(Hi, I'm back after a massive lull. Tell me what you think, as always any feedback is much appreciated).
Dear April,
I read my diary all the way through today. It’s so weird that a few months ago, my biggest problem was having to do some stupid speech in front of some stupid people. Which, by the way, got cancelled out of ‘respect’. I’ve heard that word so often now, I’ve forgotten what it means. It’s something about people pretending to be upset and smiling at me with sickly sweet smiles or instead constantly asking me how I am and saying ‘oh I know exactly what you mean’, when actually they don’t have a clue.
Anyway, I met some new girls today. Although you probably know that, you did after all say you’d watch over me. But then you promised a lot of things that won’t ever happen. Like that club you were going to take me to. And you were going to teach me how to flirt and throw out everything in my wardrobe and help me buy some more stylish clothes, despite the fact that I actually like a lot of what I wear. We were going to have a sleepover as well and get really high on chocolate and watch some chick flick.
I know you never valued sentimentality (sorry for using the big word), so I’m just going to move on now. To talking about these new friends, or potential new friends. They’re quite nice really, even if they have loads of piercings and stuff. I think you’d like them. We’re going out tonight, to some club or pub or something. I just thought I’d write you another letter so you’d know I haven’t forgotten you.
Always Yours
Johanna
Later that night, Jo staggered out of the car to view the building in front of her.
‘This is where we’re going?’
Johanna stared suspiciously at the building. It was dirty and had litter scattered all around it. The lights on the sign were only partially lit, so that rather than reading ‘Dill’s Dive’, it instead read ‘il’s ive’. Even from here, Johanna could hear shouts and laughter from in the building.
‘Yeah, old Dill’s. The best place for a bit of excitement’. Megan seemed to sense Johanna’s hesitancy and taunted her ‘not afraid are you?’
‘No of course not. Let’s go’ Johanna replied quickly, stumbling in her ridiculously high heels as she headed towards the front door.
However, Johanna hesitated yet again once she’d entered the building. It looked even worse inside than it had outside. It stank of cigarettes and booze and the paint was peeling off the walls, every now and then interrupted by what looked like bullet and knife holes. As Megan, Debbie, Susan and Johanna walked upto the bar, Jo could feel the leering looks of most of the guys in the bar on their short skirts, quickly followed by wolf whistles and, in Jo’s opinion anyway, the most inappropriate and embarrassing suggestions. She pulled up her seat to the bar, wishing she’d gone with her gut instinct of jeans and doc martens rather than a skirt and stupid heels that she was sure she was going to slip in any minute now. She then gulped as Megan presented the next challenge to her – a bottle of vodka.
‘Um actually I was going to just have water’.
‘Don’t be silly, this one’s on me. Plus no one cool drinks water here’. Susan’s voice had a hint of an edge, and Jo reflected that she had no idea where she was and she’d better agree with these girls if she ever wanted to get home alive. Having decided this she took a big gulp of the drink and then smiled at the other girls. Bored Debbie quickly went off to dance with some guys and chubby Susan followed soon after, leaving Johanna with Megan.
‘So, what’s your excuse?’ Megan asked as she sidled up to Jo.
‘My excuse?’ Jo asked.
‘For being here. For being the way we are. For not being little miss perfect, because no offence but you seem more like a good girl than a bad one’.
‘Looks can be deceiving’.
‘So I see. But seriously, you must have some way to justify yourself in your mind. A way that makes deciding to live like this not seem so bad. A way to prove to yourself that this is really the only option for people like us’.
‘I don’t know’ Jo looked up intrigued, this was the first time in months someone had talked to her semi-normally. ‘What’s your reason?’
‘Well, my Dad was a right maniac and so his genes probably contributed it, I hate my Mum and if she could get rid of me, she would except she hasn’t got the guts to actually kick me out. Plus I’ve been on anti-depressants since I was 13’.
‘Wow, now that’s a reason’.
‘I know yours. Come here I’ll whisper it’. Jo moved towards Megan and heard her hiss in her ear ‘your best friend killed herself and you feel it was your fault’.
Jo froze, ‘What? How…how do you know that?’
‘Because I felt exactly the same when my brother killed himself’. Megan sipped from her beer, not acting at all as if she’d just exposed a horrible memory of her past.
‘What? Your kidding…’ April then caught the stony expression on Megan’s face.
‘You’re not kidding. Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I had no idea’.
‘Most people don’t. And you don’t have to be sorry, it was a long time ago and I didn’t bring it up for sympathy. I just wanted you to know that there are others around that know what you’re going through. That you’re not alone’.
‘Even if I did blame myself for April’s de…what happened to April, which I’m not saying I do, why would that give me an excuse to behave however I want?’
‘You want to be psychoanalyzed? Fine, just don’t blame me if you don’t like what you hear. You behave badly, firstly because it takes your mind of what happened. Secondly, because you want to punish yourself for letting April die and you want everyone else to suffer as much as you are. You don’t try with anything worthwhile anymore, because none of it matters to you anymore. What does it matter if you were predicted 11 GCSEs and leave with none? April still won’t be here whatever you do, so why bother? Am I right?’
‘Hey guys, come dance with us, you’ve been talking for ages, come have fun’. A drunk Susan staggered over to them and Megan smiled at Jo and then led her over to the dance floor, first ordering her another drink.
Dear April,
I’ve never drank vodka before, I kind of like it. It makes me feel all bubbly inside and its so coooll. Plus megaen and the gyus are raelly cool. I tinhk we’re giong to have aolt of fun. Weeee, I tinhk im raelly qutie drnuk now. Thanx u Megaen, I wuold lkie anthor drnik…
The next morning, Jo staggered upto Megan, Susan and Debbie. Her face was a sickly white with a slight greenish tinge; her hair was greasy and pulled back into a messy ponytail. Megan looked her up and down and evaluated that:
‘You look really rough Jo’.
‘Nice to know I can always count on you to be comforting and supportive’. Jo rubbed her head for what must have been the hundredth time that morning, hoping that the pain would go away soon.
‘What are friends for?’ Megan countered
‘Ugh, my head is killing me, plus I’ve been sick about 4 times since I got up this morning’.
‘Yeah, that’s called a hangover sweetie. Usually happens after you drink quite a lot of alcohol’.
‘It wasn’t a lot’.
‘3 Alcopops, and half a bottle of some weird looking stuff that smelt alcoholic. I don’t know about you, but I call that a lot’.
‘I had less than you guys’.
‘Yeah, but the difference is that we can hold our alcohol. Unlike you’.
‘I was not drunk’ Jo argued, although she had to admit that the evidence against her was quite substantial.
‘Oh, so you normally dance on top of tables and make out with strange guys you’ve just met?’
‘Tell me your kidding. I didn’t do that. I’d know’.
‘Well ok, I was kidding about the table-dancing bit’.
Then the bell went and they walked off to their first lesson, Megan, Susan and Debbie refusing to reply to Jo’s constant denials of having kissed a guy last night.
Later on at lunchtime, Jo and the girls were all sitting round a table in the canteen, happily dissecting the muck that the school dared to call food. Suddenly Jo felt someone’s eyes on her back; slowly she turned around and saw a pair of steely grey eyes staring at her. Matt was sitting across the room, surrounded by a bunch of Neanderthals, but even though he was obviously speaking to them, he had not once taken his eyes of her. She didn’t know why, but this left Jo feeling uneasy and when Megan offered her a sly drink from the bottle she’d smuggled into school, she refused. She just didn’t want to give Matt an excuse to frown at her any more than he was already.
Self-consciously, she patted at her hair, hoping that it didn’t look quite as bad as it had earlier that morning. Even with all the noise of the cafeteria, she still managed to hear his chair scrape across the floor and his footsteps out of the room. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she stood up, gave an excuse of some sort to Megan and inexplicably went off in pursuit of Matt.
By the time she’d caught up with him, she’d realised quite how stupid she looked and was just about to turn around and head back into the dining room, when he turned around. For a while, they just stared at each other, until finally Jo couldn’t stand the tension anymore and suddenly shouted:
‘Why the hell were you glaring at me?’
‘What? I wasn’t glaring at you’, Matt argued, staring at her offended.
To this, Jo responded with a fairly frosty glare of her own.
‘Fine’, Matt conceded, ‘but what do you expect when you hang around with people like that?’
‘What do you mean people like that?’ Jo’s every word was dripping with venom, but Matt was too wound up at this point to stop.
‘You know what I’m talking about. Debbie’s the biggest slut in the school, Susan is always drunk and everyone knows that Megan is into drugs big time. Why would you want to associate yourself with people like that?’
‘How dare you? That stuffs not true, its just rumours. And even if they are true, they’re my friends and I’m running short on those at the moment’.
‘Don’t you dare blame me for that! You’re the one who won’t talk to me anymore. The one who avoids me all the time, the one who won’t take my phone calls or answer any of my emails or texts. You’re the one who has pushed me away, so don’t blame me if you suddenly find yourself left alone’.
‘God you’re self-obsessed, I wasn’t even thinking about you, I was thinking about … her’.
‘What, and you think she’d want you hanging around with a bunch of crackheads and coming to school hungover?’
‘You just don’t understand, no one does’.
‘Will you cut the self-pity crap? You think you’re the only one that’s hurting? You think that you’re the only one that misses her? She was my friend too, or has everyone just forgotten that? Of course I’m upset about what happened; of course I miss her. But most of all I just – I miss you. Cause when April died, for some reason I didn’t just lose her, I lost you as well. Did you honestly never think that I might need a friend to get through this? Did you really think I wouldn’t care if you just stopped talking to me? That I wouldn’t miss you? That I’d just accept it and wait for you to suddenly decide that I’m good enough to talk to? Cause if you really thought that I would just be okay with not seeing you, you were wrong. I wasn’t, I’m still not, but to be honest with you, I would much rather be alone than with someone who is only there half the time and even then, isn’t really there at all.’
‘I…I’m sorry…I didn’t think’.
‘No I guess you didn’t’.
Matt slowly started to walk away. When Jo saw his retreating back, something inside of her snapped and in a rare moment of madness she suddenly shouted. ‘Stop, Matt, Wait, please’. Matt flinched when he heard her words, but kept on walking, knowing that if he stopped, or worse still turned and looked at her, he would be unable to walk away.
This time Jo didn’t try and follow him; instead she simply sank to the floor, as if she had been emptied of all her strength all of a sudden. She quietly started to cry as she watched the last part of her old life walk away from her. Resting her head in her arms, she whispered the words she knew she’d never dare to tell him: ‘I…I missed you too’.
Dear April,
Seems that every time I think I have everything sorted out in my life, something comes along to show me just how messed up everything actually is. Before today, I had always seen myself as one of the good guys, as the hero of this movie. But now I’m starting to realise that I might be the bad guy after all. How else could Matt talk to me like he did? How could he look at me with such disgust and …disappointment, if I was one of the good guys?
The worst thing is I can’t even pretend that what he said wasn’t true. I wish I could. I wish I could say that I thought about him all the time. That in the months since what happened to you I have spent at least a minute, just one, thinking about anyone but myself. But I didn’t. Not once have I even considered the idea that he might be hurting too. How selfish does that make me?
I pushed him away and I don’t even know why. But I do know I never once imagined that he might walk away from me. He’s been there for me all this time, I never thought that one day I might reach out for him and find that he’s not there, waiting for me. How horrible is that? I took him for granted and I treated him horribly and I hated him for continually trying to see me and not leaving me alone. But now that he has, I can’t stand it. And yet I know that if we hadn’t spoken today, I would have carried on ignoring him and not given him a second thought, I would have just continued to hurt him.
So guess what April? Turns out I’m the bad guy after all.
Always yours,
Johanna
