Helen
I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, and I did my best, I really did. Lizzie acted so normally that sometimes I’d convince myself I’d imagined it, but then I’d get that fluttery feeling in my stomach and remember the grind of her against me. It made it so real again.
She didn’t seem worried. She didn’t seem to think about it at all. She talked about Scottie a lot. More than a lot.
She talked about Mr Roberts, too, and Harry, and anything other than the fact that she got me drunk and rubbed her pussy against mine until I came underneath her.
I was five minutes late for English on a rainy, miserable November morning, bemoaning the fact that winter was definitely here, beyond all doubt, when an unfamiliar voice called my name. I turned to find its owner, and Miss Monkton’s toothy smile greeted me. I hadn’t taken her class in years.
“Helen! I’ve been hoping to catch you around.” I pointed to the English block. “I’ve got a…”
“Oh, this won’t take long,” she said, and stepped closer, gesturing me under the porch where it was dry. “Mr Roberts and I just wanted to say thank you for your work on the set. You did such a great job. It makes such a difference to us to have students willing to put some time in, it really does. We really appreciate it, we really do.”
We. We we we.
It wasn’t the word so much as the way she was saying it. And her eyes were weird, and her cheeks were a little flushed and she was smiling really widely. And I got a strange feeling. Another strange feeling to go on the pile of strange feelings.
I was one big strange feeling these days, and not a very pleasant one. “I like painting,” I said. “It’s no problem.”
“Well, we really do appreciate it. I’m sure you had fun, of course.” I made myself smile. “Yeah, it was fun.”
“Long days painting.”
“Yeah, they were long days.”
“I’m sure Mr Roberts was good company, at least.”
And then I was feeling hot. I didn’t answer, just smiled. “I have English…”
“Of course, I’m sorry!” She put her hand on my arm. “I’ll be seeing you at the ball, yes?” I nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Mr Roberts and I are chaperoning.” “Cool.”
“It should be so much fun!” “Can’t wait.”
“Bye then, Helen.” “Bye, Miss Monkton.”
I had the strangest urge to flash her the finger as I walked away.
Lizzie came with me to the doctors. She insisted.
It was quite humiliating, her sitting there while I talked about my non-existent sexual history, but I was out of there in a lickety split, asides from some height-weight measurements and a pep talk about safe sex.
I’d have to take them until my next period. Lizzie announced with glee that that meant I’d be covered in the insanely unlikely event I went home with Harry after the ball.
Even the idea gave me the shivers.
All in all, life was pretty shit. My art was sucking, the weather was shitty, things with Lizzie were weird, and Harry Sawbridge was after my attention more and more each passing day. Not just in art, but around the school as well. He discovered mine and Lizzie’s secret smoking routine, and I wondered how coincidental that really was. Harry was ok, but he was just ok, just some other average person amongst the crowd.
The thought of kissing him made me feel sick, no matter how many times Lizzie tried to convince me otherwise. I even stopped logging into my cam account. What was the point?
Mr Roberts was Mr Roberts again. Only Mr Roberts.
I’d walk down to the river some evenings, even when it was raining, but I never saw him. I never saw him outside of class at all in fact, and I never heard a peep from him. He was just… him… friendly and professional and totally over me. Like he was ever into me in the first place.
Everything was going so horribly wrong.
Mum taking me shopping was a good excuse to have some time without Lizzie at least. We took the bus to Hereford on a Saturday morning, and it had been so long since we’d done that that I couldn’t help but smile on the way. Me and my mum. Just us. And it felt safe.
“It’s a special occasion,” she insisted. “Have whichever dress you want.”
It turned out that I didn’t want many of them. They were all ruffly and flouncy and sparkly and big. Or short, short and showgirly. Or vintage and way too trendy for a little outsider like me.
I’d all about given up when we dipped into a little boutique down Church Street, and then I saw it.
A shimmering cross between mauve and silver, satin and simple and perfectly understated. Perfectly me. I took in a breath when I saw it, and Mum did, too.
“Oh, Helen! Helen, that’s so you!”
And she was right. It fit me like I’d been born to wear it. I did a little twirl and the dress moved with me, just enough, and I felt beautiful. More beautiful than I’d ever felt.
The sales assistant gushed, and Mum had a tear in her eye, and my sad little world seemed a little bit brighter until my stomach fell through the floor at the price tag.
The sales assistant made me twirl another time, showing off the definition of my back as the fabric sloped away. It was so pretty, and so tasteful, and so expensive.
Mum pulled out her credit card and I gasped.
“No!” I said. “It’s way too much!”
She waved me aside. “This is your special night with your new boyfriend, you’ll have the dress you want!” And I felt unbelievably guilty all of a sudden, like a fraud. A horrible fraud.
I remembered the times gone by when we’d been close, and I was just a little girl and could tell her anything. I used to tell her about Mr Roberts, too.
Now we didn’t talk about anything. But I missed it. I really missed it.
They handed me my dress in a pretty paper bag, and it was so light, like the fabric itself was made of air. We stopped for a bite to eat before the bus home, and Mum asked me question after question about Harry.
What’s he like? What kind of person? How does he look? Who’s his favourite artist? How much do I like him? I answered them as best I could, but my answers were short.
Eventually she looked sad, as though she was angling for information she knew I possessed but wasn’t sharing, and I wished more than anything I could just be honest.
It’s not Harry, Mum, I’m in love with Mr Roberts. And he wanted me, for just a while he wanted me. It was the happiest time of my life, but now I’m broken again.
I’m broken and I’m lonely and life feels so uncomfortable for a little freak like me.
I tried to summon the words, or any words, but none would come. She looked hopefully as I sipped my milkshake, and I could feel how happy she’d be if I talked. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“We’d better get the bus,” she said.
I nodded, and it was back to normality again.
***
Mark
Three weeks. Three shitty weeks.
Three long shitty weeks when I questioned everything about everything. My cruddy life filled with paint and nothing else, my career in teaching and whether I deserved to hold onto that position anymore, the legacy of a woman I’d lost nearly ten years earlier, the ghost of a tragic life rattling its chains throughout my home, and Helen. The girl I’d loved and lost. The second girl I’d loved and lost.
The girl who tormented me every single day, with her soul and her sadness. And her youth. Her beautiful youth.
Her eyes were still sad, but her paintings were getting better. It had been over a week since she’d even logged into her cam account, and I’d been seeing her more and more with Harry Sawbridge around school.
I tried not to look. I tried not to care at all. But I did care.
I cared so much it made me sick to the stomach.
Jenny Monkton flittered around me like an irritating butterfly as we approached the dates of the panto. My work there was done, and yet she dragged me into every consideration, every discussion, every schedule. Between that and the ball preparations she was a noose around my neck, making plans I couldn’t escape from.
She had everything planned out. My lifts to and from the ball venue – so I could enjoy a drink, she insisted, of course I should be able to drink, she insisted – and then my participation in clearing the hall with her the morning after. The panto rehearsals, and the panto itself and the panto after party.
And work Christmas drinks, she was planning that, too.
I needed a break, and Christmas couldn’t come soon enough.
We were just a day from the ball when the ping of my email sounded one evening.
Helen
ArtyHelenPalmer is recording a message!
In shock and with my heart thudding, I clicked to view live and she was sitting in silence, twirling her hair around her fingers.
“It’s been a while. Sorry. I mean I was… I’m still…”
I watched her watching her knees, cross-legged on her bed with her laptop angled up. “I thought I should maybe… before the ball… I thought I should…”
She sighed, and so did I.
“I miss you. I miss being friends. I miss what we had.” And so did I.
“I just… being around you made me feel so alive. I felt… I felt like me… and like that was ok.” And so did I.
“I felt like I had someone who got me… someone who could make it ok…” And so did I.
“I just… I miss that. I miss you. And things are weird now and horrible and different, and sometimes I even forget there was anything more… but then I remember, and I get so sad.”
And so did I.
“I just wondered… I thought… maybe you missed me, too. Just a little. I know you probably don’t…” She laughed at herself, a horribly self-depreciating sound.
And I was typing. Typing before I could change my mind.
I miss you, Helen.
And her eyes lit up and widened. “You do?”
Every day.
“I just… I didn’t know… you didn’t seem like it…”
I was just trying to set you free.
“But… but I don’t want that… I… I want…” She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m a kid, I know, and you’re not. And I get that.
I get it.”
She took a little breath. “I just… I really…”
She held up a hand to the screen and it took me a second to realise she was reaching for the off button. “I’d better go…”
And I blew it again. Typed the only thing I could justify saying.
Goodnight, Helen.
“Goodnight, Mr Roberts.”
With regret, I typed the words I wanted to say, typed them into the chat box like they could save my soul, pull me from the depths of the black and white world I’d been rotting in and make it all real again.
Don’t go with him. Don’t be with him. Please, Helen, don’t. Wait for me. Wait until you’re older and I’m just a man, wait until this can be something. And I’ll be there. I promise I’ll be there.
But no.
I couldn’t.
I pressed delete.
***