Time for Jas

by Natasha Farrant

  Tuesday 16 November

  Marek’s leaving at the end of next week.

  He didn’t even come to school today. Mr Valenta says he has to carry on going to Clarendon Free until he goes, but I guess Marek doesn’t care what his father says any more because when I came home he was waiting for me sitting on our wall, wearing a sweatshirt covered in chalk dust and a miserable expression on his face.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.

  I don’t know what Marek makes of the difference between his house and ours. I noticed every chip and scuff and stain on the walls on the way down to the kitchen, but when I glanced at him he was still wearing exactly the same scowl, and not looking at anything at all.

  It was the picture of the miniature dachshund that did it, he said.

  ‘Violet’s been going on about it for ages,’ he told me as I made us tea. ‘I knew it was kind of stupid when I did it, but I couldn’t resist. I feel so sorry for that dog. She’s always yanking his lead and it’s not good for dachshunds to be so fat, because they have very sensitive backs. Anyway, she has been looking for the culprit – that’s what she said, culprit not artist – for ages. At first she thought it was you, because of the drawings you did in your front garden, but Mrs Henderson told her it couldn’t possibly be, because none of you were good enough. She’s been sniffing around searching for clues, and then yesterday morning …’

  He stopped to draw breath. ‘I’m so stupid,’ he said. ‘I’m normally so careful.’

  ‘What happened yesterday morning?’ I asked.

  It was the poor little fat dachshund again, being taken out for his morning walk. How was Marek to know Violet Doriot-Buffet’s husband always went out so early? That he didn’t just let the dog into the garden, but took it out for a jog (or in the case of the dachshund, waddle) around the block? Marek usually gets home much earlier from his night-time drawing sessions, and he usually always covers his chalk-covered clothes with a coat in case anyone sees him. But his father was up late working on the night of the Hungerford Bridge picture, and Marek fell asleep. He didn’t sneak out until after four o’clock in the morning, the drawing took a long time to get right and it was cold that night too. He kept his coat on, and it got covered in dust.

  It turns out I was right about one thing: a chalk artist, after spending many hours drawing, is a very multi-coloured sight, and impossible to ignore.

  Marek passed Mr Doriot-Buffet in the street, just round the corner from the Hungerford Bridge drawing. Mr Doriot-Buffet saw Marek, saw the picture, realised who had drawn the picture of his dog doing a poo, put two and two together, and told his wife as soon as she woke up, and she went straight over before breakfast to tell the Valentas.

  ‘I’ve no doubt the police will want to get involved,’ Mrs Doriot-Buffet said, when she told Marek’s parents their son had been busy vandalising public property all over the neighbourhood and also, incidentally, that she always cleaned up after her dog.

  ‘And so that was that,’ Marek said. ‘Dad went ballistic, Mum cried and I am off to Wales. I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it after the argument we had, but he rang them first thing and they said I can start immediately. Tata’s over the moon. He ordered the whole uniform online himself, cross-country running shoes and all.’

  ‘But you can’t go if you don’t want to!’ I cried.

  ‘You try telling Tata that.’

  For once, there was nobody in the kitchen. Marek absently took a chalk out of his pocket and started to draw with it on the table. A mountain appeared as I watched, and then a little figure, trudging uphill with a bag on his back.

  ‘I thought your film was awesome, Blue.’

  Something swelled up inside me then, growing bigger and bigger till I thought I was going to burst, but this time it wasn’t happiness that he liked my film, but sadness for him.

  ‘Has your dad actually seen your drawings?’ I asked. ‘Does he know how good you are?’

  ‘It wouldn’t change anything even if he had,’ Marek said.

  The chalks I bought from the toy shop were still sitting where we left them weeks ago on the dresser. I selected a pink one at random, and drew a daisy on the table.

  ‘I draw like a three-year-old,’ I told him. ‘I could practise for a lifetime and never be as good as you.’

  Marek smiled. Then, with one swipe of his sleeve, he rubbed out all the drawings.

  *

  I went upstairs after Marek left. Flora and Dad were arguing in his study. Next door in Pumpkin’s room, Pixie was singing him lullabies and wearing her wings.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  Pixie said Flora’s play had closed, just like Dad said it would. ‘Your father wants Flora to go back to Scotland. The school have agreed to take her back. Flora doesn’t want to go.’

  I stuck my head outside to listen.

  ‘But I have PAID for this,’ Dad was saying.

  ‘I don’t NEED drama school!’ Flora pleaded.

  ‘Well what else are you going to do?’

  ‘How long have they been arguing?’ I asked Pixie. She said about half an hour, and that she was trying to rise above it. She made a fluttering motion with her hands like she was flying. I laughed and she looked pleased.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘They do work. You came in with a face like a rainy day, but now the sun’s come out. All because of a pair of fairy wings.’

  Pixie is barking mad but I think I might actually love her.

  Upstairs again in her bedroom, Jas was sticking real flower petals on her geranium collage.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘To make it look more alive.’ She had a sort of manic look in her eyes. ‘Do you think it’s working?’

  I looked at it carefully. It was an even worse mess than before.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  ‘You’re lying. If you really did think it was working, you wouldn’t have asked why I was doing it.’

  She sighed and jabbed more glue at her painting, so hard she punctured it.

  ‘They’re going to win, aren’t they? Megan and Courtney and Chandra and Fran and their stupid lamb and living picture. I couldn’t even stand up and recite a poem.’

  Twig was lying on the floor on the other side of the room, watching rugby videos on my laptop.

  ‘He thinks they’ll help,’ Jas said. ‘He’s going to beg the coach to give him a second chance. I don’t see why he would. He hasn’t scored a single goal all term.’

  ‘You score tries in rugby, not goals,’ Twig informed her. ‘And at least I’m not weird.’

  ‘Twig!’ I cried.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry!’ Twig stomped out of the room.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ I told Jas.

  ‘No, he’s right.’ A large tear rolled down along Jas’s nose and plopped on to her picture. ‘I am weird. Everybody thinks so.’

  There were footsteps running up the stairs and along the landing, and Flora’s bedroom door slammed shut.

  ‘You can go if you want,’ Jas said. ‘There’s nothing you can do for me.’

  Flora was lying in bed with all her clothes on and the duvet pulled over her head.

  ‘Go away,’ she said.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘Of course I’m not all right.’

  She sat up. The duvet fell away. Her face was one big puffy smudge of eye makeup, with hair plastered to her face on the side she had been lying on, and sticking up everywhere else. She looked like an electrocuted zombie.

  ‘I suppose you heard the play’s finished,’ she said. ‘And that Dad is trying to banish me.’

  ‘Not banish,’ I said. ‘It’s not Shakespeare. It’s just Scotland.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back!’

  ‘But I thought you liked it. Maud and Peter and Barney, walking around the countryside in your nightdress, and everyone wearing wings.’

  Flora was lying on her side with her head on her hands an
d her knees drawn up to her chest. She looked nothing like the Flora who strode down Plumpton High Street planning Halloween parades, or who marched around Chatsworth Square carrying flaming torches, or looked radiant and triumphant as she took her bow in the theatre, believing she was a great success. She looked about twelve years old.

  ‘It’s not your fault about the play,’ I told her. ‘I bet if Angel had made it normal instead of doing all that weird space stuff, everyone would have said you were amazing. You are amazing.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Her eyes welled up again. I handed her a tissue. And then she told me.

  The reason Flora doesn’t want to go back to drama school isn’t that she thinks she’s too good.

  It’s that she thinks she isn’t good enough.

  ‘Barney’s a great actor,’ Flora said. ‘He can literally do anything. And Peter’s not a great actor, but he’s brilliant at directing. And Maud – well, you’ve seen Maud. She’s mesmerising. She doesn’t even have to open her mouth. She could just stand on a stage pretending to be a tree and you wouldn’t want to watch anyone else. I did Angel’s play to prove I was better than them, and now I just look like an idiot.’

  ‘I bet you’re just as good as them.’

  Flora smiled, just a tiny smile, and said please could she have a hug, so I climbed into bed with her.

  ‘It’s so scary,’ she whispered, when we were lying cuddled up under the duvet. ‘It was different when I was at school. It was easy to be the best then. But at drama school, everyone’s the best. Except me.’

  It was nice lying together in Flora’s bed. Night was falling outside, and there were no lights on in her room. In the growing dark, my mind drifted.

  ‘I’ve got a friend,’ I told Flora. ‘His dad wants to send him to boarding school.’

  ‘A boyfriend?’ Flora asked sleepily.

  ‘No!’ I protested, thankful for the darkness, but Flora can always detect what she calls feelings, even when she’s in the pit of misery herself. She raised herself on to an elbow to look at me.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘It’s only Marek Valenta!’ I mumbled. ‘You know – he came for drinks with his parents.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ Flora sounded disappointed. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I was just thinking. Neither of you wants to leave.’

  But Flora was no longer interested. She closed her eyes, and soon her breath turned into snores.

  Yesterday, I thought that all I wanted was for Marek to like my film. Today I keep thinking about what Mum said when we were emptying the stables – how the most important thing is for us all to be happy. And I think I have sat back and not done anything for too long. I’ve stood by while Jas got bullied, and I’ve watched Twig try and try to be good at something he hated, and I’ve let Flora believe her play was brilliant when maybe it might have been better to try and convince her to go back to drama school.

  Well, I’ve had enough of sitting back. I don’t care if nobody wants my help.

  I crept out of her bed to my room, and called Dodi.

  ‘I’m just waiting for Jake to call,’ she said.

  ‘I need to talk.’

  And, despite being so taken up with Jake, Dodi is still a good friend, because I talked to her for ages and despite Jake trying to call her four times while we were on the phone, she didn’t answer him once.

  I told her everything. About Marek being the chalk artist, and the boarding school in Wales, and going to the National Gallery and Marek’s featherlight kiss. I told her about sending Marek my video and going crazy waiting for a reply, and what the drawing of Hungerford Bridge meant to me.

  ‘What did it mean?’

  ‘That he liked my video. That he likes me. That we’re … I think, that we both see the world the same way.’

  ‘Do you like him?’ Dodi asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do. I like him a lot.’

  Even as I said that, I realised how true it was. I can’t remember ever liking someone so much.

  ‘Everything’s rubbish,’ I told her. ‘I haven’t told you about my family yet.’

  ‘So let me sum this up,’ Dodi said when I’d finished. ‘Flora wants to be an actress but thinks she’s not good enough, Jas has been crushed by those cupcake fiends, Twig’s in a state because he thinks he’s hopeless at everything, you’re miserable because the boy you love …’

  ‘I didn’t say love!’

  ‘The boy you like is going away, and he’s a mess because he’s going away.’

  There was a pause. ‘Do you think my family’s out of control?’ I asked.

  ‘I think your family’s barking,’ Dodi said. ‘The question is, what are you going to do about it?’

  Wednesday 17 November

  I have been thinking about Marek’s last drawing. Not the big, wonderful Hungerford Bridge, but the little figure on the kitchen table, trudging up the hill. I know that figure was supposed to be Marek, but it could just as well be any of us. Sad, crushed, tiny people struggling up hills. And I have been thinking that this is not us.

  We are not like we were after Iris died. We are not sad, crushed, tiny people.

  I have also been thinking about Pixie. Pixie and her hair and her wings and her yoga, who was brave enough to leave a town in Ireland where everyone knew who she was to live in a town where she knew nobody, who is a tiny bit ridiculous but who doesn’t care what people think of her.

  And I also have been thinking about Angel and his terrible production of Romeo and Juliet, and of what that nice reviewer said, that it was possible one day he might do something good because he has a big imagination and isn’t afraid to use it.

  The Pixies and Angels of this world are right. Being afraid is pointless.

  Now that the weather is colder, Pixie has started doing her morning yoga in the kitchen instead of the garden. Mum was funny about it at first because she said it interfered with everyone’s breakfast, but the kitchen is big, Pixie is small, Mum’s usually left by the time she starts and Pumpkin absolutely loves it. He sits on his own play mat next to her yoga mat and laughs at her, while she stands with her hands in the air, then does all these super-energetic lunges and bends and stretches, pulling silly faces at him all the time she is doing it.

  ‘I thought yoga was supposed to be all calm,’ I said this morning.

  ‘Doesn’t mean it can’t be fun,’ Pixie said. ‘Anyway, this is just to wake me up in the morning. The exercises are called Sun Salutations.’ She laughed. ‘We should get Jas to do them for her art project. Night, day, day, night, the sun rising every morning. That’s the circle of life, right? She could paint her face like she did with Todd, one half moon and the other half sun.’

  And that is when it struck me.

  Jas’s art project. A solution to everyone’s problems. Well, to Jas and Marek’s, anyway. And maybe Flora’s. Maybe even Twig’s …

  ‘Pixie,’ I said. ‘You’re a genius.’

  Twig dragged his sports bag to school this morning like it was filled with bricks rather than shorts and shirts and boots, and Jas was dressed completely in grey – Twig’s old grey jumper over her faded leggings and under an old grey coat, a grey gingham headband holding back her hair and grubby grey trainers. She looked like a very scruffy pigeon. Nobody talked. I was thinking. Twig and Jas were just consumed by gloom.

  My plan, if it comes off, will be … spectacular. Epic. Technicolour.

  Marek is still not at school. I spent most of this morning’s lessons making sketches in my exercise books. Then at lunchtime, I went to find Twig and took him aside to show him what I was thinking and to explain how we could make it happen.

  ‘It’s crazy,’ he said. ‘Also, impossible.’

  ‘We’ve done crazy impossible things before.’

  ‘We don’t know what we’re doing and we’d need loads of people.’

  ‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ I said. ‘And what about the rugby team?’

  ‘No flipping way. Not when I’m
trying to get back on the team’.

  ‘Twig! Think how much they loved Halloween!’

  ‘Fine,’ Twig grumbled. ‘I’ll talk to them.’

  After speaking to Twig I stopped in the library to use a computer. I checked the weather forecast for the next five days on as many weather-predicting websites as I could find.

  Scattered showers till the end of the week, fair at the weekend and going into Monday.

  Perfect weather for a gang of secret chalk artists.

  As soon as school finished, I ran round to the primary school. I caught Jas just as she was coming out. She shuffled out past the four cupcake girls with her eyes on the ground. One of them laughed – Courtney, I think. Jas didn’t even look up.

  ‘Come on.’ I took her arm and dragged her back into school, pulling my camera out of my bag.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I need to photograph every inch of this playground.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her eyes got bigger and bigger as I explained.

  ‘No,’ she said when I’d finished.

  ‘Jas!’

  ‘No!’

  An angel appeared, wearing a bow tie.

  ‘Hello, Blue,’ said Todd.

  I told him my plan.

  ‘Yes,’ said Todd. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’

  Jas said, ‘It will be like Halloween all over again. Or like the poetry reading. You thought that was a good idea too! It’ll be like Halloween AND the poetry reading.’

  ‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘Only this time, I promise nothing will go wrong.’

  Even though I know it isn’t actually physically possible, I swear Todd grew at least two inches.

  ‘Don’t worry, Blue,’ he said, grasping hold of Jas’s hand. ‘I’ll convince her.’

  Back home, I stole Flora’s phone to get Peter’s number. I talked to him for ages.

  All I need now is to convince Marek.

  Thursday 18 November

  We met in the gardens in the square. I wanted to be absolutely sure no-one could overhear us, so we sat on the grass right in the middle of the lawn. Marek listened very carefully to my plan. I’m sure I even detected a flicker of interest and possibly even of admiration, but when it came to the question, ‘Will you do it?’ his response was very clear.