My Backward Life (Sample Only)

PARACHUTE LOVE

It was Friday night, and we had agreed to meet Toya and Leah outside the community center at eight-thirty, but between drinking Baileys, burning toasted sandwiches, and redoing Rana's hair to make it wavy, Chrissy, Rana and I were late. When we arrived, they were waiting for us by the arched red door of the converted church, shivering and scowling.

"What took you so long?" Leah snapped. "We're freezing our bums off out here!" She was wearing her mum's clingy, leopard-skin trousers and pointy high heels without tights, which considering the 5 °C situation, wasn't the wisest choice.

Chrissy apologized, unlinked herself from me, and went to hug them.

"If Louise lives down the road from here, why are you so late?"

"Gorgeous earrings," Chrissy said. She stroked one of the silky feathers drifting in Leah's golden-ginger hair. "You look amazing. You both do. Come on, let's go inside. Girl's night out, remember? No moody cows allowed."

Toya grabbed on to my arm and pulled at the hem of her burgundy skirt, which barely inched below her leather jacket. Along with Rana, we followed Chrissy and Leah into the Gothic church.

Christmas lights decorated the reception desk and an empty bar. Drums thrashed and pounded behind closed doors. We paid five pounds each to enter and passed two guys in ripped jeans who emerged from the concert hall doors in a haze of machine smoke.

The small hall had mirrors along one side and a plywood stage raised on beer barrels at the far end. Red and blue spotlights moved overhead. The drummer smashed out a heavy-metal gallop, the guitarist hammered up and down his fretboard, and the singer sang like he was mid-argument with someone.

Chrissy looked back at me and grinned. She was the only one who knew my long-term crush, Luke, played drums for Electric Cloud.

"Why are they all dressed as girls?" Toya shouted.

"Holy cow!" Leah unscrewed the lid from a bottle of peach schnapps, which she'd snuck through in her bag. "They're actually worse than their video. Where on earth did you hear about these freaks, Louise?"

The five of us stood at the back of the hall, staring. For a moment it was as if we were all too dumbstruck to do anything.

"The drummer used to live on Louise's street," Chrissy shouted.

"Bet you're glad he moved!" Toya grabbed the bottle of schnapps from Leah and took a large swig. Chrissy began headbanging. Leah laughed and seemed to forget the music was crap. The two of them thrashed their hair while the smoke machine pumped its apocalyptic haze.

"This isn't the guy that used to live on your street, is it?" Toya shouted at me. "Oh my God, this is that guy!"

History, geography, and French teachers at East Hill would have been amazed to learn of Toya's elephantine memory. Unfortunately, it only covered the boys, celebrities, and embarrassing-moments spectrum of facts. Toya couldn't give you a date for the Battle of Hastings, or name any of the cities the Nile flowed through, but she remembered the name of every guy any of us had ever spoken to at a party. Proof: I hadn't mentioned Luke to anyone but Chrissy for at least two years.

Aware denial was hopeless, I folded my lips together, smiled, and waited for Toya to get distracted. She ran a hand over her coiled hair and squinted at the band through the smoke. Blue light shone on Luke at the back where he drummed and sweated.

Luke wasn't normal good-looking. He was more like a Calvin Klein model. Even dressed in a skirt and a pink wig.

Toya turned. "You have impeccable taste, Louise Doors," she said, raising the schnapps bottle in a salute. "Definitely not a stiff." Then she took a swig and passed it to me. I took it and handed it on to Rana.