Sugar and Spice

by Jean Ure

  They might have been just mindless blobs, but they still called me names and made fun of me. And what did it matter to Shay, anyhow? I hadn’t noticed her being so brilliant, what with calling her mum a vampire and using up all that great wodge of paper with hardly anything written on it. She hadn’t even bothered to do her French, or draw the intestines.

  I said this to her and she snarled, “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you!”

  “But what does it matter?” I cried. “Nobody cares! What’s the point?”

  “I’ll tell you—” Shay stabbed a finger into my breast bone “—what the point is.” Jab, stab. “The point —”

  I went, “Ow! Stop it!” She was really hurting me.

  “Well, then, just shut up,” said Shay, “and listen!”

  I said, “I’m listening.”

  “Right, then! You’ve got a brain. Yeah?”

  I nodded, humbly. I knew I had a bit of brain, cos Mrs Henson had told me so. Mrs Henson had said, if I worked hard enough I could pass exams, I could get to uni, I could be a doctor.

  “So if you’ve got a brain, why not use it!” bellowed Shay.

  I shrivelled. I did wish she wouldn’t shout quite so loud.

  “You want to end up like that lot?” Again, she waved a hand about the playground. “You wanna be pushed around for the rest of your life? Cos that’s what’ll happen. You let ’em get to you an’ you’ll be just another gawker like all the rest of ’em. Probably end up working in Tesco’s.”

  I bristled at that. “What’s wrong with working in Tesco’s?” I wasn’t going to tell her that my mum worked there.

  “There isn’t anything wrong with it,” said Shay, “if that’s what you wanna do.”

  “Well, maybe it is,” I said.

  “Yeah, and maybe it isn’t,” said Shay.

  She had some nerve! “I don’t see why you’re going on at me,” I muttered. “What about you?”

  “Doesn’t matter about me! I can look after myself. Don’t see anyone pushing me around, do you?”

  Humbly, I shook my head.

  “So that’s the difference between us. Yeah? It’s why I can get away with it and you can’t.”

  I thought, get away with what? But I sort of knew what she meant. Shay did her own thing, no matter what anyone said. When I tried doing my own thing, everyone jumped on me. What I couldn’t work out was why it bothered her. Why should she care if I ended up in Tesco’s? Why should I care, if it came to that? Mum was happy there. She had all her girlfriends, and they laughed and had fun. Of course it wasn’t the same as being a doctor, but that was just a daydream.

  “Oi!” Shay poked at me again with her finger. “You listening?”

  I said, “Yes!”

  “So you gonna do what I tell you?”

  I sighed. “I s’ppose so.”

  “You better had!” said Shay.

  I went back into class that day wondering how I felt about Shay bullying and bossing me. I decided that I didn’t really mind. Which was strange, in a way, cos as a rule I get a bit stroppy if anyone tries telling me what to do, like with Millie and Mariam we never laid down rules or bossed one another. We got on really well! But with Shay it was like she’d set herself up as my own personal bodyguard. My minder! So long as I did what she told me, I’d be safe. I know it was a bit wimpish of me, but it did feel good to have someone on my side for once.

  As soon as we were sitting at our desks, Karina turned to me and hissed, “What was all that about?”

  I said, “Oh! Nothing, really. Just homework.”

  “What d’you mean, just homework?”

  I smiled; a bit shamefaced. “Shay says I ought to do it.”

  “Why?” Karina’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What’s it got to do with her? I thought you were going to stop all the goody-goody boffin stuff?”

  I said, “Y-yes. Well – maybe. I don’t know!” I felt like a puppet, being jerked about in all different directions. “It’s difficult,” I said.

  “You’re just weak,” said Karina. Fortunately everyone else was yelling at the top of their voice, so no one but me could hear her. “You just let her push you around! Don’t blame me when everyone turns against you. I could join Amie’s lot tomorrow, if I wanted. It’s what I’ll do,” she said. “I will! I’ll tell Amie we’re not together any more.”

  We never had been together; not really. All the same, I hate upsetting people and I didn’t want Karina to feel like I’d driven her away. I whispered, “I’ll do my homework but I won’t write stuff that’s going to be read out.”

  “You’d just better not,” said Karina.

  “Well, I won’t,” I said. “Least, I’ll try not to.”

  I added that bit to myself, very low, so Karina couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure, if Mr Kirk set us an essay on something really interesting, that I’d be able to stop myself. Sometimes when I start writing I get, like, carried away, and that’s when the flocks of sheep start appearing, and moons start turning into bananas.

  There wasn’t any problem with that night’s homework cos all we’d had to do for Mr Kirk was read ten pages of The Diary of Anne Frank, and I’d already done that. I’d not only read ten pages, I’d read the whole book. I’d sat up in bed and finished it by torchlight, while the Terrible Two grunted and groaned and snuffled in their sleep. It was so funny in places, and so sad in others, that I couldn’t tear myself away from it.

  Even when I’d come to the end, I couldn’t get to sleep for thinking about it. Imagining how it must have been, when the Nazis came. Imagining how it might have been, if they hadn’t come. If Anne Frank had grown up and got married and had children of her own.

  Karina said it was just utterly boring and she didn’t know what people saw in it. According to Karina, if Anne Frank hadn’t been discovered by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, no one would ever have bothered reading her stupid diary.

  It was when Karina said things like that that I knew we couldn’t ever be friends. I knew that if Mr Kirk had set us an essay on Anne Frank, I’d have dashed off ten pages of my own, just like that, and wouldn’t have cared if Karina had gone off to join Amie Phillips. However, all we had for homework that night was maths. Oh, dear! I really have to concentrate so hard on maths. But I decided that I would. I’d make a determined effort, because dear Mrs Saeed never embarrassed me, or singled me out, even when I did get good marks. Also, of course, Shay would be pleased with me. I wanted Shay to be pleased. At any rate, I certainly didn’t want her to be cross!

  So after tea I cleared a space on the kitchen table and sat down with my maths book and started to concentrate. It was fractions, at which I’m quite hopeless. Especially decimal fractions. But I remembered Mrs Henson telling me: “You can do it, Ruth, if you just put your mind to it.” That was fractions, too. I seem to have a big black hole in my brain when it comes to numbers. But I could do it!

  I chewed the top of my pen. 0.35 + 0.712 + 0.9…I couldn’t even use a calculator, cos my dear little brother had gone and ruined the only one we had. He’d dropped it in the bath!

  Can you imagine? Mum said she’d see if there was another one on offer somewhere, like with a packet of crisps or something, but in the meantime I was having to work everything out on paper. In fact, that was what we were supposed to do anyway, but I bet nobody else did.

  I’d just worked out the answer and was feeling rather pleased with myself, when Mum came bursting into the kitchen and cried, “Ruth, I’ve just remembered…it’s Lisa’s Home Bake day tomorrow and I promised her I’d make something for her to take in. I’d clean forgotten about it! Just pop down the corner shop, there’s a good girl, and get me some pastry. I haven’t got time to make any.”

  I hadn’t got time to go down the corner shop. “I’m doing my homework!” I said.

  “Oh, now, come on, it’ll only take you five minutes!”

  “So why can’t Lisa go?” She was the one that wanted the stupid pie, not me.r />
  “I’m not sending a nine year old out in the dark. Just get yourself down there and stop being so stroppy.”

  I went off, grumbling. How ridiculous, going to the corner shop for pastry when I had a mum who worked in Tesco’s! Needless to say, there was a queue a mile long at the checkout. There would be, wouldn’t there?

  Everyone picking up fish fingers and TV dinners on their way home from work. Angrily I snatched a packet of pastry out of the freezer and stamped about at the back of the queue. Why did Mum do this to me? What about my education? I knew she had a lot to cope with, what with working all day and having to look after Dad, not to mention Sammy and the Terrible Two. But I was trying to do my maths homework!

  Anyway, guess what? When I finally raced home with the pastry, it was THE WRONG SORT. She hadn’t wanted frozen pastry.

  “How can I roll it out if it’s frozen?”

  She sent me all the way back again. This time, for chilled pastry.

  “Short crust, mind, not puff!”

  So then I had a bit of an argument with the man at the checkout cos he said the frozen pastry wasn’t properly frozen any more and he didn’t want to take it back. But Mum hadn’t given me any more money and I was practically in tears, cos I just couldn’t stand the thought of going all the way home and all the way back for the second time, but in the end a nice lady standing behind me said it was all right, she’d take the frozen stuff, and I was just so grateful to her.

  “That’s better,” said Mum, when I’d panted up six flights of stairs and back into the kitchen. (The reason I’d had to pant up the stairs was cos the lifts weren’t working. Again.) “Now, look, just pop across the hall and ask Mrs Kenny if she’s got a tin of cherries I could have. Here! You can give her this in exchange.” She tossed a tin of fruit salad at me. “Go on! I can’t make a pie out of fruit salad.”

  I hate having to go and ask Mrs Kenny for things. Mum’s always making me do it. I just find it so degrading! Anyway, Mrs Kenny didn’t have a tin of cherries. I told her Mum wanted to make a pie for Lisa’s Home Bake, so she gave me some sticks of rhubarb instead. I loathe rhubarb; so does Lisa. Tee hee! I should care. Mum did, though. She said, “What’s this? Rhubarb? That’s no good! I wanted cherries. You know Lisa won’t eat rhubarb!”

  “That’s all she had,” I said.

  Mum made an impatient tutting sound, like it was my fault Mrs Kenny didn’t have spare tins of cherries in her cupboard. Why didn’t Mum, if it came to that? What’s the point of working in Tesco’s if you can’t stock up with things?

  “We’ll have to cook it,” said Mum. “Get me a saucepan. Well, go on! Don’t just stand there. Do something!”

  So before I know it, I’m over at the sink scrubbing rhubarb and chopping it into little pieces and pulling off the stringy bits, and dumping it in the pan and showering sugar over it.

  “Not that much!” screamed Mum. “God in heaven, your dad won’t have any left for his tea!”

  I sometimes think that my mum is seriously disorganised. Me, myself, I like things to be orderly. I’m always tidying my desk and making out lists of Things to be Done. But it seems like I’m the only one in my family.

  After I’d helped with the pie and done the washing up, including all the stuff left over from earlier, Mum said we might as well get the lunch-boxes ready for tomorrow.

  “Save the rush in the morning.”

  I said, “Mu-u-um, I’m trying to do my homework!”

  “Oh, very well,” said Mum. “If you don’t want to help. As if I don’t have enough to do! I’d hoped to be able to put my feet up at some stage.”

  I looked at Mum and she did look frazzled. I know it wears her out, all the work she has to do. So we made up the lunch-boxes and I did some more washing up, and then, because poor Mum was obviously worn out, I told her to go and sit down and I’d make her a cup of tea; but when I took the tea into the other room I found her struggling with Dad’s oxygen cylinder, trying to drag it out from the bedroom. I ran straight over to help her. Dad’s oxygen cylinder, which he has to use if his breathing gets extra bad, is really really heavy. Between us, we managed to lug it across the hall and into the lounge.

  We were both panting, though not as much as Dad. I suppose I ought to be used to it by now, but I’m always secretly terrified that maybe one day he just won’t be able to breathe at all.

  Naturally, with all the racket going on, Sammy woke up. He came pattering out in his pyjamas, wanting to know what was happening. Seconds later, the Terrible Two appeared. By the time I’d got them all back to bed, and Dad was breathing better with his oxygen mask, it was nearly ten o’clock and I was just feeling too tired to concentrate on fractions. The homework had to be handed in next morning. What was I going to tell Shay???

  Today I told that Karina girl where to get off. Some people just can’t take a hint, I had to yell at her in the end. Then you should have seen her go! But really she must have a hide like an elephant. You tell a person to shove off, you can’t make it much plainer.

  SHOVE OFF YOU DORK YOU’RE NOT WANTED!

  She’s still hanging around, but I reckon she’s starting to get the message. If she hasn’t gone by the end of next week – well! She’ll get what’s coming to her.

  Had a long talk with Spice. Told her to pull her finger out and stop trying to bring herself down to the same level as the rest of the morons. What’s it matter if they call her names? Names can’t hurt you. Anyway, they won’t be calling her anything so long as I’m here. Anyone calls her names while I’m there, they’ll get my fist in their gob. Yeah, and that includes Brett Thomas. What a gorilla!

  And that stupid Joolyer and her sappy little friend. Prinking and prancing. I told Spice, they’re just a load of dumbos. She’s gotta get her act together! She said she would, but she’s not gotta lotta bottle. God knows what’ll happen when I’m not there. Still, that’s her problem. She’ll have to learn to fight her own battles – I can’t be around all the time.

  I dunno why I bother, really. What’s it to me if she ends up like the rest of ’em? Be easier just to let her get on with it. She’s nothing to me! This time next year I won’t even remember who she was. But I just CANT STAND IT when a load of mindless blobs go round guzzling and slurping and GOBBLING UP anyone that’s got a bit of brain. It DISGUSTS me, to tell the truth. That’s why the Karina girl has gotta go. Not just cos she’s in the way, though she is in the way (but not for long. I got her number!) but because she’s like a leech. Except instead of sucking blood, she sucks brain.

  I’ve watched her! She thinks it’s really funny when Spice turns in one line of homework and calls it an essay. Yay! That’s great! That’s really amusing, that is. Another bit of brain down the toilet. If she had her way, she wouldn’t stop till she’d sucked the lot out, and then there’d be one more mindless blob cluttering the place up and thinking it’s clever to be stupid.

  GOD THEY MAKE ME SICK.

  The Vampire’s gone off for three days on a training course. She says it’s to do with cosmetics. Oh, yeah? More likely a course on How to Put your Fangs to Good Use, or How to Avoid Garlic. In other words, a vampire convention!

  That’s what I reckon. There’ll be all these other vampires there, all sharpening their fangs and thirsting for fresh glasses of blood. I asked her if she was taking her coffin with her and she said, “What on earth are you talking about?” She said I had a very morbid sense of humour. “If it is a sense of humour. Honestly, Shay! Do you have to be so ghoulish?”

  Yup! I have to be. It’s the only way I can get by.

  The Vampire went off yesterday. She thinks the Invisible Man is then here keeping an eye on me, but if he is I can’t see him.

  “Hi, Dad! You there? Anyone at ho-o-o-o-me?”

  No reply. I don’t think he came back last night. At any rate, his bed wasn’t slept in. I’ve checked the answerphone, but there’s no messages. Nothing on the email. I’ve tried ringing his mobile, I’ve rung it several times, but it
always seems to be switched off. Maybe he’s gone on a training course, too. How would the Vampire know? They never talk.

  I remember the first time they left me, I was scared. I stayed in my bedroom and cried. Boo hoo! So pathetic. Course, I was only nine years old. I couldn’t give a toss now. What do I care?

  It’s odd he hasn’t even left a message. I s’ppose he’s all right. I s’ppose he hasn’t had a car crash or anything. Nah! Course he hasn’t. The police would have been round. It’s what they do, they come and tell you. He probably thinks the Vampire’s here. He thinks she’s here, she thinks he’s here.

  GOD THEY’RE SO USELESS!

  I desperately didn’t want to wake up next morning. Mum had to come and bawl at me three times. “Ruth, I’m not telling you again! Get out of that bed! And get your sisters up. Do you want to be late for school?”

  I didn’t just want to be late. Being late wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to go at all. I was just so scared that Shay was going to be angry with me! It wasn’t that I thought she’d bash me or anything. But she’d give me that look, like I was lower than an earthworm. Like she didn’t know why she’d ever bothered.

  “Just a mindless blob!”

  Shay despised mindless blobs. I didn’t want to be one of them. I didn’t want her to despise me – I wanted to be someone worth bothering with!

  I crept into class just as Mrs Saeed was collecting homework.

  “Ruth,” she said, “just in time!” And she smiled at me and held out her hand, with this really happy expression on her face. “Homework?”

  I mumbled that I was sorry, but I hadn’t done it. Poor Mrs Saeed! She looked so disappointed, like I’d really let her down. She said, “That’s not like you, Ruth.” I hung my head and didn’t dare look at Shay. As I slipped into my seat, Karina nudged me, like she was gloating, and went, “Hah!”

  It was like she thought she’d scored some kind of victory. I wanted to turn my back on her, but that meant I’d be facing Shay. I grabbed my rough book and shielding it with my hand, cos Karina was really nosy, she always wanted to be in on absolutely everything, I wrote, “I couldn’t help it, I had to do things for my mum.” and pushed it across to Shay. Would she write back to me???