by Maggi Gibson
‘Do you mind!’ Tas mutters. ‘Can’t you watch what you’re doing?’
‘Sorry, Tas,’ Megan apologizes, immediately bending to pick it up and wipe the dust from it. With an irritated sigh Tas takes it from Megan and turns away.
I’m puzzled. Tas is normally so kind and understanding. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask as we pull our art aprons on.
‘Course I am,’ she says miserably. ‘Just a bit tired after the festival, that’s all. I didn’t sleep well last night.’
‘Me neither!’ Sindi-Sue exclaims as she tips some paste into a pot. ‘I had this dream about me and Phoenix Macleod. We were getting married. A pink fairy-tale wedding with a glass carriage, six white horses, big meringue dress, the works. Oh, Sassy, I can’t believe you actually MET him!’ She goes all swoony. ‘He has such totally gorgeous eyes …’
‘You can forget about Phoenix Macleod’s gorgeous eyes for the next forty minutes,’ Miss Cassidy interrupts. ‘We need to get these finished so we can paint them next week.’
Obediently we get stuck into tearing up newspaper strips and dipping them in gunge. From time to time I glance across at Tas. When I think about it, she hasn’t been herself all morning. She ran into registration at the last minute, then at break time she disappeared to the library. I guess there’s something wrong. But then again she was on great form at the Wiccaman festival, so I can’t think what.
‘Sheesh! I hate Mondays,’ Megan yawns after a while. ‘A whole week of boring old school stretching ahead. I can’t wait for next weekend.’
‘That reminds me,’ I say. ‘Next Friday’s sleepover’s at my place. Mum asked if we want any DVDs ordered from her club.’
Cordelia looks up from her flying-bat sculpture. ‘You know me, Sass,’ she grins. ‘Night of the Restless Dead … Zombies on the Prowl … Voodoo Vampires … That kind of thing always makes me happy. But hey, if everyone else wants something different, that’s cool.’
I look expectantly at Tas. Tas is an all-singing, all-dancing blockbuster Bollywood romance addict. There’s a new one just out – Moonstruck in Mumbai – and I know she’s desperate to see it.
But she says nothing.
What’s more, she’s making an absolute mess of her artwork! Just slopping the paste on any old way. She’s even got some gunge in her hair. Tas is so NOT your gunge-in-the-hair kinda gal. It can’t just be that she didn’t sleep well. Even a tired Tas is a tidy Tas.
‘What about you, Megan? What DVDs would you like?’ I ask, as I wonder if maybe I can catch Tas alone at lunchtime and find out what’s up.
Megan looks surprised. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Me? I didn’t know I was invited.’
‘Well, I did,’ Cordelia giggles. ‘But I suppose that’s cos I’m psychic!’
Playfully, I flick a bit of paste at Cordelia. She ducks, it misses … and splats the back of Magnus’s head! Fortunately Miss Cassidy’s too busy trying to unstick Mad Midge Murphy3 from his flying saucer creation to notice. Magnus spins round angrily, but when he realizes I’m the culprit, he smiles like I just hit him with one of Cupid’s little love arrows. Honestly! Boys are WEIRD!
‘Course you’re invited, Megan!’ I say and Megan’s face lights up. ‘Only thing is, my room’s not that big, so I’m warning you now – four of us will be a bit of a squash.’
‘No, it won’t,’ Taslima blurts. ‘Cos I … I won’t be there.’
We all turn and stare at her.
‘Why not?’ I ask, confused.
Tas sighs heavily and hangs her head, her dark hair falling across her face. ‘I’d like to be there. I really would …. But it’s my mum …. She …’
Tas hesitates, like she can’t find the right words, and I’m hoping it’s not gonna be something horrible, like her mum has cancer or is divorcing her dad, or wants to move back to Pakistan or something.
‘I’m sorry, Sass …’ she says quietly. ‘Mum says we can’t be friends any more.’
Sometimes I get so angry I feel like the top of my head’s going to blow right off and flames will come shooting out. Other times I feel so hurt I want to curl up like a distressed porcupine and stick out all my needles to stop anyone coming near.
When Taslima tells me WHY her mum says we can’t be friends any more, I don’t know whether to explode like a volcano or curl up and crawl away and lick my wounds.
In a small voice Tas explains how her mum saw the clip of me on the TV news on Saturday night while we were all at the festival, and how it was followed up with shots of half-naked men and women drinking and dancing around bonfires on the beach.
‘So by the time I got home on Sunday Mum had worked herself into a right tizz,’ Tas says miserably. ‘She said she would never have let me go to the festival if she’d known it was going to be so wild.’
‘But it was, like, totally civilized! We didn’t see any of that!’ Megan exclaims.
‘Yeah, try telling my mother! I told her we were with Sassy’s mum the whole time, but she wouldn’t listen. She said she saw Sassy with her own eyes, up on stage with hardly a stitch on, and that if she was going to behave like that now she’s “a pop star”, then I couldn’t be her friend any more.’
‘But didn’t she hear what I said before I sang?’ I gasp. ‘Didn’t she understand there was a whole point to the way I was … er … dressed?’
Tas sighs heavily. ‘She was watching with the sound off.’
Poor Taslima. Apparently she pleaded with her mum and argued that it was totally unreasonable to say we couldn’t be friends any more.
‘In the end I stormed off to my room in tears,’ Tas continues, ‘and Mum shouted after me, “You see what I mean, Taslima. I told you that girl’s been a bad influence. There you go, throwing tantrums now, like a spoiled two-year-old!”’
Half-heartedly I paste a strip of sodden paper on to my sculpture as my mind tries to process everything Tas has just said.
‘I’m sorry, Sass,’ Taslima says, her bottom lip quivering. ‘Mum worries, you know, about me doing well at school. Plus my aunt in Pakistan phoned yesterday, going on and on about how wonderful my cousin Aisya’s doing. How she’s very serious and always studying. How she’s going to get a scholarship to university –’
‘But you’re the cleverest person we know!’ Cordelia exclaims. ‘You always do your schoolwork.’
‘Yeah, well, Mum worries I’ll not get good enough grades to be a dentist –’
‘A dentist?’ Cordelia interrupts. ‘But you don’t want to be a dentist! You want to be a psychologist!’
‘I know, I know …’ Tas groans. ‘Mum wants me to be a dentist cos that’s what she wanted to do.’ She pauses. ‘But I really can’t stand the thought of poking about in people’s mouths …’ Tas’s eyes fill with tears and I forget all my anger.
‘Being a chiropodist would be even worse, wouldn’t it?’ Megan chips in, and everyone turns to look at her. I throw her a grateful look for taking the heat off Tas. ‘Imagine having to clip old men’s toenails! Gross or what?’
‘Or working in Meaty MacBurgers or a butcher’s! I would HATE that,’ I add, and Tas smiles shakily through her tears. ‘I mean, that has to be a vegetarian’s nightmare!’
‘What about being an undertaker?’ Midge Murphy chips in as he reaches across to grab my paste pot. ‘All that hanging about in graveyards. Gruesome!’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’ Cordelia runs her black-nailed fingers under the tap to wash the glue off. ‘I might quite like that actually.’
‘Cordelia!’ I exclaim, just as the bell goes. ‘You are seriously spooky! I couldn’t think of a worse job!’
‘I could!’ shouts Miss Cassidy as we all chuck our paste-spla
ttered pots towards the sink and dash for the door. ‘Art teacher to you lot! Look at the mess I’m left with!’
Outside in the corridor I link arms with Taslima. ‘So … we’re still friends?’ she asks quietly.
‘Course we are, Tas. Sooner or later your mum will realize I’m not the awful empty-headed person she thinks I am; then we can get back to the way things were before.’
‘But she’s so stubborn, Sass,’ Taslima sighs. ‘I don’t know what it would take to make her see sense.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.’ I try to smile as we head for the dining hall.
Though, to be honest, right at this moment, I don’t have a clue what on earth that something might be.
3
Isn’t it strange how some days at school seem to go past in the blink of a gnat’s eye, while others go on forever? Today has been a total dddrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag.
But it’s over now. I have served my time, done my penance, suffered greatly, thought up three thousand ways to get into Tas’s mum’s good books, rejected three thousand ways to get into Tas’s mum’s good books, spent endless hours wondering if Y-Generation have called yet to offer me a record deal, and now at last, like a kidnap victim who has been incarcerated for years and endured unspeakable torture4, I emerge blinking into the glorious sunshine.
As Cordelia and me wander across the playground Twig waves from the school wall and my heart lifts.
‘Try not to worry about the Tas thing,’ Cordelia says, giving me a reassuring hug. It will probably all blow over. Parentals are always coming up with big heavy-handed THOU SHALT NOT rules, then they forget all about them a couple of days later. The ageing brain’s an amazing thing. A bit like a sieve. Stuff falls through it all the time, never to be seen again.’
‘Fun day?’ Twig asks, jumping on to his skateboard and rolling along beside me.
‘Not really,’ I sigh. He listens as I tell him all about Tas and how her mum saw the clip on TV and got totally the wrong end of the stick.
‘But Tas’s mum can’t stop you being friends at school, can she?’ Twig asks as he weaves around a lamp post.
‘I guess not,’ I smile. ‘Anyway, how come you still don’t go to school? You moved in with Megan and her mum weeks ago now.’
Twig zigzags round a small boy on a bike. ‘School’s bad for my health. Come out in a horrible rash all over, you know, like a nut allergy. Start wheezing, get that anaphylactic shock thing, go into total meltdown!’
Then he leaps off the board in front of me, flicks it up and catches it.
‘Well, I’m allergic to school too,’ I laugh. ‘But I’m MADE to go.’
‘Yeah, there have been quite a few letters from the education department asking Dad to get me enrolled,’ Twig admits, falling into step beside me. ‘But I stick them through the shredder before he gets home …’
Just then a butterfly flutters by and lands on a flower. Twig drops his skateboard and creeps up on it. Carefully he catches it in his cupped hands and brings it over to me.
‘You know how some people keep butterflies in jars?’ Twig says. ‘Well, if I had to go to school, it would be like putting a butterfly in a jar.’ He opens his hands and the butterfly flutters off into a nearby garden. ‘Or,’ he says, jumping on his skateboard again, ‘a dolphin in a bathtub …’ Laughing, he powers off the kerb, into the road, curves round a couple of parked cars and flips back up on to the pavement.
‘See?’ He grins as he slowly circles me. ‘I’m a free spirit. I can’t be pinned down. Gotta keep moving.’
When we get to my house there’s no one in, so the first thing I do is check the phone for messages. Twig stands beside me in the hall, his fingers crossed, his arms crossed, his legs crossed, oh, and his eyes crossed.
‘My toes are crossed too,’ he grins.
But there’s nothing from Y-Generation.
We’re in the kitchen grabbing some munchies when Mum comes in, laden with shopping.
‘You didn’t take any calls for me before you went out?’ I ask anxiously as I slab some peanut butter on an oatcake, top it with a jalapeño and hand it to Twig.
‘Sorry, sweetie,’ Mum smiles. ‘Not a squeak. But here, this came in the post for you.’
She takes a picture postcard from the jumble of mail on the worktop and passes it to me. It’s a photo of a field full of colourful tents with an open-air stage in the distance. Across the bottom it says WICCAMAN FESTIVAL, and someone’s drawn a stick figure with a guitar on the stage and printed SASSY above it.
Puzzled, I turn it over. As I scan the message my heart flutters against my ribs.
Hi Sassy!
It was great meeting you and your friends. Sorry I didn’t catch you before you left.
Hope we can meet again sometime soon. PHOENIX x.
‘Cool card,’ says Twig through a mouthful of peanut butter and oatcake. ‘Who’s it from?’
‘It’s from Phoenix. Phoenix Macleod.’ I say, trying desperately to appear casual even as my heart leaps up and down like an excited two-year-old on a trampoline. ‘So, what do you want to drink?’ I open the fridge door and start pulling out cartons and bottles. ‘Milk? Lemonade? Fruit juice? Smoothie?’
Twig looks at me like I’m mad and pops the last bit of oatcake in his mouth.
I shut the fridge door and grab the kettle. ‘Peppermint tea?’ I’m totally struggling to cover up the fact that I’m thrilled that Phoenix thought to send me a card. After all, Twig is my official boyfriend and he’s totally adorable. The last thing I want is for him to be upset and think I’ve been flirting with Phoenix.
‘Are you … OK?’ Twig pushes his flop of hair back and fixes me with a curious look.
‘Look, that card from Phoenix. I didn’t know he was going to send it.’ I pour the juice too fast into a glass and it splashes all over the worktop. ‘I don’t even know how he got my address. I mean, you’re my boyfriend …’ My voice trails off as something tells me I’m not making things any better.
Twig looks at me, puzzled. But puzzled-amused. Not puzzled-angry. ‘Yeah, and you’re my girlfriend.’ He shakes his head and his hair flops over his eyes. ‘And it’s not a problem if you get postcards from other people … It’s not actually my business. We don’t own each other, do we?’
‘Course not,’ I say sheepishly. ‘But I thought it might … you know, bother you.’
‘Well, it doesn’t.’ Twig smiles. And suddenly all my confusion seems well, silly. If it doesn’t bother Twig, then why should it bother me? I make a show of pinning Phoenix’s card up on the kitchen noticeboard – like it’s been sent to the whole family, and not just me.
In any case, I tell myself as Twig and me wander out to the garden to sit in the sun and finish our munchies, Phoenix is just a cool chico I met once-upon-a-time at a festival.
Chances are I’ll never see or hear from him again.
4
It’s Thursday and I STILL haven’t heard from Y-Generation. I was starting to get seriously worried they’d forgotten all about me, but in maths Cordelia said she sneaked a peek in her mum’s crystal ball last night and she saw a Y-Generation car parked at my front door and Ben and Zing getting out. ‘I can’t say exactly when they’re gonna turn up,’ she explained as we copied the answers to some algebraic equations from Tas’s jotter. ‘But I saw it REALLY clearly. So they’re bound to call sometime soon.’ So that’s cheered me up quite a lot.
Which is good, cos I’m pretty upset about the whole Taslima thing. All week she’s been unnaturally5 quiet. Cordelia and me have been doing our best to act totally upbeat and chatty around her, but NOTHING has made her smile. Not even Mad Midge Murphy doing
his impersonation of Arizona Kelly’s latest video – you know the one, where she pretends she’s a wild cat locked in a cage – and kinda sounds like one too.
When the bell for lunchtime goes, Tas slips out before the rest of us have even packed our bags.
‘Where’s Tas gone?’ I ask as Megan, Cordelia and me push and shove our way along the busy corridor to the lunch hall. ‘Do you think she’s OK?’
‘Uh oh,’ says Megan, throwing a look at Cordelia. ‘Hasn’t she told you?’
‘Told me what?’
‘That she’s joined Maths Club,’ Cordelia says. ‘So she won’t be spending Thursday lunchtimes with us now.’
‘And that’s not all –’ Megan adds eagerly, as I choose a cheese and chutney baguette from the fridge display. ‘She’s joining Chess Club on Fridays too, and Silent Reading Club on Wednesdays.’
‘But she doesn’t even like chess! And if she goes to all the lunchtime clubs I’ll hardly see her at all!’ I splutter.
Cordelia sticks her thumb on the infrared reader to pay for her pizza slice. ‘I think her mum’s behind all these lunchtime club things. She’s trying to make sure Tas sees as little of us as possible.’
‘As little of me as possible, you mean,’ I mutter. ‘This is SO unfair! Oh, Cordelia, surely there must be something I can do to make Mrs Ankhar change her mind about me?’
‘Yeah, there is,’ Cordelia says as she slurps her bat’s-blood juice. ‘Give up singing, dedicate yourself to your studies, sign up to Maths and Chess Club and decide to be a dentist. Then she’ll think you’re a perfect friend for Taslima.’
Twig’s waiting for me after school again, and – YAY! – this time he’s NOT brought his skateboard like he did on Monday and Tuesday, or his bike like he did yesterday, which means we might even get round to HOLDING HANDS on the way home like a real boyfriend and girlfriend!