Pretty on the Inside, Fee Johnstone

The smoke from Jamie’s rollup entombed us, sealing us off from the rest of the world. It nipped my eyes and made me wheeze but I didn’t refuse the one offered to me. I tucked in my lips to hold it steady while Jamie leaned closer to light me up, floppy hair obscuring one eye. The twinkle of the exposed eye made my insides twinkle. This surprised me as I had never thought about what nestled under my little pouch of belly fat and if I had, I’d have pictured it hollow, like the torso of a shop mannequin. But now, I could feel something there – a swirling then a rushing that crept down my thighs and made me feel weird.

     I averted my gaze quickly, lest my face betray what was happening inside me. I suppressed the urge to cough as Jamie chatted about the book which rested on the coffee-stained Formica table. The Dice Man sounded infinitely cooler than The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole which was hiding in my schoolbag. Thankfully, Jamie didn’t ask the dreaded ‘What are you reading?’ question and I was free to listen and dream of that velvety brown hair tickling my face. I hadn’t paid much attention to Jamie before, likely because we inhabited different worlds: one of us was wore Dr Martens and listened to Pearl Jam and Hole while the other shopped at C&A and listened to Wet Wet Wet.

     I thought I had gotten away with my impersonation of someone cool when a shrill voice penetrated our hazy cocoon.

     ‘Jen! What are you doing? You don’t even smoke! You look so stupid!’

     My acne throbbed as my face flushed and I became acutely aware of my unfashionable glasses and ridiculous ‘Forever Friends’ pendant that hung around my neck. In that moment of shame, I’d never hated anyone more than John, Jamie’s idiot younger brother, who also happened to be my boyfriend.

     I didn’t look at either of them and stormed out of the cafe leaving a trail of mortification and Fuzzy Peach in my wake.

                                                                                           ***

     I was supposed to go to John’s to do homework but I didn’t want to. Not just because he’d embarrassed me, but because I needed to be by myself, to make that scary trip inside my head and digest what had just happened in the doldrums of The Baker’s Oven.

     I stopped off at the library but instead of heading to the Young Adult section for my usual Point Horror fix, I ventured to the Audio Department. I was usually content with taping the charts off the radio so flipping through cassettes of unknown bands was new and exciting. I found what I was looking for sandwiched between Hipsway and The HolliesHole. What a strange name for a band.

     When I got home, I closed myself in my bedroom, plugged dad’s giant Phillips headphones into my Walkman, got under my duvet and pressed play. The rough guitars and the raspy female voice yelling about being a teenage whore startled me for I was far more accustomed to the likes of Mariah Carey searching for her Dreamlover but I didn’t turn it off. I imagined Jamie listening to it at the same time and I replayed our brief liaison. My imaginings gathered moss until the two of us were lying entwined under an old oak, twiddling each other’s hair and smoking baggy rollups.

     The twinkling in my tummy intensified and I knew that I was no longer hollow. Were I to peel back my flesh and peek inside, I’d find something pretty that would light up the room.

                                                                                           ***

     From then on, I spent as much time as possible with John in a bid to get closer to Jamie. I made excuses to pop over to his house most evenings and arrived with my Walkman blaring Nirvana’s Love Buzz in the hope Jamie would answer the door and think about my love buzz. Of course, Jamie was always at some gig or other but those new feelings in my tummy kept me hopeful.

     With all the time I was choosing to spend with him it was no wonder John thought our relationship was progressing. As a lanky streak of hormones, he often tried to up the pace. Every time his callused hands strayed towards unchartered territory I made my excuses to leave because I felt nothing except disgust. But I kept coming around because if gave him up, there was no chance I’d see Jamie.

     In a bid to be noticed, I changed my style, mimicking that of Jamie – second-hand army jacket that stunk of must, Dr Marten boots in purple and long-sleeved band T-shirts with thumbholes cut into the cuffs. John, always eager to please, tried to evolve with me but he just wasn’t the right fit for combat trousers, or, for me.

     One evening, the moment I’d been waiting for happened: an open bedroom door with Mudhoney playing was an opportunity to make conversation. I’d taken one of their albums out of the library not two days previously, having seen one of their posters in Jamie’s room.

     ‘Come sit with me for a bit,’ Jamie said and held my gaze so long that it made my legs wiggle.

     I sat on the bed and dared not make eye contact again as we discussed what made Patty Schemel from Hole such an enviable drummer.

     By ‘discussed’ I mean I nodded emphatically at the appropriate moments and tried to keep my face from stretching into a dorky grin because I was finally being noticed.   

     ‘Oh here you are! I thought you’d been in the toilet an awful long time,’ said John plonking himself onto the bed.

     He did not just say that. I wished for him to be sucked into a dark abyss, slowly and painfully. But in making himself comfortable, he forced me closer to Jamie and he was redeemed.

     The faint smell of coconut mingled with patchouli from that floppy hair surprised me because all of Jamie’s grungey crew looked like they needed hosed down with shower gel. I was transported to a Lilt advert and didn’t immediately register that I was being spoken to.

     ‘Kat? Hellllo?’ Jamie waved a hand in front of my face.

     ‘Oh, sorry, I was somewhere else,’ I faltered.

     ‘So I saw. I was asking if you want to come to a gig tomorrow night?’

     ‘With you? Yes! Of course I will!’ I as good as shouted. There was no suppressing the dorky grin now.

     ‘Well, I mean, John too of course. If you fancy it, John?’

     ‘Yeah, I guess so. Don’t think we’ve anything better on tomorrow,’ he shrugged.

     I resisted the urge to simultaneously punch John and hug Jamie then ran all the way home.

                                                                                           ***

     I didn’t sleep that night but it turned out not to be excitement that fuelled my insomnia: it was confusion. 

     Was it a date? No, of course not, John was invited too.  But why ask me at all?  Were my feelings reciprocated? Should I make a move? Would my friends laugh at me?  Well that was a joke – I had barely any friends left because I’d shut them all out. I couldn’t talk to them about this so I had closed myself off to them and eventually, most had given up on me.  I hadn’t even cared until now.

     The questions whirled around my head until I thought I would vomit and for the first time in months, I sought Teddy and cried into his tatty head. I wished to go back to the time before I met Jamie, before these secret feelings when light-up LA Gears and Marti Pellow were enough to make me happy.

                                                                                           ***

     I was so tired the next day that by the time school was finished I didn’t know how I’d manage the gig but I had to go. I had to know.  I fixed myself a caffeine bomb, something I’d heard Jamie talking about: six teaspoons of Nescafe and an equal amount of sugar. Each mouthful of the tarry solution burned through my somnolence but I was ready, the anxiety of the previous night having been swallowed way, way down.

     I’d never been to a gig before and the stink of the unwashed grossed me out.  There were so many people jumping around, their long tendrils of matted hair whipping in all directions. I felt hemmed in and the caffeine rendered me jittery and paranoid. Everyone was looking at me, they must know which means Jamie must know.

     That Jamie didn’t seem interested in John and me only exacerbated my feelings and while John was having a great time drinking his first Snakebite, I thought I was going to die. My heart ached and I couldn’t get breath. Everyone was still staring and the words John spoke were gobbledygook so I ran, pushing through the mass of moshers to get as far away from this as possible. 

     I slumped in a doorway. Months of secrecy and confusion had taken their toll. My insides were no longer pretty; they were diseased. I wanted to claw them out and throw them into the mosh pit to be stamped on until they were nothing more than a bloody pulp.

     Salt trickled into my mouth from tears I didn’t know were falling and I hugged my knees to my chest, wishing someone were here to hold me. But then came the light brushing of fingers on my cheeks, wiping delicately at the flow of emotion. I hadn’t known John to be so tender and for the first time I felt guilty for my feelings. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I really did want to like him but words did not form. I just wept until the person crouching over me took my head and cradled it into their itchy woollen jumper. I sniffed, releasing the blockage in my nose and at once, my scent receptors trembled back to life. I’d expected the whiff of John’s hair, that murky aroma of unchanged beds, but instead it was coconut that wove up through my nostrils and down through my viscera reigniting the sparkles. Jamie pulled me into her tropical embrace and kissed the top of my head.

     The warm lips pressed to my head told me everything I needed to know – that I was pretty on the inside.


Pretty on the Inside has been previously published in Crab Fat Magazine.

© Fee Johnstone

Fee Johnstone currently resided in Scotland and has had a few stories published in independent anthologies and zines. She is happiest when writing to the soundtrack of her two snoring cats.
Twitter handle: @missfeeee

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