by Jean Ure
“I don’t want to talk about it, OK?”
I swallowed. “OK.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about me, I came to talk about you.”
Guardedly, I said, “What about me?”
“Why you’re not at school.”
“You know why I’m not at school! I’ve got this headache.”
“Yeah, you said.”
“It’s like a migraine. It’s really really—”
“Carmen, stop it!” I thought for a moment he was going to shake me. That startled me even more. It was so not Josh! We didn’t treat each other like that. “What’s happened to you? Why have you suddenly let them get to you? They’re not worth it! People like Marigold Johnson… they’re just body fascists. Nothing up here.” He tapped his head. “Completely empty. All they think about is looks.”
I knew that Josh, like Indy, was only trying to help, but it just made me feel even more humiliated than I had before. I’d always been so determined not to feel ashamed of my own body that size wasn’t something I’d ever discussed. Not even with Indy. We’d never had girly-type conversations with me moaning about spare tyres and Indy fretting over lack of boobs. We’d always pretended we were just ordinary, regular, girl-shaped girls. That is, I’d pretended. Indy had just been kind and humoured me.
When I went shopping for clothes and Josh came along and chose brilliant, clever tops that flattered me, of course I knew that he was looking at my bum and thinking, How can we cover that up? but he didn’t ever say so. I didn’t ever say so. Not even in joke, like, “Ooh, hide the big fat bum!” I suppose I had this idea that if neither of us ever mentioned it, it would mean that he hadn’t really noticed. Which is totally and utterly pathetic, cos how could he not?
“There’s only one way to deal with them,” said Josh. “You just have to ignore them.”
I muttered, “I’ve been ignoring them.”
“So go on ignoring them!”
He thought it was that easy?
“Just come back and make like nothing ever happened, and it’ll all blow over. Honestly! I promise! People like you. They don’t like Marigold. But you’re funny and sharp and you stick up for yourself. People admire you for that. They’re glad you slagged her off. They reckon it was about time.”
I thought, Yes, and look where it got me. Look where it got both of us.
“Just come back,” said Josh.
I pursed my lips.
“The longer you leave it, the harder it’s going to get. If you came back tomorrow—”
“Dunno if I’m gonna come back at all.”
“What?”
“I said, I don’t know if I’m going to come back at all.”
“Don’t be daft! You’ll have to, sooner or later.”
“Why?”
“They’ll make you.”
“They can’t. Not if I refuse. Not unless they drag me, and then they’d have to keep me in chains.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Course it is! You’re being silly. They’d just take you into care, or put you in an institution, or something.”
“Think that’d bother me?”
“Well, it should!”
“Well, it doesn’t.”
I could see that I was exasperating him. I didn’t want to; I just didn’t seem able to stop myself. What with Indy, and now Josh, I was beginning to feel distinctly got at.
“What about the contest?” said Josh. “They won’t let you enter if you’re not at school.”
“So?”
“So we’ve written the song! We’ve chosen your outfit. You can’t back out now!”
If there’s one thing I really cannot stand, it’s being pushed around. Specially when I know, deep inside myself, that the person who’s doing the pushing is right. That makes me even madder than when they’re wrong. That makes me really resentful.
I gave Josh one of my looks. I have this look which says, as plain as can be, BACK OFF. Most people, when I give them the look, immediately shut up. Josh just went motoring on, regardless. He said, “Carm, come on! You owe it to us… me and Indy. We’re rooting for you! So are loads of other people. You owe it to them, as well. You owe it to your nan!”
I practically screamed it at him: “Don’t you bring my nan into it!”
Still he didn’t back off. “You know what she’d say… she’d say you were letting yourself down.” I felt my face turn slowly crimson. “Letting her down, as well. Haven’t got what it takes.”
I snarled, “You shut up!”
“I won’t shut up. How can you be such a coward?”
He had some nerve! “Talk about me being a coward! What about you? Haven’t even got the bottle to come out to your own mum and dad!”
I shouldn’t have said it. It was mean, turning on Josh when all he was trying to do was help me.
Stiffly, he said, “We’ve already been through that.”
Even now I couldn’t stop myself. I snapped, “Not properly, we haven’t! All you said was you didn’t want them to know. What you actually meant was, you were too scared to tell them, and that is just pathetic. Too scared to tell your own mum and dad! Then you dare to come round here and start on at me.”
Josh said, “I’m not starting on at you.”
“Well, ha ha, that’s very funny, cos it’s certainly what it sounds like!”
“Yeah? Well, you know what? I wish I’d never bothered!”
“You and me both!”
We stood there, glaring at each other. Speaking personally, if I’d been Josh I’d have walked out right there and then, but I guess Josh is a nicer person than I am. He said, “Oh look, for goodness sake, this is really stupid! If we can’t even t—”
“Go away!” I screamed it at him. “I’m sick of being lectured, and especially by you!”
This time, he finally got the message. I guess I’d gone just a bit too far, even for Josh. Coldly, he said, “If that’s the way you want it.”
“It is!”
“OK!”
I followed him back out into the hall and stood, simmering, waiting for him to go.
“At least I’m not bunking off school,” he said.
He didn’t even slam the door behind him. I would have done.
Needless to say, the minute he’d gone I collapsed like a squashed meringue. Mum’s always said that one of these days my tongue will get the better of me. “Just can’t learn to control it, can you?” I could even hear Nan rebuking me. “Well, that’s it, girl! You’ve really gone and done it this time.”
I’d bawled at Indy, now I’d bawled at Josh. But it was his own fault! He shouldn’t have brought Nan into it. He knew she was the only person in my entire life who’d ever really, truly loved me. He knew how much I missed her.
Memories of Nan came flooding over me and plunged me into even deeper depths of misery. When Mum came home at six o’clock she was considerably annoyed to find that last night’s dinner dishes, plus this morning’s breakfast stuff, were still mouldering unwashed in the sink, and the pizza which apparently (so she said) I was supposed to have taken out of the freezer and put in the oven was still in the freezer, and the oven hadn’t even been turned on, and for crying out loud, Carmen, you haven’t done a single solitary thing!
I told her that I had in fact been doing my homework, and waved Josh’s print-out at her to prove it. It wouldn’t have cut any ice with Mum even if it had been true. She went on at some length about how she had been working for eight hours straight, and the least she deserved was to find dinner ready and waiting for her when she got back. I guess she had a point. One way or another, it was a pretty horrible kind of evening.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mum was on late turn next day, so I had to get up and get dressed and make like I was going to school. While I was munching cereal in the kitchen, her mobile started squawking. She yelled at me from the bathroom. “Carmen, get that for me!” So I picked it up and found it was a text message from
school, alerting Mum to the fact that I hadn’t been there yesterday. I’d forgotten they did that. Phew! Lucky for me I’d got there first. I deleted it immediately.
“Who was it?” said Mum.
I told her it was someone trying to sell something.
Mum said, “Sell what?”
“Didn’t ask.”
“Well, in future I would like to know,” said Mum. “It could have been a free kitchen. How do you know it wasn’t a free kitchen?”
I said, “It wasn’t a free anything. It was just rubbish.” I grabbed my bag and made for the door. “I gotta go, I’ll be late!”
I caught the bus at the usual stop, but instead of getting off at Ravenspark Road I stayed on till we reached the shopping centre. I wasn’t going back to that school again ever. Of course I knew they would come for me. I’d be hunted down like a criminal and dragged off in chains, or more likely handcuffs. I’d heard of people being brought back to school by the police. But they couldn’t make me stay there! I’d just keep running off until in the end they’d be forced to send me somewhere else. Either that, or lock me up. Whichever. I didn’t care! Sooner be behind bars than have to suffer Marigold Johnson and her gang of sniggering morons every day.
“That fat freak! What’s she think she’s gonna do?”
The words still rang in my ears. I had the feeling that everyone was staring at me. Ooh, look! Fat! Body fascists, that’s what Josh had called them. You’re the wrong size, you’re the wrong shape! Yeeeurgh, bluuurgh, don’t want her joining the club!
Thinking of Josh, as I went into the shopping centre, made me feel bad all over again. He and Indy were my two best friends, and I’d upset both of them. Josh had trusted me with his secret. He’d confided in me what he wouldn’t even confide in his mum and dad, and I knew how hard it must have been for him. He is such a very private sort of person. He doesn’t just blurt things out like I do. He’d probably been screwing up his courage for weeks before finally bringing himself to tell me. How could I have been so mean as to fling it back in his face?
And how could I have snarled at Indy? Threatening never to talk to her again! Indy and I had been friends since our very first day in Year 7. She was the only black girl, I was the only fat girl, and I guess we drifted together for comfort. Nobody else, right at the beginning, seemed to want to know us. Indy and her mum had just moved from London, and out of all my special gang at juniors I was the only one that got sent to Ravenspark. My best mate Janey was supposed to be coming with me, but at the last minute her mum and dad had gone off to live in Australia, leaving me on my own. Marigold had been at juniors, but she didn’t want to know me any more than I wanted to know her. Me and Indy were always going to be outsiders. Most everyone else got sucked into Marigold’s orbit before even the first week was out.
Fortunately, as it happened, me and Indy hit it off from the word go. We both came from single parent families, which was an immediate bond. And we both utterly despised Marigold Johnson, which was another. I love Indy! She is really funny and scatty. She has a little brother who is even scattier. He gives us lots of laughs, like when he asked his mum to buy a second fish tank so his fish could go on holiday. Actually, I thought that was just so sweet! He was only six years old, and he really cared about his fish.
Nan used to like Indy. She said, “That girl has a happy face.” Mum, on the other hand, always makes me grind my teeth. She says it’s “so amusing” to see us together, what with me being so huge and Indy being so tiny. Well, she doesn’t actually say huge; what she says is big. But that is just a polite word for fat.
Another thing she says, though not in so many words, is “How come a boy like Josh” – meaning a boy who could have his pick of any girl he chose – “goes round with someone like you?” Not even Mum would be horrid enough to actually say it to my face, but I know that is what she thinks. She occasionally lets slip these remarks. She is so beautiful and glamorous herself that she considers it a total waste, like for instance if Darrin O’Shea from Urban Legend were to hang out with – oh, I don’t know! Some ancient old bag of a politician, maybe. Why not have a girlfriend as gorgeous as he is?
It’s what Marigold thought, and the reason she got so insanely jealous, cos how could someone like Josh prefer a wobbly jelly to a prom queen like her?
What Mum has never been able to get her head round, though I’ve told her over and over, is that Josh is not my boyfriend, he is just my friend. We confide in each other and look out for each other and support each other when things go wrong, like when Josh’s cat went missing and I helped him look for her, and went round the streets sticking notices on lamp posts, and did my best to cheer him up when he thought he was never going to see her again. Like when Nan died, and it was Josh who was there for me. Indy was, too, except she lives miles away, while Josh is just ten minutes down the road. I cried buckets all over him. Not over Mum; I didn’t shed a tear, hardly, in front of Mum. Mum didn’t shed a tear, either, cos of being scared she’d make her mascara run. Well, no, I’m being unfair, she did cry a little bit, when she first got back from the hospital, just not in public when she had her make-up on.
Mum never loved Nan the way I did; sometimes I used to think she almost resented her coming to live with us. They certainly didn’t always see eye to eye, in fact they used to fall out quite a lot, mainly over me. Mum used to say that Nan automatically took my side whenever we had an argument, while Nan said Mum did nothing but carp and criticise. She always used to stick up for me, especially when Mum went on about my weight.
“Just leave the girl alone! We can’t all go round looking like bits of string… wouldn’t want to, neither. Some of us like a bit of flesh on our bones.”
It used to make Mum so mad! She accuses me of having a sharp tongue, but if I do it’s her I get it from. It’s true I am not a doormat; I don’t believe in just lying down and letting myself get trampled on by the Marigold Johnsons of this world. But I am not a bad sort of person. I really am not! I had never ever yelled at Josh or Indy before. It was all the fault of that hideous Marigold. She had turned me into a right cow.
I tramped on, round the shopping centre, trying to find something interesting to do. I was just about to go into HMV and check whether there was anything by Urban Legend that I hadn’t got (which I knew there wouldn’t be) when my mobile started up. I thought, I am not going to answer it! But it turned out to be a text message from Josh. R U coming in 2day? I immediately texted back: No I told U. So then he wants to know, Why not? And I tell him, U no why not. So then he says, UR missing maths and I tell him, Good (because I hate maths) and for just a few minutes it makes me feel quite triumphant. Yay! I’m missing maths! I’m walking round the shopping centre while everyone else is stuck in a dreary classroom listening to Mr Fenwick drone on about equations. Best of all, Josh hasn’t given up on me.
Made bold by a sudden mad burst of enthusiasm I go waltzing into HMV and begin happily browsing, picking things up and putting them down, until I notice someone watching me and immediately become self-conscious and go rushing back out into the shopping centre and walking furiously in no particular direction.
A couple of policemen are strolling past. They give me these really suspicious looks, like “What is that girl doing here?” and “Why isn’t she in school?” but I stare back boldly and they go on their way, leaving me alone. It’s a good thing we don’t have to wear much in the way of uniforms at Ravenspark, specially in summer. Just black trousers and a white top. Nobody’s going to know which school I go to, unless I have the misfortune to bump into someone like Mrs Gasbag – or Mum.
The thought of bumping into Mum makes me go scuttling like a frightened hen down to the far end of the shopping centre. Mum works in the High Street so she’s not very likely to be around, especially at this time of day, but on the whole it seems best not to take any chances. She’d do her nut if she discovered I wasn’t in school again.
I have heard that some shopping centres are really fun p
laces, where you can easily spend an entire day without ever getting bored or running out of things to do. Ours is not like that. It is called the Bosworth Centre, which is a very dreary name for a very dreary place, especially when you don’t have any money. But I didn’t dare go home before my usual time in case of running into Gasbag. I swear that woman spends her life peering through the letter box, waiting to spy on me.
At lunch time I bought a bag of crisps and an apple and sat and munched in a corner, keeping an eye open for Mum, or Gasbag, or anyone else that might recognise me. After lunch I went into Primark and wandered up and down the aisles, gazing at stuff, until I felt that I was being watched again, probably by a big beefy store detective who’d haul me off to be strip searched before I even had a chance to turn my pockets out and show him they were empty.
I left Primark and scuttled next door into Superdrug. In Superdrug they had bins full of stuff just asking to be nicked. So I nicked some. For absolutely no reason at all, except for something to do. It wasn’t even like it was something I wanted. I mean, camomile wipes! What was I going to do with those, for heaven’s sake? They had cotton wool balls in another bin, and I’d have nicked some of them, as well, if I’d been brave enough. It wasn’t conscience that stopped me, but fear of being arrested. Maybe Josh was right, and I really was a coward.
I slid out of Superdrug and into the Choc Shop, which is right next door. They have these ultra gollopy delish chox in the Choc Shop. Handmade, with yummy gooey fillings. Mum never buys any as they are a) expensive and b) fattening. But just now and again, Nan used to treat us. Her and me. We’d have gollopy delish chox together, sitting at one of the little tables, with Nan sipping a big frothy cappuccino and me slurping at one of their special fizzy bubble drinks, all pink and sweet and zingy. That was before Nan’s arthritis became so bad she hardly ever left the flat. It seemed like such a long time since Nan and me had had fun together.
I dithered in the doorway, trying to get up the nerve to do a quick snatch and grab. I fantasised what Nan might say. Go for it, girl! She was wicked, was Nan; she could egg you on. But I didn’t think even Nan would encourage me to shoplift.