Scarlett

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘You did?’ Holly says, aghast.

  ‘Well, it was only a baby tooth. Probably.’ I frown. ‘That was the end of school number two. Mum packed me off to stay with my nan in Milton Keynes – school number three. I only lasted there a term. Nan said I was a hooligan and I needed some firm discipline, and she sent me to stay with my Uncle Jon. That was school number four, my first secondary. I was there for six months, but I got suspended twice.’

  ‘Jeepers,’ says Holly.

  ‘Then it was back to London, to Greenhall Academy, which was a nightmare from start to finish. So getting worked up about school number six – well, why bother? It can’t be all that long till the summer holidays start, and there’s no way I’ll be sticking around much longer than that. I mean, it’s hardly worth turning up at all.’

  I glance at Holly through narrowed eyes to see if she’s up for a day’s skive, but her jaw drops at the very idea.

  ‘You have to go in,’ she protests. ‘It’s school!’

  ‘Yeah, it’s school,’ I echo. ‘When does that bus come, did you say?’

  ‘Half eight,’ Holly says. ‘Any minute now.’

  ‘OK.’ I grin. ‘Look, I’ve left my pencil case behind. Don’t want to be in trouble before I even start – I’ll run back for it. Won’t be long!’

  I turn back down the lane, walking briskly – as briskly as you can on three-inch wedges, anyway. They are out of their tiny minds if they think I am going to school today. Primary school? I’m sorry it’s just not happening.

  Secondary is bad enough; you spend the day shaking hands with teachers and filling in forms and being shown about by geeky kids keen to get you involved in chess club and maths club and after-school sports. Great. Primary though, that’s a million times worse. Gym class in your knickers, star charts for good behaviour and lunchtime recorder lessons? No thanks.

  ‘Scarlett, wait!’ Holly yells after me. ‘You’ll miss the bus!’

  ‘Maybe,’ I call back to her. ‘Maybe not. Don’t stress, Holly!’ I turn the corner, scramble over a bit of tumbledown wall and duck out of sight in the trees. I stand still, listening, and after a few minutes I hear the school bus draw up further along the lane. The engine idles for a few minutes, so I guess Holly has made it wait. Eventually it revs and then fades, and the morning air is still again.

  I sit down on a fallen tree trunk and text Mum, asking her to relent and let me come home. There’s no reply. I eat some crisps left over from yesterday’s packed lunch and play Snake for a while on my mobile, surprised at how calm and peaceful it feels to be sitting alone in the dappled green light of the woods.

  I’m sleepy now, which isn’t surprising because I haven’t slept properly for days. I could curl up on the forest floor in a nest of leaves and bracken, or I could sneak back to Dad’s, slide under that patchwork quilt and sleep the day away in comfort. I venture out of the woods and clunk back down the lane to the cottage. With any luck, Clare will be busy mixing up cauldrons of soap in the workshop and Dad will be plugged into his PC doing webby stuff, and I’ll be able to sneak upstairs unnoticed.

  Fat chance. The front door squeaks as I slip inside, and I get no further than the third step before Dad’s voice says quietly, ‘Scarlett? What exactly is going on?’

  I try the line about forgetting my pencil case, but Dad isn’t fooled. His lips set into a thin line, so I smile my infuriating smile, just to wind him up a little more.

  ‘I’ll take you myself,’ he says grimly. ‘I should never have trusted you to go on the bus.’

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ I protest. I really don’t, not just because I’m tired, but because my tummy is doing backflips with the crisps and the muesli, and the ache in my chest from yesterday is back. It’s probably a virus, or a rare kind of allergy – to school.

  Dad doesn’t care. The Morris Traveller rattles through the lanes, Dad gripping the wheel in stony silence as he delivers me to my fate. He keeps it up for a whole five minutes before caving in.

  ‘OK, Scarlett,’ he says, his face creased and frowny. ‘I know your mum went back to her maiden name after we split up, and she told me you were using the name Murray too. Actually, though, you’re still legally Scarlett Flynn. I thought it’d be easier if I enrolled you at Kilimoor as that. OK?’

  No, Dad, that’s not OK. I don’t want your name. I don’t want to be part of your poxy new family.

  ‘Whatever.’ I shrug.

  Joining a new class mid-term is not easy, despite what I said to Holly. It takes guts to walk into a place you’ve never been and act like you couldn’t care less. People know you’ve got a story, and they’re hoping it’s a juicy one. They can’t wait to weasel it out of you. A broken home? Cool. Excluded from your last school? Wicked. Weirdo, freak, loser? Tell me about it.

  I’m used to it now, of course, but you have to be cool, you have to be calm, you have to play it right. You have to make an entrance.

  That’s what I do, all right. Dad drives right into the playground and screeches to a halt just as the bell for break peals out.

  Kids swarm out of the school towards us, then stop, gawping. I can see Holly, with her mile-wide grin and her shining face. I can see a geeky girl and a lanky, ginger-haired boy, but the other kids seem very young. They are amused by my wedge sandals, my fluffy rucksack. They whisper and point at my ketchup-coloured hair.

  I look around the playground for a stone to crawl under.

  Dad starts explaining my late arrival to the teacher, Miss Madden, who peers at me over her glasses, looking faintly horrified. She dredges up a smile.

  ‘Miss Flynn,’ she says, and I can’t help wincing at the name. ‘A11 the way from London, so. Well, I’m sure you’ll settle right in.’

  I’m sure I won’t.

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ I say.

  The wedge heels don’t help – I am head and shoulders taller than every other pupil in this dump. I feel like a lion that’s mistakenly wandered into the small furry-animal enclosure at the zoo. I don’t fit.

  OK, all I have to do is roar loudly and they’ll back away, but the more those kids laugh and whisper in their weirdo sing-song accent, the more it feels like I’m the one who’s nervous.

  Small children can be very, very scary.

  Holly appears at my side, brown eyes reproachful. ‘Did you really forget your pencil case?’ she wants to know.

  ‘Not my pencil case, my flick knife,’ I growl, and watch her eyes widen. ‘Joke, Holly, OK? I don’t carry a flick knife. You shouldn’t have made the bus wait, y’know. I’m not worth it.’

  ‘I think you are,’ Holly says.

  ‘More fool you.’

  The bell rings for class and the geeky, dark-haired girl appears at my side. ‘You’re Scarlett, aren’t you?’ she says. ‘I’m Ros. I’m in Sixth Class too. Perhaps we can be friends?’

  Do I look that desperate? Probably. I trail inside and flop down in the window seat beside her. The lanky, ginger-haired lad in the seat behind drags his desk back a little, in case I have some contagious disease that’s passed on by eye contact. Terrific. He has to be the other Sixth Class kid.

  I blow him a kiss, which makes him blush beetroot with disgust. Makes me feel better, though.

  ‘Good morning, Scarlett,’ Miss Madden says crisply. ‘Welcome to Kilimoor. We’re a very small school, and that’s bound to feel strange after the high school you’ve just left in London, but I’m sure you’ll fit right in!’

  ‘Fáilte, Scarlett,’ the class chorus. ‘Dia duit, Scarlett!’

  I look blank.

  ‘It’s Irish,’ Ros whispers in my ear. ‘They’re just saying welcome, and hello.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I scowl, and Miss Madden gives me a sour look. Yup, I’m settling in fine.

  By lunchtime, I’ve ploughed through four pages of maths and completed a geography worksheet on rainfall, all without major disaster. Maybe, just maybe, I am going to be able to handle this place. How hard can it be? It’s not just a primary school, i
t’s the tiniest primary school in the known universe.

  So what if I’m a lion trapped in the small furry-animal enclosure? They’re lucky to have me. My roar is returning by the moment.

  Ros, Holly and I eat our sandwiches on the grass, next to the playground where the smaller kids are legging it around with footballs and skipping ropes. The lanky, ginger-haired kid comes up and sits down beside us, shooting me black looks.

  ‘This is Matty’ Ros tells me. ‘He’s in Sixth Class too.’

  Matty downs a ham sandwich in just one mouthful, glowering. I wink at him, which makes him blush purple all over again.

  ‘You think you’re so cool, don’t you?’ he huffs.

  ‘Cooler than you?’ I laugh. ‘Well, yeah, just a bit, Carrot Boy!’

  ‘You’re not so tough,’ he says. ‘You’re just a wimpy, city kid.’

  Holly looks indignant. ‘Scarlett was expelled from her last school for starting a food riot,’ she declares proudly. ‘She’s not wimpy, OK?’

  Somehow, having Holly as my cheerleader strikes me as a bit sad.

  Matty glares. He roots around in the bottom of his rucksack for a bit, then draws out a small, crumpled, cylindrical package and sets it on the grass. Ros, Holly and I watch in silence as he unwraps the package to reveal a small, wizened cigarette, slightly bent.

  ‘Ewww,’ Holly says.

  ‘Think you’re tough?’ Matty challenges. ‘Prove it!’

  My heart sinks.

  I’ve been here before – and I didn’t like it. When I was staying with Nan, my friend Ria nicked some ciggies from home and the two of us hid in the school toilets, trying them out. It was disgusting – I coughed so much I nearly choked. A passing teacher heard me and we were hauled up in front of the Head. Ria said the ciggies were mine, and that I’d forced her to try them – the Head believed her.

  Nan was furious. She packed up my case and put me on the next bus to Oxford, where Uncle Jon met me with a face like thunder. I didn’t touch a single ciggy while I was there, but Uncle Jon was always sniffing my breath and checking my fingers in case they were getting yellow. He was still stressing out over all that when I got sprung climbing in the window after an evening in the park with my friends. It was gone eleven, hours past my curfew. I got grounded for a month and went kind of stir-crazy, and one night when I was mad at Uncle Jon for confiscating my CD player, I chopped my bedroom curtains into little pieces with Aunty Kay’s dressmaking shears.

  Whadd’ya know, it was back to London, faster than you could say snip, snip. Matty wants to know if I’m tough. He has no idea.

  ‘So?’ Matty asks now, offering me the crumpled, ancient ciggy.

  ‘Nah, I’m trying to give up.’ I shrug.

  ‘You’ve never smoked in your life,’ he says slyly.

  I’d like nothing better than to light up that fossilized little ciggy and blow toxic smoke rings right into his pasty face, but he’s just not worth the hassle.

  ‘Look,’ I sigh, rolling my eyes. ‘Ciggies are strictly for losers. Bad breath, yellow fingers – no thanks.’

  ‘Knew it,’ Matty smirks. ‘You’re chicken.’

  I don’t like being called chicken – especially not by a lanky, carrot-haired saddo who thinks that smoking is the height of cool.

  I stick out my tongue at Matty, and his eyes just about pop out on stalks as he spots my stud. I have instant bad-girl status, top quality.

  ‘Wow,’ Holly breathes.

  ‘Is that for real?’ Matty splutters. ‘You’re only twelve. How did you get a pierced tongue? Didn’t your parents go mad?’

  ‘My friend Em’s brother works in a tattoo studio,’ I explain. ‘He did it. Em told him I was sixteen – I don’t think he believed it, but he turned a blind eye. My mum went kind of crazy, but it was too late by then.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’ Ros wants to know.

  ‘Not much,’ I lie.

  ‘Cool,’ Matty breathes. ‘Way cool.’

  My roar is almost back to full strength. Back in class, Miss Madden hands out Gaelic workbooks and asks Ros, Matty and the older kids to work on exercise fifteen.

  ‘You’ll be needing the basics, of course, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘You can work with the little ones.’ She throws me a bright, false smile that feels like ice and hands me a worksheet titled ‘Clann’. It is illustrated with drawings of a man, a woman, a girl, a boy and a baby, labelled with weirdo names like athair, máthair, mac, iníon, leanbh.

  ‘Clann means “family”,’ Ros whispers in my ear

  I open my pencil case, pick out a crayon and scribble across athair’s face.

  I can’t be certain, but I think Miss Madden is going around the room asking people about their families. Perfect. Dad told me she knows all about me. Doesn’t she know I don’t have one? Has she picked out this worksheet on purpose? I look at her smiling, chirpy face and my fingers itch to slap her.

  I’m finding it hard to concentrate on the page. My throat aches, and there’s a lurching feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m not well, seriously. I need to lie down in a darkened room, possibly for the rest of my life.

  ‘Ah… Scarlett, conas atá tú?’ Miss Madden asks.

  I have no idea what she is asking. I can barely follow her accent when she’s speaking English, let alone Gaelic. I shake my head.

  ‘Conas atá tú, Scarlett?’ she repeats, teasing me. ‘An bhfuil tú go maith?’

  My head aches. I can’t make sense of anything she says.

  ‘She says, how are you?’ Ros whispers. ‘Are you all right? Say something!’

  ‘ I’m a bit hot,’ I mumble, and a ripple of laughter spreads out around the class. Of course, I was meant to say something in Irish.

  ‘Oscail an fhuinneóg,’ Miss Madden says, smiling. Why can’t she leave me alone? She may as well be speaking Cantonese. She grins prettily, nodding towards the window.

  ‘The window,’ Ros hisses in my ear. ‘She says, if you’re hot, open the window!’

  I lean across to fiddle with the catch and let the big, metal-framed window swing open. I look out of it longingly, across the little playground, the neat daisy-sprinkled grass where we sat in the sunshine just half an hour ago. Then I drag my eyes back to the classroom.

  ‘An bhfuil biseach ort?’ Miss Madden says.

  Why is everyone looking at me? I lean back in my chair, staring at a fixed point just above the blackboard, wondering why it keeps going out of focus. Something that feels a lot like panic is forming a small, hard knot inside me.

  ‘Miss Flynn?’

  I shove my desk so hard it topples over on to the floor. A gasp spreads out across the classroom like a ripple on water, and Miss Madden’s eyes look like they might pop.

  ‘What are you doing, Scarlett?’ she asks, switching back to English rapidly, but by then there is no going back. I step up on to my chair as the class looks on, gawping. My wedge heels make a clopping sound as I balance on the window sill before ducking through the open window and dropping down on to the grass.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Miss Madden calls out as I stride across the grass, tearing the worksheet into shreds as I walk. Ripped paper flutters out behind me like confetti.

  ‘Scarlett Flynn!’ she screeches. ‘Come back here!’

  I reach the gate and turn slightly, my head held high. The sun is warm on my back but there’s a slight breeze, and my head feels clearer than it has all day. Miss Madden is hanging out of the window, calling the name of a girl I can barely remember, a girl who no longer exists. Behind her the class have gathered in a pale-faced clump, fascinated. They seem very far away.

  I walk out through the open school gates and don’t look back.

  The trouble with Kilimoor is that there’s nowhere to run to. The main street doesn’t have one single normal-looking shop, just an alarming egg-yolk yellow pub called Heaney’s Bar, which seems to have a post office and greengrocer’s attached. There’s a sweet shop that sells sherbet lemons and pear drops straight from the ja
r and a dusty craft shop selling Aran cardigans and harp-printed tea towels.

  I fish out my mobile, hold it at arm’s length and take a picture of myself cross-eyed, tongue lolling. Messed up again, I text Mum. Coming back 2 London. Scarlett x.

  Not that she’ll be bothered. She still hasn’t called.

  I find a bus stop, count my cash and wait half an hour for a tiny minibus to appear.

  ‘I need to get to Knock Airport, please,’ I say to the driver. ‘Do you go straight there or will I have to change?’

  ‘Ah, now,’ he replies. ‘I’m going the other way.’

  ‘To Dublin?’ I ask, because I know you can get ferries from there. The driver just laughs.

  ‘No. You’re about as far from Dublin as it’s possible to be,’ he says. ‘Now, you could take the bus to Castlebar, and change there for Knock, but the Castlebar bus went an hour ago. And if it’s Dublin you’re wanting, you’d best take a bus down to Galway and pick up a coach going east. The Galway bus goes from over the road, by Heaney’s. You’ve just missed it.’

  My face falls. ‘Is there another one?’

  ‘Friday,’ shrugs the bus driver. I stand on the pavement and watch him drive away.

  I slump into a little cafe that has red-and-white checked tablecloths and order a bottle of pop and a cheese sandwich for later. The woman at the till squints at me suspiciously.

  ‘You’re not local,’ she says. ‘On your holidays? Staying nearby?’

  I push three quid across the counter, ignoring the questions. After all, I am on the run.

  Ah, no, pet, you need euros,’ the woman says, pushing back my pound coins. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  I panic. Nobody told me the money was different in Ireland. Can you get euros with a cash card? If not, I am in deep trouble. I need a bus ticket, a plane ticket, a way out of this nightmare.

  ‘I’ll leave it,’ I say. ‘I’m not really hungry.’

  There’s a racket in the street outside, a horribly familiar racket. I duck out of sight behind a potted palm as the Morris Traveller looms past, gasping to a halt across the street. Dad gets out, white-faced, scanning up and down. He starts going in and out of the shops, grimly, one by one. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that the word is out about my Great Escape.