Sugar and Spice

by Jean Ure

  I always end up bashing myself or going flump across the top and not being able to get over. And then everybody sniggers and Miss Southgate tells me to try again.

  “And this time, take a real run at it!”

  So I do, but it isn’t any use cos I still can’t get over. Most probably what I do is catch my foot in the edge of the coconut matting and go sprawling on my face.

  And then my glasses fall off and I hear them go scrunch underneath me, and Miss Southgate sighs and says, “All right! Next person.” If the next person is Karina, she’ll go flump just like I did. But if it’s the two Js, they’ll go hurtling over with about ten metres to spare and land on their feet the other side.

  Until now they’d always been the star performers when it came to PE; them and a girl called Carlie who was in Millie’s gang. They all belonged to the junior gym team and could bend themselves double and walk on their hands and balance without any signs of wobble on the parallel bars. Karina, in her sniffy way, said who’d want to?

  “It’s just stupid! Just showing off.”

  I didn’t say anything to Karina, cos she’d only have got the hump with me, but I’d have given anything to be able to show off. Sometimes I had these dreams of hanging at the top of a rope, right up near the ceiling, and everybody being madly impressed and going, “Look! Look at Ruth!” Unfortunately I’m scared of heights, so it wasn’t really very likely to happen. All I could do was watch, in a kind of awe. I wouldn’t have minded if I never got an A- again, if I could only have whizzed up a rope or done the splits, like Julia. Cos she was absolutely THE BEST, it has to be said.

  Until now. I couldn’t believe it when Shay started up. She’d been doing her leaning thing, against the wall bars, silently observing everyone. And then it was her turn to run at the horse and she just, kind of, loped up to it, sailed over like it wasn’t even there, and did a somersault with a handspring on the other side to finish off.

  Everyone gaped, including the two Js. Karina muttered, “Who’s she think she’s impressing?” but it wasn’t like Shay had done it to impress; more like it was just something that came naturally to her. “This is the way you jump over a horse.” I got the feeling she didn’t care one way or the other what anyone thought of her. She was Shay, and that was how she was, and they could take it or leave it. Which is the way that I’d love to be!

  Afterwards, as we were leaving the gym, I heard Miss Southgate talking to her.

  “Well,” she said, “it looks as if we have a new recruit for the gym team! How about it? Would you like to join us?”

  To my utter astonishment, Shay shook her head and said no. I couldn’t believe it! How could she say no, just like that? To a teacher!

  I could tell Miss Southgate wasn’t pleased. She said, “Well! That sounded pretty definite,” and her voice was all sharp and prickly. I thought Shay would apologise, but she didn’t: she didn’t say anything. I asked her later – I mean, like, weeks later – why she hadn’t wanted to join, and she just said, “Not worth it.” She was such a mystery!

  That evening, after tea, I shut myself away in the kitchen to do my homework. The kitchen was the only place that was warm enough since the central heating had been turned off. Mum said we couldn’t afford to heat the whole flat, so now we just had it on in the front room, but I was allowed to have the oven on low in the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly quiet out there cos I could hear the television blaring in the next room, and the person in the flat that joined ours had music on, really loud, but I didn’t mind that so much as the way Sammy and the girls kept crashing in and out.

  “We’re playing!” yelled Lisa.

  When I complained to Mum she said that it was nice the girls played with their little brother, and then she sat herself down at the kitchen table to ring one of my nans on her mobile. They started to talk and I really couldn’t concentrate cos of listening to what they were saying. After a bit Mum put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Get Sammy off to bed for me, will you? There’s a good girl!”

  Well. That was easier said than done. It wasn’t a question of “just getting him off to bed”. First you had to catch him. Then when you’d caught him you had to fight to get him out of his clothes and into his pyjamas, and then another fight to get him to clean his teeth, and another fight to actually persuade him into the bedroom. (Actually Mum and Dad’s bedroom, as we only have the two.) I finally got back to the kitchen to find that Mum was now working her way through a mound of ironing.

  “If you did that in the other room,” I said, “you could watch television at the same time.”

  “Too much hassle,” said Mum. “Go on, you can work, I won’t interfere with you.”

  I took out a sheet of paper and wrote MY FAMILY in big letters across the top. What could I write about my family?

  “Look at this!” Mum was holding up one of Lisa’s school blouses. “What on earth does she get up to?”

  I nibbled the top of my pen, searching for inspiration. (Bang, went Mum, with the iron.) Maybe I could just write one line, like the person that wrote about the night sky.

  “My family is so ordinary I cannot think of anything to say about them.”

  Then Mr Kirk (bang, thud) would read it out and tell me to grow up and everyone would laugh, only they wouldn’t be laughing because I was a geek or a boffin, they would be laughing because I’d dared to be cheeky. They might even start to respect me a little.

  What if I did the spelling all wrong, as well?

  “My famly is so ornry I cannot thing of anythink to say abowt them.”

  Yess!!!!

  “Know what?” said Mum. “This iron’s giving out.”

  “They are jest to bawrin for wurds. Wurds canot discribe how bawrin they are.”

  I was really getting carried away, now.

  “My mum is bawrin my dad is bawrin my sistus is bawrin my b —”

  “Well, that’s it,” said Mum. “That’s the iron gone.”

  “ —my bruthr is bawrin. This is an eggsample of the bawrin things that happen in my famly. My mum has jest sed to me that the ion has gon but she duz not say were it have gon. Maybe it have gon to the Nawth Powl. Maybe it have gon to Erslasker. I wil aks her. Were has the ion gon, I wil say.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Mum.

  “The iron,” I said. “Where’s it gone?”

  “What d’you mean, where’s it gone? It’s broke! Why don’t you make us a cup of tea and bring it in the other room? You’ve done enough scribbling for one night.”

  I made the tea, but I didn’t go into the other room. I stayed in the kitchen, writing my essay. I found that once I’d got going, my pen seemed to carry on all by itself and I just wrote and wrote, making up all these funny spellings. Tellervijun and sentrel heetin and emferseema, which is what my dad has got that makes him run out of breath. (It’s really spelt emphysema. I learnt it, specially.) In the end, I wrote five whole pages! Even longer than my essay about the sheep and the bananas. I felt quite proud of it.

  But then, guess what? I got cold feet! I woke up in the middle of the night and I knew I couldn’t really hand in five pages of silly spelling. I just wasn’t brave enough. But it was too late to write anything else, and even if it wasn’t I couldn’t bear the thought of Mr Kirk singling me out again. Specially not if it was about my family. I’d just die of shame! So I tore up my five pages, even though I thought they were funny, and on the bus next morning, on the way to school, I wrote down my original sentence: “My family is too ordinary for me to say anything about them.”

  I wondered, as I got off the bus, whether Shay would sit next to me again. I did hope she would! It had made me feel a bit special, when Shay sat next to me. But I really couldn’t think of any reason why she’d want to.

  This school is a DUMP The kids are RUBBISH. The teachers are PATHETIC. It is all GARBAGE.

  Well it’s OK, I won’t be there for long. Not if I can help it! They’re all a load of drivellers. Some stupid woman
wanted me to join the gym team. Purlease! I’m not joining any of their ridiculous little teams, I’m not joining anything at all, NO WAY, full stop, finish. THE END. Sooner I get moved on the better. And I will! They’ll soon get sick of me. BUT NOT HALF AS SICK AS I ALREADY AM OF THEM.

  There’s only one girl out of the whole stupid lot that’s not a total thicko. Her name’s Ruth and she looks like she’s made of matchsticks.

  Anything but a thicko! Ha ha. All the dorks and drivellers gang up against her, so I might kind of cultivate her and see what happens. Just out of interest. I certainly don’t want her as a friend! Don’t want ANYONE as a friend. I can manage on my own, I can! I don’t need anyone. So I might not bother. I’ll think about it.

  Thinks …

  I s’ppose it might give me something to do. Take away some of the boredom. WHILE I’M THERE. She hangs out with this girl that’s a real slimeball. A right maggot mouth. But that’s no problem! I can deal with her. She’s just scum, like all the rest of them. Old Matchsticks has at least got a brain; sort of person I could do something with. P’raps I’ll give it a go. See what happens. If she’s not interesting, I can always drop her.

  The creep that takes English said to write an essay on My Family. What a stupid subject! My mum’s a vampire. She sucks blood…yeah, and my dad’s the invisible man!

  One term. That’s all I give it. After that – who knows? Maybe they’ll just give up on me. Save us all a lot of grief.

  Gonna write my essay now, about the vampire. Har har!

  On my way into school next morning, I was ambushed by Brett Thomas. He must have seen me coming and laid in wait, cos he sprang out from behind a tree as I walked into the playground. It was quite scary. I jumped and gave this little pathetic bleat. Brett said, “Where ya goin’, Goofball?”

  I said, “Going into s-school.”

  I mean, where else would I be going?

  “Wotcha got in yer bag?”

  “N-nothing!” I clutched my bag very tightly with both hands. “I haven’t got anything in it!”

  “Wotcha mean, you ain’t got anyfink in it? Wotcha carryin’ it for?”

  “It’s just s-school stuff.” I cast round, desperately, but the playground was empty. I’d done my usual trick of arriving late, after the bell. It was just me and Brett Thomas!

  “Give it us.” He reached out and grabbed the bag from me. There wasn’t anything I could do; I had to let him have it. Brett Thomas was a real hard nut, he’d bash your head in soon as look at you. Even Karina, who didn’t mind giving a load of bad mouth to Julia Bone, wasn’t bold enough to stand up to Brett Thomas. Nor was Julia, come to that. Nobody was.

  “Wossis?” He’d pulled out my lunch-box and flipped off the lid. I watched as he prised up a corner of one of my sandwiches and sniffed at it. “Peanut butter? Man, that’s some repulsive crap!”

  All the food that Mum had put in my lunch-box went hurtling across the playground.

  “What else yer got?”

  “Nothing.” I said. “It’s just homework.”

  “Homework?” He upended the bag and shook out the contents. “Only nerds do homework!”

  He was about to mash all my books and papers into the ground when a voice yelled, “You do that and I’ll beat you to a pulp!”

  It was Shay. I couldn’t believe it! Shay, daring to threaten Brett Thomas…I felt like snatching up my stuff and making a run for it, but I knew I couldn’t leave her there. She didn’t know what Brett Thomas was like; she didn’t know what she was letting herself in for.

  “Honestly, it’s all right,” I said, “it doesn’t matter, it’s not important, it —”

  “Course it’s important!” She turned on me, fiercely. “Can’t let people get away with this sort of thing!”

  “So who’s gonna stop us?” Brett brought his foot down on top of my maths book and began grinding it into the mud.

  “I am,” said Shay.

  “Oh, yeah? You an’ whose army?”

  “Don’t need any army!”

  Shay launched herself at him. He was bigger and stronger than she was, but she caught him by surprise and managed to throw him off balance.

  I hastily scooped up my papers and rescued my maths book.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go! Shay…let’s go!”

  But she wouldn’t. She stood there, glaring, hands on hips.

  “That is such bad behaviour,” she said. “What are you? Some kind of throwback?”

  “Please!” I was hopping from foot to foot. There still wasn’t anyone else in the playground. “Leave him!”

  “Next time,” said Shay, “just pick on someone your own size.”

  We turned, and walked off across the playground. Brett came after us. He didn’t actually do anything, just fell in behind us, breathing over our shoulders and uttering threats.

  “I’ll get you for this, bitch! You don’t know who you’re dealing with!”

  Even now, Shay couldn’t resist answering him back. “I know what I’m dealing with,” she said. “Stone Age moron’s what I’m dealing with!”

  By the time we reached our classroom I had this great big tremble running through me, from top to bottom, making my whole body shake. I sank into my desk, next to Karina.

  “You look really freaked out,” said Karina. “Like you’ve been chased down the street by a horde of headless ghosts.”

  I told her it was worse than that. “Brett Thomas snatched my bag and Shay said she’d beat him to a pulp and he was a S-Stone Age moron!”

  “What a total idiot.” Karina craned her head to give Shay a contemptuous glare. (Shay had chosen to sit next to me, on the other side.) “Stupid thing to do!”

  “Pardon me?” said Shay. She also craned her head. “You don’t think it’s right someone stands up to him?”

  “Not unless they want to get themselves knifed,” said Karina.

  “He’d just better try it!” said Shay.

  “You wait. You’ll see! He’ll get you.”

  “You shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “He’s a horrible boy! He’s been excluded once.”

  “Really?” said Shay, but she didn’t sound too impressed.

  “Yes, and then they went and let him back, and now he terrorises everyone.”

  Shay tossed her head. “Doesn’t terrorise me!”

  “But he’s dangerous,” I said. “He’s really mean.”

  “So’m I,” said Shay. “I’m meaner than a hyena! He’s not gonna get me.”

  And he never did. I don’t know what it was, whether he was scared of her, or whether he respected her, but after that he never came anywhere near her. He never came near me again, either, thanks to Shay. I don’t know how it is that some people can stand up for themselves and beat the bullies and others can’t. If I’d told Brett he was a Stone Age moron, I dread to think what he would have done. There was just something about Shay that warned people off.

  When it came to lunchtime I didn’t have anything to eat, on account of all my food being scattered over the playground. Karina, who also brought packed lunches, said that I could have half of one of her sandwiches, if I wanted, and a mouthful of yoghurt.

  “But that’s all, otherwise I’ll get hungry, and if I get hungry I’ll feel faint.”

  Shay then came over to sit with us, bringing a trayful of chips and curry, and a slice of cake.

  “I tried to get two dinners but they wouldn’t let me, but that’s OK, we can share…look, I’ll divide it up.”

  She actually drew a line with her knife down the middle of the plate and said that one half was for her, and the other half was for me. When I tried to thank her, she said I didn’t have to do that.

  “We’re Sugar and Spice, right?”

  She’d noticed! All by herself, without me telling her. Karina said, “What’s that s’pposed to mean?”

  “Means we share,” said Shay.

  “Why?” said Karina.

  “Cos we do. Yeah?” Shay glanced at me
for confirmation, and I beamed and nodded. I could see Karina was cross as hornets and didn’t want Shay sitting with us, but it wasn’t like her and me had sworn eternal friendship. We hadn’t sworn any sort of friendship. We’d just drifted together out of convenience, cos being together had seemed better than being on our own. Maybe the three of us could form a gang. The Sugar and Spice gang!

  It was a cosy idea, but I think I already knew that Shay wasn’t a cosy sort of person.

  We had two lots of homework that night: French and biology. I’m not terribly good at French, but I am good at biology! I love to find out about the body and the way it works, even though some of it is gruesome. The intestines, for example. All those metres of tubing, all pulsating away like crazy, gulping and squeeeeeeeeeezing, like a big sausage machine, as they move stuff along. It’s really pretty disgusting if you stop and think about it. I mean, if all the time you’re imagining to yourself what’s going on inside you, all the gulping and the squeeeeeeeeeezing and the sausage-making. After we’d learnt about it that morning I’d looked at Brett Thomas and wanted to giggle. The thought of Brett Thomas’s innards! All churning about. Slurping and slopping and squirming like maggots.

  Ugh. Yuck. Totally gross! I said this to Karina and she squealed at me to shut up. She said if that was what went on inside us, she’d rather not know. But in its way it is actually quite fascinating, and especially if you’re thinking that maybe one day you’ll become a doctor.