Chapter One

Notes from the Teenage Underground

Simmone Howell

Things I love about the National Gallery: 

 – how on the outside it looks like a big public toilet block but inside it’s full of treasure; 

 – how running my hand along the water wall at the entrance makes me feel five years old and daring; 

 – how gallery-goers are either looking to get lost or pretending that they’re not; 

 – how in the Great Hall, when the sun shoots through the stained glass ceiling, lost or not, people’s faces take on rainbows.

On the day of the gallery excursion, me, Lo and Mira had met early at HQ, the disused junior school toilet block. Escape from school and our backwater suburb, no matter how brief, required prep work. We passed around our artillery: cigarettes, mascara and hot mocha lip tint, all the while teeming with the prospect of the city. We were late for the bus, but that was to be expected. As we walked up with our arms linked and attitudes on full beam, I thought, Moments like these are the best. Me, Lo and Mira were like the good things that came in threes: wishes, kings, back-up singers. But we could be bad too. We climbed aboard the bus. Bliss Dartford – miss priss popularity – sang out ‘Here come the frrrreaks!’ and the sucker peers stirred and snickered but this just confirmed what we already knew: we were cool, unique, original. Everybody else was barcode.

At the gallery, we checked our bags and dragged along with the group, past Greek urns, Dutch masters and Royal turds, into the moderns. Our gender-trauma art teacher Barry ‘Boobs’ Polson had us all camp before a painting with our notebooks open.

‘Think about what you see,’ he instructed. ‘Write it down.’

The painting was completely and utterly black. It made me think of night-time. I wondered if there was anything underneath its shiny surface. Things impressionable young girls shouldn’t be looking at. I wrote in my notebook: Surface and Underneath.

I felt my face. Beneath the frizz and lippy I looked like a normal seventeen-year-old. Brown eyes, brown hair, combination skin. I was meant for bigger things. My mother, Bev, named me after her favourite feminist, Germaine Greer. My namesake was brave and audacious, a sexual libertine and an authority on Shakespeare. Um...much to live up to? If she was an icon I was a clod. I could be boastful and call myself an authority on film, but there was no getting around my virginity. Bev insists that all smart girls have an inner Greer. I pictured mine asleep under a rock, or a kidney stone. She wasn’t likely to crawl out any time soon.

I wrote in my notebook: Everything and Nothing.

I looked up. A couple of nerdburgers had their heads down, scribbling away, but the rest of the class were passing notes or looking around the room, distracted. Boobs saw none of this. He was staring into the black, transfixed. He didn’t even notice when Lo stuck me in the ribs and whispered, ‘Let’s go.’

Minutes later, the three of us were sitting on the grass in the sculpture garden, half hidden by a Henry Moore, sharing cigarettes and cashews, and dreaming aloud.

Mira took her shoes and socks off. She stretched her legs out and inspected them. There was a line on her upper thigh where she’d stopped shaving. ‘God,’ she said. ‘Check me out.’

‘You’re European,’ I stated. ‘If we lived there we could spend our summer sleeping on the Riviera beaches. You wouldn’t even have to shave.’

Lo said, ‘Get thee to a depilatory.’

‘We could burn up Florence with scooter boys,’ I continued. ‘After dark we could dance barefoot in nightclubs, wearing only sheer green shifts with gold jewellery.’

‘Ha!’ Mira smiled.

But Lo had had enough of my reverie. She nabbed my cigarette and took a drag. ‘I’m bored.’

‘You’re always bored,’ I said.

Lo played the sullen blonde from her purple toenails to her cig-smoky halo. Lo has talents. She is quick and merciless and she has perfected the art of looking put-upon. This makes people take her seriously.

She settled back on her elbows. ‘Summer lies before us like a . . .’ She snapped her fingers, searching.

‘Blank canvas?’ I supplied.

‘Exactly. We need a project.’

‘Well, it’s that time of year,’ I said. ‘Are we still going to have a theme?’

‘Of course,’ Lo snapped. ‘And goals and guides. But whatever the theme is, it has to be significant.’

‘Significant how?’ Mira asked.

Mira’s secretary specs make her look bookish but her mouth always gives her away. Her lips have a life of their own. They remind me of that famous painting – Man Ray’s kiss floating in the clouds. They can be floppy, foolish, soft or sultry; it depends on what she’s saying. Now she was pouting. ‘I thought this summer was going to be about boys.’

‘Boys, sure,’ Lo didn’t blink. ‘Boho boys. Dangerous boys. Boys-without-barcodes.’

‘Do they exist?’ I asked.

Ninety per cent of the male population are barcode boys, mass-market items, straight off the production line. Barcode boys are irrefutably blah. Definitely not wish-list candidates. The only thing they’re good for is practice.

‘Forget about the boys!’ Lo snapped again. ‘Think about the theme. God. How did you two ever manage without me?’

Mira and I shared a quick grin. We shrugged, and said in unison, ‘We didn’t.’