Shrinking Violet (2 page)

Lily has lots of friends. Sarah and Francine are her best ones, but there is also Ayesha and Haroula and Debbie and Jessica. Lily is tremendously popular.

On account of being silly and shrinking, I am not very good at making friends. I get nervous and blurt out the first thing that comes into my head, which is not always the best thing. Like one day when Ayesha said to me that she was going to go on a diet and lose weight.

“But I’m going to do it sensibly,” she said. “Just a bit at a time. I don’t want to lose too much all at once.”

You will never believe what I said! I said, “No, ’cos that would look silly with a great fat face.”

I didn’t mean to be rude, or to upset her. It just, like, burst out of me before I could stop it. I couldn’t understand why she went off in a huff and wouldn’t speak to me, not even when we were put as partners for gym. It was Lily who told me.

“You said she had a great fat face!”

“I didn’t!” I said.

“You did, too,” said Lily. “You said if she lost too much weight it would look silly with a great fat face!”

“Oh, dear,” said Mum.

I was so ashamed! I am always doing this kind of thing. Another thing I do, I drop stuff and smash stuff. Like I dropped Haroula’s genuine Victorian glass bubble with a snowstorm inside it that she’d inherited from her great grandmother. It was a family heirloom and I went and dropped it! Fortunately it didn’t break, it just rolled over the floor, but a huge
groan
went up, like everyone was thinking, “Trust her!”

Like another time when we’d been told to clear the stuff off our dinner plates into one bin and chuck
plastic pots, etc., into another, and I got confused and put it all in the same bin and Lily said, “You would, wouldn’t you?”

This is the sort of person I am, and that is why I am not very good at making friends. When I do, it is mostly just one at a time; not hordes, like Lily.

I used to be best friends with a girl called Greta. We did everything together and I really missed her when she went back to America with her mum and dad. We wrote to each other for a while. I quite enjoyed writing letters, but after a bit it sort of faded out. Like I would write a really long letter, and Greta would just send back a postcard, and then I would write again and for weeks and weeks she wouldn’t bother and then it would be just another card, or maybe an e-mail.
Hi! How R U? NY is fab! Will write soon. Luv & xxx Greta.

In the end we stopped altogether. I suppose we didn’t really have all that much in common is what it came down to. It was all right while we could do things together, but Greta wasn’t really a word person. Lots of people aren’t. Dad isn’t. Lily isn’t. Mum isn’t. I am the only one in the family!

Anyway, all that was in Year 5. Now we’d moved up to Year 6 and I was sort of going round with this girl called Pandora who is very good-natured and
pretty but quite honestly not the brightest. I am not being horrible here, I am just telling it like it is. She is one of those people, she is so sweet and innocent she would trust just about anybody. Like she would take sweets from strangers and go jumping into cars unless there was someone to watch over her. So I was kind of watching over her because I mean someone had to and I didn’t have anyone else. To be friends with, I mean.

Well, apart from this girl called Yvonne that I sometimes hung out with, but she is quite bad-tempered and also bossy, and in spite of being shrinking I don’t like people bossing me and pushing me around. Plus sometimes she makes Pandora cry by saying these really mean things to her, so I only hung with Yvonne on days when Pandora wasn’t there or when I was feeling strong enough to stand up to her. We certainly didn’t see each other out of school.

I didn’t really see anyone out of school. Me and Greta used to meet up sometimes, but now I just did things on my own. Usually on a Saturday I’d go and help Mum in Flora Green. I enjoyed watering all the plants out in the yard, and arranging the cut flowers in their buckets. I didn’t even mind stacking flower pots or sweeping the floor. Lily wouldn’t be seen dead in there! She would be scared her posh friends might catch sight of her. But most often she was out doing things with them, anyway. They rode their ponies in the park, or went ice skating or slept over at each other’s houses. Lily has this really
full
social calendar. Her life is a whirl!

Sometimes I used to wish that my life could be like Lily’s. I used to wish it
so much
. Dad always said that I was his little stay-at-home while Lily was Miss Gad About. I always pretended that I thought it was funny and that I didn’t mind. I even pretended it to myself.

It is
silly
, pretending things to yourself.

One day near the start of the spring term Lily came home all excited because Sarah’s mum, who is something important to do with TV, had said that Sarah could invite some of her friends to visit the set of
Riverside.

“She said we could go next Saturday, so is that all right, Mum? It is all right, isn’t it? Sarah’s mum will take us there and bring us back, so can I say I’ll go?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Mum. “Who else is going?”

“Just me and Sarah, and Francie and Hara. Debbie was going to, but she can’t.”

“So what about Violet?” said Mum.

There was a pause. I felt my cheeks go tingly. I did wish Mum wouldn’t!

“She didn’t invite Violet,” said Lily. “Just me. ’Cos I’m Sarah’s friend.”

“I wouldn’t want to, anyway,” I said.

Well, I wouldn’t! Not with Lily and her crowd. They’re all loud and shrieking, just like Lily. And they don’t really like me, they think I’m freaky.

“Wouldn’t want to?” said Mum. “But you’re such a fan! Even more than Lily is!”

“But she hasn’t been
invited
” said Lily. “Not just anyone can go. You have to be
asked
.”

“Well, I’m sure Sarah would ask her if she knew what a fan she was. After all, she is your twin!”

Lily set her jaw in that way that she does, like it’s made out of cement, or something. I felt myself shrivel. Mum does this to me, sometimes.
She tries to push me in where I’m not wanted. It gets Lily so mad! And it gets me all hot and embarrassed.

“Mum, it’s all right,” I said. “I’ve got to help you in the shop.”

“You haven’t
got
to help me in the shop,” said Mum. “I’m very grateful when you do, but it seems a shame to miss out on other things. A visit to
Riverside!
And if Debbie can’t go —”

“That isn’t any reason for
her
to come.”

Mum said, “Lily!”

“Well, it isn’t,” muttered Lilly. “People don’t have to invite her just ’cos they’ve invited me. Just ’cos we came out the same
egg
doesn’t mean we have to do everything together all the time!”

“You don’t do anything together any of the time,” said Mum. “I just thought, this once —”

“But I don’t want to go!” I snatched up Horatio and buried my face in his fur. “Mm … yum yum,” I mumbled, nibbling at him with my lips.

“Stinking swizzlesticks, you’re disgusting!” said Lily.

She could talk! I’ve seen her doing things that are far more disgusting than chumbling in Horatio’s fur. I’ve seen her chewing her
toenails
. That is gross!

Later that day I heard Mum and Dad discussing me. They were in the kitchen and didn’t know I was there. Well, I wasn’t actually
there
, exactly. I mean, I wasn’t sitting in a cupboard or anything. What it was, I was outside the door, about to go in, when I heard Mum say “too much in Lily’s shadow” and I immediately froze.

I heard Mum say about Lily going off with her friends, and me not going anywhere. Then Dad said, “She’s my little shrinking violet,” and Mum said, “But she
ought
to have friends!” And then a tap started running, and the sound got blotted out, and next thing I heard was Dad saying something about chat rooms.

“That way, she could meet someone with her own interests … that’s what she needs! Someone to share her interests with.”

“Not in a chat room,” said Mum.

Dad said, “Oh, come on! We’d monitor her.”

“
No
,” said Mum. “No way!”

She’d read this horror story just a few days ago about a young girl being picked up (in a chat room) by this middle-aged man pretending to be a fifteen-year-old boy. Lily had said boastfully that that could never happen to
her.
She’d soon suss him out! But Mum was now convinced that all chat rooms were full of middle-aged men in mackintoshes (I don’t know why she thought they were in mackintoshes), all looking for young girls and pretending to be fifteen years old. She had forbidden Lily to go anywhere near one.

She said to Dad, “If I’m not letting Lily visit one, I’m certainly not letting Violet!”

I wondered if this meant that Mum cared more about me than she did about Lily, or whether it simply meant she thought that I was more stupid than Lily and more likely to be deceived by the men in mackintoshes.

Probably she thought that I was more stupid, although in fact it is Lily who talks to strangers, not me. Lily talks to people everywhere she goes. In the supermarket, in buses, on trains. She just strikes up these conversations. I would
be too shy! I was really relieved when Mum stood up to Dad and said
no way.
I didn’t want to visit any chat rooms! It would be too much like actually meeting people; I would get tongue-tied and not know what to say.