Not like me.
‘Look, it’s just a five-minute wonder,’ I said, not bothering to hide the scorn in my voice. ‘By next week people’ll be talking about something else. Your mum made a mistake. So what? People do. And you’re not so perfect yourself.’
Celina looked as outraged as if I had slapped her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The secret good deeds,’ I said. ‘Remember those?’
Celina stared me brazenly straight in the eye. ‘What about them?’
‘It wasn’t you who started them.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Celina looked slightly shame-faced, but not much. ‘Now, if you’ve said all you have to say, get out.’
She gave me a shove towards the door.
‘Not unless you come with me.’ I grabbed her arm. ‘Or I’m going to tell your parents where you are.’
Celina tried to pull herself free, but I hung on for dear life.
‘I’m not going home!’ she hissed furiously, doing her best to fight me off. ‘I told you, my mum’s ruined my life!’
‘Oh, stop being such an idiot!’ I snapped. ‘If you do run off again, where will you go? The streets? You wouldn’t last five minutes!’
Glaring ferociously at me, Celina tried to shove me hard with her free hand. I sidestepped and she lunged forward awkwardly. She let out a cry of pain.
‘My ankle!’ she groaned, sinking to her knees and clutching her foot. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle because of you, you stupid fool!’
‘It wasn’t my fault—’ I began.
What was that smell?
Smoke.
I turned my head towards the other end of the room. One of the candles sat on a table underneath a window. A long orange flame was licking greedily at the hem of the curtains.
‘What’s that smell?’ Celina looked round a second or two later. Her eyes widened and she let out a loud scream. ‘Oh, my God! Fire!’
‘We have to get out of here!’ I reached out to help Celina up. ‘Quick, before it gets any worse.’
Celina slapped away my outstretched hand and climbed cautiously to her feet. ‘Don’t be daft!’ she snapped. ‘It’s not that bad. I can put it out with a bit of water.’
I glanced across the room. Flames were creeping up the curtains, and smoke was beginning to billow towards us.
‘We don’t have time for that,’ I said urgently. ‘We have to get out now!’
‘Nonsense!’ Celina began to hobble briskly across the room. ‘I’m not going anywhere—’
‘Don’t you know anything about smoke inhalation?’ I grabbed her sweatshirt and hauled her back. ‘If you breathe in those toxic gases, it can kill you. Come on, I’ll help you outside if your ankle’s painful.’
‘It’s not that bad!’ Celina snapped. ‘I can walk by myself, thank you!’ She tried to pull away from me, but I held onto her. ‘Will you let go, you idiot!’
She began lashing out, trying to hit me. I dodged from side to side, but I still wouldn’t let go. I began dragging and heaving her towards the door.
‘I am not going outside!’ Celina screamed furiously. ‘I don’t want my parents to know where I am!’
‘So what are you going to do?’ I panted, ducking her flailing arms. ‘Stay here and get burned to a crisp? Or die of smoke inhalation? It affects your lung tissues, you know.’
‘What are you, some kind of part-time fire-fighter?’ Celina shrieked.
‘We did a project on fire safety at my old school,’ I shouted back. ‘So I know what I’m talking about.’
Celina didn’t look at all impressed. She grabbed a chunk of my hair and pulled it hard, and I yelled out in pain.
‘If you’d just let go of me, I could put it out in two seconds!’
‘IT’S TOO DANGEROUS!’ I roared. Managing to free my hair, I leaned away from Celina and wrenched the front door open. ‘You’re coming outside with me, whether you like it or not!’
Celina didn’t like it. We fought and wrestled our way out of the door, Celina resisting every inch of the way. As I was manhandling her out onto the porch, the blazing headlights of a car turning onto the drive made us both look round. I took advantage of the distraction to slam the door shut behind us.
‘Oh-h-hh!’ With an utterly dramatic change of mood, Celina slumped on the doorstep and burst into noisy tears. ‘My ankle! My ankle! I can’t walk – I think it’s broken!’
‘What?’ I stared at her in stupefaction. ‘You said it wasn’t that bad!’
The car had stopped, and people were jumping out. It was Chloe and her parents.
‘Celina!’ gasped Mrs Maynard, who was the double of Chloe, right down to her skinny frame and make-up overkill. ‘What’s going on?’ She stared at me. ‘Who are you?’
I ignored her and turned to Mr Maynard. ‘Your granny flat’s on fire,’ I gasped. ‘You need to call the fire brigade.’
Chloe’s dad stared at me for a minute in open-mouthed amazement. Then he ran over to peer in through the window by the front door. He groaned in disbelief, and then pulled out his mobile phone.
‘Celina!’ Mrs Maynard was frowning from her to Chloe as the cogs in her brain finally began to turn. ‘Have you been hiding out in our annexe?’
Chloe stared sheepishly down at her feet, biting her lip. Celina ignored her.
‘Oh!’ she wept, clutching her ankle. ‘I’m in agony! Someone get me a doctor!’
‘Celina!’
We all looked round. The mayor and his wife were racing across the road from the house opposite, calling their daughter’s name. Their faces were alive with relief and concern. As they reached Celina and both flung their arms around her, lifting her to her feet, I drew back into the shadows.
‘Where have you been, you naughty girl?’ Mrs Patel sobbed. She looked very unglamorous in a green towelling tracksuit which had seen better days. ‘Don’t you know we’ve been sick with worry?’
‘What’s happened, John?’ The mayor looked round at Chloe’s dad, who had just clicked his mobile phone shut.
‘Celina was hiding out in our granny flat,’ Mr Maynard said with a frown, ‘and it looks like she’s somehow set the place on fire.’
‘Oh, don’t be cross with me!’ Celina blubbed, collapsing to the ground again. ‘I hurt my leg, and it’s really painful! I think it could be broken!’
So that was her little game, was it? At last I had realized. Pretend to be more seriously hurt than she actually was, and so get out of any responsibility for almost burning down the Maynards’ granny flat. And running away and putting her parents through hell. I had to hand it to Celina. I’d never met anyone so thoroughly aware of how to turn every situation to her own advantage.
‘You’re a very lucky girl, Celina,’ Chloe’s dad went on. Unexpectedly, he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the glare of the security light above the garage. ‘If it hadn’t been for this young lady here, you could have died.’
‘Yes, she’s a heroine!’ Mrs Maynard proclaimed loudly. ‘We saw the way she got Celina out of the house. She practically had to carry her because Celina couldn’t walk.’
‘Well done, Sunita,’ said Chloe, and she actually gave me an awkward kind of hug. ‘You saved Celina’s life!’
I stared around at them. ‘But I didn’t—’ I began.
Celina had stopped crying pretty quickly. ‘No, she didn’t,’ she said sharply. But her words were lost in Mrs Patel’s hail of sobs as she dashed forward and caught me in a huge embrace.
‘Oh, thank you!’ she wept. ‘You saved my precious baby!’
‘You’re a very brave girl, Sunita,’ the mayor said in a voice choked with emotion. ‘My wife and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts. John, whatever damage Celina has caused, we’ll pay for it all.’
‘Just a minute!’ Celina protested in a furious, high-pitched voice. ‘Sunita didn’t save me!’
‘No, I didn’t, really I didn’t,’ I agreed, but my voice was lost amid the loud protests of Chloe a
nd her parents, and the wail of the fire engine heading our way.
‘Of course she did!’ declared Mrs Maynard. ‘We saw everything!’
‘I know you and Sunita don’t like each other, Cee,’ Chloe added earnestly, ‘but you ought to say thank-you.’
The look on Celina’s face was priceless. She really was trapped. If she told the truth, her parents would find out that she’d been fighting with me because she wanted to stay hidden. And she’d have to let on that her ankle wasn’t as bad as she was making out. She wouldn’t want her parents to know any of that. But if she didn’t tell the truth, then I would get all the credit.
I could see various emotions flit across Celina’s face before she made a decision. Looking as if she was sucking a lemon, she stared down at the ground.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered through her teeth.
‘But—’ I began again.
Everyone ignored me as the fire engine screeched to a halt at the kerb. As the firemen jumped down and began unfurling the long rubber hose, I could stand it no longer. Silently I backed away down the drive. No one noticed. I longed with all my heart to be safe at home, and to forget that any of this had ever happened.
‘That was the local newspaper on the phone, Sunita.’
Mum came into the living room, where I was snuggled on the sofa under a duvet. There was nothing wrong with me, but Mum seemed to think I needed pampering. ‘They wanted to know all about how you rescued Celina. It’s going to be front-page news tomorrow.’
I groaned. I wanted to bury myself under the duvet and never come out again.
‘It’s all right.’ Mum sat down on the sofa beside me. ‘I told them I didn’t want you to be interviewed so I gave them all the information they needed. And I’m afraid they did ask about your dad, but I just said the situation was the same.’ She stroked my hair as I dropped my head into my hands. ‘It wasn’t too bad, Sunita, honestly.’
‘That isn’t what’s bothering me,’ I muttered. My face was bright red. Somehow, out of nowhere, I had become a heroine. When I’d got home I hadn’t mentioned what had happened to Mum. I wasn’t planning to either. However, a phone call from the mayor to see if I was all right after my ‘ordeal’ put an end to all that. The Patels and the Maynards had already talked to a reporter from the local newspaper by then, so it was impossible for me to tell them what really happened.
The twins had got very over-excited and raced around the house screaming that I was a heroine, and Mum wanted to know why I hadn’t told her, and Mrs Brodie, who was here having a cup of tea, said all sorts of lovely things about me. It was terrible. I felt a total fraud. Now Mrs Brodie had gone home and the twins were in bed, and Mum and I were alone for the first time since it all happened. I knew what I had to do.
‘Mum,’ I said haltingly, ‘if I tell you something, will you just listen? Don’t say anything till I’ve finished.’
Mum looked surprised. ‘If that’s what you want,’ she agreed.
I started at the beginning, on my first day at Coppergate, when Mum and the twins had walked me to the bus stop and I’d seen Celina for the first time. I told her about my feud with Celina, and how I’d started the secret good deeds, and the way everybody at school had joined in. About Celina standing up in assembly and taking all the credit and how it had made me feel, how I’d wanted to get my revenge. Then I stared down at the duvet, unable to look Mum in the eye, as I explained how I’d found Celina by chance and I hadn’t saved her life at all, that we’d actually been fighting with each other, and everyone had just got the wrong idea …
When I’d stopped speaking, there was silence for a moment. I took a breath and dared to look at Mum for the first time. My tummy twisted and churned as I saw that she had her head in her hands. Was she really disappointed in me?
‘Mum?’
Mum took her hands away. She was smiling, even though there were tears in her eyes.
‘Sunita Anand!’ She reached out and gave me a big hug that almost knocked the breath out of me. ‘I just can’t believe what a truly amazing person you are!’
‘I don’t feel very amazing,’ I muttered, hiding my face in her shoulder. ‘Everyone thinks I’m a heroine, and I’m not really.’
‘Oh, yes you are.’ Mum hugged me tight. ‘You got Celina out of danger, even if you had to do it by force.’ I felt her body shake as she began to laugh. ‘You could have left her behind, after all!’
I couldn’t help laughing myself then. ‘I did think about it.’
‘And after everything else that’s happened …’ Mum shook her head. ‘I wish you’d told me all this before, Sunita. But there’s one thing I do know, and that is, you are definitely a heroine in every sense of the word.’
I felt a warm glow steal over me.
‘And it looks like Celina has got what she deserves,’ Mum went on. ‘I don’t think she’ll be bothering you again after this. Do you?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ I lay back against the sofa cushions, realizing what this meant. I had a chance to start over again at Coppergate, and be accepted for who and what I was. I wouldn’t be dragging what Dad had done around with me, like a heavy burden on my back. I would be free to be myself.
‘Make way!’ Zara called importantly, brushing a couple of Year 7 kids aside without ceremony. ‘Clear the decks! Can’t you see there’s a heroine on her way into school here?’
I thumped her shoulder. ‘Stop it, will you? It’s bad enough with everyone staring, as it is.’
‘Well, they’ve never seen a heroine before,’ Henry chuckled, pretending to dust the door handle before waving me through into the Year 7 corridor. ‘Do come in, Your Highness.’
‘Please stop,’ I wailed. It was like my first day at Coppergate all over again. Everyone’s eyes were on me as I walked into the playground on Monday morning. They had all seen Saturday’s local newspaper with its front-page headline: MAYOR’S DAUGHTER RESCUED FROM BLAZE BY SCHOOLGIRL!
‘No chance,’ Zara declared, her eyes gleaming. ‘I’ve never been friends with a heroine before, and I’m going to milk it for everything I can get.’
I grinned. ‘Look, enough of the heroine stuff. You both know what really happened …’
The newspaper article had brought Zara and Henry scurrying round to see me on Saturday afternoon, hardly able to believe their eyes and ears. Of course, I had told them the real story.
‘That just makes you even more of a heroine in my book,’ Zara said firmly. ‘The temptation to leave Celina behind must have been enormous.’
‘Sunita!’
I turned to see Chloe Maynard waving and smiling and nodding at me as if she’d been my best friend for ever. Danielle, Jyoti and Jack Browning were with her. They looked slightly sheepish.
‘Are you OK?’ Chloe chattered brightly, putting her hand on my arm. ‘I just wanted to tell you that Cee’s fine. Her ankle wasn’t broken, just a bit of a sprain, but her mum and dad are taking her away on holiday today. She won’t be back till the beginning of next term.’
‘Too ashamed to show her face,’ Zara muttered in my ear.
‘You were pretty brave, Sunita,’ Danielle said grudgingly.
‘Yeah.’ Jack cleared his throat. ‘Well done.’
‘So how are you, Sunita?’ Jyoti chimed in. ‘You didn’t get hurt too, did you?’
‘I’m all right, thanks.’ I wanted to be cold and stand-offish, but I couldn’t. I didn’t care enough to act that way any more.
Chloe smiled brightly at me. ‘We were wondering if you wanted to hang out with us for a bit?’ she offered.
I smiled. ‘That’s really nice of you,’ I said with sincerity, ‘but I have my friends.’ I nodded at Henry and Zara. ‘See you around, though.’
‘Well!’ Zara exhaled loudly as the three of us walked off towards the classroom. ‘Did you or did you not just turn down the chance to join the biggest bunch of drama queens in the whole school?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m already a heroine,’ I said jokin
gly. ‘I don’t need any extra drama in my life.’
As Zara, Henry and I walked into class, there was a burst of applause. I blushed, especially when I saw that Mr Arora was already at his desk and was joining in enthusiastically.
‘Well done, Sunita,’ he said, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘It’s very uplifting to know that I have a heroine in my class.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I mumbled, ‘but I wouldn’t mind if nobody mentioned the word “heroine” again today.’
‘Get used to it,’ Mr Arora said with a smile, and sat down to take the register. Later, when everyone else had lined up to go to assembly, he called me over to him.
‘The rest of you go on ahead,’ he said as I stood by his desk. He waited until the classroom was empty, then turned to me. ‘I just wanted to congratulate you on how well you’ve settled into the school, Sunita,’ he began gently. ‘I know it hasn’t been easy for you. And now you deserve every bit of praise and credit that you get.’
‘Sir,’ I blurted out, desperate to stop him, ‘I think there’s something you should know.’ I hadn’t planned on telling him the real story of Celina and the fire, but it just seemed the right thing to do.
Mr Arora listened in silence. ‘Sunita, I agree wholeheartedly with your mum,’ he said firmly, when I’d finished. ‘You got Celina away from danger. Whether she came willingly or not is irrelevant!’
‘Do you think so, sir?’ I said, knowing that Celina didn’t see things in quite the same way.
‘And anyway, isn’t there something else you should be proud of too?’ Mr Arora raised his eyebrows at me. ‘I’m talking about the secret good deeds, of course.’
I couldn’t stop a giveaway smile from lighting up my face. ‘How did you know it was me?’
Sunita’s Secret Page 15
