This War Paint

Jane


His car wasn’t there. So, obviously, the first thing which flashed through my skittish, silly, girlish mind was ‘oh God, he’s gone and left.’ But a few steps out of my front door, following in the shadow of my little sister, were enough for Florence’s gossip to swirl me whole in its half truths. James was the first to let me know. He told Helen who told me - after a few muffled, awkward seconds of wondering whether it was safe to let me know or not - that Fraser’s car had been decimated sometime in the night and was sat in Florence’s only police compound.

James tried not to laugh as Helen told me this, all sympathetic lines and soft edges, but he was the last of my concerns. Foremost was Fraser. I sat in the massive 4x4, listening to some stupid pop song and biting my nails because Fraser hadn’t shown up that morning and the seat next to mine was so empty.

I already missed him. Like a blow to the stomach, I realised I should have kissed him the night before, standing in the hallway of my neighbour’s house with his hand cupping some part of my face. I didn’t know or understand how far the feelings swarming my stomach went, but I knew if he was in some kind of danger I would fight tooth and nail to keep him safe. He’d done the same for me every opportunity he’d had. In Fraser, I had found a protective older brother and the last person in the world I would want to be related to.

When the car pulled to a stop, I was left standing in front of the school, alone. Scared and young, thin legs quaking like it was my first day. Like I was just born. Like I’d never been alone before.

I blinked, started my legs into motion and moved towards the school. David was watching me and I glanced at him from under my eyelashes. He didn’t care that he’d cost Fraser a car, a lifestyle, a home. Because, of course it was David’s doing, he had seen his own precious car with words tattooed on spaces he had polished a million times. And revenge was a natural desire for someone like him.

He looked at me with the same hot, cruel eyes I had seen flash at me before hands gripped mine and forced me back into a corner. Shivers crept up my legs, reaching my hips, sending my flower tattoo into a ripple of movement. Like a single finger dipped in a river, I felt the effects of him everywhere.

But then I was flanked, quite suddenly, by two bodies blocking him completely from view. I half faltered, tripping over myself. Shocked. I was shocked. Lolly certainly wasn’t big enough or inclined enough to appear at my side like this, not if David was somewhere in the vicinity.

A thin arm stuck out and steadied me, looping in mine as if my instability was just an open invitation. I looked down at this girl and couldn’t come up with her name. Brunette and tanned and pretty, smiling at me because she knew mine for sure. The boy on my right, however, I knew him very well, if only by reputation.

Fraser’s best friend and partner in crime shot me a quick nod as he led the way for us through a sudden torrent of students. And they parted for him because, hell, they didn’t want their cars to be vandalized too. Max knew people, people like Fraser, and anybody like Fraser was bad news. To them, anyway. To me and the skinny boy with the larger-than-life presence leading the way he was more than just a dark fairytale.

“You probably don’t know who we are,” the brunette linked with me spoke. “But we’re Fraser’s friends and we look out for people in our circle, and you, Jane. Any friend of Fraser’s is ours too.”

She was smiling all straight, white teeth and I thought she was quite possibly the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Or maybe it was just the ugly sight she was blocking.

“That’s my boyfriend Max and my name’s Baby – a nickname I promise – but it’s better than the real thing. I swear my parents must have hated me.” Here she laughed like it was the most natural thing to do in a situation like this. With David’s nasty eyes burning holes into us and half the school pretending not to be watching our every move. And I actually smiled because there was something about her laugh which made it impossible not to.

“Hello,” I murmured stupidly. Like a little girl being offered a new hand to hold, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

“It’s hot today,” she commented. “Do you think it’s better to be too hot or too cold? I never know.”

Here Max swung an arm over Baby’s shoulder and kissed her temple like she’d just done something too adorable. I didn’t know either, and I couldn’t understand how we were just walking through the school like there wasn’t a mob of angry footballers stalking us. Where was Fraser? I felt exposed without him, jealous of the couple in front of me and about as tall as a number two pencil.

I brought a hand up to my mouth, biting quickly on my nails so the rest of my chipped nail varnish peeled back. I missed him. I missed him so much that it wasn’t rational, it wasn’t possible, I had only seen him yesterday evening and now it felt like things had changed all over again. I wanted to bring back those moments in the half light in Mr Kanaka’s hallway and tell him that I would go wherever he wanted to go. Florence be damned.

Here I was, though, twisting through the hallways and counting down the seconds until something happened. And, sure enough, having just got to second two hundred and thirty, I felt a cold hand wraparound my wrist. Painfully.

My momentum stopped, as did the couple’s in front, as we all rounded as one unit to face David.

But it wasn’t David at all.

Lolly’s manicured fingernails dug into my skin so cruelly that I wondered whether she’d reached a vein yet. I didn’t call out, I didn’t make a sound. I stared at the girl and her blonde hair and green eyes and pretty face. She stared back with a nasty expression, something which looked so close to hate and so far from how she’d used to look at me. Once when I had been her dance partner in junior school and model for photography class and best friend. Now she couldn’t stand the sight of me, and it made me so sad.

Something else David had ruined, all because I wouldn’t put out for him and love him like he was the best thing to ever have happened to me. He’d snatched Lolly away in spite because I wouldn’t complete whatever creepy fantasy he had made in his mind.

“What is it Jennifer?” I asked, knowing I didn’t have the right to her nickname anymore.

She paused, the hand squeezing the life out of mine lessening but not letting go. I’d caught her by surprise. I wanted to ask what she’d expected me to do? Cry and break down and tell her that David was all hers, probably. But here I stood, my face going cold and two strangers flanking me without one word of remorse to my name. I didn’t think I had any more room for that.

“I…” she began before finding it again – the hatred. “I just wanted you to know that we’re not friends anymore. In fact, I hate you and I’m pretty sure everyone else does too after what your psycho stalker did to David’s car. Stay the hell away from us! I don’t want to see your people anywhere near mine,” she spat, eyes sweeping over the three of us, shoving me in a closing drawer with them. Typecast, I suddenly thought, I guess I’ve just been typecast all over again.

But I was okay, I didn’t care that she wanted to put me with them or shun me from the popular people or make me feel like I was nothing. Because I felt okay.

“Is that it?” I asked stonily.

“That’s what you’ve got to say to me? After you stole the only boy I ever loved and told me to my face that you couldn’t stand him? I come to school one day to find the two of you a couple without one word of warning from my best friend.”

She choked on the last two words and, for the first time since she’d grabbed my wrist, a piece of her got through to my heart. I was five and holding out my hand for little Jennifer Jameson to hold and being told to call her Lolly like the sweet.

“Do you want to make this a scene?”

I was genuinely curious to know. Had this all just been to publicly prove she was finally her own person? That she wasn’t Jane Hathaway’s best friend anymore, that she could rule this school just as easily? I felt like telling her there was only a month left before finals and then all of this – all of the pretentious popularity and ownership – meant nothing. I just blinked at her, though, and asked the question again in my head to my own reply.

“I’m not trying, Jane, I am making a scene. And after thirteen years of friendship I think that I deserve that, don’t you?”

Her hand got tighter and I quickly wondered where my lovely Lolly had been buried? The ditzy blonde who loved Gucci and Prada but couldn’t do her ten times table by herself. She had stood beside me that morning a few weeks prior and watched me blush under Fraser’s eyes, who had watched me cringe when David had glanced over. How could anyone be so blind?

“I think you need to move along, bitch, or I’ll be the one making a scene.”

Baby came out from behind me like a raging Chihuahua, barely making it up to my shoulder and managing to look twice as intimidating. Her almond eyes were narrowed into slits as she came in between us, shooting Lolly the foulest look I had ever seen on a teenage girl. Or, come to think about it, anybody else.

Max was sighing loudly from over my shoulder but even I could tell he wasn’t annoyed. I cast him a quick glance and found a smile on his lips and a kind of proud admonishment in his eyes, as if he had already asked her not to get involved but found it adorable that she had anyway. He caught me looking and shot me ‘what-you-gonna-do’ shrug which had me feeling my own kind of contentment. These two were here, protecting me and looking out for me, all because their friend had fallen unceremoniously into my life.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Lolly snapped after being momentarily stunned at Baby’s appearance.

The brunette standing defensively in front of me was having none of that. She grabbed onto the hand cemented to my wrist and leveled a threat so painful sounding at Lolly that the girl practically quivered in her heels. I couldn’t help but feel bad for her, she didn’t know what to do with being confronted so starkly, the closest to an argument we had ever come before was a brief debate over who was the hottest boy in the school. I watched the cogs in her head slowly turning to life, processing the implications of what Baby would do if she didn’t let go. Pretty quickly after that I had my hand back.

Rubbing the sore skin, I took a step away to come level with Max. I was tired of this and it hadn’t even really begun. Lolly had said some things I would be thinking about all day and night because she hadn’t spoken one word that was a lie. I had been the one lying. If I had told her about that night at the party and the way I felt about Fraser and the things David was capable of, none of this would be happening.

“I’m sorry Lolly,” I said into what had become a tense silence.

There was a crowd for us and I didn’t want to give them any more. They’d had enough of me over the years and this, my broken friendship, what seemed to be the last piece of what I had once been, was mine to keep.

I was sorry, so so sorry, but I could do nothing more. Lolly couldn’t stand the sight of me after stealing her man and having his car vandalized and ruining any chance she had ever had of being popular. I understood and it hurt, but there was no more to say.

I turned to go, making sure Baby turned with us, because I wasn’t so heartless to leave the girl there to scare little Lolly any more. We left the nosy onlookers and David in the back glaring holes into us and Lolly amid it all. Maybe she had her scene after all.

I was promptly dropped off at homeroom by the couple who promised, no, insisted, that they’d swing by to take me to my next class. Aside from being annoyed at having bodyguards for the day, I was content too. They made me feel safe. They kept David at bay. Baby made me laugh with her silly jokes and vivacious smile, Max told me enough times that Fraser was okay to make my worrying bearable. I missed him. Of course I missed him. Being with Baby and Max, though, was like having a piece of him with me, or rather like being allowed a piece.

In fact, it was one of the best days at school I had had all year. It was going so well. And it was going just a little too well for David Armstrong.