Paper Airplanes

by Dawn O'Porter

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Porter, Dawn.

  [Paper aeroplanes.]

  Paper airplanes / Dawn O’Porter.

  pages cm

  Previously published in the United Kingdom by Hot Key Books in 2013

  under title: Paper aeroplanes.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-1184-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61312-699-8 (ebook)

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Guernsey—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.O6135Pap 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014005024

  Text copyright © 2014 Dawn O’Porter

  Title page photograph copyright © 2014 John de Garis

  Book design by Maria T. Middleton

  First published in 2013 by Hot Key Books in the United Kingdom.

  Published in 2014 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

  115 West 18th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.abramsbooks.com

  For Nana

  Paper Airplanes is a novel about Renée and Flo—two teenage girls who realize pretty quickly that without each other they struggle to be themselves. It’s about friendship, good and bad.

  Although there are some similarities in the girls’ lives (particularly Renée’s) to my own, every character in this book is entirely fictional. I did, however, use my own teenage diaries for inspiration. The book is set in 1994, and the girls are fifteen, which is how old I was then. It’s set in Guernsey—a small island just off France—and anyone who has visited may recognize many of the places I write about, but I have changed some names to create a new world for Renée and Flo.

  Reading back through my diaries from this age was as fascinating as it was excruciating. In a time when there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no mobile phones, and obviously no Internet, friendships worked very differently. As much as I rely on the Internet more than the air I breathe, it’s been fun to remember how simple everything used to be.

  I hope you enjoy this story. It’s been cathartic to write, and it brought back lots of memories. Having my own diaries as my guide to how it really feels to be a teenager has been invaluable; I just wish I hadn’t stopped writing them when I was sixteen. If you are a teenager now and keep one, don’t stop. Reading your own words many years later is the best story of all.

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  1. BACK TO SCHOOL

  2. REALIZING YOU ARE ALONE

  3. WHEN THE WORST THING HAPPENS

  4. THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY AND FRIENDS

  5. A SECRET AFFAIR

  6. MEN COME AND GO

  7. THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR?

  8. A WRENCH IN THE WORKS

  9. DRIBBLES DOWN THE SIDE OF A PAN

  10. THE LETTER OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  11. WORKING OUT THE ANSWERS

  12. WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS

  Epilogue OCTOBER 1995

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FLO

  “You look fine. Hurry up.”

  I look at my reflection. I do not look fine.

  “I look better with it up.”

  “No you don’t. Wear it down. Up makes your chin look big.”

  Ouch. I never wear my hair down, she knows that.

  “And anyway, I’m wearing my hair up today, so you can’t.” Sally spins around and pounds for the door, leaving me to stare back at myself in the mirror and rebelliously yank my limp, dark brown hair into a ponytail. Hurting my fingers with the elastic band and wincing as hairs are plucked from my skull. When it’s up, all I can see is chin.

  Brilliant! In under three minutes she’s managed to inspire a brand-new insecurity. My fat chin is now right up there with the big nose she informed me of when we were ten. If there was an exam this year in making me feel paranoid, she would get an A+.

  I leave the toilets, hair down, and chase her up the corridor. She barges her way into the classroom with all the menace of a headmistress in the making. No one wears the green school uniform quite like Sally, her shirt neatly tucked in all the way around and her thick green skirt exactly at the regulation length, just at the knee. Her tie—real, unlike my fake one on an elastic band—is in the perfect knot, her light brown hair gathered on top of her head like a dog poo. She moves forward like she’s on rails, her nose in its usual tilted position, her eyes searching for something to tell off, her aura oozing imminent battle. I walk alongside her, my big nose leading the way like an arrow losing speed. All summer I have told myself that this year will be different, but I’m only one morning into a new school year and my “best friend” has me quivering in my knee-length socks.

  “Why do we have to sit right at the front?” I ask nervously.

  “Flo, you do this every year. I get us to school as early as I can so we can get the best desks in the classroom, and you just moan, AND you always make me late. We only just about made it before anyone else because you were faffing so much.”

  “Sorry. I had to give Abi her breakfast.”

  “Why doesn’t your mum do that? It’s her child,” Sally says, proving she’s never listened to a word I’ve said.

  “Because Mum and Julian were in the living room talking about Dad.” I dump my rucksack onto my new desk. “Did I tell you he moved out?”

  “Julian moved out? Why?” She wobbles the chair that’s at her desk and swaps it for one that doesn’t wobble in the row behind.

  “No, Dad has moved out,” I say, getting annoyed but trying not to show it.

  “Flo, are you going to go on about your dad being depressed again? It really brings me down.”

  “He moved out, and I miss him.”

  “It’s all you talk about,” says Sally.

  I start to arrange my desk.

  “Haven’t you even got a new pencil case this year?” Sally asks, moving the conversation on.

  “This one is OK,” I say quietly.

  “OK, OK, OK. Everything is always just ‘OK.’ It’s so boring. Who wants to be ‘OK’?”

  I sit for a moment and think about what she said. It doesn’t take me long to realize that I, quite genuinely, just want to be OK.

  RENÉE

  Nana rips open the curtains and stands over us, mumbling something along the lines of “New term, new start.” I throw my hands over my eyes to try to ignore the morning, but she is determined that this will be her first and final visit to our bedroom before school.

  “I’m in the bathroom first,” barks Nell as her skinny silhouette stalks past the end of my bed. She’ll be in there for ages as usual, but I can wait. My hunger is already forcing me to get up.

  Pop is sitting at the kitchen table wearing a white undershirt, gulping hot tea like it’s a glass of water and fixing the sole of one of Nana’s shoes. He is making grunting noises.

  “Morning, Pop. Want some bacon?” I ask.

  “I don’t eat d
uring the day,” he replies, not looking up.

  I already knew that. He’s never eaten during the day. Mum told me it was about control. That he sets himself challenges to remind himself who is boss. If you ask me, he doesn’t need to skip meals to show anyone who is boss. With a temper like his, no one is in any doubt who makes the rules in this house.

  “Make sure you make enough for your little sister, Renée. Don’t be selfish.”

  I loaf over to the fridge, peel four slices of value bacon from the massive pile in the packet and dangle them in front of me as I walk over to the stove. I know full well that making breakfast for Nell is a total waste of time. She will just throw it up later.

  “I want an egg as well. No, I want two eggs, and bacon, and three slices of toast, and Coco Pops,” she says when she comes downstairs. She shovels food into her mouth like she hasn’t eaten for weeks. Nana and Pop tell her she’s a good girl, but I find it hard to watch.

  After washing up my plate and the cups that were left in the sink, I kiss Nana. She’s holding her fixed shoe that’s just two short walks away from failing her for the fiftieth and final time. I head up to the bathroom.

  “You washed your plate, Renée?” Pop shouts after me.

  I bite my tongue.

  With the bathroom door closed I open Mum’s makeup drawer. It’s still just as she left it eight years ago. The smell of Chanel No. 5 comes wafting out. Her blusher brush still red at the tips, exactly the same color her cheeks used to be. I close my eyes and run it over my face. As the bristles tickle my nose, all the hairs on my arm stand up, and then a solid tear falls out of my eye and lands on my top lip. I don’t know why some mornings I get a tear and some mornings I don’t. Maybe it has something to do with my dreams. Last night I dreamed that Mum didn’t really die, that she had just gotten in trouble with the police and had to go into hiding until they stopped looking for her. I woke in the night convinced it was true, then realized it couldn’t be, as I was in bed in her old bedroom, the room that she died in. The last place I ever saw her.

  I love Mum’s drawer. The fact that no one has thrown anything from it away is proof that we’re all clinging onto something. This evidence is comforting, as no one would ever say it out loud. I know the others look in it too, because sometimes I lay a hair over her makeup and by the end of the day it has always moved. The drawer is like an altar in a church. It’s sacred. To get rid of Mum’s drawer would be the final stage of letting her go. None of us is ready to do that.

  “HURRY UP!!” yells Nell as she pounds on the door. I quickly brush my teeth and let her in. She snarls at me as I skim past her, giving me just enough time to slide through before the door is slammed shut.

  Five minutes later, I am dressed. My school uniform at least reminds me that there is a life for me beyond this gray, depressed house. I run down the stairs, grab the sandwiches I made last night from the fridge, and leave.

  The summer holidays have been long. I can’t wait to get back to school.

  My walk to school serves its purpose, as always. I like to call it my daily evolution. I leave the house with my head hanging and arrive at school with my chin up, ready to have some fun. It’s like the picture in the science lab of the ape turning into man by gradually standing up over a series of drawings. I leave the house an ape; I arrive a human. OK, maybe ape is a bit dramatic, but I really don’t feel like myself when I am at home.

  My teachers say in my reports that they wish I put as much effort into my schoolwork as I do messing about, but I say balls to that. They also say I should learn to keep a lower profile, but balls to that as well. I bet no one ever tells Madonna she should keep a low profile, and if they did, she’d never listen.

  As I walk up the path that takes me to the tennis courts and through the back gate, the concrete building of the school slumps in front of me. Tudor Falls is an ugly building with a lovely name, but I can’t help smiling when I see it. School makes me happy in a funny kind of way. For eight hours every day I get to be myself. Well, a better version of myself than I am at home, anyway.

  I run up to the entrance hall. The smell of polished wood coming from the assembly hall tickles my throat. As I walk over the freshly vacuumed carpet tiles, the bell rings out like a screaming teacher, reminding me that I’m late. I run past the headmistress’s office and the staff room—which is already leaking out the smell of freshly puffed smoke—and toward Room Six, our new classroom. Running in the corridors at Tudor Falls School for Girls is highly illegal, but since everyone else is already where they’re supposed to be I can get away with it. I slam through the swinging double fire doors that divide the corridor into two halves, but stop dead at the sound of a violent thud.

  I creep back and peek through the glass. It’s Miss Le Hurray, head of history. She’s on the ground and rubbing her nose—the swinging doors had swung back and whacked her right in the face. I hover for a second. I should help her, but an order mark on the first day would be bad—four marks mean a detention. I watch her through the glass, looking for signs of brain damage. She rolls onto her side and brings herself up to standing, then reaches a hand to the back of her head where it hit the floor and gives it a rub. There’s no blood. Assessment made, I continue to run. I have to get to class.

  As I burst into Room Six I can see that everyone has already chosen who they’ll sit next to for the year. Carla and Gem, my “best friends,” are over by the windows at the back, sitting next to each other of course, both waving frantically at me but not bothering to get up. As usual I do my best to look like I don’t care, already feeling the neglect that comes with being the third wheel to an indestructible duo. I can see that the only spare desk is in the second row back on the right-hand side of the room. It’s miles away from Carla and Gem and next to Margaret Cooper, who I’ve sat next to for the last five years.

  I’m habitually late at the beginning of term, and Margaret always saves me a place. I like her—she’s funny—but we’re not really friends. We mess around in class and partner up when we need to. I never phone her at night or hang around with her on the weekends. She is just the only other person in our year without a best friend. So when Carla and Gem get all possessive of each other and forget I even exist, I have Margaret. It’s good to have a Margaret at school.

  In Year 9 we did sometimes go round to each other’s houses. One time her mum picked me up after netball club and we really stank so we had a shower. When I saw her naked I couldn’t believe how much pubic hair she had. Mine was just a little tufty bit down the middle, but she had a massive bush. I sometimes wonder if Margaret ever thinks it’s weird that I saw it, but out of everyone in the class she developed the earliest and she seems to be quite open about all that stuff. She had boobs when we were twelve, and I know she started her period ages ago because she always has loads of panty pads in her desk and doesn’t try to hide them. I find that really weird. I’ve never told anyone about my period, even though I started more than a year ago. I get all my panty pads by sneaking into the sickroom during break times. The idea of buying them kills me.

  My lateness has caused another major balls-up in the seating arrangement. The only seats Margaret has been able to get for us are directly behind Flo Parrot and Sally Du Putron. Margaret Cooper I can handle, but sitting so close to Sally makes my skin itch.

  Sally and I hate each other. We always have. It started when I came back to school after having a few days off after Mum died. She was so horrible. The headmistress had announced what happened in assembly so everyone knew to go easy on me when I came back to school, but Sally didn’t get the hint. As soon as I walked into the classroom she came storming over to me and insisted I had made the whole thing up to get attention. After sobbing and convincing her that I had in fact lost my mum to a hideous disease that made her shrink to half her size and cough like an old man, she insisted that I tell her what a dead body looks like. Which I couldn’t do, as I was taken out of the room before it happened. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the
funeral, but Sally didn’t care about that.

  You have to be a certain kind of person to know how to be that much of a bitch at seven years old. I honestly think that Sally Du Putron is pure evil. She isn’t nice to anyone, especially her best friend Flo Parrot. Who, to be fair, must be a bit of a twat to put up with it.

  FLO

  I don’t care where we sit—it doesn’t matter to me at all—but Sally is militant as always, and I can’t be bothered to fight. I just sit where she tells me and don’t make a fuss.

  God knows what people must think of me—some nervous, quiet drip with no opinion, probably. It wouldn’t be far off from the truth. I should have stood up to Sally years ago, but she’d make my life hell if I did, and anyway, all I care about this year is passing my GCSE exams. Good results mean good A levels, and good A levels mean university, which means I can get off this island. Guernsey may be beautiful, but if you want to escape your life, being on an island seven miles long and four miles wide makes it very difficult.

  At 8:35 A.M. our new teacher comes in. Sally has been arranging the stuff in her desk for about ten minutes, but now the lid is down, her back is straight, and she is doing her best “notice me” face.

  “Good morning, girls. My name is Miss Anthony.”

  We all stand up.

  “Goooood mooorrrrning, Miss Anthoooooonnnnnyyy.”

  I don’t know why it has become normal for us to greet teachers in super slow motion like this, but we always do it.

  She’s pretty, which is a surprise. Up until now all female teachers at Tudor Falls School for Girls have pretty much had a hump and facial hair, but Miss Anthony is beautiful. She’s about thirty, slim, and quite tall. Her hair is dark blonde and curly, shiny, and down to her shoulders. She has a white blouse tucked into a tight knee-length skirt and pointy shoes with a not-too-high heel. She looks gentle and kind, and she smells like rhubarb and custard candies. She’s the most attractive teacher we’ve ever had at Tudor Falls. I like her instantly.

  I can see Sally’s brain ticking over. She’s upset by Miss Anthony’s prettiness and has obviously already decided not to trust her. Her eyes scan her from head to toe, clearly longing for a teacher with a hump who doesn’t make her feel ugly. Which I hate to say, without the nicely organized hair and impeccable uniform composition, Sally kind of is.