The Strawberry Sisters

by Candy Harper

  I wanted to ask her what sort of nonsense she thought the big kids might give us, but she kissed Kayleigh again and pushed us out of the door.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Kayleigh said. ‘Can you? Now we’re not babies any more and there’s going to be a proper art room, not just loads of pots with the paint all dried up in them.’

  She didn’t stop talking for the whole twenty minutes it took us to walk to school. She was really excited about the cafeteria and the art teacher and having an actual upstairs at school. And she thought we should ask our mums if we could wear nail varnish now we were in Year Seven.

  She didn’t pay any attention to the traffic. I think that’s another reason why we’re good at being friends. I make sure that Kayleigh doesn’t get run over and she’s so excited all the time that she helps me remember the bright sides of things.

  When we walked in the gates of St Mark’s, there were already tons of kids hanging about.

  ‘Some of them are really grown up,’ I said in a low voice.

  Kayleigh looked up at me (she’s nearly a whole head shorter than I am so she’s always looking up). ‘Ella, you’re grown up.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m tall, but I’m still quite little.’

  We managed to find our registration room. When we got there, Ashandra was already sitting at a table. Somehow, she made the school uniform look really cool and, even though she didn’t get to go to the induction day because she was in America visiting her dad, she looked completely not nervous. You can just tell by looking at some people’s faces that they don’t have any secret maps in their socks.

  ‘Ash!’ I called, waving to her. ‘This is Kayleigh.’ I’d told them so much about each other that I’d imagined them hugging when they met. But they didn’t hug; instead, they looked at each other like you do when someone shows you their dog and you don’t know if you should stroke it because it might not be friendly.

  Then Ash smiled. ‘I got us this table,’ she said.

  The tables were arranged in four columns. Each one had two chairs neatly tucked behind. ‘We just need another chair.’

  I hesitated. It seemed like someone had arranged the classroom exactly how they wanted it, but Kayleigh grabbed a chair from the next table and plonked herself down in it.

  Lots more people arrived and everyone looked at everyone else in their stiff new uniforms.

  Then the bell rang and the door flew open and in walked our teacher. Her black hair was even curlier than I remembered and she was wearing a dress the colour of poppies.

  ‘Ooof,’ she said, dropping a pile of books on the desk. ‘Being new is terrible, isn’t it? Terrible.’

  She flopped into her chair and rifled through a pile of papers.

  ‘She needs to go on a diet,’ whispered a girl sitting across the aisle. She was wearing the high-heeled shoes that Mum wouldn’t let Amelia buy. Her friend giggled.

  ‘She’s even got fat knees.’

  That wasn’t true, but her friend giggled again.

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten, my name is Miss Espinoza. I teach Spanish and also French and I’m your tutor. Remember, I am just like you; this school is new for me too. In July, we came for the day to meet each other and now it is our first proper day together. So nobody in this room knows what they are doing or where they are going.’ She said it in such a happy way that twenty-eight pairs of shoulders relaxed a bit.

  ‘We will work it out,’ she said. ‘We will help each other. If you see someone trying to have a French lesson in the swimming pool then you must whisper in their ear. And that includes me.’

  There were a few giggles.

  ‘Be nice to each other,’ she said.

  I smiled because that was exactly what I was planning to do. Maybe even Miss Espinoza would notice how super nice I was.

  She took a good look at our table. I sat very still.

  ‘Girls,’ she said to me, Kayleigh and Ashandra. ‘One of you needs to move over here.’ She pointed to a table across the aisle that had one lonely girl sitting behind it. ‘Then we’re all two to a table. Yes?’

  Kayleigh looked at me. We had all agreed to sit together. I didn’t want to move, but I really did want Ash and Kay to have the chance to get to know each other. I’d promised myself I’d be nice and I supposed that meant doing difficult things sometimes so I moved my chair across the aisle to sit next to the girl. She had her hair pulled back in a tight plait with a fuzz of frizz escaping around her face. She didn’t look at me when I sat down.

  ‘Thank you. Now we have to find the register on here.’ Miss Espinoza flipped open her laptop.

  After registration, we went to maths. First, we had a test so the teacher could work out what level we are at. There were some groans, but I quite liked it because in maths I always know what to do. I didn’t know what to do when someone shouted, ‘Look at lamp-post girl!’ as we were moving to our next lesson so I didn’t do anything.

  In RE, we filled in a questionnaire and played a game. It was two chairs to a table again so, to be nice, I suggested Ashandra and Kayleigh sit together. I was next to a boy because he was last to arrive and the only space left was beside me. He didn’t say a single word the whole time. And I ended up behind the girl who’d called Miss Espinoza fat. Her friend called her Jasmine. All the way through RE she made rude comments about how gross our teacher’s tie was. I kept sneaking looks at Ashandra and Kayleigh to see how they were getting on, but there wasn’t really a chance for them to get friendly. Everybody was being first-day quiet. Even Kieran from my primary school was sitting still and pretending not to be a nightmare.

  ‘Playtime!’ I said when RE was finished.

  High Heels Jasmine turned round to face me and laughed. ‘It’s called break. This isn’t primary school.’ And she looked at me as if she knew that I’d still got some Sylvanian Families under my bed.

  ‘She can call it what she wants,’ Kayleigh said to Jasmine, linking arms with me and leading me off outside. This is exactly why I’m so glad I’ve got my friends at school with me. I just freeze when people are mean, but Kayleigh and Ashandra know exactly what to do.

  After breaktime (where no one does any playing and you have to be careful where you stand because someone in Year Ten might want to stand there), it was time for double PE.

  I came out of the changing room in my super-white new trainers and the PE teacher looked at me and smiled. ‘You look like you’ll do well this morning,’ she said as she opened a net of basketballs.

  The bright side of being tall is that I can reach things from the top shelf and it’s better to be called ‘giraffe’ than ‘elephant’. Another bright side, which I found out in PE, is that after you’ve been picked first for a basketball team and disappointed everyone then snooty girls with heels promise you that they’re never going to make that mistake again.

  The rest of the day took a long time to be over. I kept trying to be nice and say that Ashleigh and Kayleigh could sit together in our classes so they could get to know each other, but they didn’t seem to want to. And at lunchtime I ended up having two different conversations, even though I wanted to get us all talking together.

  When I got home, Chloe and Amelia were already back, but Lucy has to go to After School Club and wait for Mum to pick her up because she’s too little to be at home alone with us. I was going to have a drink, but I suddenly felt really tired so I lay down on the sofa, just for a minute.

  But in our house, if you lie down and close your eyes, people jump on you.

  When Chloe had finished her trampoline routine, I sat up and pulled the hair out of my mouth.

  ‘You’re all red,’ Chloe said. ‘Did you have a disgusting day at school?’

  ‘I’m red because you just did a somersault on my head.’

  ‘What about school?’

  ‘It was OK. I mean, some of it was nice.’ I wanted to tell her a list of nice things, but I hadn’t made one yet. ‘It was jam sponge for pudding.’

  ‘I know. I had thr
ee lots. Your face is quite crumply. Like an elephant. Or a bulldog. Are you going to cry?’

  ‘Dad says crying is for babies.’

  ‘Crying is for anyone who feels like it. Like farting.’ She squeezed my shoulder.

  I don’t know why Amelia says Chloe is dumb. She says some smart things to me.

  ‘I’ll make you a sandwich,’ she said.

  The sandwich had three types of cheese and two types of pickle in it.

  Even if a sandwich is disgusting, if it was meant in a very kind way, it can still make you feel better.

  When Mum and Lucy got home, Mum had a huge box of doughnuts for us.

  The bright side of having a mum who’s a teacher is the food. Bringing home doughnuts is not unusual. And at Christmas and Easter and the summer holidays Mum gets lots of boxes of chocolates which she shares with us. On special picnic days and party days and bring-and-share lunch days, there’s always lots left over and Mum brings us something home. There’s more food in schools than you’d think.

  ‘The head bought them for the teachers,’ Mum said.

  ‘Why?’ Lucy asked. ‘Nobody gave me a doughnut at school. We did halving today. Halving is hard; I should get a doughnut for that.’

  ‘Mum works much harder than you do. Anyway, you’re having a doughnut now,’ Amelia pointed out. ‘Yes, but it wasn’t meant for me. It’s a secondhand doughnut.’

  ‘It’s not really second hand,’ I said. ‘Because no one else has had a go at it first. If they had, it would be all chewed.’

  ‘Like this,’ Chloe said and she opened her mouth to show us.

  ‘Why exactly did the head give you doughnuts?’ Amelia asked Mum.

  ‘Because he’s trying to bribe us all into doing what he wants and not to complain about stress and the broken toilets.’

  Chloe put two more doughnuts on her fingers like rings. ‘But there are loads here. Didn’t anyone eat them?’

  Mum shook her head. ‘No one wanted him to think that they were agreeing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get stressed if someone gave me a doughnut every day,’ Chloe said.

  ‘You never get stressed about anything or anyone anyway,’ Amelia said.

  Mum filled up the kettle. ‘Well, I’ve heard a whisper that we might be inspected this term so the head’s going to need some pretty big doughnuts if he thinks he can stop us from getting stressed.’

  ‘Will it be Daddy that inspectors you?’ Lucy asked.

  My mum and dad used to work at the same school, but then Mum had lots of children and stayed at home to look after us while my dad got more and more important until he was head teacher and then he stopped being a head and became an inspector instead.

  ‘No,’ Mum said with a funny look on her face. ‘Dad won’t inspect my school; he doesn’t work in this area.’

  Lucy twirled one of her coppery curls round a sugary finger. ‘If inspectors are so evil, why is Daddy one?’

  ‘Because obviously Dad could never do anything evil,’ Amelia said.

  She was being sarcastic, which is Amelia’s favourite pastime and is basically saying the opposite to what you mean.

  Mum was staring into the tea bag tin.

  ‘Duh,’ Chloe said. ‘Dad’s not one of the evil ones. He’s a good one.’

  Lucy was happy with that, but I saw Amelia raising her eyebrows at Mum. I didn’t know what it meant except that Amelia doesn’t think that my dad is very good. But Amelia doesn’t think anyone is very good at the moment. Mum says she’ll grow out of it eventually.

  I hope it’s before Christmas.

  ‘But you are going to be inspected by someone?’ Chloe asked Mum.

  ‘Quite possibly. It’s been a while since they last came to our school so we’re definitely due a visit. But nobody knows for certain.’

  ‘That’s rude,’ Lucy said. ‘You should send them one of those bits that you get on party invitations that says “yes, I am coming” or “no, I wouldn’t come to your stinky party even if you paid me”.’

  Mum fished the tea bag out of her cup. ‘It doesn’t work like that. They used to tell you when they were coming so that you could work yourself up to a nervous breakdown. Then they said they’d only give you a few days’ notice so that you had to squeeze all your panicking into a weekend, but now they just turn up and you get to go insane right in front of them.’

  ‘What does “just turn up” mean?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘It means they can strike at any time,’ I said.

  ‘Like zombies,’ Chloe added.

  ‘Does that mean you’ve got a lot of work to do?’ Amelia asked.

  Mum frowned. ‘Let’s forget about work tonight. How about after tea we get into our pyjamas and watch a film and eat some popcorn?’

  My mum doesn’t have to try to be nice, she just is.

  Talking about zombies must have put ideas in Chloe’s head because, while Mum was listening to the news and making our tea, Chloe convinced us all to play March of the Zombies.

  We have lots of made-up games in our family. Amelia won’t play most of them any more, but sometimes you can talk her into March of the Zombies. She says it appeals to the apocalypse in her soul.

  I think that means she likes the biting.

  Our house has a basement, which is really good because when you make a lot of noise down there it sounds like slightly less noise up at ground level.

  When we moved into this house, the basement had pale blue walls and a wooden floor painted white, and Mum and Dad said it was going to be the playroom. After three weeks, everyone was calling it the Pit.

  Our house has quite a lot of clutter in it, but the Pit seems especially full because it’s where all the tiny things live. Like Lego bricks and Barbie shoes and felt-tip-pen lids and Playmobil people. They fill up the Pit as if a plastic monster has done a multicoloured plastic sick all over the floor. Underneath all the tiny stuff, the floor isn’t white any more. Now it’s covered in paint and dried-on Play-Doh and some brown sticky stuff that no one can identify. Even the walls aren’t empty because once, when Lucy was bored, she decided to put some stories on them. She couldn’t write then so she just drew pictures. There are a lot of people shouting and fighting.

  I don’t really like mess. I keep my corner of our bedroom very neat and always try to keep my bits and bobs tidied away. But the Pit does look as if something evil has smashed everything up so I guess it’s a good place to play zombies. Especially because there’s no window down there and you can make it properly dark.

  ‘I’m too old for this,’ Amelia said, but she closed the door and turned off the light anyway.

  ‘I’ll be the zombie,’ I said because I was still trying to be nice and nobody ever volunteers to go first. I positioned myself with my back against the door, counted to three and then started to walk slowly across the room with my arms stretched out to the sides, trying to be as quiet as possible, which is quite hard when you’re stepping on bits of board games and something squidgy. When my fingers brushed someone’s hair, I made a grab. ‘I’ll eat your brains!’ I said and gave the victim a very gentle bite. (When we first started playing, the bites were much harder, but one of the neighbours complained to Mum about the blood-curdling screams coming from our house.) I could tell from the tiny shoulders that I’d caught Lucy, that and the way she muttered, ‘It’s so unfair,’ because the rules said that Lucy was now a zombie too.

  After a few minutes, I found Chloe which meant Amelia was the last person left and when we found her we lifted her up high and proclaimed her the zombie queen.

  Even though she tried not to smile, I think she liked it.

  She switched on the light. ‘Must be nice being a zombie,’ she said.

  Chloe poked her. ‘You’d know.’

  Amelia pinched her back. ‘I don’t know why people are always running away from them in films. If the zombies come, I’m not going to wear myself out trying to escape. I’ll just give in and become one of them.’

  ‘But your brain
would be zombified. You wouldn’t be able to think. Don’t you want to use your brain?’ Lucy said, looking shocked.

  ‘You sound like my science teacher.’

  Lucy’s eyes were wide. ‘It’s not just no thinking: it takes away everything. If a zombie bit me, I wouldn’t be Lucy any more.’

  We all laughed because not being Lucy is the worst possible thing that Lucy can imagine.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you babies to your games. I’ve got things to discuss with Mum,’ Amelia said, opening the door. ‘I’m just saying it would be nice not to think about stuff sometimes.’

  Ashandra and Kayleigh sitting silently next to each other at lunch popped into my mind.

  I knew what Amelia meant.

  The bright side of Wednesdays is that when it’s finished you’re more than halfway through the school week. And I get to go to my dad’s after school.

  I had been trying really hard to be nice and to get Ash and Kay to be nice to each other as well. They had been nice, but I was worried that it was too nice. They said things like, ‘Please can I borrow your green pen? Or, ‘I like your headband,’ but they never said, ‘Give me a crisp before you scoff them all,’ or, ‘Budge up, big bum’. Chloe says things like that to me all the time. And Chloe really likes me.

  But I started to hope that things were progressing in our music lesson before lunch on Wednesday.

  The tables in the music room are in long rows and that means three people can sit together. I had Ashandra on one side and Kayleigh on the other. Ash was doing an impression of her choir leader accidentally smacking himself in the face with a tambourine and we were all cracking up. This was how I had always imagined things and I hoped that it was the beginning of the three of us being best friends forever.

  When I looked up to make sure Mr O’Brien hadn’t noticed us laughing, I saw that it was only two minutes to lunchtime and the music room was a complete mess.

  Even though it was only my third day, I’d already realised that there are basically two types of teacher at secondary school. One lot start getting you packed up before it’s time for the lesson to finish. They make sure everything is exactly in its place and then you have to sit down and answer questions about what you’ve learnt so that everybody knows that you’ve done some learning, even if what you mostly remember about the lesson is that Kieran tried to climb out of the window. When the bell goes, those kinds of teachers let you file out tidily. I think the other lot of teachers missed the day of training when you learn about filing out tidily because they carry on doing stuff right until the bell rings and, when it does, they look really surprised as if they thought you were all just going to keep on learning about S-bend rivers forever. They start shouting about things you need to tidy up and homework you have to do, but most people aren’t listening because they’re edging towards the door and Kieran has already got his crisps out.