The Places I've Cried in Public Read online

  As always, like with my gigs, the world hadn’t ended. People were vaguely smiling, hardly interested.

  Alistair grinned as I sat down. “You have a lovely singing voice, Amelie,” he commented. Everyone turned towards me again and I essentially became just a shyness rash. I hated him for a moment – for singling me out and making me the centre of attention, even though it was a nice compliment. I slunk down in my chair and hid behind my hair until the exercise was finished.

  Things didn’t improve in the public-humiliation Olympics. Alistair then made us play “hilarious” ice-breaking activities. One was a game called Zip Zap Boing where we had to pass “a ball of energy” around the circle, using a series of ridiculous sounds and actions. I only zipped, which meant saying the word “zip” and passing the “energy” from one side of myself to another. Hannah only zipped too, and muttered under her breath, “This is awful and I want to die.” I smiled at her widely to try and show her we were the SAME and we could BE FRIENDS. Then we were given bingo cards with things like Favourite colour is pink and Likes to run on them, and were instructed to find people with these traits. I almost considered dropping out of college right there and then, and telling my parents it wasn’t for me. However, a bingo square said Comes from another place and everyone flocked to me right away and I didn’t have to approach anyone or say anything apart from “Yes, Sheffield” multiple times. Once everyone had ticked me off, they started chatting to each other like it was the simplest thing in the world. I stood on the edges, clutching my bingo card, my armpits sweating, missing my old life and my old friends. Then I heard Hannah’s voice behind me.

  “Can you pretend to like pink for me?” she asked.

  I spun and smiled goofily at her. “I mean, it’s always been my favourite colour.”

  “Great. Wow. What a coincidence.” She marked it down on her sheet. “And, do you have any pets?”

  I nodded. “Yep. A unicorn.”

  “Me too!”

  Both our smiles grew wider and I wrote down her name in that square. “It’s Hannah, right?” I asked.

  “Yep. And I can pretend to have broken a bone, if you want?”

  “Brilliant. Which one?”

  “All of them.” She shrugged. “I jumped down an elevator shaft in protest against this ice-breaker game. Broke every bone in my body. I’m a miracle of science.”

  We both giggled and our bonding continued.

  “Do you have curly hair?” I asked her.

  “I mean, when I curl it. Yes, yes I do.”

  “Are you left-handed?”

  “Sometimes I put out my left hand to look for the L shape, because I forget my left from right. Does that count?”

  “Totally counts.”

  “Right, my turn to tick some off. Have you ever been abroad?”

  “I lived in Sheffield,” I replied.

  “Totally is abroad.”

  Darla interrupted us by yelling “BINGO!” We all clapped her and she did an actual faux Oscar acceptance speech.

  Alistair then talked us through the campus, and how the timetable worked, and said we could come to him any time we needed. Despite his extrovertness, I kind of liked him. Form time would definitely never be boring. He dismissed us and everyone trickled out of the door, chatting like they were friends already.

  I dawdled with my bag, taking a bit too long to fit my notepad in. Hannah was fiddling with hers and I hoped we might talk more. She zipped hers up and raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, we survived. Do you feel inducted?”

  “I feel like I may need therapy for the rest of my life.”

  She laughed. “What have you got next?” We fell into step and pushed our way out of the media block into the sunshine. Hundreds of students hurried from A to B, stopping to check their own maps to figure out where exactly “B” was.

  “English language,” I said.

  She pulled a pair of mirrored aviators down onto her nose. “Oh no, I’m doing lit. Otherwise we might’ve been in the same class. We’re heading to the same block though. Have you got a map?”

  I walked with Hannah all the way to my next lesson. She told me she’d chosen to come to college rather than stay at her secondary school. “It was a religious school and they banned sixth-form girls from wearing vest tops, even in the summer. I ain’t staying somewhere like that.” She was one of only five students who didn’t stay on. We stopped outside my classroom door, and I checked the number to ensure I was in the right place. “Some of us are meeting for coffee actually,” Hannah said, adjusting the strap on her rucksack. “There’s this place in town called BoJangles. You can come if you like? At lunchtime?”

  I could’ve hugged her. Because, had it been up to me, I’d never have mentioned seeing her ever again even though I was desperate to. I bleated out yes and asked where BoJangles was.

  She showed me on her phone. “It’s so cute you don’t know your way around our tiny town,” she said. “Don’t worry, it takes about five minutes to get the hang of it. Anyway,” she took her sunglasses off and waved goodbye. “See you at lunch.”

  “Bye,” I called after her, watching her red hair merge into the chaos of new students getting lost in the corridors. “Thank you,” I said quietly, almost to myself.

  It’s so cold, I’m going to have to leave soon. There’s a thin layer of ice creeping closer towards my arse. I bow my head, pull my legs up, and push my knees into my eye sockets.

  Hannah isn’t my friend any more.

  I don’t really have friends any more.

  The rest of that first day went as well as it could. I managed to find all my rooms. I met my teachers. They told us how much harder A levels were compared to GCSEs. My music teacher, Mrs Clarke, seemed cool and she was the most important one. I went to BoJangles and I sat quietly as Hannah introduced me to Jack and Liv. We bonded over how the North is different to the South.

  “So you say ‘bAth’, whereas we say ‘bARth’.”

  “Gravy? On chips? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “So, where exactly is Sheffield? Oh, okay. And what’s the Midlands? I thought Sheffield was up north?”

  “You play guitar?” they asked, once we’d exhausted all the words I say differently. “And you write your own songs? Wow.”

  On the whole, as first days go, it was okay. These guys all knew each other better than they knew me, but they’d gone to college to meet new people and I was a new person. Hannah clearly led this little group of defectors from their religious school, and Jack clearly fancied Hannah. He stared adoringly while she described how naff the drama facilities were at their old school. “So, why have you moved all the way down here?” Hannah asked, checking her perfect fringe in a hand mirror.

  “My dad got made redundant. He couldn’t find another job up north.”

  Hannah put her mirror away and looked at me with genuine sympathy. “Wow, that sucks.” The rest of the table made supportive noises over the foam of their coffee.

  “It’s okay,” I lied. “My mum grew up near here, so I’ve been down south a few times before.”

  “Well, just in case you don’t know,” she said. “We put ketchup on our chips, not gravy.”

  “Heathen.”

  And we smiled the smiles of new friends being made.

  I hadn’t met you yet, of course. This was still Before You. Maybe I sensed you though – on that very first day – walking home in the sun, to the place that wasn’t yet home.

  All I know is that I just about felt okay as I walked back to the new flat. My phone led me down this alleyway as a shortcut, past the backs of people’s gardens.

  I’d have two hours to play guitar before my parents got back and snatches of new lyrics drifted into my head as I walked through the speckles of sunshine. The alleyway curved left and I emerged onto a rickety railway bridge. My phone told me to cross it, so I did, stopping in the middle to look out at the train tracks vanishing into the point of a triangle. My brain got all quiet a
nd a lyric wiggled its way through my subconscious.

  I’ve got a horizon either side of me… I’ve got your love etched deep inside of me… I want to go back, but life has other plans…

  I knew right away it was a keeper. The start of a song. I bashed the lines out on my phone as a memo note, keen to get it down before it vanished back into the ether. I’d just finished typing when my phone started vibrating in my hand.

  My heart twisted over as I held it to my ear.

  “Hello?” I said, even though every singing, sad part of my body knew who it was.

  “Ammy! How did it go?”

  Alfie’s voice was the sound of safety. The sound of comfort and home. And yet it sounded so far away from this bridge.

  I tried to ignore my lurching stomach. “It went okay actually. I met this drama girl, Hannah, who was pretty friendly and cool. The mixing equipment at college is good.”

  He laughed and I could picture him doing it – the way he always held his hand up to his chin, the way one eye closed up a little bit more than the other. “Well, that’s the important thing,” he said. “And I’m glad not all southern fairies are too awful.”

  My phone tucked between my shoulder and my ear, I walked towards this bench at the far end of the bridge, sitting down right where I’m sat now.

  “I don’t think I’ll make any friends if I refer to everyone as southern fairies.”

  He laughed again. “True! But you can secretly think it at all times. In fact, we won’t let you back into Yorkshire if you don’t.”

  “You better let me back me into Yorkshire!”

  Laughing in the background, the noise of a scuffle, Alfie called “HEY” and then Jessa’s voice boomed into my ear. “AMELIE, WE MISS YOUUUUUUUUUUU. COME BACK UP NORTH, YOU TWAT.”

  My smile split my face in half. “I miss you too.”

  “School was SO weird without you today. I even considered putting a cardigan around a balloon and pretending it was you.”

  “I’m not currently wearing a cardigan,” I told her. “It’s too warm down here.”

  “OH MY GOD, GUYS,” she shouted away from the speaker. “SHE SAYS IT’S SO HOT DOWN SOUTH SHE ISN’T EVEN WEARING A CARDIGAN!”

  There were sounds of disbelief from my old friends. “Pics or I won’t believe it,” Kimmy shouted. Then laughter and more disturbance and I found myself bent over, pressing my hand to my guts.

  “Give me the phone back, Jessa. Jessa?” I heard Alfie negotiate. “I’ll let you have a chip. Okay, three chips. That’s more than three! Okay…hang on… Sorry, Ammy, you still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Hang on. I’ll let them walk in front so we can talk properly.”

  I heard the crunch of Alfie walking across gravel. “Where are you guys?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from squeaking.

  “Oh, the Botanical Gardens – same old, same old.” I could picture them. I knew exactly which chip shop they’d gone to, and I knew exactly which bench they’d sit on.

  “What have you got on your chips?” Though I already knew the answer.

  “Gravy, cheese and mayonnaise – the secret ingredient!”

  “It’s the mayonnaise that makes it so wrong.”

  “I’m before my time, Ammy, you know that…” There was a pause down the line. “I miss you,” he said, eventually. “Today was weird and horrible.”

  I gulped and blinked up at the blue of the sky. “Two years will go quickly enough.”

  “That’s what we keep saying.” Another pause. “But, you’re okay? I was thinking about you – sending you happy thoughts. Did you get them?”

  One tear escaped. The beginning of this. I collected it with the tip of my finger and flicked it off. “I did. Thank you.”

  We both sighed, not saying it. We’d said it all before I left. “How did your first A level chemistry lesson go?” I tried to steer the conversation towards upbeat. “Were you allowed to use the Bunsen burner?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you there’s more to it than Bunsen burners?”

  “They’re the only reason you like science, and you need to stop lying to yourself.”

  Alfie laughed, but it was a sad one. I could hear Kimmy and Jessa arguing somewhere near him. “I’d better go,” he said, “they’re eating all my chips.”

  I did not want the phone conversation to end. I did not want to lose the sound of his voice. But we’d agreed to get on with this, we’d agreed to accept the shitty situation for what it was. We’d agreed to put us on ice.

  “It’s only two years,” Alfie had said, clutching my face the night before I left, my entire sixteen years of life packed into cardboard boxes. “Then we’ll both be at Manchester and we can be together again.”

  “What if you can’t wait for me that long?”

  “You know I will.”

  “I don’t want you to feel tied to me and resent me,” I’d said, crying and not sure I really meant it.

  “I won’t. And neither will you. We agreed, remember? We’re free to do anything with anyone, apart from falling in love.”

  “It’s literally impossible for me to fall in love with someone who isn’t you.”

  I’d certainly meant it at the time.

  We’d kissed and both cried and had sex for only the eighth time, and it was bittersweet and clumsy and a bit snotty, but still lovely. Afterwards, we stayed up all night, whispering about how amazing Manchester would be.

  “Okay,” I said, only two weeks later – feeling like every centimetre of distance between us was an individual knife in my stomach. “Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.” Another tear splashed onto my dress before I had a chance to catch it.

  “I’m so glad your first day went okay.”

  “Me too…thanks again.”

  He rang off and I looked at my phone for a very long time as a wave of grief hit. My phone wobbled in my shaking hands and a teardrop splashed onto the screen. That was all it took, visual confirmation of my sadness. On this bench, this very bench, all those months ago – when the sun was shining and I hadn’t met you yet – I dropped my head onto my lap and I cried. Anyone could’ve walked past and seen me. The grief was too raw for me to care. My back shuddered, my dress splattered with salty tears and trails of snot.

  I am on this same bench now, my bum numb from the cold. I’m sat in exactly the same place and I want to reach through a wormhole in time and comfort myself, pat my own back. I reach out with my gloved hand, like I can touch my former self. Like I can wipe away her tears. Like I can pull her hair back from her ear and whisper into it, urging me not to do all the things I was about to do. The things that led to the me I am now. This empty husk, this confused mess.

  It started here.

  I don’t understand what happened yet, but I know it started here.

  If I can join the dots, maybe I can begin to understand. Because I don’t understand any of it. Nothing about the last six months makes any sense. Not how I behaved or what I’ve lost and how much it hurts. It’s a mess within a mess.

  This bench is Dot Number One. This is the first place I ever cried in public.

  I close my eyes against the freezing night air. I feel Past Me rise up, like I’m sitting on my own ghost. I feel the tears on her face, the shudders of her back. I reach through time and I whisper to her:

  “Oh, Amelie, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  The words turn to frost and float out over the railway tracks.

  I’ve had a week away from seeing you and half-term has lowered my tolerance to be around you. It feels like there’s no oxygen in here. Maybe because it’s pissing it down outside so everyone’s sheltering from the rain. Or maybe it’s because the heating is cranked up to maximum and all the windows are steamy. Or maybe it’s the scent of mass-produced spag bol wafting over from the kitchen. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because you are here. With her. In the corner.

  I can’t believe you’re here and you’re kissing her and
I feel like I could die right now.

  I’m alone, as always. Exhausted from being up so late last night, sat in the opposite corner, my knees hunched up, the hood of my hoodie popped, curling up like a snail that doesn’t want to get smushed. I don’t really come in here any more. I hide away in the music room, or fold myself into a silent cubicle of the library. I look through the mass of sweaty bodies – of people laughing and eating spaghetti and not thinking about how heartbroken they are – and I stupidly pick out your face. You’re smiling at her from under your trilby hat. You’re looking at her how you used to look at me. It hurts in such a profound way there almost isn’t room for it in my body.

  Why am I doing this to myself? I think, for the millionth time since I got here.

  I see Jack and Hannah cuddled up at a table near the door, doing a very good job of pretending not to notice me. My stomach’s heavy with bile and the smell of lunch makes it worse. I’ve hardly been eating and my parents are worried, and I’ve hardly played guitar and Mrs Clarke is worried, but the only person I want to notice all this and worry is you.

  And you’re not worried, Reese. In fact, you don’t see me at all.

  Which is so dumb, because it was here that I first met you. And you more than noticed me that day.

  Of course, this sweaty canteen didn’t look like this back then…

  “Whoa, for a shitty college talent show, they’ve really gone all out,” Hannah said, as we pushed through the doors of the refectory.

  The three of us stopped and looked around to marvel at the transformation. A professional stage had been erected where the jukebox usually sat. A makeshift bar had popped up in the kitchen. A proper lighting rig hung from the ceiling, and the whole place sparkled with some intergalactic projection, casting Milky Ways across the walls. The place was packed, like the whole college had decided to come. We were two weeks into term and everyone was still keen to mingle and bond.

  “How did the stoned music-tech people have the energy to do all this?” Jack joked, making Hannah laugh. I smiled as I looked between them. I had the bonus of knowing they liked each other before they did – a front row seat for the Jack and Hannah Show. It made me very happy for them but also made me miss Alfie so much it hurt to breathe.