Glitter (4 page)

A
t lunchtime things get really bad. I stick close to Cali and she shows me how the canteen works. I make sure I get a big helping of Friday fish and chips and a double helping of sponge and custard for pudding. I don’t know if there’ll be anything but coffee and margarine for supper when I get home.

“Hi Cali,” says Dylan, coming to sit with us and unloading his lasagne from his tray. “Who’s your new ladi-da friend then?”

“This is Liberty,” smiles Cali. “Libs for short and give her chance Dyl, she’s learning fast.”

“Hello Dylan,” I say. “Pleased to meet you.”

Then he cracks up laughing and sticks his nose up in the air and starts talking in a funny voice, “Oh, sorry, I’m so very pleased to meet you too, Liberty. Perhaps later I might take you for a lovely wander in the rose garden?”

Then he starts laughing again until tears squeeze out of his eyes and I don’t think he can stop.

“You’re like something out of one of them Jane Austin stories,” he laughs, “like
Pride and Prejudice
and stuff. My mum loves them.”

“I’m not really,” I say, blushing and feeling awkward. “I just speak differently, I guess. It doesn’t mean anything though. Not really. I can’t help it.”

“‘It doesn’t mean anything though,’” he mimics.

“Calm down, Dylan,” says Cali, “she’s not that funny. Why don’t you turn your attention to helping her instead of laughing at her?”

So Dylan and Cali spend the rest of lunchtime attempting to teach me how to easy up my accent.

“I can’t do it,” I say, after trying really hard. My whole face starts glowing red with embarrassment. Their sounds feel weird in my mouth and however hard I try, my tongue keeps getting all twisted around them.

“You’ll just have to try a little bit harder then, won’t
you?” says a very big boy from the end of our table.

“Accents don’t mean anything,” I shriek, turning towards him. I can feel myself losing it again and I can’t control myself. My rage is bubbling up inside, threatening to boil over. Alice’s words about taking responsibility for my feelings are spinning around my head but I don’t know what she means, I don’t know how to take responsibility. “Just because you think I have a posh accent,” I scream, “it doesn’t mean you know anything about me or about my life. You know nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nobody does!” I throw my cutlery down so hard it breaks my plate in two. Cali puts her head in her hands.

“It means you’re rich,” the big boy shouts back. “Loaded, by the sounds of it. Listen to yourself. What you doing in a place like this anyway, poor little rich girl? Shouldn’t you be out on your pony with Mummy? Rich girl, rich girl, poor little rich girl.”

And then like a wave rippling through the dining hall the whole school joins in and chants, “Rich girl, rich girl, poor little rich girl.”

Their loud words tumble over and over me and I’m drowning in a sea of noise. I hate them all. They know nothing about me or my life. If only they really knew what
my life was really like and how much it’s fallen to pieces in the past twenty-four hours, then they’d have nothing to shout about. But they haven’t even given me a chance. I wish I could run away and disappear.

Cali starts sighing and banging her head on the table again.

“What is it with you?” she shouts above the noise. “You really let him get under your skin didn’t you? You gotta learn to keep yourself under control here Libs otherwise you’re gonna end up in deep, deep trouble. You gotta learn to stay cool, stay easy.”

Everyone’s still chanting and their noise is crashing over my head like rough, grey waves and there’s nothing to hold on to. Then suddenly there’s a huge uproar and the world’s most massive food fight breaks out. Chips and sausages and lumps of fish and tomatoes and great blobs of lasagne are being flung from every corner of the room. Most of the kids are shrieking and shouting and going crazy. Everyone seems to have forgotten about me, they’re too busy with their own food wars. Cali’s eyes glitter at me and a daring smile tugs on her lips. My fingers dance around the edge of my plate, longing to join in. Nothing so outrageous as this ever happened at
my old school and I’m caught in the middle of excitement and fear. Cali smiles and throws a chip at me and I can’t resist it any more. I grab a handful and throw them back at her and then some fish and custard and pudding and we’re all getting covered in food. Custard is sliming its way down my new blazer and Cali has fish batter stuck in her hair.

We’re all laughing and screaming and then the big boy shoots an evil glare at me across the table. I quickly swallow my laugh and freeze and then stare right back at him. A blob of cold custard drips on to my cheek wiping the smile from my face. Alice wouldn’t believe this if she were here; she wouldn’t know what to do. She’d probably say, “Take responsibility, Libby” But I don’t care about what Alice thinks any more and I don’t care what the stupid big boy thinks of me. He’s not going to get away with bullying me, I’ve had enough of that from my dad. I pick up a big chunk of sticky sponge pudding and fling it through the air towards him. The only trouble is that Mrs Cobb, our head teacher, bursts into the room and gets in the way. The sticky sponge splats on her glasses and slides slowly down her face before it plops to the floor. Everyone is silent and my sponge-throwing arm is
completely frozen in midair. Mrs Cobb grabs the back of my blazer and pulls me towards the door.

Inside her office I suddenly don’t feel so brave.

“Explain yourself, Liberty,” she says, rubbing cake crumbs off her jumper with one hand and leafing her way through a file, which I suspect is all about me, with the other. “There’s nothing in your notes here to suggest that you’re a troublemaker. Now tell me what happened?”

“Well,” I say, my voice wobbling, and wishing I were back, safe and well behaved, at my old school, “everyone was laughing about my accent and they were calling me ‘rich girl’ and I said that accents don’t mean anything about who you are, because they don’t, and anyway I’m not even rich any more, and then the whole dinner hall went crazy. I’m sorry Mrs Cobb, for causing any trouble.”

“Yes, well,” she says, “I might expect that kind of behaviour from some of the others in this school, Liberty, but not from you. I understand from your father that you’re experiencing a rather dramatic change in circumstance. So in this instance, I suggest you go to the bathroom and clean yourself up and we’ll put it
down to that and forget about the whole thing. I will, of course, expect you to join in the dining hall clean-up detention after school and then I don’t expect to see you back in this office for anything of this nature again. Do I make myself clear?”

I
’m drowning in a hot puddle of detention shame, which is melting me into a jelly of badness. I am now officially a bad person and although Mrs Cobb is putting all this down to my change of circumstances, I am not so sure. Maybe my dad is right; maybe I’ve been a bad person all along. I don’t want to look at anyone so I try to stick my eyes to the floor, but they keep disobeying me and following the very big boy who started all the shouting. I can see him over the other side of the hall scraping lasagne off the wall and he can see me. His shiny black eyes meet mine and he mouths the words “You’re dead” at me. A cold shiver races down my spine. The whole school is here
quietly scrubbing away at bits of dried-out food and it’s all my fault. Some of the dinner ladies and the school security man are pacing up and down, watching out for trouble. My hands are trembling and my throat is dry. My dad will go completely mad if he ever finds out about this and then I really will be the disgrace of the Parfitt family.

“I thought I told you to stay cool,” says Cali, finding me when our detention hour is up and we’re all allowed to speak again.

“I tried, Cali,” I say, “but sometimes my temper is just too hard to control. And it wasn’t all my fault. Everyone suddenly went crazy. I’m sorry you got a detention as well.”

“It’s not the detention I’m worried about,” she whispers, “it’s you getting on the wrong side of Tyler. He’s evil.”

“What might he do?” I ask.

“You really don’t wanna know about that,” she says, “it’ll give you nightmares. Come on, stay close.”

My eyes are all over the road on our walk home, looking out for Tyler. I can’t see him but every time we pass a shop doorway I stick myself to Cali in case he’s lurking in the
shadows, waiting to leap out and get me.

“My advice would be to lie low for the weekend,” says Cali. “Let him blow off his steam on other people. I’m around so if you’re bored come on up. Fourth floor, orange door, number 119. My mum’s a childminder, so just follow the kid noise and you won’t get lost.”

I’m left alone, staring at our green front door. I’ve managed not to think about my dad and his problems all day long, but now I’m home I can’t pretend they don’t exist any more. I’m scared he’s going to shout at me and if he finds out about the detention I’ll definitely be dead. I take a deep breath and knock on the door.
It’s OK,
I say to myself,
I can cope with this. I can cope with anything.
I haven’t thought about the violin all day and now the thought of it makes me feel stronger. Soon I’ll have a violin and I’ll be able to disappear inside my music and take myself far away from here. I can hear the telly blasting out from the sitting room, but my dad can’t hear me. I knock again, a little more loudly and wait. Nothing. I hold the letterbox open with my fingers and shout.

“Dad, it’s me.”

“All right, all right,” he finally grumps, charging down
the hall. “I can hear you, Liberty; I can hear you. Haven’t you heard of such a thing as a doorknocker?” he booms when he opens the door.

I shrink back into myself and silently slide inside. Nothing has changed from when I left this morning. I don’t think my dad’s even made himself a coffee let alone anything to eat. He still hasn’t had a shower, so he’s starting to smell and he’s still wearing the same clothes from yesterday when he picked me up from school. He slumps back on the sofa and stares at the telly. I hover in the doorway waiting for him to ask about my day. But he doesn’t. He just keeps on staring and staring and I wish he would notice me like he does Sebastian. I wish we could do things together and have fun and wish that just once in my life he might like me and say he’s proud of me. Just once would be enough, just so I could know for sure. It might help if I had something pleasing to say, something to cheer him up and cheer me up and bring a bit of sunshine into our flat. But I’m full of dirty, grey dishwater and he’s turned into a slug.

I make us both a coffee and we sip in silence while a man on the news talks about the credit crunch and all the bank problems and all the companies going bust and
closing down. There are shops all over the place closing down, even ones that have been going for years. The man on the news keeps saying how it’s going to affect everyone and the worst is yet to come. My dad just keeps on sighing and sighing; it’s like he’s lost in a black hole and can’t seem to find his way out. I don’t find the news very interesting. I mean I know it’s important and everything but I just want to ask about the violin. The words keep trying to escape from my mouth but I don’t think now is really the right time. It’s my birthday soon and I’ll just have to wait until then. But I can’t wait for my birthday. I want to know now.

“Daddy,” I say, “you know on your bed…?”

“Quiet, Liberty,” he snaps. “Can’t you see I’m trying to listen to the news?”

Later, after we’ve eaten some chips from the chip shop and my dad is staring at more news, I creep back into his room to look for the violin. I just need to see it, to know that’s it’s real. I can’t wait. I just have to know.

In his room everything is exactly as I left it this morning. Except for one thing. The violin has disappeared! I rub my eyes to wake them up and search around under the piles of stuff and in the bin bags, but it’s
nowhere. I can’t believe it! It was definitely there this morning, I wasn’t imagining it and now it’s disappeared. Oh, please, please, please make me find it…please let it be here. I’ll be good for ever and ever and ever and I’ll never lash out or get detention again I promise, promise, promise! I don’t want to spoil my dad’s birthday surprise but I need, need, need to see it, just to make sure it’s true. I’m just sliding under the bed, in case it got pushed under by accident, when my dad bursts his way into the room.

“What are you doing in here, Liberty?” he booms. “Can’t a man have a bit of privacy in his bedroom any more? This is an out-of-bounds room, Liberty, do you hear me?”

“Err, sorry, Daddy,” I say, standing up and brushing the dust off my uniform. “I was just going to make your bed up for you so you can go to bed tonight,” I lie. “You’re looking tired. I was just trying to help.”

“Oh,” he huffs. “Good idea, Liberty. Well get going on it then. Don’t dally.”

I
can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes all I can see is Tyler’s mouth saying, “You’re dead.” I make sure my window is shut tight and am glad for the sounds of the telly drifting under my bedroom door. My whole insides are trembling and my worry eczema’s got so bad I had to put loads of special cream on before I came to bed. I pull out my phone. I know it’s late but I’d like to talk to Alice, even though she’s annoying me at the moment, I think the sound of her voice will help.

“Libby, I’m so glad you called,” she whispers. “I’ve been worried to death about you. What’s happening? Are you OK?”

“I’m OK…ish, Alice. I had to go to this new school and it’s kind of all right, but they started teasing me about my accent and then there was a food fight and I got a detention and a big boy is threatening to kill me.”

“Detention! You had a detention, Libby?” she shrieks. “Your dad will go mad at you when he finds out. You are so funny! Thea Quaddy’s moved into your bed, we’re having such fun. Missing you though.”

“I’m missing you too,” I say and then my voice cracks and I start crying. “It’s horrible here, Alice, my dad’s being really weird and I’m so scared of Tyler.”

“I can’t believe you got a detention, Libby, it’s amazing! Wait till I tell the others. Sorry, I’ve got to go,” she whispers, “Matron’s coming.”

“OK,” I say, “but I need you to promise me that you won’t tell Sebastian. It’s none of his business what’s happening here. And I can’t call you often, Alice, because I’ve nearly run out of phone credit and you know…”

I can’t stop crying. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I can hear snooker championships on the telly. I snuggle close to my teddy. His name is Mr Ted and he wears a blue stripy jacket and yellow woollen trousers. My mum gave
him to me the day I was born. If she were still alive none of this would be happening, I’d be having a lovely life where only nice things happen. If she were still alive I bet she’d go right up to stupid Tyler and punch him on the nose and tell him to leave me alone. She’d be able to sort my dad out and tell him to be friendlier to me and she’d probably be full of brilliant ideas to help him to get a job. And I’d never ever be scared again and if I were she’d always hold me tight and tell me not to worry. Maybe I should disobey my dad and call my granny. I could ask to borrow Cali’s phone, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, especially as it would be a real life emergency. Granny would know what to do, she’s good at solving problems.

I hear my dad switch off the telly and our flat fills up with the silence of the night. He’s moving around, mumbling to himself, opening and closing the kitchen cupboards and slamming the fridge door. Now he’s in his bedroom. It sounds like he’s moving some of the heavy boxes and trunks around. There are clicking sounds and bashing sounds, and then he drops something and swears. I’m wondering about the violin. He’s quiet for ages, then I hear him shuffling towards my door.

My tears freeze; I hold my breath and shut my eyes
tight. Please don’t come in! Please don’t come in! He peeps his head around the door, then creeps in and sits on the end of my bed. I can’t believe it, he’s crying. He’s sobbing and shaking. I open my eyes a teeny bit to look and his tearful face is like crumpled paper, wet from the rain. I’ve never seen my dad cry before and I don’t like it; it feels weird and confusing. One minute he’s barking at me like a fierce dog and the next he’s crying like a little boy. I lie really still so he thinks I’m asleep because I don’t know what to do. I’m not interested in talking to him because every time I do he just bites my head off. And anyway, he’s not really interested in talking to me. He only wants Sebastian and that’s the truth. I think I should be feeling sorry for him or sad. But I don’t because my heart has shrivelled up into a little ball and is hiding somewhere safe inside. I don’t want him in here; I wish he would leave.

“I’m sorry, Lissy,” he sighs. “I’m so, so sorry. It’s all my fault, all of it.”

I think my dad’s gone mad. Who on earth is he talking to? I know for sure that I am not Lissy, but who on earth is? Why can’t he be like a normal dad and go back to his own room and leave me alone to sleep? But he doesn’t go. It’s gross; he’s curling up in a ball and falling asleep on the
end of my bed. I wriggle my legs out of the way so I’m not touching any part of him. He stays there for hours, his snoring keeps me awake and his stale breath smell keeps puffing up my nose. In the early hours of the morning he wakes up and quietly creeps away. I stretch my legs into the warm patch that his body leaves behind.