Seriously Sassy

by Maggi Gibson

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ I snap, ‘because, to be perfectly honest, I’ve got more important things to be doing with my time.’

  ‘Ooooh!’ squeals Pip from the living room. ‘Like snoggy‐wogging your new boyfriends!’ And then she makes all these disgusting lip‐smacking sounds.

  Honestly! That child needs putting into some correctional facility before it’s too late. I mean, when I was nine I was more interested in baby seals than boys.

  And what does she mean, boyfriends?! Plural?!

  At lunchtime the following day Magnus grabs five minutes to share a blueberry muffin with me. I was a bit disappointed he didn’t text last night – not that I was sitting by my mobile waiting or anything. I mean, my guitar practice schedule keeps me pretty busy too.

  Magnus explains between mouthfuls of muffin that he’s going off for the next two days to some swim training camp for mega‐talented under‐sixteens. When he comes back, he suggests, smiling kinda shyly, maybe we could meet up at Paradiso’s caff again.

  This time I refuse, on account, I explain, of not wanting to support a large multinational supermarket chain. Careful not to spray him with half‐chewed muffin crumbs, I tell him how large companies keep workers’ wages down, rip off local farmers and contribute to global warming by flying all sorts of goods halfway round the world.

  I don’t know if they’re driving him too hard on the training front, but his eyes kinda glaze over before I finish.

  ‘I’m gonna be late for swim practice,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘I need to go.’

  But my little speech must have lit some passion deep inside him, cos before he speeds off he pulls me close and – yes!yes!yes! – kisses me on the cheek!

  I almost choke on a half‐swallowed lump of muffin, then something inside my tummy goes WHOOSH right up through me. Like a massive electric charge. And every organ in my body pings awake and every nerve ending totally zings!

  I light up like I’m wired to the national grid.

  I find Cordelia and Taslima sitting on the fire‐exit doorstep. Cordelia’s busy reading Taslima’s palm, but stops as soon as she sees me.

  ‘Karumba!’ Cordelia says, shading her eyes, like I’m mega‐floodlight‐bright. ‘You look like you’re glowing!’

  And I am! I continue glowing all the way through maths and French. We’re in IT now, and I’m still glowing. In fact I’m giving off such an electric charge my computer’s getting the jitters. This weird black graph has come up on the screen, with a bright green line peaking and dipping constantly. I press Escape and another graph pops up. Taslima leans over and presses Control+Alt+Delete, but nothing helps. Even more graphs pop up. Then the computer starts to whirr, like it’s having a panic attack.

  ‘Mrs Smith!’ Taslima calls, waving her pink pencil in the air. ‘There’s something wrong with Sassy’s computer. I think it’s having a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Not the only one,’ Mrs Smith mutters, though I don’t think she meant us to hear. Sighing heavily she tucks her romantic novel, Moonlight Becomes Her, into the filing cabinet and comes over.

  ‘What have you done, Sassy?’ Mrs Smith asks wearily.

  ‘Nothing, miss. Honest,’ I plead.

  ‘She’s in love,’ Taslima says.

  Mrs Smith presses a few keys. More bright graphs appear. The toolbar at the bottom of the screen fills up with hundreds of little baby ones, all marching along.

  ‘In love, eh? So who’s the lucky fellow?’ Mrs Smith asks, like she finds that more interesting than my malfunctioning computer. I hesitate. This is embarrassing. It’s one thing BEING in love. Quite another sharing it with the WORLD.

  ‘With Magnus,’ Taslima whispers.

  Mrs Smith’s eyes widen. ‘Magnus Menzies, the swim champ?’

  Taslima nods.

  ‘Nice one, Sassy.’ Mrs Smith winks at me. ‘He’s gorgeous!’

  Taslima stifles a squeal of laughter. My computer whines like a dying cat and the screen goes totally black. And me? I continue glowing.

  I glow all the way home. I’m still glowing when Dad and Digby come in at six. But I haven’t forgotten about Bluebell Wood. An eco‐warrior‐babe has to find a happy medium between her love life and her responsibilities to the planet.

  ‘So?’ I ask them right away. ‘What have you found out?’

  They exchange a shifty look.

  And why?

  Only because they have done nothing! Zilch. A big fat zero.

  Digby, suitably blushing, explains how his mate is off sick. He’s waiting for him to come back. Then he’ll be straight on to it.

  As if someone has just thrown my mains switch, I stop glowing.

  ‘W‐what you have to understand,’ Digby stammers, ‘is these things have to be handled delicately. They take time.’

  This proves my whole theory about who should be in charge of running the world. As I have always suspected, adults are not to be trusted. Put simply: they just don’t care enough.

  After tea I phone Cordelia and tell her the whole sorry saga. ‘I don’t think they’re going to do anything to help,’ I sigh.

  ‘Well, maybe we should go down to the woods. See if anything else has happened. I mean, if we find trees chopped down that’ll force your dad and Digby to get their sorry little butts into gear, won’t it?’ Cordelia says.

  Half an hour later I meet her at the main path into the woods. She’s wearing the sweetest red frilled dress with black stripy tights and lacy fingerless gloves.

  I take her the same way Twig took me. We stop in the clearing where we saw the man in the suit. A fluffy red squirrel runs up a tree and leaps delicately from branch to branch.

  ‘This is pointless,’ I mutter, sitting down on a mossy tree stump. ‘Maybe the guy was just counting the trees or something.’

  ‘Shhh!’ Cordelia says, spreading her fingers wide.

  In the distance a woodpecker taps furiously. Close by, some bigger birds, wood pigeons maybe, flutter up from the high branches, the whirring of their wings fading as they fly off.

  Cordelia stretches her arms out and closes her eyes. ‘I can feel something,’ she whispers, swaying gently backwards and forwards. ‘Yes! The trees are afraid. I feel them quivering. They feel threatened.’

  She opens her eyes and slowly walks deeper into the wood, like she’s in a trance. Suddenly she stops and shouts, ‘Sassy! I knew it! Come and see this!’

  She’s standing by a huge old beech tree, her hand against its smooth bark. At first I can’t see what she’s so excited about. Then she lifts her hand and reveals a small splash of luminous green paint.

  She moves to another tree and shouts me over. It has the luminous green mark too. Then another, and another, and another.

  ‘What does it all mean?’ Cordelia asks, eyes huge.

  ‘It means they’re marked for chopping down. That’s what it means,’ a voice calls from somewhere above us.

  Startled, we look up into the thick green foliage. It’s Twig!

  ‘Have you been following us?!’ I shriek, outraged.

  ‘No way!’ he says as he swings himself down from his perch. ‘I was here first. Anyway, has your dad found out what’s going on?’

  ‘Nope,’ I admit. ‘That’s why we’re here. Checking things out.’

  ‘There’s a bad presence here. Something evil,’ Cordelia whispers. ‘I’m telling you. The trees feel threatened. I can feel them quivering.’

  Twig widens his eyes at me, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Cordelia’s psychic,’ I explain. ‘Her mum’s a witch.’

  ‘Course she is.’ Twig nods.

  Suddenly, as if possessed, Cordelia takes off again. She scoots through the bushes then rummages in the depths of a clump of ferns.

  ‘Looks like someone’s been littering!’ she exclaims as she pulls out an aerosol can and gives it a shake. ‘And it’s not even empty!’

  ‘You know what bugs me?’ Twig says as we inspect the can. ‘If we spray�
��paint it’s called vandalism, but when grown‐ups do it they call it work.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I ask.

  ‘People really need to know these woods are under threat,’ Twig says, tucking the can into a deep pocket of his baggy jeans. ‘If not, we’ll come out one morning and they’ll be gone. All chopped down. And there’ll be houses or factories or a road or something here instead.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘Dad’s out at a public meeting tonight. Trying to save a car factory – can you believe it? As soon as he gets back I’ll talk to him again. He’s GOT to listen this time.’

  When Dad gets in just after nine I start pressing my case. He looks at me like he’s no idea what I’m talking about.

  ‘Bluebell Wood?’ he repeats, gormlessly.

  I roll my eyes in despair. Since my father started this whole going‐into‐politics caper he’s become even more of an idiot than he was before.

  ‘Right now we’re chock‐a‐block with other things, Sassy. Your dad’s got to get out and on to the doorsteps,’ Digby says, marking more engagements on the election calendar he’s pinned to the wall. ‘As it is, he’s got two public debates tomorrow about this threatened car‐factory closure. And a Bonny Baby Competition. But we will get round to it, Sassy. I promise.’

  I am not impressed. ‘I don’t think you should be campaigning to save a car factory anyway. I mean, the last thing we need is more cars!’

  ‘It’s not just about cars, Sassy. It’s about jobs. And votes. The car factory is a big local employer. Now kindly get out of my study and let us get on with things!’ Dad says firmly.

  To be perfectly honest I hope my dad doesn’t get elected. He’s just going to be like every other politician. Scared to do the right thing in case it loses him a few votes.

  The next day a rumour starts spreading around the school, virulent as bird flu in a chicken coop. It goes like this:

  Midge Murphy, our class idiot, says he heard from his brother, who heard from his friend who heard from this guy whose sister was going out with a fella who works in our flea‐pit cinema, that the council is going to knock down the old cinema and replace it with a state‐of‐the‐art new one. And they’re going to build a new swimming pool too.

  Even Miss Peabody has heard. ‘It would be a wonderful thing for the town,’ she says. ‘It’s high time there were more places for young people. It’s very unhealthy having you all hanging about on the streets, being hoodies and doing that slappy‐happy thing. It’s not safe for a woman to go out on her own.’

  ‘So that’s what she carries those for,’ Taslima whispers, nodding at the knitting needles sticking out from Miss Peabody’s bag. ‘They’re poison‐tipped weapons. For self‐defence purposes.’

  In art everyone’s still talking about the new cinema, but Miss Cassidy says we shouldn’t get too excited. It’s exactly the kind of thing politicians come out with before an election to get people to vote for them, she says, but once they’re elected nothing happens.

  As soon as I get home I head straight for my room. There’s only one more week until the election. One more week till I get the chance to cut my demo disc. All I have to do is lie low and not do anything to upset Dad. At the end of class Miss Cassidy asked me to stay behind. She gave me contact numbers for a couple of recording studios in Glasgow, and offered to help set it up for me if I want.

  As I strum my guitar a new song starts to form in my head. A line comes to me. I pick up a kind of rhythm from it and the next line floats in, like waves washing gently up on the shore, one after the other.

  Don’t put that axe to my throat

  Don’t spray toxic fumes in my face

  I’m just noting the first lines down in my notebook when my door slams open and Pip bursts in.

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ Pip says, flopping on to my beanbag and grinning at me.

  ‘Great?’ I echo, absent‐mindedly. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, Sassy!’ Pip rolls her eyes and flaps her tiny painted fingernails. ‘You are so weird. What planet are you on? The new cinema thingie, of course!’

  ‘It’s just a rumour, Pip. You’ll learn. Every so often there’s a rumour about something fantastic that’s going to happen in Strathcarron. It never does!’

  Pip gets to her feet. ‘You are such a misery, Sasperilla Wilde! Why can’t you just enjoy things like other people?’ She stomps across the room and turns just as she’s going out of the door. ‘When I grow up, I am not going to turn into a misery guts like you!’

  ‘DON’T EVER CALL ME SASPERILLA!’ I yell after her. ‘OR YOU’LL NEVER GET THE CHANCE TO GROW UP!’

  I slam my room door shut and start to play guitar really loud. Whenever Pip wants to wind me up she calls me Sasperilla. Which is the name my completely idiotic parents put on my birth certificate, not thinking of the terrible psychological damage it would do. Imagine calling a child after some awful American pop soda! Thankfully, Mum’s post‐natal hormones had settled down by the time I was starting school, and she registered me as Sassy,23 which is what I’ve always been called. So no one outside of the Wilde household knows my dark secret. A secret I intend taking with me to the grave.

  STRUMSTRUMSTRUMPITYSTRUM!

  I’m doing a kind of mad punk thing, leaping around the room, swinging my hair, making such a racket I don’t hear my mobile ping. Fortunately it lights up too.

  I pounce on it like a cat on a gerbil.

  A new text message. From Magnus! I flop back on to my bed and hold the mobile above my head. Wabby‐dabby‐doo! He’s back! And he wants to meet up. Tonight. There’s a brilliant film on at the cinema. Do I want to go?

  Of course I want to go! But I’ve got no credit on my mobile, so I clatter downstairs two at a time and almost flatten Brewster, who has the unfortunate habit of lying at the bottom. Startled, he starts banging into the furniture and barking – just as the grandfather clock starts chiming.

  ‘Will you stop that infernal racket!’ Pip screams from the top of the stairs. ‘I am trying to DO MY HOMEWORK!!!’

  I run into the kitchen where Mum and Dad and Digby are poring over piles of musty old papers all tied up with pink ribbons. Weird or what?

  ‘Can I go to the cinema tonight?’ I ask quickly, fingers and legs crossed, touching wood and sending up a silent prayer to any god‐like person who might be tuning in.

  ‘Shhhhh… ’ Dad says. ‘This is complicated.’

  Mum looks up. ‘Who with?’ she mutters.

  ‘Magnus,’ I say quickly. ‘You know, the NICE boy Dad met in Paradiso’s.’

  ‘OK, honey,’ Mum mumbles, as she goes back to flicking through the pile of yellowed papers she’s holding. ‘But straight home after.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum!’ I grin. I run back into the hall and Brewster starts barking again. I shush him as I grab the phone. Hands shaking, I dial quickly. It rings. And rings. And rings. At last Magnus answers.

  ‘Hi. It’s me,’ I say, trying to sound cool. ‘Just got your message.’

  ‘So… do you want… you know… to go?’ he mumbles.

  ‘Sure. What time?’

  ‘Half six,’ he says more brightly. ‘I can meet you at the end of your road if you want. We can walk up together.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say.

  Because – WABBY DABBY DOO – it is!

  The film – Monster Mash Four – is totallycompletelyrelentlesslydisgustinglyatrociouslymindnumbinglystunninglypukeinducingly awful.

  Thank goodness I never had to sit through the first three.

  And the cinema is so decrepit even the fleas have bailed out. No wonder they’re planning to knock it down. In fact, if they don’t do it soon it’ll probably fall down all on its own.

  Me and Magnus – who, I have to say, is looking really cool in a midnight‐blue shirt and jeans – are sitting as near the back as poss, to avoid the popcorn wars raging in the front.

  I’m wearing a neat little skirt I borrowed last week from Cordelia, and at first I think, horrified,
five minutes into the film, that Magnus is touching my leg. Then I realize it’s not Magnus that’s dodgy, thank goodness! It’s the seat! There’s a spring loose or something and it keeps sticking into me every time I move.

  With just the final battle scene to go and only three mutants left alive, Magnus takes my hand and this warm ripply feeling runs right through me and almost makes up for how awful the film is.

  When it finishes we stumble, blinking, into the light. A few sad‐looking monster‐lovers are queuing for the next screening.

  Magnus turns to me, his face shining. ‘That was brilliant, wasn’t it?’

  For a moment I think he must be joking, but, no, there’s no hint of irony in his voice. He honestly DID enjoy it.

  ‘I’m starving now,’ he says, putting his arm round my shoulder. ‘I could kill a burger.’

  And before I can say anything we’re outside the brightly lit glass doors of Meaty MacBurger’s.

  ‘Hold on!’ I splutter as the glass doors slide automatically open. ‘I can’t go into Meaty MacBurger’s!’

  I leap backwards like I’ve had an electric shock and the glass doors slide shut.

  ‘Why not?’ Magnus looks at me, his face crumpled.

  ‘I’m a vegetarian.’ I try to say it non‐aggressively as I know that some meat‐eaters can get a bit upset.

  ‘No problem!’ Magnus says. He picks a piece of popcorn from my hair and flicks it into the gutter. And that’s when I notice. His eyes are the most extraordinary blue. Bluebell blue. ‘You don’t have to eat the burger!’ he grins. ‘It’s me that’s hungry.’

  He steps forward and the glass doors slide open again.

  ‘The problem is,’ I begin patiently, reminding myself that this is probably all new to Magnus, ‘burgers are made out of cows. And cows eat grass. And grass needs space to grow. And whole acres of Amazonian rainforest are getting burned so they can plant grass so they can feed cows so they can turn them into –’