Best Friends For Never

by Laura Pearson

  First, Isabel pointed out the statue of the very first headmistress of Crabtree School, Lady Constance Hawthorne. Isabel told Rani about the legend that surrounded the little stone dog that stood at Lady Hawthorne’s feet. Even though he was small and not a live dog, Baron Biscuit had guarded Crabtree School for hundreds of years. It was said that no harm could come to any Crabtree girl as long as the Baron was at his post. He had seen a lot of strange goings-on over the years.

  “Don’t forget to stroke him every morning,” Isabel told Rani. “He brings good luck!”

  “Do you like animals?” Lottie asked Rani, studying her closely. “Do you have any pets? Are you allergic to pets? Are you allergic to anything?” Lottie needed loads of information for the new RANI section in her purple notebook.

  But Rani didn’t want to answer Lottie’s questions. She was too shy. It got very quiet and no one knew what to say.

  For a minute, Zoe felt sorry for Rani. She thought about telling the story of the fox that she had seen that morning: the fox going to the bus stop. That might make Rani laugh. But before she could, a deep voice boomed, “Please don’t be sad, Rani. I am Baron Biscuit, and I like to eat biscuits and sometimes I wee in the school hall. Woof, woof, woof. Bow wow-wow-wow!”

  Rani jumped (they all did), and then she smiled the tiniest of smiles when she realized that the voice of Baron Biscuit was really Ava, crouched behind the statue.

  “A-woofity-woof-woof,” said Baron Biscuit. “Don’t you like animals, Rani? Don’t make me lick you!”

  This time Rani actually giggled. “I do like animals, but I don’t have any pets,” she told Lottie. “I have four brothers and Mum says that’s enough wild things in the house. I wish I had a dog more than anything.”

  Lottie jotted this down in her notebook and nodded approvingly. Wanting a dog was a plus in her book. Lottie had a dog. In dog years Pip was about a hundred and forty years old, but he was still a dog. Zoe thought he was a bit boring, but it was funny when he snored.

  “Zoe hasn’t any pets either,” Lottie told Rani. “Ava has a cat, I have a dog and Isabel has three baby rabbits.”

  “Do you want to meet Lady Lovelypaws?” asked Isabel. “Crabtree School has its very own cat.”

  “Is Lady Lovelypaws a statue too?” asked Rani.

  Lady Lovelypaws was not a statue. She was very much a real live cat. At the sound of her name, Lady Lovelypaws came bounding out of Mrs Peabody’s office and ran towards the girls. She purred and rubbed against their legs and they stroked her fluffy white fur. Lady Lovelypaws could sense when a child was unhappy. She wound herself around Rani’s legs as if to give her a big cuddle. She smiled up at Rani and rubbed her whiskers against Rani’s socks. (Lady Lovelypaws really could smile; she was a most extraordinary cat.)

  “She likes you!” said Ava, whilst Lottie recorded this fact in her notebook. “See, it will be like having your very own cat when you come to school!”

  Zoe knew that it was a kind thing for Ava to say, but really Lady Lovelypaws belonged to all of them, equally. She belonged to every girl at Crabtree School. One cat divided one hundred and fifty-six ways didn’t go very far, if you asked Zoe. But this was probably not a good time to mention that.

  Joined by Lady Lovelypaws, they continued their tour. They showed Rani the school kitchen, where the dinner lady, Mrs Crunch, baked delicious lunches. Mrs Crunch gave Rani a taste of her special apple crumble. She gave Rani’s tour guides each a taste too, which made Zoe feel a little less grumpy about missing break time.

  The girls led Rani through the library, which was two whole floors tall, with ladders to reach the top shelves. Mrs Shush, the librarian, let Rani choose a book. “Come back any time you like, dear,” said Mrs Shush.

  “She means it, too,” said Isabel proudly. “You are allowed to go to the library to get a book any time you want, all day. Even if you are in class.” Zoe could see that Rani was impressed. Finally the new girl was beginning to understand how lucky she was to be at their school.

  Then they showed Rani the big school hall, which had a stage with special lights for concerts and plays. Behind it, there were props and scenery for every kind of show imaginable: there was baby Jesus’s manger from the nativity, Father Christmas’s workshop, a rainbow scene with a yellow brick road, a castle with turrets… Rani stared in awe at the collection of wondrous places. Mr Rockanroll, the music teacher, was playing the piano on the stage, and when he met Rani, he sang her the school hymn.

  After the last verse the girls led Rani out to the playground and showed her the giant tree house where they played their famous Mummies and Babies games. They pointed out the garden patch where the Green Thumb Club grew loads of vegetables. Rani met Colonel Crunch, who was Mrs Crunch’s husband and the school groundskeeper. Colonel Crunch promised to build Rani a giant see-saw when she said that she loved them.

  The girls also introduced Rani to Nurse Forehead, who was putting a plaster on a Reception girl’s bleeding knee and offering her an emergency lollipop. “If you get sick at school,” Isabel said helpfully, “Nurse Forehead has a special room with a bed you can rest on and a warm duvet and she reads you stories until your mum comes to get you. If your throat hurts, she gives you ice lollies.” Not many schools had a nurse quite as special as Nurse Forehead.

  Isabel saved the best for last. The Rainbow Room was absolutely the loveliest place in Crabtree School. When your class got golden tickets for being tidy in the lunch room or quiet in the corridors, you got to go there. The Rainbow Room twinkled with fairy lights and it had a fluffy rug with beanbag chairs to sit on. Lottie showed Rani the old-fashioned popcorn machine in the corner.

  “When we watch films in here we get popcorn, like in the cinema,” Zoe told Rani proudly.

  “What is your favourite movie?” Lottie asked Rani, her pencil at the ready.

  “It’s called Epic,” said Rani shyly. “It’s about a girl who shrinks down to the size of a fairy.”

  “That’s MY favourite movie too!” said Ava. “We have the SAME favourite movie!”

  It turned out that Rani and Ava had the same favourite colour too, which was pink. Rani liked hot pink with sparkles and Ava liked regular pink. Zoe had always liked pink and purple equally, but as Rani and Ava went on and on about pink, Zoe wondered if perhaps pink ought to be her favourite colour after all. Best friends were supposed to like the same things, right?

  They finished up their tour, and by the time morning break was over, Rani had a tummy full of apple crumble, lots of new friends both young and old, and a smile as big as the one on the face of the fluffy white cat following her every move. Even Rani had to agree that Crabtree School was a truly magical place. Ava told her about how earlier in the year, they’d had to make last year’s Year Six class leave.

  “They loved it so much, they wanted to stay forever and ever,” Ava told Rani. “So we made things pretty horrible around here to get them out.”

  Rani probably couldn’t imagine Crabtree School being horrible. The new girl’s sad expression was long gone, and Zoe was glad. She was still cross about not being sat next to Ava any more, but now that Rani knew her way around and wasn’t so scared, Lottie, Isabel, Ava and Zoe could get back to playing Mummies and Babies like they were supposed to.

  By the end of the afternoon, it was clear to Zoe that nothing was going to go like it was supposed to. In the lunch room after morning lessons, Ava had sat down next to Rani without saving room for Zoe. It was the first time in forever that Zoe and Ava weren’t next to each other, but Ava was so caught up in telling Rani all about Crabtree School’s Halloween Carnival that she forgot all about Zoe. Zoe had to sit across from them and it was difficult to hear over the clanging of cutlery and the chitter-chatter of the rest of Crabtree School.

  “I would never want to dress up as anything scary like a witch,” Rani was saying to Ava. “This year I am going to be a princess.”

  “Zoe was a witch last Halloween,” Lottie told Rani.

 
“What’s wrong with being a witch?” asked Zoe loudly.

  “Nothing,” said Rani. “I just don’t like scary costumes.”

  “Me neither,” said Ava.

  This was a strange thing for Ava to say because last Halloween, Ava had gone as a spooky fairy, with a powdery white face and black glitter around her eyes. Zoe had thought Ava looked VERY scary, and it hadn’t helped that she’d kept swooping around yelling “Boo” at everyone. It had been a properly scary Halloween costume, if you asked Zoe. She was going to remind Ava of this, but Ava and Rani were already talking about something else. They were looking down at their lunches.

  “Did you say that you are a veterinarian?” Zoe shouted across the table at Rani.

  Ava and Rani laughed together. “No, a vegetarian!” said Rani. “I don’t eat meat.”

  “Oh,” said Zoe, looking at Rani’s jacket potato. The rest of them had cottage pie. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s part of my religion,” Rani told her. “Also, I like animals too much to eat them.”

  Rani’s religion was called Hinduism. Isabel, Ava and Lottie asked Rani a million questions. Lottie needed a complete list of what Rani didn’t eat. Ham and cheese sandwiches? No. Roast dinners? No, at least not the meat bit. Pepperoni pizza? No, at least not the pepperoni bit. Beans on toast? Yes.

  Isabel wanted to know all about Hinduism, and were there any other rules to it, and by the end of lunch Ava had decided that she wasn’t ever eating meat again.

  “But we love cheeseburgers,” Zoe reminded her. They always went for cheeseburgers before they went to the cinema with their mums.

  “But I love cows too,” Ava had said after thinking it over.

  Zoe hadn’t realized that Ava felt so strongly about cows. Best friends were supposed to know everything about each other, weren’t they?

  After lunch, Mummies and Babies was ruined all over again. Instead of playing properly, during second break everyone stood round Rani, asking her all about her old school and her old city and her old friends. Zoe couldn’t understand why Lottie and Isabel and, worst of all, Ava wanted to hear about a place that could never be as perfect as Crabtree School for Girls. But try as she might, Zoe couldn’t manage to drag her friends away to play. Even Lady Lovelypaws was glued to Rani’s side.

  If you asked Zoe, Rani was turning into a real problem.

  That afternoon, they were all sitting in science class, learning about magnets. Magnets are objects that can be attracted to metal objects, and other magnets. Zoe knew all about them because they had loads on the refrigerator door at home.

  Miss Moody told the class that magnets had both north and south poles. Two of the same poles would push apart from each other, and a north and a south would pull together. Then Miss Moody demonstrated this fact with two big magnets.

  “And so, girls,” Miss Moody concluded, “if I hold the magnets like this, they stick together. So I must have a north pole and a what, girls?”

  Lots of hands went up, including Zoe’s. The answer was easy. But Miss Moody did not choose Zoe.

  “Ava?” said Miss Moody. “North pole or south?”

  Even though she wasn’t near the window any more, Ava must have been daydreaming, because she said, “North Pole. Father Christmas lives at the North Pole.”

  Everyone laughed, even Ava and Miss Moody. Zoe loved her best friend even more for being so silly; they were so different and yet they stuck together so well. She and Ava were like magnets, Zoe thought to herself, like a north and a south pole. So she was delighted when Miss Moody told them about their science homework for the week.

  “Girls,” Miss Moody said. “As you must have guessed, our next science unit is going to be all about magnets. I want you to think of a way to show the class how magnets work, or how we use them every day.”

  Then Miss Moody said something that nearly made up for Year Three’s new seating arrangement. “You can work on your own or with a partner on this, girls,” she told her class. “You can choose whomever you want, just make sure you both contribute equally to the idea. We’ll do our presentations on Friday, so you have a few days to work on this.”

  Zoe leaned round in her chair and beamed at Ava. She was already planning to ask her mum for a play date with Ava after school so that they could work on the magnet experiment. And she knew Ava was thinking the exact same thing.

  The magnetic play date was not to be. At least, not for Zoe. When the girls came out of Crabtree School’s big front doors, Ava’s mum was already there to collect Ava. And not just Ava.

  “I’m taking Rani as well,” Ava’s mummy told Miss Moody, who was at the school gates, shaking the girls’ hands goodbye. “They’ve just moved in across the road from us and her mum is unpacking. I believe her mum rang Mrs Biro.” Mrs Biro was the school secretary.

  Rani lived across the road from Ava? Since when? Thanks to Lottie’s spying, the girls knew all about every family that lived on Crabtree Lane. Whose house had Rani taken? Zoe wondered.

  “Can Zoe come too?” Ava asked her mum. “We need to plan our Christmas project together! It’s about the North Pole!”

  “Surely you have loads of time for that,” said Ava’s mum. “It isn’t even Halloween!”

  “It’s not for Christmas, it’s a magnet project,” Zoe told her, pushing Ava gently aside. “I really need to come to your house today!”

  “Zoe Eloise Ahlberg!” Without the girls noticing, Zoe’s mum had arrived. “Did I just hear you invite yourself to Ava’s house?”

  “It’s OK,” said Ava’s mum. “Normally I would have her, but today I’ve got Rani coming home with us. The Anands have just moved in and her parents are unpacking.” As the mums were chatting, Ava’s little brother, Johnny, had climbed to the tippy top of a crab apple tree. Ava’s mum was trying to pull him down.

  “Maybe another day,” Zoe’s mum told her as she turned to help. Johnny was hanging upside down in the tree pretending to be a bat. Both mummies were trying to untangle him from the branches. In his pram, Zoe’s baby brother, Rafe, squealed with delight and pointed at Johnny. At least someone was happy.

  “Besides,” Zoe’s mum told Ava’s, “it’s probably best just to have Rani. Three can be a difficult number, if you know what I mean.”

  Zoe for one did not know what her mum meant. What was wrong with the number three? Three was a great number. Three snowballs to make a snowman, three wishes from a genie – three was just fine, thank you.

  Then out of the corner of her eye, Zoe spied Lottie and Isabel heading off down the street with Lottie’s mum and her little sister. Isabel and Lottie dragged Lottie’s ancient dog, Pip, behind them. Zoe already knew they were planning to make him a magnetic collar and lead for the science project.

  “But how can Rani come with you?” Zoe asked Ava’s mum desperately. “She doesn’t even know you. You could be a kidnapper! You aren’t supposed to go off with strangers, you know,” Zoe told Rani.

  “ZOE! THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH!” Zoe’s mum smiled at Rani, who was now a bit nervous again and holding Ava’s hand.

  From her mum’s tone of voice Zoe knew that she had a zero per cent chance of changing her mind and a one hundred per cent chance of getting into big trouble if she kept this up. Sadly she waved goodbye to Ava and they headed off in different directions, Ava and Rani still holding hands.

  “Who am I supposed to play with then?” Zoe asked her mum after she’d finished her snack of three apple slices, three string cheeses and three cups of water. (Three really was such a nice number.)

  “Play with Rafe,” Mum said.

  Even though he was still just a baby, Zoe played with Rafe a lot. She played with him so much that his first word had been “seven”. He was the only thirteen-month-old in the whole wide world who could count to twenty. Zoe was proud of him, but Rafe couldn’t help with magnets and he couldn’t replace her best friend.

  Zoe went upstairs to her room. She wondered what Ava and Rani were doing. Maybe they were watching Ep
ic or playing with Ava’s dress-up clothes. Instead of the princess dresses everyone else had, Ava had loads of her mum’s old real-life dresses to play in. Zoe wondered which one Rani would choose. Surely not the black one with the silver sparkles and feathers. That was Zoe’s favourite. And hopefully Rani and Ava weren’t talking about magnets; what if Ava decided to work with Rani on the project?

  Zoe imagined Ava showing Rani the fairy garden under the big tree behind her house. She pictured Ava’s mum serving them both pizza with no meat round Ava’s kitchen table, and then maybe those special ice lollies they always had at Ava’s house, the kind with sprinkles on. Could vegetable-arians eat sprinkles?

  Zoe was still thinking when it began to get dark. The star stickers above her bed, which were arranged in proper constellations just like in the real night-time sky, began to glow. Zoe’s dad had helped her stick them on. He was a scientist who built rockets to go into outer space. He was also very tall, which helped with reaching the ceiling.

  “Zoe! Teatime, darling,” called Zoe’s mum. Zoe could hear her dad and Rafe in the kitchen, and she could smell spaghetti bolognaise.

  But even after she’d had her third piece of garlic bread, Zoe was still thinking about Rani.

  “Rani doesn’t eat meat,” Zoe told her mum and dad. “She can’t eat cheeseburgers. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Who is Rani?” asked Zoe’s dad.

  “Rani is the new girl in Zoe’s class,” said Zoe’s mum. “They moved in across the road from the Hugheses.” Hughes was Ava’s surname.