Free Flick by Abigail Tarttelin Page A

floating away and disappearing into the air.

ILLUSORY HOPE AND MY COLD, TINY DICK
    I, however, have a Get out of Purgatory Free card. The following day Mam comes into the spare room, where I’m on the computer wasting away time I don’t know what to do with, and thrusts the phone into my hands, whispering loudly, “It’s a young lady!”
    The phone splutters with laughter. “Thanks, Mam,” I mumble, taking it off her, wondering what Ash/Ella/Daisy, none of them young ladies, wants this time. A clear, articulate, polite voice, still with a mild northern accent, rings out of the phone.
    â€œHello, is this Flick?”
    â€œYeah, hello, is this Rainbow?” I almost drop the handset. “How do?”
    â€œHuh? Oh, I’m good yeah! I’m sorry I’ve been so busy—I’ve got my exams coming up and it’s a bit mental with me being new and transferring and there was a whole load of crap to do . . . but I’m free now if you’re free!”
    Yay! Rainbow! I think, but I calm myself. The aim is to come off cool, sexy and nonchalant, and also to secure a date and then love her forever and move into a Victorian flat on the seafront at Ness or emigrate to Berlin with our two charming but illegitimate children and I’ll be a graffiti artist and she’ll be my muse. No problem. I’d better stay calm and collected for the moment though or she’ll think I’m a psycho.
    â€œOh . . . cool.” I swing my legs onto the spare bed and lean back in the computer chair, in an attempt to channel James Dean. “Wicked, yeah, that’s—obviously I didn’t worry, I knew you had work, so, you know, it was cool, so I’m cool. I haven’t really thought about you—it. I mean, like, dating. Obviously I thought about you . . . Anyway, I’m pretty busy too actually. In fact—I’m slammed.”
    â€œOh . . . so you don’t want to meet up?”
    â€œOh no! I mean, yeah, that would be great, I meant—slammed as in . . . well you know . . . um . . .” Fuck. My brain has gone blank. I was so successfully being noncommittal that my brain has lost its commitment to the English language. Think of something, Flick, think . I’VE FORGOTTEN ENGLISH . . . Say something! says the little voice in my head. What else could “slammed” mean? “Beaten?” I mutter. Out loud. Oh God, Jesus and fuck.
    â€œBeaten? Have you been hurt?”
    â€œNo! I didn’t mean beaten. I meant . . . beaten as, as, as in tired, as in I’m beat from doing stuff, but, but now I’m free, and not really doing anything . . .”
    â€œ. . . So you’re not busy?”
    â€œI’m not busy right now, I have, I have, nothing . . . absolutely nothing to do right now. I’ve been on the Internet for the past hour looking up what I’d do on a law degree and now I’m on eBay looking up ‘smallest,’ so . . .”
    â€œ. . . What?”
    â€œUm . . .” The hole I’ve dug has no way out. It’s dark in here and I want my mum. “It’s really funny actually, um, you, um . . . well you look up ‘smallest’ and just see what you get, and there’s a teeny tiny phone. Anyway . . . I’ll tell you later. So where d’you wanna go slash what d’you wanna do?”
    â€œI don’t mind, where d’you want to go? Slash do?”
    â€œI don’t mind either, we can do whatever you like.”
    â€œOh no, I’m crap at choosing, I can make massive decisions about my life, but I can’t decide how to spend afternoons or what to eat or anything like that. You choose!”
    â€œI’d like to do something that you’d like to do, Rainbow.”
    â€œWell yeah but . . . I don’t know what to do