Sophie Parkin

Best of Friends

Chapter 1
Summer with May

Florrie, 15

I liked May the first time we met, at a party. She was giggly and she had weird, sticky-out hair, a darker version of my blonde hair. We had friends that knew each other who introduced us, and we got on straight away.
  I guess it was because we were both a bit freaky, and didn't like everyone else. She was straightforward, but she didn't mind being different in the way she looked.
  We don't go to the same school. May goes to the posh private school down the hill from mine. Not everyone who goes there is posh, but you do have to pay, and her family have more money than mine. I go to the big comprehensive, but all the kids in our year from all the schools in the area meet up - either around the station after school in the winter, because there's a mall to keep warm in; or in the park during the summer. When it's warm we love to just hang in the park, talking and lying on the grass. The boys play football and us girls pretend we're watching. As if! We have far too many important things to discuss other than the state of the boys' legs and bums, though that can be interesting too.
  It was still spring when I met May. At first, we saw each other a few times with other friends like Jack and Enya and we'd just cotch together, you know, hang out. We all liked art, we'd go to galleries after school, like the National Portrait Gallery or the Tate Modern. At that time there was this giant orange sun mirrored in the ceiling of the Turbine Hall, called the Weather Project and we would go and lie on the floor staring at our reflections, talking for hours. We always had so much fun when we were together.
  The only problems were, May lived miles away, and she had a really weird dad. May told me that he was always drunk, and he definitely looked like he was whenever I saw him. He always had a drink in his hand. Plus, getting to the station near May's was a nightmare, and then it still took ages to walk to her house. She wasn't one of those convenient friends who live just around the corner.
  So May started staying around my house at weekends. Her dad didn't mind at first, then he started taking it personally, thinking I was taking May away from him; it was weird. So that left meeting after school or going to hers, but her dad was so freaky it was really awkward.
  We'd have long phone chats or go on MSN Messenger to stay in touch. We liked the same things - neither of us can play a musical instrument but we love music. Music and laughing! We were always watching comedies together, and eating strawberry cheesecake ice-cream. Sometimes we'd go to Topshop for the whole day. Neither of us had any money but we'd spend the whole day trying on clothes for fun until the assistant would tell us to get lost. When we were hungry we'd go into the deli stall in the supermarket and pretend we wanted to test bits of pies and cheese and anchovies. We spent hours putting on make-up, experimenting on each other or ourselves - like the time we painted our nails with Tippex and drew felt-tip pictures over them. Have you ever tried getting Tippex off your nails? I don't recommend it. We liked cooking, and when we baked some bread for her school experiment we were determined to eat it too. I'm not sure what we forgot to do, but trying to eat the stuff almost cracked our teeth.
  It was soon the summer holidays. May was the first friend I'd ever had that I didn't mind spending long period of time with - because we had so much fun.
  Other friends always irritate me after a whole day together - they'll say something stupid, or they don't think before they speak and you have to deal with so much rubbish anyway, I don't need it from friends too. I tell then - 'Sorry, you're making me really mad. I can't stay around you, I need a rest.' I'll tell them to go home, if they're getting on my nerves, or I'll go home. But it was never like that with May. We had a whole summer of fun and no school and just hanging about in the park talking and laughing, laughing and talking, whistling through grass, or making daisy chains. That was, until we met Ruben.
  Ruben was sixteen and we were thirteen when we all first met, he doesn't go to either of our schools, and he used to do drugs but he's cleaned himself up and he's doing his A-levels now. I thought he was great when I first met him - he seemed a lot of fun and he had this great big wild afro. Sometimes we'd go round to his house and listen to music - he's wicked at playing the guitar, and he's graffitied a fantastic mural all over his bedroom wall. He was really changing his life because he knew he'd been wasting his time on drugs and wanted to do good. I like people when they realise they can change things for themselves. I guess May did too.
  Ruben lives closer to May than me. She began dropping over to his house alone after school, then at weekends. Whenever I call her up and asked where she was, it was always - 'Oh, I'm just around Ruben's.'
  May said he wasn't her boyfriend, but I couldn't believe it. She said she spent time around there because he was teaching her how to tag (design her graffiti name). Whatever. We both turned fourteen this summer but by September there seemed to be more and more times when she was busy around Ruben's and couldn't see me.
  What can you do? I've got lots of other friends so it's not like I'm going to be alone, I just spent more time with Tania and Poppy.
  One day May told me that she'd had sex with Ruben, and I knew that was the end. Things had changed, she had changed. She'd become less like May and more like one of Ruben's belongings. They won't even come out with us because Ruben says, now he's seventeen, he doesn't want his friends to see him hanging with fourteen-year-olds. He doesn't even take her out.
  May speaks to him every night on the phone for two hours, and that's after dropping by his place for an hour after school. He's not that interesting, but May is kind of obsessive like that.
  The summer seems a long time ago. Now it's so cold. I can't believe our garden is coated in snow. The snow has a way of separating you from remembering the sun. I know there are going to be other summers, I'll have another great time with my friends this coming summer, but it's not going to be the same without May. If you don't know I can't explain what it's like to have a friend who wants and likes all the things you do; who says what you're thinking, or does something before you say it; a friend you want to be with because she makes everything better than it was before; who's not afraid of looking silly and doesn't get embarrassed.
  I'll never forget May on the hottest day ever. You could see the haze making everything shimmer. It was so hot I had to lie in the shade under a tree, too exhausted to move. May, dressed in a cut-off jean skirt and T-shirt, leapt up and started doing cartwheels about the lawn before she leapt into the mini fountain and did a handstand. Everybody could see her polka-dot knickers. She began the largest water fight ever seen - we all joined in. The park keeper chased everyone out for causing a disturbance. All of us were soaked, and none of us could stop laughing. For ages we were curled up on the pavement, cracking up.
  Then there was the time a gang of Rude Girls tried to jack us for our phones and she shouted at them so loudly they ran away.
  You can keep on remembering these times, but what's the point?
  I don't know, I really liked May, and we kept talking for a while, but it's not the same. I know she's been saying things about me behind my back to Poppy, like I'm jealous of her and Ruben, that I fancy him and just rubbish stuff, but she won't say them to me and I really don't like that. Why can't she be straight? She's changed and as long as Ruben's around, she's going to spend all her time with him.
  The other day I bumped into her and we had nothing to say to each other, except: 'Are you going to see the gig on Saturday night?' 'No. It's sold out.' That was it! I could never have imagined we would lose our connection; that our friendship would be empty and meaningless.

Best of friends © Sophie Parkin, 2006. Published by Piccadilly Press Ltd.