by Various
Suddenly, I wanted to sob my eyes out.
“No tears,” Susie commanded. “She will sense fear. She will destroy you if she senses fear. Think of something nice every time you see her face.”
“Yeah,” I muttered and then, out of nowhere, came a vision of Him.
Tall and lean, with dark eyes that searched for me in the vast school. He was out of my league, according to Amelia, but I hadn’t imagined that moment between us yesterday. Jake had looked right at me. I hadn’t imagined that electric current between us either. No way.
At that moment, I stopped wanting to cry.
“Thing is,” I said to Susie, “everything’s not terrible. There’s this guy…”
Jake was in none of my classes that morning, but Amelia was. She glared at me as I walked into the classroom for my first lesson, and if I hadn’t practised my stalking earlier, I was sure I’d have wobbled a bit as I passed her desk. Somehow, I found a free seat beside a mousy-haired girl and got my textbook onto the desk without my hands shaking too much.
From this vantage point, I could see Amelia whispering something to a pretty, very curvy girl sitting near her. I knew from the curl of Amelia’s pink lips that she was being nasty, and sure enough, the other girl turned away with a telltale glitter of tears in her eyes.
“What exactly is Amelia’s problem?” I asked the mousy-haired girl beside me.
“No idea. She’s always been like that. Cos she’s beautiful, she gets away with it.”
I didn’t agree with the beautiful bit, that was for sure. Amelia has serious boobs, big blue eyes, and hair that spends lots of its time getting bleached, but she is hardly a Hollywood movie star. Her looks are all down to sheer effort. I’ve heard that really kind people can radiate goodness and light. Amelia radiates spite. She is pretty to look at but, like a fairy-tale creature that turns evil when the moon goes in, underneath the smile and the make-up is something vicious.
The mousy-haired girl turned towards me. She had the loveliest blue eyes, like cornflowers, and a great smile. “I’m Fiona.”
“Izzie,” I said, smiling back at her.
“Oh, I know,” Fiona said. “You’re hot gossip at the moment”.
“Me?” I was surprised. There were other new kids in fourth year and I didn’t think I stood out that much.
“Amelia has it in for you,” Fiona informed me.
My heart didn’t exactly sink, but it didn’t feel bouncy with joy either.
“Why?” I asked. “I’ve done nothing to her. She’s the one who tripped me up in the canteen yesterday. I hope this place has an anti-bullying policy, because if she does anything like that again, I’ll report her – after I’ve paid her back.”
My words sounded a lot tougher than I felt. I didn’t know if I was up to dealing with a person like Amelia.
“She hates you because Jake Ryan, the hottest guy in the entire school, told his friends that you were pretty.”
“Jake said I was pretty?” I asked, dazed.
“Don’t go all girly on me,” said Fiona in exasperation. “Amelia’s nuts about Jake, and he’s never so much as looked at her, no matter how hard she tries – so if he likes you even a teeny bit, she’ll make your life a misery, Izzie. Don’t you understand?”
I didn’t care.
Let Amelia launch surface-to-air missiles at me. My shield of happiness about Jake would deflect them.
Fiona was a fabulous source of school gossip, and she said that Jake did art, which was one of that afternoon’s scheduled classes. “Amelia doesn’t do art,” she added, “so you and Jake can gaze into each other’s eyes in peace.”
I put on lipgloss for art and got there early – to find Jake and another guy putting chairs into a circle around one single chair. Jake looked up when I came in, and that slow, gentle smile lit up his face. His gaze made me feel warm, as though a slow heat was travelling through me. And the flipping – oh, wow, the flipping. My stomach was doing somersaults.
I was staring at him, and that would have made me from Planet Dork, as Amelia put it – except that he was staring back at me.
“Do you play guitar, by any chance?” I asked, before my brain had properly engaged. “It’s just your fingers are so long…” Oh God, what did I just say?! I went pink, which doesn’t suit me because of the white skin.
“How did you know I play guitar?” he asked softly.
My brain, having done its spectacularly dumb thing, then went into “sleep” mode, and all I could do was smile at him goofily.
He smiled back and was, I think, about to say something – when the rest of the class came into the room.
I floated away to a desk to sit and pretend to attempt a life drawing of a bored-looking guy in his school uniform.
“Obviously,” droned the art teacher, “life drawing is supposed to be of a nude model, but we can’t manage that here.”
Some people giggled, and there were a few rude remarks about nude drawings, but I just stared at my paper and sometimes at Jake, who was always looking back at me.
I have never had this happen to me before, I ought to point out. It made me almost dizzy with excitement. All my fears about the new school, new house, even the thought of horrible Amelia, faded blissfully into the background.
As I sketched, badly, I was immersed in a fantasy world where Jake and I were lying on the grass in the park and looking up at the clouds, trying to work out what shapes they resembled. I’ve always wanted to do that with a boyfriend.
As we left art, Jake moved closer to me and touched my hand. I thought he would speak again, but then we were separated in the crowd.
I floated through history and even managed to cope with my first chemistry lesson with Ms Carter, who has grey, sticky-up hair and a total disregard for colour when it comes to clothes. (People over nineteen shouldn’t be allowed to wear neon T-shirts.) “She’s a bit eccentric,” I muttered to Fiona, who I’d managed to sit beside again.
“Mad,” was Fiona’s one-word reply.
The final bell rang, and the entire school erupted into the halls for the frantic rush to lockers and bags. Fiona and I reached the locker hall to see Amelia’s gang surrounding a couple of what had to be first-years – small girls who looked like bush babies with their big, startled eyes. My best friend, Susie, has a twelve-year-old sister, Jennie, who’s in first year, and they all reminded me of her: sweet, inquisitive and dying to belong to “big” school.
Amelia’s gang didn’t look like they shared my fondness for younger kids. People were generally keeping out of the way, as if everyone had decided that avoiding the gang was the best bet.
“I didn’t have an iPhone Five,” Amelia was hissing to a dark-haired girl with shiny black Mary Jane shoes and a look of innocence that had marked her as a likely victim from the start. “But I do now!” Smiling, Amelia snatched the phone from the smaller girl’s shaking hand. The cover was pink and sparkly and, with one practiced move, Amelia ripped it off.
Perhaps it was to do with my Karate-Warrior Girl outfit, but something inside me snapped. Of course, there had been bullying in my other school – there is bullying everywhere – but the teachers had always stamped it out quickly. We were a “telling school”, Sister Mary-Louise explained. If we saw someone being bullied, we told a teacher. There was no rubbish about not telling on people you knew. “Zero tolerance”, Sister Mary-Louise had called it grimly.
I wanted zero tolerance here too. How dare Amelia pick on little kids?
Ignoring Fiona’s shout of “Don’t, Izzie!”, I stalked up to the group. I grabbed Amelia and forcefully whirled her round till she was facing me. I ripped the phone from her hands. “Don’t pick on smaller kids,” I snarled. I leaned forward, and down – suddenly realizing I was taller than her. “Don’t pick on anyone, in fact.”
Before Amelia could manage to reply, I grabbed her jumper and pulled her in the direction of the admin office. In case you think I was being too tough, this girl had been terrorizing people for
years. The time had come for desperate measures. Besides, dragging her was the only way I thought I’d get her there.
I must have really been channelling the Warrior Girl because I felt so strong. “Coming?” I roared to the crowd behind me.
Nobody replied.
“Don’t be such cowards,” said Fiona, bravely pushing through a few of Amelia’s shocked gang to stand beside me.
“Let go of me, you bitch!” shrieked Amelia. She was properly struggling now.
But you can’t struggle successfully in fashionable heels. I was taller, stronger, and I was wearing my trusty biker boots. Plus, Amelia stood for everything I hated, which made me weirdly strong.
“You don’t get to pick on the smaller kids with me around,” I said to her. “Let’s see what the principal has to say about this.”
Since I didn’t really know where the principal’s office was, I didn’t know where to go and paused for a moment to think. Amelia was struggling like crazy. I wouldn’t be able to hold onto her much longer.
“Let her go!” one of her gang yelled.
“Hold onto her,” said a male voice.
Stalking down the corridor was Jake.
“Jake!” the small first-year in the Mary Jane shoes cried, and she ran into his arms.
He hugged her, whispered into her ear and then marched up to us. “Did you steal my little sister’s phone, Amelia?” he said in that low voice that wasn’t soft now. It was diamond hard.
“I didn’t know she was your sister,” pleaded Amelia, suddenly broken. After all, bullying the little sister of the guy you fancy is not a good lurve move.
“You shouldn’t bully anyone,” he said, giving her such a look of acid dislike that I was surprised her make-up didn’t start dripping down her face.
Amelia knew she was beaten.
Afterwards, everyone wanted to talk about it. But I just wanted to go home. Now that it was over, I was too shaken by Amelia’s cruelty and by how Jake hadn’t even looked at me when he said thanks for saving his little sister.
Susie and I talked on the phone for an hour that night, going over everything in detail. “You’re a heroine, Izzie,” Susie said. “Be proud of yourself for what you did.”
“I am…” I began. But I felt sad too. I must have imagined that Jake felt something for me, otherwise he’d have looked at me or hugged me or something…
The principal wanted to see me first thing the next day. Amelia had been suspended for two weeks. He said a new anti-bullying policy was being put in place and told me I had done well to try and stop the bullying, but added that dragging another student to his office was not the answer.
“I will phone your parents to tell them how you behaved,” Mr McArthur said, “and explain that while we don’t tolerate students physically grabbing others, you were acting in the interests of much younger children.”
“So I’m not in trouble?” I asked.
The corners of Mr McArthur’s stern mouth raised a fraction. “Absolutely not,” he said.
First class was maths and Fiona had held a seat for me. Everyone still stared at me but a few people slapped me on the back. “You go, girl!”
“They’re all talking about you,” said Fiona gleefully.
“Are they?” I muttered, taking out my maths book. The one person I wanted to talk about me, or to me, was nowhere to be seen.
Jake arrived late for maths, and one of his friends obligingly moved so he could slide into the seat next to mine. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe.
He leaned over and took my hand under the desk and murmured, “Thank you, thank you, and thank you. That’s from my mum and dad, and Claire, my little sister.”
The flipping thing was happening again. He kissed my hand. His mouth was so soft and warm against my palm. “That’s from me,” he said.
I could feel him beside me the whole lesson and I couldn’t concentrate on one single theorem. Not one.
“I’ll tell you what homework we got.” Fiona smiled, knowing that I’d missed everything the teacher had said, as Jake and I walked out of the classroom, hand in hand.
“I wanted to get your number yesterday,” Jake said as soon as we were outside in the corridor. “But there was no time and then everything happened.” He handed me a piece of paper with a number on it.
I looked at the paper, dialled the number on my mobile, then hung up. “Now you have me,” I said softly.
“I don’t know anything about you, Izzie, but I do know you’re the most amazingly brave and beautiful girl I’ve ever met,” he said.
“Really?” I said, looking up at him.
“Really.”
And then his lips brushed mine, and, well, the flipping thing went quite out of control.
The Cool People don’t own the school any more. We’ve become sort of anti-cool – because Amelia and her gang were the cool ones and they made everyone’s lives hell. There are still bullies, but they don’t get so much of a chance in Laurence O’Toole any more.
As for me and Jake… Well, we lie on the grass in the park and look up at the clouds. And sometimes I can’t see the clouds because he leans over and kisses me. And then I just see clouds in my head: the lovely happy clouds of a happy ending.
Let me make it clear, my life was going great until Charlie Sutton sauntered into the college library one rainy Tuesday lunchtime and turned everything upside down.
OK, not great, maybe, but decent. Under control.
Fine. Not under control, more, “hanging off the edge of control by my raggedy bitten fingernails”, but still, you get it. Jenny may have woken up one morning and decided she didn’t want to be friends any more, but I was getting by on my own. I found a system, a way to make it through the day, and ninety per cent of this plan meant hiding out in the super-secret study spot I discovered in the back corner of the library.
It’s perfect. Tucked way back in the classics section, far from the banks of shiny new computers and DVDs for loan and well-thumbed copies of The Great Gatsby and Beloved. There’s a single study carrel sandwiched between the shelves, next to an ancient, clunky PC that still runs Windows 98 and shudders in protest if you even try to load a page with Flash (like, say, the entire modern Internet). The librarians can’t see me – nobody can see me – nibbling my sandwiches, doing homework, killing time while Jenny lounges in the main hallway with Sascha and the rest of her shiny new Foundation Art friends.
In a few short weeks, it’s become my sanctuary, my escape, my only relief in the great sprawling mess of loneliness that is the sum total of my life. It’s most definitely not the place I want to find the resident Year-Twelve Romeo, Charlie Sutton, staring down at me with that arrogant smirk of his.
“What?” I ask shortly. “This spot’s taken.”
“I can see.” He gazes around at the square metre I’ve claimed as personal territory: the cardigan on the chair, my files in permanent residence on the desk, a water bottle and illicit snacks slipped under a magazine. “Why don’t you just move in a TV and call it a day?”
I don’t reply. If you ignore a problem, it goes away, right? Even if the problem is a tall, brown-haired, hoodie-wearing boy who’s most often described as “Captain America’s chavvy younger brother”. (Like that’s a good thing?!)
Charlie makes a show of leaning against the desk, like it’s his personal kingdom. “Vita, Vita, Vita… It’s lunch break. As in a break from work. Don’t you have anywhere better to be?”
I stare at my economics textbook.
“All work and no play,” he says, sing-song, until finally I snap.
“Go away!”
“Shh!” Charlie scolds me, laughing. “This is a library.”
“Exactly.” I glare back, lowering my voice to a hiss. “What are you even doing in here? Shouldn’t you be off getting an ASBO somewhere? This is a learning environment.”
“And I plan on getting educated.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
I groan. “Please tell me you’re not
here to meet Taysha,” I say, naming his latest girlfriend of the week. Or last week. I can’t keep up.
“I’m not.” He leans to peer at the papers on my desk. I slam a folder down on top of them. “It’s Kristii.”
I form a vague mental image: blonde, tourism BTEC, eyebrows like an underfed tapeworm. “Let me guess; she spells it with an i?”
“Two of them.” Charlie grins back, like he’s amused. “She signs little hearts on top; it’s adorable.”
“I bet it is.”
Charlie begins pulling books out of the stacks and reshelving them out of place, spines inward. “Enough about her; I want to know all about you.”
“Sure you do.” I don’t even try to hide my sarcasm. Charlie Sutton has been slouched in the back of my economics class all year, and aside from the time he made a spirited argument against equal pay for women – “Because you’re only killing time before you get knocked up, right, babe?” – he hasn’t said a word to me.
“I mean it.” Charlie tries the charming grin that has felled half the girls in year twelve (and, according to rumour, the gap-year student in the front office too). “What’s your deal? Is this why I never see you around any more – you just hide out here all day and hope nobody finds you?”
I flush red, but before I can manage a reply, there’s a bored sigh behind us. “Charlie?”
He turns. Kristii-with-two-i’s is waiting, wearing a cropped peach T-shirt and floating asymmetrical pale green skirt – despite the fact that it’s raining. In England. In March.
She raises one underfed eyebrow. “I have class in, like, ten minutes.”
“I’m all yours, babe.” Charlie turns back to me. “She’s a beast!” he whispers with a wink.
I roll my eyes as he ushers Kristii off into the next stack, and moments later, low murmurs and giggles start up.