The Worst of Me by Kate Le Vann Page A

lurking behind this question, or some kind of encouraging pep talk, which would be worse. I changed the subject.
    ‘Is it fair to say you don’t like Muslims, Paul?’ I said. I could hear myself sounding somewhere between a total bitch and slightly unhinged.
    ‘What kind of question is that?’ my mum said.
    ‘It’s not fair at all. Or true,’ Paul said at the same time. ‘Yes, I’m a Christian, but I don’t think I have the right to say that the faith I was brought up to believe in is more valid than other faiths.’ He leaned back in his chair to look as though he was now considering the question seriously. ‘Actually, I lived with two Arabs – a Saudi and an Iraqi – at university, we enjoyed discussing religion, and in fact, I’d say that it would be harder for me to understand an atheist than a Muslim.’
    ‘Isn’t the definition of having a faith, in a god, that you would
have
to believe your god was best?’ I said.
    Paul put down his fork. He couldn’t eat and speak at the same time. When he did this, I always thought it was rude to keep stuffing food in my face while he spoke. Although part of me always wanted to be rude to Paul, another part of me obediently put the fork down, even though I wasn’t even being asked to.
    ‘If it makes you feel any better, Cassie, my god
is
the best,’ he said, and winked at my mum. ‘But it’s polite not to tell other people that.’ Then he and my mum chuckled as if this was brilliant stand-up comedy.
    ‘Why are you talking to Paul as if he’s an evangelist?’ Mum said.
    ‘Believe it or not, it’s actually a school project,’ Paul said. ‘I had a glance at the website Cassie’s been on this afternoon and there’s a bunch of kids talking about exactly this.’
    ‘Why did you “have a glance” at that website?’
    Paul shrugged. ‘You pointed it out to me in the first place. I clicked on history to find a web page I’d closed and then I opened it up again because the title was interesting. If you’re trying to hide your browsing history, maybe you ought to furtively delete the cache every time you leave the computer.’
    ‘Look, Cass,’ my mum said. ‘You’re overreacting. No one is trying to spy on you.’
    ‘I am struggling to understand why Paul —’
    ‘Cassidy. You use my computer all day long. If Paul has work things he needs to deal with in the evenings, more often than not I tell him you’re probably doing research for your homework and can he leave it a minute, when I know that what you’re really doing is looking at pictures of popstars on heat.com. Oh no! I know that you’ve looked at heat.com, call the European Court of Human Rights! We have both been treading on eggshells around you, and I’m really sick of it. You’re not easy to live with —’
    ‘Don’t I know it!’ I said. ‘I heard you telling Paul you can’t wait to see the back of me.’
    ‘Cassidy, that’s completely untrue,’ Paul said, but by this point my mum was crying. She scraped her chair back and walked out of the kitchen.
    ‘That,’ Paul said, leaning low to look me in the eye, ‘was a really shitty thing to say.’ He spoke quietly, butthe swearing was a total shock and his voice was horrible and made me shiver all over. He moved suddenly and I jumped, bracing myself. He went after my mum. I was left staring at the half-eaten bowls of pasta, hugging my arms.
    I wanted to go to my room, but that would put me close to them, close enough to hear them breathing. So I had to stay downstairs. I didn’t know whether to clear away their food. What if they came back to eat it? What if they came back and said they couldn’t believe I hadn’t even cleared the kitchen? So I did nothing, bracing myself for the criticism. And I was furious, furiouser at being the one made to feel guilty and worried.
    I wrote a text to Jonah and left it in my outbox unsent while I considered my options. I was too nervous to call him. He and his mates would be watching a