Seriously Sassy

by Maggi Gibson

  What’s more, I’d have to tidy my room. You know, make sure there’s nothing embarrassing lying about. Like girly things. And I don’t have time for that. As it is, I’m going to have to wash my hair and straighten it again. And find something to wear.

  ‘Nah,’ I groan. ‘Too much hassle.’

  Just then Mum comes in and I say a quick bye to Cordelia.

  My heart sinks as Mum settles on the end of my bed. It’s always a bad sign. It means she wants to talk SERIOUS. Or EMBARRASSING. Like do I need to move up to the next bra size. (Hmph! Chance would be a fine thing.)

  Mum clears her throat and smiles. Another BAD sign.

  ‘So what was all that about, honey?’ she asks. ‘Nothing,’ I say hurriedly, grabbing some stuff I need for the shower.

  ‘Well, anyway, the thing is –’ she begins.

  ‘Listen, Mum. Can we maybe talk later? I mean I’m in a bit of a rush here –’

  I bang around my room, making a big show of being in a hurry, even though I’m not.

  ‘A bit of a rush?’ Mum repeats. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I need to shower and dry my hair and straighten it and do tomorrow’s homework –’

  ‘Well, this won’t take more than a couple of minutes, honey,’ Mum says, picking Tiny Ted up and thoughtfully smoothing his fur. ‘The thing is, I’m really sorry you didn’t get to Megan’s party the other night.’

  Oops! A sudden pang of guilt stabs me in the gut. It’s strong enough to make me think I should at least hear Mum out. I flump on to my beanbag and sigh heavily.

  ‘I bumped into Megan’s mum today,’ Mum continues. ‘In Paradiso’s. And it sounds like the party got rather out of hand.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard,’ I lie, hoping Mum doesn’t notice.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mum goes on, ‘she was saying – again – how sorry she was about everything that happened, you know, when you were still in primary school. It was a very difficult time for Megan, she was saying. Things were very un settled and unhappy at home.’

  ‘Look, Mum. I know all this. You told me at the time. Her dad ran off with his secretary and her mum wasn’t coping and was maybe even going to have to sell their house and move. I know all this!’

  ‘Mrs Campbell says Megan has settled down now. She’s not palling around with those older girls any more. She says that Hannah girl and her friends were just using Megan. Always borrowing her clothes and not giving them back. Getting money from her, making her run messages for them and things. Not real friends at all.’

  I set my jaw and stare out of the window. Mum’s idea of a couple of minutes is very different from mine. It must be something to do with getting older. Time must move slower, I suppose. I make a mental note to myself. I will never EVER do this to my children!

  ‘So,’ Mum continues, ‘Megan’s mum would dearly love you and Megan to be friends again. I was thinking, maybe you could ask her round for tea?’

  My mother is certifiably insane!

  ‘Look, Mum. I really don’t have time for this. I do not want to make up with Megan –’

  ‘Sassy, I know what she did was wrong –’

  ‘WRONG!’ I shriek, surprising even myself. ‘Megan STOLE from me and CHEATED and LIED!’

  Mum sighs heavily and gets up from the bed. ‘Think about it, Sassy,’ she says. ‘I hoped when you asked to go to Megan’s party you’d moved on. Bitterness breeds bitterness, honey. You need to forgive and forget.’

  Minutes later I stomp along to the shower. Why is it, I wonder as I step under the hot spray, that Megan constantly spoils things for me? I’d just managed to get over this morning’s humiliation, and was feeling all happy about my date with Magnus, when – PING – Megan pops up again and makes me feel all horrible and yucky.

  As I dry my hair I still can’t get Megan out of my head. So Mum thinks what happened at the end of Primary Seven wasn’t such a big deal? Well, it was. I’d put tons of work into writing something new for this big poetry competition and then what happened? Megan’s poem won.

  Which would have been fine.

  Except it wasn’t Megan’s.

  It was mine.

  She’d copied it out of one of my notebooks and put it into the competition under her name.

  Of course, I told Miss Brown, our teacher. And up till then I’d really, really liked Miss Brown. She’d been my favourite teacher ever.

  But Miss Brown said could she see the original? And that night I turned my room upside down looking for the notebook. And I found it. But the page with the poem was ripped out.

  The next day Miss Brown said she’d spoken to Megan and to Megan’s mum and they’d both insisted Megan had written the poem and that it wasn’t very nice of me to accuse someone who was my best friend of cheating just cos I hadn’t won.

  And I was so upset I burst into tears in front of the whole class and had to run out of the room, and then some of the mean girls started to follow me around and call me cry baby and tease me. Which was the last thing I needed just before I was going up to high school, which, let’s face it, was scary enough on its own.

  Megan has never come clean about it. She has never called to apologize or anything. Then when we started high school she hung around with older girls like Hannah and her horrible friends, and I met up with Cordelia and Taslima and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Anyway, at the time Mum tried to make out that I should’ve been big enough to help Megan through ‘a rough patch’. Megan, Mum said, was just being very needy and if it was a prize I wanted then she would get me one. Which is how I got my guitar.

  But, though I love my guitar, I really, honestly, don’t think I can forgive Megan. Not yet.

  Maybe not ever.

  Whoopeee! The rain has stopped, my hair is straight and I, Sassy Wilde, am on my way to meet Magnus the Magnificent!

  I had to lie to Mum. But it was just a little white lie. I mean it’s not one that can POSSIBLY harm anyone. At thirteen a chica should be able to do some things privately without the parentals having full information. I mean, I don’t ask them for every detail of where they’re going, who they’re going with and what they intend doing every time they step out of the house.

  And if I HADN’T lied I would’ve been stopped at the door and the conversation would have gone something like this:

  MUM: So where are you going?

  ME: Paradiso’s caff.

  MUM: But you hate Paradiso’s! Why on earth are you going there?

  ME: I’m meeting someone.

  MUM: Someone? What do you mean, ‘someone’? Has this someone got a name?

  ME: Magnus.

  MUM: Magnus? Who’s Magnus?

  ME: A boy.

  MUM: Well, I guessed that. So where does he live?

  MUM: How do you know him?

  MUM: Why don’t you bring him back here?

  MUM: What are the two of you going to be doing?

  MUM: Why can’t we meet him?

  And so on. And so on. And so on.

  Whereas the WHITE LIE conversation went like this:

  MUM: So where are you going?

  ME: I’m meeting Cordelia. Up at Paradiso’s.

  MUM: That’s great, cookie. Have fun!

  ME: Byeeee!

  MUM: Byeeee!

  With some luck I’ll make it all the way to Paradiso’s without it starting to rain again and my hair turning into some kind of crazy fright wig. I’m wearing my new jeans, a cool little Friends of the Fowl vest top with a silly yellow chicken on the front and my new sandals. I’ve straightened my hair – again – and put a smear of eyeliner round my eyes and a bit of mascara on. I thought about lip gloss, but Pip told me recently about a survey in one of Mum’s magazines – which, incidentally, I don’t think she should be reading! – that eighty‐two per cent of men say they don’t like kissing a girl with lip‐gloss on. They prefer their kissing ‘au naturel’.

  Not, of course, that I’m planning to KISS Magnus tonight!

  If we
get as far as holding hands that would be just fine.

  I do Taslima’s calming exercise – you know, the breathe‐through‐your‐heels trick – until at last I see Paradiso’s up ahead.

  The car park is pretty busy. Mums and kids everywhere. And the occasional man. But no Magnus. Then I see him. Standing by the kiddies’ sit –’n’-rides. You know, the little Thomas the Tank Engine and the Spaceship.

  He’s wearing black shorts and a black T‐shirt. Unfortunately it’s got JOCKSTAR splattered across the front. Once we know each other better I’ll explain to Magnus why advertising multinationals on your body is a BAD thing. I mean, you can’t blame him for not knowing, can you? He spends most of his day underwater, training to be a swim champ.

  I give him a little wave as I approach. He smiles back. My head races. What am I going to say to him? I can stand up in front of the whole class – or the whole school, for that matter – and blast forth on the need to cut carbon emissions and recycle your old socks, but I lose the ability to string two words together when I’m anywhere near Magnus.

  Suddenly I’m by his side. The electronic doors glide soundlessly open and we’re walking through. Together. He’s saying something, but it all jumbles in my head so I just smile and laugh and hope he’s not just told me his gran’s died or his cat got run over.

  And then we’re in the queue in the caff and Magnus has taken a tray and he’s filling a paper cup with Fizzipop and asking me what I’d like. But my head’s thinking Fizzipop’s another multinational company with really dodgy practices stealing the water supplies in some Third World countries, and it’s full of chemicals and things that’ll make me hyper, and then I hear myself saying, ‘Fizzipop’s great, thanks,’ and he’s filling another paper cup and it all froths up and spills over the top and over his hand and he’s laughing and I try to tug a couple of napkins from the dispenser to help mop it up when the whole dispenser splits open and a thousand napkins flutter everywhere.

  Five minutes later Magnus has tidied up the napkins, and paid, and carried the Fizzipops safely back to a table. I’m so relieved to be sitting down. I try to breathe through my heels without Magnus seeing. I SO need to get a grip.

  Magnus is chatting away. He did the Scottish qualifying time at the swim thing he went to in Edinburgh, so there’s a chance he’ll be in the national youth team! Thank goodness he’s doing the talking. My heartbeat starts to slow. There. I even manage to take a sip of my drink without it choking me and spurting down my nose. Magnus has given me two straws. I smile at him as I suck. He sucks from his Fizzipop and smiles back. It is SO romantic. My backbone goes all tingly and turns to jelly.

  ‘You were brilliant in the mock election,’ he says.

  At last I find my voice. ‘Thanks. But I didn’t win.’

  ‘But your song was really good.’

  I smile at him again.

  ‘I didn’t know you could play guitar and sing. It was cool.’

  That’s when I realize I am a sucker for flattery! Like Brewster with his dog biscuits, I wait patiently to be fed more.

  ‘And you look great with your hair straight. I saw you at Megan’s. You should wear a dress more often. It really suits you.’

  At last I relax, and soon we’re talking quite naturally. About school, and Mr Hemphead’s stick insects, which he breeds in big glass tanks all round his room. And Magnus says he went in to see Mr Hemphead one lunchtime and Mr Hemphead had a huge stick insect on his desk and was sharing his jalapeño sandwich with it, and talking to it – like it was a real person. And I suddenly realize that Mr Hemphead actually LOOKS like a stick insect and we both have a fit of the giggles.

  Then we start to talk about Miss Peabody and how ancient and funny she is.

  ‘Have you ever noticed,’ Magnus asks, ‘she’s always got these huge knitting needles sticking out of her bag?’

  ‘I know!’ I laugh. ‘And she’s been knitting the same thing forever. That horrible orange wool! I can’t believe she’s ever going to wear it.’

  And that’s when I see him. Over by the Fair Trade bananas. A huge green rosette in his lapel, a small crowd of photographers and reporters buzzing round him.

  MY DAD!!!

  Magnus follows my gaze. ‘Somebody you know?’ he asks.

  And I’m about to say, ‘No, not really,’ and suggest to Magnus we should maybe go, NOW, when Digby spots me. Immediately he whooshes over, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Hey! Sassy! This is great!’ he exclaims. ‘Perfect, in fact!’

  My heart sinks and my brain whirrs into overdrive. Mum thinks I’m with Cordelia. Magnus looks nothing like Cordelia. Oh no! If Dad finds out I fibbed I’ll never get my demo disc. I have learned through bitter experience that the atrophying21 parental brain just cannot grasp the difference between a teensy white fib and a HUGE GREAT WHOPPING LIE.

  ‘Now, who’s your friend?’ Digby asks, stretching a hand out to Magnus.

  ‘Magnus,’ I mutter. ‘This is Digby.’

  ‘Tell you what, Magnus,’ Digby says as he shakes his hand vigorously. ‘I’d just like to borrow Sassy for a few moments. Then you can have her back.’

  Magnus looks confused. And I’m confused too. Since when did I become an object to be lent or borrowed? But Digby has already got me by the arm and he’s dragging me towards the Special Offers.

  ‘Your father’s doing a photo call,’ he whispers as he whisks me along. ‘You know, part of the election campaign. Dad Does Weekly Shop. That kind of thing. We’ve got the local press here. So if you could just be in for a couple of dad‐and‐daughter shots, that would be perfect!’

  Dad looks momentarily startled as Digby propels me towards him.

  ‘But –’ I start to protest.

  Too late.

  Like an experienced politician, Dad covers his surprise, slings his arm around me and grins at the cameras. He even kisses the top of my head. YEEEUCK!

  Through a blur of flashing lights I see Magnus – staring. Oh no! How am I going to look him in the eye after this? I am SO embarrassed.

  ‘Smile, Sassy!’ Digby mouths, towering above the heads of the photographers.

  ‘Can we have one by the meat counter?’ one of the photographers calls, and everyone files off.

  By the meat counter? THE MUTILATED, DEAD ANIMAL COUNTER? I don’t think so. This far and no further! One of the reporters grabs Dad to ask his views on the comparative benefits of genetically modified runner beans. I would love to answer him, but instead take my chance and escape down the Pickles and Jams aisle.

  But where’s Magnus? I have to double back to find him. And guess what? He’s only hanging on Dad’s every word, excited, his face shining! Like genetically modified runner beans were all he’d been waiting for to make his life complete.

  ‘Wow, Sassy! You never said your dad was famous!’ he exclaims.

  ‘He’s not,’ I hiss. ‘And I’m going. Are you coming?’

  I half expect him to say no. I mean, he looks more in love with my dad than with me!

  ‘Sure,’ Magnus says meekly, and follows in my wake as I tank towards the exit.

  After we leave the supermarket Magnus walks me to the end of my road. He says it’s great I got into the photo with my dad. He says he doesn’t think it’s embarrassing at all. And he says he’s going to get the local newspaper when it comes out, and he’s going to cut the picture out and get me to sign it in case I’m famous one day and he’ll be able to sell it for lots of money. Except, he says, he won’t sell it, cos he’ll want to keep it. And when he says that he looks into my eyes, like he’s really kinda crazy about me, and I start to feel all squidgy inside again.

  Which makes me all nervous so I start rabbitting on about the deal I did with Dad for the demo disc and what a great opportunity it is and how I really want to write and play my own songs – when who comes hurtling towards us, weaving crazily on a skateboard, but Megan’s stepbro, Twig.

  Of course, I try to ignore him. But just as he passes he flicks
the board up, catches it and leaps on to the pavement, yelling, ‘Hiya!’ like he’s a mate. ‘I was just coming to see you. There’s something I need to talk to you about.’ He fires a look at Magnus. ‘In private.’

  Magnus bristles and puts his arm round me!

  My heart almost stops, then starts to race. And I’m sure I can feel Magnus pulling himself up tall, just like Brewster used to if any other dogs came sniffing around his lovely black lady lab.22

  A bit of me likes it. A bit hates it. Like there’s these two tiny versions of me in a boxing ring inside my head. In the pink corner, the new Sassy, with her straight hair and her teensy glam dress, is checking her lip gloss in a mirror. And in the green corner, the old Sassy, her hair crazily curly, in jeans and a vest top, not wanting any guy to have any rights over her, or any say over what she does and who she sees, flexes her muscles and limbers up.

  ‘Whatever,’ I say to Twig. ‘But right now’s not a good time.’

  At last he clicks he’s not wanted and leaps back on his board.

  ‘See ya soon!’ he says, and speeds off.

  ‘So who’s he?’ Magnus asks, dropping his arm from my shoulder.

  ‘Twig,’ I mutter, expecting that to be the end of the matter. Some hope! From there to the end of the road Magnus doesn’t shut up about Twig. What’s his real name? What school does he go to? How do you know him?

  I don’t know the answers to half his questions – and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to answer the other half. I mean, no way am I going to tell him about Twig finding me slumped in a puddle of tears on the pavement on Friday night.

  So in the end I say, ‘Look, can we change the subject? He’s just this boy. I really don’t want to talk about him.’

  And can you believe it? Magnus only goes all moody on me.

  ‘Spit on a stick!’ I exclaim, exasperated. ‘If you want to know about Twig go ask Megan. He’s HER new stepbro. He’s got nothing to do with me!’

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘Honest.’

  We stop at the end of my road cos I’m not letting Magnus near any of my family again – not for a long time – when Brewster comes ambling along, sniffing the air, to meet us.