Junk - Melvin Burgess [38]
Chapter Ten
Gemma
It was so typical of Vonny to give me the news just before the party. I was really looking forward to it. I got out my party stuff and dyed my hair, I was really looking the part. And in comes the posse. It was horrible. She’d got Richard on to her side, that was bad enough. But even Tar started agreeing with her.
‘I don’t want you to go, you know I don’t want you to go,’ he kept saying.
‘Then what are you on about?’ I hissed.
And he just ducked his head and muttered, ‘But they’re right…’
I went right off Tar after that. I mean, what was the point of all that I love you stuff, if he just teamed up with them and sent me back home?
Thanks, Tar.
And I’d done everything for him, I’d done it all for him. I’d never have gone away if it wasn’t for him. I might have thought about it but I wouldn’t have done it. Now I had and there he was telling me I belonged back at home. Great.
I gave him a bit of the old cold shoulder after that. You’ve got to have a bit of stand-by-me. I was getting fed up with him anyway. Now he was trying to be Mr Responsible, he could find someone else to hold on to at night.
That was Friday. On Saturday we got ready for the party. I was really determined to have a good time; it might be my last day of freedom. We spent all day making food and clearing out the rooms and getting the sounds wired up. Jerry locked himself in upstairs with Richard’s sound system, making a party tape. Vonny and Tar and me were making salads and stuff, and Richard was running about baking bread – olive-bread, olive oil bread, cheese bread, all different sorts. I stuffed myself. But I got fed up when he left to do an hour or so in the bicycle shop so I went upstairs to help Jerry while Tar and Vonny stayed downstairs and played House.
I got too stoned with Jerry, I suppose. I was all excited about this party but when it came… I dunno, I just wasn’t in the mood. Basically Auntie Von had put the spokes in as far as I was concerned. I just couldn’t help thinking how they all thought I was a kid and no one liked me.
The other three went to the pub, but me and Tar of course had no money so we just hung around at home glaring at each other. Or rather, I glared at him while he slunk about trying to be nice. But not nice enough to back me up about staying on at the squat.
We sampled the wine they’d bought in, ate some of the food. Before he went out Richard gave us some cookies he’d made – hash cookies. I was waiting for the lights to start twinkling or something, but nothing happened so I had some more but still nothing happened. I thought he hadn’t put enough in. I was still waiting when they came back.
Richard said he had some people our age coming round but as far as I could see it was just the squat crowd and a few friends of theirs. They were all standing round in groups, talking about, I dunno, how to run your car on rice salad or something. I mean, you spend all those years being Little Sammy or whatever, you leave school, get out there on your own and what do you do? You turn into Big Sammy…
If that lot grew their hair a bit and put on suits it could have been a party at my parents’ place. Here it was animal rights and anarchism; back home it would have been the Church jumble-sale and the local Conservative Club, but that was about the only difference. They wore the clothes and they had the haircuts but… well, put it like this, their parents really did a good job on them, that’s all.
Things began to liven up as more people came. I had a few smokes. Tar kept coming and going. At one point he turned up – I was by the salad bowl stuffing myself – and he turned up all excited and said that they’d hatched this plan to go and open another squat.
I said, ‘What for? We’ve got one.’
‘No, you don’t understand, it’s just to free up as many properties as we can find…’
It turned out one of Richard’s friends had spotted this place and it was a big old house, just perfect. Of course Richard got really excited about it, like