But a lot of people don’t feel the same and I was given a pretty hard time about my canteen campaign. Even my friends thought I’d gone crazy. Whenever I tried to talk about it, no-one wanted to listen. They’d just laugh or roll their eyes. In the end I got so mad that I put together this thing – a presentation – and I showed it at one of our school assemblies. I didn’t want to do much talking so instead I found pictures on the internet of the rainforests before and after they’d been destroyed for palm oil. I showed shots of the orangutans whose habitat was disappearing. In the background I had the sound of a forest gradually being replaced by chainsaws and that horrible cracking sound of trees falling, and I showed some of the products that contain palm oil – it’s in everything from bread to shampoo.
When I started my presentation, a bunch of idiots started slow-clapping, like it was all just totally boring. Some people even booed – I guess because they were mad I was trying to take away their favourite snacks. I felt so alone and horrible up there on the stage. But I was determined to get through the whole thing, even if everyone booed all the way through it. Because just once, I wanted everyone else to know about the things that worry me. I guess I was hoping there might be one other person who felt a tiny bit the same.
I can’t tell you if my presentation made any difference, but at least by the end of it no-one was slow-clapping or booing anymore. It was actually very quiet. Maybe people were listening, maybe they’d nodded off. I didn’t really care. I was just glad I got a chance to say it.
The school didn’t get rid of all the bad food, but they did start stocking some of the replacement ones I suggested so I guess I achieved something – even if I’m the only person who ever buys those things. But honestly? I’m not sure the effort was worth it.
Poss chooses that moment to stick her head out from the edge of my jumper. Everyone laughs in surprise and, quick as a flash, Jo snaps a picture.
‘That’s a great shot even if I do say so myself!’ she pronounces and we all look at it on the display window. Jo’s right. Poss is at her wide-eyed, super-cute best.
‘Are you allowed to bring a possum to school?’ Leni asks.
‘Well, no,’ I admit. ‘But she’s going to stay well hidden, aren’t you, Poss? So no-one will know about it.’
The bell goes and as we head off to class, I catch Josh giving me another one of his looks. Does he think it’s cool or gross to have a possum hidden under your jacket? I really can’t tell.
The turnout for our rally meeting at lunchtime is pretty small. No surprises there. It’s just me, Erin, George, Leni and Josh. Anya is there, because the rest of us are, but she’s still saying she probably won’t come on Saturday. Adam’s not there but he’s told Josh that he might come on Saturday now, and Erin says Phoebe and Jagath will come along, too. We’ve all brought our lunches with us and we have a sort-of picnic, sharing stuff around. And I can’t help noticing that Josh sits right next to me.
We chat about what we want to write on our banner. George suggests ‘Students for trees’, but Erin wants ‘Teens for trees’. Then Josh says, ‘What about “Give trees a chance”?’ which I think is cool. Josh is actually pretty funny. People just don’t always notice because he gets drowned out by Adam. By the time the bell goes, we still haven’t settled on anything but it’s been a friendly meeting. I’m feeling happy, especially with Poss sleeping soundly and warmly in her pouch.
I’m halfway to maths class before I realise I’ve left my textbook in my locker. ‘Don’t wait,’ I tell Leni and Anya. ‘I’ll catch you up.’ There’s no point all three of us getting in trouble with Mr Cartwright for being late.
As I turn into the corridor I can see there’s something on my locker. It’s a note, folded in half and stuck down with tape. Inside is a bit of digital artwork and it sort of reminds me of the graffiti down at the skate park – Miss Everything with her big shoes. This is also of a girl in bathers, but she’s covered in hair. Her legs are hairy and so are her arms, and there’s masses of the stuff curling out from her armpits. She even has a moustache. The hair on her head is long and sticking out everywhere in big, matted dreadlocks. I know straight away that it’s meant to be me. Written underneath in big red letters are the words: Dirty Hippie.
There are footsteps from around the corner and I shove the note in my pocket just before the principal, Mrs Brinkman, appears. She’s surprised to see me. ‘Why aren’t you in class, Sophie? Is everything okay?’
Poss chooses that moment to become active and her head peers out from around the edge of my blazer.
Mrs Brinkman is silent for a moment. Then she says, ‘This is not the right place for a wild animal, Sophie. It can stay for today, but tomorrow it stays at home.’
I nod and mutter, ‘Okay, Mrs Brinkman,’ and I flee to maths. As I hurry I can hear the note crinkling in my pocket.
I manage to stop myself from looking at the note during the whole of our maths class (because Mr Cartwright is the kind of teacher who can hear a note rustling from a kilometre away), but I can feel it burning a hole in my pocket. I can guess who drew it. Nelson Cooke. I do wonder for a split second if it was Leo Flynn, the guy who I’m pretty sure did Miss Everything. But he really doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d do something like this.
In between maths and our next class (science), I go to the bathroom and sneak another look at the note. On second viewing I can see that the drawing is nowhere as good as Leo’s, even though the person has tried to copy his style. So now I’m positive it was Nelson. What I’m not sure of is what to do about it.
In science, Mrs Franks gives us a diagram of a dissected rat. We’re supposed to label the different organs, then colour them all in with different textas so we can easily identify them. I put my head down and work solidly, glad for the distraction.
When Mrs Franks looks over my shoulder, she laughs. ‘That’s the most beautifully coloured-in rat I’ve ever seen, Sophie,’ she says. ‘Have you changed your mind about doing the actual dissection?’
This is a joke, of course. Our class is dissecting a rat soon and everyone is supposed to participate – no exceptions. But there’s no way I’m cutting up a rat. I told Mrs Franks this and at first she kept saying, ‘You have to do it, Sophie, just like everyone else.’ But I kept on about it and she eventually told me to write a two-page essay explaining ‘my objections’. I ended up writing ten pages. I told her I thought it was wrong that humans did things like that to animals just because we’re bigger and smarter. I said it was cruel to kill all those animals just so we could look inside them. I told her I’ve been a vegetarian my entire life and I never wear leather or fur. I also explained the things we could do to learn the same information without killing an animal. Like, there are these computer programs with 3-D simulations of a rat’s internal organs. We could look at those instead. There are lots of educational films that cover this stuff too.
After Mrs Franks read my essay, she said I didn’t have to do the dissection. ‘I admire your principles,’ she said, ‘even if I don’t agree with you.’ She still likes to tease me about it, though. Pretend there’s a chance I’ll change my mind. No-one knows exactly when the rat day is – she deliberately hasn’t said so that people wont be ‘sick’ that day – but it must be soon.
The colouring helps take my mind off the note. But towards the end of the lesson, the classroom gets really warm and my legs get all itchy again. I can’t wait to get home and take my tights off.
I cop the usual bike-related abuse on the ride home (‘Are you part of a circus?’) but it doesn’t bother me too much. It’s good to be moving, although as I start to sweat, the itchiness gets worse. It feels weird not turning in at our front gate, but I’m so desperate to get out of these tights that I don’t think about it much. Daphne opens the front door as I’m dumping my bike around the side of the house.
‘We should put that in the back shed,’ she says. ‘It’d be terrible if it was stolen.’
‘I’d be happy
if someone stole it,’ I say. I guess I’m a little grumpy.
‘Really?’ says Daphne, surprised. ‘But I always thought it was such a you bike.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s not a me bike at all. A me bike wouldn’t have ribbons on it, for a start. It would be shiny green. And it wouldn’t weigh 500 kilos.’
Daphne looks like she’s about to say something, but then the phone rings and she goes off to answer it. There’s no sign of Eliza, which is good, because it means I can quickly get changed in her room.
I peel off my tights and give my legs a good scratch. The welts reappear instantly. Seriously, if my skin was a person it would be the type that bursts into tears whenever someone gives them a funny look. I go through my bag for something else to put on and realise with a lurch that I’ve left my jeans at home. All I have is the skirt I was wearing yesterday and some shorts, neither of which will cover my legs. Even worse – I don’t have my door key so I can’t go and let myself in. Daphne probably has a spare but she’ll want to know what I need it for. In the end, there’s nothing for it but to pull on the tights again.
I transfer Poss into the pet carrier and head outside. I’ll do my homework out there, I decide. The breeze might help with the itching.
The two boys are in the yard, whacking their one stunted tree with a stick.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘We’re bored,’ grumbles Oscar. ‘The Wii broke.’
There’s no way I can do my homework or feed Poss while they’re doing this. I’ll have to distract them.
‘Well, how about you pretend you’re inside a Wii game?’ I suggest. I don’t know anything about Wii and I’m fully expecting the boys to say it’s a dumb idea, but they both jump up straight away, looking excited.
‘Yeah!’ they say. ‘Let’s pretend we’re inside Super Galaxy Adventure.’
‘Hey, not me!’ I say. ‘I’ve got homework. And anyway, I don’t know how to play it.’ But the boys keep begging and in the end I can see it’s going to be easier – and quicker – just to join in for a while.
It turns into a crazy game – partly because I know nothing about Super Galaxy Adventure and partly because the boys keep changing the rules, but they’re happy just to have me chasing them around. I have to keep changing into things – like a boulder that’s trying to roll over them or a giant bird that wants to catch them in its beak. Soon I’m totally exhausted, but I’m laughing a lot too. They’re growing on me, I guess, these boys.
‘I’m just going to the toilet,’ I call as I escape inside. The running around has made me really hot and my legs are burning. I rush to the bathroom and push down my tights so I can give my legs a good scratch. They look like a total mess.
I’m mid-scratch when the door flings back and Eliza walks in. Her eyes go huge with shock when she sees my legs and her mouth falls open. ‘What’s wrong with your legs?’ she asks.
If I was a different person – Anya, for instance – I might have told her that I have some rare, contagious disease and that she should stay away from me. But I’m not Anya. So I tell her the truth.
‘I shaved them yesterday and I got a rash.’
Eliza keeps staring at my legs, her forehead creased. ‘Does that usually happen when you shave?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I’ve never shaved before.’
‘You must have really sensitive skin,’ says Eliza.
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Super-sensitive.’
‘What shaving cream did you use? Or did you just make a lather with soap?’
I shake my head. ‘Neither. I just shaved them dry.’
Eliza gives me a der look. ‘Well, no wonder you got a rash,’ she says. ‘You’re supposed to wet your skin first, and then use soap or a foam or cream. They’ve got some good ones at the chemist shop at Westland Mall.’
‘Oh,’ I say, feeling stupid. Now I think about it, it’s obvious that you shouldn’t just start scraping a razor against your skin, especially if you’ve got emo skin like mine. I expect Eliza will leap on this chance to laugh at me. But to my surprise, she sits down on the edge of the bath.
‘Hey, don’t worry about it,’ she says. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. Look at the mistake I made deciding to go out with Creep Features.’
‘Creep Features?’ I repeat. ‘Do you mean … Nelson?’
Eliza smiles – a kind of sad, tired smile. ‘That’s my new name for him. Do you like it?’
‘I love it,’ I say. ‘It fits him perfectly.’
For a moment I consider telling Eliza about the note. Even showing it to her. But I chicken out. Eliza is being friendly right now, but who knows how long that will last – or if it’s even for real?
‘So does that mean you guys aren’t going out anymore?’ I ask.
Eliza nods and slumps down onto the side of the tub. ‘I dumped him today. In front of all his soccer friends.’
I find myself grabbing Eliza’s hand and shaking it. ‘Good one,’ I say.
Eliza’s smile looks a little happier. ‘Thanks.’
I feel like I need to apologise to her again, just in case she didn’t hear me last night. ‘I’m really sorry about how I told you. About Nelson cheating on you, I mean. It can’t have been the best way to find out.’
Eliza raises her shoulders and lets them fall slowly. ‘Well, at least you were honest about it,’ she says. ‘After I dumped him, some of my friends admitted they knew he was cheating on me, but they didn’t say anything because they were afraid of upsetting me.’ She gives a short snorty laugh. ‘I guess they were trying to be nice, but I’ve been thinking about it all day and I’ve decided that I’d rather know the truth.’
‘Even if it hurts?’ I say.
Eliza thinks about this. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘It’s always better to know.’
‘You’ve got to stop doing that,’ says Eliza and I realise that I’ve started scratching my legs again.
‘I can’t,’ I groan.
Eliza gets up and opens the bathroom cupboard, moves a few things around, then extracts a bottle. ‘This stuff should help,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘We used it when Thomas had chickenpox and couldn’t stop scratching.’
The stuff in the bottle is sort of pink and milky-looking. It smells weird but right now I would happily rub my legs with fish guts if I thought it would help.
‘I’m such a moron,’ I say, looking down at my poor legs as I dab the lotion on with cotton wool. It’s soothing, but my legs are now pretty gunky. Eliza suddenly grins at me, which takes me by surprise.
‘Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I shaved off an entire eyebrow once,’ says Eliza.
‘No way!’ I say, laughing. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, it was before we moved here,’ Eliza explains. ‘I decided my eyebrows were too bushy so I tried to shape them with a razor.’
‘So is that why you guys moved here?’ I ask jokily. ‘Because the whole missing-eyebrow thing made it too embarrassing to stay where you were?’
The smile instantly disappears from Eliza’s face. ‘No, that’s not why we moved,’ she says quietly. ‘We moved because my dad died and we had to sell our old house. He had cancer.’
There’s not much you can say after you’ve put your foot in it that badly – just I’m sorry. Which is what I say. Then I add. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Really?’ says Eliza, picking at a hole in the hem of her jumper. ‘I thought everyone knew. I thought everyone was whispering about it behind my back. That’s what it felt like, at least when we first moved here.’ The hole in Eliza’s jumper is growing. ‘Which is why it always drives me crazy when Mum goes on her whole let’s focus on the positive thing. Like, how can anything be positive after your dad has died?’
It’s strange how finding out something like this can change everything. My image of Eliza is completely different now. It’s like one of those colour-by-numbers pictures where, just by adding one colour, the picture sudden
ly morphs from a bunch of random blotches into something you can recognise. A picture you understand.
‘Dinner!’ calls Daphne down the hallway. ‘Come and get it while it’s hot!’
‘Wait there for a mo,’ says Eliza to me and dashes out. She’s back in a minute with a pair of tracksuit pants. ‘Wear these until that rash calms down a bit.’
At dinner (pasta and tomato sauce), Daphne makes us play the ‘best thing’ game again. The boys say that the best thing was playing ‘pretend Wii’ with me.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That was my highlight too.’ I’m glad we’re not listing our worst things. The sooner I forget about that horrible note, the better.
Eliza says her best thing was ‘Being a single woman again’, and gives me a smile.
Everyone helps to clear away dinner and the boys go and turn on the TV.
‘I guess I’ll go and have a shower,’ I say as I put the last bits away.
‘Why don’t you come and watch tellie with us?’ suggests Daphne.
‘Yeah, come on,’ says Eliza.
‘Well, okay,’ I say. ‘Sure.’
The show the boys are watching is pretty dumb, but they both think it’s hilarious and crack up over every tiny thing. That makes the rest of us laugh. Then Daphne starts tickling them, making them laugh even more.
‘Mum,’ says Eliza, rolling her eyes. ‘That’s not the way to tickle them. You have to do it like this.’ She waggles her hands in the air for a moment, then launches herself at the boys. They shriek with delight.
It’s noisy and I get kicked (accidentally) in the stomach a few times, but it’s nice too. As I head off to shower I feel a bit guilty that I’ve wasted an hour doing nothing except watching TV – but then maybe that’s okay. Maybe wasting time is sometimes the best thing you can do.
In the shower, I wash off the lotion and I’m relieved to see that my legs are way less blotchy than before. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to wear my summer uniform.
I feed Poss and explain that I can’t take her to school in the morning. She doesn’t seem too worried. It’s not until I’m lying in bed that I realise I hardly thought about the note since I got home. And by then, I’m too tired to think about it anyway.
Sophie Bennett Saves the Planet Page 4