Page 22 of Take My Hand

Did any of it mean anything? Did he like me? When he gave me a hug before he left, was it a little longer than the one that he gave to the others?

I turned on my side, away from Liv on the blow-up mattress we were sharing, and flicked on my phone to scroll through the pictures I’d taken earlier. I quickly flicked through the ones of everyone else, until I got to the three or four that I’d taken of Zak on his own. The first one he was smiling with his perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth showing, and his blue eyes bright. Liam had been talking to him, but Zak’s eyes had been on me asI snapped away. The next one was Zak smoking a cigarette in the garden. He was sitting on the bench again and I’d caught his side profile. His strong, square jaw and the little dimple right at the corner of his mouth. The smoke was swirling up in front of him, and if I’d had any talent as a photographer, it could easily have been the cover picture on one of the books that Louise, Liam’s mum liked to read.

I stared at it and wondered what he was thinking about in that moment. Maybe it was me. We’d been getting along, chatting, laughing. Perhaps he was thinking about asking me on a date. I thought about how he only ever took a couple of drags on his cigarette and then put it out. What was the point of smoking? Glancing back at the picture it struck me how cool he looked with a cigarette in his mouth. Maybe that was why. Yet he didn’t strike me as a boy who cared whether he looked cool or not. What if it was all an act and he was sweet and funny and, what…

“Shit,” I groaned and rolled onto my back, holding my phone to my stomach. A small chink of light escaped lighting up my chest for a few seconds before it faded out.

I was being stupid. He could have any girl in school that he wanted, so why would he be interested in me? I wasn’t anything special. My eyes were a little too big, and my top lip was bigger than my bottom one. I couldn’t dance for shit—I got that from my dad, he was awful. I was hopeless at sport too. Zak Hoyland would, and probably should, end up with a girl like Becky Marshall. She was Head Girl and captain on the school netball team. She was much more Zak’s level.

“What are you doing?” Liv’s voice was muffled by the pillow she was face down in. “What time is it?”

I lifted my phone and brought it back to life. “Three.”

“Morning or afternoon?”

“Morning. You’ve been asleep since nine-thirty. You really are a lightweight.”

“Everything feels wrong.” She moaned like she might be about to puke.

I turned my head to face her. “Do you need a bucket or something, because you know Emma’s mum will kill you if you vomit on her carpet.”

“Nope.” She lifted her hand to swipe at her mouth. “I need water.”

I reached across my body and picked up the bottle of water I’d taken to bed with me. “Here, have this.”

She shuffled around until she was in a sitting position and took the bottle from me. “Thanks, you’re a life saver. Vodka is a bitch.”

I lay on my stomach, still watching as she gulped back almost all the bottle in one go. Her blonde hair was a messy halo around her face, and she had mascara smudged under her eyes, yet she still looked pretty.

“Liv.”

“Hmm,” she said around the rim of the water bottle.

“You know when you dated Joshua, how did you know that you liked each other?”

Her little button nose wrinkled. “You told me,” she said, holding the bottle against her forehead. “You came up to me in PE and said, ‘did you know that Joshua Brooks wants in your knickers?’ I said no, and you said that I should go speak to him, so I did.” She grinned and pushed her messy hair from her face. “And you were right. He did want in my knickers.”

“I remember,” I said. “I caught you with your knickers down, if I recall.”

“Do you think you two could stop talking about knickers,” Ana complained from Emma’s bed. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“Sorry,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“I can’t now. Not until you tell me why you want to know how Liv knew she liked Joshua.”

Shit. Liv was a little self-centred and I could have easily got her off the subject by talking about, well, Liv. Ana was different though. She wouldn’t stop hounding me until I gave her something.

“I was just wondering that’s all,” I replied, rolling onto my back.

Ana snorted. “Wow, you’re some sort of English wizard and you can’t come up with anything better than, ‘I was just wondering’? Shit, Maddy, up your game girl.”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh crap, now we’ve woken the monster from the deep.” Ana sighed. “Go back to sleep, Em.”

“I can’t not if you’re all talking about something. You know that I hate being the last to know.” She reached over and flicked on the bedside lamp. “Spill.”

“I was just asking Liv how she and Josh knew they liked each other.” I dropped my forearm to my forehead and sighed. “It was nothing important, you can all just go back to sleep now.”

---