Tomorrow the sun will rise.
There’s a girl I know. She lives in Uckfield somewhere in
the shit end of nowhere. That’s what she said and I believe her. Not because
she’s eye-catching, not because she’s pretty much an A grade psycho, not, even,
because she knows how to play the six string. Just because I believe her, that
sun comes up every day, no matter what. Yeah, I suppose, I might expire before
its shows up but it’ll still be there, dead on time. Tomorrow she said.
Chapter 1
A long time ago I found myself at a pretty rickety
crossroads. On the one hand I had my family, loved out of principle and on the
other I had girls. Hell, there were a lot of them. Roslyn, Jessica, Chelsea.
Americans, Scots... Whatever I didn’t even pay attention half the time. Life
was easy.
I guess it started with Chelsea. So I guess that’s where I
start. In a math class (Top set, just saying). The sun was hiding away as you
expect it to, and the clouds were that horrible tinge of storm, I was
pretending to pay attention while I watched them. I swear if I could turn back
time... But I digress.
In comes this girl. Sweet looking girl, red hair, a couple
freckles. She’s holding these books like they would stop a bullet and she’s got
and a face on like someone’s tested it. Anyway, the substitute beckons her over
and they start whispering. I hated that. I always thought if they can whisper
why can’t I? One mumble and out I’d go, but them, they can have a shit storm
gossip just between themselves, giggling and pretending they were anywhere else
but at work and get away scot free. Liberties were all too easy for them.
Whatever. Basically my attention had been taken from the
weather and I’m dying to find out who this new girl was. Math, as a topic and
food for thought had fizzled out of existence. Somewhere a lantern had blown
out in the evening breeze. And the best bit is I know she’s got to come to me,
I’ve got the only free seat left, and much to my pleasure I knew that pissed
our teacher off. He was just a substitute but he knew me already, smart enough
to know, too dumb to try. And with that discerning grimace I see him gesture my
way.
Play it cool, I thought. Be interested but stay sober, don’t
freak her out with all the moronic babble and just talk like normal people do.
Judge me if you want but it worked. She sits down and gives me that
we’ve-just-met-but-hi kind of smile and while I give the facade of
concentrating on the puzzle book equations laid before me (That, on a side
note, probably really did come from some back side of a newspaper and were
printed to give the same impression) gave a little wave and rocked forward on
my chair to fill out the first set of answers.
At the time, I figured that must’ve looked awesome. Some kid
with clearly better and bigger things to think about, pondering out the window
but who can answer more than the class average did in half the time. Now I’m
sure I m must’ve looked like a smarmy git, but hey, if I had a time machine.
Anyway, eventually I get the courage to say something.
Hey. Did you get moved up?
“No...” She mutters back, “I just started here.”
So I give her this look, the intrigued look, the one that
says, tell me more? And she goes on, “I’m Chelsea.” She says.
I should mention this is when the butterflies started. She’s
got this accent that rolled off like a symphony and her eyes smile when she
talks. Just her name gave me shivers. The good kind, obviously. So I keep on
going, asking her about her last school and why she left and she tells me about
how she’s come all the way from the States and she left for family reasons and
I just watched her talk.
I like expression. Talking’s easy, just throw some sounds
together and say the sentence in your head, but a conversation? That’s in the
expression, love is in the eyes, emotion’s in the face and interest is in the
direction. And then there’s subtle stuff, the widening of the pupils, the
occasional lick of the lips, and best of all the words that don’t make it out.
The ones that just about form in the mouth but never get heard.
Man, the things she didn’t say.
Chapter 2
So it took a while, and I don’t remember how, but sometime
in the late spring, when those clouds had thinned out into long strands of grey
and white that made the sky look God’s big blue writing pad (I suppose that would
make the world His doodle), we walked down the riverside holding hands and
talking about this, that and the other.
She liked Nirvana. And well, I didn’t really know Nirvana,
my sister loved them too. Had this big poster in her room of that Kurt Cobain,
the one with his big blue eyes and his head a little tilted and his hair
touching just a little over his brow. Your typical heart throb kind of photo. I’ll
admit it now, when Chelsea mentioned Kurt, I felt a little jealous. I wasn’t
rich, I wasn’t famous and I didn’t know how to play an instrument. It’s silly
looking back, I know, but I had a little vendetta with the dead man.
She liked poetry though, and that I knew how to do. I wrote
stanzas and verses all the time, I was a regular Byron. At least I thought I
was. So I would write these little quips and pass them across in our math class
just to substitute for our inability to speak louder than a mouse. And she
would give a little giggle and write something back, or draw a little
illustration like someday I could send them to a publisher and we’d live a nice
quiet little life in the countryside just enough out of town so that the
traffic wouldn’t disturb our lazy afternoons.
Anyway, I’d walked her home one day. It was a regular thing,
we’d spend hours walking back, taking all the long routes so that we could
spend more time together even though she’d always get an earful from her
family. They didn’t like her spending so much time after school with me, they
got worried about where she was and she would hear all about it in raised tones
that quite frankly made me feel horribly uncomfortable. Especially her dad. I’m
sure he didn‘t like me, and Chelsea would mention how protective he was, which
made me even more terrified of talking to him. So we’d hide away in her room
and talk about her poster of Kurt, with his big eyes and slightly off skew head.
Then I would make my way home several hours later and get in to a furious
mother demanding to know where I had been. I didn’t tell her at first, having a
girlfriend was still an embarrassing thing to admit to my family, I knew what
it would lead to. Patronising bullshit.
We been doing this courting thing for a while, I still hadn’t
gathered the courage to do what I really wanted. I’d never kissed a girl
before, let alone a pretty one like Chelsea. Our relationship felt more like a
title than fact because of it. I think she must’ve felt the same, I could read
in it her expression. Our conversations were too blasé and yet we kept eye
contact, shifting closer to each other with every sentence, holding hands and
arms and knees, and when she was listening to me talk I could see her bite the
inside of her lip like she was holding back some urge that I knew only too
well.
As I said before, it was late spring; we were sat in the
hollow of a big pink blooming bush, sheltering away from the beating sunshine. She
looked stunning, she had let her hair down and her eyes were sparkling in the
scattered light through the leaves.
“Have you ever kissed anyone?”
My stomach again, the butterflies starting flocking again we
she spoke, and I couldn’t say anything, I shook my head trying to answer her
and clear my mind at the same time. She leant toward me a little and said with
the confidence I should’ve had, “Me neither, do you think we should..?”
She had that smile on, the one that said she knew what I was
thinking, except I wasn’t thinking, I was panicking. What do I do, what do I
do? She moved closer again and I just shut my eyes. That’s what happened in the
films, maybe if I close my eyes I’ll know what to...
It had happened, her lips were on mine, and they were soft
and gentle. Still I couldn’t think straight, so I opened my eyes and there she
was, so close to me, and it was amazing. I closed my eyes again and kissed
back. Hell, suddenly I was a man, I had kissed a girl.
Chapter 3
We were promiscuous to say the least. Every day we kissed
and every day we pushed our luck, and even though I was normally initiating the
whole affair I couldn’t help but feel totally out of my comfort zone. The what
do I dos were starting to really get to me and for some strange youthful
reason, I let them.
Then they were rumours. I hated school, I hated the
teachers, I hated the pupils and I hated the work. I just wanted to be the
recluse, the untrodden corridors were my friends and the quiet disregarded
library was my sanctuary. The less that knew me the more comfortable I felt.
I was reading a book one afternoon; Chelsea was elsewhere
with her girl friends so I had some time to explore the literary universe. I
was sitting by a window behind a bookshelf quietly eavesdropping on the other
pupils and watching the clouds roll over. When these two older kids come in,
they stood just on the other side of the wall of books and started talking and
giggling.
I heard them mention Chelsea, and my ears pricked up, they
were talking about how strange she was, about her red hair and then, to my
absolute horror, about her ginger boyfriend and how hilarious it was the two
ginger kids found solace between themselves. I felt like a fucking joke.
I tried to ignore it, I tried to be sensible but it kept
coming back, that conversation played itself in my thoughts all day and all
night, I saw people looking at us, I saw people talking behind cupped hands. I
hated it.
I don’t know what I was thinking, I really did love her. I
just let those words get to me. I started to avoid her to save us both from the
agonising stares. I think she must’ve picked up on it; eventually she started
to get more inquisitive to my lack of appearance. I would just tell her nothing
was wrong, everything was fine, we’d hang out later.
Then one of those kids approached me. They asked me about
Chelsea and I panicked. I didn’t want to be part of rumour; I didn’t want to be
any source of attention. And that was it.
Looking back, I kind of wish I had been more stoic. I wish I
could have just faced it. I wish I hadn’t panicked. I remember talking to
Chelsea, saying silly things that made no sense. It’s not you, it’s me. I still
have feelings for you but I think we need space. Lies and bollocks. I was splitting
with her to save face, to avoid other people’s remarks.
And she just looks at me. I see the tears welling up in her
eyes, her lips quiver and she looks everywhere but at me. I felt shit. I was
shit. She shuffles her feet and listens, her ears flush and she bites her lips
together. What was I doing?
“It’s fine.” She says. I know she’s lying, I know because I
didn’t feel fine. The butterflies were screaming in agony at what was happening
and I felt sick and unhappy. The world seemed like it was growing ever darker.
I couldn’t see anything except her, the uncomfortable movements, the subtle
signs that I knew were my fault. And then she looks at me, straight at me, and
I know I was stupid. I wanted to turn back the time and change it all, I wanted
the day to start again; I wanted to change it all.
“Tomorrow the sun will rise.” She says.
A different sun. A new sun. Today has happened; tomorrow is
not a recital, but a brand new composition.
