More Than Friends | ✓

Chapter Four

The next few days we went to and from school together and lunched together. I was in heaven. I fancied Alice so much and I was spending so much time with her. I loved watching her, I love hearing her talk. We’d sit on a bench at lunchtime and I’d just keep asking silly questions and she’d fall for it every time, flowing into long detailed answers whilst I just drank greedily from her aura.

It was Friday, the end of my first week, and we were walking home together. I asked her what she was doing on the weekend. She was training ice skating. Suddenly she got excited as though the idea had just come to her: would I like to come ice skating with her?

I said I couldn’t skate. She said it was ok, she’d teach me. And so, my heart skipping, we arranged to meet the next day after lunch at the rink.

We met by the entrance. With the recent success in the Olympics, ice skating was in the popular eye again, but that warm August day it wasn’t very popular in my town and the rink was almost empty. An old man sat in the ticket office and greeted Alice and talked to her like good friends. He let me slip in for free.

Alice was wearing another thin baggy wooly sweater, mini-skirt and leggings. She had her own skates at the rink. She helped me put my loan pair on and led me out onto the ice.

Immediately my feet went in opposite directions and I almost collapsed. Alice found it all very funny. Very slowly she led me around the rink. She would stand in front of me, holding each hand, and drag me forwards by wriggling her bottom so she moved backwards. Her long fuzzy blonde hair was like a halo around her smiling beaming face and I was mesmerized by the pattern her wiggling bottom traced, its zig zagging path burned into my retina.

Suddenly Alice let go of me and turned. She accelerated instantly and was off around the rink with an elegance and efficiency that made it look effortless. As she reached the far corner furthest from me she did a simple jump and spin without slowing down and was onwards around the rink until she came up behind me again and skidded to a halt exactly where she’d started seconds before. Her cheeks were flushed from the sudden exertion in the cold air. And then she grabbed my hand and tried to get me to skate some more. She did these laps every so often. She said she was keeping warm. I was in awe.

After our skating we walked back and before she realised it she had led me back to her house. She was giggling, saying I was more like Bambi than Dean. I was a bit put out and embarrassed.
Everyone was talking about Torvill and Dean. She stopped, pointing out that she lived here.

This terrace was a bit posher than my terrace and the houses seemed a little bit bigger. She squeezed my hand and thanked me for skating with her. She laughed and called me Bambi again. My face must have fallen. She lent in and whispered in my ear. “Don’t forget, Bambi was a stag don’t you know?” in a fit of giggles and then she turned and bounded up her steps to her front door, several at a time.
I walked home elated and lost.

Had she been giving me hints and encouragement? Were we still ‘just friends?’ It wasn’t so far home.

On Monday I had to wait by the end of my row for Alice to come into sight. We walked together, side by side, close but not touching. Alice said matter-of-factly that I was invited around to dinner Tuesday night. Apparently the old man at the rink had told her mum about me and Alice’s mum had thought it would be nice if I came round for tea. ‘Just as a friend’, Alice added. I went from elation to devastation in a split second. But I tried to put a brave face on it.

At six-form you normally take only three subjects. Some take four. And so you have several empty slots on the schema. You are supposed to spend these empty slots in the six-form study rooms where you sit and work, or talk quietly and pretend to work, and there’s a teacher there to take the register so you can’t skip it. I had a empty slot and I sat in the sun on the benches outside the study rooms waiting for that teacher to arrive.

This time it was Mr. Davis supervising. He saw me sitting alone outside and paused on his way in.

“No Alice today?” he asked conversationally.

“She had biology.” I stood up to follow him in but he put his arm around my shoulder.

“Ah, you just help her with her biology homework eh?” he joked.

I stifled a giggle and he laughed loudly at his own joke and at my embarrassment, and I joined in. So we went into the study room with his arm around my shoulder, laughing.

After study period it was lunch time and we tumbled out into the quad sunshine. Helen and Katie and their gang — they called themselves Katie’s Posse — cornered me. Katie, always loud, asked how I was so pally with Mr. Davis.

“Oh I’ve met him down the pub.” I said, my chest puffing out at the boast that I went to a pub!

Almost as quickly I got this sinking feeling that this was a rumour that could easily get me into deep trouble. But The Posse cooed; I was a bad boy and that excited them.

Helen asked what I was doing for lunch. I looked around; Alice was heading straight for us.

“Alice!” I called, as much to attract Alice’s attention as to answer Helen.

Katie smirked incredulously “Flat Alice? Why the fuck do you waste your time with her? What’s she do, blow you?” and The Posse fell around laughing like that was the funniest joke in the world.

I looked wildly around. Where was Alice? Had she heard? I couldn’t see Alice anywhere. One moment she was almost with us, the next she had disappeared.

I heard a quiet voice, Helen’s voice, asking “Do you love her?”

I think Helen had a romantic side and liked to play cupid. It was the kind voice of a friend, of an ally.

I felt sick. I pushed my way through The Posse ignoring Katie’s grabbing attempts to hold me back. I went searching for Alice but I couldn’t find her. I guess she’d had years of disappearing and hiding at school and was expert at it.

We met at the school gates at home time. Alice’s eyes were puffy. I went to put my arm around her but she pulled away as though stung. But she seemed a bit pleased that I’d waited for her. On the way home she told me she’d skipped lessons and hid all afternoon in the sports block. I was quiet. I wasn’t really equipped for comforting her and didn’t know what to say.

Tuesday we went to school, lunched and came home from school together as normal. It was routine now and Alice would search me out. I was really enjoying having a proper friend, which kind of complicated things as I also had the most tremendous crush on her and it was growing all the time.

I wasn’t sure if she thought about me like that, if she noticed me like that, if she liked boys, if she wanted anything. I was getting an uneasy feeling that we were ‘just friends’ and that I was destined to follow her around forever, watching her date other boys and try and comfort her each time she was dumped and always being in agony inside. I don’t think a boy and a girl can be just friends. One or the other always wants more. I wanted more. I wanted it all.

As we parted on the way home. Alice smiled and reminded me to be at hers at 6. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten. I had been nervously looking forward to it all day!