Do You Remember the First Time?

hair was glossy and carefully dried. This wasn’t skeggy little schemie bully. This was big-time cheerleader style. Well, she wasn’t going to intimidate me, jumped-up little brat. I’d let this happen to me too many times as a child and it wasn’t going to bother me now. I swallowed my fear.
    ‘Fuck off, boring person,’ I said.
    ‘Ooh!’ went her almost as well-groomed acolytes.
    ‘What’s that? Are you telling me to – what?’ said Fallon in seeming disbelief.
    ‘Let’s go. I’m very bored here,’ I said to Constanzia.
    ‘Oh, the little swot’s bored?’ Fallon’s eyes were flashing. ‘What’s the matter? Not enough swotting around for you? Or – don’t tell me – there are too many people talking. Makes you feel like you’ve got friends. Good party by the way?’
    ‘I’ve got friends,’ I said, shocked despite myself.
    ‘I can’t believe you invited us!’
    I didn’t. Mind you, I’d invited Sheena the first time round. For fuck’s sake.
    They giggled loudly.
    ‘Anyway, it’s party season – you must be going to Ethan’s party tomorrow? After all, you invited him.’
    She said this to Constanzia. Constanzia shook her head.
    ‘Really? What a shame. Of course it would be too boring for you – they’ve got a swimming pool. And a wine cellar. Everyone else in the class has been invited. Never mind, you two.’
    I couldn’t believe this. I was feeling terrible about the fact that I wasn’t invited to a party by someone I didn’t know. Who cared?
    ‘Just the two of you staying at home then? On your own? No, that’ll be much more fun. Much less boring.’
    And they strode off.
    ‘Christ. Has she always been like that?’
    Constanzia looked at me. ‘Erm, remember when you got that scar?’
    Sure enough, looking down on my arm I saw a scar that I hadn’t noticed before.
    ‘She pushed you off the climbing frame.’
    ‘Witch.’
    ‘Head witch,’ Constanzia agreed. ‘And you know, yesterday, you leave me to face the witch all alone. You do this if you want a friend dead, yes? There, see – go into the gingerbread house by yourself, stupid child.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
    ‘Buy me a Twix,’ she said.
    ‘No!’
    ‘I’ll share it.’
    God, it’d been a long time since I’d eaten a Twix. Chunky Kit Kats are a much more adult snack, I believe.
    ‘All right,’ I said.
    ‘Why are we so unpopular, Stanzi?’ I said, as we sat on the wall and licked toffee off our fingers. For a second I forgot I was thirty-two, that I had a mortgage and a near-fiancé and had been chairman of our university leaving ball committee. I was just at school, sitting on the same wall near the science lab I always used to sit on, staring at the same sad windows and dripping brickwork, tasting chocolate and caramel on my tongue and utterly absorbed in the universe that was school.
    Constanzia stared at the floor and ate her last piece of Twix. ‘Because you’re a swot and I’m the smallest minority in the whole school, remember? And I used to have a moustache. And you never have any tits.’
    I looked at her. True, she did have a very heavy line of yellow hair on her top lip.
    ‘And they just decide they didn’t like us and that was that. Anyway, why is this worrying you now? It’s always been like this.’
    I swung my feet. ‘I don’t know. I’m just getting sick of the whole thing.’
    ‘Don’t worry. Just hold on for two years and we can go to college. Yay! Hooray! Sex and boys all night long.’
    ‘You’ll be surprised how quickly that gets old,’ I said, and then did a double take. ‘Two years?’ What if I couldn’t get out of here? No way was I staying two years.
    ‘Well, you have to. You leave now, it’s all over for you. “ Big Issue ?”’
    ‘Look, I’m not going to leave school, OK?’
    ‘“ Big Issue ?”’
    ‘Stop that, it’s not nice.’
    The bell rang.
    ‘I can’t remember a thing. With this new timetable, the school has deliberately set out to destroy me.’ Constanzia pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.
    I pounced. ‘Me neither. Let me see.’
    ‘Why are you looking at mine?’
    ‘Oh, yeah.’
    ‘Yesterday, when you having such a great time without your best friend, you fall down? You get hit on the head?’
    ‘Kind of.’
    ‘Your Italian e schifo .’
    ‘Is that good?’
    She smiled at me. ‘You have to go be maths idiot now, yes? Run along, piccolo rana .’
    I’d managed to raise Tashy on the telephone, sneaking out at lunchtime