Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘Don’t stare at me. Come in the toilet. I mean it, I’ll talk to you but you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. On your own life.’

I followed Chloe into the girls’ toilets. Whatever was wrong with her would be my fault – I could predict it, guarantee it and would bet my life on it. But it was a relief all the same. The alternative – that her silence would be carried on publicly in the great staring arena of our lives at the high school – wasn’t something I’d dared to think about.

‘Are you coming, or not?’ Chloe hissed at me over her shoulder. She knew I didn’t like to spend time in there.

My toilet at home smelled like the little yellow block Barbara put in the cistern and the bowl of dried-up flowers and pine cones and things that was always on the window ledge. But the bogs at school smelled like what they were used for, and cigs, and blood. They smelled like everyone was on their period and had just done PE. It was horrible. I always tried to time myself so I went at home just before I left and then again as soon as I got back.

We went inside past the prefects who were waiting near the door. It was their job to make sure that no one was using the toilets for smoking or writing on the walls. Inside there were a group of Year Elevens standing by the mirrors in a huddle. They were smoking and writing on the walls and taking turns listening to something on someone’s personal stereo. Even though they were not the girls who’d bugged me when I was in Year Seven and Eight, I didn’t look at them. I looked at Chloe’s bag which was just in front of my face. It was light pink and she had written ‘Carl’ on it in biro and drawn a heart around it. Chloe walked quickly right into the cubicle that was furthest away from the door. I paused by the cracked sink and Chloe frowned at me again.

‘Get in here, will you?’

I followed her into the cubicle. There was a poster on the inside of the door about chlamydia, and lots of writing with Tipp-Ex pen or scratched into the paint with a compass: lists of names of people accused of having chlamydia, and who they’d got it from. The door caught on my rucksack as I tried to close it behind me. I turned to take it off and elbowed Chloe in the stomach.

Chloe said, ‘For fuck’s sake,’ under her breath and I was about to tell her to get lost but the girls waiting under the mirror had noticed us, struggling with our bags in the doorway of the cubicle.

‘Look at them two,’ someone said.

‘Look at the lezzies.’

There was a little chorus of whooping and two of the girls said ‘Woooo’ at the same time, which made the rest of them laugh.

‘Let’s be friends,’ said someone else.

That is something that they all said, even the boys. Sometimes I said it too, but it was ages before I knew what it meant. It was the sort of thing people said to you quietly in the dinner queue. You had to say it in a certain tone of voice or it didn’t work. Lessbefrens. Like that. I didn’t think it was a great joke, actually, but I was wrong – Chloe told me it was hilarious.

‘Shut up, you slags,’ Chloe shouted over the top of the cubicle. I was facing the door and I slid the bolt across and looked at the letters and pictures on the inside of the door until the banging outside stopped.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ I said.

A disaster to do with Carl, no doubt. Nothing too bad, but bad enough to get Chloe worked up. Although I’d heard about rows with Carl before and listened to them and agreed to go and stay at her house and drink Bacardi Breezers and watch Titanic to make her feel better, I did not feel like doing that today.

‘I can’t tell you unless you promise you’re going to keep it to yourself. It’s confidential.’

‘Right,’ I said. Confidential was a word that Chloe used quite a lot.

‘I’m sorry about the party. I had other things on my mind.’

‘What?’

‘I’m trying to tell you.’

‘Did you cancel it then?’

‘No, it wasn’t cancelled. Just forget about the fucking party, will you? You know I would have called you, would have let you know what was going on if I could have done,’ she said.

‘Right.’

‘Don’t be like that. It’s serious.’ She paused, and I wondered if she was about to start lying to me. ‘Me and Carl had sex,’ she said, not smiling, but with a pale, blank look about her face. She wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Like, properly, all the way in.’

‘For God’s sake. You’ve been going on about this party for weeks and then you flake out on me just because you fancied screwing your boyfriend instead?’

I kept my voice down but I could hear the chatting outside, the taps running. Those girls weren’t paying any attention to us anymore. I put my hand on the door.

‘Lola!’ There was something about her voice, something highpitched and fragile, that made me stay.

‘I know about all this already,’ I said, ‘so you fucked me off for Carl. Surprise surprise. We’re going to be late for Food Tech.’

‘You don’t know…’ She bowed her head and scratched the back of her neck. ‘We weren’t even doing it before.’

‘I thought you said…’

‘We did other things,’ she said quickly, ‘just as good as. We might as well have been. I mean, I had my clothes off and stuff, didn’t I?’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘It was his idea!’ Chloe said shrilly, ‘to hang on a bit. Until I was fully ready. That’s what he said. There was no rush. He was happy with the other stuff. The pictures and that.’

I didn’t say anything. I knew for a fact that Chloe had been hinting, if not actually saying, that she and Carl had been having sex for ages. Since about two days after they met. She had been going on about how big his cock was and how much better it was to be going out with someone who was more mature and experienced than the little boys in our school. She’d been carrying on like this, holding it over me, for weeks and weeks.

‘Anyway. We’ve done it now, but something went wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It hurts, like, loads.’

‘It’s meant to hurt, isn’t it?’ I pulled a face, and thought about ruptures. We didn’t get sex education until we were in Year Ten but I reckoned I knew the basics.

‘I know that. I’m not thick.’ Chloe shook her head, but still wouldn’t look at me. ‘I mean, I knew it was going to hurt the first time. Like when it was going in. You’d expect it to, wouldn’t you? Emma said I might get a bit of bleeding. I know about that.’

How come Emma was suddenly a world expert? Who’d shag her?

‘Did it bleed?’ This was like the eyebrow-plucking, the legwaxing, the pierced ears. There was a reason I always let Chloe go first.

‘I don’t know. It was dark. And then I was wearing my black going-out knickers, so if I did, it didn’t show. Anyway. That’s not the point. Stop being a perv.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘That was like a full eleven days ago and it’s still really hurting. Like every time I go to the toilet it really stings. It burns. It’s horrible.’

Chloe looked upwards and ran her index finger along her lower eyelid. First one, then the other.

‘Eleven days?’ I counted. ‘That was Boxing Day. You had sex with him for the first time when I was hanging around outside the car?’

I couldn’t believe it. I could not, seriously, believe what I was hearing.

‘I’m supposed to be your best mate,’ I said. ‘It was fucking cold, waiting for you outside that car. We were supposed to be hanging out that day.’

‘No,’ she said, impatient – as if I was missing the point. ‘Later on. At night.’

‘You went back out?’

‘This really isn’t the issue here.’