My Friend Miranda

by Im Griffin

  Once we’d got into the routine of things the week went by quite quickly. We had one exam each morning and one in the afternoon, with an hour of revision time before lunch, when it was difficult to get much done because of Trisha’s exaggerated sighing and moaning. The day finished at quarter past three, which gave Miranda and me particular satisfaction because we bombed straight off for an early bus, whereas all the posh girls still had to wait until quarter to four for their private buses.

  We finished on Friday afternoon with the needlework exam, which seemed a fitting tribute to the futility of the whole exercise. Among other things, we had to define such terms as ‘warp’ ‘weft’ and ‘nap’, and label a diagram of a sewing machine. Afterwards, Miranda and I pegged it to the bus stop, screeching at the tops of our voices.

  “What’s the name of those silver wheel things that the thread goes over?” shouted Miranda.

  “Tension discs, you prat! What did you put?”

  “Oh. I called them the tension wheels. Still, pretty close eh? Perhaps Trotter will let me have half a mark!”

  “Perhaps she’ll give you a special handicap like they have in golf. You might come top then.”

  “Oh, ha ha.”

  The plan was that we would have a huge feast in Piccadilly Gardens, to celebrate the end of the nightmare. First we went to Woolworth’s and got ourselves a king-size Mars bar, a bag of pick 'n mix and a cherry and orange flavoured sherbet dip each. I wanted a two-litre bottle of Iron Brew to share, but Miranda was insistent on milkshakes, so we got chocolate ones from MacDonalds, so thick that the straws stuck up unaided.

  As always, I was starving, and I shovelled down the whole of my Mars bar within a couple of minutes. I tried to take the sherbet dip at a more dignified pace, but I accidentally ate the dipping lolly, and ended up having to pour the sherbet from the packet into the mouth. The pick 'n mix was probably the most satisfying part of the feast: I had selected all the purple ones from the container of Quality Street, and I’d also cleaned out the miniature walnut whips. Miranda had chosen some sucky sweets like Murray mints and Pascal’s fruit bonbons, but I knew I just wouldn’t have the patience for them.

  I saved the more unappealing pick 'n mix for the bus home, a Quality Street which I’d thought was fudge but Miranda said was coconut, and a couple of mint flavour toffees that must have fallen accidentally into the treacle toffee section. Miranda was suggesting that we should attempt to walk round the edge of the fountain for a dare, but I declined because it was cold, and falling in would have been both embarrassing and unpleasant. Besides which, I was starting to feel slightly sick. We parted to catch our separate buses home, and my mum was astonished when, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want cheese on my spaghetti bolognaise, and went to bed without any pudding.

  Clothes peg fever was one trend that Miranda and I managed to follow, and I suppose that we had made half-hearted efforts to liven up our stationery collections, but on the whole we were not particularly cool. I had overheard my mum on the phone to Miranda’s mum saying that ‘they’re still little girls really, aren’t they?’ and probably in comparison to the likes of Vikki and Trisha, we were.

  One lunchtime Miranda and I were sitting at a table in the dining hall with Sinead Murphy, discussing the English essay we’d just given in, when Amanda Parker and a couple of other well-groomed prep girls approached us. They desperately scrutinized the room for more desirable company, and then took the three remaining seats. Amanda Parker was in the middle of describing the outfit she was wearing for her cousin’s bar mitzvah.

  “...The skirt’s really long and tight with a split up the back, and I’m having cerise shoes to match. Oh, and my mum’s booked me into the hairdresser’s to have my hair put up.”

  Her companions sighed dreamily. “You’ll look gorgeous. Where did you go shopping?”

  “Well, we looked in Dorothy Perkins and all that lot, but my mum said the stuff was a bit tatty. So we ended up going to Kendal’s on Deansgate.”

  Miranda was staring vacantly across at a puddle of vinegar on the table, and Amanda Parker sensed that she was not commanding the full attention of her audience. “So what do you lot wear at the weekend then?”

  Miranda and I looked at one another doubtfully.

  “Jeans mainly. I always wear trousers because I take my dog out a lot,” Sinead pronounced confidently.

  “What kind of jeans?”

  “Tight ones. From Top Shop.”

  Amanda Parker breathed a sigh of satisfaction and exchanged nods of approval with her sidekicks. Sinead had passed the test. Next, the spotlight was on Miranda and me. “What about you two?”

  We both knew full well that the contents of each other’s wardrobes would horrify the likes of Amanda Parker, so I got in quickly, muttering something about “Jeans too, most of the time.” That only left Miranda, who now felt an obligation to come up with something different. She had the look on her face of feverish concentration that I recognised from maths lessons, and which as often as not concealed a total internal blankness.

  The silence had continued for a moment too long, when Miranda leaned forwards triumphantly. “I’ve got a ra-ra skirt...”

  She might as well have handed Amanda her own death warrant. Ra-ra skirts had been fashionable a couple of years before, but were now hopelessly dated. Amanda almost choked on her diet coke, and Lisa and Naomi tittered cattily.

  “A ra-ra skirt!” Amanda exclaimed. “What, you mean ones of those skirts in layers? Has it got different colours on the different layers?”

  “Well yes actually, it has,” Miranda replied primly, aware that she was being made fun of.

  “Do you wear your deely-boppers with it then, Miranda?” Naomi asked. Deely-boppers were kind of antennae things on a headband, which had been in fashion at around the same time. I had owned a pair with blue windmills on the ends.

  Miranda giggled nervously. “No, I think I gave those to a jumble sale.”

  “You should get your mum to take you shopping,” Amanda advised. “Go round the Arndale and get some trendy stuff.”

  “Yeah...” Lisa agreed. “Miranda would look good in fitted trousers.”

  “Not too tight though,” Naomi chimed in. “They make your bum look big.”

  “And probably grey or black. Dark colours are more slimming.”

  Miranda nodded doubtfully, uncertain as to whether this was a further form of teasing.

  “Anyway, we’d better get going,” pronounced Amanda. She obviously couldn’t wait to tell everyone else about Miranda’s ra-ra skirt. “See you around!” Naomi and Lisa smiled insincerely and waltzed off after her.

  I turned angrily to Miranda. “Miranda! What did you go and say that for! I’ve never seen you in a ra-ra skirt. I bet it doesn’t even fit you anymore.”

  Miranda shrugged sadly. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “Oh, who cares?” exclaimed Sinead, which was all very well for her, she didn’t have to live with the stigma of being Miranda’s best friend. “It’s a bit pathetic the way they’re so obsessed with clothes. I mean, it doesn’t really matter what Miranda wears at the weekend anyway, does it?”

  I agreed with her one hundred percent – I’d have chosen Miranda in her ill-fitting ra-ra skirt any day over Amanda Parker in some immaculate cerise outfit. But that wasn’t the point. How was Miranda ever going to fend off the bullies and snobs in our class if she went around just offering up reasons for them to pick on her?

  “In future if you can’t find something sensible to say just don’t say anything,” I grumbled, and then Miranda looked hurt and I felt mean.

  As I had suspected would happen, Miranda’s clothes pegs were soon forgotten, and the next thing they found to tease her about was her ‘personal hygiene problem’. Our class had an obsession with body odour and deodorant, even though most of us had not yet made it to puberty and therefore smelt of nothing more sinister than bubble gum and soap. The odour-conscious
carried cans of sickly-smelling deodorant around in their bags, and would frequently squirt the stuff inside their blouses and sniff one another appreciatively. “Aw, can I have some of that? It’s gorgeous.”

  Upon arrival in a classroom which was deemed to smell offensive, someone would call out “BO alert!” and the cans would be whipped out and sprayed liberally into the air.

  I had approached my mother to plead the case for a deodorant of my own, and initially been refused point blank. “That’s ridiculous! You don’t need deodorant when you’re twelve! In fact you don’t need deodorant at all! I’ve always managed perfectly well without it.”

  It was true. The only deodorant she possessed was an ageing container of Boots own-brand, which had lurked in the bathroom cabinet for as long as I could remember, and she didn’t smell particularly unpleasant.

  In the end I managed to wear her down in combination with Nancy, who being a year older than me was feeling the pressure of the sweat vigilantes even more strongly than myself. She returned from her next visit to the supermarket with a ‘Mum’ roll-on deodorant each, Nancy’s was pink, and mine was pale green. It was hardly the stuff that makes men stop in the street and give you flowers, but it would do.

  Miranda was not so lucky, her mum felt the same way as mine, and stuck to her guns more determinedly. This was unfortunate, as Miranda was in fact one of the few girls in the class who could have done with a squirt of Amplex; she was of a sweaty disposition, and tended to develop damp patches under her arms when suffering from stress. Her misfortune did not go unnoticed by Trisha and the gang, who would sniff the air and snicker in disgust whenever Miranda was in the vicinity.

  She became paranoid about the possibility of body odour. More than once I caught her sniffing herself anxiously in response to a peal of laughter from across the classroom, even though half the time they were giggling about something else altogether. She retreated to the toilets every break to blot her armpits with tissue, and, although it was often boiling in our over-heated classrooms, she steadfastly kept her jumper on for fear of exposing the dreaded damp patches. Enshrouded in black wool, she sweated more than ever.

  The issue came to a head on a Friday, when Miranda had been kept behind by Mrs Trotter to unpick the hem around her skirt, which Mrs Trotter claimed was wonky (in fact it was as good as it would ever be, skirts never hung properly on Miranda, and Mrs Trotter should have realised that just from observing her in school uniform). Miranda got back to our classroom halfway through the lunch hour in a state of near breakdown, having been forced to stand in her skirt in front of the mirror while Mrs Trotter moodily re-pinned the hem, and commented once again on Miranda’s ‘slowness’. She was having a particularly sweaty day, and this unfortunately coincided with Trisha and Vikki having run out of anecdotes about Altrincham ice rink and feeling rather bored.

  “Hey Sturdy-Gurdy!” called Trisha. “Come over here.”

  Miranda had just bitten into the first of her peanut butter sandwiches and she looked up suspiciously, like a dog interrupted part-way through its dinner.

  “Yes you! We’ve got some useful information for you.”

  The sandwich was wearily replaced in its foil wrapper, and Miranda shuffled across the room. She would not have dared to refuse. Trisha continued.

  “We think you’ve got a little problem Sturdy. It’s called a personal hygiene problem. Do you know what that means?”

  Miranda flushed and stared past Trisha to the pin board beside the door.

  “We just thought we ought to tell you so you can do something about it. It’s not very nice for the rest of the class you know.”

  There were looks of false concern all round, before Miranda was airily waved away. “All right Sturdy. You can go now!”

  Miranda turned blindly and stumbled back to her desk, her eyes prickly with tears. She picked up her sandwich and swallowed heavily. I would have liked to say something consoling, but I could sense that this would only damage her pride further, so I did not look up from my Latin vocabulary.

  She must have got hold of a deodorant from somewhere, perhaps she bought it herself, because from then onwards her familiar pong was completely absent, replaced by a synthetic floral scent. She always took her bag into the toilets with her and spent ages in the cubicle, so I suspected she was frantically re-applying, and I knew from staying at her house that she even put it on it before going to bed. I asked her once what the point of this was and she explained her theory that if you applied deodorant at night and then again in the morning you were doubly protected against sweating, because you had an extra-thick layer coating your armpits. I tried it myself for a while, but was forced to give up when my mother began to complain about the stiff white stains on my school blouses.

  Chapter 13

  Sometime around the beginning of February Miranda and I arrived at school to be accosted by huge pink posters everywhere. They were emblazoned with lips and hearts and announced a ‘Valentine’s Disco’ for first, second and third years. The slogan ‘COP TIL YOU DROP!’ was written across the bottom in neon-pink marker pen.

  By break time the majority of the posters had been removed, but there was no further need for them anyway. Everyone who could read knew what was happening on Friday February fourteenth, and from the sounds of things everyone intended to be there.

  “I’m really surprised they’re letting us have one,” said Amanda Parker, who was one of those prep girls who knew every bit of gossip going. “Apparently at the last disco there was loads of drinking and people snogging each other and some of the boys had to go to hospital to have their stomachs pumped.”

  “Perhaps they think it’s ok because it’s only first to third years,” someone suggested, prompting peals of wicked laughter from Vikki and Trisha to demonstrate that youth was no barrier to hedonism.

  Personally, I wasn’t convinced that the disco was something to get excited about. Discos at my primary school had consisted of the girls standing in a big circle doing the actions to the Birdie Song, while the boys ran manically round the edges of the room, pausing only to climb onto the pile of PE mats in the corner and then dive-bomb off on top of one another. I voiced these fears publicly and was assured that the boys from the local grammar school were ‘dead fit’, and moreover, that they would be too busy chatting us up to do any dive-bombing.

  During the two weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day the whole of the lower school became semi-hysterical with lust. It seemed that ‘COP TIL YOU DROP’ was being taken very seriously. Half of our class was on a diet, and the likes of Amanda Parker were flapping around booking sun-beds and manicures. I didn’t really see that much could be achieved in two weeks but I was trying not to bite my nails so that I’d be able to wear nail varnish, and Miranda and I had bought a tube of peel-off face pack from Charlie Ball’s Discount Warehouse.

  On Friday the fourteenth Miranda came home with me after school so that we could get changed together. Nancy and Miz were going to be there too, which was bad in that I’d have no chance of sneaking Nancy’s patent leather belt out of her wardrobe, but good in that they might lend us some make-up.

  It took Miranda and me about five minutes to get dressed, after which we sat on the floor and painted our nails ‘Hawaiian Sunset’. I hadn’t been wholly successful in my non-biting campaign but I figured I could still paint the stumps. Entertainment was provided in the form of Nancy and Miz shrieking hysterically and running in and out of Nancy’s bedroom to view themselves in the full-length mirror on the landing, while a huge pile of reject garments built up at the top of the stairs. In the end Nancy decided that the only thing she could possible wear was her purple leggings, which unfortunately had a big coffee stain down them. Ignoring Miz’s assertions that the black lycra mini was just as nice, she hand-washed the leggings in the sink and put me in charge of drying them with a hair-dryer while she did her make-up.

  Several hours later, or so it felt, we assembled in the hall to show my mum our outfits. I was wearin
g black ski-pants, a white shirt loose over the top and a black leather tie, purchased from Chelsea Girl in the January sales. Nancy had encouraged me to buy the tie, but that didn’t stop her sniggering and threatening to mess up my tie-knot by tugging it amusingly. Miranda was wearing blue and white stripey dungarees which accentuated the curve of her stomach, and looked like a pot-bellied Andy-Pandy. Her one saving grace was her hair: she’d taken out the usual pigtails and it fell down her back in ripples of honeyed silk.

  “You look really pretty with your hair down,” my mum told her. “You should wear it like that more often.”

  Miranda blushed at the unexpected praise, and it occurred to me that with an elderly rather puritanical mother and no sisters or female friends, she probably hadn’t received many compliments. I used to think that she didn’t care how she looked, but that wasn’t strictly the case. She just didn’t know where to start. Nancy had done our make-up for us (frosted pink lipstick and blusher) and I honestly think it was the first time Miranda had ever worn any. She kept peering into mirrors when she thought I wasn’t looking, and I even caught her pouting at herself on one occasion. Personally I wasn’t sure about the blusher because I was bound to get hot and go red anyway, but Nancy said I could always wash it off after I’d ‘made my entrance’.

  In any case, Miranda and I paled into insignificance beside Nancy and Miz, and it was difficult to believe they were only a year older than us. They looked like super-models in their leggings and little tops, particularly Miz because she was so tall and skinny. They’d gone all out with the make-up as well: foundation, eye-shadow, mascara, the lot. I could tell my mum was a bit doubtful about the Cleopatra-style black eyeliner, but she smiled nobly and said that it was ‘very dramatic’.