me and charlie couldn’t see each other for three whole weeks

says:

that cos u bought that shit about him having to get his balls chopped off if he caught it

says:

it’s true though

says:

mumps can affect fertility in a man

says:

god forbid you may one day …

says:

. . . . . . . .

says:

whenever you’re finally READY of course

says:

XDDDDD

says:

fuck off franki

says:

yeah franki

says:

too much is too much

says:

yeah all right

says:

sorry dude

says:

u know I love u

says:

i have a lot of respect for my elders

says:

franki

says:

u and charlie remind me of my mum and dad

says:

married

says:

no sex

says:

i wonder if charlie has a lover too

[ IS OFFLINE]

says:

fucking hell that girl can’t take a joke

says:

lan?

says:

so this girl

says:

ruth beadle

says:

she ⋆stares⋆

says:

u kno?

[ IS OFFLINE]

says:

seriously???

says:

girls??????

says:

SERIOUSLY

says:

jesus

COTTON WOOL

Ruth

Now

Alanna is leaning over the reception desk like a kitten ready to pounce. She hasn’t changed into her uniform yet and her skinny buttocks jiggle in American Apparel jeggings. In front of her is a complicated house of greeting cards.

If you’d asked me, ten years ago – say eleven – who were the people I couldn’t imagine living without, I’d have had trouble answering. Before I met Neil, nobody seemed destined to stick. I had always known that my school years wouldn’t be the happiest of my life. Even as a young girl it seemed obvious to me that I wasn’t destined to meet my real friends there. Girls who sat together on the first day of school stuck together throughout, despite the changing geography of the classroom and separations by teachers desperate to curb the giggling. I listened to Beth Wellbelove breathe heavily over her trigonometry exercises for five years. I told myself I was holding out for college, though I wasn’t sure at that point if I was even going to college.

In a sense, my intuition was right: Neil and I met in the summer of my first year at nursing school, right after I’d finished my exams, though he had nothing to do with nursing school; he’d left school ten years earlier. After I met him I stopped worrying so much about making real friends. Perhaps I just wasn’t built for friendship.

Throughout my life I’ve had the luxury of forgetting about Alanna several times. In the end, though, she always comes back, like a particularly pretty zombie or a deeply ingrained psychological trauma.