We Are Not Okay Read online

  ‘We took a risk today. A big risk. There’s no risk involved on Sunday. Trust me, I’ve thought this through. No one will see us, no one will know.’

  ‘A different town, a city over thirty minutes from our houses is fine. But a weekend, in the same town, in the same house? What if my dad offers to walk me to Sophia’s house then he sees her parents? I can’t expect them to lie for me too. This is getting out of hand—’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I should have never have come here with you today because now you think this is normal. This isn’t normal, not for us. This is just becoming too risky.’

  ‘So, what if it is? So what? Aren’t we worth the risk?’

  I shake my head and try to walk away but he gently touches my arm and turns me round towards him again.

  ‘Aren’t “we” worth the risk, Ulana?’ he says again as he stands in front of me, looking at me, waiting. His question hangs dryly in the air, waiting for me to grab it, to grab him and reassure him. But I don’t say anything. I don’t what to say. The risk he talks about is just a word, an idea, merely a potential obstacle that may or may not arise in our – his – future. But that risk to me is everything. He doesn’t know. He has no idea what it’s like to feel torn between my beliefs and him, to feel like I have to choose between my religion and love.

  ‘You just don’t understand. You couldn’t.’ I grab at the edges of the bus and hoist myself onto the top step. I lay the return ticket on the driver’s counter and walk to the back of the bus. Aiden follows me onto the bus but doesn’t sit beside me. He doesn’t sit anywhere near me. He heads up the stairs of the double decker and disappears somewhere above me. Away from me.

  I wait for him off the bus, ready to say the words he wants to hear, but it’s too late. He flops down the steps and marches past me as if I’m invisible, like I was to him before he finally noticed me.

  I walk home slowly later that afternoon. I feel everything. The cold breeze on my cheeks. The damp moss on my fingertips. The vibrations from the passing cars on my eardrums. The wet mist on my nose. And when I get home, back to reality, I still think about our conversation. I think about it all that night.

  It consumes my thoughts, my entire existence. While my dad asked about my chemistry assignment and my mum fussed over dinner and gossiped about the neighbour’s daughter who staggered home, probably drunk, at midnight on Saturday night while her ‘poor parents slept unaware in their beds’, I replayed his words over and over again.

  ‘Aren’t “we” worth the risk, Ulana?’

  Why didn’t I say yes?

  The next morning, I can’t take it anymore. I risk everything, break all my rules, just to talk to him. I can’t have him go through another minute thinking I don’t care about him. I can’t have another sleepless night having ended a conversation like that. We barely get time together as it is, so the little moments we do manage to pocket, we can’t waste them. I don’t have time to waste. It’s not a luxury for me as it is for others.

  I’ll hover outside PE, talk to him for a few minutes while his class is preoccupied with bloody knees, callouses, dirty shorts and sweaty shirts. Maybe I’m just scared that he won’t be there this afternoon in the woods. That maybe I’ll sit on that bench, in the cold, and wait, just wasting time. And if he doesn’t come today, I’ll know. I’ll know that the risks I took will have all been for nothing. But most of all, I’ll know that if he doesn’t come today, he may not come tomorrow or the day after. And I will have lost him, forever.

  My face fills the window into the basketball court. My hands grip the ledge, getting clammier the longer I wait. Inside, clusters of girls play netball on the far right of the court, while a large crowd of boys circle around the coach on the left. I see Steve. I see Euan, Lee, Matt, Andrew, Ollie, that boy who blew up the bunsen burner in chemistry last year and singed his hair – all boys I shouldn’t even know the names of, let alone be watching in their shorts that sit a little too high above the knee. But not Aiden. I don’t see him anywhere.

  Where is he? He should be in PE. He’s always in PE at this time. But not today. Why not today?

  Maybe he went home sick.

  I scoop up my bag and rush to the front office. Mrs MacIntyre greets me when I push open the glass door. ‘Ulana, how can I help you?’

  She’s nice to me. Every Christmas my parents give her and every other staff member a small box of chocolates as a thank you. They’re generous like that, thoughtful, respectful. And yet here I stand in front of her, about to lie to her, to my parents, to everyone. I have no respect.

  ‘I was walking by PE and Mr Gerrard asked me to check on a student…um, I think it was Aiden McDonald?’ My voice is a little too high, a bit on the shaky side. She knows. She must know. Maybe she’ll even tell the headmaster, or call my parents, tell them that she has concerns, that she thinks I’m lying. Maybe they’ll all start to dig into my after-school activities, find out that I’ve been leaving UCAS prep early. Maybe they’ll find out where I’ve really been going, who I’ve really been meeting with.

  But if she’s suspicious, she doesn’t let on. Instead, she slides over a manila folder and opens it. She runs her name down the page with a manicured index finger, tinted with a green shade. Green like the colour of the birch trees in the spring, the trees that our school is named after, the trees that Aiden and I meet under.

  ‘He’s not on my list. He didn’t go home sick. Is he absent?’

  ‘No, no. Perhaps he must have been still changing for basketball. I’ll let PE know,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’ I turn and hurry out before she can ask me any questions.

  I gaze up and down the hallway outside the office, pulling and looping the straps on my bag. Why is it when you urgently need to see someone, you can never find them?

  TRINA

  Journal Entry 3: 05.10.2018

  Why is it when you never want to see a person, all you do is see them?

  Lucy is everywhere!

  It’s like she’s stalking me, waiting around every corner, under every floorboard, behind doors. She’s obsessed with me. She just won’t let this past summer go. I’m sure she’s finding it very difficult to process in her pea-sized brain that her boyfriend chose me over her. Ex-boyfriend might I add.

  EX.

  As in not together anymore, broken up, never getting back together. In my experience, and it’s not like I’ve dated a lot of people (actually none except Rhys, if that’s what we’re doing), but I thought when two people break up both are free to date. I’m sure she moved on too over the summer, with lots of people likely, so why is she fixating on who Rhys is moving on with? Or maybe it’s nothing to do with him. But it’s all to do with me. She hates me. If Rhys had moved on with someone else, maybe she wouldn’t have minded. But me? I didn’t even know her before all this. I stayed out of her way, avoided her and her little minions whenever I could. Up until this summer, I’d never really thought about her, let alone said a bad word about her. She was just the pretty girl who shared a book with me in English two years ago, and someone I said ‘Hi’ to occasionally if we caught each other’s eye in the hallway.

  Yet she’s going out of her way to bash me to everyone. She just loves to torture me at school. She shouts ‘Slut’ when I walk by then either looks away or pretends it was just a cough – is she five years old? And she deliberately nudges into me when we pass, sometimes with such force that it knocks me into the wall. Yesterday she intentionally threw the volleyball at my face then pretended that she was sorry by running over and fake-hugging me, while whispering in my ear: ‘Maybe that bump will improve your face. You can thank me later.’ Mr Simms even praised her for ‘checking on me, making sure I was OK’. Unbelievable. That girl is a professional at what she does.

  What she doesn’t know – and this is quite funny – is that Rhys has been texting ME all week. Yes, he’s been showering me with texts, one almost every day, asking how I am, talking about the summer we had together, he even
wrote: ‘I really enjoyed the summer with you. I didn’t want it to end.’

  ‘Didn’t want it to end?’ He may as well have said ‘I Love You Trina’!!!

  Of course, I’ve been texting him back. I tried playing it cool, but honestly, I really like him. I’m done with games with boys – leading them on, not responding to their texts, kissing them at the weekend but ignoring them come Monday. Rhys is more mature than that, and since I’ve met him I’m more mature. This sounds so clichéd but he really does make me a better person. And maybe he did that for Lucy and now that they’re broken up she’s gone back to being who she really is.

  I can’t wait for Lee’s party this Saturday. I’m going to go and look amazing just so Rhys notices me and finally acknowledges me in public, in front of all of his friends (and maybe a little to mess with her!). I’ll go shopping after school and pick up a new outfit from H&M – but leave the tags on of course because I can’t afford to actually buy it. I’ll return it all next week after I’ve aired it outside to get rid of any smoke smells. Hopefully someone won’t spill their drink on me because then I really will be screwed. How do you explain that? ‘Um, sorry, I was trying it on at home in my bedroom and I accidentally spilled my juice. Oh yes, it might smell of vodka and Coke but really it’s just Ribena’ (while smiling sweetly and holding the receipt in my hand).

  I might try something different with my make-up too? Maybe tone down the black eyeliner a little, try the more natural look? No, not for Rhys, because I refuse to change for anyone, but for me. I don’t feel like I need so much make-up on anymore. My skin has cleared up a lot over the last year and when I look in the mirror I don’t entirely hate the person I see staring back. Actually, I’m feeling pretty confident these days. I’ve never been one to care about weight, or obsess over what size I’m buying in Topshop, and maybe that’s because I’ve never had an issue with my weight. I eat whatever I want.

  Today I Ate:

  –Breakfast: 2 chocolate frosted pop tarts and a milky coffee with 2 sugars

  –Breaktime: a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, and 1 cigarette

  –Lunch: a chip butty from the fish shop down the street, Coke and 1 cigarette (‘borrowed’ from Lee)

  –After school: It’s only 5.10 p.m. and I’ve already had a Pot Noodle (Did you know the Chicken & Mushroom has no chicken in it?? It’s actually vegetarian! Vegan too, I think! Crazy, eh?!)

  –Dinner: Not sure yet, whatever I can find in the freezer to stick in the oven for Mum and me but guaranteed there won’t be veggies anywhere on our plates!

  I always laugh at girls who pick at salads and fruit at lunchtime at school, thinking that if they get fat no boy will want them. Saying that, I know how shallow boys can be, so wouldn’t put it past them.

  Except for Rhys. Not Rhys. He doesn’t care about that stuff. He’s different :)

  I just hope he doesn’t believe all the rumours that go about school. And there’s always rumours. Last year, Fisher told everyone that we had sex at Sara’s party. No, we kissed and that was it. Believe me, that was enough! He tasted like the inside of a toilet! But he spread that rumour around and no doubt everyone believed him. Who cares? I don’t. If telling lies about girls makes him feel like a man, then I pity him.

  Besides, a month later he accidentally blew up the bunsen burner in his chemistry class and burned the front part of his hair! It was amazing! He had to shave his head, it was so bad!!!

  HAHAHAHA!

  He called me a slut in front of his friends when I laughed at him. Speaking of, someone wrote TRINA DAVIS IS A SLUT in the first-floor toilets again.

  Really?

  That’s the best you can come up with, Lucy?

  Very original. Assuming it’s her anyway – who else would it be?

  Not that I thought that much of her imaginative skills or overall intellect anyway. OK, fine girls like that always get into uni, and girls like me don’t. Lucy ticks off about ninety per cent of that uni list.

  Actually, let’s see that list again:

  University – Further Education – is for people who:

  1.Read William Shakespeare – last May, Lucy demanded to play the lead in Romeo and Juliet in the end-of-year school play, and guess what? GOT it without even needing to audition

  2.Drink tea in the afternoons, especially if it comes with a scone – OK, I can’t prove this one, but I’m sure she does this

  3.Write with a pen that has a fluffy thing on the top – if I have to see her pink and gold feather pen one more time, I’m going to rip the feather off and feed it to her!!

  4.Post photos of their parents – and they actually look normal, and HAPPY! – oh look, right there on Facebook: Mummy, Daddy, Lucy, and little cute cocker spaniel Jack…Jack? I’m surprised she didn’t call him Fluffy or Doodles or something like that

  5.Detail volunteer work experience at elderly homes and children’s hospitals on their profile – tick

  6.Use the term ‘extra-curricular activities’ on their CVs…for people who have CVs! – tick

  7.Have a five-year-plan that includes getting married and buying a fancy breed dog – again, I can’t literally prove this, but I’d bet my life on it. So I’m giving that a tick.

  8.Make daily ‘To Do’ lists – she even has a ‘To Do’ List notepad with a fridge magnet attached!! She carries it around everywhere then sits it on the table in the Caf as if some miraculously intellectual thought will spring to mind mid-lunch and she’ll just HAVE to write it down in case she (gasps!) forgets!

  9.Colour-coordinate their school folders – seen this, TICK!

  10.Season-coordinate their wardrobe – urgh!!! Triple tick!

  But maybe at the end of the day, she’ll be laughing at me. Because when school ends, she’s out of here. She can pack her bags and skip off to uni anywhere in the world. And me? I’m stuck here. I can’t leave Mum by herself. I’ll get a proper full-time job and start helping her with the bills. The debt just keeps piling up, and she pretends as if it’s not urgent right now but it is. The red letters on the envelopes tell me ‘URGENT’.

  But until real-life smacks me in the face, I’ll enjoy being a teenager for a little longer. Until then, I’ll continue being me, even if some girls at school think that writing ‘Slut’ on the toilet door will bring me down – because it won’t.

  I mean, yeah, of course it hurts a little. I don’t want everyone thinking that, but it is what is. That’s what my mum always says, ‘Not everyone is going to love you, Trina. But it is what it is.’

  I never used to be like this. I never used to care what girls at school thought of me or whether boys liked me. Yes, I enjoy wearing skirts a little shorter than the other girls, yes, I like low-cut tops and lace bras, but what bothers me is when people assume that I’m doing it to look good for a boy. I do it for me. I’m confident in myself, and if my confidence makes someone else jealous or question their own self-esteem, then sorry but I’m not going to change. This is who I am. I could never imagine pretending to be someone I’m not for a boy. I like Rhys A LOT but if he asked me to change, I’d tell him where to go. I’m not changing for anyone. I’m happy with who I am, and I will never be put down by any girl or any guy.

  Speaking of, heard another rumour today (no surprises here though) that Steve cheated on Sophia Greer last weekend. I doubt it was the first time either. People like Steve don’t change. I do feel bad for Sophia though. She seems really nice. And I mean genuinely nice, not fake nice. Wish I’d got to know her more this year, especially since we’re in study period at the same time. But as my mum says, ‘it is what it is’. Maybe we still can get to know each other. It’s only October. There’s still time. She’s good friends with Ulana. I wish I still was. Maybe I wouldn’t have such a reputation at school had Ulana and I stayed friends. But people change, I guess, drift apart. That’s what happened with us, I think. Or maybe she drifted away from me. I never found another friend like her after that. But then again, I’ve never really been the type of girl
that has lots of girlfriends. I’ve always got on better with guys. Less drama. Less competition. Less…well, everything. Girls can be mean, girls gossip…

  I still wish I had a close girlfriend though. Don’t tell anyone I said that.

  SOPHIA

  ‘It’s all my fault.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ I say again. When I look up, Ulana still stands there, hands on her hips. Waiting for something. Waiting for me to do something, like it’s that easy. Nothing is ever that easy. And it is all my fault. ‘I know what you’re thinking but I’m not going to do it.’

  Ulana looks at me, then her gaze drops to the cold cigarette end by my black ballet pump. We’re sitting on the wall down the alleyway by the chemistry labs. This is where people go to smoke in between class, make out with their boyfriends, or for us, just have a private conversation away from the cafeteria, away from curious ears. Not even the girls’ toilets is safe anymore. You never know who will be reapplying their lip gloss or cheek highlighter when you’re having a complete mental breakdown about your relationship.

  ‘You have to,’ she tells me. Again. ‘I know you love him. But he obviously doesn’t love you enough to stay faithful to you. Not only did he cheat but he bragged about it. He’s embarrassed you at school. Everyone knows.’

  My face presses into my palms until I can’t feel my nose anymore. ‘Ulana, this isn’t helping!’ I jump down off the wall and press my spine hard against the stone. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m getting angry at you. It’s him I’m angry at.’

  She jumps down beside me, and wraps an arm around my shoulders. ‘It’s OK. I get it.’

  I tuck my chin and place a hand over my face. I don’t want to cry. But I can’t stop it. I can’t stop Steve from hurting me, I can’t stop people from talking about it, and I can’t stop the tears from falling down my cheeks.

  ‘Oh Soph!’ Ulana turns towards me and pulls me in by my arms. She holds me tight, and I hide my face in the crook of the neck of her red peacock coat. ‘Don’t cry.’