Taken the first time I stepped onto hallowed Vegas land.

So here’s the thing. I know this blog has been ass-deep in tumbleweeds since the end of Scintilla and I’m sorry. I present to you these reasons three:

1. A few of my favourite people at work have departed for pastures new which, along with the fact that there is a ton to be done and morale currently resembles Ja Rule’s career, has left me decidedly unmotivated to write here.
2. I have been channelling what little creative energy I have into the second draft of the novel I’ve been writing since the dawn of time.* The writing process has been going so well that I have actually been feeling less like I want to lacerate my face with a broken plate and more like this could actually be a thing a couple of people might want to read.
3. All my enthusiasm and excitement for life has been channelled into the trip I am taking to the States in less than 48 hours.

Yes, in two days’ time, I will be meeting 67 bloggers for shenanigans, hijinks and general hilarity in 40-degree heat (Celsius) and I couldn’t be more excited/thrilled/terrified. The introvert in me wants to have a long talk about boundaries and going to sleep at a decent hour but I am feeding her Valium and hoping she will just give it a rest until the weekend is over. This is a long way from the Christian youth conferences I attended in my youth: here, the debauchery can take place in broad daylight.

I also get to hang out a little longer in Vegas with my sister, Yawps and Brandee before heading to New York where I get to eat BBQ with a warmongering smurf, have brunch with a kindred, and convene with some of my favourite people.

This holiday has been a long time coming and my apprehension is paired with relief that it is finally here and the probability of me backhanding someone for something paltry are greatly reduced. I’m going to use this time to overcome some insecurities, fling my arms around people I have wanted to hug since discovering them, eat food that cannot be found in the UK and indulge my Bath & Body Works penchant.

I’ll holla when I’m back.

* exaggeration

I didn’t instagram it but it certainly has a place here.

Let’s meet, he says, apropos of nothing and despite the fact that it’s been nigh on six years since we spoke properly. We have drifted apart in that perplexing way where suddenly you open your eyes and realise that your weekly calls had at some point become fortnightly and then slipped into vague texts once every few months before fading out altogether. When I ask him why now he says I found your twitter page and we laugh for a little while about how London has robbed me of my Northern calm. Let’s meet, he says again gently; he knows I am around for Easter and in his words “it would be nice.”

Curiosity gets the better of me and I acquiesce.

We meet at the field we used to walk together on Friday nights. He is wearing a blue scarf and a smile that erases the space between us. The ground is soft enough that my shoe sinks a little too deep and he offers me his arm and pulls me free. We tread carefully and begin our first lap of the field. I bundle up my nervousness and leave it on the knoll where we used to hold hands and roll down on the last day of school. Time cartwheels away from us and because I know I can, I slip my arm through his.

He has a daughter now; a gorgeous little thing with huge green eyes and a birthmark on her hand. He shows me photos and his voice turns to treacle when he talks about her. And her mum? I venture but he shakes his head and we leave it at that.

These are the things I had forgotten:

• That he litters our conversations with my name
• That he has a scar slicing through his left eyebrow from where he came off his bike
• That we had made out more than once
• That we are exactly the same height

On our fourth lap, the sun starts to sink and I whip out my phone. Instagram, right? he asks and then laughs at me when I cock my eyebrow. Yup, found that too. I call him a stalker and he kisses the side of my forehead.

When it is time for me to head home, I close my eyes during his hug. He tells me we have to talk more and I nod but I think we both know that when it comes to us, it’s a bit more special when we haven’t spoken for a while; when the feelings have had time to settle like sand at the bottom of a pond; when he can phone me in the middle of the night and say awake? and I can grumble “I am now,” and talk for an hour anyway; when we can hide behind the distance and feel safe.

Today’s Scintilla prompt:

Behind the curtain to my left, there was a voice. It belonged to a lady who took great care in describing the extent of her pain, imploring first the nurses then the doctor when he was finally roused and brought to her side, that it was a 10. Don’t you understand? A 10. Do something.

The curtain itself was of an indiscriminate pattern. A swirl here. A loop there. Something that could have been a butterfly in the corner. I averted my eyes and counted the same block of ceiling tiles above my head 20 times before they came to talk to me. There were questions, the sort designed to ascertain whether or not I would need surgery: when did this start? Is there any pain? Has this happened before? But they were asked with a quiet compassion and, from what I could see in the gentle brown eyes of the nurse, sadness.

Later, when I was back in that bed beside the now sedated woman with the pain that was a 10, I placed my palms on the blanket that was the same pale blue as the floors and wondered out loud but without tears just why my body would turn on me this way. There’d been things in the past; nights spent in hospital beds while my Dad paced outside the door and my Mum squeezed my hands and sent up whispered prayers but those times were in the past. They were in the past and they had always been managed. Moreover, I’d always been given a precise explanation to help me understand the cause of my body’s rebellion.

This time I was to make do with sometimes these things just happen and for me, that wasn’t enough.

The timing was atrocious; we’d called it quits only two days beforehand and before beginning the process of “getting over it”, there were decisions to be made. Who to tell, what to say, what exactly my story should be to my work colleagues who saw me carted off in the back of an ambulance. I weighed them again while I recounted the ceiling tiles and twisted the pale blue blanket in my hands and above all else, didn’t cry.

After being released, there would be halting explanations over the phone and holes punched in walls and the decision not to bother anyone else with the weight of it. There would be times when I’d catch myself thinking what if and set myself firmly back on the path of it’s all for the best, I suppose.

But before that, before any of it, there was the bed and the feeling of utter helplessness, the emptiness and the question asked quietly over cracked lips of how I was to first mourn and then accept the loss of something that I hadn’t even known was there. There was the futility of trying to claw back control of my rebellious body and all the while, there was the sun hanging in an azure sky and shining through the window and onto my skin.

Brother, the victor of this tale beside me.

Today’s Scintilla prompt:

Post a photo of yourself from before age 10. Write about what you remember of the day in the photo.

I’d like you all to take note of the Jheri curl and the heinous owl glasses. I would also like you to take note of the way I am smiling. Despite my unfortunate appearance, I am smiling and I mean it. By the end of the day these photos were snapped, my smile could be found floating somewhere in the Irish Sea.

On my sister’s 16th birthday, Mama T gathered the three of us up and drove us to the terminal so that we could make the four hour ferry trip across the water to see Papa T. Ferry travel was not new to us; it was how we made our way back and forth from the mainland and with the vast restaurant, free kids cinema and miles of polished hallways to explore, it was always a joy. You see that smile? That is the smile of a gullible 8 year-old emetophobe who has never experienced choppy seas and thinks that only Tom & Jerry and mounds of ketchup-soaked chips await her.

That day, we boarded the Lady of Man, one of the three ships that transported folk from the Isle to the mainland. It was not our preferred ship but that wasn’t enough to dampen any spirits as we parked the car in the hold and made our way up from the underbelly and out into a booth by the restaurant.

An hour into the journey, the sky darkened and it started to rain. I came in from the deck and shook water mixed with curl activator from my hair. I brushed raindrops from my favourite red jumper with the word Jules written on it in looping luminous green script (it came from one of Mama T’s best friend, Julie, who owned a clothes printing shop and unloaded all her unsold stock on us when she closed down.) I thought nothing of the gentle way the Lady began to sway. I took my seat between my sleeping sister and my golf-obsessed brother and read my book.

What we didn’t know was that we were sailing into one of the worst storms in years. What we didn’t know was that the sea would wrap its fingers around our ship and toss it around with the same kind of gleeful abandon you witness when a toddler encounters a small animal for the first time. What we didn’t know was that our captain would have to drop anchor so we could ride it out. And what I didn’t know was that everyone would get so fucking sick.

I have never in all my days been confronted with so much puke. There was no escaping it. Our fellow passengers heaved and retched around us, powerless to control themselves. To the left, a family balanced coke bottles full of it on their table and made apologetic faces at us. To the right, a father travelling with his infant son, struggled and failed to juggle him and the multiple overflowing sick bags. I remember raising my head long enough to see Mama T accept the stained little boy onto her lap so that the dad could get himself cleaned up. I remember watching him stagger down the hall only to be felled by an unseen pool of regurgitated carrot on the floor. I remember the tears pouring down my face as I battled to keep my food down – this was an emetphobe’s nightmare and I was living it in all its Technicolor glory complete with motherfucking Dolby digital surround sound. I remember that I only managed to offer my groaning sister an iota of sympathy that this was how she was spending her birthday before I took back my pity for myself.

The ship’s staff was dashed to the floor as they tried in vain to negotiate the decks. The storm chortled merrily in the faces of us all as it threw restaurant workers, cleaners and crèche workers into the walls and clear across the room to land painfully at the feet of the sickened passengers.

And I remember my brother.

When the announcement came that due to “current circumstances” the restaurant was now giving away all food for free, I felt him stir for the first time in the trip. Up until now, he’d had his nose buried in a golf magazine and I had envied him his iron stomach and serenity as the rest of us suffered. But now. Now that the prospect of free food was being dangled before him, it was time for action. Mama T placed a hand on his arm and beseeched him look around and see the bloodied face of the wait staff who had tried to clear plates from tables. He shook her off. The boy set his face like flint and silenced even my sister’s groaning and, as we watched, he crawled, then stood and braced himself against fallen suitcases, hand rails and walls and made his way into the restaurant.

Half an hour later, he was back with a wet jumper where his Fanta had been knocked from his hand by a particularly vicious wave, but victory stamped on each of his cheeks. He set down his plates of free food and proceeded to demolish all that was before him with the gusto of a person who knows he has triumphed over the odds and traversed a veritable ocean of vomit. Mama T looked on in awe. I saw pride flicker in her eyes before a fresh wave of nausea pushed my eyelids back down.

Six hours after we first boarded, I felt my Mum’s fingers, cool and reassuring on the back of my neck. She wiped the sweat from my face, and, with my sister on one arm and I on the other, led us through the ship – the state of which you can only fucking imagine – and back to the car. My brother suppressed a belch and beamed all the way to Papa T’s side.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with two of my favourite people in life, Kim and Dominique. They are witty, wonderful and hot and I love them. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

Answering the second of today’s pair of prompts from the Scintilla Project:

Given the chance again, I would have thumbed the last traces of blood from your lips and kissed you.

I would have slipped my hands inside your school blazer and made you drop your school bag and I would have left you standing on the sports field wondering where this girl, the one with the mischievous smile and the grazes on her knuckles had been all your life.

Because although I never told you, you were the stripe of yellow against the greyness of that particular year. And even though there were times when I could have sworn that everything I felt was blazing from my eyes and burning a path across the space between us, etching my devotion on your chest, superhero style, you never seemed to notice. Or at least if you did, it never tainted or tinged what we had.

I can count the reasons on my fingers of why I never went there: too shy, we’re platonic and that’s cool, bound to reject me but today the reasons that buttoned my lip seem ridiculous and were I gifted a do-over, I’d toss them over my shoulder for luck and lean in, eyes closed, lips parted, heart poised.

Maybe then, when you hooked your legs under mine during silent study and made my heart double back and stop, it would have meant something other than you wanting to get a closer look at the war wound on my knee and comment on the scar that it would leave. And perhaps, if you were lucky, I’d have traced your lips with the very tip of my tongue on the days we shunned the bus and chose to walk home instead. And, if everything went like it is supposed to when you summon the courage to kiss a boy with a too-long fringe, who broke the nose of a person that hurt you, I might not be the one that got away.

The same way that you are.

For illustration purposes ONLY, that thing there on my head is an igele and that on the right? Mama T’s Foodgasmic Jollof Rice with stewed beef. I know.

For today’s Scintilla post, I chose the first of the two prompts:

Many of our fondest memories are associated with food. Describe a memorable experience that took place while preparing or eating food.

Africans don’t really need an excuse for a party.

Passed your exams? Let’s roast a pig. Tied your shoelace? Break out the palm wine. Received your British passport? Kill the motherfucking fattened calf. And we make no bones about the fact that our celebrations revolve around food. We twitch in our seats at weddings as the scent of pepper soup laden with red snapper seeps through from the reception hall. We drift off during engagement speeches and imagine ourselves already at the buffet, plates piled high with puff puff, fried rice and oxtail stew. Like so many other things with us, when it comes to food, we use our entire bodies and leave our fucks to give littered somewhere underneath the buffet table.

When I am 12, I’m old enough to know how to make jollof rice and how after last time, I need to wear gloves when I am slicing scotch bonnet peppers. I also can’t find it in me to care. I want to spin 2Pac on my Discman and hover around the conversations of big bro and his friends wearing cycling shorts and an absence of shame. I have plans to change into jeans just before the party – we are celebrating someone’s promotion – recite lyrics to some of the tracks I have memorised and do it all before one of the adults catches on and smacks the words clean out of my mouth.

But Mama T is having none of it. She’s one of three mothers in charge of the culinary festivities and she’ll be damned if I roll up on her and bring shame to the family. I am dragged into the cavernous kitchen of the church hall and balanced on an auntie’s knee to have my scalp oiled and my hair braided. I am livid; there are boys to impress and girls to shade and neither can be done with hands wrist deep in my ‘fro.

But there is something that happens when you’re a kid and you’re in the middle of a group of smiling surrogate mothers. Multiple hands reach out to part your hair and plait the extensions (gold because you are young and devoid of sense) in. Chin chin and plantain chips and spoonfuls of ogbonos soup find their way to your mouth. Your cheeks are pinched at the same time your bra size is complimented and suddenly, you are both girl and young lady and the absolute centre of attention.

You clock the platters of salmon and the stacked plates and when you ask for a taste of okra stew and a cube or four of fried white yam, your aunties* rush to bring it to you. And because the room is full of the sound of ladles clinking against stock pots and the smell of frying crayfish and roasting chicken; because these women love each other like sisters and therefore love you like a daughter, their tongues are loosened and the conversation meant for adult ears alone starts to flow.

You see de man she for bring to Gloria? Nah, oyinbo. Handsome.

Wetin? She no get pikin for her ex?

Na so?

I no sabi, oh! I no dey for this wahala.

When a husband makes an unannounced and wholly unfortunate entrance, 20 pairs of eyes chase him out accompanied by laughed shouts of comot for road! He is smiling when he goes, a chicken drumstick in his hand. I see Mama T’s eyes slide to me. She nods only once, a sign not to repeat the info to which I have been privy and she pushes my golden braids off my forehead and tucks a piece of stewed beef inside my cheek.

These are the memories built around food but solidified by my culture.

By the time food is ready to be served, I have abandoned my jeans and have accepted the igele that another auntie has carefully tied around my head. Papa T bends down to kiss my face and asks if I’m hungry. I tell him no. I am full in more ways than one.

* Not so much aunties as “aunties.” Every woman is called an auntie in our culture because we’re badass like that.

Also, if you can guess what any of the pidgin means WITHOUT USING GOOGLE, I’ll…reward you in some manner to be determined.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with two of my favourite people in life, Kim and Dominique. They are witty, wonderful and hot and I love them. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

I chose the second of today’s Scintilla prompts:

When you have watched your brother return home day after day with torn and muddied school shirts and a nose that drips blood on the kitchen floor. When you naively think that it won’t happen to you; that younger kids aren’t so brutal; that they’ll pass you over for the kid with the limp or the one with the lisp; that being the only black face isn’t such a big deal; you’re just a person after all. When you are punched for the first time while the sound of a racial slur rings in your ears and later on, when your parents have patched you up and are in the other room crying, you sit with your brother and he wants to tell you it gets better but can’t.

Weeks later, you watch from the car while your mother walks your brother across the playground after school. He is still bloody and his shirt is still torn but he is triumphant. Later, you will listen to your parents discuss this, the day that he snapped and fought back and won and you will remember that you have fists. The next day, you use them. A switch has been flicked and it can’t be undone.

When you defy your parents and run to the beach with a boy that is out and out wrong for you. You listen to his pretty words and swan dive into his pretty eyes and upon meeting his lips, fancy yourself pretty too for a time. You will come away from that day with sand between your toes and caught in your hair and trip over lies to your father when he questions your whereabouts. Once in bed, you will turn events of the day over and over in your head while you turn the shitty piece of glass he told you was a gem in your fingers and you will tell yourself that you are in love. You are not. Love comes later. But this, this is the first time you lose yourself in a boy so much so that your parents to this day think you were roaming the shopping centre with your girlfriends. This is when you learn that love is a dangerous thing.

You are woken from Saturday morning sleep by keening. It is not yet light and the sound coming from across the hall frightens to you; causes your heart to breakdance in your chest. You are on your feet and at the door of your bedroom before you are fully awake. Following the sound into your parents’ bedroom, you see your father cradling your mother in his arms; her eyes are unseeing and she is gripping his shirt so hard it has torn. You are frozen with fear and look to your Dad for an explanation but he shakes his head. This is how you learn that your relatives can pass away and your parents are not superheroes but human beings whose hearts can break on a Saturday morning.

When her parents don’t allow you to keep any of her things and all you have left are messages in your inbox. When you have spent days trying to put yourself back together enough to go back to school but have to be excused from first lesson biology so you can go and cry in the toilets away from judgmental eyes. You dream of her every night for a month and hold conversations with her when you think nobody is listen. Your parents worry. Another month goes by and you accept it. You bundle up your emotions and tuck them out of sight and you realise that death is not just something that happens to “other people” but to your people too.

You are exhausted. Spent. Almost broken after months of fighting with your boyfriend, with your parents and with your bosses. Your best friend is gone and you miss her so much that it manifests in a physical ache in your gut. Your braids need re-doing and at home, your room is an unholy mess. When she is introduced to the team, you aren’t really paying that much attention. You catch snippets: “Canada” and “sister company” and “welcome.” She is assigned the seat next to you and for the first week, you don’t speak to each other. Then there is a conversation about True Blood and you find out she too has a blog and you look at each other for the first time and see it there: the beginnings of a friendship that you will hold close to your heart.

For today, I chose the following Scintilla13 prompt:

At the time, I was still young enough not to have registered her existing in any other role apart from that of my mother.

We’d travelled from the Isle; lugging a three-tier wedding cake in padded cardboard boxes across the Irish Sea. We’d journeyed by ferry, coach and finally train and I’d pressed my head against the window and watched half of England race by. Later, I’d rubbed frantically at the smear the grease from my jheri curl had left on the glass.

Mama T, parted the endless sea of her schedule and took the time to point out landmarks. She pulled me into her lap and let me sleep even as she re-iced rosettes and handed our tickets over to the inspector to be checked and stamped. We were on our way to London for a wedding in which I would be a flower girl. There was a pink dress and white patent shoes and the promise of staying up to the wee hours with adults who sipped champagne and forgot that there were kids around. My mother had spent over a week icing intricate whorls and loops onto the cake and I’d marvelled as she’d wrestled it and me onto luggage trolleys and into the bowels of the underground.

We ran into him at King’s Cross. He couldn’t have been much older than me but he carried a surplus of years in his eyes and in the way his shoulders stooped and his hand shook when he asked us for money. I in my pink taffeta and naivety stepped behind my mother and clung to her waist; wholly unused to seeing destitution on the swept streets and beaches of the Isle. He seemed resigned already, to being ignored, stepped over, forgotten. I saw it in the way he refused to meet our eyes and heard it in the lowness of his voice. I remember fixing my gaze on his hands; dirtied, bloodied, an entire world away from my own where each fingernail shone with pearlescent polish and the ring Mama T had said I could wear as long as I didn’t lose it.

There was some time before our train back and London was intoxicating in the way that only a child who has heard but not seen and lived can appreciate. I wanted to explore. I wanted to be lifted up to the payphone so I could call my auntie and tell her that I was in the city where she lived. I wanted to develop the photographs on the disposable camera in my bag so I could show my friends – brag a little and field their questions. I was already tugging on my Mum’s sleeve when I realised she was leaning down, taking the hand of this boy and helping him to his feet.

I stayed silent as she led us both to the high stools of a café bar; watched as she lifted first me and then him onto adjacent ones. I was young but not young enough not to notice the looks from the patrons; the sneers and the incredulity painted onto the faces of folk at neighbouring tables. I wore my embarrassment as palpably as the tulle around my knees. She ordered meals for the both of us and brushed my hair from my cheek when she told me she was heading to the bathroom and would be right back.

Be nice, she said.

But I wasn’t sure how. I opened my mouth to speak but the words froze at the back of my throat. It’s OK, he said and I felt my guilt pool in the space between us.

At that café table, I learned his name and his story; that his parents were elsewhere living their lives in a way that no longer included him. I understood that this station was the warmest and that a lot of the time, you wouldn’t be turfed out if you were reasonably neat, kept to yourself and didn’t “bother” people. I learned that he knew how to make £5 last a week. I also learned that my mother was a person who didn’t baulk at poverty; who washed the hands of a boy with no home and met the horrified stares of onlookers head-on, with a retort ready on her lips. I learned that she could empty her purse into the coat pockets of a stranger and buy plasters for his feet. I learned that she would fill a bag with food and drink, hand it over and spend a train ride thinking that this was not enough. I learned the capacity of my mother’s love for other people.

I still think about him from time to time. When I renew my direct debit to Shelter or drop coins into the palms of people on the street. I keep him in mind when I make an effort to be kinder or when I need to exercise some perspective when it comes to my own problems. I wonder where he is, what he is doing and what kind of man he grew up to be; whether or not he was given the chance to grow up at all.

And I wonder whether or not he remembers a woman and her seemingly mute little girl in a station in London, reminding him that there are still people who care enough to lift you onto a stool and take your hand in theirs.

For today, I chose the following Scintilla13 prompt:

Her name was Lisa.

She was in her final year at college; about to head off for university – Oxford no less – and she found me on an internet message board about Hip Hop of all things. We bonded over rapid-fire exchanges about Busta vs Ice Cube and NWA vs Run DMC and A Tribe Called Quest vs the world. When that wasn’t enough, we took it to MSN Messenger (yeesh, I feel about 112 writing that) and I sliced hours at my job in half by asking her which three CDs she’d take to a dessert island, who was better, Brandy or Monica.

I was missing my university best who’d shipped off back to her hometown pretty much as soon as she had her diploma in her hand. We’d spent a final night jamming to Marley and T.O.K in low light, glasses of vodka lemonade sweating down our wrists. She’d left a sister-shaped hole and while she could never be replaced, Lisa dutty-wined into that space and suddenly, it didn’t hurt so much.

In time, our conversations turned from the greatest rapper of all time (me: Jay-Z and 2Pac, she: Nas) to everyday things; she had a younger brother who crept into her bedroom and stole her underwear to use for embarrassment purposes. Her parents were the kind of in love that led to her pressing a pillow over her head at night to drown out the unwelcome sound of parental couplings. She pronounced it dah-tah and I teased her.

Lisa wore her hair in box braids and sported her contempt for the male species in the way her top lip curled. She was four years younger than me but acted like she was older. We late-night plotted about her heading over from Kent to see me. Don’t be sneaking out of college, now, I warned when she talked about skipping a day of classes, don’t get your ass and caught catch beats from your parents. She chuckled in a way that told me my warnings would go unheeded.

In person, she was tiny – a whip of a thing and her each of her braids was almost as big as her wrist. We spent time walking Oxford Street, hiding in storefronts when it started to rain. She blew her cigarette smoke into my face and I play-cursed her. She made me hold her hand when she got her nose pierced. I smooth-talked her parents into dispensing with punishment when I told them she was with me: a good Nigerian girl with a real job and Christian parents.

We sat on my bed and listened to De la Soul, LL cool J and Slum Village back to back. We argued about which was J Dilla’s best song. I schooled her on Al Green. In the end, we fell asleep listening to Common. She was imprinting herself on the clay of my life; leaving fingerprints wherever she touched. I asked her about her friends at college and she frowned from behind her hair. What about them? she challenged. I dropped it. Lisa was a tempest when she was pissed.

Visit number 8. She sweet-talked me into driving her back to Kent. It was a 90 minute drive and, because it was a day where the sky was so blue that it almost hurt to look at, I acquiesced.

I want to talk to you, Lisa said during the second track on Common’s Like Water for Chocolate. She turned down the music, bundled her braids up and put on her serious face. I want a girlfriend, she said.

She turned into an 18 year-old. She turned her eyes on me and asked in a voice that made me tighten my grip on the steering wheel if I’d consider being that girlfriend.

There’s no real easy way to break a heart. I told her I was flattered; told her she was a more than a few notches above important to me; promised her we would always be cool. She fixed her eyes on the road ahead. Said nothing. Turned Common up and blocked me out. I spent the drive re-evaluating our friendship. She wouldn’t talk to me. Not even when I stopped for petrol and bought her six Crème Eggs and tried to pull her into a hug.

She was out of the door and in her house before I had come to a complete stop in her street. She left her cigarettes, her Crème Eggs and the CD single of Common’s Come Close on my back seat.

On the drive back, it rained so hard that I pulled the car onto the hard shoulder and decided to sit it out. I unwrapped a Crème Egg, slipped the CD in and as Common talked to me and I talked back, I wondered if Lisa would drop out of my life. When the rain stopped, I stepped outside, stretched my legs and stood for a moment watching cars headlights cut swathes through the dusk.

She did leave my life. But not for this reason. We were friends for another couple of years before the girlfriend she eventually did get made her choose between us. We never spoke about that day in the car although sometimes I could hear the memory of it echoing in her voice. Sometimes when I Listen to Come Close, I will think of that drive home with the song on repeat and her cigarettes sitting in the back seat.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with two of my favourite people in life, Kim and Dominique. They are witty, wonderful and hot and I love them. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

1. To begin, spend six months to a year feeling your cheeks burn when a certain boy loops his arm around your shoulders. Sprinkle budding friendship with lashings of unrequited obsession. Scrawl his last name after your first in your geography exercise book and spend copious amounts of time thinking about what you will name your curly-haired, biracial, cherubic children.
2. Fervently deny accusations from peers that you are smitten. Conveniently “lose” your geography exercise book. Resolve to be less of a cretin around him and adopt quips and witty repartee to mask the pervading scent of your love and convince people that this is nothing but platonic. Fail. Entirely.
3. Apply balm to broken heart on receipt of knowledge that boy has entered into a relationship with what can only be described as a shrill succubus of a girl.
4. Spend next two months alternating between weeping into pillow and praying feverishly that the succubus’ hair will fall out. Do best to ignore boy. Fail. Entirely.
5. Whoop with ill-concealed Schadenfreude and joy when boy calls to inform you relationship has fallen to pieces. Remember yourself and reassure him that she was not good enough. Drum up the courage to tell him you have missed sitting next to him in French. Almost dissolve with excitement when he says “I’ve missed you. Full stop.”
6. Re-cover new geography book with extra-large transcriptions of your first name with his last.
7. Furnish self with Sweet Valley High books and Impulse body spray and think you know everything there is to know about romance and the minds of boys. Take this ignorance knowledge and a newfound confidence (brought about by tiny braids and new glasses) to the house of the boy.
8. Spend an hour being plied with Malibu and coke. Refuse a fifth glass only to be fixed with the gaze that makes your mind go blank and your legs turn to jelly. Be told “I’m still feeling sort of messed up. I just really need you to be here right now.” Accept glass despite mounting nausea. Mistake fear for excitement.
9. Listen to The Cardigans on repeat in his bedroom while fighting off the fug clouding your head. Smile wonkily when he lays a hand on your shoulder and asks if you are alright. Tell him you feel a little woozy. Place your complete trust in him when he suggests you lie down for a while on his plaid sheets.
10. Wake not too long after with your jeans and shirt unbuttoned, a stomach in knots and a boy who you thought was your friend poised to continue to take advantage of your prone form. Reach for something, anything with which to repel him. Alight on Roget’s Thesaurus and use force to propel thesaurus from bedside table to head of boy.
11. Run home with your stomach in your throat and you heart properly broken this time and left in pieces on the boy’s bedroom floor.
12. At front door, adopt what you hope is an expression of utter calm before entering house.
13. When your parents clap eyes on your tear-stained face and frantic eyes and rise to their feet to ask you ”what’s the matter? What happened?” tell them the biggest lie you have ever told: ”nothing.”
    ~

 

14. Spend two days absent from school feeling sick to your stomach. Talk yourself out of telling anyone because surely it was your fault; surely you had led him on. What did you think was going to happen? You deserved it.
15. Return to school and note almost immediately, the sidelong glances, the sniggers in the common room and the grins of people you don’t even talk to. Search the faces of your schoolmates for the boy and find him looking at you without a hint of remorse. Watch with incredulity as he turns away.
16. Spend a week or so being taunted in the worst possible way by the succubus – the way where a person talks about you like you are not standing a foot away from them. Listen to the lies being spun as the truth and say nothing, not even when she walks past and mutters a slur under her breath. Feel for the first time since it happened, the type of white hot rage you should have been feeling all this time. Choose to direct it at her.
17. During PE, sneak back to the changing rooms under the guise of using the bathroom. Locate her things and fill your gym bag with her uniform, her prized shoes and her mobile. Later, remember to keep your eyes down and feign ignorance when the hubbub starts: where are her things? Where did they go? She can’t leave the place looking like this!
18. Later, as you shun the bus to walk home, pause on the bridge over the canal and drop her things one by one into the brown water. Watch your tears follow.

I did tell the truth about this a lot later. Last year in fact after I wrote about it here. I didn’t realise how much it affected me until the boy showed up on Facebook years later and tried to be all “aww, wasn’t I a rascally youth, lulz.” No, sir, you were an asshole of the highest order and I wish nothing but herpes, pustules and misery on you. I struggled with the thoughts of not bothering to say anything because he didn’t manage to go “all the way” and isn’t that the only thing that counted? I’m dealing. My parents and friends have been amazing. I am mostly past what happened but sad that he thought his actions could be filed under “boys will be boys” and that there are countless other women and girls out there who go through similar or worse and can’t speak out for the same reasons I didn’t.

I also know that my revenge was pretty petty in the grand scheme of things and that my anger was misplaced. But, dude, that girl was a harridan and ruined my life for months after the fact so yeah, only the tiniest bit of remorse going on over here. HER FACE WAS PRICELESS.