By the time I got to Helen’s house on the night of the party, Julia was already taking up all the space in front of the mirror and peering into it with a slightly revolted expression.
“Bloody hell, my hair looks terrible. And look at all these spots! Typical!” Julia proclaimed, heaving a huge sigh and throwing down her hairbrush in disgust.
If you looked really closely at her chin and squinted, you could see something small and indistinct that could possibly be a blemish of some kind.
As for her hair, well, it was refusing to curl into beautiful ringlets, hanging in kitch lopsided waves instead, much to her annoyance.
“What are you talking about?” Helen demanded, her mouth full of hair grips. “You look lovely.” Said Katrina, a pretty, dark eyed girl from Julia’s physics class. She flicked her brown bob and smiled patiently.
“You always look lovely.” She said.
Julia rolled her eyes. “Can I borrow your curling tongs, Helen?” She asked wearilly, “They might work better than mine.” Helen shrugged, digging through a drawer to find a pair of tights without any big holes in them.
“Sure, but you look fine anyway.” She said. Julia always needed reassurance but she was useless at giving it. She just didn’t seem to understand about being tactful or complimentary, so if any of us ever said we looked awful she’d just agree loudly and then laugh hysterically to herself as if she’d said something really funny. I glanced at Julia. She was busily coating her eyelashes in thick clumpy mascara, and swore loudly as she got flecks of dark brown gunk stuck on her face. She spat on her finger and started rubbing them off, but Helen fell over her as she hopped about trying to pull on a pair of stomach controlling tights, and Julia prodded herself in the eye.
“For Fuck’s sake Helen!” Julia growled, clamping her eye shut and trying to get rid of the brown smear that now underlined it.
“Sorry.” Helen said, standing on one foot and trying to get the other leg of her tights on.
“Here, have some booze, it’ll make you feel better.” She paused in her struggle to pass Julia the bottle of cheap, sweet cider she’d smuggled upstairs and to turn her little ghettoblaster up as loud as it could go.
By the time we’d all decided what to wear and carefully applied our make-up, we were stupidly excited in the way that only sixteen year old girls can be. Our voices were getting screechier and screechier, and our faces pinker and pinker. Helen kept talking about whether John would be going, Julia worried about whether a guy she fancied called Peter was going and me and Katrina laughed at both of them. We passed the cider around, and bounced up and down on Helen’s bed in our strappy shoes, singing along with her music until we collapsed in a pile, out of breath.
“What are you doing in there?” We all sprang up in panic at the muffled sound of Helen’s Mum’s voice coming from the other side of the door.
“Nothing Mum.” Helen said, smothering a giggle as we frantically tidied the bed and stuffed the now empty cider bottle into Helen’s wardrobe, under a pile of dirty clothes. By the time Mrs.Gale had opened Helen’s bedroom door, we were all sitting tidilly on her bed, feigning quiet serenity and nodding our heads slightly to Helen’s hurredly turned down R.E.M. We smiled pleasently at Helen’s Mum as she stood in the doorway, hands on hips. When she saw us all dolled up, she melted visibly.
“Ooh, you all look lovely.” She said. “Are you ready to go now?”
“Yes Mrs.Gale.” We chimed, grabbing our bags and coats and checking our eager faces for the last time.