Dearest Kit

Chapter Twenty Two

   “Fucking hell, I want your life,” Jimmy pulled open the front door to his house and greeted me in rather an unorthodox way, pushing his hair back off his face and waiting in the doorway until I said something in response. 

   “Umm,” I raised an eyebrow, twitching my upper lip, “thanks?” I offered, although I wasn’t sure what to say at all. He stepped aside so I could go in, out of the cold, and kick off my boots, following Jim up the steep set of stairs and into his bedroom. 

   It was a fairly small room, a single bed pushed up against one wall with clothes and books and CD cases piled up all over the floor. He had Indie band posters stuck up over the cream coloured walls, peeling at the edges where the blue tac had begun to wear out. I hand’t been here for a while, since we were about seven or eight, but I liked the fact I had someone to talk to who didn’t go to my school and wasn’t really friends with any of my friends. 

   “I want to date Christopher Ainsworth,” Jimmy sighed, sitting cross legged on the floor as I perched on the edge of his bed, removing my acoustic guitar from it’s case and giggling. 

   “You can have him after me,” I offered, “sloppy seconds.” 

   “I’ll take sloppy seconds if it’s Christopher fucking Ainsworth,” Jim shrugged, starting to mess around with some riffs after plugging his guitar into a small amp. “I want to be flown over to LA and stay in his London apartment and go to premieres in designer clothes.”

   “We’ll get there,” I assured him, “as us, as The Lost Boys.” 

   “You think that?” Jimmy asked supposedly and I just nodded, smiling to myself as I tuned up. “Would you be willing to give everything up to try it?” He wondered. 

   “What’s everything?” 

   “Your education, a steady career, your brain?” He queried, his voice becoming increasingly more high pitched and dramatic. 

   “Well, Jimmy,” I started, “I would hope I wouldn’t be required to give up my brain?” 

   “You know what I mean,” he said scathingly. “Would you drop university and all that academic shit and jump into the band; would you take the chance?” 

   “I think I would,” I said, for the first time out loud. “If it means having the possibility of doing the thing I love as a job, then yeah, why the hell not,” I sighed, laughing softly. “Would you?” I returned the question hopefully. 

   “Whatever else am I going to do with my life?” He chuckled. “When do you go back to college, Monday?” 

   “Yeah,” I said disappointedly. “I’d rather stay off, do music with you, but I feel I ought to at least finish off my A-Levels, then I’ll have something to my name.”

   “Are you not enjoying it?” He frowned. 

   “I am!” I replied quickly, “But,” I stopped then and groaned, clenching my jaw, “there are a few people who are starting to get on my nerves and being around them all day every day becomes very taxing sometimes.” 

   “Talk to me,” Jimmy put down his instrument and came and sat next to me on the bed, leaning forward attentively. 

   “There are these two girls in my class, Sacha and Beth?” I explained, “You might have met them before?” 

   “I know who you mean,” he said slowly, apprehensively. 

   “Well, me and Sacha were best friends a few years ago, like best, best friends, inseparable,” I started, standing my guitar up against the bed and hugging my knees to my chest. “And then, her and Beth started getting closer, and me and Beth had always been close too. Suddenly, it was all about going to parties and meeting boys and getting drunk and they didn’t care about me or our other friends or the fact that they were becoming ignorant and irritating,” I blurted out, stopping in order to catch my breath again. “They were being oblivious, and I finally decided that I couldn’t deal with them, I would just have to ignore it, and pretend it didn’t bother me.”