Free Slam by Nick Hornby

always felt like a holiday, the time with Alicia, and the holiday would come to an end, and we’d still be girlfriend and boyfriend but we’d have a life as well. As it turned out, when the holiday ended, we ended too. It was a holiday romance, ha ha.
    Anyway, I came in from skating one afternoon and Mum said, “Have you got time for something to eat before you go over to Alicia’s?” And I said, “Yeah, OK.” And then I said, “Actually, I’m not going over to Alicia’s tonight.” And Mum said, “Oh. Because you didn’t go last night either, did you?” And I said, “Didn’t I? I can’t remember.” Which was a bit pathetic, really. For some reason, I didn’t want her to know that things with Alicia were different. She’d have been pleased, and I didn’t want that.
    â€œStill going strong?” she said.
    â€œOh, yeah. Pretty strong. I mean, not as strong, because we wanted to get some schoolwork done and stuff like that. But, yeah. Strong.”
    â€œSo, strong, then,” she said. “Not, you know. Weak.”
    â€œNot weak, no. Not…”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWeak.”
    â€œSo you were just going to say the same thing twice?”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œYou were just going to say ‘Not weak. Not weak.’”
    â€œI suppose so, yeah. Stupid, really.”
    I don’t know how my mum puts up with me sometimes. I mean, it must all have been completely obvious to her, but she had to sit and listen to me swear that black was white, or that cold was hot, anyway. It wouldn’t have made any difference to anything, telling her the truth. But later, when I needed her help, I remembered all the times I’d been a muppet.
    Â 
    I think I went over to Alicia’s the night after that conversation, because if I didn’t go three days in a row, then Mum would really have known that something was up. And then I didn’t go for a couple of evenings again, and then it was the weekend, and on the Saturday morning she texted me to ask me to lunch. Her brother was around, and they were having this family reunion thing, and Alicia said I was a part of the family.
    I’d never met anyone quite like Alicia’s mum and dad before I started going out with Alicia, and at first I thought they were dead cool—I can even remember wishing that my mum and dad were like them. Alicia’s dad is like fifty or something, and he listens to hip-hop. He doesn’t like it much, I don’t think, but he feels he should give it a chance, and he doesn’t mind the language and the violence. He’s got grey hair that he gets Alicia’s mum to shave back—I think he has a number 2—and he wears a stud. He teaches literature at a college, and she teaches drama when she’s not being a councillor. Or she teaches people to teach drama, something like that. She has to go into lots of different schools and talk to teachers. They’re all right, I suppose, Robert and Andrea, and they were really friendly at first. It’s just that they think I’m stupid. They never say as much, and they try and treat me as if I’m not. But I can tell they do. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m smarter than Alicia. I’m not showing off or being cocky; I just know I am. When we went to see films, she didn’t understand them, and she never got what anyone was laughing at in The Simpsons, and I had to help her with her maths. Her mum and dad helped her with her English. They still thought she was going to go to college to do something or other, and all the model stuff was just her going through a rebellious phase. As far as they were concerned, she was a genius, and I was this nice dim kid she was hanging out with. They acted as if I was Ryan Briggs or someone really scummy like that, but they weren’t going to officially disapprove of me because that wouldn’t be