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“They’re totally doing an impression of Dad.” Emma pointed out the gesticulating one to their mum, whose shoulders shook with laughter again.
Lucie turned back to the other window. The guy called Chris walked past Lucie’s dad’s car, a rucksack on his back and a tennis racket in hand. Lucie’s eyes locked on his. They were bright green and sparkled like jewels. His hair was wavy and short. Was it soft too? As he passed her window, he looked at her, and the sides of his mouth turned up in a smile. Dimples appeared in his cheeks. Lucie smiled shyly back as a heat prickled her skin.
He continued walking past the car, and she forced herself not to turn and stare. Her cheeks were burning, and her belly fluttered. She held her breath and shoved her hands beneath her bum to sit on them and stop the need to pull at her clothes or ponytail. What was going on with her body?
“The little squirrel has beady eyes like your dad,” her mum whispered loudly, but Lucie barely heard her. Emma and her mum’s laughing got louder.
Even sitting on her hands, they twitched beneath her. She dropped her head and smiled to herself as the torrent of emotions rushed through her.
Her dad was back. The driver’s door opened, and the rush of air flipped her ponytail and cooled the back of her neck. Sweat beaded her forehead, as a chill cascaded down her body.
“Right, he’s going to move his car out of the way,” their dad said while blustering his way back into the car. His face was red, his brows still furrowed. “What are you laughing about, Kathleen?”
“Nothing, just a cough,” she replied while fake coughing between chuckles. Emma coughed along too, oblivious to Lucie’s turmoil.
“I guess he didn’t get a rocket to Uranus after all,” Emma whispered in Lucie’s ear.
“Who? Dad?”
“No,” Emma replied conspiratorially. “That guy who got out the car. That’s the one from the party who jumped in the pool. I can’t believe he’s here.”
Emma quickly forgot Chris as she whispered something about the Daniel Craig squirrel in her mum’s ear, but Lucie couldn’t forget him.
Don’t turn around. If that Chris guy sees you staring, he’ll laugh at you.
As the car pulled away, Lucie turned to glance out the back window. Chris stood there, looking back at her with his beautiful green eyes. He waved with his free hand, his dimpled grin wide. She refused to move her hands and wave back. But as she stared at him, the tiniest smile crossed her face as their car disappeared away from him and farther into the woods.
Chapter Six
“Ems, it’s totally fine,” Lucie said with a smile to Emma and Emma’s friend, Jess. “I’m going to sit on the beach and draw. I’ve got my iPod and headphones. I’m happy. You and Jess have fun, okay?”
Heat bounced off the concrete while the sun warmed her bare legs. Sitting on the beach with her favourite tunes on repeat was the perfect way to spend the first couple of hours of their holiday.
Emma’s lips twisted as if she was in an internal battle. Emma frequently went above and beyond for her loner sister, including the all-school trip to Alton Towers. Catty girls from the year above had laughed at Lucie when, pale and teary, she’d baulked at going on one of the “baby rides.” Emma had shouted at the older girls and left the queue for the ride she’d been desperate to go on to take Lucie for ice cream.
Lucie would have liked to have a friend with her, but she’d never had friendships like Emma had or like television ones, and it left her with an aching hole in her heart. Was it wrong to want to be like everyone else? Popularity looked like a lot of fun, and it had to be better than the soul-crushing loneliness that swallowed her up when she sat alone at lunch or searched for a smile in her direction when the teacher told the class to pair up. The other students who desperately attempted to avoid making eye contact made her want to sob, but no one would want to be her friend if she cried in front of them. Maybe it would be different when she got to university. One year to go.
“You’re sure? Like really, really sure that you want to be alone?” Emma squinted against the sun of the late summer. Jess stood next to her, distracted by her fingers as she wiggled them around in the sunshine. Her fingernails had magnetic nailvarnish on them, and it was all she’d talked about since she and her parents arrived at the lodge.
Lucie offered a nod and a smile to convince Emma. After Dad’s endless lectures about preparing to study law, she needed the escapism she found through drawing. People streamed past them, heading to the variety of activities the holiday village advertised. A group of young teenage lads with messy hair cycled past, hollering at the pretty girls in short skirts giggling near the coffee house. If anyone did that to her, she’d hide all weekend. She wouldn’t look good in one of those pretty skirts either. Her mum once commented on a dress that sat above Lucie’s knee. Apparently, Lucie had oddly shaped thighs compared to the other girls at school. It was another thing for her to add to the long list of things she hated about herself. In this heat, she selected shorts that came to her knees in the hope that they were long enough not to draw laughter from strangers. She clenched her hands into fists. She didn’t need to hide the rest of her legs, but she still looked sheepishly around in case anyone was smirking at her.
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Emma replied. She did her usual pause in case Lucie changed her mind. “But before we go, Jess, tell Lucie what you told me about that Chris guy.”
“Oh yeah, if you see him, avoid him. He’s a party animal and troublemaker. If he’s here, then he will cause so much trouble.”
“Like what sort of trouble?”
“Rumour has it”—Jess leaned in—“on the last day of term, he set fire to all his schoolbooks in the middle of the playground. Then he announced to his mates that he’d been sleeping with the maths teacher.”
“No way is that true,” Lucie replied.
“That’s what started the argument between him and his girlfriend at the party, apparently,” Jess said. She was such a gossip, especially as she believed everything she heard. “Stayaway if you see him, because I swear, last night, he said he was going somewhere boring with his dad for the weekend and was going to cause as much trouble as possible.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Have fun at the beach and enjoy your drawing, Lucie. We’ll be back in a couple of hours to pick you up before dinner.”
Emma poked her in the ribs before hooking her arm through Jess’s and heading towards the activity centre. Their laughter was loud as Jess gesticulated and Emma pointed out different things on their walk. Even from a distance, their confidence was unquestionable. Emma didn’t hunch her shoulders or continuously wrap her hair around her fingers as Lucie did with her mousy brown ponytail. She hated these traits, and even when she tried to hide them, her dad repeatedly told her off for them as he did with all her faults.
Some days it was like her and Emma against the world. Emma was the only person who could talk Lucie down when her heart beat out of control, or she couldn’t breathe or swallow during an anxiety attack. It was like playdough or clay was lodged in her throat, and she was terrified of suffocating. Each attack was more intense than the last. The terror that she would die, and her life would end as a failure, escalated the closer she got to the next school term and applying to university. The comedown from the attacks were usually spent at home cuddling a hot water bottle as tears and exhaustion overwhelmed her.
