Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 120326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Sasha laughs down the phone line. “Yeah, Liz said Fiona's been talking about how worried she is for you to be going over to the ‘big smoke.’ Just an FYI, she's planning on giving you a rape alarm before you leave.”
“She is not!” God, my mum can be such a nutter at times. You'd think I was twelve instead of twenty-two by the way she carries on. She's a policewoman, so you could say she's more aware of the dangers that are out there than most. Not very many little girls have mothers who teach them self-defence from the age of five, but I did.
“She so is. Liz told me all about it when she phoned the other day.”
Sasha likes to call her mum by her first name. I've always found it kind of odd, but hey, each to their own. My and Sasha's mothers are best friends. It's something that gives us an extra-strong bond. Our two bungalows sit side by side along the coast, in a little village called Gormanston, where you will find approximately two pub/restaurants, one boarding school, a train station, a tiny grocery shop, and an army barracks. The latter makes it an eclectic mix. I’m not a stranger to seeing men in uniform hanging around – winkety wink.
Okay, so I’m also not a stranger to scurrying by like a jittery little lamb when I see them, either.
Liz and my mum get along like a house on fire, since they are both whole-heartedly disillusioned with men. Liz had Alan to disillusion her and my mum had my dad, who left us when I was five and my mother had just become pregnant with Alison, never to be seen again. I can't count the number of times I've heard the phrase “who needs a man” bandied about over the years.
Perhaps this is why I've never had much experience with men. My mother is so negative about them in general that it makes me fear them. Not to mention that ever since I turned sixteen she’s told me horror stories about the crime scenes she's been on – the rapes in particular.
She hasn't really got a filter that tells her what you should and shouldn’t tell your teenage daughter. And when it comes to what will and will not scar said daughter for life. It’s no wonder that thoughts of being with a guy make me break out in a cold sweat. Well, that and the fact that Robert was the first boy I ever found appealing. Unfortunately, he took my blossoming crush and stomped it into the ground.
I'm what you would call a defiantly shy person. In other words, I try my hardest to fight past the shyness and be confident. To speak my mind even when it's almost torturous to do so. I don't want to let the bitch rule me, but most of the time it's like I live inside a tortoise shell, physically incapable of being free. Sometimes I think it was Robert's antagonism that made me this way. He bullied me constantly, and I was constantly trying my hardest to show him I was immune to it, when really I was dying inside.
Well…I suppose some of the shyness is just naturally a part of my personality, but I’m sure he contributed a little bit.
Just thinking about him brings on a bad memory. I was thirteen years old, and Robert was fifteen. He knew I liked him, and he decided he'd have a little bit of fun with me. The three of us had been hanging out in Sasha's bedroom, because Sasha was sick with an ear infection. When she went into the bathroom so that her mum could give her some medicine, I was left alone in the room with Robert.
I wasn't as wise back then as I am now. Even though Robert would call me names every chance he got, I was still (secretly) madly enamoured with him. When you're a young girl, you tend to like a boy even more so when he's mean to you. It's one of those unexplainable sicknesses of the mind.
Robert patted the place beside him on Sasha's bed, and told me to come and sit down. I did as he requested. He placed his hand on my thigh and asked me if I was nervous. I shook my head, my heart beating wildly in my chest. He continued moving his hand up my thigh and leaned his lips in close to my ear. I let out a tiny gasp just before he whispered to me, “You, Lana, are the ugliest girl I have ever laid my eyes on.” Then he pulled away and began laughing uproariously.
I know what most people would be thinking: the little fucking shithead. That's not what I thought at the time, though. At the time I told him to piss off, held in my tears, ran from the house, and locked myself up in my bedroom, where I cried for days. I was so easily upset as a kid, hyper sensitive to the tiniest little thing.
This is just one example of hundreds of others. It's strange how the people who end up in your life can shape you for the worst.
I've managed to grow up and gain confidence without him in my life these past six years. I'm actually unsure as to whether I should be going to London for the summer to live with his sister at all, because I'm inevitably going to run into him at some point. The problem is, Robert is and always will be my “look how great my life is now” person. You know, that one individual from your past who you really want to run into when you're looking drop-dead gorgeous, just to show them how much better than them you really are.
I know, it's irrational and foolish, but I want Robert to see me now with my clear alabaster complexion and my hourglass figure. I want him to know that despite him always telling me I was stupid and ugly, I'm now an attractive grown woman, about to start my doctorate after receiving first class honours in my degree and my masters.