What You Become (6 page)

‘I shouted again, didn’t I? Kept getting funny looks on the bus.’

Her sleek dark hair was parted at the side, so the fringe fell over one eye.

‘We only had a tiny bit,’ Ti said. ‘Please don’t be a cow.’

‘I’m not talking to you, am I? You can eat as much cake as you like, you’re my hero. I’m talking to
this one
.’

Ophelia stared at me, and my cheeks began combusting.

‘
She
gets expelled, for something that you did too, and you’re round here eating
my
apple cake? In your Fairfields uniform?’

‘It wasn’t Rosie’s fault,’ Ti said, while I chewed frantically, grateful that I had a mouthful of cake, wishing that I hadn’t risked a visit.

‘Oh? I thought you said she legged it?’

I felt like crawling under the table, but I couldn’t move.

‘But she owned up,’ Ti said. ‘I told you, it didn’t make a difference.’

‘Yeah?’ Ophelia said, and I nodded. ‘So how come you’re not expelled?’

‘He didn’t believe me.’

‘That’s convenient,’ she said, sizing me up. ‘Some people are just born lucky, eh?’

Ti had got up and put her hand on Ophelia’s arm, and was pleading with her not to be horrible.

‘You don’t deserve her,’ she said. ‘She’s a bloody angel. My heroine!’ Ophelia kissed Ti’s forehead, squeezing her face between her hands, and you would have thought there were eight years between them rather than eight minutes.

She turned away to refill the kettle, water crashing against the bowl, then slammed it back on to its holder, and yanked the fridge door open to find the milk. Everything she did was extra loud, like she overestimated the force needed to move objects.

‘You have to remember, Phe, Rosie’s mum’s ill. She can’t have any extra stress at the moment.’

‘Pffff!’ Ophelia said. ‘She just needs to get some anti-depressants, like Mum did. Take one of them every day, and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘I’d better go,’ I said, because there was no way I could listen again to Ophelia tell me how my mum was just ‘a bit depressed’. But neither twin was paying attention to me. Sometimes it was like that when they were together, all their concentration sucked into the other.

‘You don’t get it, Phe. It’s more than that. Anyway, I told you – I got too close. Rosie told me to stay back, and I didn’t listen.’

‘Bullshit! She just uses her mum as an excuse.’

‘Screw you, Ophelia,’ I said, slipping my feet into my plimsolls.

‘Running away again, are we?’ Ophelia said, reaching into the cupboard for the teabags. ‘Nice one. Good friend you are.’

‘Oh, shut up, would you?’ Ti snapped at her, before following me out.

‘Thanks for coming over to see me,’ she said, as she opened the door, and it was like I was her aunty or a neighbour or something, not her best friend.

‘Yeah, thanks for the cake,’ I said back. Too much had changed too fast, and I couldn’t keep up, and then Ti shut the door, and I hated that she was going back inside to Ophelia who would bad-mouth me all night long.

I wanted the old times back, when Ophelia was wrapped up with Will, and me and Ti were the sisters, and there wasn’t a secret between us. All the way home, I picked Ophelia’s apple cake from my molars, stomach churning as though I’d eaten raw chicken, and I wished very badly I had resisted it.

Twelve

It was late when Dad got in from work. He knocked on my bedroom door in his creased-up tweed jacket and jeans, and for a second I thought he knew I’d been to see Ti, but the timid way he pushed my door open told me I wasn’t in trouble.

‘What now?’ I said, continuing to read my camera manual, as he sat on the end of my bed. If he asked me one more time to put myself in Mum’s situation I would throw the camera at him.

‘I’m sorry you’re having a hard time,’ he said. ‘And I just wanted to remind you that this won’t last forever.’

I stopped reading, and looked at him. Why did he have to be so nice?

‘You’re such a help to me, Rosie, and I know it must be hard, and I just wanted to say thank you for being such a good daughter.’

‘I’m not a good daughter,’ I said miserably. ‘I’m not a good anything.’

‘You’re a good everything! The way you look after your mum and Joe, I can’t thank you enough, Rose. Honestly, I couldn’t manage without you. I’m so proud of the way you’re handling this.’

Oh god. I couldn’t bear it.

‘Ti’s parents have been locking her in the house like a dog.’

‘Oh dear,’ Dad said quietly. ‘That’s not good.’

‘But, hey,’ I said, ‘why stick around when your friends fall on hard times? Better to just move on, find a new crowd, isn’t it?’

‘
Rosie
,’ Dad warned, and I could see how tired he was, how much he didn’t need this, but I couldn’t stand him being grateful to me.

‘No, it’s cool,’ I said, pretending to read again. ‘Who cares about Ti? She’s been kicked out of school now anyway. You can congratulate yourself for knowing a bad egg when you see one. And I’ll soon forget about her. I mean, I’m just a kid, right? I’m just a teenager. What I want isn’t important.’

‘Please don’t be melodramatic, Rosie,’ Dad said. ‘We’re parenting you, that’s all. We want you to make the most of your education, enjoy your time at school. Really, Boo, would it be so bad to get to know some other people? It would be such a weight off if you could just
try
.’

His eyes were so hopeful I could barely look at them. Why couldn’t he fly off the handle now and again, like Fab? Give me something to rebel against. But no, he was holding his arms open for a hug, and I needed it just as much as he did, because I was so disappointed in myself, and I couldn’t handle him being disappointed in me too.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll try. If you stop calling me “Boo”.’

Thirteen

Grease
rehearsals had begun at lunchtimes as well as after school now there were only a few weeks before the end of term, so my hope, as I headed into the canteen was that Charlie, Alex and Mia would be in the Drama block with Chase and all the other theatre minions.

They walked in just as Pat was filling my bowl with chips. Pat was one of the few dinner ladies who’d appreciated the zine Ti and me had made one rainy Wednesday. We’d pushed it under the kitchen door, a little book full of reviews of the school-meal range, with hand-drawn pictures, and it had made her laugh so much she had given us extra food when she served us ever since.

‘Long time no see, my sweet,’ she said, handing me the overflowing bowl. ‘Where’s your sister?’

I shrugged, too embarrassed to explain that Ti had been expelled, or that I’d taken to eating a bag of crisps in the toilet cubicle at dinner time.

Waving a note, Charlie made a beeline for the hot food counter, cutting in front of all the kids in the queue with total confidence. Somehow she managed to make school uniform look like it wasn’t school uniform. I couldn’t work out how she did it. She wore a white shirt and navy jumper and black trousers or skirt like everyone else, but it just looked different.

‘We’re in the play,’ she said to the general area, smiling her sweetest, ‘so we’re prioritized for dinner. Jacket potato and beans, please. No butter. I hate butter. Butter’s
foul
.’

Pat handed her the food she’d asked for, then passed the same to Mia and Alex who had followed with the same requests. Poor them, unable to even enjoy the simple pleasure of butter. The worst thing about seeing them – except for
seeing
them – was that now I couldn’t pour gravy (which was free, and therefore extra delicious) on top of my chips. But actually, who cared? They already tormented me, I might as well take the edge off with a nice load of gravy.

‘Lot of calories in that,’ I heard Charlie say, and so I emptied the jug. Defiantly I picked up a spoon as well as a fork at the cutlery area.

‘Blooooooom,’ Alex whispered, catching up with me as I pushed my tray to the tills. Charlie laughed too loudly, and the flamethrowers started, and it was so odd how sensitive they made my face. I could feel the air passing over every millimetre of it, and I tried to focus on that sensation, instead of what I might look like, or how humiliating it would be to spill what had become a kind of chip soup.

After you’d paid for your food, there were three steps into the main part of the canteen. One time a Year Seven fell backwards down them on his chair, still holding a forkful of his dinner, and the whole room just came alive with laughter. It
was
funny, especially as the kid was fine, but can you imagine if that was you? The kid still gets called ‘chair’ today. Like it’s his name. Like: ‘
Oh, hi, Chair. How are you?
’

‘
Blooooooom
.’

Alex wasn’t letting up, and my bowl and glass juddered a little on my tray. Still I kept my head up like Dad insisted, and looked for a free seat at the end of one of the long tables. The people that designed the layout of school dinner halls definitely didn’t remember what teenagers are like. If they did, they would litter single places round the edge of the room, along with tables of twos and threes, instead of these nightmare stretches of twenty-six.

Kiaru and Alisha glanced at me as I stepped down the stairs and I was musing on how they managed to hold their place smack bang in the middle of the school hierarchy when the world tilted and my chip soup began sliding along my tray. I tried to correct it, but my apple juice had tipped over and the sudden pool of liquid made me jump, and then somehow with a roar in my ears, I was sitting down hard, in exactly the way that it was important not to.

‘Blooooooom!’ went the call, much louder than usual so as to be heard over the cheers and whooping and laughter, and I looked around, with gravy burning my thighs through my tights and hot chips crushed between my fingers to see Charlie, Alex and Mia stood in a line at the top of the stairs, happier than I’d ever seen them – happier than I’d ever seen
anyone
– like my fall was the crowning production of the season. Charlie held her hand out, like she wanted to help me, though she was laughing so hard that she was actually crying, and something came over me, rage I suppose. I took her outstretched hand with my gravied one, and still sitting on the bottom step I gripped for all I was worth, and maybe because she was at the top of the stairs, or because she wasn’t expecting it, I managed to pull her down with me.

She fell on to her knees before Alex or Mia could save her, and her jacket potato – no butter – rolled with a slap into my mess of gravy and chips.

The kids standing to get a better look let out a gasp, and Charlie wasn’t smiling any more. Alisha crouched beside me now, with her hand on my back, and Kiaru held out a fuzzy-looking grey bundle of toilet roll, like Granny used to have, and their faces were concerned, the only ones in the whole horror show not gawking.

‘Psycho!’ Charlie shouted, leaping up as Chase made her way over to us. I wiped my meaty hands unsuccessfully on Kiaru’s ball of tissue, and then we were marched to Kes’s office where I found myself accusing Charlie of pushing me down the stairs in an on-the-spot explanation of my mad-seeming behaviour.

Unable to tell who was lying, Kes gave us each a week of lunchtime detentions, and though I knew Charlie would probably get a note from Chase to say she was
needed at rehearsals
, I was overflowing with relief. Lunchtime detentions meant my parents would be none the wiser.

‘You’re going to be sorry for doing that,’ Charlie said to me, as we left.

‘I don’t think I am,’ I said, buoyed a little from sticking up for myself. ‘I reckon it will always be one of my top five favourite things that I’ve done.’

‘I wonder if it’ll always be one of your mum’s top five favourite things you’ve done,’ she said drolly, and my feeling of security drained from me. ‘Or if maybe she’ll get
really stressed
.’

Fourteen

The chips-and-gravy incident didn’t help with the ‘bloom’ call, but people that wouldn’t normally smiled at me as I went about the school, and I felt like maybe the gammy leg stump I’d been trailing since Ti had left was healing over a touch. Especially when Alisha found me in the chaos that is the end of the school day, and put her hand on my arm.

‘Did you enjoy your dinner?’ she asked, and we grinned at each other, as though we were already friends. Alisha wore a smart grey coat with a thick blue scarf wound round her neck, and with her warm hand still on my arm, I felt sort of spectacular. She hadn’t spoken to me since Year Seven when she told me my Maths textbook was upside down, but I’d always liked her from afar. She and Kiaru seemed kind and clever, like they knew how to have a good time without hurting anyone.

Ti thought they were snooty because they wore pretentious glasses, and had houses on Castle Road, but I found them interesting. They arrived at school together every morning in this sleek black four-by-four with tinted windows, and sat at the front of every class. It impressed me the way that they passed notes and sniggered like everyone else, but never got called out by the teachers because they could answer all the questions too.

‘
Rosie Bloom
,’ she said, and I pressed my lips together, embarrassed by the dumb feeling of pride rushing through me at her attention. When she smiled, her face was even more lovely, her cheekbones high and round, and I felt myself smiling back without choosing to.

‘Can you hang out after school?’ she said. ‘We want to ask you something.’

Linking her wrist through my arm, the way I’d seen her do dozens of times to Kiaru, she led me through the corridors, and outside to the gym, where he was waiting for her.

All the way, she talked about
Grease
, and how she should have been given a bigger part because her singing voice was way better than most of the cast’s, and how Pirate FM wanted to do an interview with the ‘stars’, which was annoying because they were too inarticulate for the radio.

‘Sure, they have faces for TV, but none of them should open their mouths!’ she moaned, and I laughed but all I could really think about was what she wanted to ask me.

Kiaru lifted his chin in the barest minimum of hello, so I didn’t bother smiling. I hoped for a minute to sneak a text to Dad; it was his turn to collect Joey, but he’d worry if I wasn’t back by four. Right now I wanted to seem free and easy, and so I just cruised along beside them, as if I often hung out at other kids’ houses, rather than going straight home to make sure my mum and brother were okay.