Mira in the Present Tense

by Sita Brahmachari

  “Stop it! Just stop! I don’t know what you get out of being so vile to me, but you’ll have to find someone else to pick on.”

  I can feel Jidé’s eyes on me. When I finish reading, I look up at him and smile. He should know it’s because of him that I summoned the courage to face up to Demi, Bo, and Orla.

  “School can be a brutal place,” agrees Pat. “I remember from my own school days; I hated it so much I was always playing truant, but you only need one or two true friends to change everything. I was thinking, as you’ve all been brave enough to read out your own work, I should probably read you something of mine. Mira’s already had a sneak preview of this one. I can tell you, it’s certainly no better than your writing.”

  “What’s it about?” asks Ben.

  Pat Print thinks for a moment. “I suppose it’s about loyalty…Now, where are my specs?” She rummages in her satchel for her glasses, which hover halfway down her nose. She leafs through her book with great care, as if she’s looking for a particular moment. Then she peers at me from under her glasses, smiles, and begins to read.

  There should be a moment when you decide enough is enough, and you can seriously have enough of being smacked on the back of the legs with a wide metal ruler because you can’t remember what twelve times eight is. Can you remember? Too long. Thwack. That’s how long you got. But there was no single defining moment. It was just one ordinary drizzly day of quiet torture that made me walk through my school gates mid-morning. It was the ordinariness of it all…the once-too-often wound that made me lift the latch and walk free, out onto the open moorland. That day I made a promise to myself never again to go back to school. I don’t remember how many hours I walked before I came to the creek. That’s when I saw it…a picnic basket washed up on the riverbank. My first thoughts were of bulrushes and Sunday school, but when I opened the hamper lid, there, lying curled up in a mole-like ball, was the small brown form of my first dog. I called him Moses for obvious reasons.

  The bell rings and Pat Print closes her book straight away, as if she can’t wait to stop reading. I think she’s still shy! She rummages in her satchel and pulls out three copies of her book, handing them around.

  “I’ve called every dog I’ve ever had by that name…just a whim.”

  “Would you sign it?” I ask her.

  She nods. I can tell she’s pleased.

  “Can I take one for Millie too?”

  In mine she writes: To Mira. Schooldays are not the best days of everyone’s life! Love, Pat Print. In Millie’s she writes: To Millie, a loyal friend, with love, Pat Print.

  As soon as she writes that I feel a pang of guilt. Millie Lockhart has always been my most loyal friend. Why can’t I just be honest with her about Jidé? It’s not like there’s much to tell anyway. Tonight, I think.

  If she asks me about Jidé, I’ll tell her about the texts.

  Pat Print peers over her glasses at Jidé and Ben. They are hovering in an awkward place between not wanting to miss out or look too keen. Eventually, Ben thrusts his book in front of Pat without saying anything at all. She smiles to herself.

  In Ben’s she writes: To Ben, for whom the bell tolls, with love, Pat Print.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Ben.

  “It’s just another great book you should read.”

  Ben groans.

  Last, it’s Jidé’s turn. Pat’s pen pauses for a moment over the page before she decides what to write…To Jidé, a brave and fearsome warrior, with a heart of gold, with love, Pat Print.

  No matter how hard he tries to look like he doesn’t care what she’s written, Jidé has a smile curling at the corner of his mouth, a smile that I can’t help but wear too until it’s wiped off my face by the sight of my dad of all people, coming out of Miss Poplar’s office. He thinks I haven’t seen him as he makes a swift exit out of the side door. A deep well of sadness starts to swirl in the pit of my belly, but I still it with this thought…if Nana has died while I’ve been at school today, he would be taking me home right now.

  “Pat, have you got a minute?” Miss Poplar calls to Pat Print down the corridor. She is not her usual cheery self.

  I watch them for a moment. Pat Print looks serious, glancing nervously back to the classroom we’ve just been in. She nods her head at whatever Miss Poplar’s talking about but when Pat Print starts to talk Miss Poplar keeps interrupting her. Even from this distance you can tell by the way their hands dance around that the conversation is getting quite heated.

  I pass Miss Poplar in the corridor before break, and she just smiles at me and walks straight past. I want to ask her why my dad was in her office, but as she hasn’t said anything, I think maybe I’m not supposed to know.

  At break, I sit on the wall on my own. Nobody bothers me until Jidé walks over to join me.

  “Want to hang with Ben and me?”

  I nod and we walk over to the bench where Ben’s dealing out three piles of Simpsons Top Trumps. I can’t believe he’s still playing this, but Jidé and Ben laugh as they exchange “Huggability” scores. In primary school they used to play car Top Trumps so I suppose they have moved on, a bit. Any kind of Top Trumps is, as far as I can see, a completely pointless waste of time, but I am grateful, all the same, to Jidé for asking me over because nothing makes you more likely to be picked on than being on your own.

  After school I drop by Millie’s and give her Pat Print’s book.

  “So what happened today?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “What did you talk about with Pat?”

  “We read out our writing…Ben did something about skateboarding, I wrote about yesterday in class, and Jidé talked about his birthparents in Rwanda.”

  “Has he called you yet?”

  “No, not yet…How are your teeth?” I ask.

  “They ache badly,” sighs Millie, covering her mouth and opening Pat Print’s book.

  “To Millie, a loyal friend, with love, Pat Print,” she reads, smiling up at me.

  “It’s true,” I smile back at her. “You are.”

  “You too,” she says, closing the book.

  So much for being honest with Millie.

  Thursday, 12 May

  Millie is still off sick.

  At break, Jidé comes over to sit next to me on the wall. I feel stupidly proud to be so close to him, as if he’s some kind of badge of honor.

  “Where’s Ben?” I ask.

  “Not here. No Millie?”

  I shake my head.

  “You’d better not sit here,” I warn him, pointing to Bo and Demi who are nodding in our direction.

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll probably have a go at both of us now,” I say, trying hard not to look in their direction.

  “Let them!” Jidé flashes his film-star smile at them. “How’s your nana?” he asks me.

  “Dying.”

  He just nods and we sit there in a silence stuffed full of things we would like to say to each other.

  “I didn’t know about your parents, about what happened in Rwanda,” I finally pluck up the courage to say.

  “It’s not the sort of thing you shout about anyway. I was too young to remember…Grace and Jai are my mum and dad now.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Just like anyone else’s parents, except worse, because, well, you know Grace, she’s always telling me what to do,” shrugs Jidé.

  Another silence. This time Jidé breaks it.

  “What do you think of Pat Print?”

  “She reminds me a bit of Nana Josie,” I tell him.

  “I wish she was our teacher,” sighs Jidé.

  “Why?”

  “Pat Print’s deep…She looks into you and really sees what’s there.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  The bell rings. Demi and Bo are still eyeballing us as if they can’t believe that Jidé Jackson is actually taking the time to talk to me. Jidé jumps off the wall, and before I can do anything
about it, he has grabbed my hand to help me down. Bo and Demi just can’t help sniggering, but Jidé gives them the finger and refuses to let go of my hand. Instead, he starts swinging our arms backward and forward in a huge “I don’t care who sees” arc through the air. I suppose this means that me and Jidé are not a secret anymore.

  “Jidé, let go,” I laugh.

  “But I don’t want to,” he laughs back.

  When I walk out of school, Demi and Bo are hanging around by the gates.

  “Are you and Jidé going out?” Demi shouts.

  I just keep on walking, trying to wipe the smile off my face. The truth is I’m glad she shouted it out for everyone to hear. It’s what I’d like to do myself.

  Dad opens the door. He’s hardly ever at home when I get back from school. It’s turned out to be such a great day that I had almost completely forgotten about him coming out of Miss Poplar’s office this morning.

  “Hey, Mira. How’s school?”

  Always the same boring question.

  “Fine.”

  Always the same boring answer.

  “How’s Nana?” I ask.

  “The same…I wanted to have a little chat with you. Sit down a minute, Mira.” Dad budges up on our kitchen bench. This does not feel like “a little chat” to me—this is more like family-conference territory, even though there’s only me and him at the table.

  “I dropped in to see Miss Poplar this morning.”

  “I know, I saw you,” I snap back at him.

  “Did you?” he asks, looking a bit taken aback. “Well, the thing is, your mum and I, we were a bit troubled by that project you told us you were doing about Rwanda, and what with everything that’s going on with Nana…”

  “Oh! For God’s sake, Dad.”

  “The point is, Mira, Miss Poplar told me that you’re not doing a project about Rwanda and she also told me about the bullying incident and…you know, Mira, if you’re struggling with anything, we just want you to know that you can always talk to us.”

  He’s waiting for me to say something, but I feel that spark of red-hot anger light up in me again so I keep my mouth clamped shut.

  “Maybe it’s because we’ve all been so focused on Nana—”

  “Stop treating me like a baby. I’ve sorted it out myself. I don’t need you wading in all the time.”

  “That’s good. Miss Poplar told me that you faced up to it, but if you’d have told us before, we might have been able to help you.”

  My jaw aches with the effort of clenching my mouth closed tight.

  “OK, I understand, you want to fight your own battles, but I don’t understand why you lied to us about the research into Rwanda.”

  “It’s not a project, all right! For some people it’s real life, Dad,” I yell at him, storming off upstairs and slamming my bedroom door so hard that a crack appears in the wood.

  Friday, 13 May

  Unlucky for some.

  At breakfast Dad watches my every move as if I might be ill or something. When the smoke alarm goes off again, I feel as if my head is about to explode. I am out of that door at 8:30 on the dot to find Millie striding along the pavement toward me. I am so pleased to see her after the blow-up with Dad that I feel like hugging her. I don’t, but on the walk into school I do start to tell her about Jidé and me. Not everything, not about the texting—some things you just want to keep for yourself—but I tell her that he sat in her seat the day I faced up to Demi and I tell her how he came and sat on the wall with me yesterday.

  “The cheek of it. Sitting in my seat! I was only away for two days and now you’re going out with Jidé Jackson!” she laughs.

  “I didn’t say we were going out together.”

  “What else would you call it?”

  Ben comes meandering toward us with his funny, trying-to-be-cool, slope-y walk that he’s adopted since we came to secondary school; it’s the kind of walk where he looks like he’s dragging an injured leg belonging to someone else behind him.

  “You’re back then?”

  “Looks like it,” grins Millie, showing off her double row of braces with fluorescent rainbow-colored bands that glint in the sunshine. Trust Millie to choose the brightest colors.

  “I should have brought my shades!” jokes Ben, shielding his eyes from the glare.

  “Where’s Jidé?” Millie asks.

  “Dunno. He’s not in today.”

  “Probably lovesick,” Millie whispers, so I elbow her in the side.

  Ben looks a bit awkward, like he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. I suppose Jidé is to Ben what Millie is to me…One is lost without the other, or that’s how I used to feel anyway.

  “Written your adventure story yet?” Ben asks Millie.

  “Yep, it’s in my bag. Want a sneak preview?”

  Ben nods.

  So we sit together, just the three of us, listening to Millie read her story.

  “Lock Heart by Millie Lockhart.” Just the way she reads the title makes you know it’s going to be good.

  “You’ll have to dig deep,” he had said. Beatty didn’t even know if she believed him. Could anything really stay hidden for all this time? As she dug into the cold soil, she heard what she thought was a voice calling to her, but it was only the sound of the wind whistling over the plain. Already a mound of earth about half the size of her own body mass was growing by her side, and with each spadeful it was getting harder for her to reach into the pit to clear more soil. Just as she was considering how, if she jumped into the hole, she would ever get out again, her spade struck something hard. She had to find a way of levering it out slowly so as not to damage it.

  She tugged several times, but it kept slipping back into the soil as if it didn’t want to be disturbed. Now there was no going back. So, without knowing how she would clamber out, she eased herself into the hole.

  It was surprisingly cold in the earth. She leaned her back against one wall of the pit, her legs straddling the opposite side as she levered up the heavy silver box. She brushed off the mud and was just about able to decipher the remnants of a pattern on the lid. There were indents, which looked like they might once have held jewels, but now they were hollow like empty eye sockets. She tried to cleave open the box lid, but it was locked tight. She would have to wait till she got home. Her heart was beating hard with the excitement and the effort of digging.

  Suddenly the pit grew dark and she found herself cast in a giant’s shadow.

  “I told you, Lockhart, if you dug deep enough, you’d find it. Now hand it over—”

  Whenever you’re getting really into something at school, the bell always interrupts.

  “That’s sick!” booms Ben.

  “Thanks,” grins Millie.

  “What happens next?” asks Ben.

  “Your guess is as good as mine!” Millie laughs.

  “Want to come up to the skate park after school?” Ben shouts, even though Millie’s standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

  She pulls a doubtful face. “I could try,” she says. I have to stop myself laughing, because the thought of Millie Lockhart in a skate park…well, let’s just say she might not fit in. But probably that’s what you do when you go out together…hang out, even if it’s something you don’t really get, like skateboarding.

  At lunch break I decide to text Jidé, but there’s already a message waiting for me in my inbox.

  Missing you.

  JJ xxxxx

  Two words. Five kisses. So it’s not that hard to text him back.

  Missing you too.

  Mira xxxxxx

  Sunday, 15 May

  Crystal’s not in her bed and the curtains are drawn round Clara’s bed. Nana is sitting propped up on her pillows. She smiles weakly at Doris as she walks out from behind Clara’s curtain.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “Clara died early this morning,” Doris says gently. “Your nana sat with her all night, and Crystal’s been moved to a private room.”
>
  “Did Clara’s son ever come to see her?” asks Krish, staring at her drawn curtain.

  “Not a soul came for Clara, except maybe your Nana Josie,” answers Doris as she eases Nana into her wheelchair and pushes her toward the Staffroom. Krish and me follow behind them.

  “You don’t mind if we go to the Staffroom today, Josie?” Doris goes on. “It’s all hotting up in the Family Room.”

  “No, dear, I could do with a change of scenery,” sighs Nana, patting Doris on the hand to reassure her.

  “But do you think she ever had a son?” pursues Krish.

  “I only know I never met him,” sighs Doris.

  “Did she ever call him by his name?”

  Doris stops pushing Nana for a second and looks down at Krish as if she’s trying to remember.

  “Do you know, I don’t think she ever did.”

  Krish nods.

  When we get to the Staffroom, Doris slumps down in a chair next to Nana. It just feels right to ask them if I should make them a cup of tea. They both nod. I get the impression that we’re only here because they don’t want us on the ward with Clara lying there. After a while Question Mark appears at the door and nods to Doris.

  “You want to stay here for a while?” Doris asks Nana.

  She shakes her head and Doris wheels Nana back to the ward. Halfway down the corridor Krish takes hold of one of the handles of the wheelchair.

  “You want to push, son?” asks Doris, smiling at him and moving aside.

  As we approach the ward, Krish pauses in the entrance. The space where Clara’s bed once was is empty. I wonder who else, except for our family and the staff here, will remember Clara. Not to be remembered must be a sad ending…and soon, I suppose, her place on the ward will be taken by someone new.

  It feels wrong to be so easily replaced.

  Dad peers round the door of the ward.