by Hayley Long
Behind us, someone started moaning about Goose pushing in. I turned round and saw that it was only Lee Fogel so I said, ‘All right, don’t get your pants in a pickle.’ And then I got our chips and went with Goose to eat them on the pavement outside.
As we were passing through the door, Goose said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, Lottie, but I’ve invited someone else to come and eat her dinner with us.’ And then she nodded her head towards the concrete ledge which ran along the front wall of the chip shop and where all the kids from my school usually sit to eat their chips.
I looked over, and a girl who was sitting on the ledge and holding a sausage roll stared back at me.
I froze.
Goose said, ‘This is Sam. She’s just been moved into my music class and she’s brilliant. She’s going to join my new band.’
And even though I kept my face under total control so that it was the perfect picture of calm, the inside of my head was an absolutely different picture. In my mind’s eye, I could see my own head spinning round and round like a poltergeist and my eyes popping out of their sockets while I screamed:
‘NOoo’
at the very top of my voice.
Samantha Morgan sat there with the hand that was holding her sausage roll hovering in mid-air in front of her. And then she shrugged and took a great big greedy bite.
Goose said, ‘Do you two already know each other?’
I slowly ate a chip and considered how I should answer this question. I could tell her that this was Samantha Morgan . . .
Samantha Morgan!!!
. . . the very same Samantha Morgan who USED to be my friend long before Goose came to my school but who HASN’T BEEN my friend since Year 9 because she once DELIBERATELY got me into serious trouble by provoking me so much during a Welsh lesson that I accidentally smashed a window, which resulted in my temporary exclusion from school and Samantha Morgan being told by her mum to NEVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN.
Samantha Morgan took another bite of her sausage roll and said, ‘All right, Lottie?’
I gave her a nervy fake smile and ate another chip. Then I said to Goose, ‘I thought I was joining your band.’
Goose looked surprised. ‘Well, yeah, but you said you can’t play any instruments or sing or –’
‘Yeah, but I can shout in an artistic and interesting way,’ I said, really quickly. ‘And anyway, I was going to write some lyrics, wasn’t I?’
Goose blew on the steamy end of her sausage and said, ‘Well, you still can. What’s the problem?’
I couldn’t think of a really good response so I gave a really pathetic one instead. ‘I thought it was just going to be us!’
Samantha Morgan said, ‘Oh, if Lottie’s gonna freak out and cause a big scene, I’m going.’ And then she stood up and started brushing pastry crumbs off her school trousers.
Goose said, ‘No, hang on. I want you in my band. You’re really good at playing keyboards.’ And then she turned to me and said, ‘Think about it, Lottie. If we’re going to launch a disco-based female equivalent to the Foo Fighters, we need another member. All the best bands are trios. The Sugababes are a trio. Destiny’s Child were a trio. Even The Jimi Hendrix Experience were three people, weren’t they?’
I knew that Goose was just trying to get around me by bringing up The Jimi Hendrix Experience, my favourite band in the entire world - even though they don’t make records any more.7
I swallowed hard and tried to keep my voice steady. Being in Goose’s band seemed like the golden opportunity of a lifetime – but it was also losing its appeal extremely fast. I desperately wanted to tell her about Samantha Morgan and the broken window and my temporary exclusion from school, but I couldn’t because Samantha Morgan was just standing there with her arms crossed, giving me evils.
Goose said, ‘Three is a magic number, Lottie.’
I said, ‘Yeah, maybe. But, the thing is, I don’t actually want to be in this band if—’
Before I could finish, Goose snapped, ‘Well, fine! Don’t be then.’
So I said, ‘Good. Then I won’t.’
And Goose said, ‘Well, don’t.’
And I said, ‘Yeah, well, I’m not.’
And then Lee Fogel – who is officially the most annoying person in the entire history of the universe – suddenly appeared out of the chip shop and started feeding chips to Samantha Morgan in a very unnecessary and frankly sick- making manner, and I realized then that it was her who must have given him all those hideous yucky hickeys on his neck.
I looked at Goose and said, ‘It’s getting a bit crowded around here. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you with your new friends.’
Goose said, ‘Lottie, wait . . .’
But I was already walking off towards town. I’d had enough of school for one day.
ChINChILLas
A chinchilla is a little fat furry thing with chicken feet and a pointy nose. It has little round ears on either side of its head and big long whiskers which stick straight out like a hairy biker’s moustache. It’s about the same size as a small rabbit and it is quite possibly the cutest living creature I’ve ever clapped eyes on. If Lee Fogel and Samantha Morgan hadn’t engaged in that dodgy display of public affection outside Pat’s Plaice and forced me to move to somewhere less revolting, I might have lived my whole life unaware of the existence of these fascinating little animals. But now I am aware and soon I’m going to have one all of my own. So actually, the dodgy snoggers did me a favour. I suppose this is a very good example of positive thinking.
Blake, my counsellor, reckons that physical exercise is good for the mind. He reckons that it’s a scientifically proven fact. He never said those exact words, of course, but I knew what he meant. What he actually said was, ‘It’s as good as gold that working up a sweat when you’re feeling glum can stop you packing a wobbly and make you feel a lot more hunky-dory. Keep yourself nice and active, Lottie – it’s good for you.’
And it was this advice which was bouncing about my brain as I marched very actively away from the chip shop.
As I marched, I tried to bin all my bad thoughts but there were just too many of them. The inside of my head was starting to feel like this:
I was quite literally in a rubbish mood.
So I stopped thinking altogether and just kept marching, and pretty soon I stopped feeling bad and angry and disgusted and started feeling nothing at all. And that felt better.
And then I stopped marching and slowed down to a regular walk.
I walked past the parade of shops on Merthyr Road, past The Jean Genie hair salon (which is owned by my future mother-in-law, Jean Stingecombe), past the Dragon Coffee House (where me and Goose used to go for a double choco-mochaccino with extra cream and marshmallows – before she decided to be close personal friends with Samantha Morgan), past the Hippo Eater pub (where my mum sometimes takes me for a Hefty Hippo Club Sandwich), over the flyover (which is really quite high up and not strictly meant for pedestrians) and all the way into Cardiff city centre.
And when I got there, I got on a bus.
And then I did what I always do when I get on a double-decker bus. I climbed up the twisty stairwell to the top deck so I could sit at the front and pretend to be flying. But to my annoyance the front seats were already taken. A girl who looked hardly any older than me was sitting with a little tiny boy who was eating a massive great bag of crisps and on the other side, a chubby middle-aged couple were rubbing noses and kissing and giggling. It was a blatant waste of a front seat because they weren’t even looking out of the window.
I tutted to myself and then I said,
‘Yuck!’
Actually, I think I said it louder than I meant to because the chubby man pulled his chubby face away from his chubby girlfriend and, in a slightly raised voice, said to me, ‘You’re sexually frustrated, you are.’ He said these words with as much certainty as he might have said, ‘This is the bus to Newport, this is.’ Or ‘I am a chubster, I am.’ And then he went right back to rub
bing noses with his girlfriend.
I stared at him in total gobsmacked horror and then I turned and walked right down to the other end of the bus, as far away as possible, and sat on the long back seat.
No sooner had I sat down than an old woman in the next seat pulled the sleeve of my coat and said, ‘You going anywhere nice, love?’
I turned and looked at her. She had curly white hair and was wearing a bright red woolly coat. She looked quite sweet actually. In fact, now I think about it, she looked exactly like one of Santa’s little helpers.
‘I doubt it,’ I said, and then I smiled so that she wouldn’t think I was being rude.
‘Gonna meet someone special, are you?’ she said.
‘I doubt it,’ I said and then, guessing that she might be a bit lonely and wanting to talk, I asked, ‘Are you?’
Santa’s little helper leaned forward and said in a hushed voice, ‘Who knows?’ And then, in an even lower voice, she added, ‘I’ll be meeting my maker soon enough but only He knows if it’ll be today.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and immediately wished I’d never asked.
She pulled the sleeve of my coat again and said, ‘Day off from school, is it?’
I wasn’t sure how to answer this question so I said, ‘Hmmm.’
The old woman said, ‘What’s Hmmm supposed to mean?’ and then, before I could even answer, she gave a big crackly laugh and said, ‘You’re on the mitch, ain’t you? I can tell. I sees it all the time on these buses.’
I was a bit annoyed then. I said, ‘It’s not illegal for me to ride on a bus, you know.’
The old woman stopped laughing and said, ‘Oooh, touchy! I’ve hit a nerve, haven’t I, love? You is on the mitch, ain’t you!’
‘No, actually,’ I said. ‘I don’t go to school any more. I left ages ago.’ I didn’t mean to lie but she forced me to.
‘And how old would you be now then?’ asked the old lady – who I’d begun to realize was not as sweet as she looked.
‘Twenty-three,’ I muttered. Even as I was saying it, I knew it was stupid.
‘Twenty-three?’ The old woman started laughing so hard that, for a moment, I thought her teeth were going to fall out. ‘Twenty-three,’ she said. ‘Well, let me tell you something, love: today you might be twenty-three but you’ll wake up tomorrow and you’ll be twenty-five. The day after that, you’ll wake up and be celebrating your fortieth. Before you know it, you’re drawing your pension and by the end of the week, you’re breathing your last breath and dropping down dead. Mark my words, kiddo, that’s how fast life goes. So don’t wish it away.’ And then she clicked her fingers to show me how quickly my life was going to disappear.
I stood up and pressed the bell and muttered, ‘Excuse me, I have to get off now.’ And then I hurried down to the front of the bus – taking care not to attract the attention of the chubby man – and almost fell down the twisty stairwell in my desperation to escape.
I think it’ll be a while before I get back on a Cardiff bus.
The bus pulled away, leaving me next to a small retail park. There was nothing much there except a shop called Happy Pets, a carpet warehouse and a kitchen showroom. Automatically, I started walking towards the pet store. For a crazy second I actually managed to convince myself that I was twenty-three and I was on my way to work on the checkouts in the pet store, but then the moment passed and I remembered that I was actually only fifteen and was mitching off school and had just been told by a random fat man on a bus that I was sexually frustrated. This didn’t help improve my mood. I don’t mind admitting that by the time I crossed the massive car park and walked through the doors of the pet store, I was feeling fairly miserable.
And that’s when I saw it. It was sitting in a cage, all cuddled up in a corner, and it looked a bit like this:
only cuter.
I stood and looked at it for about half an hour and then a sales assistant came and asked me if I needed any help and I said, ‘It’s OK, I’m getting help from a behaviour therapy counsellor, but thanks anyway.’
The sales assistant gave me a weird look and walked off.
The little fat chinchilla thing yawned, closed its eyes and went to sleep. And I smiled, said bye to it, and left the shop so I could begin my very long walk home.
hOw MItChING Off sChOOL MaDe MY Mum GO eDGY aND hOw Gareth stINGeCOmBe MaDe everYthING Ok aGaIN
And then my mum stressed out on me. She must have been hovering around just waiting to pounce the very second I got home because as soon as I put my key in the lock, she flung open the door and said, ‘Where on earth have you been?’
I said, ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
My mum said, ‘And shouldn’t you have been at school?’ And then she gave me a Stare of Death and made me feel bad.
I stomped into the kitchen, threw my bag on the floor and sat down at the table with my chin in my hands. And then, because I was feeling a bit bleak and couldn’t really cope with being polite, I said, ‘I asked first.’
‘No you didn’t, I did,’ snapped my mum. Then she sat down opposite me. ‘The school phoned me at work to say that you weren’t in your art lesson. I knew something must have gone wrong because you love art. I’ve been sitting here, worried sick, all afternoon. Now will you please tell me where you’ve been?’
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and pulled my best harassed face. Then I did this:8
‘Don’t do that Talk to the hand thing to me – it’s rude,’ said my mum. ‘Now please will you tell me what happened?’
‘I didn’t have a good day,’ I said. ‘Blake says that if I feel myself going edgy, I should bush out for a while.’
‘What?’ My mum looked confused.
I sighed again. ‘What he means is – if I feel things are going wrong, I should try to remove myself to a more calming environment.’ Then I added, ‘Remember – Blake is from New Zealand. He speaks foreign but he makes perfect sense to me. And he’s good looking.’
My mum said, ‘Yes he is, isn’t he? He’s very good looking.’ And then she went quiet and her head seemed to drift off into outer space.
‘All right,’ I said, suddenly feeling a bit freaked out. ‘There’s no need to go on about it. There are more important things in life than good looks, you know.’
My mum’s head smacked back down from outer space with a thud and she said, ‘Yes . . . well . . . I don’t think he meant that you should truant from school and worry everyone half to death though.’
‘I wasn’t mitching,’ I said. ‘Not really. Not when you properly think about it.’ And then I stopped because I knew that, actually, I’d been quite blatantly mitching and this line of argument wasn’t really going to get me anywhere. I changed tack. ‘Sorry.’
My mum frowned and then she sort of smiled and reached across the table and took hold of my hand. ‘Promise me you won’t go walking out of school again.’
My cheeks went a bit hot and my eyes started prickling. I could feel that I was dangerously close to crying. I said, ‘I promise I’ll try but it’s a bit hard when your so-called best friend decides she’s going to be number-one-chums with Samantha flipping Morgan.’
My mum said, ‘Ah . . . I see.’
Of course, she knows about my history with Samantha. And how I got excluded in Year 9 because I threw Samantha’s stupid exercise book and bag out of the window during a Welsh lesson.9 But I only did it because she said my mum was a rozzer and I thought she’d said lezzer. Looking back on it now, I can’t believe I got so freaked out. Anyone would think I had some serious issues.
Mum said, ‘Just because Goose has found a new friend, doesn’t mean that she isn’t still best friends with you. They say three is a magic number, you know.’
‘Oh, don’t start that,’ I said.
‘I’m just asking you to give school a chance.’ My mum shrugged. ‘And remember, we were going to go to the pet shop and choose a baby rabbit, weren’t we?’
I sniffed and nodded. Then I said, ‘Mum, instead of
a rabbit, do you think I could have a chinchilla?’
My mum looked surprised. ‘A chinchilla? Are they those round fluffy things with pointy faces?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. And they’ve got chicken feet and they sleep a lot. Can I have one?’
‘I suppose so,’ my mum said.
And then I felt quite happy and gave her a kiss on the cheek and was about to go upstairs when she stopped me in my tracks.
‘Oh, and Lottie . . .’ she called, ‘Gareth popped round on his way home. He wondered if you’d be interested in a Saturday job at his mum’s hair salon. There’s a vacancy, apparently. If you fancy it, he said you should stop by for an interview after school tomorrow.’
I came back into the kitchen; my mouth open in amazement. ‘Are you both nuts?’ I said. ‘I got sacked from my last job for nicking shoes during my mental-disturbance-of-a-reasonably-significant-nature episode,10 remember?’
My mum said, ‘Hmmph.’ And then she said, ‘Yes, I do remember that, thank you.’ She raised her eyebrows and added, ‘But I suppose there’s nothing much to pinch in Jean Stingecombe’s hair salon, is there? A few grey curls, maybe? Some split ends?’
I bit my lip. To be honest, I’ve always quite fancied the idea of working in a salon. I’m naturally and genuinely very interested in hair. Much more than I am in Central Business Districts or Oscar Wilde’s books about gardening. I wasn’t sure about working for Gareth’s mum though, cos I don’t know her. And although it doesn’t always seem like it, I’m actually quite shy. I said, ‘Does Gareth’s mum know that I am an ex-criminal with a mental disturbance of a reasonably significant nature?’
My mum said, ‘Stop exaggerating, please. You’re not a criminal, Lottie. You don’t even have a record. You were given a warning.’ Then she walked over to me and put her hands on my cheeks. ‘Besides, you’re fine. Remember what Doctor Edwards has been telling you – and Blake too. Lots of people go through episodes of rocky mental health. It’s just important that you develop strategies to cope with it.’