The Art of Being Normal (26 page)

Essie takes my hand and we head downstairs. I trip on my dress on the bottom step and Leo has to jump up to steady me, but apart from that it’s a perfectly graceful descent.

‘You totally lied to me this afternoon,’ I say lightly.

‘I’ve had a lot of practice,’ Leo replies, one eyebrow raised.

We smile at each other.

‘You look nice,’ he says.

‘Honestly? I can’t decide whether I feel amazing or ridiculous.’

‘Go for the former.’

‘Thanks. You look nice too. It
suits
you. Get it?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘I do try. Hey, do you know where we’re going tonight?’

‘I might.’

‘But you’re not going to tell me, are you?’

‘Nope.’

Mum and Dad swoop in then, armed with a camera each, and make us pose for a series of photographs in the hallway. As they snap away, calling out instructions, I wonder what they’re thinking; whether they’re silently freaking out at sending their only son off to a phantom ball dressed up as girl. Whatever their feelings are, they’re keeping them well hidden, covered up with wild enthusiasm. Since telling them, their behaviour has been slightly hysterical, the two of them torn between acceptance and horror; trying to
make up for the horror bit with overt support. Only the other night I heard Mum crying again, Dad soothing her, so I get the feeling we still have a long way to go. But I love them for trying so hard, so much it makes my heart ache sometimes.

As we pose for my parents I notice instead of wearing smart shoes or high heels, all four of us are wearing trainers. I’m about to ask why when there’s a loud beep from outside. Essie runs into the living room and sticks her head under the curtains.

‘The limo’s here!’ she calls.

Leo frowns. ‘A limo, Essie, are you serious? You do remember where we’re going, don’t you?’

‘Oh relax, I couldn’t resist,’ Essie says, shooing him away. ‘C’mon, everyone, time to go!’

I’m the last to leave.

‘Be safe kiddo,’ Dad says, hugging me.

‘I will.’

Mum takes me in her arms then, hugging me close.

‘You look really wonderful,’ she whispers in my ear.

‘Thank you, Mum.’

We pull apart. Her eyes are all wet.

‘Now look after each other and have fun,’ she says, wiping her cheek with her sleeve. ‘That’s an order by the way!’

The limo is pink with leopard-print upholstery and flashing lights. It is the ugliest vehicle I have ever seen.

‘It’s so tacky! I adore it!’ Essie proclaims, sprawling over
the seats. ‘I asked the company for the most disgusting limo they had and they have not let me down!’

‘I feel like I’m in an incredibly low-rent music video,’ Felix murmurs, gingerly sliding in beside her.

Leo is still frowning. ‘We’re not meant to be drawing attention to ourselves, remember?’ he hisses.

‘So?’ Essie says, pouting.

‘I hate to say it, but I think Leo’s right,’ Felix says. ‘We’re going to stick out like a sore thumb in this thing.’

‘Can someone
please
tell me where we’re going?’ I ask.

Everyone ignores me.

Essie sighs. ‘How about we get out round the corner from the venue and do the last bit on foot?’

‘That’ll have to do,’ Leo says grimly.

As the limo creeps through the evening traffic, I try to narrow down our likely destination. We head out of Eden Park, on our way passing several limousines heading in the opposite direction, towards school.

‘Suckers!’ Essie yells out of the sunroof.

After that we head south through the city centre, then over the bridge. It’s only then it dawns on me where we’re going.

We’re heading for Cloverdale.

Leo guides the limo driver round the back of the estate, avoiding the main streets and dropping us off on the corner of Renton Road. Home of the old Cloverdale swimming baths. As Leo helps me climb out of the limo, I notice the queue of people snaking down the side of the fence. I begin
to feel nervous, holding on tight to Leo’s hand. He squeezes back.

‘Oh my God!’ Essie cries, grabbing Felix’s arm and jumping up and down. ‘People have come! They’ve actually come!’

As we move closer, I realise I recognise most of the people in the queue. There are a couple of girls from my textiles class, some emo kids from Year 11, a lesbian couple from Year 9 holding hands, a large group of goths, from Year 7 kids up to sixth formers. As we walk past them I can feel their eyes on me, their nudges and whispers tumbling down the line like dominoes. My legs feel like they’re made of paper.

‘I’ve got you,’ Leo whispers as he steers me towards the front of the queue.

We get there to find Amber holding a clipboard, her hair scraped back in a tight don’t-mess-with-me ponytail, accompanied by a burly boy wearing black who is introduced as her boyfriend, Carl.

‘AKA the muscle,’ Essie says, her eyes lingering on Carl’s arms.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask, as Essie turns to speak to Amber. ‘You keep saying “all will become clear”, but so far absolutely nothing is.’

‘Just trust us,’ Felix says.

I glance at Leo.

‘What he said,’ he adds.

Essie gives Carl the nod. He pulls aside the loose fence panel. Essie bangs the fence three times with her elbow. The crowd quiets down.

‘I now declare the very first Alternative Eden Park Christmas Ball open!’ she yells to polite applause.

I don’t have chance to ask any questions because I’m then being pushed down on my hands and knees. One by one we crawl through the hole which has been carefully lined with plastic sheeting. Once through the hole and standing upright again, I can see the route to the baths has been lit with hundreds of tea lights in jam jars. We follow it up in to the foyer where there are more lights, guiding us towards the pool itself. The four of us lead the way, the excited murmurs of our classmates humming behind us.

‘How did you get all these people here?’ I ask, glancing behind me.

‘We just conducted a rather militant underground advertising campaign,’ Felix says casually.

‘Consisting of what?’

‘Oh, it was very easy,’ Essie says. ‘The second Leo described this place we knew we had a venue. We then simply gave people an alternative; spend another Christmas Ball hating the human race and all it stands for, or have some fun for a change and come to this one instead.’

As we get closer I realise I can hear music.

‘Is that a DJ?’ I ask.

‘It might be,’ Felix says, his face twitching.

As we turn the corner on to the poolside, I can’t help but let out a gasp. Because it looks amazing. There are more lights, as well as white balloons and silver streamers everywhere. Plus, suspended from the top diving board, there’s
a slowly turning disco ball, casting millions of dots of light around the space.

‘This is what you were doing,’ I say, ‘this afternoon.’

‘And last night. And the night before that,’ Essie says. ‘Getting a generator in here was no picnic, you know.’

At the other end of the pool, near the shallow end, there are proper decks blasting music out of a set of massive speakers. The DJ himself looks suspiciously like one of Felix’s older brothers.

‘Felix, is that Nick?’ I ask, squinting at the slight figure behind the decks.

‘It is.’

‘He doesn’t mind DJing a high school ball?’

Felix turns to me, his face grave.

‘I won’t lie to you, I’ve promised to be his slave for the duration of Christmas Day in return.’

I look at the three of them; their faces aglow from the flickering candles dotted everywhere.

‘I can’t believe you’ve gone to all this trouble,’ I say, ‘just for me.’

I can feel myself welling up for about the fifth time this evening.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ Essie cries. ‘You are not crying tonight. It’s not allowed, for one thing it will totally ruin your make-up. And for another, your emotion is misplaced; it’s not just for you. Take a look around.’

I do as I’m told. Gradually the bottom of the pool, for tonight re-christened the dance floor, is filling up with awestruck kids; the oddballs of Eden Park High. But then I
realise it’s not just the goths and the emos and the nerds out there on the slippery surface. There are other kids out there too, kids I’ve always dismissed as normal, kids who I never dreamed would choose a ball in an abandoned swimming pool in Cloverdale over Harry Beaumont’s snow machine extravaganza.

Nick begins to play a Bruno Mars song.

‘Come on,’ Essie says, ‘let’s dance.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, planting my feet firmly on the ground.

I can’t forget the fact I’m here as a girl, as Kate. And down on the dance floor are a ton of kids whose reaction to my appearance I have yet to properly gauge.

‘Go,’ Leo whispers in my ear. I hesitate before letting Essie guide me towards the ladder. We clamber down on to the dance floor, the surface of which slopes gently downwards towards the deep end.

‘I get the Converse now,’ I say, nodding down at my feet.

‘See, I told you all would become clear,’ she says, grinning, pulling me into the centre.

As the chorus kicks in I can feel people looking at me. Essie immediately begins to dance, flinging her arms in the air and singing along. But I’m rooted to the spot, too afraid to make any sudden movements. Even though Leo has paved the way at school in some respects, I’m still a boy in a dress to most people; David Piper in drag.

Essie grabs hold of my hands.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, shaking them.

‘I don’t think I can do this, Ess, everyone’s looking.’

She yells something I don’t catch over the music.

‘What?’ I yell back.

‘Dance like no one is watching!’ she shouts in my ear. ‘Pretend it’s just you and me!’

I shut my eyes for a second and try to imagine it’s just Essie and me dancing around her bedroom. I begin to move, just my arms at first, slowly introducing the rest of my body. After twenty seconds I dare to open my eyes and although half of the kids on the dance floor are still gawping at me, I manage to more or less block them out for the rest of the song, just concentrating on my mad best friend’s grinning face as she bounces up and down in front of me.

We’ve danced to a couple of songs and I’m almost in the swing of things when I hear it.

‘Freak Show.’

I look over my shoulder, but the dance floor is crowded and I can’t work out where it came from, I stop dancing.

‘You OK?’ Essie asks, tugging at my arm.

I nod. But I’m not OK. This is too much too soon. I try to keep moving but my limbs feel heavy and clumsy.

The next time I hear it clearly. I spin round. A group of kids from the year below are standing in a semicircle, staring at me, their lips curled in disgust.

‘Tranny,’ one of them says.

The others dissolve into giggles.

‘Yeah, are you like a drag queen?’ another asks.

Leo appears as if from nowhere and cuts them off.

‘Piss off, why don’t you. If you can’t be cool then you may as well go to the other ball.’

‘Yeah,’ Essie chimes in. ‘If you’ve got a problem with anything you see, then you’re not wanted here.’

‘Well?’ Leo growls. ‘Got anything more to say?’

The Year 9 kids look at one another before wandering off, throwing us dirty glances over their shoulders.

‘Idiots,’ Essie mutters. ‘You OK?’

‘Fine,’ I say, although I’m shaking.

‘Thanks,’ I murmur to Leo, as the next song kicks in.

He shrugs.

‘Is it always going to be like this?’ I ask.

‘For a while, yeah. But it’ll get better, I promise, it already has for me. And this comes from someone with a bit of experience.’

I nod gratefully, relieved to find I’ve stopped trembling.

As Felix joins us we start to dance again and Leo surprises me by not being all that bad a dancer, although he does bow out of some of Essie’s more outrageous dance move suggestions. We dance to song after song and slowly I look around to find fewer kids are staring at me; they’re too busy dancing themselves. Our dance circle slowly expands until I find I’m dancing alongside kids I’ve never even spoken to before.

At one point I’m conscious of Simon Allen shuffling about beside me, still smelling distinctly of plasticine despite wearing what appears to be a hired tuxedo.

‘Hey, Simon,’ I say.

‘Hey,’ he replies. ‘Look, I, er, just wanted to say, I think you’ve got proper balls.’

The second the words leave his mouth, he goes bright red, like tomato red.

‘Oh my God, sorry, bad choice of words,’ he stammers. ‘What I mean is, I think you’re really, really brave.’

I’m a little taken aback. In all our years of sitting next to each other in form room, Simon and I have barely spoken. There’s always been this non-verbal agreement between us that associating with each other may draw unwanted attention to our individual oddness.

‘Thank you, Simon,’ I say. ‘I really appreciate you saying that.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he mutters, looking at his feet before turning to shuffle off again.

‘Wait,’ I say.

He turns, his face still pink.

‘Dance with us?’

He hesitates before nodding, and ends up staying for another two songs.

Nick has been instructed to play as many requests as possible, so the music lurches from rock to pop to punk to folk.

‘Wanna drink?’ Leo asks when a particularly obscure goth rock song starts to play.

‘Good idea.’

We sit on the edge of the pool with cans of Coke, watching our classmates dance below us. A group of Year 7 kids are staring up at us, their mouths hanging open.

‘Just block them out,’ Leo instructs, as if he can read my mind.

‘Is it weird?’ I ask after a few seconds. ‘Having your special place invaded like this?’

I can hardly believe this is the same space Leo and I spent that freezing cold evening, sitting on what is now a dance floor teeming with kids.

‘A bit,’ Leo admits. ‘Not that it’s going to be mine for much longer. They’re bulldozing it in the New Year.’

‘No way?’

‘Yup. They’re going to flatten it to the ground,’ he takes a long sip of Coke. ‘Nah, it’s good it’s going out in style.’