by Judy May
To Audrey Doherty, aka Bangles,
for all we’ve enjoyed together.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
DAY ONE
DAY TWO
DAY THREE
DAY FOUR
DAY FIVE
DAY SIX
DAY SEVEN
DAY EIGHT
DAY NINE
DAY TEN
DAY ELEVEN
DAY TWELVE
DAY THIRTEEN
DAY FOURTEEN
DAY FIFTEEN
DAY SIXTEEN
DAY SEVENTEEN
DAY EIGHTEEN
DAY NINETEEN
DAY TWENTY
DAY TWENTY-ONE
DAY TWENTY-TWO
DAY TWENTY-THREE
DAY TWENTY-FOUR
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
DAY TWENTY-SIX
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT
DAY TWENTY-NINE
DAY THIRTY
DAY THIRTY-ONE
DAY THIRTY-TWO
DAY THIRTY-THREE
DAY THIRTY-FOUR
DAY THIRTY-FIVE
DAY THIRTY-SIX
DAY THIRTY-SEVEN
DAY THIRTY-EIGHT
DAY THIRTY-NINE
DAY FORTY
DAY FORTY-ONE
DAY FORTY-TWO
DAY FORTY-THREE
DAY FORTY-FOUR
DAY FORTY-FIVE
DAY FORTY-SIX
DAY FORTY-SEVEN
DAYS FORTY-EIGHT, FORTY-NINE & FIFTY
DAY FIFTY-ONE
DAY FIFTY-TWO
DAY FIFTY-THREE
DAY FIFTY-FOUR
DAY FIFTY-FIVE
DAY FIFTY-SIX
DAY 6
DAY 7
DAY 8
JUNE 12
About the Author
Copyright
DAY ONE
I have NO friends. None. Count them.
It’s OFFICIAL since last night, and I can’t even feel angry any more these days. I don’t feel anything now, it’s like having pins-and-needles in the places where I used to feel happy or sad. I mean, God, you’d think that I could make one person like me after six months here. I can’t believe people are still pissed off that I had lunch with Danny from chemistry when I didn’t even know he’d been that girl’s boyfriend for the last million years. I think they just like having someone easy to hate. Possible Solution: I need a brother, or even another sister to hang out with, and maybe then I’d get to be the ignorer for a change. And I could tell them things and they’d have to behind her. Or a parrot! That would do the job, and I could go all super-geek and teach it to say,
‘Poppy girl, you are the best person ever in the whole history of everything!’
Only except Mindy would sneak up to it at night, and re-train it to worship her.
OK, BRING IT ON! Chapter one million of the moan-fest! Why not? Even my old friends from the city haven’t called or written back in forever, so I have to write in this or I’ll go properly, grown-up mental and start talking to the sheep AND (as if we needed further proof of my defectiveness) it’s not like this notebook is some wonderful pink and silver job like Mindy has with butterflies in the corners, but I think I ripped out most of the bits that had old homework notes.
I bet I could go the whole summer without talking to one single person.
LIST OF POSSIBLES FOR ME TO TALK TO:
Mum (way too efficient)
Dad (way too jokey)
Mindy (away for weeks)
Trug the sheepdog (limited conversationalist)
Dad’s Cousin Adam who lives with us (too weird)
Adam is OK, but not exactly what you’d call normal, what with the way he talks so loud like he’s always standing in traffic and the way he doesn’t eat or wear anything not officially, by-the-book, organic and ethical. Super-weird for a farmer. I hope he doesn’t wonder why he can’t get a girlfriend.
Tonight I am going to iron my hair to make it go straight (my hair-straighteners are another thing that got lost in the move), and put in lemon so it will go from light brown to blonde. If I look better, then they might forget that I don’t talk the same or have the right clothes. What worked in the city doesn’t look good here for some weird reason. I was hoping that writing in this would make me feel better, but I now actually feel worse, which I didn’t think was possible. Last night’s COMPLETE DISASTER was something that belonged on a sit-com end-of-series special, and has me doomed to cringe every fifteen minutes until the end of time itself.
The main reason it hurts is because I really made a huge effort, and thought it would be amazing and I’d finally have friends. Mum should have told me that they wear jeans and stuff to dances here, after all, she did grow up in the countryside. And that way I wouldn’t have turned up looking like a Christmas catalogue compared to the rest of them. An hour can feel like a year; one hour exactly, standing at the side of the badly-decorated school hall in my stupid short, red dress and high heels and no one even said ‘hello’ back when I said ‘hello’! After that I just waited in the ladies’ toilets until Adam collected me. I was there for ages in the end stall, hoping no one would guess it was the same person in there all the time. At one point I heard my favourite song playing and couldn’t even go out for that. Mortification with a capital ‘M’. I think I will just stay in my room until I am seventy when half the people from last night will have lost their minds or be dead. And I am NEVER wearing that red dress again.
DAY TWO
More grief. Much more! I am only writing in this hoping it will stop me feeling sick every time I think about it. It’s like a nightmare or something that should be happening to someone else. In school for the last few weeks they’ve been talking about ‘The Farmer’, asking, ‘Is The Farmer coming?’ or, ‘Have you seen what The Farmer is wearing today?’ I’ve been wondering who The Farmer is, but was too shy to ask anyone. Then today just before geography class, I worked out that it’s ME. God, they so hate me!
I felt so stupid and so nothing that I ran home right after geography without telling anyone, and hid in my room until the time I usually get back, when I crept out and came back in through the kitchen all noisy and clattering about. Since then I’ve just been lying on my bed, going over and over it all in my head. The Farmer.
The Farmer! Why can’t they find another torture-victim and just leave me alone for once?
I just keep imagining we’re back in our old home. I know Dad was sick of the accounting thing, but I’m still in shock and amazement that he got Mum to stop lawyering. I think they saw a reality show about leaving the luxury of the city and living off the land, and bought into the whole hype.
And as if I needed even more hassle (I mean, why stop until I’m friendless, homeless and hairless?), I burned my hair a bit last night and it still stayed curly, especially because I had to wash it again because the lemon was so sticky and made me smell like a pancake.
I keep pretending I’m OK, but really I feel like I will break. Will they stop if I break?
I bet some of them have never even been to the city and still they call me ‘The Farmer’. I tried telling Mum and she said not to take them seriously or they’ll win. I tried to tell her that they already have won, but she was busy matching socks. Even socks are more important than me.
LATER
I asked Dad can I join Mindy at the French summer school and he said ‘no’ and something about maturity. She is only two years older than me and she went two years ago so it’s not fair. Nothing’s fair. It’s all Mum and Dad’s fault for moving us. They don’t even care that they have ruined everything.
DAY THREE
Dad is immersed in his book on trees again and says
that the long double line of trees that are on the way to school is made up of elm trees. I would never admit to liking anything around here, but I do love how the double line of them makes a sort of roof, like a grand palace. When I walk under it I pretend I’m a magical, royal creature of the woods. I know that’s stupid and like I’m seven or something, but it’s the only way I can stand going to school.
Today I ate breakfast during the walk, because the breakfast table was unbearable again with everyone talking about the farm and the problems, and Dad eating half a pig’s worth of bacon over his notes, and Mum pretending to have a headache so Adam will leave her alone about the non-organicness of the coffee.
I can fit two slices of peanut-butter toast into my pocket, made into a sandwich so it doesn’t go mushy all over the lining. Today I pretended it was doused in a mystical power-giving potion that would make me say and do all the right things, and then finished it quickly before I got to the main road so no one would see. I was reminded it was really only peanut butter when that massive girl with the loud voice and blue eyeliner tripped me up on my way in the gate. I didn’t even get my mandarin orange back because it rolled under a teacher’s car.
They are having a field day now that Mindy’s not around to even pretend to care.
Only three days to go.
DAY FOUR
We had a free class because the English teacher said that we could use the time to get to be better communicators. It was SO obvious that it was because she couldn’t be bothered teaching us anything new and because she wanted to read her book. (It’s the sort of book that would never get on the curriculum from the look of the muscley man on the cover.) So we had to talk to someone in the class we didn’t really know and find out about them and their family and what they liked doing. I looked at Barbara Montague because I always thought she might want to be my friend once she knew me, or at least not ignore me, but everyone just talked to their mates and Miss Phillips didn’t notice that I sat there all class just watching people talking. I did try to say something to Matthew Blondel, but he just looked embarrassed and moved away, and it’s not like he’s the most popular guy in school.
In exactly 1,192 days I will be eighteen. Then I will move to Paris and become wonderful, and get re-married every two-and-a-half years to richer and richer men, and live in bigger and bigger houses until I wind up in the palace at Versailles. I will be a sculptor and a musician and a writer, and have more friends even than shoes, and that will be hundreds. Please let that be true, please don’t let me be here on my own while Mindy has a life.
DAY FIVE
Today was a good day. I walked slower than normal so I didn’t get to the school road for ages and Barbara Montague was dropped off at the crossroads at the same time. I said ‘hello’ because I am an idiot and still always say ‘hello’ even when people blank me, but today she asked me what I was doing for the summer holidays. I was so floored that I couldn’t think of anything and so I said,
‘Not much.’
Then she told me all about how her family was going to an island off the west coast of Africa and how they had horses and dirt bikes and a swimming pool there. I think she just asked me about my summer so she could show off about hers, but I’d want to tell everyone if I was going somewhere fantastic, so I understood. It’s the first time in ages that I had someone to walk into school with, even if she did dump me for a group of girls in the year above as soon as we got near the cloakrooms. It’s an OK start.
Mindy always speeds up whenever we get to the gate so she can talk to guys she likes without her sister there getting in the way.
I told Mum and Dad about Barbara and her holiday and Mum suggested maybe she’d let me go with them for a couple of weeks, and so I know she really doesn’t get that I don’t have any friends. She thinks it’s like before when I had loads of friends in my old school. I wish I could go back and maybe live with one of them.
DAY SIX
I nearly died today, and I’m so glad that it was the last day of term. I am too furious even to cry. I still can’t believe it. It is MENTAL. Mum went behind my back last night and phoned Barbara’s mum (who she sees at yoga) to suggest that I go with them to the island to keep Barbara company. Then her mum went and asked Barbara who said ‘no way’, that she didn’t even know me. And then Barbara’s mum lied to my mum and said that she already had a friend going and that there wasn’t enough room for anyone else.
And then it was all around the school, which is how I know the whole story, and people were pretending to ask me on holiday with them and laughing. Also, no one told me that you are allowed to wear your own clothes on the last day of term so I was the only one wearing school uniform.
The good news is that it can’t get any worse. And the bad news is … that it can’t get any worse.
I didn’t want to go back along the main road after school in case I bumped into Barbara, so I went the long way home by the library and took out this home-study kit for learning French. In our class we don’t start French until next year and I really need to get going sooner than that, I might get rescued and whisked off to Paris any day now (yeah, as if). I wish I thought of it before, I could have been listening to the audio stuff on the walk to-and-from school. Mindy always listens to music when she walks with me and sometimes she gets to borrow Mum’s bike and cycles on ahead of me, so it’s not like I was crazy-busy doing anything else.
Going the long way round meant I had to pass the Egg Farm. Of course Mr and Mrs Granger were there, and of course they yelled at me, screaming,
‘What are you doing on our land?’
But I wasn’t, I was just on the edge of the road. Weird because they’ve met me before when Dad took us around for an introduction, but they were nasty then too. I think that’s why they work with chickens, because they can’t work with people. They are like storybook baddies, with him all heavy and red-faced, and her stick-thin and wringing her hands together that way. Except they don’t have ‘redeeming features’, which book-baddies always seem to have. They’re fairly hilarious, not that you’d ever dare laugh or they might, I don’t know, set a pack of rabid chickens after you.
Anyway I was so depressed that even they couldn’t make me feel any worse. I am giving up and will just go and lie in a field until someone scrapes me up and sends me somewhere.
DAY SEVEN
Dad took the lambs away today and put them back in the sheep field, although you couldn’t really call them lambs any more. They get boring once they’re big, so I wasn’t bothered. It’s funny how me and Mindy sometimes do get along, like when we would tie a string around the lambs’ necks and walk them like little dogs and get them to jump over fences and things. But that was weeks ago, and now they are like sheep and only eat. Even giving them bottles became a pain when we had to do it three times a day. I do like looking at all the cows and sheep in the fields, but you get used to that too. It’s not all that thrilling living on a farm, not like I thought it would be when they first told us. I think I will ask Dad can I have something new and original like a snake or a chinchilla or a duck, just to see his reaction, but he will probably say it’s too dangerous. I wonder how mature he’ll say you have to be to own a duck.
I just sat on my bed all day listening to the French course, learning basic phrases. If I land in Paris tomorrow I will be fine for fruit tarts and hotel rooms.
***
I wish someone would ask me how I am.
DAY EIGHT
I brought a blanket into the greenhouse and some stuff to kill the woodlice and earwigs. It is now not nearly as bad as it was before. Then, because there is nothing else on the planet for me to do, I fixed the broken bit of glass with a wooden tray from the kitchen, which I have never seen anyone use. One really good bit is the way I can see the summer cattle-field from the greenhouse. I must find a chair to bring in.
During lunch (one more meal a day to suffer through now that it’s the holidays) Adam said that two little boys and their mother are mo
ving in to the house at the far side of the summer cattle-field. I bet they find this greenhouse and wreck it with stones. Adam said I could spend the summer babysitting for their mother who isn’t well, and he even said it like it was a good idea, which is part of his mental-ness.
That made Mum ask me what I wanted to do for the summer and I didn’t dare open my mouth in case she got busy organising, so I said
‘I don’t know.’
I say that a lot.
Then, even though I was eating in a way that made it obvious that I didn’t want a conversation, she said what a pity Barbara already had a friend going with her to the island. Mum really super-size doesn’t get it. I think the coffee wrecked her brain a long time ago. She bought me something unwearable in town, and I said thank you and did a pretty good pretend smile.
I worked out that most days I say about fifty words out loud (but always in a nice, polite voice, not sulky or looking for attention – Mum and Dad really stamp down on ‘tone’). When you include ‘pass the milk please’, and ‘sorry’ and all the ‘I don’t know’s’, that’s not a lot of things said. There’s a gazillion words inside me, they just seem to get stuck on the wrong side of my mouth. I get scared that I will make people angry or make them not like me, unless I pretend to be OK and say OK things.
DAY NINE
My cousin Jen phoned and said she will not be coming over this summer so now there is only Paris in four years to look forward to. In town with Mum earlier I waited for her outside the post-office and saw that friend of Barbara’s who is not in our school, who I think is called Emma-Jo. A few months ago I saw them and their mothers together in the café, and Barbara gabs on and on about how her friend Emma-Jo is going to be famous some day. So I’m adding one-and-one together and getting this blonde girl.
