It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,19

inclination to send someone a sext, my breasts will be the pornographic highlight.

I’m pretty sure my boobs are responsible for the only time in my life I properly kissed someone. It was at the year-eleven school social, which Lucy had bullied me into going to—when I say bullied, what I actually mean is lots of positive reinforcement, emotional cheerleading and general enthusiasm—and she pretty much babysat me all night to stop me from sneaking off and leaving. It got to the very end of the night, the time when everyone who is panicking about having kissed no one starts desperately looking around and grabbing each other, and I’m sure my cleavage was one of the major things attracting the boy to me in the three seconds he spent looking at me before he mashed his face against mine. I was a very willing participant in the mashing, as the fact I hadn’t kissed anyone in my life was weighing on me—forget being a virgin, being unkissable is a worse fate, especially for anyone who has had bad skin.

‘Well?’ Lucy picks up a bag of chips, looks at it, and puts it down again. She’s had no appetite for a few weeks now, which is worrying me. Lucy doesn’t eat much when she’s anxious about something. (I tend to operate at the other end of the spectrum.) Zach and I used to bring her food in the lead up to final exams, because we knew she’d just nibble at an apple otherwise. But, the thing is, exams are over. She got the marks she wanted. She’ll likely get into the course she wants, and yet I can tell she’s still lugging all that stress around like an overstuffed backpack she can’t take off.

‘Well, what?’ I answer.

‘What happened at the party, obviously?’

‘Honestly, there’s nothing to say. I went. I hung out. I came home.’ I shrug, as though I am the kind of person who goes to parties all the time and then shrugs about it. No big deal.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. There’s so much to say. Let’s start with the big stuff and work backwards: did you kiss Owen?’ Lucy asks.

‘No. God. I would have mentioned that.’

‘Did you come close?’

‘No.’

‘Did you touch at any point?’

‘No.’

‘Was there eye contact?’

‘Not really.’

‘Did you talk to each other?’

Lucy is good at grilling people because this is how her mother operates—a million rapid-fire questions about your day, your homework, your train ride home, the walk from the train station to your house, the last thought you had before you opened the front door. I think they see it as some weird way to practise for when Lucy becomes a lawyer.

‘Not really.’

‘Interact in any way?’

‘Sort of. He said hi and asked if I was having fun. I said yes. Oh, and he peed in front of me.’

‘He peed on you?’ Zach says, his voice almost a yelp.

‘Not on me. Near me. In front of me. For barely a second. He peed into the toilet and I was momentarily standing near him.’

‘Why were you in the bathroom with Owen?’ Lucy asks. Her tone is gentle now, like the voice our school counsellor Ms Bennett used when she wanted you to confess to being the person who hung a used tampon off the balcony railing. (The tampon incident, as it came to be known, remain unsolved but everyone was pretty sure it was a girl called Marley who loved gross and shocking things and always had at least three disgusting videos primed and ready to show you on her phone.)

‘I was leaving as he was coming in…oh, forget I even mentioned it.’

‘I can never forget,’ Lucy says.

‘Did you want to kiss him?’ Zach asks.

‘In the bathroom?’

‘At any time.’

‘No.’

I suspect they don’t believe me.

‘You are the worst storyteller today,’ Lucy says, and she sighs dramatically.

The thing is, her interest in my life is genuine. From the moment we met, Lucy has cared about what happens to me, and I usually put a little bit of effort into making it worthwhile for her. I always tell a story. My life has had so few things happen in it that when I go to a party on my freaking own, you better believe I will draw it out into a week-long discussion, dissecting every interaction and moment. No doubt they’re still annoyed I wasn’t live-texting and sending them videos of every moment. My lacklustre answers today are bordering on unforgivable.

So I go back to the beginning and give them a proper run through,