The Budding Roses

I hate you Harry Styles!

Monday 7th July

I pined to see him, unable to wait any longer, but where the heck was he? He's always early on a Monday, and today is definitely Monday, right?

'Have you seen Harry?' I whimpered at Natasha. Damn, the Common Room had filled up to overflow already, now I was certain never to see him, ever again.

What utter torture, for now I would have to endure three agonising hours of Chemistry, trudging through the inertia of melting points and conductivity, still grateful to find distraction in anything but thinking of him.

'Where have you been?' At last he arrived, it wasn't too late, he had made it, he was safe.

'Morning,' a grunt was expelled from Harry's most miserable mouth, indicating way too much apathy than even the meanest of Monday morning blues warranted.

'Were you feeling ill yesterday morning?' I grinned, hoping my positive mood would cheer him.

'No, why would I?'

'Oh, it's just you seemed quite drunk, that's all. I thought you might have had a headache?'

'Well I didn't, and I wasn't anymore drunk than usual.'

'Then do you remember what we were talking about?' Please let him remember! There's no need to be embarrassed, I feel the same way too.

'I don't know Simone, but even if I did, then shut up about it, okay?' What does he mean '"shut up about it"? Have I suddenly sprouted an ugly flesh eating mole which is crawling about my chin and making him reconsider?

Tuesday 18th July

'The tension between you two, it's just awful,' Natasha announced, 'as well as being totally pathetic, your aura, well it's dragging everyone down.'

'Don't blame me or my aura, when it's him who's got the problem,' I fingered at Harry who was lolling about with his legs wide open. What an arrogant goof.

'I don't care who the source of the misery is, just sort it out before we go camping, okay? If you ruin this trip for me, I'll never forgive you.'

Ugh, the obligatory holiday with friends to mark the end of Lower Sixth and the start of summer; something which might be tolerable, should we headed to a warm and luxuriant locale, but oh no, of course that's never going to happen, not when Natasha has decided that it would be far more exciting if we go camping.

'The Four Seasons isn't a realistic option,' she had barked, but really, what a stupid idea it is to expect us to go away en masse, in to the dark depths of the English countryside, and reside under a flimsy leaking canopy for a whole week, and not fall out about it.

'Just think of the fun we'll have, sitting around the camp fire, telling ghost stories in the middle of the night.' Will that really be necessary, when I'm spooked enough from just contemplating this doomed trip.

'Phwoar, check out Laura, she's looking hot today,' Harry's leering voice broke me from my spiralling thoughts, as Laura Ashworth slinked her way past our table, 'I bet you wish you looked as good as her, don't you Simone?'

'Are you saying I'm not as fit as Laura Ashworth?'

'You've got that right. You might have been popular last year, but it's this year now. Face it, you couldn't give it up and so people have moved on.'

Silence fell upon the cafeteria just like during an episode of Eastenders, you know the sort, when following a seismic family member revelation, someone just knows, by the powers of telepathy, to cut out the music playing on the jukebox in the Vic, right at that most crucial point, at the crescendo, just in time to hear me bare my soul and scream,

'I hate you Harry Styles, I really hate you!' I believe they call it airing one's dirty laundry in public, and if one is to be considered a lady, then one should avoid such behaviour at all costs, right? Well in that case I've just succeeded in securing my place at the lesser end of society.

Yet despite such embarrassment, at least my tirade would be supported, and Natasha would have to agree that what Harry had said was both unnecessary and deliberately provoking.

How wrong I was. Once more I'm naive to think otherwise; for she just glared at me, eyes pursed tight, telling only too clearly that I was the one who had wronged, and that her loyalties sat most absolutely with Harry. I'm enraged at this, just another betrayal to add to her spiralling list.

Now choking back the tears, I ran to the toilet to weep alone. How I wished for them to see me now, to witness my spearing pain. Any minute now one of them will feel remorse and will come to rescue me from this forlorn escape. But ten minutes have passed, tick tock, tick tock, and still I'm alone, observing in the mirror the details of my now swollen face, my gasps for air now accelerate, as I accept that nobody is coming to find me.

Later

The afternoon was pitiful. A blob of doom smeared my existence, spreading like spilt ink across a piece of ruined paper. I sniffed my way through three hours of Biology, and some more, for the duration of my lonely journey home, resolving to fight on, but my emotions taunted me with self-pity, my blurred eyes unable to find focus through the kaleidoscope of pain which I now stared through.

I clung to garden fences for support, fighting hard against my screams, as fellow pedestrians fled to the opposite side of the road, eager to escape from the unleashed crazy girl. Why doesn't anyone to want to help me? Isn't a single person concerned that some terrible event must have happened, to wash me up such a dishevelled mess?

'Are you okay?' At last a smidgen of humanity; but of all the people to find me and offer me counsel at this most wretched hour, Flora Sidebottom was not the desired bearer of sympathy. 'What's happened to you? You're not looking like your usual perky swot face,' Flora leaned against her garden gate, smoking a cigarette.

'Oh it's too pathetic to even talk about. Well it's just Harry Styles. We hate each other, but we're supposed to be going on holiday together next week, and now Natasha, well she hates me too, and I don't know how to fix things, and I've got no friends left, and I just want to die.'

'What have you done to make them hate you so much?'

'Nothing. That's the point, absolutely nothing.'

Flora took a long drag from her cigarette whilst I knelt down to stroke her grinning mongrel Eric.

'God, I'm glad I'm out of all that,' she continued. 'it's just all so High School. You kids need to grow up and get proper jobs, then you wouldn't be falling out and crying over each other, you'd be crying over having to do a real days work.'

'I guess.'

'Anyway why don't you just go out with Laim Payne instead? You two were destined for each other in Year 11. Then you wouldn't care less what two idiots like Harry and Natasha think about you.'

'Maybe you're right?' I started to sob again, a massive wave of hyperventilation now swiftly approaching, about to break and knock me to the floor.

What if is she's right, what if Harry and I aren't meant to be together, and this is God's way of causing me to realise that it's Liam who is my true soul mate? Oh please, dear Lord, don't let it be true, I just don't see how it can be, for I don't love Liam and can't imagine how I ever can.