Sugar and Spice (7 page)

Ugh. Yuck. Totally gross!
I said this to Karina and she squealed at me to shut up. She said if that was what went on inside us, she’d rather not know. But in its way it is actually quite fascinating, and especially if you’re thinking that maybe one day you’ll become a doctor.

Not that I was; not any more. People like me don’t get to be doctors. Still, it didn’t stop me being interested, and I’d been looking forward all afternoon to drawing my picture of the human digestive tract, which was what Mrs Winslow had set us. I sat down at the kitchen table with my felt-tip pens and began carefully to copy out the picture from the sheet she’d given us.

First there was the stomach, looking like a set of bagpipes. I did the stomach in yellow, cos I knew it was full of acid and yellow seemed like the right colour. Then a wiggly bit, which was the
duodenum,
which became
the jejunum,
which became the
ileum,
which all together made up the
small intestine.
I did those in green, as I thought that all the food that had been churned up by the acid might probably turn a bit greenish as it slurped on its way.

Next there came the
large intestine,
looping up one side and down the other, with a band across the middle. I made the large intestine big and bulgy, and I used a brown felt-tip pen for filling it in.

By now, my drawing was looking quite colourful; I just needed to say what everything was. I found a
spider-tip pen and began to draw arrows and print duodenum and jejunum in tiny neat letters, being sure to check that I had the spelling right.

I’d just drawn an arrow pointing to the up bit of the large intestine and was about to write
ascending colon
when the kitchen door crashed open and Sammy burst through, shrieking, followed by Lisa and Kez. You’ll never guess what! He went slamming straight into me, so that my pen scraped across the page, tearing up the paper and leaving a great furrow right through the middle of my beautiful drawing that I’d taken such care over. Oh, I was so angry! I bellowed at him.

“You stupid blithering idiot! Look what you’ve done!”

Sammy stopped and put his thumb in his mouth.
“Look!”
I snatched up the page and thrust it in his face. “See that? See what you’ve done? You’ve gone and ruined it! You stupid, thoughtless —”

“What’s the matter?” said Mum, appearing at the door.
Sammy at once ran to her, sobbing. “What have you done to him?”

I said, “It’s not what I’ve done, it’s what he’s done!”

“She yelled at him,” said Lisa.

“Poor little mite! You’ve scared the life out of him.”

“But he’s ruined it! He’s ruined my homework!” I was almost sobbing myself. My lovely intestines! I’d worked so hard at them. “It’s taken me ages!”

“I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose,” said Mum.

“They shouldn’t be allowed out here when I’m doing my homework! Why can’t they stay in the other room and watch television?”

“Don’t want to watch television!” screeched Lisa.

“We’ve already watched it,” said Kez.

Mum was peering over my shoulder at my poor mangled drawing. “Oh, dear! What a shame. Can’t you do it again?”

“No! I haven’t got time, I’ve still got my French to do.”

“Why not use that one?” Mum nodded at the sheet Mrs Winslow had given us. “Why not just cut it out and stick in on the page, and then colour it?”

“Cos we’re supposed to
copy
it!”

“That’s a bit daft,” said Mum. “That’s a proper drawing, that is. Better than anything you could do. What’s the point wasting your time trying to copy it?”

I said, “Why ask me?” And I crumpled up my spoilt drawing and hurled it across the room.

I knew that Mum was right, the drawing on the printed sheet was oceans better than the one I’d done, even with all my lovely bright colours and my little arrows. How should I know why Mrs Winslow wanted us to copy it? All I knew was that I’d enjoyed doing it and I’d been really pleased with the result and secretly hoping that perhaps I might get an A, or even an A+, and now it was totally ruined and I just felt
sick.

“I’ll take him away,” said Mum. “Come on, Sammy! You come with your mum. Leave Ruth to get on with her studies.”

I said, “It doesn’t matter now, I’ve given up. I’m not going to bother any more.”

“Well, I must say,” said Mum, “I’ve never really seen why they have to give you all this extra work. You’re at school seven hours a day. Isn’t that enough?”

Mum went off, taking Sammy and the Terrible Two with her. I pulled my French book out of my bag and looked at it and put it back again. I’d given up! I wasn’t bothering any more. Other people didn’t bother; why should I? Nobody ever got into trouble. Now and again the teachers would mutter about “staying after school”, but nothing ever came of it. I thought probably they preferred it if they didn’t have too much homework to mark. I wasn’t ever going to bother with homework again! What was the point, if I was just going to end up in Tesco’s? I bet they’d never asked Mum if she’d got any GCSEs, and
she
was allowed to work on the
checkout.
I could do that! No problem. In any case, as Brett Thomas had said, only geeks did homework. I was through with being a geek!

Next day I told Karina that I wasn’t bothering with homework any more. Karina said that she was glad. She said it was a great relief.

“It’s not good if you keep getting things read out and teachers saying all the time how you’ve written loads more than anyone else and how you’re just so
brilliant
and
wonderful
and —”

“No one’s ever said I’m brilliant and wonderful!”

“No, but they keep going on about you…listen to
what
Ruth’s
written, look what
Ruth’s
done. It’s not good,” said Karina. “It just puts everyone’s back up.”

“Well, look at this,” I said, and I showed her what I’d written for Mr Kirk. Karina read it and giggled.

“Hey!” She turned and grabbed at someone. It was a girl called Dulcie Tucker who was in Millie’s gang. “Listen to what Ruth’s written for Mr Kirk…
My family is so boring that I can’t think of anything to say about them!”

“Yeah. Right on,” said Dulcie, like she couldn’t have cared less.

I snatched the page back from Karina. “You don’t have to go telling everyone,” I said.

“Why not? It’s funny! I hope he reads it out.”

“So anyway, what about you?” I said. “Are you still going to do homework?”

Karina pulled a face. “I’ve got to. My dad’d bash me if I didn’t.”

“How would he know?” The teachers never sent notes home, or asked to speak to your parents. Not that I’d ever heard.

“He checks on me,” said Karina. “He says he pays all
these huge amounts of tax so that I can get an education and he’s going to make sure that I get one.”

“Some hope at this school,” I muttered.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want one anyhow,” said Karina. “Soon as I can, I’m getting out.”

I asked her what she was going to do, but she said she didn’t know.

“Don’t know, don’t care. Just so long as I can leave this dump.”

I wondered what I’d do if my dad were like Karina’s. Well, or my mum, since my dad doesn’t pay any tax. He’s on disability allowance. Mum pays! She’s always going on about it. “All this money they take off me.” Didn’t she realise it was for me to get an education?

“Besides,” said Karina, “it doesn’t matter about me, cos I don’t get up people’s noses like you do.”

“I don’t mean to,” I said.

“I know you don’t
mean
to, but that’s how it comes across. Always getting things right and knowing all the answers and sticking your hand up and doing your homework and – just everything!”

Humbly, I said, “I’ll try and stop.”

“Well, it’d be good,” said Karina. “Cos then people wouldn’t hate you quite so much and we might be able to join Amie Phillips and her lot. I could probably join them right now, if I wanted, but I wouldn’t do it without you. It’d be nicer if we were together, wouldn’t it?”

I said that it would, but really and truly I wasn’t sure that I wanted to join Amie Phillips’ lot. They were all remnants: all the leftovers that no one else wanted.