Emily shakes her head, as if she can’t quite believe it. ‘You are so out of order on this,’ she says. ‘It’s not a game!’
Shannon just laughs, flicking back her long golden hair. ‘Of course it’s a game,’ she says. ‘And like every game, there are winners… and losers. I don’t have to explain which of the two you little freaks are.’
Emily pushes back her chair, gets to her feet, and Sam stands on my other side, his fingers curled round mine. I hold Shannon’s gaze, and she is the first to look away, flustered and huffy.
We leave our lunches and we leave Shannon… we walk away and don’t look back.
We’re not freaks – we’re friends.
No charges were made, no formal complaint was lodged, and Miss Bennett had my statement, on record, saying that Mr Hunter was a cool, kind teacher who never put a foot wrong that I could tell.
All the same, Mr Hunter never came back to Kinnerton High. Miss Bennett said he’d put in a transfer to finish his training year elsewhere, and that perhaps it was for the best.
He didn’t even get to say goodbye.
It’s almost Christmas now, and things are very different. We have a new English teacher, Mr Rae, a grim-faced fossil in a nylon shirt, with a taste for garish cartoon-print ties. Needless to say, nobody is crushing on him.
Not all of us have forgotten Mr Hunter. We’ve started work on a new issue of S’cool, to be published in the spring. Shannon said she had better things to do than mess about on some saddo magazine, so Emily is the editor now. Jas is still involved, plus lots of the old team, along with random kids from Years Seven, Nine and Ten. We work on the magazine every Friday, after school in the library, with Miss King and Mrs Hanson to supervise.
I’m still seeing Sam Taylor. His foot is better now, and he has moved on to yet another style of hat, a simple black beanie worn with a couple of band badges pinned to the side. He wears it with a flapping black jacket, an Arab scarf and a pair of skinny black cords, and he looks almost normal, for Sam.
He has yet another band too, but this one is different. It’s real.
It all kicked off in the music room. Sam was telling Josh Jones he wanted to try a twenty-first-century indie/jazz band with a rockabilly-meets-skater feel, and Josh just laughed.
‘Forget the rockabilly-meets-skater bit,’ he said, hammering out a jaw-dropping solo on the school drum kit. ‘Why don’t we just get our line-up together and see what happens?’
Sam opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again.
‘We?’ he echoed.
‘Why not?’ Josh said, chucking his drumsticks in the air and catching them again. ‘It might be fun.’
‘I can play the guitar,’ Emily said, looking up from her work. ‘And sing, a bit…’
‘I’ve got my grade five piano exam,’ Sarah piped up.
‘My brother’s got a bass guitar,’ Robin chipped in. ‘That’s a line-up, just about. Does the band have a name?’
I rattled my tambourine and winked at Sam. ‘We’re thinking of calling the band My Secret Boyfriend,’ I said with a grin.
Sam laughed and Emily rolled her eyes, but Josh said it was brilliant, perfect, cool. We may look like a mismatched bunch to outsiders – Josh and Robin, the swotty, serious boys, Sarah the shy, arty girl, Sam with his hat and his sax, and Emily, who has just dyed her hair purple and started wearing smudgy black eyeliner that gives her the look of a multicoloured panda – but hey, we don’t care.
We practise every Monday and Thursday night, in the music room, and we’re getting pretty good. Miss Bennett asked us to play at the Christmas disco, so she must think so too.
How about Shannon?
Well, she didn’t waste time hanging around on the sidelines. She latched on to Nisha Chowdhury, a quiet girl with waist-length plaits who always reminded me of an Indian princess dressed up in Kinnerton High School uniform, beautiful, mysterious, sweet.
Shannon picked out Nisha the way she once picked out Emily, the way she once picked out me… I guess she had a knack for spotting the quiet kids who wanted to be cool but didn’t quite have the confidence to make it happen. Kids who’d go along with just about anything she said.
I was a charity case, an experiment, exactly the same as Emily… I just didn’t see it at the time. Of course, in the end, I stopped saying yes to everything Shannon suggested and started to be myself, and that was the end of the friendship.
It’s Nisha’s turn now.
Within a fortnight, she’d cut her gorgeous hair and had it layered and streaked with red, and pretty soon she was wearing bum-freezer miniskirts and little white shirts, along with shimmery gold eyeshadow and hi-gloss pink lippy. These days she totters about after Shannon on her new spike-heeled shoes, laughing at every joke, fluttering her soot-black lashes at the Year Nine lads even as her marks go down the pan and her teachers shake their heads in despair.
I can’t blame Nisha, of course. She wants her moment in the sun, her moment of being cool, cute, cutting edge. I wouldn’t swap with her, though, not for a million quid. Last week I saw the two of them in town, chatting to some older lads in a beat-up old car. They were laughing and flirting and sipping cans of cider as the car stereo blared out rap music.
Shannon is heading somewhere I really don’t want to follow, a world where I know I’d be way, way out of my depth. Sometimes, I wonder if even Shannon doesn’t feel that way too.
One day towards the end of the Christmas term, just after the three-thirty buzzer, I’m walking up to the lockers to get my tambourine for band practice when I see Shannon. She is leaning back against my locker, smiling, twisting a long hank of corn-coloured hair round and round her fingers.
‘Ginger,’ she says. ‘Haven’t seen you for ages. How’s it going?’
It’s six weeks since Shannon’s party, six weeks since our friendship fell apart, but when she switches on her megawatt grin, time peels away like nothing ever happened.
‘It’s going great,’ I tell her. ‘Seriously.’
‘Yeah? You’re still with Sam? I never thought that would last. No offence, Ginger. You have to admit, he’s a little bit weird!’
I sigh. ‘Yes, I’m still with Sam.’
‘And he finally got a band together.’ Shannon frowns. ‘Who knew? Everyone says they’re – you’re – pretty good. Imagine.’
‘You can see for yourself, at the Christmas disco,’ I tell her. ‘Should be fun.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be going,’ Shannon says carelessly. ‘You know what these school things are like. They’re just so… well, lame. No offence. All the teachers lurking around checking the orange squash hasn’t been mixed up too strong, that kind of thing. So childish. Ben said he’d take me to a gig in town, instead.’
‘Ben?’
‘I ditched Andy Collins,’ Shannon explains. ‘I’m seeing Ben Tyler, now, from Year Ten. Now he is cute.’
‘Right.’
I used to think Shannon was the coolest girl in the world, but right now I’m struggling to remember just what I saw in her. Did she ever see me as a friend, an equal, or just an obedient lapdog, a wide-eyed audience-of-one for all her wild, wonderful ideas and exploits? It’s not exactly rocket science. The only surprise is that it took me so long to figure it out.
I reach past her to open my locker, take out the tambourine, and Shannon steps to one side. She slides a scarlet envelope from her pocket and hands it to me, my name written carefully on the front in gold pen.
‘I got you a card,’ she says, almost shyly. ‘You know, with it being Christmas and everything.’
‘Oh!’ I take the card and open it carefully, drawing out a beautiful card that sparkles with glittery snowflakes. For Ginger, best friends forever, she has written. Lots of love always, Shannon. There is something smooth and heavy in the envelope still, and my breath catches as I tip one half of the little silver heart necklace out on to the palm of my hand.
I don’t know what to say. I try for a smile, but my eyes mi
st over and I have to blink back tears.
‘I miss you,’ Shannon says. ‘It’s not the same, is it, any more?’
‘No, it’s not the same,’ I tell her.
It’s better in lots of ways, but I can’t tell Shannon that. I have real friends now, friends who listen, friends who care, friends who like me for who I am. If I’m honest, though, there is a part of me that misses Shannon.
‘I’m sorry about all that stuff I said,’ she says quietly. ‘About Mr Hunter. I was angry, I was upset, and I guess I wanted to hurt him. I didn’t mean to hurt you too.’
‘No?’ I ask.
Shannon looks guilty. ‘Well, maybe a little. I’m over it, now, though. No harm done.’
I shake my head. Shannon doesn’t get it, she really doesn’t.
‘I see Emily’s dyed her hair purple,’ she goes on. ‘Honestly, what does she think she looks like? Josh, Robin and Sarah… Ginger, they’re so dull. Why don’t you hang out with me again? Like old times.’
‘What about Nisha?’ I ask.
‘What about her?’ Shannon says. ‘She’s OK, but you’re my real friend. Think about it. Ditch the freaks.’
I smile, slipping the card inside my school bag.
‘Have you ever seen a fox?’ I ask her abruptly. ‘A wild one, I mean. Have you ever stroked one?’
Shannon wrinkles her nose in disgust. ‘Foxes are smelly, dirty, flea-ridden things,’ she says. ‘Yuck. Vermin. What are we talking about foxes for?’
I laugh. There are some things I could never explain to Shannon, not in a million years.
‘I’ll always be your friend,’ I tell her. ‘I like you, a lot, even though you hurt me. It’s just that I can’t be the kind of friend you want me to be – I have to be honest, I have to be myself, and you do too. We can’t turn the clock back. We’re heading in different directions, Shannon.’
‘Does it have to be that way?’ she asks. ‘I miss you, Ginger.’
‘I miss you too,’ I say.
I turn away from her, my cool, confident, golden-haired friend, and walk along the corridor towards the music room, towards the ‘freaks’ who have turned out to be better friends to me than Shannon ever was. As I get closer, I can hear Josh crashing away on the drums, Sarah picking out a tune on the keyboard, Robin strumming his bass, Emily singing softly into the mike. Above it all, the sound of the saxophone soars, wild and wonderful and full of life, full of hope.
I think of Sam, with his crooked grin and his beanie hat jammed down over unruly hair, his addiction to peanut butter, gherkins and blue lemonade, his great lip action. I smile, push open the door to the music room and go inside, leaving Shannon behind.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Ginger Snaps
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Ginger Snaps
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
GingerSnaps Page 15
