Strawberry Sisters

by Candy Harper

  ‘I can’t. Honestly, Amelia, I’m really sick; there’s no way I’ll be able to.’

  I was totally confused. ‘You said you weren’t that bad!’

  Lauren made a choking noise. ‘I . . . It’s . . . Oh, you don’t understand!’

  ‘No, I don’t understand because you keep saying different stuff. Are you ill or not?’

  ‘I’m too ill to come into school tomorrow,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘I’m sorry I’ll miss drama.’

  But she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded angry. Well, I was angry too; I felt like she wasn’t telling me everything. ‘Lauren, what’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Is this because of your fight with Milly?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Is there some reason you don’t want to come into school? Because everybody feels like they’d rather be lazing around at home sometimes, but—’

  ‘Is that what you think? That I’m just lazy?’

  I hadn’t meant that at all and now she was cross with me again. Something inside me snapped like a brittle twig.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t know what to think because you won’t tell me anything!’

  ‘Think whatever you want to, Amelia.’

  And she hung up.

  I blinked hard. My hands were shaking.

  I’d been walking all the time I’d been talking and I was already quite far from school. I didn’t backtrack to see if Ella and Chloe were still waiting for me at the school gates; instead, I stormed home by myself. The other two didn’t arrive for another fifteen minutes.

  ‘You could’ve told us you weren’t walking with us,’ Chloe said when she found me in the kitchen. ‘We waited ages for you.’

  ‘So?’ I snapped.

  ‘So it’s not very polite.’

  ‘Your face isn’t very polite.’

  ‘Sorry, is this better?’ And she pushed her nose into a piggy snout and stuck out her tongue.

  ‘Do you have to be such an immature, blob-headed moron?’

  Ella stepped between us. ‘It’s just that we weren’t sure whether we should keep waiting,’ she said. ‘We were a bit worried.’

  ‘You’re always worried, Ella. I can’t be held responsible for that.’

  Chloe would have snapped back at me, but Ella just turned away. As she did, I saw her face pucker like she was about to cry.

  I stomped upstairs and threw myself on my bed. I was so angry inside that I wanted to be able to lash out at someone. I was trying to find reasons to be mad at Chloe and Ella, but really I had to admit that they hadn’t done anything wrong. I knew I was taking my bad mood out on them.

  I breathed hard and clenched my fists. I was so annoyed. Mostly with myself. I thought I’d decided not to be the mean big sister any more and here I was saying horrible things to sweet little Ella. The point about deciding to behave well is that it takes more than just good intentions. It’s really easy to think that you’re going to be a better person, but then you get into the heat of the moment and it’s actually quite hard to control your feelings. I sighed. I couldn’t go back to being the stroppy one now. Things were all weird with Lauren, but for once I was determined that I wasn’t going to spread my bad feelings all over my family. I was going to be considerate.

  I took a few deep breaths and went back downstairs.

  ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you, Ella,’ I said.

  She looked startled. I suppose she hasn’t heard me say sorry very much. ‘That’s all right.’

  Chloe looked at me. ‘And I’m sorry I called you names,’ I said to her.

  ‘Apology accepted, gorilla-breath,’ she said.

  It’s funny how there are a lot of different ways to call people names and some of them are OK and some are not.

  Chloe filled the kettle at the sink. ‘Do you want a cup of tea, poop-for-brains?’

  I let her get away with that one.

  Lauren wasn’t in school the next day and she didn’t call me either. Which was fine because I didn’t want to speak to her anyway. Since I’d decided I wasn’t going to be a misery guts who upset her family any more, I didn’t tell Mum or Chloe or anyone about falling out with Lauren; instead, I focused on being helpful and not grumpy. So when Mum got back from school I volunteered to make tea while she had a bath. I was halfway through when I heard Lucy squealing in the sitting room.

  ‘Quick! Quick! Come and look!’ she shouted.

  That’s the sort of thing she says when she’s taken off a plaster or found a hairball the size of a melon under the sofa, but I put down the knife I was using and stuck my head into the sitting room just in case it was actually something interesting for once. Lucy was pointing at the TV and Chloe was standing frozen in front of it. On the screen was a boy’s wide, grinning face. Thunder.

  It was a local news feature on the new youth squad and how they hoped they were training the stars of future Rugby World Cups. It only lasted thirty seconds, but Thunder did get to say that he thought the coaching at the club was ‘awesome’.

  ‘You didn’t tell us Thunder was going to be on the telly,’ I said to Chloe.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘I didn’t know because he didn’t tell me and he didn’t tell me because he’s the worst friend in the world.’ She clenched her jaw and her fists.

  ‘Or maybe he was afraid to tell you because he knew you’d look like that,’ I said. I hoped she wasn’t going to start punching things because somehow, whenever one of my sisters starts trashing the place, it’s me that gets the blame because I’m the oldest. Like that means I can keep any of them in check.

  ‘Or maybe he forgot about it,’ Lucy said. ‘Maybe he had other things in his head. He does spend lots of time talking about what’s for tea. I forget about stuff when I’m thinking about important things. Like sweets or turning into a dinosaur.’

  Chloe wasn’t listening. ‘I can’t believe it. Thunder gets to do everything. He gets to be on the squad and on TV. I’m better at rugby than him! I’d be better on TV as well.’

  I actually felt sorry for Chloe; it did seem really unfair. ‘You totally would,’ I agreed. ‘Your whole face could fit on the screen and, unlike Thunder, your nose looks nothing like a potato.’

  She twitched out of her trance.

  ‘Yours is more like a carrot,’ I went on.

  She gave a half-smile. ‘Yeah, well, at least I haven’t got cauliflower ears like you.’

  ‘No, you just smell like Brussels sprouts.’

  Then she twisted my arm behind my back and I knew I’d managed to cheer her up.

  ‘What are you going to say to Thunder?’ I asked, shaking her off.

  She flexed her muscles. ‘I’ll just let my fists do the talking.’

  I was pretty sure that she was mostly joking. ‘Seriously though, don’t fall out with him. You two have only just got things sorted out after you said you didn’t want to go out with him.’

  ‘I know and after he stopped all that nonsense we agreed that we were going to stay as best friends. Friends are supposed to tell each other things.’

  ‘It is quite hard to tell people things when you know they’re going to be cross,’ Lucy said. ‘Like when the arm popped off that old doll of Mum’s. I didn’t want to say because she’d shout at me.’

  Chloe and I looked at each other.

  ‘Lucy!’ Chloe said. ‘You broke Annabella and didn’t tell anyone?’

  Lucy stared calmly back at us. ‘That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t tell so Mum wouldn’t be cross with me.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

  ‘Last week.’

  ‘You mean Mum’s got no idea that her most precious thing from when she was little has lost an arm?’ Chloe demanded.

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘You’d better show me,’ I said to Lucy. ‘And if I can’t fix it then you’re going to have to confess.’

  Lucy scowled, but we made her tiptoe upstairs so Mum wouldn’t hear us from the bathroom. She showed us wher
e she’d hidden poor Annabella under her bed. I managed to squeeze her little plastic arm into its socket and then I snuck into Mum’s bedroom and quickly put her back in her box in Mum’s wardrobe, before Mum got out of the bath.

  ‘No more touching Annabella till you’re twenty-five,’ I said to Lucy.

  Lucy tutted. ‘I’ll be practically dead by then.’

  ‘Good. Maybe you’ll be too weak to break her again.’

  ‘I think you’d better go and tidy the Pit to make up for what you’ve done,’ Chloe said to Lucy.

  My mum still calls our basement room the playroom but the rest of us call it the Pit because it’s always such a mess in there with books and toys all over the floor and all the furniture that’s too shabby to be anywhere else in the house. Actually, during half-term, Lucy had completely tidied and redecorated the whole room because she had this crazy idea that Dad, Suvi and Kirsti could live there. It was really sad to realise that Lucy wants to live with Kirsti so much that she was prepared to spend hours tidying up all that mess. Obviously, Mum and Dad had to explain that Kirsti wouldn’t be coming to live with us and, in the weeks since that happened, the creeping tide of tiny plastic toys has already washed back over the floor of the Pit.

  ‘Good idea,’ I said to Chloe. ‘Having to sort out Sylvanian shoes from Lego pieces and My Little Pony brushes is enough to drive anyone to good behaviour.’

  We went back into the kitchen and Chloe helped me finish making the chilli.

  ‘I could understand him not wanting to tell me bad news,’ she said while crunching on a piece of red pepper.

  ‘Are we back to Thunder?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Bad news I understand, but you’d think he’d want to share good news with me, like being on TV.’

  I searched in the drawer for the tin-opener. ‘But, if he had, what would you’ve said?’

  ‘I’d have said, “That’s really unfair. I’m better at rugby than you and I ought to be the one on TV.” ’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘But then I might’ve been able to say, “I saw you on TV and your voice only squeaked a little bit when you were talking to the interviewer.” ’

  ‘He’ll be sorry to have missed out on such high praise.’

  Chloe shook her head. ‘Friends are supposed to share things.’

  She had a good point. I stirred a tin of tomatoes into the pot and wondered why Lauren didn’t seem to want to share things with me any more.

  ‘Maybe you should talk to him about it?’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh, I will. This is all he’s going to hear about tomorrow.’

  Maybe I should take my own advice and talk to Lauren. I missed her. But she was the one who was being unreasonable. She should be calling me. I pushed thoughts about my best friend out of my head and went back to the chilli.

  Later, when we were in bed, Chloe whispered, ‘Suvi says I shouldn’t give up on getting girls on the rugby squad. Do you think she’s crazy?’

  I do think Suvi is a little crazy. I used to think that she was crazy-mean and that she’d stolen my dad away from my mum; now I know that’s not true but I still think she’s a bit crazy; she doesn’t eat sugar and she likes maths and she says TV is bad for you, but I don’t mind those things so much any more.

  ‘You’d have to be crazy to want to be a part of this family,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but I mean about the rugby squad. She says that I should make them put girls on the squad; I can’t do that, can I?’

  I wriggled further down under my duvet. ‘I don’t know. Can you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe you should find out.’

  The next morning, Milly actually managed not to make any comments about Lauren during drama. But somehow that was even worse. She was wearing a special face like she thought she was being all saintly and gracious because she was being kind enough not to point out the fact that Lauren had let us all down.

  I wondered if Lauren really was still ill or if she was just avoiding me. I sort of wanted to call her, but I couldn’t quite get my thoughts about the whole situation to make sense. Part of me wanted to say sorry, but a bigger part of me thought that she ought to apologise first.

  I still hadn’t sorted things out in my mind when Chloe, Ella and I got to Dad’s house. Lucy was sprawled on the stairs, arranging My Little Ponies in a battle scene with various home-made weapons and sucking a lollipop.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.

  ‘I made it out of a Smarties tube.’

  ‘Not the pony bazooka. The lollipop.’ Suvi never usually allows anything that sugary in the house.

  ‘Emily gave it to me.’

  ‘Evil Emily?’

  ‘Yep. Evil Emily’s got a grandma who buys her lots of sweets because she knows that it annoys her mum.’

  ‘I suppose that’s the best kind of Evil Emily.’

  Lucy slurped happily. ‘And I’ve got a packet of Maltesers from Rose.’

  ‘Why are your friends being so generous all of a sudden?’

  Lucy shrugged and squished a blob of Blu-Tack on to a tiny plastic hand grenade so she could stick it to a pony hoof. ‘Cos I’m nice.’

  I stepped over the battlefield to go upstairs. ‘It can’t possibly be that.’

  Before we went to bed, Dad told me and Chloe to put all the recycling out on the kerb.

  I wasn’t in the best of moods. ‘Why do we have to do it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s important for you to learn life skills,’ Dad said. ‘Next week, I’m going to teach you how to change a tyre.’

  ‘I can already do that,’ Chloe said. ‘Thunder’s uncle showed us.’

  ‘What about you, Amelia?’ Dad asked. ‘What are you going to do when you find yourself with a flat tyre by the side of the motorway?’

  ‘I’ll ring Chloe.’ I folded my arms. ‘Anyway, what has this got to do with recycling?’

  Dad sat back and opened his paper. ‘I told you: life skills.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I can carry some cardboard boxes without any practice, but I can see that even a short walk might crumble your elderly bones so just this once I’ll do it.’ I followed Chloe to the garage before he could say anything. I didn’t really mind that much about moving some recycling; I just felt so fed up about Lauren.

  The recycling is supposed to go in a little green bin in the garage, but that quickly gets full up. Some people, like Suvi and Ella, neatly stack the extra stuff round the bin, but other people, i.e. everybody else, just open the door from the kitchen and toss it into the garage. Which means, when it’s collection time, you have to crawl about in the cold garage, fishing yoghurt pots out from whatever they’ve rolled under.

  I tried to pick up an armful of plastic bottles, but they escaped my grasp and clattered all over the concrete floor. I huffed.

  ‘Why don’t you make up with Lauren?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘Who says I need to make up with Lauren?’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious you’ve fallen out with someone. And, since you haven’t been spending hours and hours on the phone to her, I’m pretty sure it’s Lauren.’

  My skin prickled. Infuriating. I’d put so much effort into not taking my bad mood out on my family, but obviously I hadn’t done a very good job. I bit my lip.

  ‘If you make up with her then you could stop being super grumpy all the time and just go back to being your normal level of grumpy.’

  I couldn’t help giving Chloe a black look. ‘If Lauren wants to make up, she knows where I am.’

  ‘Yeah, but you said she’s poorly. Why don’t you go round? You could do it tomorrow after rehearsal.’

  ‘I’m not going back there; it’s bad enough that her mum makes me feel unwelcome, but if Lauren doesn’t want to see me then I won’t set foot in that place again!’

  Chloe stomped on a juice carton to make it pop. ‘Yeah you will.’

  ‘I won’t. I’m furious.’

  ‘I know you are. But you get furious about things all
the time; you were furious this morning when I used your toothbrush.’

  I stared at her. ‘Was that you? You said it was Lucy.’

  Chloe went on gathering up packaging. ‘I said Lucy had used it, which was true, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t use it too. It’s the only one that’s ever in the proper place. I don’t have time to remember what I’ve done with my toothbrush the night before when I’m trying to get ready for school.’

  I made a growling noise in my throat.

  ‘Anyway, the thing is that you were angry then, but you’ve completely forgiven me now, haven’t you? Especially since I’m offering you such good advice about Lauren.’

  ‘Who I am still furious with.’

  ‘But what I’m saying is that you get cross with people about ten times a day. You like it. You’ll have forgotten about it by tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe. But I’m pretty fed up of her not being a very good friend.’

  ‘She is ill though, isn’t she? She keeps being ill. She had all that time off before half-term.’

  ‘That wasn’t all being ill,’ I said. ‘She had to go to a wedding and some days she had to go to the orthodontist.’

  ‘I didn’t know they let you have a whole day off for that. Anyway, she seems pretty sicky. She always looks dead pale when I see her. What exactly is wrong with her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. But in my head I could hear Lauren saying, I’m really sick. ‘She just gets tired sometimes,’ I said. ‘It’s because of when she had glandular fever.’

  ‘I thought she had that ages ago.’

  I wished Chloe would stop going on. ‘She should just go to the doctor and get them to give her something for it,’ I said, shoving the garage door open a lot harder than necessary. Chloe carried out the jam-packed green bin while I followed with a cardboard box crammed with the rest of the recycling.

  ‘Maybe there’s nothing the doctors can do,’ Chloe said. ‘Remember Nana?’

  It was awful when they told us that there wasn’t anything they could give Nana to make her better. ‘This is completely different. Lauren’s not really that ill and she isn’t going to die.’

  ‘But still, sometimes even doctors can’t make people completely right again, can they?’