by Hilary McKay
The latest family news is that Saffron and Sarah have left school forever. It has been all tears and yearbooks and prom dresses and ‘What will we do if we don’t get our grades?’ for weeks. They need four Grade A ‘A’ levels each so that they can go to Law School. They’ll never do it. Sarah missed loads of school being ill when she was little, and Saffron didn’t even learn to read until she was eight.
Caddy says they need not worry about not passing because they always need car park attendants at the zoo.
Or they could help David on his burger stand.
Or Daddy in his junk shop/fine art gallery.
And Mummy says she could probably get them some modelling at her Art College too.
So. Nothing to worry about there. And meanwhile they have both passed their driving tests.
A long time ago Sarah talked about the bright red open top sports car she would one day own.
And now she does.
2nd August 2009
The Reason I Went Camping.
(I Only Went So I Could Tell …)
‘I don’t know how your mother copes!’ said my father.
That is true. He doesn’t. And he cannot ask her because she is in Italy with Saffron and Sarah and Sarah’s parents. They said she needed a break.
When he first heard this Daddy remarked that he also needed a break, but when he found out that the country she would be breaking in was Italy, he murmured, ‘Too many painful memories,’ and shut up. Years ago, when he was much younger (and I hope better looking) Daddy behaved very badly indeed in Italy.
And the consequences are with him yet.
So there he was, poor thing, left behind with Indigo and me, and then Indy got tickets for a three-day music festival, the sort where you camp, and so did David, and their friends Patrick, Marcus and Josh. And I began my great pestering to be allowed to go too, and Indigo, David, Marcus, Patrick and Josh all backed me up and promised to look after me.
At first Daddy said no way on earth would he let a twelve-year-old go camping with five seventeen-year-old boys at a rock festival.
But I took no notice of this, and I went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and I must admit that one of the good things about Daddy is that he is not quite as stubborn as the rest of the family and in the end he broke.
‘Go then!’ he cried. ‘Go! Only don’t blame me if you catch pneumonia/trench foot/nits/swine flu/far worse.’
And added, ‘I don’t know how your mother copes!’
Then he went shopping and came staggering back with wellies, antibacterial spray, cereal bars, baby wipes, earplugs, a very loud whistle from the camping shop, (the sort you blow to attract attention when you have broken both legs half way up a mountain), and many other things which he said were absolutely necessary for camping at music festivals. Also he had a serious talk with me, during which he explained that the ear plugs were in case the music was too loud, and the whistle was to be blown if I was annoyed by any whistle-fearing festival goers, and the antibacterial spray was to be squirted on everything I touched, and that I must carry my mobile phone, switched on, at all times, especially in the loo.
‘Why especially in the loo?’ I asked.
‘Because there you will be ALONE,’ said Daddy. ‘Stop screeching and rolling about like that! I am not being funny. If you are not going to take this seriously you will not be allowed to go.’
So I squirted myself with antibacterial spray and tried on the wellies.
And I was allowed to go.
It was a very strange experience; not a bit what I had expected. The music, for instance, which was not at all the sort of stuff I would listen to in ordinary life, was transformed (by sky and clouds and stars overhead and mud and enthusiasm underneath) into sound so mesmerizing I could hardly bear it to stop. Everything jangled, brighter and stronger, harder and scarier, than ordinary life. The smell of the hamburgers from David’s hamburger stall. The colour of a red helium balloon, escaped from a girl’s hand and climbing higher and higher through the windy sky, the feel of the ground under my sleeping bag at night, hard and knobbly as dragon’s back.
Rain and sun and noise and quiet.
I forgot to use my antibacterial spray, and I didn’t need the whistle once. I don’t know what happened to the earplugs. I gave most of the cereal bars to some little kids I met in a puddle. And I am sure Daddy has never experienced a music festival loo, because if he had he would know that it is the last place in the world that you would take your mobile phone for a quiet chat. The trick is not to breathe at all, never mind speak. (Especially when you have a bodyguard of seventeen year old boys on the other side of the door.)
But I survived.
Just.
I’m not sure if I could survive twice, though.
I fell asleep in the car home. I fell asleep in the bath. I fell asleep on the sofa eating bread and honey, and I fell asleep over the computer.
‘Go to bed,’ advised Daddy.
‘I will,’ I said, ‘as soon as I’ve sent one email.’
‘Ah,’ said Daddy, and went away so that I could be private.
(I only went so I could tell …)
There is not one musical thing about Daddy, except his whistle. He has a lovely whistle. When I woke up again he was whistling a tune I knew well: ‘(Everything I do) I do it for you.’
He stopped when he knew I was listening.
(… Tom.)
25th August 2009
I cannot write much because I am so exhausted. Today I went school uniform shopping.
I started off with Mummy, looking for trousers. She was very droopy about it and after 11 or 12 pairs in quite a lot of different shops she sat down in Starbucks and would not get up.
So Saffron had to take over, and she lasted until new school bag time. And then she stamped off snarling, ‘That’s it. You’re on your own. I’ve finished with you forever. Goodbye.’
Just because when I said turquoise with flowers I meant turquoise with flowers NOT turquoise with flowers and very small purple butterflies. What is so difficult to understand about that?
Daddy did shoes. It was torture. After an hour or two I longed to be adopted. I did not care by whom, as long as they had no opinion on what I chose to wear on my feet. They are my feet, after all.
Daddy disgraced me shoe shopping. He stood outside the thirteenth shop and bellowed, ‘There is a circle of hell exclusively made up of shoe shops and they are all full of twelve-year-old girls! The Chinese had the right idea when they bound their daughters’ feet!’
He was not arrested. I think he should have been. And so should all those people who nodded and murmured when they heard him and said he was quite right.
PE kit tomorrow. I am not wearing a tracksuit whatever it says on the uniform list. Or plain trainers with no flashes and non-marking soles. Someone will have to help me find things that are completely different and yet so exactly the same that I will not get put in detention when I turn up with them instead.
Simple.
9th September 2009
I love this time of year, the beginning of September. All the colours seem just right. The sky is a thinner, clearer, blue than it was in August and the shadows on the walls are as purple as the plums in Sarah’s garden. Outside my classroom window the leaves on the willow tree have been so faded by sun and rain and wind that they are as much silver as they are green.
Kiran, who is reading over my shoulder, says ‘Stop writing about boring colours, Rose!’
Okay, I will write about boring Kiran instead.
Kiran is not pleased to be back at school. I am. I like to see my friends. Molly is too; in fact she was ready to come back from halfway through the holidays. Her pencil case (full of needle-sharp pencils) was organised weeks ago, and her school uniform all laid out, even the socks.
‘I am longing for homework,’ Molly said.
Even Kai was glad to be back at school.
‘At least there are proper full size footb
all pitches here,’ said Kai.
But not Kiran. Kiran has had a job. Three pounds an hour for washing up teacups in the park café.
Three pounds an hour!
‘I worked for it,’ says Kiran.
I suppose she did, but not terribly hard. She was often let off the washing up to take a cup of tea to the ice cream man, or to feed leftover sandwiches to the ducks, or to mop the tables under the lime trees. Also, whenever Molly and I went to visit, the cafe owner gave us free cups of tea and lollies and sent us off to the swings. And all the time Kiran got richer and richer.
Lucky, loaded Kiran; she has more money under her bed than anyone else I know. No wonder she did not want to come back to school.
‘Stop writing about my money, Rose!’ commands Kiran, once again leaning over my shoulder.
OK.
19th October 2009
What happened to me on my birthday.
Which was ages ago. Weeks. Because now I am thirteen, and all the things that go with a birthday, such as height measuring on the kitchen wall and surprise phonecalls from Saffy and Sarah and Tom-in-New-York (but Tom will never manage a surprise phone call as good as the one that said, ‘Just fetch Indigo for a quick word, Permanent Rose!’ and was on the other side of the door when I ran to do that little thing) and Caddy and Michael bringing Buttercup over, and Buttercup singing Happy Birthday Dear Rose all by himself after only two weeks of training, and the cake Mum painted with food colouring roses, red and orange and silver and gold, and the presents and cards …
All those things are over. And people are no longer saying ‘I can’t believe you are thirteen, it seems no time since you were a little tot of two …’
Which brings me very tidily onto what happened to me on my birthday.
Because I too could not believe I was thirteen, but it was true and it felt very strange and not all as I had imagined it would when I was eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and longed and longed to be thirteen, and catching up with Caddy and Saffron and Indigo at last. Which of course did not happen.
I mentioned all this to my slightly too intelligent friend Kiran, who said, ‘Time is linear, Rose.’
My birthday was on a school day. I spent most of the morning of that day forcing Kiran to explain her conceited remark (see above) and it took her all of assembly, double maths (fancy having double maths on your birthday!), break, and ran on into drama. By which time I had managed to disprove her narrow-minded theory of doom, and she was shouting a bit, and so was I. Neither of us were doing what everyone else was doing, which was working in pairs to improvise a scene between a teenage shoplifter and police officer (again).
What Kiran was shouting was, ‘Rose, you are so opinionated! You think you can out-think the speed of light!’
And what I was shouting was, ‘I do not have to even bother to out-think the speed of light; I just have to wait for the moment to come around again. Look at the moon.’
‘If you say ‘Look at the moon,’ one more time I’ll kill you,’ said Kiran.
‘Look at the galaxy then,’ I said. ‘Look at the whole spinning universe. Look at yourself! You’ve been talking in circles all morning.’
Kiran lunged at me and dumped me onto the mattress that we use for improvising faints and falls. So I went for her ankles. And then we were both put into detention.
Detention.
That’s what happened to me on my birthday.
(Reasons for detentions have to be written on the detention slips that go home to our parents. Mine said, ‘For inappropriate and immature behaviour while questioning linear nature of time cf. circular form of ditto with ref. to speed of light as visual concept only. 45 mins.’)
‘Immature behaviour!’ said Kiran. ‘Why do they always put immature behaviour? Stop laughing, Rose!’
9th November 2009
My brother Indigo and his friend Tom (who lives in New York and is also my friend – in fact, I got him first) have many things in common such as ridiculous hair, and weekend jobs in music shops, and liking maths which they say is fun, and little sisters. That is what they call me and Frances: little sisters.
Indigo and Tom, when they run out of other things to talk about, like to exchange little sister stories, and I don’t think much of it, considering I am thirteen and Frances is only just about five. Tom’s latest little sister story was about when Frances, left alone with a pair of really sharp scissors for the first time in her life, hurried to make the most of the opportunity by cutting off all her hair. He took a photograph of her to show us. I must admit Frances is a good ruthless chopper. In patches at the front she was nearly bald.
It happened that at exactly the same time as Frances was cutting off her curls, I, with the help of two friends who should have known better, was dyeing my hair. Blue and purple stripes. With a kit bought from the chemist with my birthday money, and extra ink to make sure from mummy’s illuminated manuscript phase (thankfully over). If you try yourself, my advice is, leave out the ink. The blue and purpleness of my hair was nothing in comparison to the blue and purpleness of my ears and my neck and my face in trickly stripes, and I think that was due to the ink. It was very hard to get off, and before we had hardly begun, Indigo had taken a photograph, and minutes later Indigo’s own little-sister-and-hair-styling story was on its way to America. And so was the photograph he had just taken, now with a title: ‘Rose, purple, blue.’
‘Delete it at once!’ I commanded Tom, but he didn’t. Instead he printed it in black and white and purple and blue on sticky back label paper. He made me into forty-eight stickers.
‘What are you going to do with them?’ I asked furiously (only I didn’t know how to do furious by email so I did frantic instead: What are you going to do with them).
‘Haven’t decided,’ said Tom. ‘Still thinking, Rose.’
He thought too long. While he was doing it Frances stole those stickers, and she took them to school and shared them with her friends. And they used them to graffiti New York (or as much of it as they could reach).
‘The demand was huge,’ said Tom. ‘You are the new neighbourhood art, Permanent Rose. Of course the original forty-eight didn’t last long, (you being so famous over here) but since then … well, it’s amazing! Everywhere I go. You! Rose, purple and blue! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it years ago!’
1st December 2009
Nearly Christmas and school pantomime time. Cinderella this year, and all my friends are in it. Molly is Chorus and Kiran is a Palace Dancer and guess who I am?
Hot Stuff Rose from the marketplace, the unsecret love of Simple Simon, the Skateboarding Prince!
But best of all is Indigo, because he is an Ugly Sister. Only he is not ugly at all, in fact he looks quite worryingly pretty in a dress. He has to ride a unicycle on stage because that is how the two ugly sisters get to the ball (Cinders goes in a wheelbarrow) and he has to sing a duet with the other ugly sister which he does very well indeed.
Everyone has promised to come. Michael and Caddy and Buttercup, and all the parents and David and Saffron and Sarah. Sarah was not too keen at first though.
‘How is that Icelandic witch?’ she asked.
‘Gone, gone, gone,’ I told her. ‘A hundred years ago. You have got to come and see Indy in a purple dress with a pink wig, Sarah! You may never get the chance again.’
‘Pink and purple?’ asked Sarah.
‘And doing a fan dance and singing a duet with the other ugly sister. Angel of the Morning. Reggae, with harmonies!’
‘Oh Rose, it’s a bit tempting,’ said Sarah. ‘I so rarely get a chance to show off my wolf whistling skills.’
‘And later he rides a unicycle with his skirt hitched up.’
‘OK, I’m coming,’ said Sarah. ‘Save me a seat at the front and don’t sell tickets to anyone from Iceland (the country not the supermarket).’
So I agreed.
Tom was a lot easier to persuade.
‘Absolutely I’m coming,’ he sai
d. ‘I’ll be there if I have to swim. What fantastic casting! Hot Stuff Rose! And it’s about time Sarah and Indy got together again. She’ll never be able to resist him when she sees in him a dress but just in case, Rosy Pose, it might be a good idea to have some mistletoe about.’
Oh yes. It might.
‘Are you really truly coming?’ I asked.
‘I’m counting the hours,’ said Tom.
So am I!
24th December 2009
I am the only person awake in this house, because it is very early morning. So early that the sun will not rise for at least another hour. Outside, unbelievably, there is snow. It is not dark. The streets lamps are dull orange, and the sparkly little fairy lights that Saffy has tangled through the fig tree are icy white, and the snow is glowing with a light of its own. This Christmas Eve morning it holds a colour in its shadows that I know very well: indigo blue.
Last night, all among the indigo blue shadows we went sledging in the park. Saffy and Caddy and Michael and Buttercup. Indigo and Sarah. David and Tom and me. Also Sarah’s father, my mother, Molly and Kiran.
It was amazing how the sledges appeared with the snow, bright moulded plastic ones mostly, but we have an old wooden toboggan too, and Molly had a wonderful homemade one that was faster than any other. It was all very noisy and cheerful and afterwards everyone came back to our house where the mistletoe that I had hung in every room was not wasted. It was very late before people went to bed; if they could find a bed: this house is packed and overflowing with people home for Christmas.
‘The crowds are worse than New York,’ grumbled Tom. ‘I’ve hardly seen you all week, P Rose. Let’s get up early in the morning and go sledging on our own.’
‘How early?’ I asked, because my mornings have been early enough already lately, and that is because my share of the family Christmas squash is Buttercup. He is sleeping in my room and he is a very early riser, it seems to me (and by the way there is no better, (or worse, depending on how you look at it) chaperone than a two-year-old in your bedroom for keeping the boys away. (But I digress.) (It was quite deliberate too: Saffy thought of it, I know she did. Anyway.)