Do You Remember the First Time?

crooned love song was one of the funniest things I have ever seen, even though despite being someone who enjoyed sneering at the T-shirt prices, I was really beginning to regret not taking the opportunity.
    On stage, surrounded by exploding lights and rapturous noise, the tiny fireball I thought I was getting to know had been entirely replaced by a bone-free rag doll, who swayed so alarmingly she practically had to be held up. Fortunately he’s a big bloke, not like most pop stars, so she couldn’t fall over completely. She stared into his eyes like Mowgli being hypnotised by Kaa, and swayed gently to the (very slow) song, mouthing along, slack-jawed, with the words, as the rest of the auditorium pretended to cheer (to show Darius how nice they were) whilst secretly wishing Stanzi killed in a milliondifferent ways. Didn’t he know he was meant to pick the fat girl, for goodness’ sake, so they could all feel he was only doing it for pity and would much rather be with them? But it wasn’t, ha-ha-ha, it was my friend and it could have been me ! Ha-ha!
    I remembered suddenly, as I was waving along (I could somehow remember all the words) how jealous of Courtney Cox I was when she gets pulled out in that Bruce Springsteen video and wondering a little wistfully if I was the only person in this whole auditorium who could remember that. Not even Darius could. But I wasn’t that person any more.
    ‘She’s rubbish,’ said a girl wearing fairy wings next to me.
    ‘Yeah, I bet he’s really regretting it,’ said her friend. ‘Oh no! I’ve pulled a minger!’
    ‘That’s my friend you’re talking about,’ I said, trying to look taller than five foot four.
    ‘Really?’ said the first one quickly. ‘Does she know him then? Can she get us backstage?’
    I wasn’t to find this out right away, as, when the song ended, and Stanzi received a big, sweaty hug and a kiss, which she seemed disinclined to let go of, she wasn’t sent back into the crowd with me, presumably in case she got torn limb from limb by twenty thousand ravaging teenage beasts. They sent her off sideways, presumably smuggling her through a side exit, and I had to watch the rest of the gig on my own.
    I didn’t care, though. In fact – ooh, it suddenly occurred to me that if someone from school were there we might even get some cool points for this. Yeah, then we could start changing things around here; that would be great! I jumped up and down to ‘Colourblind’ in the encore with everyone else, excited.
    I was sixteen all evening. And it was great.
    I didn’t really come down – and I didn’t think Stanzi was coming down, ever. Hyperventilation was clearly going to be a way of life from now on. No backstage passes for us, alas, but she did get her Darius T-shirt – for free – and a big cuddle and kiss from the man himself, which is really quite a lot better than sex when you’re a virgin teenager in love with a pop star, and she was jumping like a pogo stick when Dad and I found her round the side. Full-fat Coke at Pizza Express didn’t help.
    ‘It’s love,’ I said.
    ‘I can’t eat,’ declared Stanzi dramatically. ‘I will never eat again. I will fade away to nothing and die for love because nothing in my life can ever again be as glorious as tonight.’
    ‘Can I have your doughballs then?’
    ‘No!’
    We had to drop her off when she became too incoherent to talk straight and I had to promise to Dad a million times we hadn’t been drinking or taking anything we shouldn’t.
    I had an odd feeling when I woke up the next day. An absence of complete and utter dread. In fact, I felt almost … jolly. The sun was shining, my thighs were slim, pop stars loved us, what could be as bad as Monday? I almost had a spring in my step as I kissed my dad goodbye outside school.
    ‘Oof,’ he said. ‘Been a while since you’ve done that.’
    ‘Well, as long as you’re on your best behaviour, you’ll get another one,’ I said, cheekily, enjoying his surprised face as I hopped out of the car. I’d decided to go for levity. Ifsomeone was making nice in our family, maybe the rest of them wouldn’t be so horrible. I didn’t put much hope in my theory, but at the moment it was the only thing I had; I had thought the fish and chips might have helped, but the stony breakfast silence hadn’t changed at all.
    Then I noticed someone at the school gates, and stood still. Looking the picture of agonised misery, slouching around trying not