The Ned Wood Archive

Ellie

Lauren’s decided that it’s time for them to go up to the sign. Abi wants to grab something to eat. Phoebe wants a break from the boys next door. Ellie wants to stretch her legs. They leave their campsite and head off towards Arcadia and beyond. Where the action is. There’s a couple of food places before you get there, so they all stock up, then carry on past Arcadia before turning up the hill to head into the Park.

Faces turn as they walk through the crowd. Ellie’s used to the lads staring at Abi. Mostly, she thinks it’s just cos she’s tall. She stands out. And she’s used to the lads staring at Lauren, because, well Lauren’s got this aura about her that seems to attract them. And she encourages it, Lauren does. What Ellie’s not used to is getting stared at herself. Yeah, no, sometimes she gets these looks, but they seem to be saying ‘what have you done to your hair?’ Cos all the lads think that girls should have long hair. Like Lauren. And Abi. And Phoebe. And sometimes she gets stared at, she thinks, because of her nose which she doesn’t like because it’s too sharp. So when they walk through the entrance at the bottom of the park and go past Sweet Charity and past the food stalls and past the picnic tables, she isn’t surprised to see this bloke staring at them. It’s only when she catches the eyes of the bloke that she realises he’s looking at her. He’s watching her walk past. In a flattering way, at least that’s how she feels. Has she got that right? It’s making her feel somehow like she’s the only person around. Did she misinterpret what that look meant? Doesn’t matter. It makes her feel good. She smiles at him. He’s wearing a bright orange, African style shirt. Not the standard band T-shirt at least.

“Nice shirt,” she shouts. Phoebe and Abi turn and look at her and then try to follow her gaze. Ellie’s smiling. This doesn’t happen to her often.

“What just happened?” asks Phoebe.

So Ellie explains. “Oh some bloke was just smiling at me,” she says. They quiz her. She has to describe where he was and what he looked like. She’ll always remember the shirt: a Ghanaian Kente design mainly in orange, maybe with some green, so she describes that in detail. She knows he had a beard and she thinks he had a pony tail, so she vaguely describes those. What she doesn’t say is what she remembers the most. She’ll wait before she tells them because she wants to savour it all to herself for now. That look in his eyes and how it made her feel so good.