Chapter 7

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Saturday 1st August 1998

It’s a good thing we spent a lot of time together on Saturdays. Otherwise this would’ve been a total bust. The five of us went for a walk through the park around midday, and the whole thing turned into a jungle. We spent half the day trying to fight our way back out. In the end, we stumbled upon a single huge tree, and once we cut that down, the others receded and the park became normal again. We all just about collapsed from exhaustion when we got back to Dakota’s.

In fact, I hadn’t moved from the sofa in a good half an hour.

Dakota had gone off to rest on her bed, while the others had gone out to the garden to lounge around out there. It was much quieter than I was used to here.

So, of course, that didn’t last long.

Bao came with a spring in his step. Too sprightly for someone who’d been devotedly hacking his way through a jungle an hour ago.

“Get your dancing shoes on! We’re going to a party!”

“Ugh,” I grunted instinctively at that expression. This really isn’t my thing…

“Melody invited us! She and Harmony have their house free for the weekend,” he continued on obliviously. “Surprised she decided to invite us, really – I mean, she sent Zahid a text and he asked if we could come, so I guess it’s more of a ‘sure, whatever’ thing… Apparently they throw a mean party, though. She said I got really drunk last time they threw on. Funny thing is, I don’t even remember going to a party…”

“That checks out,” I uttered, trying to focus in on the one workable bit of that whole speech. As… flattering as the offer was, I honestly wasn’t interested. Even setting aside the dancing proposal, hanging around with a load of people I’m not really close to and trying to make light conversation was daunting more than anything. It took this whole Lokonessence thing just to birth a friendship with Bao, Kendal and Zahid… Yeah, now I’m just being a hypocrite.

“You don’t seem excited!”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?” Bao asked, genuinely confused. Don’t give me that look…

“Because…”

I exhaled softly, mulling over my words carefully. Y’know, weasel my way out of this like some kind of… weasel…

“It’s just not my scene. I don’t really want to go.”

“Come oooon,” he grinned mischievously, leaning over me. “I wanna see your moves!”

“I don’t have moves,” I grumbled, dragging myself off of the sofa and away from his leering, hoping beyond hope he’d drop it and just accept that I wasn’t interested.

“Sure you do! Everyone does!”

Evidently, I’m no one.

“Just leave it.”

“You’re being a party-pooper, man…” Bao whined, shoulders drooping in disappointment.

“The party’s not even started yet,” I pointed out. “And if I’m not there, I can’t… poop it, can I?”

“Really, man. What’s wrong?”

Bao approached me, put a hand on my shoulder while looking at me with concerned eyes.

“You’ll feel better when you’re dancing, trust me.”

“For fuck’s sake!” I snapped, swiping his hand away. “Listen to me, Bao: I don’t like dancing! Okay? Is that a crime?”

I didn’t mean to shout at him – not really – but I’d been struggling to contain my annoyance from the off, and I had finally lost the battle. In the moment, my animosity towards him was real and scarcely under control.

Worse, Bao really seemed baffled by what I’d said.

“Why…?”

“I just don’t! Why do I have to explain it?” I growled. I noticed only then that my heart was beating faster, as it does whenever I get into an argument. If this really counted as one…

“Okay, okay, gees…” my friend relented with his hands raised in a ‘cool it’ gesture, before adding, “I thought you were fun…”

“Oh, fuck off!”

Yep. Seal well and truly broken now.

“What, all the shit we’ve done in the past month doesn’t matter cos I don’t want to flail around to music?”

It’s the same logic as “people who don’t drink alcohol are boring”. Say the people who consider booze necessary to be fun.

“Sorry I don’t meet your expectations of a normal person!”

“What’s all the yelling for?”

Either we – well, I – had disturbed her, or she’d simply happened to head downstairs at that moment… Dakota had entered the room, concern dashed with curiosity on her face.

“Alex doesn’t like dancing,” Bao told her flatly. Either he was completely incapable of reading my tone, or – and more likely, considering – he didn’t find it an issue the way I did.

Dakota’s eyes lit up.

“Awh, I love dancing!”

This sounds absolutely idiotic, but my blood ran cold at that. The image of her writhing about under disco lights flashed into my mind and stung. It felt like betrayal, in some stupid way.

“See, everyone likes it!” Bao summarised.

Again, I’m no one.

“Just… go to your fucking party,” I hissed, turning tail to get away from them and this discussion and everything but my own ridiculous thoughts. I slammed the living room door behind me as I went.

Needing sanctuary, I made like electricity and took the shortest route – not home, not anywhere else, but straight upstairs and to the loft. There – sealed away. Good. Good riddance. Or something. Ugh.

I opted to pace around, yelling in my head. Mostly repeating the same points I’d already made. Generally being… not normal, in a number of ways.

When that grew tiring and the anger had faded off into misery, I sat down at the piano. Don’t worry, dear reader – the misery was directed inwards. I know how stupid this whole ordeal is, and that’s what I felt… stupid. Unreasonable. Any normal person wouldn’t have a problem. They would at least put up with going to the party, and that’s assuming it didn’t sound like a dream way to spend a Saturday night.

My fingers began traipsing up and down the piano, stringing a random tune together, melancholic and slow. It was transient – I’d forget it soon enough. It lived only in this moment. Sometimes I would find the chance to note down a tune I’d created, but mostly they were like this. The one from when I first played on this piano was the same… long gone, now.

God damn it. The only thing I’m good at is piano music that nobody gives a shit about and only lasts for as long as I play it. Even my new friends would sooner be squirming around to Livin’ Joy or something than stand around listening to my crap. And I wouldn’t blame them.

My temper momentarily spiked at that, and I hit multiple keys hard at once. Reeling, I leant back, exhaled hard. What a ridiculous human being I am.

“Hey…”

Dakota’s head was peaking above the floor where the staircase descended. She could’ve been doing a mole impression.

“Oh, hey… I figured you’d be going with the others.”

Seriously. Who in their right mind would want to hang around here with me? The thought of all of them opting to stay here because of me struck me, and I mentally winced at the idea of having that much influence.

“No. I think you and I had a bit of a misunderstanding…” Dakota began, steadily scaling the stairs. “I liked what you were playing. Until the…”

She imitated the heavy hitting of keys, like some kind of dramatic Looney Toons recreation on air piano.

“End bit.”

Oh god. Of course she heard that…

“Yeah, I was…”

What could I even say? … what could I say that didn’t make me sound pathetic…?

“… what d’you mean, misunderstanding?”

“Bao told me what the argument was about… like, properly…” she told me as she made her way over to me. “I agree with you.”

… wait. That didn’t make sense. She’d said it: “I love dancing!” And I…

“All that…” she continued, before sashaying aimlessly side to side a little. Honestly, without music and about thirty other people with her, it was cute. “‘Dance’ stuff… I don’t really care about that. You play piano.”

And then she span, gracefully, on one foot, coming to a halt again after a single revolution. That bright smile of hers spread across her face.

“I dance.”

A mix of relief, shame and curiosity took hold at that.

“So you mean… proper dancing?” I asked. Yeah, shoot me.

“Yes! Thank you! Proper dancing!” she grinned. (See! Not just me!) “It’s just me, y’know? I can’t not… choreograph. I hear music and it’s like an instinctive thing…”

“Huh. That’s pretty cool.”

She’s like me. An artist. Okay, that sounds super-pretentious… but it’s like she’d said: her dancing was like my piano-playing.

“You flatterer,” Dakota teased; she walked off to the other end of the loft, where a CD player was stationed along with a small stack of CD cases. She switched on the former and took the top case off of the latter, opening it up and taking out the disc from within. Swiftly, the disc went into the player – she pressed pause before the first song could begin.

“Not done this one for anyone else before. Tell me what you think,” my friend told me, while slipping off her socks and throwing them to the corner of the room.

“Taken your socks off? I approve,” I joked. She giggled, almost deviously. Uh…

“Yeah, yeah… now watch.”

Turning back to the CD player, she skipped ahead a couple of tracks and pressed play. She told me later on that the song was Heaven Knows by The Corrs.

I can’t do any justice to her performance. I could never find the words to capture it. She was captivating. Focused. Graceful. I felt like I could see her heart pouring out through her movements, her expression… sure, it was all abstract on its own, but it combined effortlessly with the music and lyrics to paint a story of love and loss. She was a master of her craft. It all seemed effortless, seamless.

And it finally dawned on me just how in love with her I really am.

The song faded across into another track – Dakota all but leapt out of her final stance and hit the stop button. She turned to me with humble expectation.

“Soooo… what did you think?”

Even though I heard her fine, there was still a delay in my response as I simply absorbed the sight before me. Thankfully, I zoned back in quickly enough.

“That was incredible…”

“Awh, come on… really?” she beamed, blushing a little.

“Yeah! I’ve never seen anything like that!” I enthused.

“That’s not really a mark of quality…”

She smirked at me. I jolted at that, and in a panic, I waved my hands around.

“No, err, I mean, it was really good and it kinda blew me away, but sure I don’t have much to judge on, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t really special!”

Yeah, that probably covered it…

She giggled again and leant forward a little.

“Thank you. It really means a lot.”

I smiled reflexively in response.

“You’re welcome.”

And then – lightbulb moment!

“Hey, why don’t you try coming up with something while I play piano?”

“Sure, sounds fun!” she declared. “Hit it, maestro!”

“You’ve got it!”

I played, and she danced, for a good half an hour. Maybe it wasn’t what everyone else in the world wound want to do on a Saturday evening, but she and I were happy. And there was something magical in watching her take my music and interpret it. I said she was an artist “like me”, but she was the real talent here.

Of course, she was using her entire body while I was merely using my hands, so she wore herself out faster. She called time on our creative session with a huge stretch.

“Come on, downstairs,” she instructed me, waving me after her with her fingers as she made her way to the stairs. “Let’s rustle up some dinner.”

I followed after her eagerly – some might call it puppyish – and together we headed down to the kitchen. We cooked some pasta and settled down on the sofa to eat it. Just her and me, sat there, eating, and it felt intimate and special. And kind of embarrassing now that I’d realised how strongly I felt for her…

In some weird parallel world, I could be living like this every day. The two of us as an item, in a version of events where I’m worth having a relationship with.

As we finished, I took our trays back to the kitchen, rinsed the plates off and put them in the dishwasher (thank you, Cassie and Neil, for investing in a dishwasher). My brief spell alone let my mind drift back to what had kicked this all off… yeah, in the rush of learning more about Dakota and watching her dance, I’d forgotten how much of an idiot I am.

“I’m sorry about before…” I announced gloomily as I returned to the living room and to my side of the sofa. Dakota’s expression was… hard to read. Bothered, perhaps?

“As far as I can see, you and Bao were both at fault,” she reasoned. “Apologise to him, not to me.”

“I shouldn’t have-”

“Sure, maybe you shouldn’t have, but you did. And he didn’t realise how annoyed you were getting.”

“Still…” was all I could manage in response to that. Perhaps she was right – and it wasn’t like I didn’t plan on apologising to Bao too – but it still all fell on my shoulders. My issues, my over-reaction, my temper.

“Sounds like I win,” she teased, smirking at me. I really don’t know what spell she’d cast on me, but like clockwork, I smiled back.

“And hey, maybe you can apologise later? The others decided to come back here and stay the night.”

“… is that an invitation to stay over, or am I meant to hang around to see them?” I checked with her.

“An invitation! Yeah, sorry; an invitation,” she repeated herself, and then began playing with her hair. “It’d be weird if you were the only one not here, anyway.”

“Sure, I’d love to stay!” I answered. “Guess I’ll phone home and tell them, then…”

No need for me to go into detail on the phone call. The only highlight – and that makes it sound like a positive – was Lucy in the background shouting out “be gentle with her!” I hadn’t mentioned the gender of the friend who I was staying with. My attempts to explain myself to Dad were garbled and I wound up hanging up abruptly.

Still, no problem with me staying over.

“Sorry. Lucy… made libellous claims…” I explained with warm cheeks to a cackling Dakota as she writhed on the sofa. Well, at least she was entertained…

The next few hours were spent chatting about more or less everything under the sun. Pets we’d had, childhood stories, uncomfortable moments, memorable meals, birthdays… we were in fits of laughter as Dakota recounted a visit to Fota Wildlife Park in her youth and the antics that unfolded. I will never look at gazelles the same way again.

And all the while… I took her all in. I relished every moment. I basked in the light of that perfect smile. I noticed a hundred new things about her, watched the way she toyed with her hair, burnt the sound of her belly-laugh into my brain, took glances at her feet as she wiggled her cute toes- wait, forget that last one! Rewind!

Man. This was what love felt like.

As much as I didn’t want this to end, our shadow-of-a-tryst was disrupted shortly after midnight by the rowdy return of Bao, Kendal and Zahid. By this point, we were tucking into some Neapolitan ice cream (Dakota’s midnight treat of choice) – we wolfed the rest down so we could hide the evidence, and were struck by brain freeze.

Five teenagers, three tipsy and two with brain freeze. It happened, folks.

“Saturday night! Saturday night!” Bao sang in an admirable tribute to Whigfield. Evidently, he was the most inebriated of the three – Kendal was simply giggling and slurring her words, and Zahid had taken to leaning against the wall with an attempt at looking cool and casual. Bao, though… was a mess.

“Duuuude,” he addressed me, “you missed ooouuuut. There were some girls from other schools there. Other girl schools!”

“Drat!” I declared with a mock-frustrated swing of the arm, while my brain thawed. “And err… I’m sorry for earlier, man…”

“Naaah, isss fiiine!” he assured me, leaning to one side so he could reach around and pat my back. “Iss weird but we’re all weird in curtain ways!” (That was most likely meant to be “certain”.) I took the sentiment as intended and otherwise held my tongue.

“I kept an eye on them both,” Zahid informed us loudly. “Didn’t drink too much just in case I…”

He carried on, but the volume of his voice rapidly dropped to a mumble.

“What about you, Kendal? Good time?” Dakota asked – the shorter girl nodded and her hair bounced around.

“Yeayh! Lots of fun! Plus I made out with Harmony!”

… huh.

“You did…?” I asked, taken aback by that little bombshell.

“Yeah, but I already told you I’m into girls! Or did I?” Kendal pondered, pouting and rubbing her head to try and spur her mind back into action.

“Melody’s gonna kick you butt next time,” Bao warned her before collapsing onto the armchair.

“I’d kiss her too but they’re twins so Iunno, maybe I did kiss her…”

With that, she turned to Zahid.

“Did I kiss her?”

“Who?”

“Melodyyyy!”

“Why would you kiss her?” Zahid asked with a squint.

“Cos she’s cute, duh.”

Dakota lightly tugged on my arm to gain my attention.

“Guess we have to herd them to bed sooner or later,” she whispered in my ear. I tingled at the feeling of it, and her lyrical tone shook my brain twice as hard as the ice cream had.

“Y-Yeah…” I replied while trying to regain myself.

We let the trio continue on for a little while longer (during which Kendal munched her way through half a pack of Digestives), and it took us until 1:30am to get them all settled down. Zahid took the sofa, while Bao settled down in one of the smaller bedrooms. He’d opted for Dakota’s cousin Pete’s room because “dat Jurassic Parkster”. Dakota had decided that Kendal would join her in the double-bed of the master bedroom, which left me with the room of the other cousin, Anna.

I know she hadn’t used the room for months, but it still felt weird to sleep in the bed of a young girl I’d never met.

Having brushed my teeth with a finger and stripped down to my underwear, I crawled under the sheets. The moment I relaxed, the day’s toll struck me. The jungle quest from the afternoon, coupled with how long the day had been, had exhausted me more than I realised.

“Knock knock,” Dakota whispered through the door.

“… who’s there?” I asked regardless.

The door opened gently, unveiling my Irish crush in her pyjamas. It was hard to tell in the light, but they seemed to be baby blue; a scattered paw-print pattern covered them; the top gave a tiny, tantalising glimpse of her midriff, while the bottoms cut off just past the knees.

“It’s the banshee!”

“… from the X-Men?”

She drifted over to the end of the bed, sitting herself down and then stretching her leg out, pushing the door up with her foot.

“Kendal’s being restless. And I wanna talk some more.”

My heart skipped a beat at that. She… wanted to spend even more time with me?

“Are you sure…? I mean, I’d love to, but you should get some rest…”

“Alex…” she spoke lowly. “You’re turning down a girl in her PJs. Sending her away. Just what kind of man are you?”

That teasing smirk crossed her face once again, highlighted from one side by the moonlight like something out of Hollywood’s greatest works.

“Err- n-no, I mean, it’s-”

“Honestly… I can go if you really don’t want me here,” she purred, standing up again.

“Just stay already!” I urged her; she tittered to herself and sat back down.

“Maybe it was the ice cream. I struggle to sleep after midnight ice cream.”

She shimmied a little further up the bed, a little closer to me.

“So… what should we talk about?”

I don’t know how long we talked for. My mind’s a little hazy on what we even covered. All I know is, somehow, at some point, Dakota Radley and I fell asleep together.