It Was Destiny, Really

She stomped on my My Little Pony, the pink one with the purple tail and the glitter. We were six. I had cried and cried for days, until Daddy brought me a bigger one. She had sneered, tossed her head so her shorn hair fluttered and yanked on one of my braids. The boys used to do that, but Mummy always said it meant they liked you. What did it mean if a girl did that?

When we ten, and Zack had let his fingers glide over the strings like magic, and she had been given one too, and smiled, ever-so-confident. Her fingers didn't glide. She brought them down fiercely, and the note had throbbed and ebbed away. It wasn't magic, but it was something.

We were thirteen when she and Freddy became best friends; utterly inseparable, like me and her used to be. Zack and I sat together at lunch for the first time that day. She had laughed at something Freddy had said, and then they'd strolled out of the canteen together, arms slung around each other's shoulders without a backwards glance. Zack looked at me, then stood and moved tables.

"Oh, God, Summer, I think...I think I may, just a little bit..." She paused, looking deep into my eyes, "drunk." Freddy snickered and she looked around for him wildly, before her eyes fixed on his slouched figure and she laughed. "Freddy!" She was on his lap the next second. His hands were flung around her waist, her arms tangled behind his neck. "You...you love-" It was my fifteenth birthday party, and they had ruined it.

Freddy declared that he was gay long before she did. A sixteen and a half year old Freddy decided after a very nearly seventeen year old Zack, in a sudden spur of recklessness – or that could have just been the vodka shots – to straddle and kiss Freddy. Katie, stoned as ever, had laughed loudly and giggled and clapped her hands together. "Goodie." She had said. Freddy had given her the finger. He and Zack didn't speak for weeks after, but when they did, it was Freddy saying, quite simply across a silent room, "You, me, behind the bleachers at lunch, whatcha say, Mooneyham?" Zack had stormed out, but me and Katie and Freddy had seen how his eyes were glowing.

I wasn't too sure why precisely, but when the girl – Harriet, who had insisted we all call her Harry between leers at Katie – put her hands under Katie's black-sequined skirt, I left, the back of my eyes feeling hot. No one saw me leave. No one came after me to see if I was okay. Why should they?

Harry left, and a dozen others came and went with her. Katie used to sit on my lap while we ate lunch, her feet on Zack's legs along with Freddy's head while Tomika sang a few chords under her breath and we stared at her talent, even though we should really be used to it by now. "Going to the college in town?" Katie asked through her noodles. Lawrence, Alicia, Marta and Tomika said that yes, they were. Freddy and Zack merely grunted out a response. "Summer?" He gaze turned to me, wide and hopeful. "England," I had said. "England!" She had shrieked. I nodded and looked out of the window at the green trees as the room flew into chaos.

Cambridge was nice, I suppose, but I missed the heat of summer, and the cold of winter. Everything was the same, really. I had no friends. I worked. Then a boy told me I was beautiful, and he thought that he might possibly be in love with me, and would I like to go to his house in Warwickshire for Christmas to meet the family? And because he was tall and British and had pale skin and very fair hair and eyes that didn't flash with dark fire, I said yes.

And then, of course, the band got huge, and had tours and everybody who was anybody was their best friend, and then they were in London. When the boy said he'd got us backstage passes, my heart stuttered. But only for a second. Because I'm me, and my heart never stutters, and most definitely not for more than a second. I put on my makeup and a fashionable, slightly rocky, slightly grungy dress that one of the boy's friends, who was reading fashion design had made for me. They all played so well, of course, and afterwards, the boy's arm so firm around my waist, we were ushered into their dressing room. Zack was leaning against the wall, threading his fingers through Freddy's hair absentmindedly. Lawrence was peering over Marta's and Alicia's shoulders at a magazine with some new band on the front, and Tomika had Billy behind her, massaging her shoulders and talking to her about how absolutely essential khaki is in today's fashion climate. Katie was draped along a sofa, doing absolutely nothing, then-

"Summer! Ohmigod, it is you, isn't it!" And I was in her arms, and her hair was all in mine and her perfume was all around me and I was abruptly and inexplicably happy.

"Is that-"

"No way-"

"Are you sure-"

"Oh good God, it is! Summer baby!" Marta elegantly shrieked, catching my hands in hers and air-kissing both my cheeks.

"Hey, Sum." Freddy said, grinning at me widely, but not moving an inch, and looking infinitely cool for it. Zack nodded a greeting, then looked away. Katie, however, couldn't seem to be capable of keeping either her eyes, or fingers, off me. Something that the boy didn't seem to notice, for all his genius analysing power when it came to 15th century literature. Freddy noticed, and kept winking at me, and throwing loaded glances between me and her. Then later, when Marta suggested that we all go to this divine club she knows, and Katie leapt from my side, to cry that she absolutely adored the idea, then paused, hung back, and asked if I wanted to come too, and I had stuttered that I would love to, and Freddy dropped me a glittering wink as he swept out, Zack on his arm.

The boy said no, that he was tired and had a lecture early morning, and he had to get back to Cambridge, then he kissed me sweetly and left. Katie glowered at his back as he left, then turned to face me, beaming. "Come on, Summer!"

It was always meant to be, if you think about it, ever since that day when her once-white cotton sock clad foot had come down so forcefully on the head of my plastic pink horse. Fate. I'd known this forever, and I think that she started to realise it too. Either that, or the alcohol, and the prospect of being quite alone with me made her confident, but either way, she still stepped forward and pressed me into the wall and slid her lips over mine. And then her hair got all in the way, and we were on the floor, and no thoughts of the boy entered my mind, and then ohmygodheat and then it was over.

It was Zack who found us, lying next to each other on the bathroom floor of her hotel room, exactly two inches of space between us. His cheeks had flared and he ran. Katie sat up, propping herself upright with one arm, and ran a hand through her hair, sighing. At last, she turned to me. A fond look crossed her face then, and she bent over me. I wanted to reach up, to feel that hair between my fingers once more, to see that beatific smile grace her features, to hear my own heart pounding with joy, so loud in my ears. So I did.