PopCo (38 page)

I type the name of my favourite homoeopathic pharmacy into the browser and the page pops up instantly. I click through to the K page and select Kali-Carbonicum in both 200C and 1M potencies. I press ‘add to cart’. Then, excited to be actually shopping (sort of), I select the P page and order the same potencies of Phosphorous, just in case the Kali-Carbonicum doesn’t work. Then I order some organic hand cream to make myself feel better. I click through to the payment page and type in my credit card number (which I know off by heart, having an affinity for learning long numbers). Blah blah blah. Click, click, click. Oh. Delivery address. I hesitate for a moment, and then type in Room 23, East Wing, Hare Hall (although I almost typed PopCo Towers), Dartmoor, Devon. That’s enough information, surely? Maybe not. I have the feeling we may have moved on from the days where you could draw a picture of the pub next door to where your friend lived and an arrow pointing to their flat with just the name of the town and the Royal Mail would get it there somehow.

Ben and Esther knock at the door while I am still wondering whether to press ‘Confirm’. Ben is carrying a tray with a teapot and some cups on it.

‘Do either of you know what the address here is?’ I say.

Ben shakes his head. ‘It’s Hare Hall,’ he says. ‘That’s all I know. He puts the tray down on the table.

Esther is checking the pockets of her hoody, and then her denim skirt. ‘Um, I thought there was one in here,’ she says. ‘Oh yes. There you go.’

She passes me a PopCo
With Compliments
slip.

‘It’s all on there,’ she says.

*

Roxy only stays at Groveswood Comprehensive for one more week. In that week she attaches herself to our group like we are a host and she is an unknown virus. She spends this time pouting, smoking (really!) and explaining how to shoplift. Then she is gone. We later hear that she has started at an all-girls private day school in town. I am jealous that she has escaped.

During that week, I use her presence as a cover for the fact that I still don’t have any of this right. My grandparents are giving me
£
1.75 a day dinner money now, so I save this every day, pretending I am on a diet like Lucy and Michelle. I don’t think Lucy and Michelle like me, though. One day I was a few minutes late into the Portakabin at lunchtime and noticed that the conversation died the moment I walked in. Later, I asked Emma what they had been saying. ‘I stuck up for you,’ she said mysteriously. ‘But you know what they’re like.’ Do I know what they are like? I’m not sure. I know they pick on girls who smell, are fat, wear the wrong clothes, speak up too much in class, don’t brush their teeth, don’t shave their legs, eat food that is bigger or smellier than a chocolate bar, don’t wear deodorant or don’t have permed or styled hair. I have been pretending that my hair is permed which has gone down well. I am not fat and I don’t smell. But I need to get a different skirt.

On Wednesday the maths sets are announced in Mr Morgan’s class. Roxy sits there sighing and painting her nails with Tippex. Perhaps she already knows she is leaving. We haven’t done a test to see what sets we should be in, like we have in some other subjects. Instead, Morgan (Moron) has decided to set us on the basis of the two pieces of homework we have done so far, and our general attitude in class.
Emma and I are put in set 2, along with about four other girls, none of whom we know. Our friends all go into set 4, except Roxy, who is way down in set 5. I am disappointed not to have made it into the top set. The boys who are in top set all go to chess club and computer club, unsurprisingly. They must be really clever. Also, perhaps it’s a good thing that I didn’t get into the top set. Imagine being the only girl in a class, with none of your friends. It would be horrible. One thing I have been learning this week is that the more time you spend with your friends, the less time they have to talk about you behind your back. You really do have to be on constant alert all the time at school. I have been on DEFCON 1 since the necklace incident which, while it could have been a lot worse, marked me out as odd.

Along with Emma and Sarah, I have been put into the top set for English. This setting was done on the basis of a test that included spelling, comprehension and a little essay on the subject ‘My Favourite Book’. My new favourite book is
The Count of
Monte Cristo
, which was in my mother’s book box, so this is what I wrote about. In my essay, I repeated what my grandmother said about revenge.
This book shows that revenge is a bad thing
. But, like my grandfather, I am not so sure I really agree with that. I want Moron to get it, and Miss Hind, and Lucy, actually, and Michelle. The English teacher, Mrs Germain, wrote on this essay ‘Very mature’ and gave me an A–. I like Mrs Germain much more than all the other teachers.

The rest of this week is spent plotting the purchase of my skirt. I have actually managed to ask Emma how much her skirt cost. Not being sure whether it was ‘gyppo’ to ask something like this, it took me two days just to formulate the question. But I now know that they are
£
6.99. I also need thick black tights, which I have noticed Tanya and Emma wearing on colder days. I think I will have enough money for both these items by Saturday but that doesn’t solve the issue of how to get into town to get them without my grandparents knowing. I know that some of the others go into town every Saturday. They invited me once but I said I lived too far away and I haven’t been invited since.

‘I wish I could come into town with you lot on Saturday,’ I say to Emma on Thursday. ‘It’s really boring at home.’

‘Well, why don’t you come for tea on Friday and then stay the
night?’ she says. ‘We can go in together on Saturday. It’ll be brilliant.’

This is inspired of Emma, although I can’t say I didn’t have the idea myself first.

‘Will it be all right with your mum?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, I’m sure it will. Look, give me your phone number and I’ll get her to ring your mum to tell her it’s OK.’

My heart beats as I tear a scrap of paper out of one of my folders. ‘I’m staying with my grandparents at the moment,’ I say, coolly. ‘So she’ll have to talk to one of them.’ My life really is full of lies right now. At least I don’t have to worry about being afraid of being alone in the dark any more. I have so many other things to worry about that this fear has been squeezed out of me like the last bit of toothpaste in an old tube.

Emma and I have a plan. We will get up early on Saturday and go into town before the other kids get there. We will purchase my skirt and tights from a shop she knows and then go and hang around with the other kids afterwards. I will have the embarrassment of carrying a plastic bag around all day but it will save the embarrassment of having to take the whole gang along to buy the skirt.

My preparation for this operation is so complex that I don’t have time to do any homework on Thursday night. I resolve to catch up over the weekend. I examine my whole wardrobe for something suitable to wear into town on Saturday. There really is nothing. I don’t know what they all wear out of school but it’s reasonable to assume that I don’t have it. Shall I take something anyway, or simply pretend to have forgotten? If I pretend to have forgotten, will Emma lend me something or not? If she doesn’t I will have to come home, as I can’t go into town in my school uniform. Will asking to borrow clothes make me a weirdo or a gyppo? I’m not sure. Still, it will probably be better to be called a weirdo or a gyppo by Emma for five minutes than to be called one by all the other kids in town all day. I decide to take nothing.

During Friday afternoon break, when I get a minute alone with Emma, I see an unexpected opportunity. Clapping my hand over my eyes, I feign sudden revelation.

‘Oh bother,’ I say.

‘What?’ she says.

‘I haven’t brought any clothes for tomorrow.’

She laughs. ‘You’re so absent-minded, Alice. It’s all right. You can wear something of mine. I borrow clothes off my sister all the time.’

My heart sings.

The skirt shop is in a bit of town I haven’t been to very much before, near Mill Road. The ground floor is full of army surplus stuff that older teenagers wear: combat trousers, army boots, green shirts. It is dark inside the shop, and the man behind the till smiles lasciviously at us as we walk inside.

‘Hello, girls,’ he says, through rotting teeth.

Emma and I exchange a look and then run upstairs, giggling. There’s no one up here except for us. It smells slightly of rain, and school lockers.

‘You could nick stuff here, and they’d never know,’ Emma says in a whisper. We have been a little bit fascinated with shoplifting since Roxy told us all about it.

‘I know,’ I say.

‘Have you ever …?’ she says.

‘No. Have you?’

‘No.’

There are racks and racks of school-uniform style clothes up here and other things I have seen people at school wearing: parka jackets, leather jackets, cheap fashionable shoes. I wonder if the clothes I am wearing now – a black skirt and a shell-pink jumper – come from here. I am so glad I am not wearing my own clothes.

‘Can I help you?’ says a girl’s voice.

We turn around. The girl looks young, possibly a student. Her hair is dyed bright blue and she is wearing a female version of the clothes from downstairs: big DMs, tiny combat trousers and a baggy T-shirt with the words Amnesty International on the front. I want to be her! I am too scared to speak, so Emma asks for the skirt and tights, saying they are for me.

‘You’ll want a size bigger so she can roll it up, presumably,’ the girl says, winking.

‘Yeah,’ says Emma.

I know this is how they make their skirts shorter as I have watched them getting changed after PE. This girl knows that too –
and she has even made a joke about it. I feel sick inside. I know that the rest of my group would call this girl a weirdo but I would give anything right now to be her age (about eighteen) and working in a shop like this, with blue hair and crazy clothes.

‘Did you think she was pretty?’ Emma says when we leave the shop.

‘Did you?’ I say. I have the impression that Emma thought, like me, that the girl was pretty but I want her to say it first. She hesitates.

‘No. Do you think I’m a lezza? Come on.’

We walk into the centre of town to the market square, looking for Lucy and Michelle. Sarah and Tanya are at the stables, apparently, so it’s just going to be us four. We are early, so Emma suggests that we look in Boots. Her lip gloss has almost run out, and she wants to get a new one. I wonder if I have enough money left to get some myself. I know that the rest of the gang always get cheeseburgers from the new McDonald’s on a Saturday, regardless of diets and everything else. If I want to do this too, I definitely can’t afford lip-gloss. It’s a conundrum.

So we are in Boots, looking at flavoured lip-gloss, and there are no members of staff around at all.

‘Are you thinking what I am thinking?’ Emma says.

‘What …?’

‘You know.’

I do know. So many of our conversations seem to operate according to the surreal, hardly there principles of not-saying-something-first, guesswork and basic telepathy. I know what she’s talking about, and she knows that I know. But neither of us has mentioned it first. No one is a gyppo. No one is to blame.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But …’ I gulp. ‘What if …?’

‘No one’s looking, though.’

‘No.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘You first.’

We giggle. ‘We’ll do it together,’ Emma says.

Objectively, I seem to be better at this than she is, and I notice her watching and copying me. I pick up two lip-glosses in my hand, one with my forefinger and thumb; one concealed in my palm. I say something loud to Emma about already having this one and then I put
one of them back, using slightly too theatrical movements. I still have the other lip-gloss concealed in my hand. I quickly put this hand in my pocket. We leave the shop.

Outside, there is a stall giving out leaflets to do with animal experimentation, which I have heard people talking about at school, but never really understood before. I look at the people on the stall, briefly, and their posters of rabbits with electrodes in their brains, and dogs tortured and shut in cages. My stomach turns over. This can’t really happen, can it? I want to cry. But I can’t really think about this because I am a thief now and Emma and I have to get away from Boots. We are running, suddenly, and we don’t stop until we get to the park.

‘Did you really do it?’ Emma says.

‘Did you?’

‘Yeah. Look.’ She shows me the lip gloss she stole.

I smile, and get mine out too.

‘Do you think they’ll be following us?’ she says.

I frown. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We’d better not go into Boots again for a while, just in case.’

‘No.’

We are brave. We are on the run. We have new lip gloss! We promise not to tell anyone else we have done this. Later, Emma asks me if I will be her best friend. It is logical – in our group, Lucy and Michelle are best friends, as are Sarah and Tanya. I had a feeling that Emma has brought me into the group and groomed me for this purpose and when she asks me now I get the feeling of finally having done things right.

We meet the others later and go to McDonald’s, where, even though we are scared of being seen/caught, we cannot resist getting out our lip glosses. Of course, we do not say how we obtained them. I can tell that Lucy and Michelle approve of me a bit more today. I have lip gloss. I am wearing fashionable clothes. After lunch, we all eat chewing gum (to make our breath fresh) and then we go to the small shopping centre and sit on a bench watching a group of boys from our year who are sitting on another bench watching us. We giggle, and they occasionally call things out and hit each other.

At about three o’clock, just before I have to leave to get my bus, one of the boys comes over. His name is Michael and everyone knows he wants to go out with Lucy. He comes over to Emma and
takes her off to one side, whispering something in her ear. She comes back, grinning.

‘Do you like Aaron?’ she asks me.