By Any Other Name (15 page)

‘OK, everyone, stop!’ Mr Jenkins calls. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got. Chairmen to read out a summary, please.’

I can’t concentrate on what is being said after that. I’m still blazing with fury at Geek Freak for speaking to me that way. And how dumb is he? Like it’s all that easy –
just stop war by not fighting and all the bad stuff will go away. Naïve idiot. And rude too. And aggressive. And . . . I
really
hate that boy!

I
deviate home via the shops on Tuesday after school, but my heart sinks when I see Fraser and friends sitting on the wall by the bus stop. I
don’t really want to run into them now. I’ve spent two days avoiding Fraser while I try to get my head round what I’m going to do with myself. When he sent me a text last night
about meeting up at school today, I ignored it.

Cam’s with them, still in her uniform. She’s taken her tie off and has it tied round her waist like a sash, as if she thinks that’s some kind of fashion statement. Actually she
just looks really stupid. Her shirt is unbuttoned halfway. I can see the boys trying to look down her blouse, even though there’s nothing to see. Even Stuart who has his arm round Lucy. Poor
Lucy – of all of them, she’s not too bad. She deserves better than Stuart.

Fraser watches me approach. He doesn’t look particularly pleased to see me. ‘Hi,’ he says as I walk up to them. I’d rather walk past but of course I can’t.

‘Hi.’ I don’t know what else to say.

Cam puts a hand on her hip and looks me in the eye. ‘So where’s your spaz sister?’

There’s a collective gasp as if they can’t believe she’s said it. I’m ahead of them with that. I can believe – I’ve heard it before, other times, other
places.

‘She’s at home, and she’s fine, thanks.’

Fraser doesn’t say a word. So that’s how it is. Oh well, I can look after myself. Time they knew that.

‘How’s the slut look working out for you, Camilla? Managed to get any of these guys interested yet, or are you just working on pissing off their girlfriends enough so that they dump
them and you can get your claws in that way?’

Another collective gasp, louder than the first. Fraser’s face is blank.

Camilla shifts her stance to square on, both hands on hips. ‘I don’t know how you’ve got the face to even speak to us. You turn up acting like you’re better than everyone
else, but what are you really? A nobody. Fraser’s told me where you live.’

Oh, has he? Well, I guess that’s that then.

She carries on. ‘Why do you think you’re better than any of these guys? Huh? You think you’re pretty. You’re nothing special. You think you’re smart, right? You
can’t even keep your man interested.’

They’re all looking at me – Lucy, Stuart, Gemma, Fraser and the others – and their faces show they agree with her. Is that what they really think?

‘What I just don’t get,’ Cam says, laughing, ‘is why
you
think
you’re
so amazing. It’s like it’s written all over you that you think
you’re awesome. But you’re weird, you live in some shitty little house and you’ve got no friends. Isn’t that right?’

I turn to Fraser. ‘And this is what you think, is it?’

He shrugs and stares past me.

‘Right. OK.’ I turn away and walk off, forgetting the shop. I just want to get home.

But before I do . . . I’m going to settle the score a little. I turn back. ‘You know, you should ask yourself, Camilla, how many of this lot would still be friends with you if you
had no money. If your dad went bust. Ask yourself that.’ I laugh at her. ‘I know what the answer would be. Do you?’

And I go down the lane at the back of the shops, forcing myself to walk at a normal pace and not break into a run to get away from them.

Fortunately Katie is helping Mum make cookies when I get home and I escape upstairs relatively easily when I tell them I need a shower after PE. In truth I want to wash Cam’s words off my
skin where I feel like they’ve stuck.

I let hot water cascade over me and I hear her in my head over and over again. ‘You turn up acting like you’re better than everyone else . . . It’s like it’s written all
over you that you think you’re awesome . . .’

A traitorous little voice inside says she’s right. I did . . . do . . . think that.

Is that why they don’t really like me?

Am I that stuck up?

The voice says I have been.

I try to tell it that maybe I just needed some defences. Maybe I was just trying to take care of myself. Maybe I was confused about who I am now.

The voice tells me something back. It tells me that’s not completely true.

And then I scream at it to shut up.

I get out of the shower and wrap myself in my robe and lie on my bed staring at the ceiling with its hairline cracks and stupid swirly pattern in the paint. I never had problems making friends
before. People actively wanted to hang out with me. I was one of the popular crew. I was fun to be around. What happened?

I swallow as an unwelcome truth forces its way into my head, though really I must have known it already because I said some of it to Camilla before.

I’m not the same person I was back home. More than that, I’m not in the same environment. Here I’m the girl in the shitty little house with the spaz sister and the dad who
doesn’t have a proper job, and I’m weird, and I don’t have Facebook, and . . .

I never realised how much of people’s opinion of me was wrapped up in who and what was around me, and not who
I
am.

I’m in shock . . .

I
’m still thinking about it when I go to bed later. Turning it round and round in my head. Thinking of my old life and whether there were any
clues I should have picked up that could have told me people’s opinions of me weren’t always what they seemed. And I couldn’t see it. I really couldn’t. I could have gone on
for maybe years and never realised.

Thinking about home makes me think about Tasha, and the memory right at the front of my mind is that first day I saw her again after the summer, right before we were due to go back to school.
‘So what gives?’ Tasha said, throwing herself on to my bed with a bounce. ‘What have you been up to while I’ve been away?’

She’d rushed round the same day that they got back from their month touring the US. No jet lag for Tasha, which was typical of her.

My heart thumped erratically and my mouth went dry. ‘Oh, the usual. Had a week in France, which was cool, being down in Provence for the first time. And it’s so different there to
everywhere I’ve been before. And then we were in Cornwall for a few weeks.’

‘And how was that?’ She wiggled her eyebrows at me. ‘Anything interesting happen?’

She meant boys. I knew she meant boys. But nausea rose up inside and a cold sweat broke out all over me. The words wouldn’t come out. I just couldn’t say, ‘Oh, nothing, just
the usual. Nothing to report.’

No words would come at all.

Something must have shown in my face because she got up in a hurry and put her arms round me. ‘Hey, babe, what’s up?’ She examined my face anxiously.

I swallowed. Pulled myself together. Fought the nausea down. ‘Nothing. Sorry, hon. Just felt a bit sick for a moment. Must be something I ate.’

‘Do you want me to get you some water?’

‘Oh, please. Thanks, hon, and then you can sit down here and tell me all about America, which is going to be way more interesting than anything I did this summer.’

She smiled. ‘Sure,’ and ran off downstairs to get me the water. I leaned against the wall while she was gone and tried to get my heartbeat back to normal and block the hideous
memories trying to invade my here and now.

I swallow and hug my arms round myself as I lie in bed, trying to get to sleep and unable to. The house is quiet. Everyone else has been asleep for ages. The display on my
alarm clock says it’s two in the morning.

I wish Tasha was here to talk to now. I wish I could have talked to her back then. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone. Every time I think of that day at the end of the holidays, I wish,
wish,
wish
I could go back in time and change it and find the words to tell her.

I turn over and bury my head in the pillow. You can’t turn back time and I’m here alone and stuck with it.

Most of the time I’m caught between trying to brave it out and feeling sick about the trial coming up, and being on a constant state of alert in case I’m being followed. I
can’t get down the village high street without checking behind me three times. But who can I tell that to?

I dread going to school the next day and by eight o’clock, when I’m halfway through a bowl of cornflakes, I decide it’s just too much.

‘Mum, I don’t feel too well. I think I should go back to bed.’

I never try to skip school so she immediately puts the kettle down and comes to feel my forehead. ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ she says and Dad appears from behind the screen of
his laptop where he’s checking the news articles.

‘I feel headachy and sick. I don’t think I can go in today.’ I push my cereal away and get up from the table. ‘I’m going to try to sleep it off, and then if I feel
better I’ll get up and do some revision.’

‘Do you want me to bring you anything?’ Mum calls after me, voice worried.

‘No . . . feel too sick,’ I mumble on my way up the stairs as she comes into the hall after me.

‘Call me when you wake up and I’ll bring you a drink.’

‘Thanks,’ I croak and disappear into my bedroom.

Actually I do have a headache, from not sleeping most of the night. And I do feel sick, at the thought of going into school. So when I lie down on the bed, knowing I don’t have to face
that for another day at least, my eyes grow heavy and I do drift off to sleep. At first I wake every few minutes, as I remember something that penetrates my subconscious whenever I try to relax,
like Fraser’s face when I ask him if he agrees with Cam, like hers when she tells me what she thinks of me . . . But eventually I fall into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.

It’s eleven o’clock when I wake again and I can hear someone moving about downstairs. I turn over and bury my head in the pillow, not wanting to face anyone yet. I can’t put on
a mask at the moment and if Mum or Dad asks me what’s wrong, I think I might break down and cry.

I feel such a fool. Such a freak. I don’t know how to get back to being a proper person again.

All the people in this place hate me and it seems like that’s all my fault.

I need to feel normal again.

After a while, an idea comes to me. It’s so wrong it makes me shiver. But it’s so what I need.

I go downstairs and smile at Dad, bolstered by what I’m about to do. He’s working on the computer. He smiles back. ‘Want a cup of tea or a cold drink?’

‘I’ll get it. You’re busy. I’m feeling much better now. Is it OK if I take the laptop upstairs to revise?’

‘Sure, it’s in the living room.’

Back upstairs, I sit on the bed and open the browser. It opens slowly and I fidget with impatience before I can type the URL in the address bar. Again, it seems to take forever to load.

Finally the Facebook front page opens and I log into my account. I go to My Friends and click on Tasha’s photo, then on the message icon. The text box flashes up and I stare at it for a
second, but I know just what I want to say and then my fingers are flying on the keys.

I hit the button to send it and then lean back on the pillows in relief. Which is the wrong thing to feel because I should be panic-stricken at what I just did. It was exactly what I was told I
must never, never do. But I need Tasha. I can’t do this all on my own. It’s too hard.