I laughed. ‘It’s not that bad.’
‘You’re being deprived. It’s an outrage. I told Mum and Dad, I said to them, don’t make Caddy grow up without boys. It’s a cruelty. But did they listen? Noooo.’
Tarin had gone to normal school, and by normal I mean neither single-sex nor private. Nobody had made Tarin wear a bright green blazer and knee-high socks. She’d been free to wear too much make-up and thread ribbons through her hair.
‘I’ve decided that I’m definitely going to get one this year though,’ I said, hoping that saying it out loud would somehow make it happen. ‘A boyfriend.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Tarin’s face broke into a grin. ‘You’ve decided?’
I nodded. ‘That’s my goal for the year. And I’m going to have sex. And do something significant.’
‘Don’t all three of those count as the same goal?’ she asked. ‘Three birds, one stone? One boy to unlock the set of achievements? With his penis of significance?’
‘You’re teasing me.’
‘I am. Well spotted.’ She gave my hair an affectionate tug. ‘So what are you going to do to make this happen?’
I paused.
‘Because it’s great that you’ve decided that that’s what you want, but you should be trying to make it happen as well.’ This was easy for her to say. Tarin never had to try to make anything happen.
‘Mmm,’ I said, starting to regret bringing it up.
‘Not that I think you’ll have any trouble,’ she added quickly. ‘Look, maybe you should do more out-of-school stuff. Meet new people.’
‘Speaking of new people,’ I said, seeing my opportunity to change the subject and taking it, ‘there’s a new girl in Rosie’s form.’
‘Yeah?’ Tarin had taken my scarf and wound it around her own neck, fluffing out her light brown hair over it. It suited her far better than it did me.
‘Rosie loves her,’ I said.
‘Does she?’ She gave me a look, a small, knowing smile dancing on her face. ‘Are you jealous?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
She laughed. ‘No, but I know you. You and Rosie are as inseparable as it is possible to be, and you managed it being in different schools for ten years. Now a new girl arrives right near the end of your educational chapter and Rosie likes her?’ She made an exaggerated ‘oh dear’ face, then grinned. ’New people are always exciting. I wouldn’t worry. It’s the novelty, you know? Have you met her?’
‘Yeah, on Friday.’
‘What’s she like?’
I hesitated. ‘Nice.’
She made an incorrect buzzer noise. ‘Try again with a word that means something.’
‘She’s very confident. But in a relaxed kind of way, not in a showy way.’ I realized as I was speaking that this was close to identical to how Rosie had first described her over the phone. ‘And funny. Sarcastic kind of funny. Oh, and she’s really pretty.’
‘Sounds unbearable.’
I had to laugh. ‘She is much cooler than me.’
Tarin slapped my arm. ‘Don’t say things like that! As if cool matters.’ Only people to whom cool comes easy, like Tarin herself, ever say things like this. ‘Did you like her?’
I thought about it. ‘I didn’t not like her.’
‘Did you want to like her?’
‘Not really.’
‘Maybe give her a chance at least? If Rosie likes her, she must be all right. And remember, it’s only one week into the school year. They might not even be talking in a few weeks’ time.’
I tried to remind myself of this later that evening, when I clicked on to Facebook and rolled my finger over my laptop’s touchpad to look at my feed. I let my eyes follow the updates without really taking them in until they snagged on one. Rosie Caron and Suzanne Watts are now friends.
My chest gave a kick of completely irrational jealousy. Of course they’d be friends on Facebook. In fact it was kind of a surprise that it had taken this long. But still. I moved the cursor to hover over Suzanne’s name, hesitated, and then clicked. This turned out to be pointless, as I could see absolutely nothing of her information, except her profile picture. I leaned forward to look at it more closely. She was with a girl and a boy, all of them dressed in an unfamiliar school uniform, and they were clinging on to each other in an overly exaggerated embrace. The photo had captured them mid-laugh.
I clicked back to Rosie’s page and saw that Suzanne had posted a video on her wall. Feeling ridiculously nervous, I clicked on it. It was a puppy trying to get out of a tent, defeated by its own short legs. It was a cute video, but it made me relax because I knew – and Suzanne clearly didn’t know – that Rosie didn’t really like dogs. She should have chosen a video of a cat.
Feeling brighter, I shut my laptop and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had ten years on this girl, and however interesting or cool she was, time was surely the biggest upper hand of them all.