We arrived at the local pub ten minutes late. Walking towards the old stone building a bitter stale smell burnt my nostrils. I hated the smell of pubs especially when I wasn’t planning on drinking. The big wooden windows of the first floor allowed us to see in perfectly from outside. A group of guys standing around drinking looked at Will and I. They stared at me for a second and went back to exchanging work stories.
It was the kind of look that made you wonder if you had food between your teeth. I arched my head looking for my reflection in a nearby window and ascertained that I was fine. The door to the tavern was scratched, dinted and old, but it retained carvings from the late 1800s. A warm breeze of perfume and smoke smothered my nostrils as Will opened the door for me. Lara stood out like a rose amongst a garden of dung, well that was except for the other rose that accompanied her. She was pressing up against a tall, olive-skinned, muscly boy. He didn’t look like a local, more like a surfy although the nearest beach was three hours away. His long arms meant he could have wrapped himself twice around Lara. I suddenly thought of Ken and Barbie.
Will gurgled beside me. The sound made him sound like he was suffocating. As we neared I coughed politely.
“Oh, hey guys,” Lara said awkwardly and quickly let go of her handsome man. A couple of men nearby who’d been engaging in voyeurism went back to their drinks. I flashed Lara a cheeky grin. Her face reddened but then she grew distracted as she took in my appearance.
“Er…Sophie, Will, this is Luke.” Her eyes didn’t shift from my face, she looked genuinely confused. I welcomed the opportunity to break eyes with Lara to shake Luke’s hand. Will shoved is hands in his pockets but offered a handshake when I elbowed him.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. I elbowed Will again.
“Yeah, me too,” he mumbled and stalked towards the bar.
I tried to improve the sudden awkward atmosphere that Will’s childish behaviour had created.
“Don’t mind him.” I gave Luke my best smile. “I took him away from his RPG game.”
Luke laughed a very deep manly laugh. It seemed wrong for someone his age to produce that level of baritone. Lara’s own soprano giggle contrasted and together they sounded like wind chimes. Lara looked eagerly at Luke and did her signature school girl cutesy shuffle. He ogled at her.
“Thanks for reserving a pool table,” I added trying to keep the conversation going to placate my own unease. I could sense the sexual attraction between them; their feelings of lust for each other was almost overwhelming to me. I felt like I was becoming some sort of empath: fictional humans that could sense the slightest change in other peoples moods. I’d read about them in novels. The surrealness of it all made me feel kind of hollow and I suddenly wanted Melinda.
“No worries, we got half an hour ago and started a game – but you can probably guess we’re a bit distracted.” Luke laughed loudly creating a bass line in my bones – it made Lara bite her lip. Urg! was all I could think. Lara stole a quick kiss from Luke, he made some masculine grunting noise and pulled her to him with his tree-trunk arms. The two guys sitting down began to watch them again. I felt like an unwanted spectator and I made a snap decision to drink alcohol after all.
“Thirsty?” I offered, gesturing to the bar.
“I’ll come with.” Lara giggled as she carefully shuffled out of his grasp, and he made the experience last as long as possible. I averted my gaze uncomfortably. As soon as she was free I moved swiftly to the barman who was quite busy. Strangely, I got his attention rather quickly and he gave me a large interested smile and raised his index finger indicating he’d be one moment.
“Sophie. What did you do to your face? You look so different!” Lara brought her fingers up to my cheeks and squeezed them. I flinched.
“I used my mum’s makeup. Maybe I’m compensating for my coming birthday tomorrow – getting old you know.”
Lara chuckled. “Makeup usually only adds to the features you already have Soph but your whole face is different! I mean even your eyebrows look different, did you pluck them?” By plucking I assumed she meant using tweezers to pull hair out by the roots, a process that seemed more insane to me than putting makeup on.
“This is me we’re talking about,” I reminded her, she looked thoughtful. She inspected my face millimetre by millimetre and nearby, two young guys stared at us. I tapped her fingers away. I didn’t want to be part of their late night fantasies.
“You think it looks bad?” I asked. She didn’t exactly seem happy by the changes.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…not you.” Which was exactly what Will had said. They were both obviously uncomfortable with the changes. But I wasn’t, not at all, I was having a new experience of not being a complete ugly duckling, or at least not feeling like one. I began to feel hurt that they weren’t happy for me that I looked different so I changed the subject. “What’s Luke having?”
“Oh he doesn’t drink. He doesn’t like the carbs,” she said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Mistakenly, I thought she was making a joke and laughed quite hard. She blinked at me and I quickly shut up.
“Right, yes, beer does have carbohydrates.” I agreed.
A group of six people walked in and occupied the pool table next to ours. Will walked back to Luke with his beer, which had taken him forever to fetch and probably on purpose. The guys stood near each other, backs to the pool table, both trying to come up with something to say to each other.
This made Lara and I laugh. Yet, their combined awkwardness made me feel nervous and I wanted to go over to them and tickle them, or make a funny face, anything that would take away the tension. I ignored the barman that seemed happy to ignore the other customers to chat to me and took my Midori and lemonade back to Will and Luke. I picked up a cue.
“Ready guys?” I challenged them. “C’mon Will you and I can be on one team and Lara and Luke on another, sound okay?”
Everyone seemed pleased with that arrangement. I wasn’t known for being a leader but if things continued the way they were going, I was afraid Will would act on his testosterone and Luke would end up punching him or something. Will had plenty of spirit but Luke’s muscles were large enough to have their own area code.
I stared pointlessly at the table and my stomach did a small flip as I remembered how bad I was at pool. I popped two coins into the slot and pushed in the silver tray. The balls clunked inside the table; Luke scooped them out into the black triangle. Will watched him set the balls up and shook his head.
“He’s doing it wrong.”
At that moment I made a decision. I grabbed Wills arm and dragged him out the night air. “What is wrong with you?” I asked more loudly than I’d meant. A group of smokers standing nearby stopped talking to listen in to our conversation.
I heard one of them say “lover’s quarrel.” I gave them a look that said “Mind your own business.” I turned back to Will.
“I don’t like the guy, I can’t help it.” He shrugged his shoulders and lowered his head.
“Well, can you make an effort at least? Lara obviously likes this guy.” I knew that I was telling Will off like he was a three year old. But I loved both my friends and I wasn’t going to let anything come between us. He puffed his chest out and raised his head. “I’ll try.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder and walked back inside leaving me on the sidewalk. I looked up at the sky. When I thought about the stars and the planets, it put my small problems back in perspective. Life was bigger than our tiny subjective worlds. I took a deep breath and followed him inside.
Lara threw me a questioning look when I re-entered. I just shrugged at her. She looked at Will and her face became somewhat sad.
“You can break mate.” Luke smiled forcefully at Will and handed him the cue with a tensed bicep. He’d obviously picked on Will’s dislike of him. I looked at Lara and she gave me a half smile. She’d picked up on it too. Will took the cue and placed the end in his left hand lining the shot. He did two small pseudo hits with the cue then let his right arm follow through on the third. Crack the balls split and Will pocketed two smalls.
“Yay we’re bigs!” Lara touched Luke’s arm affectionately. Will handed Lara the cue avoiding her eye contact. I’d suspected before that Will like Lara more than a friend, and sadly, I think I’d been right all along.
It couldn’t be. There would have been more signs, surely. They were too much like brother and sister. I watched Will’s behaviour closely. His face was buried in his beer. When Lara took her turn, he stared to the side not looking at her. The cue she held was as thin as her arms were. She hit the white ball and it bounced off a big one which hit the corner of a side pocket.
“Just missed!” she squealed and stepped back into a player from a nearby table. They looked like farm boys from the nearby hinterlands. The guy looked serious as he turned around but his face completely changed when he saw Lara.
“Sorry,” she said putting her hand over her mouth and touched his shoulder with the other.
“No problems sweet thing, you can bump into me anytime.” He gave her a very charming smile and tipped his hat at her. She giggled her school girl giggle. How she managed to bring out Neanderthal reactions in men I’d never understood. I saw Luke stiffen and stare coldly at the cowboy. Luke was twice the size of him. The cowboy threw Luke a smug ‘she’d be mine if you weren’t around buddy’ smile. The cowboy appraised Luke’s statuesque physique, considered the odds of his winnin a confrontation and went back to his game.
Impressive.I liked the idea that Luke cared enough about Lara already to feel protective, although I wondered if that confrontation had been about protecting her, or about territorial pissings. It dawned on me one reason that Will had been acting strange was because he’d always been the protector in our group. Maybe he felt his role being threatened. Will was watching Luke like a hawk now.
It was my turn. I had a tricky shot. I wanted to sink a ball, but I was a hopeless shot and expected myself to miss completely. I aimed for a ball up the other end of the table; it was the only one not in snooker.
“Careful now, Soph. Don’t dig the table green up.” Will guffawed thinking he was very funny. I threatened him with my pool cue. He flinched. At that moment, everything seemed to slow down. A lot. Not slow like the minutes ticking by in an exam, but millisecond by millisecond moments. I lowered the pool cue onto my fingers and hit the white ball with as much force as possible. Time had slown down so much I was able to place the cue perfectly onto the white ball. There was a thud and the white ball rolled down the table. Not only did it hit the small ball I was in snooker with but it bounced off towards another small ball to the right. It hit that ball and another and another and another and all plonked into nearby pockets. We only had to sink the black to win. I stood there stunned, my mouth literally fell open. Time sped up again, but I noticed an eerie silence around me. I raised my eyes and everyone stared at me, mouths open, bodies still like statues.
“Oh my god, Sophie!” Will pulled me into a hug and spun me around, I got plenty of pats on the back.
I heard “Nice fluke” from somewhere to the left of me. It definitely was a fluke, but time had slowed down, it made it easier to aim and think and concentrate. I just knew the angles, I’d know exactly where to hit the white ball. Was that cheating? I released my breath and it came out as a snorted laugh. I was more worried about cheating than the fact time had slowed down. Maybe I could embrace the strange things happening to me. Maybe they weren’t all for the worst.
The room filled with excited chatter, clapping and hoots. I flushed bright red and noticed every single one of the cowboys looking at me. One of them winked and I wanted to turn into a bug and scurry away along the sticky barroom floors. Another extremely dark and handsome man bowed at me. I felt so proud, but it hadn’t really been me.
Of course, my happiness didn’t last for long.
Sssophie you should leave your friends now, you will hurt them if you don’t. His breath made a hissing noise in my mind.It was the bad voice. All other noises softened and became a combined murmur.
“No!” I shrieked, reacting strongly to the voice – this was a change I couldn’t embrace. This voice scared me. Terrified me. I was determined to remain tough, but I couldn’t help trembling. I bit my lip and made fists.
My previously cheering audience had become a room of silence and whispers. People looked confused. I tried to stay calm but the panic was rising, taking over my body. I started to sweat, my heart thud in my ears, the room became blurry and I swayed a little. I was tense, so tense my muscles ached but I couldn’t relax. To my dismay the voice continued.
You will go crazy. Lose your mind. Look at your friends they don’t trust you.I stared at Lara and then Will. They looked horrified and helpless –I was hurting them.
See. Lara and Will are scared of you. This is nothing. NOTHING compared to what’s coming. You are a freak. You’ve always known it, you are different, you have no place in this world and the world will hate you! Do you want to hurt them Sophie?
“No. Of course I don’t want to hurt them!’ I screamed.
Lara gasped, her sparkling blue eyes were wide with terror – I looked away feeling ashamed. People shifted uncomfortably. I felt helpless, gripped with terror.
You are already hurting them. Look at their faces. I didn’t look. I already knew. I was screaming at myself. On the outside I looked like a crazy person. A security man moved towards me. I ran out of the bar.
“Soph.” I heard Will yell out to me as I burst through the door into the cool night air.