Love is a Laserquest - Alex Turner/Arctic Monkeys Fan Fiction

1999

I check the clock on the gym wall, begging for the hands to move faster, feeling impatient and annoyed. My stupid, purple dress is feeling tight and unbearable, the hairspray in my curls itchy and overdone. All of a sudden, I want nothing more than to get home, take off this ridiculous, bloody outfit, and crawl into my own bed and be alone. Maybe turn up Radiohead at top volume. But the dance doesn't end for another ten minutes, and everyone around me is irritating and immature, and I feel like I can't breathe.

Why can't I breathe? Why is my chest so tight?

My eyes land on Alex and Vanessa once more, dancing awkwardly– though very close now– across the dancefloor, and the stupid, swirling blue lights and the awful Westlife song are making me want to tear my hair out. For some reason, it's hard for me to tear my gaze away from my best friend– though his stupid face is inexplicably annoying me more than anything else– but I finally manage to, and I push my way into the girls' toilet.

There's a gaggle of girls in front of the mirrors, with their eyeliner and blusher and lip gloss, so I skirt around them and lock myself in a stall, lean back against the wall and squeeze my arms around myself.

I force myself to take in a couple gulps of air, but my vision seems blurry, and I realize my eyes are burning and– I'm crying.

My mum springs to mind without warning, and it makes me swallow back the tears– blink furiously so they can't come.

The last time I felt like this– panicked, wretched, emotionally out of control– was the day she left. It began with the sight of her things at the top of the stairs when Dad brought me home from school. It cascaded down the back of my throat when I saw Dad start crying at her words, as he physically tried to keep her from walking out the door, begging. I was spinning in the center of my mind, pinwheeling into a black hole of anger and panic, feeling like I could throw a tantrum or be sick from the unfairness of it all.

That's sort of how I feel now– like I could claw off my own skin to stop it feeling this unbidden pain, this unexplained, wretched irritation.

Someone's knocking at the stall door, so I force myself to shake it off, pretend to flush the toilet, and go back out.

To my relief, the lights are back up in the gym, the music over, and I find Alex waiting for me by the door to the car park alone. I feel a moment of ease, and I fall into step beside him as we go outside to find Dad waiting for us, parked in the line of other parents.

"Did you lot 'ave fun?" Dad asks as we climb into the car.

The night was fun, I remember, before Alex went to dance. We ate stupid finger foods, and drank soda, and made fun of the music, and everyone's clothes. We talked through a playlist of our own– the soundtrack we would create for the school dance if it were up to us. We even put in some slow dancing songs. And it was fun, it was like any other Friday night, except we were dressed up and laughing about Matt trying to dance with a girl in the year above us. But then Vanessa's friend came over, and Alex was blushing, and then he and Vanessa were dancing and my chest felt like I was wearing a Victorian-era corset.

"Yeah," Alex replies for both of us.

"Did you dance?"

They keep going back and forth as Dad navigates his way to the Turners' in the dark, talking about the music, and the dancing, and our teachers, but I can't quit puzzling over how I feel.

Was it Vanessa? We're not mates, but I don't have a problem with her.

"Not one Radiohead song," Alex is saying, and Dad is pretend gasping.

Is it Alex?

It doesn't make any sense.

My eyebrows are still pulled together in confusion by the time Dad stops at Alex's, and I finally pull myself from the sludge of my brain to say goodbye as he's climbing out. I watch him walk up the drive, his shoulders bent in his suit jacket, in the dark, the familiar, messy back of his brown haired head bobbing towards the front door.

I remember his arms slung around Vanessa and their nervous smiles, as he's disappearing inside, and when Dad is pulling away toward home I feel breathless– like I honestly might choke or be sick all over the windshield.

It's Alex.

I fancy Alex.

The thought feels like coming home, but also like stepping off of a cliff, and I don't know what to do with it.

I'm silent for the rest of the ride, worried I might actually be sick if I even open my mouth.