The Dating Club

Promises, Plots and Birthday Plans

Chapter 23: Promises, Plots and Birthday Plans


I meet Marissa at school on the way to the dinner hall and she pulls me to the side of the corridor and puts a hand to my ear to whisper to me.

     "Alfie texted me," she says urgently, looking around us quickly before continuing. "He really needs to see you, he was ever so upset about what happened at the hospital."

     "Why are we whispering?" I whisper back.

     "He's having an operation on his back, he wants you to visit him."

     "There isn't even anyone listening Marissa!" I say, but she quickly puts a hand over my mouth to stop me from continuing.

     "He wants you to go alone, and without Luke."

     "Why would I go with Luke?" I laugh, and she shushes me quickly and smacks my arm.

     "Jess this is serious! He doesn't want anyone to know you're going.

     "So his girlfriend doesn't find out and hunt me down," I mutter, hitching my bag up on my side and pulling Marissa with me to our table. She rolls her eyes and tags along quickly.

     "I know you two didn't finish on a good note but this could be your chance to fix this. Don't you want to at least stay friends with him?"

     "I don't want his girlfriend to come around to my house and set her pink Chihuahua on me in my sleep!"

     "Oh come on, Jess. You can defend yourself from a room full of boys in one of your karate classes, but not from a small dog with a ribbon and a lot of Eau de toilette?"

     "I'm not going to hit a dog!"

     "Did someone say something about a hot dog?" says Matty, walking over with a sausage in his mouth and two others in baps, smothered in ketchup, mustard and onions. He holds them out to Marissa and myself and then chews his own hot dog noisily, before dropping a kiss on Marissa's cheek and leaving a spot of tomato sauce on her face. She makes a face at him but takes the hot dog and we sit at the table.

     And then to my surprise Luke comes and joins us with a hot dog himself. Marissa stares at me wide eyed and Matty's eye brows almost hit the ceiling but both say nothing.

     "So how come they're selling hot dogs at the cantine then?" mumbles Luke, chewing his food. He nudges me and grins at Marissa and Matty.

     "I don't know but I do know that Parma looks extremeley pissed off at the moment, I'd better watch out Jess," says Matty, tearing off a bit of hotdog with his teeth and reaching for a triple chocolate chip cupcake to his left.

     Everyone on the table then turns to where he is looking, and the four of us all meet the eyes of the four on Parma's table at once. I quickly turn back around, covering my eyes and groaning. "Did we really just all turn at the same time? Obvious much? Thanks guys!" I say, and Luke laughs next to me.

     "It's fine, nothing to worry about! What can she do now?"

     "Have you seen how much I've gone through in the last three months? She's a monster!" I wail, and Matty and Marissa begin to laugh with Luke. Marissa stops when she sees the look I am giving her and Matty.

     "Ok, so I shouldn't laugh. But you should really lighten up, Jess, it's your birthday this weekend."

     "Yeah! What are you doing for it?" Says Luke. Matty's face only registers a kind of guilty surprise. He probably didn't know but I don't mind. 

     "I don't know, I was thinking of just having a small sleepover or something."

     "Oh no don't be like that, have a party! It's your seventeenth, right?"

     "Yeah, nothing special."

     "What do you mean? Don't you remember our promise?" Says Luke, a little disappointedly.

     I frown as I sort with my mind through all of the promises I have made with Luke -

          - The brownie oath I made when we were fourteen that meant I would save every orange jelly belly I laid hands on for him...

            ... The pinky promise I made when we were fifteen that I would go and see the last Harry Potter movie with him...

                  ... And the moment I swore that I knew what I was doing with Parma's club, right from the beginning...

     "No, I don't remember," I say, turning a blind eye to Matty as he steals my hot dog from me. Luke looks down at the table and pretends to wipe away a tear but I know that he is hiding a huge wound to his ego.

     "I'm only kidding," I say, nudging him. "We promised that I would hold a party on my seventeenth birthday as that would be when the contract for the Jelly Belly jar ran out."

     "Erm, what?" Says Matty, popping the rest of my hot dog into his mouth with a single finger. Marissa loses it then and starts laughing, gripping Matty quickly to support herself.

     "I almost forgot about that!" she shrieks, before falling off of her chair and onto the floor.

     "Yep, you got it right. It will officially be yours on the eleventh of December," says Luke.

     "And mine! I own half of the goddamn Jelly Belly jar!" Shouts Marissa from beneath the table.

     "What jelly belly jar? What are you on about? What's going on? Actually wait did you mention a party?" Says Matty.

     "Yeah - "

     "Marco! Jimmy! Denny! Huddle!" Matty hollers, and all at once the table is surrounded by the rugby team. Matty sets about organising a sound system fit and the rest of the boys discuss drinks, to my horror. Luke attempts to shoo them, and fails.

     But through the squalor a high pitched squeal worms it's way to me. "You are inviting me to your party, aren't you?"

     "Yes Parma! It won't be a party without now will it?" I say, smiling as I turn to her. She looks a little thrown aback for a minute but quickly composes herself.

     "Good!" She says smartly, waiting until her lackeys have assumed their positions in her radius before walking off out of the hall.

     "Oh dear," I say, turning back to Luke. "I just invited Parma to my party."

     "And about fifty other people as well," says Marissa a little worriedly, surveying the crowd around us.

     I exchange worried glances with the three. Marissa tugs at Matty's sleeve impatiently until he turns back to us, but there is no chance of persuading him I am not having a house party.

     "Are you parents at home on your birthday?"

     "No he is not," says Luke before I can say otherwise. "You're dad is over at mine for the big match - Chelsea versus Man United."

     "Luke..." I hiss, kicking him under the table. "I'm not letting this turn into a house party!"

     "Live a little, Jess. It will be fun!"

     "My last party wasn't so fun," I mutter, and Marissa tuts at me. "This will be different. It's your birthday!"

     "I suppose," I say, albeit a little grumpily. I look over to see Matty and thirty other boys all on their phones, triumphant grins glazing their faces. I shake my head and go to stand to go to my next class.


     At the end of the day Matty picks Marissa and myself up from school and takes us to the hospital. Matty never apologised for his rude behaviour at the hospital last time so the silence in the car is a little awkward.

     Marissa and I slip up the stairs and as we are walking down the hallway I get the bizarre feeling that something weird is going on, but I cannot quite put my finger on it. Whether it's the sickly shade of yellow the walls are painted, or just the sheer memory of what happened here that's creeping me out the feeling does not go, not even when we enter Alfie's room.

     "Hey Jess," he says. I notice how little cards there are in the room now. Not one balloon graces the bed that Alfie is laid in.

     "You're looking... Better," I say, and he nods.

     "Yeah. Five broken bones, two fractured ribs, six plasters and three major ops later..."

     Marissa laughs and the room goes silent. "I'll go outside," she whispers, and slips out of the door.

     "Jess, I have something to tell you," whispers Alfie, beckoning to me, so I go over to the side of his bed. "I have a way for you to get out of the Dating Club. And a way to ruin Parma."

     "Why would you want to ruin Parma?" I say, and his face darkens suddenly.

     "She ruined me. But that's the past. We used to be close, so I know everything on her. I could bury her. But all you need is this." Alfie then digs into a bag on the desk beside him and hands me a wallet of paper.

     "Ashamed though I am to admit it, I had more to do with the Dating Club then just participation. Parma promised me things, in exchange for... This, but she never paid up. She just manipulated me. So here, expose her. Expose me too, if you want - I don't care. As long as she gets what she deserves."

     Alfie then falls into the bed at that note, as though telling me this has exhausted him. Realise that he is not going to say anymore, I stand and turn to leave.

     Marissa walks down the corridor with me, occasionally glancing at the wallet in my hand. I am about to tell her what Alfie told me when I spot something in one of the rooms to our left.

     "Is that... Parma?"

     There is a flash of red and I am sure. Parma Rose stands facing a bed, a fair haired woman inside. She is young but unwell, her hair thinning and her face worn and worried. No cards or balloons adorn the room, there are no flowers and there are no changes of clothes on the chairs inside. The woman is in one of the long term rooms, and she has clearly been receiving chemotherapy.

     Their voices drift out of the just open door, and it is a voice I have never heard Parma use before - it is honest, and not dripping with venom or sarcasm or lies. And she is telling this woman about her day, and at one point I hear Parma's voice break, at another I hear her laugh.

     I feel like an intruder, listening to this other side of Parma, but the truth is that it's intriguing and I am curious as to why Parma only shows this side of her to this one woman.

     The woman looks at Parma with nothing but love and doting, entirely different to the looks of fear, jealousy and little admiration her followers and the people at school give her. And it's when I look down at how Parma and the woman hold hands on the sheets of the bed that I finally understand who this woman is.

     "Good bye Mum," says Parma then, picking up her school bag from the floor. Marissa and I flee down the stairs, each of us feeling as though we have just discovered something unnatural and forbidden to any other than Parma's mother.

     And it's with a startling realisation that I stop outside Matty's car, a sudden wave of nausea and sadness hitting me. Luke was right.

     Parma and myself are not so different after all.

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