Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

What’s really unbelievable, when I think about it, is I thought Connor and Carly would totally hate me after I killed their ‘Maw’ but they don’t. Right enough, they think I didn’t mean to kill her. They think I was so scared I didn’t know what I was doing and I was just trying to keep her away from me. And I’ve pretended to be all guilty and everything and all sad that the ambulance got there too late.

Mum and I had gone by then so I didn’t see Bitch actually die. Connor told us to just go, to run – he said he’d tell the police, and Mandy as well, that me and Mum had run off and then Jed had stabbed Bitch. And then Mum could call the police and make out like We’ve just escaped from the Johnsons – Help! as if she didn’t know the stabbing had even happened.

So that’s what we did.

And now Jed and Ryan are both in prison.

Result!

I get my bag from where I dumped it on the chair and run downstairs.

Mum’s clearing the table. She’s all ‘My little girl’s first date’ and I’m ‘Mu-uuum.’ I’m not a little girl, I’m like fifteen?

‘You look beautiful!’

I so don’t. I’m just in old jeans and a shirt and no make-up, or hardly any, because it’s no big deal.

Then she starts, ‘Now, don’t feel pressured to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with’ and I’m ‘Mu-uuum!’ and then I’m ‘Relax, I’m not going to have sex or anything’ and she’s ‘Well, that’s a relief!’ and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh.

But sex is so gross. I’m not having it till I’m like twenty at least. Connor says he was twenty-one when he first had it. I know it’s not cool to think sex is gross but it so is? Mibs, my best friend, she agrees. But I’m pretty sure Andrew doesn’t, so I’ve laid down some ground rules, just to make sure everything’s clear from the start, and now I’m telling Mum:

‘He knows there’s going to be no physical contact until the third date. Then holding hands and maybe kissing but that’s it. He’s cool with that.’

‘I should hope so!’

‘He’s not a jock or anything, he’s pretty much king of the super-nerds, and he’s not good-looking so it’s kind of I’ll take what I can get, you know?’

‘Beckie!’

Now we can hear an engine on the track and we go out onto the veranda to wave at Connor’s car. He’s driving me to Andrew’s house and then he’s driving us both to the NBS Theatre in Westport, where Pippa works, to see the Star Wars film which is going to be mobbed by kids and nerds and Pippa will like probably sit with us, and Connor’s picking us up right after the film, so even if I wanted to have sex how could I?

It’s really nice and warm but not too hot on the veranda and there’s a lovely breeze, and we sit on the swing seat and swing ourselves and breathe in the lovely piney smell of the trees.

‘So what is it you see in this Andrew, then?’

‘He’s really funny? And super-smart. Bit like me.’

Mum laughs. ‘And is he as modest as you are?’

‘He’s modest about some stuff and not modest about other stuff.’ I grin. ‘He’s… He’s a bit like, you know, Dad in that way? And maybe in other ways as well.’

And there’s a bit of a silence, not exactly awkward, more like we’re both thinking stuff and it’s kind of sad and kind of happy.

‘Like, I know he’s going to be telling me all about game theory and evolutionarily stable strategies. It’s his new thing. He thinks game theory can be used to solve pretty much all the problems in the world.’

‘Not short on ambition, then.’

We both laugh.

‘For example, war? Apparently there are these three different strategies, hawk and dove and crow. Doves are like really nice and kind, like peace activists and people, but the problem is that if everyone in the world is a dove the system’s inherently unstable because the minute a hawk appears – hawks are like super-nasty and just want to exterminate everyone else? – if they’re in a world full of doves they basically just go mental and pretty soon the world’s fucked.’

‘Beckie.’

‘Sorry. I mean, like if the Nazis had won the war. Because the hawks know they can do whatever they want and the doves won’t stop them. It’d be like Hitler or Putin or Trump somehow gets into Teletubby Land. Or like every country’s Switzerland except for North Korea? Then the opposite scenario, a world full of just hawks, obviously that’s f… that isn’t going to work either because they’ll all just kill each other. The only way for it to be stable is to have retaliators in the mix – crows. They’re like doves except they’re smart and they fight back if a hawk starts anything, like maybe James Bond? So everyone can coexist.’

Mum’s smiling. ‘Well, that makes sense, although I’m sure Dad would be up for a debate about it with Andrew.’

Connor’s getting out of his car. ‘Hiya!’

‘Hi Connor!’ Mum gets up. ‘Thanks so much for acting as Beckie’s chauffeur yet again.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Yeah, thanks Connor,’ I say on cue.

Mum hugs me. ‘Have fun, darling.’

I hug her back. ‘Thanks Mum. I will.’

‘Looking good, Beckster,’ says Connor.

I can see myself in the glass of the kitchen window and I’m thinking, yeah, I’m not bad. I’m not the prettiest girl in the class or anything but I’m okay. I’m tall and slim but I’ve got curves. Quite a few boys have asked me out before, so I can’t be like a total minger, but I said ‘Thanks but no thanks’ because I only wanted to go out with Andrew Main but he was with Sherilyn, that skanky cow who called Mibs a retard just because she thought a caftan was a kind of cafetière. Sherilyn made Andrew’s life hell, ordering him about and once when he got her the wrong yoghurt in the canteen she glooped it over his head and all her skanky friends were laughing and Sherilyn was yelling at him, ‘You fucking know I hate strawberry!’ and he just smiled his goofy smile and used his scarf to try and wipe it off his hair.

That girl is such a fucking bully.

Last week after hockey there was just me and her in the changing room because she always takes forever in the shower washing all her skanky flab, and I waited behind pretending to have lost my scrunchy, and I told Mibs and them just to go ahead to our next class and explain to Mrs Hutchison why I was late, and then when Sherilyn came out of the shower I slammed her up against the changing room door and told her if she didn’t (a) chuck Andrew and (b) stop picking on Mibs I was going to break her nose so fucking badly no fucking surgeon on the planet would be able to put it back together and how many boys would want to go out with her then?

She pissed herself and had to go back in the shower.

Connor’s going on about the wedding as usual – they’re getting married at our house because neither Connor nor Erin is religious – and it’s super-dull, so I ask him about Mrs Miller, the old lady who’s the latest client of Connor’s Computer Services.

‘Aw Beckie, you should’ve seen the spread she’d laid out for me, right? We’re no just talking scones and cake, there was like tuna and prawn rolls and wee pork pies and egg mayo sandwiches and that, and peanut butter ice cream and an oat and strawberry smoothie. It was pure amazing so it was.’

‘And you scoffed the lot?’

‘Only polite, eh? Mrs Miller thinks I need fed up or Erin’s gonnae leave me for some big hunky guy she’s gonnae meet at the pool.’

That’s where Erin works. She’s like a really amazing swimmer and she was nearly picked for the New Zealand Olympic team for breaststroke when she was fourteen.

‘That explains all the protein.’