Sugar and Spice (15 page)

And she sucked in her cheeks so that her lips practically disappeared inside her mouth, which made me feel that I was being sour and small-minded. I was glad I hadn’t admitted to her that last Christmas I’d actually asked Mum and Dad if I could have a filing cabinet, one of those metal ones with drawers,
and a key,
so that I could put all my things away nicely in different-coloured files, with proper labels, in alphabetical order, so Kez and Lisa couldn’t get at them. I had this feeling that she’d utterly despise me. (I didn’t get the filing cabinet, anyway; Mum said they were too expensive and that in any case there wasn’t any room.)

“Wanna see what I keep in here?” said Shay. She pulled open a drawer, where normally, I should think, people would put knickers and socks and pairs of tights, and dumped the contents on the bed beside me. I gasped; I couldn’t help it. It was full of jewellery!
Bracelets and chains, rings, necklaces, hair slides, all winking and glittering.

“And in
here
 —” she yanked out a second drawer, “I got make-up.”

I could feel my eyes boggling. I had never seen so many pots and tubs and tubes and jars.

“I call it my collection,” said Shay.

I remembered what she’d said about her mum being a beauty consultant. I thought perhaps that was where she’d got it from, but scornfully she said, “Nah! Got it myself, didn’t I? There’s loads of other stuff I could show you. I got —”

And then she stopped, and I felt this little shiver run through me. Someone was calling up the stairs.

“Shay!”

Could it be the Vampire?

Shay ran out on to the landing. “What d’you want?”

“I wanted t—Oh! Hallo. Who’s this?”

Curiosity had made me a little bit brave. I’d gone pattering out behind Shay. I just couldn’t resist! Shay scowled and said, “Someone from school.”

“And doesn’t someone from school have a name?”

I squeaked, “I’m Ruth Spicer.”

“Well, hallo there, Ruth Spicer! I’m Shay’s mum.”

I could see why Shay called her the Vampire. Unlike Shay, who was dark-skinned, her mum was very pale, like a water lily. She just had no colour at all, and was so amazingly slender that she looked like the long white stem of a plant. She’d made up her eyes with thick black stuff on the lashes and purple on the eyelids, while her mouth and fingernails were deep blood red. I wasn’t sure that I’d like her for a mum, but she was kind of fascinating, in a weird sort of way.

“Are you staying for tea?” she said.

“Yes, she is,” said Shay. “I’ve got all the stuff.”

“I saw.” The Vampire tightened her blood red lips. She was obviously not pleased about something, but whether it was me staying to tea, or Shay not telling her that I was staying to tea, or something else entirely, I couldn’t quite work out. “I presume,” she said, “that that was what you wanted?”

“What?” said Shay.

“For me to see!”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on! Everything all nicely laid out so I couldn’t miss it?”

“I just laid it out ready,” said Shay.

Slowly, her mum shook her head. “You do these things on purpose, don’t you? Your one aim in life is to rile me. Well, all right! Go ahead, stuff yourself with artificial muck. Why should I bother?”

“You shouldn’t,” said Shay.

“No, well, I’m not going to. I’m off down the gym, now, then I’m meeting up with Boo and Ellie. I probably won’t be back till late, but your father should be here well before then. He said he’d be home by eight. OK? Nice to meet you, Ruth. Have fun!”

“She really
hates
me eating junk food,” said Shay, as we returned to her bedroom. “It drives her whacko!” She sounded quite jubilant about it, so that I began to think maybe her mum was right, and it really was her aim in life. “You don’t have to look like that, prune face! She already is a whacko. Can’t you tell?” She made her eyes go crossed and stuck out her tongue and waggled her fingers either side of her head. “Totally bonkers! Wanna try on some of my jewellery?”

I hesitated. I was worried by the thought of her dad not getting home till eight o’clock, because Mum was
expecting me ages before then. I said apologetically to Shay that maybe I’d better leave now, while it was still light.

“I know it’s silly,” I said, though I didn’t really think it was, “but my mum gets all fussed if I’m out late on my own.”

“Won’t be on your own,” said Shay. “I’ll come with you.”

“But how will you get back?”

“Same as I did last week. Told you the Vampire wasn’t the worrying sort. She doesn’t care what I do – apart from eating junk food!”

I was beginning to think that Shay lived in a very peculiar sort of family. I couldn’t imagine my mum and dad not caring what I did.
Or
going out and leaving me in the flat by myself. I’m always wishing that I could have a room of my own and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet, but I’d absolutely hate it if the whole flat was empty. I think, actually, I’d be a bit scared. Shay obviously wasn’t scared, but maybe that was because she was used to it. It just didn’t seem to bother her.

After we’d tried on some of her jewellery, and listened to another CD that she discovered by almost treading on it, we went down to the kitchen to eat our junk food. I suppose it was junk food. Shay said it was, though it seemed just ordinary to me. When we’d finished eating, I said that I’d have to go or Mum would
start frothing, so Shay came with me all the way across town. I did feel a bit guilty seeing her go off again by herself, and thought that if anything happened to her it would be all my fault, but she really didn’t seem to mind.

Mum opened the front door. She said, “Ah, there you are! Not before time. Did they bring you back?”

I said yes, because after all Shay
had
brought me back, and Mum then said, “I hope they saw you up in the lift?” to which I made a fluffy sort of mumbling sound.

“I hope they did!” said Mum, following me into the kitchen. “That lift’s not safe this time of night – anyone
could get in there with you. So what was it like? What’s her mum like?”

I wasn’t going to say that Shay’s mum was a vampire and a whacko. I had more sense than that! I said, “She’s very thin – she looks like a model.” Mum sniffed and said that she could probably afford to.

“I suppose the place is dead posh?”

“Yes, but it’s not as cosy as ours.”

I said it partly cos I knew that it would please Mum, and partly cos it was true. Shay’s place wasn’t cosy, any more than Shay herself was. But I still felt flattered that she’d invited me!

The next week was half term. I didn’t think, probably, that Shay would want to bother seeing me at half term, so when Millie called round and asked if I’d like to sleep over her place one night, I was quite pleased.

It was ages since Millie and I had done anything together. I could tell that Mum was pleased, too. She likes Millie and I don’t think, really, that she did like Shay. She always said that she was “too knowing”. I’ve never actually understood this, as I wouldn’t have thought it would be possible to be
too
knowing. I’d have
thought the more you knew, the better. But Mum obviously felt it was a bad thing, maybe because she thought Shay knew things she ought not to know, like grown-up type things, whereas Millie (Mum said) was “natural and unspoilt”. I dunno! Just because Millie lived round the corner and wore the sort of clothes that Mum considered “suitable”. She didn’t consider Shay’s clothes suitable. It really irritated her, Shay going round in designer labels. She kept on and on about it.

“Totally ridiculous! A girl that age.”

So when I asked if it was OK for me to spend the night with Millie she said yes without any hesitation, even though she’d been hinting that it would be nice, now it was half term, if I could stay in and keep an eye on the kids for a change, while she went out. Dad would still have been there, cos Dad hasn’t left the flat for I don’t know how long, but Mum would never leave him on his own all evening with Sammy and the Terrible Two. I knew she’d been looking forward to having some time off and I thought perhaps I was being selfish, wanting to go to Millie’s. But Mum seemed really keen.

“Maybe you’ll get back together again. I’d far rather you had Millie as a friend than that Shay.”

It was fun, being round at Millie’s. For a little while it was almost like we were back at Juniors again, giggling together and sharing secrets. But Mariam had been with us then; it didn’t seem the same without her.
It had always been the three of us. Millie said she’d called round Mariam’s place and hadn’t been able to get any reply.

“Someone said they’d moved.”

I said, “
All
of them?”

“It’s what they said.”

“I thought it was just Mariam! So she could go to another school.”

“I’m just telling you what I was told,” said Millie.

I twizzled my toes under the duvet. (We were lying in bed at the time.) “Wish I could go to another school! Don’t you? Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere else? If you could choose.”

“Dunno.” Millie shrugged. “Krapfilled’s OK.”

“I think it’s horrible,” I said.

“That’s cos you don’t join in.”

“Nobody ever asks me!” I said.

“So whose fault’s that?” Millie rolled over to look at me. She propped herself on an elbow. “You go round making like you’re so
supeeeeeerior
 —”

I was indignant. “I do not!”

“You do. You just don’t realise you’re doing it.”

I couldn’t think what to say to that. I muttered that I didn’t
feel
superior.

“It’s the way you come across,” said Millie. “Specially now you’re hanging out with that Shayanne Sugar. She’s really freaky!”

“She’s my friend,” I said.

“Yeah? Sooner you than me!”

Growing desperate, I said, “I only started going round with Shay cos there wasn’t anyone else. Cos you and Mariam were both in gangs. I’d heaps rather you and me could still be friends!”

“We can be,” said Millie. “Out of school.”

“Why not in school?”

“You know why not in school!”

“Because of
gangs,
” I said. “I hate gangs! I just hate them!”

“Well, there you go,” said Millie.

I knew, then, that me and Millie could never get back together again. We could never be proper best friends.

“Gangs make people stupid,” I said. “They make people do things they don’t want to do. They make them
all follow my leader.
I couldn’t ever belong to a gang!”

“You know your trouble?” said Millie. “You just don’t try. You go to a new place, you gotta learn to fit in. Otherwise you’ll just be, like, an outsider all the time.”

It’s what I was: an outsider. But at least I had Shay!

“How about we meet up again tomorrow?” said Millie, as she walked back with me through the estate the next day. “I’ll call round…eleven o’clock. We’ll do something. OK?”

I said OK, thinking that even just seeing her out of school was better than not seeing her at all, but then, quite suddenly, the following morning when I was least expecting it, I got this phone call from Shay.

“Hi, Spice! What you up to?”

I said, “Nothing very much.”

“Me neither. Wanna meet? Shopping centre, same place as before? See you in half an hour. Don’t be late!”

I forgot all about Millie. I said to Dad that I was going to meet someone in the shopping centre, and was about to go whizzing off when the Terrible Two started up, wanting to come with me. I told them that they couldn’t.

“I’m meeting a friend.”

“You’re meeting
her
! You’re meeting that girl!”

I said, “What
girl
?”

“That Shay person!”

I said, “So what if I am?”

“Mum doesn’t like you seeing her,” said Lisa, all virtuous.

“No, an’ you’re s’pposed to be looking after us,” whined Kez.

“You never take us anywhere!”

“Who’d want to?” I said.

I slammed the front door behind me and scooted off to the lift before Dad could find enough breath to tell me I couldn’t go.
It wasn’t till I got off the bus at the shopping centre and saw the hands of the big clock pointing to eleven that I remembered…Millie was supposed to be calling round! For just a moment I felt a pang of guilt, but then I reminded myself that Millie wasn’t really, properly, my friend any more. When we were in school she hardly ever spoke to me. What kind of friend was that? Shay was the one who was my friend. She was the one who looked out for me and made it OK for me to do my homework and not get bullied or picked on if it was read out in class. I didn’t care any more about Millie. She didn’t stick up for me. Let her go round with her stupid gang, if that was what she wanted.

On my way in to the centre I passed a girl from school. Varya. She was with her mum – well, I suppose it was her mum. She smiled at me and said hallo, and I said hallo back, and as I did so I suddenly realised that it was the
very first time
I’d ever spoken to her. She mostly kept to herself and for some reason nobody ever bothered her. I’d always thought she seemed quite an interesting sort of person, but she didn’t speak very much English and I was too shy to go and talk to her because how would we manage to communicate? But that day in the shopping centre she was, like, really friendly, like really pleased to see me, and her mum was, too, smiling and nodding as we passed, so that I went on my way feeling quite bubbly.

Shay was already there and waiting for me. I broke into a trot when I saw her.

“Sorry I’m late!”

“You’re not late. I was early.
She
brought me.”

“The Va —” Hastily, I corrected myself. “Your mum?”

“
The Vampire.
Yeah! She dropped me off. What shall we do? Wanna go and mooch round Sander’s?”

Sander’s is this big department store, which is brilliant for mooching as parts of it are like street markets with racks and racks of clothes, and one entire floor which is called The Bazaar, where you can find just about anything you could ever dream of. Shay said, “Let’s go to Jewellery.” She led the way and I followed. Sander’s is
so
enormous that left to myself I would most probably panic and get lost, but Shay obviously knew her way around.

“Jewellery’s my favourite,” she said. “This is where I always come.”

It’s really beautiful in the jewellery department. There’s counter after counter, piled high, everything all winking and flashing in a thousand different colours, like an Aladdin’s cave. We wandered round, touching things and picking things up and trying on bracelets and chains. Shay found some earrings that she fancied. They were in the shape of parrots, swinging on a perch: bright red and blue and emerald green. They would’ve looked stupid on me as I have this rather ridiculous face, very
small and squashed, but on Shay I could see they would be totally brilliant. I urged her to get them, and she was obviously tempted. She held them up by her ears and said, “What d’you reckon?”

“I think you should buy them,” I said.

“Mm…dunno! I’ll think about it.” She put the parrots back and reached out for something else. “Hey, look! These would suit you!”

She’d found some tiny little earrings in the shape of flowers. I agreed that they were sweet, but I couldn’t imagine ever wearing them.

“So what would you get,” said Shay, “if you were going to get something?”

What I’d always, always wanted was a silver chain. I said this to Shay and she cried, “Let’s look!”

There were so many silver chains that it was really difficult to decide which one I should go for, but in the end I settled on one which had a tiny little pixie figure hanging from it.

“That’s Cornish, that is,” said Shay. “Cornish pixie. That’s a good luck charm! Is that what you’d get?”