Lou Out of Luck Read online

  A lithe man with a very complicated haircut greeted us at the door – “Hi, friends!” he cried. “You’re new,” he twinkled and pointed at me. “I’m Uliol.”

  I was trying to work out if he had a speech impediment but Dermot said, “Hi, Uliol!” So I guess not.

  Everyone seems to know each other, and I stop feeling sorry for Dermot as the rest of this class clearly love him. It’s like he’s got a double life! They admire his clothes and ask after his mum. Dermot has mates in their fifties, with pierced lips, in dashikis. I feel so boring I might as well have turned up carrying a clipboard.

  “OK!” Uliol bounces on his tiptoes and the circle gathers more closely. “We have a new member. Everyone, this is Lou. Lou, this is EVERYONE!”

  I give them all a shy wave and get smiles and nods in return. “Everyone” is mainly adults and I’m glad I’m wearing Lav’s cardigan. I probably look twenty-one.

  “Do you know much about us?” Uliol asks and I shake my head.

  “Quick, quick, super-quick,” he says, still bouncing. Just bouncing while he talks, why not. “I set up Performance Class five years ago for troubled teens and the troubled teens told me to get stuffed. But it was actually a blessing, as the universe sent a ragtag collection of adults my way: sensitive souls, artists and oddballs, and now we’re a happy family! And we’ve still got one or two teens,” he says, pointing at Dermot, who bows.

  “Now, let’s go round, quick, quick, super-quick, and everyone say something they’re proud of this week. Go!”

  He points at me and I freeze. My mouth goes dry and I say, “Bwah. Ah. Uh. Sha.”

  “OK!” Uliol says, briskly. “That wasn’t fair. We’ll start here,” and he points at a lady on the opposite side of the circle. I feel like I’ve let him down.

  “Being honest with my mum!” she cries out.

  “Yes!” everyone shouts at her, including me … a bit late.

  “Being more positive!” the man next to her calls out. Well, that’s lowered the bar. I must’ve done something vaguely good this week.

  “Yes!” I yell, racking my brains.

  The attention is moving round the circle towards me. Dermot says, “Making friends!” and I’m sure this refers to Hannah and me. Which is sweet, but the naked honesty (and, let’s be frank, uncoolness) of it makes me so glad no one from school is here.

  Finally, my turn. My tongue feels thick again but I manage to stammer, “Ccoming here!”

  “Yes!” everyone shouts, pointing at me, and it’s still so uncool but I feel good. I do a little double thumbs-up at them and think if Cammie ever saw this, I’d have to move schools.

  I realize this is the sort of place where someone can put their hand up and say, super chill, “I’ve just written a poem about food and sexuality, if you wanna hear it, guys?”, and rather than pinning him down and giving him a violent wedgie that he’ll taste for a week, everyone stops what they’re doing and listens to it.

  It’s wonderful and also terrible. This class gives people NONE of the defences they need in the real world. At school, caring about things is loser-ish, sincerity is pathetic and being different is more dangerous than weeing on an electric fence. Finally, I understand why Dermot is so terminally Dermotish.

  “How long have you been coming here?” I ask him.

  “YEARS, why?”

  “Uh-huh. No reason,” I nod.

  Uliol stands in the middle of the circle and divides us into groups of five. I’m eyeing up my group: there’s an unimpressed-looking black woman called Patrice, a gentle man called Eli with wispy blond hair and an extremely confident girl with long plaits who is called Star. (Well, she says she’s called Star. I’d like to see her passport; I bet she’s really a Pauline.)

  This is like the time we tried Zumba, and Mum and I were forced to admit that we had no rhythm. Dad, on the other hand… The teacher moved him to the front of the class so everyone could learn from his “uninhibited grace” and “fluid hipwork” and he was SO smug on the drive home.

  Anyway, while I’m sneaking a look at my group and hoping they can tolerate a weak link for one morning, the door clangs and Uliol sings, without looking around, “Better late than never!”

  I glance across the room, towards the door, and see Pete.

  Yes, that Pete. Surly, uncommunicative Pete. The boy least likely to ever sit in a circle and listen to someone’s poem about food and sexuality. He must be lost, looking for the boxing club. Although … next to me, Star gives him a salute and Patrice blows him a kiss. Huh.

  I give Pete a little wave and he stares back at me, clearly horrified. Uliol puts him into another group and I don’t get the chance to talk to him. I turn back to my group, where Star is taking charge.

  “Guys,” she says, in dreamy tones, “I’d like to work on my spontaneity.”

  “OK!” Dermot agrees, but I have questions. How can you work on your spontaneity? Surely that’s the sort of thing that just happens?

  Eli jumps straight into it, bouncing on his toes just like Uliol. I start bouncing too but feel like a tit and quickly stop.

  “Name a place,” Eli says, pointing at me. I have to stop myself from retorting, “No! YOU name a place, Bossy!”

  “Essex,” I say and the mood in the group seems to sag. What have I said? What’ve I done wrong?

  “That’s good,” Patrice says. (Her face says, It’s not. It’s rubbish.) “But how about somewhere smaller?”

  “A matchbox,” I suggest, desperately trying to give them the answer they want.

  “Something we could be inside?” Star’s dreamy voice is getting a little terse. I get it, I’m annoying. SORRY.

  “A sleeping bag!” I brainstorm, feeling like we’re finally on the right lines. I even bounce again, I feel so confident.

  “NO!”

  Uliol looks over at us and Patrice apologizes for shouting. “I’m sorry. That’s on me,” she says. “But no, we need a place where three or four people –” she gestures round at us – “can stand and have a conversation, a scene, a conflict. Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say in a small voice. It’s no fun being thrown into something you don’t understand. I could be in bed right now. “How about a cupboard?”

  Star massages the bridge of her nose and sighs.

  I wish I was in bed right now.

  “What’s in the cupboard?” she asks.

  “Nothing?” I reply.

  “Can you see why that doesn’t give us much to work with, dramatically?” Eli says in serious tones. Dermot hasn’t said anything. I have a feeling he’s holding in giggles.

  “There’s a … mop in there,” I say, willing my brain to be creative. “It’s wet.”

  “Great. A mop. We can work with a wet mop, right, guys?” says Dermot, trying to get the mood up.

  So we establish that two spies are hiding in a cupboard. With a mop. Which is wet. Star and Patrice pretend to be the spies, and they’re so funny; they add all these extra little touches, like finding things on the shelves, miming it all.

  Then Dermot steps forward, declaring, “Aha! It is me, Agent Milfoux, cunningly disguised as a wet mop!”

  I’m laughing while the other two “spies” reel in shock and accuse him of lying. Eli nods at me and I realize I have to join in. I panic and yelp, “I’m a mop too!”

  Star sighs and stops twirling her fake moustache. “I’ve had a long week,” she says to no one in particular.

  “Why don’t we all just agree where it’s set, and what’s going to happen and write it down?” I finally say what I’ve been thinking all along.

  “But improv is thinking in the moment, being responsive, saying yes, and… to everything your team members say,” Eli explains. “Whereas writing is control.”

  “I like control,” I say without thinking. And my team members nod. Yeah, you can tell.

  “Let’s try another one,” Dermot says, keeping the peace. “It’s set in zero gravity…”

  So, an hour later, we’re
taking a break and I’m standing with Dermot, watching people stretching and chatting. Unlike school, I am GLUED to his side. He’d better not go to the toilet: everyone here intimidates the heck out of me.

  Speaking of which… I tried to nip over to Pete and say hi, but each time he’d move away and start talking to someone else. After a few attempts, I gave up.

  “Do you know him?” I say to Dermot. “He used to go to our school.”

  “Yeah,” Dermot says. “He started coming here just before Christmas.”

  Just before Christmas. So, just after Lou Brown and the Aquarium Boys came to a wet and dangerous end. And around the time his two oldest friends started going out with The Stupid Brown Sisters™️.

  “Thanks for coming,” says Dermot. “I thought you were going to drop out.”

  “If you’d told me what it was, I might’ve,” I grouch.

  “Yeah. That’s why I didn’t.”

  “Hmmm.” I glower at him.

  “By the way … I have a present for you,” he says, and I shut up whingeing immediately, because I am only human and I heart presents.

  I position my little taxidermy mouse on the wall in our front garden, against a backdrop of primroses. I turn him gently so you can see his loafers and briefcase, and I take a photo. He is beautiful and I shall call him Mr Business.

  I send the photo to Gabe and he replies immediately.

  WHAT. IS. THAT?

  Oh, this? Just an exquisite piece of taxidermy that Dermot gave me. NBD.

  I’m so jealous. My otter is rotting.

  Gutted, pal.

  Swap?

  Nerp.

  So gutted. Don’t bother coming tomorrow. Just stay in, hang out with your mouse.

  I put Mr Business on the kitchen table so Mum can enjoy him. She chokes on her soup.

  “Off!” she shouts. “That’s so unhygienic!”

  “No, it’s not. He’s dead.”

  “Dead things are unhygienic, Lou.”

  “Then why did you make me kiss Grandpa when he died?” I ask.

  Silence. I feel I’ve made a good point.

  “I don’t like cruelty to animals,” Mum says, changing the subject.

  “Animals aren’t killed for taxidermy,” I tell her, feeling embarrassed for her ignorance. “They’re stuffed when they die!”

  “Die of what?” she asks.

  I blunder into her trap. “Well, like mouse illnesses. Or … old age?”

  “Does this mouse look old?” Mum demands, holding it up with a napkin.

  “No. But. Well. It was probably ill.”

  “So you think taxidermists sit patiently in animal hospitals waiting for mice to pass away. Then they ask the mouse family gathered around the hospital bed if they’d like their uncle stuffed and dressed as a dainty stockbroker?”

  She has ruined my present. I hadn’t thought about it that way at all.

  “Fine.” I put Mr Business by my feet and go investigate the saucepan of soup on the hob.

  “No way!” Mum says, pulling me back by my jeans pocket. “You wash your hands first.”

  I do but I grumble so she doesn’t think she’s won. “Where’s Lav?”

  “In her room.”

  “And Dad?” I ask and she holds her hands up.

  “I don’t know actually. He’s not answering his phone, or texting back.”

  “Is he out with Uncle Vinnie?”

  “I don’t know. I think he might be doing that job Uncle Vinnie got him, or waiting to do it.”

  “Whatever that job might be…” I say slowly.

  “Lou, please. I have more than enough to worry about right now.”

  Please, she should peek in my Worry Diary. I’ve got enough to open a shop.

  We spend the afternoon together watching The BFG. I don’t think Mum’s paying attention. She sighs. “I don’t know why Sophie’s parents let her out so late.”

  “Mum. He nicked her from an orphanage.”

  She keeps her phone next to her in case Dad calls, but nothing.

  As the film is reaching the end, I hear a thudding noise in the back garden, like someone’s kicking our sticky back gate open. Mum hears it too and we both turn our heads like meerkats.

  Burglars? I mouth at her and she looks baffled and shrugs.

  “In Dad’s shed?”

  We get up silently and creep into the kitchen. All the lights are off, so we can see the back garden clearly by the light of a nearby street lamp. There’s someone in Dad’s shed, and the light is off, as if they’re trying not to attract attention.

  I pull a long, sharp knife out of the knife block.

  Mum looks at me.

  I put the knife back.

  Mum wrenches open the back door and says, in a steadier voice than I could have managed, “Hello?”

  “Excuse me!” I chirp from behind her, trying to sound adult and threatening. I fail.

  “Who’s out there?”

  “Me!” Dad pops his head out of the shed, and we both shriek with surprise. “Who else would it be?”

  “A burglar?”

  “How much do you think they’d get for my radio, two spades and a small stash of beer?”

  “A small stash of what?”

  “Nothing.”

  When Dad comes in, he smells as if he’s been out in the cold for hours. Mum and I keep asking him how his day was, but his answers are all very vague and deliberately boring. His day was fine, the work was fine, he did fine, he might go back again. At least he’s clear about how much he earned – a hundred pounds, which he stuffs in the teapot with pride.

  I want to know what he was up to, but at the same time I can see that Mum’s annoyed at him for not answering her texts and is looking to start an argument. As I much prefer my parents on friendly terms, I change the subject. I tell them I’m meeting Gabe and his new Debating Club friends tomorrow but they’re very serious and clever and I’m worried I’m going to look like a dimwit. So what can I do?

  “They’ll love you, no matter what,” says Mum, smiling.

  “Yes!” Dad agrees. “And you’re not stupid; you’re super bright and FUN.”

  I blink at the pair of them. I wasn’t expecting much, tbh, but that useless response did a limbo boogie under my low bar of expectations.

  They smile back at me. You’re welcome! We just did some parentings! I’m surprised they don’t high-five each other.

  No wonder I’m not clever. This is what I come from. I bet Gabe’s family are discussing the Middle East RIGHT NOW. “Just to play devil’s advocate, Gabriel, what about the Treaty of Blahbaddy-Blah-Blah…”

  I go upstairs to try and get more practical help off Lav. She’s in bed, reading. Her hair is greasy, she’s not wearing any make-up AND she doesn’t even yell at me when I accidentally knock a pile of her clothes off her chair. All very un-Lav.

  “What are you reading?” I plonk myself next to her on the bed. “Sorry, I just knocked a mascara behind your bedside table.”

  She ignores it and shows me a book on feminism. “Megan says that profiting from your looks is anti-feminist and playing into the patriarchy. But I think she’s wrong, so I’m reading up on it so I can tell her to eff off.”

  “Good thinking,” I say, wondering how soon I can change the subject onto my problems without sounding selfish.

  “Um? I’m meeting Gabe’s Debating Club friends tomorrow?”

  “Oh, yeah, you said. They sound dry.”

  “Can I borrow some clothes?”

  “Do you promise not to spill anything down them?”

  “I promise to try not to?”

  In bed that night, I feel really nervous, though I know I shouldn’t. I look over at my chair, where Lavender has laid out my outfit for tomorrow. Nothing fancy: skinny jeans, T-shirt, cardigan and trainers… BUT the secret ingredient is Lavender’s actual genuine vintage leather jacket. The most expensive thing she owns apart from orthodontist-straightened teeth.

  I offered her Mr Business as a t
hank you but she said she didn’t want a dead mouse in her bedroom – no matter how formally dressed.

  I meant to borrow not to keep, so I’m secretly very glad that was her answer. Lucky escape there.

  Narrow squeak, I think and smile to myself in the darkness. That’s the spirit – upbeat. Nothing to be nervous about. Look at my lovely witty personality. I am super fun.

  Look forward to seeing you tomorrow! I text Gabe. No emojis, all words. Mature texting.

  I lie in the darkness waiting for him to reply. My palm begins to sweat. I put my phone down and wipe my hand dry. He’s probably busy. Or asleep.

  When did having a boyfriend get difficult? I didn’t sign up for this. The first two months were a breeze; it was less stress than having a goldfish. I pick my phone up again and google Blazakhstan. Sigh. It’s not a place.

  I can see Lav’s reading light is still on. On an impulse, I get out of bed and rummage around on my desk till I find a piece of paper. I scribble a quick note to her: If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know? I stare at it, wondering what I could do. Reach something high up? Tell her a funny secret about Pete? Turn another team of dancers into synchronized swimmers who destroy a TV studio and become briefly famous?

  I sneak out into the hallway, avoiding the creaky floorboards I know are lurking underneath the carpet. I push the folded note under her door. I turn to go to bed when I hear a soft scooting noise and see my note by my feet with something written on the back.

  Thanks x

  I go back to bed and scroll around on my phone until I find what I’m looking for. A podcast called “The Middle East for Dimwits”. That’s me! Maybe I can get up to speed by tomorrow. Worth a try.

  I wake up the next morning – it feels like seconds later – my headphones tangled around my neck again. I don’t feel much more informed about world politics, but … I run my fingers quickly across my face. No spots, anyway.

  After twenty minutes in the bathroom, I can no longer ignore Dad’s banging on the door. “FINE, I am DONE!” I tell him.

  “Water doesn’t grow on trees, Lou,” he says.

  “No, it falls off them after rain, so…”

  “So?”

  “I’m just saying it’s not a great saying … moody,” I add under my breath as I head to my bedroom.