Naked

I remember the first day that I met Oliver. It was a Friday, after school had finished before half term, and a boy in my class, Tom, had invited me over to his house. I had thought Tom was cute, with his large blue eyes and funny spiky brown hair. He had a round face, which I liked because when he smiled, two small dimples cut into his cheeks, just like mine. Tom was my best friend, even then I knew it.

For two eleven year olds of the opposite sex, just hitting puberty, there wasn’t any awkwardness when he’d invited me over. My mother barely cocked an eyebrow when I had told her. She just told me to have fun and be home for eight.

“Hey Lizzie, you want to see my camera?” Tom had asked when we’d slipped off our black shoes. We hadn’t been at secondary school long, and the new shoes were still giving me blisters. I was glad to take them off and waggle my toes around in my socks.

“Sure.”

Tom’s house had smelled old and dusty, like my Nan’s. I don’t ever remember minding much, it was something I had grown to find comfortable. Despite the “old” smell, the house was relatively new, newer than ours at least, and on a road on the edge of Sheffield, near the park where my parents and I sometimes walked the dog.

The staircase had been lined with the usual family portraits, but only one really made me stop. Tom was in it, with an older, darker haired boy, their arms slapped over one another’s shoulders. I looked at it for a long while.

“Lizzie,” Tom had called from the first floor. “You coming?”

“Uh, yeah,” I gave the photo one last look before I hurried up the remaining steps where my best friend was waiting for me.

Up in his room I was memorised and just like that I forgot all about the boy in the picture and the dusty smell.

“Sorry it’s a mess,” he muttered, kicking a box of Lego out of the way. “Mum tidied it a bit though.”

“I don’t mind.” Tom beamed and began showing me all sorts of things that he had. We spent a while looking through a stack of pokemon cards he had, kept in their own little tin.

“I can’t believe how many shineys you have, Tom,” I said in awe, moving the little card around in the light, making the two-tone background shimmer. “They must have cost loads!”

“I’ve got two of those,” he boasted. “You can have that, if you want.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, still twisting the card. He nodded and started playing with a little plastic pokemon character. “Thank you.”

We played for a while, making little stories with his figurines, and battling with the pokemon cards, resulting in me winning my own little stack. I was sure Tom had let me win, but I didn’t ask. Soon, though, he dragged me over to a little desk where what I would soon learn was his pride and joy sat.

“This is so cool, Tom!” I had smiled, holding the chunky thing in my hands. It was a Polaroid, Tom had told me, his mother had given it to him for his birthday. There were a few pictures he’d already taken with it stuck around a mirror, mostly of him and a fat black cat.

“That’s Bod,” he told me when he saw me looking at the green slanted eyes. “She’s so fat, if she’s around you should try picking her up. She weighs a ton.”

I laughed at that, and Tom laughed too. We didn’t go find the cat, but we did use the camera. First we took a picture of an old watering can that had been left out in the garden. I’d liked how the camera spat the picture out at us, blank at first, but then, like magic, our picture was there. It mesmerized me.

The garden soon bored us both, and Tom decided that my face was far more exciting. I was embarrassed when he pointed the Polaroid at me, and I covered my face with my hands.

“No, Tom!” I mumbled, dunking under my hair.

“Come on, Lizzie,” he giggled, pulling at my wrists until my reddened cheeks were freed. “Please, whilst the sun’s still out.”

“But I look silly!” I whined, pulling at my school shirt and the gray skirt swinging around my hips.

Tom shook his head at me, the camera hanging from it’s strap around his neck. He chewed on his lip for a while, staring at me in thought. I stood silent, and tried not to sway from foot to foot, but he just took so long to say anything, I ended up leaning against the back wall of the house.

“Wait here,” Tom said after a while, and he ran inside the house, taking the camera with him.

It was cool outside, but the sun was setting lower in the sky and the orange rays began to feel warm against my face. The garden was nice, not too many plants or anything, but there was a nice pond in the corner, and a table and chairs. I imagined Tom sat at the table, eating breakfast on a summer morning with his family. His mum and his dad.

“I’m back!” Tom came skipping back through the back door, but he didn’t have the camera anymore. Instead, he’d taken his blazer off and was only in his shirt and tie, like me. He had the sleeves rolled up, revealing his snowy pale arms and a thick brown watched strapped to his wrist.

Tom didn’t have the camera, but somebody else did. It was the boy from the photo, following behind sluggishly with a grim look on his narrow face. He looked different from the picture by the stairs, but I could still recognise him. His hair was even darker, and longer, reaching just past his ears. He looked different from Tom, everything about him seemed darker, more foreboding, from his honey brown eyes to the black t-shirt and jeans he was wearing. He sort of scared me, but I couldn’t stop looking.

“This is Oliver, my brother,” Tom introduced lazily. The boy glared at his younger sibling, letting the camera dangle from his hands.

“Oli,” the boy threatened dangerously, but when Tom rolled his eyes he didn’t say anything else about it. “What do you even want me to do?” he asked, looking at the camera with a clueless expression.

“Take a picture of me and Lizzie,” Tom instructed, meeting my side and leaning against the wall, just like I was. “Please,” he added.

Oliver sighed and told us to stand still whilst he brought the camera up and looked through the little lens. I didn’t look back at the little black circle like most people do; all I could watch was the half of Oliver’s face that I could see, distorted by his squinted eye. His dark hair fell against his face, and I thought it was odd how I liked both his narrow features as well as Toms rounded cheeks.

“Hey, girly,” Oliver said and I felt my face burn when he looked at me. “Move in, I can’t fit you in the damn shot.”

Tom pulled me closer, but his arm felt too tight around me and I felt something twist in the bottom of my stomach. What did he mean I couldn’t fit into the shot? Was I really that big?

The reason I liked Tom’s plump face was because it made me feel better about my own. I liked how his arms were thick and he wasn’t skinny like a lot of the boys in our class. Because I wasn’t skinny like the girls. I wore bigger shirts, and my skirt didn’t look as good on me and sometimes if I had a big dinner the night before my blazer wouldn’t fasten properly. I knew I was bigger. I just didn’t think anybody else noticed; at least until now.

Oliver took the shot and gave us both the picture and the camera, stuffing them into his brothers hand and sauntered off back into the house, mumbling something under his breath. I watched him until he disappeared through the back door.

I stayed for dinner at Toms, and we ate on the floor in the living room whilst we watched The Simpson’s. We kept looking at the picture at the two of us together, both chubby and pale against the red brick wall, and we laughed about what we thought was goofy and what we thought looked good. But all I could see was the stretch in the fabric of my shirt around my stomach and my round, round cheeks.

I hated the photo, everything about it, but when I left at eight o’ clock, his mum, Carole, giving me a lift home in her blue estate, he slipped it into my hand and said that I had to keep it forever. And even though I loathed the shot, I promised him that I would, even tacking it up on my wall that night, along with the pokemon card that he had first given me.

It was the start of Tom’s and I’s friendship, but it was also the start of something that would very nearly destroy me.