COUPLE OF NOTES:

1. Have uploaded two chapters from different places in the middle. Sorry it's not the first chapters but those have been reviewed to death at youwriteon.com and I'm sick of hearing opinions on them now. These chapters may seem a little out-of-context, but I've tried to pick ones which work on their own. Comments from youwriteon.com often said my language was too old for my characters (have to admit, I found these comments annoying, especially if it was from some middle-aged American bloke. I'm only 22 myself, so feel I should have the right idea about language of the age group, but don't be afraid to say if you think the same!)

2.Two narrators, a male and a female, 18ish years old. You've got one chapter from each.


ONE CHAPTER (Vanessa)

It was Saturday and we were planning a fairly large night out for Jenny’s eighteenth birthday. Beth had offered to drive, which was unusual, so Jenny and myself had all eagerly accepted the offer of a lift. Beth picked me up first and as we cruised through the streets of Beddleton in Beth’s Mum’s four-by-four, we passed a new ‘club’. We had heard rumours about this place and it appeared to have finally just opened. Two burly bouncers in smart black suits stood outside.

‘I can’t believe there’s a club in Beddleton,’ said Beth.
‘I can’t believe there’s a black person in Beddleton, more to the point,’ I said, referring to one of the bouncers.
‘We’ll have to give the place a try some time.’
‘I’m dubious about it, but we should check it out at some point.’

Once in town, there was the three of us, as well as Jenny’s boyfriend and a few others who we knew from school. First we went to a bar for a few expensive drinks and I kept my eyes open for attractive men as I grudgingly handed over the cash for an over-priced glass of wine. I couldn’t see any I liked and decided that it was easy to be fooled in a place like this because all the men were dressed very well and had good hair. This meant that you’d see one from a distance or from behind and think ‘Yes! this looks promising…’, then you’d get a closer look and realise that, although the packaging was impressive, the goods themselves were a true disappointment.

We had been there quite a while when I spotted a guy walking through the door at the far end. He was wearing a slim fitting red t-shirt and lovely jeans he was tall, slim and nicely toned.
He walked over to the bar with his friends and I was amazed to see that, yes, he was actually pretty damn fine. I watched him as he moved his shoulders in time with the music whilst waiting to be served – he obviously liked to dance, even better. Once he and his friends had bought their drinks they all turned round and lent with their backs against the bar to chat to each other.

Time for me to walk past and give him ‘the look’. I strutted past, keeping my eyes on him the whole time. When he looked at me I smiled and raised my eyebrows slightly. He smiled back as he looked me up and down. Slightly degrading, but a good response on the whole. Luckily, the bar was fairly crowded so I was able to walk right around the edge of the room and back to where I’d started from without him noticing what I was doing.

I got back to my group and Jenny’s flash-bastard boyfriend was announcing he was going to buy us all an Aftershock. He always seemed to have too much money to throw around. I wasn’t going to complain though. A couple more drinks and I would be ready to go and talk some drunken bollocks to that fit guy. I felt bad for relying on alcohol to help me pull. But what the hell, I thought. To quote Prince, “it’s Saturday night, I guess that makes it all right.”

I started planning what I could go and say to the hot guy. I knew I would have to approach him, I had no choice. Guys like that never came and spoke to girls. The only guys who ever approached me were slightly over-weight, or perhaps a bit pale and sweaty, or wearing a huge orange shirt or maybe about thirty years old.

Jenny’s flash-bastard boyfriend handed me a blue aftershock. Once we’d all downed, Jenny announced, ‘Right then! Let’s go somewhere else!’.

‘But…’ I began, thinking of the red t-shirt bloke, then realised it was useless as the rest of the group were already shuffling in the direction of the door.
I followed and looked at the guy one more time as we passed. Oh, bloody, buggery bollocks – I thought to myself. I’m going to have to learn to act more quickly in future.

We went into the chain bar next door because it had a two-for-one offer on a nasty ‘tropical’ drink in a bottle. On the way in I overheard a shaven-headed bloke on his way out of the door, say to his shaven-headed friend, ‘Just leave it now, mate. He’s got a loaded gun and he wants to use it’.

A loaded gun? Christ. I hoped he was speaking metaphorically. Although, he didn’t look like the kind of guy who would be so creative with his speech.

Inside, we all drank a few bottles of the tropical drink, despite their nastiness. Apart from Beth of course, who kept on mentioning at every possible opportunity that she was driving.
One of our male friends who we knew from the school bus was drunkenly chatting on about some idea for a taxi service.
‘It has a bed in the back of the car for you to sleep in. Then when you get home the driver carries you inside and tucks you into your own bed.
‘And maybe even give you a kiss goodnight,’ suggested Beth, playing along with the madness.
‘No, I wouldn’t want him to give me a kiss. He could give me head, but no kiss.’
It was one of those drunken comments which left everyone looking slightly confused with vague smiles on their faces.
Flash-bastard boyfriend, who didn’t really know any of us very well, leant over and whispered to me, ‘He’s not a fucking queer is he?’
‘No’ I whispered back and flash-bastard, slightly-homophobic boyfriend nodded contentedly.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ said Beth when it got to about midnight. Not a moment too soon, I thought. I couldn’t stand soulless places like that. We all decided it was time to go to a more clubby bar nearby, where we could have a dance. There was a small queue of about ten people so we tagged on the back. When I noticed who was at the front of the queue I froze still and, for a few seconds, forgot to keep breathing. Lewis.

I ignored the tight feeling in my stomach and turned to Beth and said very calmly, ‘Look who’s at the front of the queue’. Beth looked then turned back to me.

‘How fit does he look tonight?’ she said.
‘Almost too fit,’ I replied as I put my hand on my heart trying to stop it from beating so fast.

Lewis was casually leaning against the doorframe and nodding animatedly as one of his friends spoke to him.

‘Look at how laid-back and comfortable he is. Just imagine getting it on with him. You can just tell he’d know exactly what he was doing,’ said Beth with a filthy glint in her eye.
‘Don’t, Beth. Really, don’t. It’s just too much for me to even think about.’

He went inside and we patiently waited our turn.

‘Did you see the guy he was with who was wearing the shirt with the military thingies on the shoulders?’ asked Beth.
‘Yes’ I said.
‘I think that’s his brother,’ informed Beth.
‘Ah,’ I said as I nodded slowly.

The brother looked very similar to Lewis. He had had the same strong, perfect features and was also good looking, but in a more conventional way. He didn’t have that mischievous look in his eye that Lewis had. He looked like the kind of guy who would ask whether he could kiss you, whereas Lewis seemed to be the kind of guy who would just do it.

‘They didn’t have any females with them, did they?’ asked Beth.
‘No, and that can only be a good thing,’ I said, feeling a sense of excitement. ‘Anyway, I think you should let me have him. You practically have a boyfriend and we don’t want you being greedy, do we?’ I joked.
‘I don’t think you could really call Danny a boyfriend. I’ve been out with him once and I get the feeling he hates me anyway.’
‘Still, it’s about thirty years since I went out on one date with anyone. I deserve him more. You can have the brother. He’s almost just as good.’
‘Thanks,’ said Beth with light-hearted sarcasm.



ANOTHER CHAPTER (Lewis)


The next day, Saturday night, and Amrit and I had the difficult task of finding ourselves an evening’s entertainment in Beddleton. Paul wasn’t around because he’d gone to stay with some girl he fancied in Paris. An Erasmus student he had met at university who, by all accounts, appeared to have been leading him on since January.

‘We could try the club,’ suggested Amrit without much conviction.
‘What, that new place in Beddleton?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ve heard it’s full of old chav women from Partington looking for rich Beddleton divorcees.’
‘Shit. Sounds like hell,’ said Amrit.

I ended up agreeing to go round to Amrit’ house because his younger sister had her friends coming round and Amrit wanted some moral support while he attempted to flirt with the friends. I checked whether his parents would be in. I still hadn’t recovered from the embarrassment of the house party incident all those years ago. Amrit reassured me that they wouldn’t be.

When I arrived, Amrit was hiding in his bedroom while the girls took over the living room in an intimidating way. We ventured as far as the kitchen, got beers out of the fridge and tried to devise a way of infiltrating.
‘It’s your house, just wander in there,’ I said.
‘Yeah, we’ll pretend to be looking for something,’ said Amrit.

We crept into the living room, muttered a hello to the seventeen year olds huddled around a gossip magazine, then tried not to pay them too much attention. We rifled through a stack of CDs on a cabinet in the corner. Without warning, Amrit turned to the group and said ‘Have you got a web cam now Lucy?’

There was silence. Five faces stared back at us. This was a bad start. Obviously the comment had some context but to anyone who wasn’t aware of it, it sounded completely odd. Plus, the slightly seedy connotations of web cams made it all the more unfortunate.

‘Erm…. no,’ said Lucy.

The silence continued. In a panicked attempt to salvage the situation, I came out with ‘What are you all doing tonight?’
‘Not much,’ said one, all of them cagey now after our sudden and clumsy intrusion into their conversation.
I began to ramble, ‘We’re not sure what we’re doing, we might go for a drink somewhere but we weren’t sure where to go because…’ then realised I had lost out to celebrity gossip in the battle for their attention.
‘Are you going out somewhere?’ said Amrit, more to his sister than anything, in order to give himself a safety net from further humiliation.
‘We might go out or we might stay in,’ she said.
‘That sounds disconcertingly vague,’ I said in a stupid voice, quoting from I’m Alan Partridge, our favourite TV comedy. It raised a laugh from Amrit but the girls just took it as a moody comment and there was silence again.
‘Here it is,’ I said lifting a CD from the pile and giving us a get-out clause. Amrit and I headed for the door before we found ourselves an opportunity to say anything else.

We retreated to the kitchen to drink a few more cans. Maybe we would do a better job if we drank a bit more.
Amrit’ sister came in to get ice form the fridge. I decided I may try and remedy some of the embarrassment we’d just caused ourselves by coming clean over our useful attempt at chatting up her and her friends.
‘So, did you like our moves in there?’ I asked with sarcasm, feeling more comfortable around her from knowing her as long as I had known Amrit.
‘No, they were a pile of shite,’ she said flippantly.
‘They were, weren’t they. We’ll try harder next time.’
‘Yeah, do,’ she said with a slight smile, leaving the room again.

‘I think she fancies you,’ said Amrit once she’d gone. ‘I know what she’s like around boys she fancies.’
‘She can’t do. I just acted like a total knobhead in front of her.’
‘I think she fancied you before that.’
‘Well, I’ve got another girl at the moment anyway,’ I said.
‘Yeah? Tell all.’
I told him the truth about why I had stopped seeing Charlotte and how I got together with Vanessa. He was amused by the story and I began to see the entertaining side myself.
‘But don’t broadcast it,’ I warned. ‘I don’t want Zoe to have any more reasons to go crazy-ass psycho on me. Not that she had any reasons to start with, but you know what I mean.’

It got to about eleven and the lager had spurred us on to try and prolong the night in search of the excitement we’d so far failed to encounter.

We decided to walk into the town centre to go to a bar with a late license. We were just reaching the outskirts of Beddleton, happily minding our own business when I noticed a group of about five uber-chavs on the other side of the road. The real hardcore type that you know you shouldn’t even look at. One was leaving the black, hooded, formless group and crossing over but I purposefully didn’t pay him any attention. As he passed me I felt something touch my face and momentarily wondered if I’d been punched. Then I felt a strange cold sensation where my face had been touched. It didn’t hurt but then a stinging suddenly kicked in. My nose immediately blocked up and my eyes began streaming.

As I clutched my face and focused on breathing through my mouth, I could hear Amrit saying, ‘What the fuck was that?’.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, my hand on my eye.
‘Was it pepper spray?’ said Amrit, dialling 999.
‘I don’t know.’
We banged on the window of a trendy restaurant which we were outside of.
‘He’s been pepper sprayed!’ shouted Amrit through the window, in voice which sounded a little bit too posh.

They let us into the restaurant and I went to the bathroom and tried to rinse my face. I soon discovered that the water I was splashing at my face made the stinging worse as I washed more pepper spray into my eye. I came out of the bathroom and the waiters told us some police had just gone past.

We went out of the restaurant and saw the police car parked along the road outside a pub. We went over speak to them and saw a bloke sitting on the ground. He was explaining to the police how he had been kicked to the floor and then pepper sprayed. Amrit and I made ourselves known.

‘Would you recognise them?’ asked a policeman. ‘They’ll still be in the area and if we can get a positive ID we can take him in.’
‘Worth a try, I suppose,’ I said.
The bloke got up off the ground and the three of us piled into the back of the police car. We came across the group just around the corner. The driver slowed the car down and we all gawped at the ill-defined black mass. One was on crutches and another gripped a bulldog on a lead. They didn’t look back at us.

‘Yeah, that’s them.’
‘Do you know which one used the pepper spray?’ asked the policeman.
‘No idea. They’re all dressed the same aren’t they?’ said the other bloke. Amrit and I voiced our agreement.

The other bloke and I started comparing stories.
‘I was on the phone and they shouted something to me as they went past and the next thing I new I was on the floor catching glimpses of crutches and bull dogs.’
‘Scum. Sub-human scum,’ I said, quoting Alan Partridge again.
‘That’s enough Partridge quotes for one night,’ said Amrit subtly when the policemen and my fellow victim failed to grasp the comedy in my reference.
‘They’ve got nothing better to do than go around beating up innocent people,’ said the other victim.
‘Fucking hell,’ I ranted. ‘We didn’t have anything to do tonight either but we managed to restrain ourselves from beating the shit out of randomers.’

We were driven to the police station so we could give statements and were there for a good couple of hours. As a souvenir, I got a picture on my phone of me with the other guy who’d been pepper sprayed. When we were done, they sent us packing into the damp air of the early hours and let us make our own way home on foot, perhaps to get terrorised all over again, for all they cared.