say until she sees the expression on my face, then she mumbles something about needing the loo anyway and departs. As she passes the others, Lee half-turns to see what’s going on, registers Ruby’s expression and turns away, although by the tilt of his head, I’d guess he’s still listening.

As soon as Lauren is out of earshot, Ruby lets rip.

“I can’t believe you’re choosing her over me.”

“What
? How exactly am I the villain here?” I try and keep my voice as quiet as possible. I’m not Ruby, I don’t like fighting in front of an audience. “You were the one who turned it into a choice after we’d already decided what to do.”

“So it’s ‘we’ now, is it?”

“Yes, it’s we – I’m including you in that collective pronoun. I thought you’d come too.”

“As if.
Ivory Lace
.” She pulls that face again.

“You don’t even know the band, Ruby.”

“I know that Lauren likes them,” she says and I shake my head in disappointment.

“That’s all this is about? You don’t like Lauren.” Ruby looks mutinous. “
Why?
I’m the one who’s meant to have the problem and I
don’t
,” I say, surprising myself with the truth. “Why is it so hard for you? Why can’t you make an effort for someone who likes
me
? You don’t find it so hard to like everyone else on the planet.” My voice rose with every word of that sentence and I try to ignore the glances I’m getting from everyone now, not just Lee.

I’ve got to stop letting what other people think affect what
I
do.

Ruby’s eyebrows furrow together for a second and she looks at me as if she’s trying to fight back the words she wants to say.

“Do you really want to know?” she says, losing the battle.

“Just tell me,” Kaz says.

So I do.

“I don’t like you around her.” I reach into Kaz’s bag and unplug my pathetically under-charged phone and walk away without looking back.

I don’t like you around her
.

Ruby and I never fight.
Never
. I am the one person with whom she’s never fallen out. As fast as she makes friends, she’s faster to fight – I’m always the peacemaker, the Ruby-whisperer who can talk her back into being reasonable. There isn’t a girl in our year who hasn’t run up against one of her rages at some point and she and Stu spent as much time arguing as they did making up. My best friend gets angry with teachers, angry with her parents, angry with her brothers – Callum most of all. She spends a lot of her time getting pointlessly angry with inanimate objects that don’t do what she thinks they should be doing.

Until this weekend, Ruby has never been angry with me.

As I follow Lauren through the loosely knit crowd that’s gathering around the Mellow Tent, I think about what I’ve done to push Ruby so far, trying to work out how to fix things.

“Stop it.” I look up sharply at the voice. Lauren sounded so much like Ruby. “I don’t know what’s going on with Ruby, but it’s not your fault, Kaz.”

“It must be.”

“Why?” She’s looking at me over her sunglasses, her eyes narrowed. “She’s being a brat about the band and that’s got nothing to do with you.”

I don’t know how I feel hearing someone call Ruby a brat, but it makes me want to try and excuse her, even if I don’t believe the excuse I’m making. “I’m sure it’s got something to do with Stu.”

Lauren rolls her eyes. “As if she’s the only person with an ex-boyfriend.”

And we both look at each other, neither quite sure what the other’s going to do…

Until I burst out laughing. A split second later, Lauren does the same.

Ruby may not like the person I am around Lauren, but Lauren does.

The band on at the Heavy Tent are shit. What now? I can’t be sitting on that stupid rug when Kaz and Lauren come back. I wander along the stalls, but it’s a lot less fun without Kaz. Everything’s less fun without her. When Kaz and I planned all this, it was an adventure we’d be having together, not apart. I know it’s my fault for throwing one about Lauren, but that’s only because I don’t know why Kaz can’t just see it for herself. Lauren is a) just not that great and b) SHE IS BUMPING UGLIES WITH THE BOY KAZ IS STILL IN LOVE WITH.

Although I have a very strong suspicion that Kaz might be in denial about Tom’s uglies and their bumpage.

At the “tattoo” stall, I browse the designs on display, judging the people who’ve picked them for their lack of imagination.

“Are these all you’ve got?” I ask one of the girls at the table, who’s refilling her henna pipe.

“Yeah…” She doesn’t sound certain.

“Could I design my own?”

“Not really. We’ve got transfers we need to put on before we apply the henna.”

“What if I drew the pattern on myself and you inked it?” But she’s bored of the conversation and asks me whether I’m going to pick a design. The guy on the table next to her waves me over.

“What are you after?” he says. “I’m bored of drawing characters from Winnie-the-bloody-Pooh.” Which sounds like an unpleasant medical condition.

He notices I’m staring at his arms, which are covered in real ink, and he stretches them out, rolling back his short sleeves to show his shoulders. I’ve not heard of the artists he mentions, but then I’m more into blackwork than colour.

“Do you think you could do me something huge and bold from here” – I point to my wrist – “to here?” – my neck.

“I think I could,” he says.

The straps of my vest and bra are tucked under my inked arm in case of smudging and I admire the design. The guy did an awesome job, using a black jagua ink rather than henna so it’ll look almost real once it darkens. I love tattoos. My parents loathe them, which was one of the many black marks against Stu. Imagine how they’d feel if I’d paid his shady mate a visit and come home with some underage ink. They’re going to kick off enough about this fake one. Although that’s nothing compared to what’ll happen when I come home inked for real the day I turn eighteen.

They won’t be able to do anything about it though, will they? I mean apart from shout at me.

Why would you SCAR yourself like that?

You’ll only regret it in ten years’ time
.

You’ll never get a good job
.

We watched a documentary about how tattoos are poisonous and the ink seeps into your arm and rots your brain until it falls out and you become a zombie. That’s how the apocalypse starts
.

OK, so I made that last one up, but they
are
always quoting documentaries or articles that prove how every life choice I’ve made is WRONG:

Subjects I took for GCSE.

What I want to do instead of A-levels.

My art.

My music.

My clothes.

My boyfriend…

Ex-
boyfriend.

My feet have taken me back to the Heavy Tent whilst I wait for the ink on my arm to dry. A different band’s onstage and it takes a few moments for my ears to adapt until I recognize the song from one of Stu’s many playlists. I miss the music chat we used to have, him wanting to share his sounds with me, or spending hours arguing about my Second Album Theory, and the way songs would magically appear on my iPod days after I mentioned wanting to hear more of a particular band.

Kaz is a musical omnivore, but Stu was like me – we thrive on the meat of one genre.

I hadn’t realized I was looking for him until I catch sight of him standing near one of the pillars. Seemingly alone, his hands are resting in the back pockets of his shorts, head tilted at an angle that tells me he’s listening, judging, analysing.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and leaving immediately, I walk round to the side of the crowd and start edging in. It’s a stupid thing to do, but I’m in a stupid mood. I want him to see me. I want him to distract me. I want him to… I have no idea what I want.

I force myself through one song, concentrating on the people in the crowd in front of me, reading the dates on the back of someone’s Green Day tour T-shirt, realizing I wasn’t even born then. The singer shouts out that this is their last song and I decide to wait it out. After this I will have a totally legit reason to turn round and ever so casually catch Stu’s eye.

The song closes, the guitarist chucks a plectrum and the drummer launches his sticks. They spin towards the back of the crowd so that I finally,
finally
have an excuse to twist round and …

… see that he’s gone.

This is my chance. I should leave now, get away from whatever incredibly bad idea/fantasy kept me here. If Kaz were with me, she’d see me straight, but she isn’t. She’s away with Lauren, and without her to remind me of why I should be avoiding Stu, I find myself looking for him.

As I turn for the exit, I see him there, arms folded, watching me.

In hindsight, I’m glad that Ruby didn’t come with us or she would be unbearably smug right about now.

Ivory Lace weren’t
great
…

We’re wandering the long way back to our spot on the hill, skirting the stalls that surround the Festblog “office” that’s filled to bursting with people queuing up to pose with props in the photo booths. It’s nearly four, but the sun’s as aggressively bright as it was at midday and there’s acres of pink and brown flesh on display. The air is filled with laughter and the smell of hot skin.

Lauren’s in the middle of apologizing again for Ivory Lace’s poor performance when her phone goes off. “Oh. It’s Tom.”

She looks at me and I give her what’s meant to be a nod of encouragement, although she’s already answering.

“Hey, you.” The smile that breaks out across her face hurts my heart so much that I have to look away.

I cannot be here whilst she talks to him.

I rest a hand on Lauren’s arm and point at the nearest distraction I can see – the Unsigned Stage sitting on top of the hill, the white arc of the awning reaching out above the main thoroughfare with the stage tucked in the back, like an open oyster shell with a pearl sitting in its centre. Lauren nods that she’ll find me when she’s finished and I make my escape.

It’s immediately clear why the band playing have yet to be signed. The lead singer’s voice is too quiet and the rhythm guitar’s ever so slightly out of tune – which would be fine, if the person playing it wasn’t also singing in several different keys. Loudly. I edge towards the front for a better view of the drummer, who seems like she’s having fun at least. When the out-of-tune guitarist tells us that the next song is about someone in the audience, I look round to see if I can tell who it is by their reaction, catching the eye of the guy standing behind me. I smile shyly at the fleeting contact, then scan the rest of the faces. My eyes are drawn back to him and I realize with a jolt that he’s still looking at me. Obviously my reaction to this is to turn away so fast that I hear the bones in my neck crunch. In the lull before the next (hopefully last) song, I sense someone stepping closer and hear a “Hi”.

“Hi,” I say. It’s the same boy. Thick-framed glasses, the curls of his hair making a bid to escape the confines of the cut. He’s about the same height as me, so my eyes can’t help but meet his. Again.

I like a boy in glasses. It always annoyed me that Tom insisted on wearing contacts.

“Out of ten?” He nods at the stage.

“That depends. Was that last song about you?”

I hear a soft chuckle, then, “No. It wasn’t.”

“Maybe a four?” Which sounds a lot harsher than I’d usually go, but the singing is verging on painful. The boy laughs – a happy huff of breath, which I think means he agrees. The songs ends and we all clap, and someone in the back cheers, but I’m not sure whether that’s in relief.

“Are all the unsigned bands this bad?” I can’t think of anything else to say to keep him talking to me – it’s refreshing to find I want him to.

“I hope not or the world will run out of new and exciting music.”

There’s an awkward silence, in which my phone starts ringing.

It’s Lauren.

“Um. I’ve got to go,” I say. “Nice to meet you.” But I’m deliberately slow answering and the phone rings out.

“Nice to meet you too.” He has a warm, easy smile and I like him more for it. “Although I’m not sure it counts as ‘meeting’ unless I find out your name.”

“It’s Kaz.” I omit the usual “short for Karizma – with a z” and hold his gaze as long as I dare before I start smiling at the ground like an idiot. I am very out of practice at noticing boys. And talking to them.

“Sebastian.” He nods and I nod. “I think you should come back here in” – he looks at his watch – “one hour and thirty-seven minutes.”

“Here?” I repeat, because I’m confused.

“Here.” And he traces a firm cross in the dusty ground with the toe of his boot. “I’ve heard some pretty good things about the band playing then, definitely better than a four.”

“One hour and thirty-seven minutes?” My smile feels different. Flirty, possibly, and I start walking backwards before it blows up in my face and I come out with something weird, like “Nice glasses!” – the kind of compliment that sounds more like an insult.

Sebastian looks at his watch then up at me. “One hour and thirty-six.”

And he matches my smile as I moonwalk my way into the sunshine, before I turn to hide the massive grin that’s breaking out on my face.

I set the timer on my phone for one hour and thirty-six minutes.