Chapter Three
I woke up in cold sweat, having had another nightmare about my Mother and that she wanted to give me away. In my nightmare, Jess and Tana were there, too. They were sneering at me, saying that there was no mystery to why my mother wouldn't want a child as ugly as me. In my nightmare I didn't argue with that.
Brian had laid a cup of tea on my bedside cabinet, which was stone cold by the time I got up. I hated that he sometimes had to work weekends, even when we had something planned. He'd put a note underneath the tea which acted as a sort of temporary coaster. It read:
Cassy,
Paul has called me into help with work today. I'll probably be back around dinner time, so start cooking the meal I've left in the fridge around seven.
B x
P.S. Sorry, I can't take you and Jess to the cinema today.
There was one plus side for today, though. When he went, I could have some quiet time to myself. I got dressed and trailed down the winding stairs into the middle of our corridor. Just as my toast had popped, my phone started to ring persistently. Who would ring me? Maybe Jess, wondering when we were going to pick her up. Or Brian, checking up on me like his controlling self. Or, finally, my...
No. It was too late to hope. Too late to dream of it. But I never would've guessed who it was on the phone.
"Hello." The familiar voice said. This had happened before, I was sure of it. I had heard this voice before without seeing a face. I had the odd feeling of déjà vu. And then I realised that it was the same voice. It was...
"Hello, Ron?" I answered back, still slightly unsure of myself. How had he gotten my phone number?
"Hey. I was wondering, if you wanted, to go to see that new movie...with me." My heart skipped a beat. Maybe I didn’t have to worry about being friendless after all…
"Umm, ok that sounds cool but... I was actually wondering how..." I started.
"Great. I'll come round later." He interrupted.
Still thinking excessively about the previous night, I trudged up the stairs to my room and sat myself on the bed. I was thinking that I should probably have rung Jess by now, to tell her about us not being able to go to the movies, so I whipped out my mobile and ended up listening to the all-to familiar voice-mail. I guessed a message would do. I glanced up at the mirror and caught sight of myself. I could see hints, traces of what I think she looked on me that were too painful to look at.
You would have thought that by now I would think my mother was horrible, but I was stubborn. I never stopped hoping that someday, she would come and we would all live happily ever after. I knew it couldn't happen, but I never stopped hoping.
Ron came on his own and had apparently walked all the way from the other side of town. I hurried downstairs and scribbled a note for Brian, not that he got back before I did, but I didn't want him to report me missing or something. We walked quickly to the bus station in silence, with the awkward couple of 'how are you?' and 'fine thanks.' I felt kind of guilty going with Ron, as I had previously told Jess that we couldn't go because there was no-one to drive us. I guessed it wouldn't matter if she didn't find out. My phone beeped with a message from Jess saying she would have been too ill to go anyway. So it turned out I was in luck.
When we arrived, the front entrance was completely packed with people. I was about to suggest that we did something else when I saw the size of the cue to buy tickets, when Ron said with a grin, "Don't worry, I pre-ordered them." And then waved two strips of paper in my face which seemed to be those very tickets. He would've had to order them yesterday, by the looks of the queue. Then how did he know if I was going to come or not? Huh. He'd probably ordered them for someone else and they'd not come.
We were walking through to the cue outside screen number five when I saw a very familiar face. It was Jess. And Tana.
"What're you doing here?!" Jess asked.
"I was about to ask the same question. You look fine to me." I teased.
"Yeah, about that. Well, Mum doesn't really like my new BFF." She started, and Tana smirked at me from behind her. New BFF - I assumed that was my cue to go ahead and get out of her life.
"She says I'm hanging with the wrong group. So I kind of told her I was going with you. Which I was, then you said we wouldn't be able to get here."
"You could've offered to take us!" I retorted.
"Well, I wanted to go with Tana..." She began, measuring my expression,"... she suggested that she could go with me when I told her you couldn't, so I said that your Dad..." I tensed at the sound of that word. I wasn't really used to people calling him that; I rarely did.
"...could take us after all." She seemed pleased with her logic. I stood there, frozen to the spot with shock. I'd just lost my best friend. I suppose it was a long time coming. Tana had probably been plotting this for months, right under my nose. I couldn't really enjoy the movie after that. All I could think of was Jess standing there, and Tana sticking her tongue out at me as if to say 'I've won'. She had.
All I could think about was Jess. She went everywhere with Tana. Some days before my birthday at school, I saw Jess sitting on the wall, smirking at me, as though we had never known each other, never been close. The look on Tana's face got me. And the fact that Jess was content to go along with her and her 'crew' of 'populars'.
And when I got home from the cinema, in floods of tears, Brian looked really worried. But, oh no, it wasn't for me. Something in his life was obviously way more important to him than my feelings, my emotions. If mum was there, she would've comforted me and told me everything was going to be OK. But she wasn't, so I had to deal with it on my own, without a friend in the world. My life was majorly messed up.
