Natália Gomes - We Are Not Okay

It’s a welcome break from the usual bench we meet at, and here we get to do something even more risky than sitting side by side. Not only do we hold hands, our touch hidden by the overgrown grass around us, but here we get to lie near each other. Here, our heads, our hands, our bodies touch. Here, we’re closer than ever before. Here, we risk everything.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he asks me, as he shuffles in closer.

I push my shoulder gently into his and close the gap between us just a little more. ‘I’m just thinking about Sophia. I don’t know what it is, there’s just something about Steve that I don’t trust. And she seems different when she’s with him.’

‘How so?’ he asks, as he turns and delicately places a kiss on my shoulder, which is covered in dark fabric as it always is. But I imagine what his kiss would feel like and feel the insides of my stomach churn.

‘Not as confident. I’m just worried that he’ll hurt her.’

‘You’re a good friend,’ he says.

I turn and bury my face into his shoulder. ‘I hope so. Thank you.’

A slow whizzing of a motorbike somewhere beyond the meadow pulls my eyes to the bottom left of the field. And then I see something. A flutter of branches. A movement among the trees.

‘What is it?’ he asks, raising his hand to my back as I suddenly sit upright.

‘I thought I saw something.’ I strain my eyes and look deeper into the trees, but all I see are branches and leaves beginning to turn colour and wilt. ‘I was so sure—’

‘Don’t worry. No one comes out here at this time. You might see a dog walker or cyclist, but that’s about it.’

‘That might be enough,’ I mutter, staring into the trees again.

‘Lie back down,’ he urges. ‘It’s so peaceful here.’

I unfold my spine onto the meadow ground again, pressing each vertebra into the soft grass blanket until I flatten out, like Aiden beside me. ‘Yeah, it’s nice to be off that bench,’ I laugh. Plucking a daisy from the ground, I hold it up to my nose and pretend it has a strong smell, like a peony.

‘What kinds of flowers do you get at home?’

‘In Morocco?’

‘Yeah.’

I think back to the tree-lined streets and courtyard displays. Rows of oleander and hibiscus dotted alongside colourful tiled walls and marbled fountains. And for a moment, I’m back there. I’m back home. And everything seems distant, cold. I feel suddenly separated from my life here, from my time with Aiden. A cold shiver creeps up my spine and I sit up again, letting it escape from my body, float into the chilly air and get carried off to somewhere far from us.

‘I don’t remember,’ I lie. Because the truth – the memories – just brings back that gap between us. That gap I don’t like to remember.

‘I’ll have to Google it.’

‘Hmm,’ I mumble, closing my eyes and pushing the hot pink bougainvillea and date palms from my mind.

‘Have you seen the buttercups grow here?’

I smile, open my eyes and stretch my fingers out wide as if I can feel the short stems of the creamy yellow flowers in my grasp already. Now I’m back here in this meadow, right now, with Aiden. The gap is a little smaller again. ‘Yeah, they’re really pretty. I love the yellow.’

‘Your favourite colour.’

‘Good memory.’

He sits up and turns onto his elbow, propping his head with his hand. ‘We can take a walk here when they bloom. Maybe have a picnic?’

‘Can’t. Too many people.’

‘Oh.’ He lies back down and looks up towards the sky, at a low-flying plane soaring and leaving a cloudy streak behind it. There’s an RAF station nearby so occasionally you can see one of the training vessels overhead. He traces the cloudy line with his finger. ‘We could take a walk somewhere else then?’

‘Sure, maybe right in the middle of town. Maybe on my street.’

‘I’m being serious.’

I turn until I’m now on my side and lean slightly more into him. ‘You are?’

‘Obviously not here. But how about we get the bus into Carron or Lennoxtown? That’s about half an hour from here. We shouldn’t see anyone there?’

‘But what if we do?’

‘We won’t. We could walk around, see a movie—’

‘Like a real date?’ The words linger in my mouth and I hungrily grab at them, wanting to pull them close and devour them. A date. With my boyfriend. In public. For once, I’d feel normal, not different. For once, I could act like a typical seventeen-year-old teenager. I could act like one of those girls with time to waste, those I both envy and hate too.

‘Imagine.’ He smiles, gripping my hand.

‘I already can. But it’s so risky.’

‘No, I really don’t think so. I think it’s genius.’ A wide boyish grin stretches across his face, and I can’t help but return it with one of my own.

‘And when would we enact this genius plan of yours? It’s riskier at the weekend.’

‘So, a weekday?’

‘How? We’re at school!’

‘You have a free period after lunch on Wednesdays.’

‘And you have class.’

‘So I’ll miss it for once.’

I roll my eyes. Skipping class would never be an option for me, unless I was really sick. And I mean, really sick.

‘We’ll get the bus when the lunch bell rings at 11.35 and be back for the usual time UCAS Prep finishes. We’d have five hours together.’

‘What if someone sees us getting on the bus?’

‘They won’t. And to be safe, we’ll queue up separately and even sit apart.’ He shimmies closer to me. ‘Whatever it takes. Ulana. It’d be so nice to spend time with you off school grounds.’

His hand grips mine, tighter. I float my head back and see another RAF plane overhead. In the sky, no destination, no purpose. ‘OK,’ I say finally. ‘Next Wednesday.’

‘Next Wednesday,’ he echoes.

‘It’s a—’

‘—date,’ he laughs. ‘See, finishing each other’s sentences.’

I nudge him playfully, then tuck my legs up underneath me.

‘No,’ he moans rolling back on the ground. ‘Is it time already? Please say no.’

‘Don’t worry, this time next week we’ll have five hours. We can suffer through our usual hour today.’ I stretch my hand out and pull him up to standing. He holds his arms out wide and I collapse into them until I can feel his heartbeat against my right cheek.

TRINA

Journal Entry 2: 14.09.2018

I’m not sure when it was that Lucy and I started hating each other. We’ve always been polar opposites. Style, sense of humour (I have one!), social circles, academic interests (I have none!), financial situation (I’m also lacking in that area), family…

Everything from how we style our hair to what we eat for breakfast to what we think is a priority in our lives couldn’t be further apart from the other’s. But I can’t really blame our long-standing feud on our differences. No, I think what we share is just a mutual dislike for one other, to the core. The deeeeeeeep core.

Which is funny because we were in most of the same classes at the beginning when we started Birchwood High School. Yes, she attended more classes than me overall, but there were times – a lot of times – we sat next to each other in class. I remember one particular English class that I’d forgotten my copy of Little Women and she shifted her chair closer to mine and let me read off her book. I didn’t even have to ask her, she just did it. And when my mind wandered, which was often, she pointed to the sentence that we were meant to be following along with, pressing into the ink with her manicured rose-hued fingernail that was gently shaped into an oval. We were different back then too but we didn’t hate each other. We weren’t friends, we didn’t eat lunch or even walk to the cafeteria together after the lunch bell rang, but if we saw each other in the hallway or in the girls’ toilets, we either smiled and nodded, or said ‘Hi’ like we meant it. We did mean it, I think. She was different back then. She was friendly, she was nice to people. And she smiled a lot more.