She nodded.
‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Our first date.’
She snorted and then covered her mouth.
I hadn’t seen Jennifer in her normal clothes before. She had a quirky style: bell-bottom-type jeans with colourful patches sewn onto them. In the awkward silence that was settling between us I found myself staring at those patches; one of them was a sunflower with a smiling face wearing a pair of sunglasses. It was as if it was the actual sun on a stalk growing out of the ground. Another, on her other leg, was a little rowboat with a goldfish onboard looking exhausted with a wooden paddle in each fin. She wore a red checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a brown corduroy bucket hat on her head with her hair loose around her face. She smelt of something like lavender.
I was wearing my baggy jeans and surfboard T-shirt. I’ve never been surfing but I like the style.
‘I got you this,’ Jennifer said, handing me a folded pouch of red tissue paper. ‘It’s nothing much, just a little thing.’
It was a braided bracelet, green and blue.
‘My favourite colours,’ I said. ‘Did you make it?’
‘Yeah, just something to mark the end of an era, I have the same, see?’ she said, holding her wrist up to show me.
‘I love it,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been given a friendship bracelet before.’
Her eyes snapped to me, her face flushed red, and she flicked her hair.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d like the colours and everything so … I’m glad you do.’ She spoke as if she had something to swallow but didn’t. ‘Here, I’ll tie it on for you.’
She took my hand onto her lap, turned it palm up and tied the bracelet tightly in a double knot.
‘Is it next week you and your folks are off to Prague?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, Friday, so I’ll be here for your birthday, I warned them about that ages ago.’
I realised my hand was still on Jennifer’s lap. I turned it over to rest palm down and when Jennifer glanced at it I took it away.
‘You’re so nervous about stuff like that, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Just, I don’t know, close stuff.’
No one had ever said that kind of thing to me before and I didn’t have an answer for it.
‘It’s not a bad thing,’ she said, ‘I just noticed, obviously.’
Again, I didn’t have any words.
She laughed.
‘You’re so cute when you go all red and all embarrassed.’
‘I’m not … wait, you’re the one that goes all red when you’re embarrassed!’
‘I totally do! And I’m probably red right now?’
She was.
‘Anyway,’ she said, putting the backs of her hands to her cheeks as if that would help take the redness away, ‘let’s stop embarrassing each other – your birthday, you ready?’
‘To turn seventeen?’
‘No, well, yeah, but is the driving test not still going ahead that day? You’ve a lot going on with Ronan, so …’
