But it wasn’t any of this that I noticed first. It was the wall that I noticed first.
The wall was entirely blank apart from a framed photograph of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
I looked at it.
Jason looked at me looking at it.
‘I have questions,’ I said.
‘Understandable,’ he said, nodding and sitting down on his bed. ‘Er, d’you remember Edward? From my old school? He gave it to me.’
He finished his sentence, as if this was the end of the story.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘So … OK, you’re gonna have to come sit down if I’m gonna explain this.’ He patted the space next to him on the bed.
This made me a little nervous. But it wasn’t like there was anywhere else to sit in the room, and he didn’t do it in a particularly flirty way, so I guessed it was fine.
I sat down next to him on the edge of the bed, holding my hot chocolate.
‘So, we all know I’m a Scooby-Doo stan.’
‘Obviously.’
‘And also a Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Junior stan.’
‘I mean … OK, sure.’
‘OK. So, at my old school, like, before I moved to ours for sixth form, I was kind of known as the guy who’d never kissed anyone.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘You never told me that.’
‘Well, you know I left that school, because, like …’ He made a face. ‘A lot of the guys there … I mean, it was an all-boys school and people would just rip the shit out of each other for every tiny thing.’
‘Yeah.’
Jason had told us a little bit about that before. How people at his old school were kind of nasty, generally, and he didn’t want to be in that sort of environment any more.
‘So they all picked on me for having never been kissed. And I guess I got teased about it a lot. Nothing serious, but, yeah, it was a thing. Everyone thought it was pretty weird.’
‘But you’ve kissed people now,’ I said. ‘Like … you’ve had a girlfriend before.’
‘That was all after. Before then, that was the thing people would pick on me about. And you know … people would say it was because I was ugly and I had acne and I liked musical theatre and just stupid shit like that. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me now, but I guess it did when I was younger.’
‘Oh,’ I said, but my voice felt hoarse all of a sudden. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘When we left in Year Eleven, Ed gave me this framed photo.’ He pointed at the photo. ‘Sarah and Freddie. And Ed was like, this is a good luck charm to help you get a girlfriend. We both really loved the Scooby-Doo movies, and it became an ongoing joke that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Junior were, like, the pinnacle of romance, because they’re real-life married and on-screen love interests. Every time someone we knew got into a relationship, we’d be like, but are you at Sarah and Freddie’s level, mate. I … yeah. OK. It sounds weird when I try to explain it.’
‘No, it’s funny,’ I said. ‘I just hope they don’t get divorced any time soon.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. That would kind of mess the whole thing up.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Anyway, after he gave it to me, I had my first kiss like a week later.’ Jason chuckled. ‘I mean, it was a shit kiss, but … I guess I got it out of the way. So now it is a good luck charm.’
Jason told this story like it was a funny anecdote that I was supposed to be laughing at. But it wasn’t funny.
It was really fucking sad.
I remembered the story of his first kiss with a girl he didn’t really like that much. He’d told me and Pip that it wasn’t great, but he was glad he’d got it out of the way but hearing all this from Jason now made me realise what had actually happened.
He’d felt pressured into having his first kiss. Because people were bullying him for not having kissed anyone, he forced himself to do it, and it was bad.
A lot of teenagers did that. But hearing it from Jason made me really, really angry.
I knew what it was like to feel bad about not having kissed anyone.
And to feel pressured into doing it because everyone else was.
Because you were weird if you hadn’t.
Because this was what being a human was all about.
That was what everyone said.
He looked up at the picture. ‘Or maybe it isn’t a good luck charm. I guess my romantic experiences until now haven’t been … great.’ He looked away. ‘A shit first kiss and then … Aimee.’