“What?” I sat up.
She didn’t move. “You heard me. Not at school, not at home. Just leave me alone.”
“Sasha?”
She didn’t reply.
“OK, school,” I said. There’d been whole weeks when Sasha had decided she wouldn’t talk to me at school, that was almost normal. “But home? We have to share a room,” I said. “You’re my sister,” I said. I was sounding a bit wobbly, I could hear it in my voice.
Sasha said nothing.
It took me ages to get to sleep.
Sasha didn’t talk to me while she got dressed, and she never said a word at breakfast. Although Sasha doesn’t really eat breakfast, she just takes a bit of toast as she walks out. Mum didn’t notice, not because of her book, but because she was on earlies, so I dropped the boys at their school, and walked in with Keith.
“Things still bad?” Keith said. It must have been all over my face.
“Whatever you do, Keith,” I said, “never get all...” I couldn’t think of the word.
“All what?” he asked.
“All I’m never speaking to you ever again,” I said.
“Oh, that.” Keith waved a hand. “I reckon people watch too many soaps. My mum watches them all the time, and even she thinks they’re mad. People are so fickle.”
“Fickle?” I said. “What does fickle mean?”
“Like changing their minds all the time. You know. In those shows they love someone for ever and then fifteen minutes later they’ve forgotten whoever it was who was their absolute and total soulmate, and they’ve decided to bury him alive and have fallen in love with the doctor.”
I smiled. “It was stupid though, wasn’t it, what I did? Gauche. Miss Tunks was right, wasn’t she?”
Keith shrugged. “Bad luck too. But look on the positive side. At least you know Luke is a complete... what did you say? Slug-brain, I think it was...”
“Keith!” I swung my bag at him. “You know, I nearly called him a poo-head too.”
“Poo-head?” Keith stroked an imaginary beard. “I think poo-head fits the boy rather well.”
I smiled. He was right. I wouldn’t want that toe-rag going out with Sasha in a million million years. Maybe one day she’d thank me. One day when we were old and grey....
“Anyway,” Keith went on, “who’d have guessed it would have ended up so soapy in more ways than one. After you dropped that box of Persil I was cleaning it off the floor all day. Came up super-clean though. Actually came up rather too clean. That Mrs Arnold from the flats nearly fell over on it. She could have sued me, she said.”
“The soap powder!” I hit my own forehead in what I hoped was a Homer-style facepalm. “I should’ve helped.”
“You should’ve.” Keith nodded. “But because I am nice I am going to let you off with coming filming this week after school.”
“Yes. Anything. I will do anything, Keith.”
“Well there’s a couple of things I need to ask you about.”
“Go on then,” I said. The bell went off for lessons and everyone got up.
“Well, first of all I’d like to ask your dad about his restaurant…”
“Yeah! It’s perfect! Just right for the scene in the middle! I had exactly the same idea! He won’t mind. Of course I’ll ask him.”
Keith never got round to asking about the second thing because we spent the rest of the walk talking about how Dad’s restaurant would make a brilliant cave-like set, and I said I thought my Nene would make an excellent Caliban without any make-up or special effects.
I don’t know what I was expecting in school. Mondays we always have Form Time and I was sitting with Keith. He was chatting about his film when they came in. I suppose it’s hard not to have a sixth sense about people talking about you, or laughing about you more like, but Christina makes it easy.
She and Shazna were just standing there in the doorway, looking at me and laughing. Their hands were up in front of their mouths, trying to hide what they were doing. Just like babies who think you can’t see them when they’ve got their hands over their eyes. Then I thought, well, maybe they want me to see what they’re doing. They want me to know how stupid I am. I turned away.
They all floated into class. Ruby was with them now, looking at me like I was the lowest form of life, something that hadn’t even evolved. Christina was loud now, to Ruby, so everyone would hear. “Did you hear what Seren did over the weekend? I feel so sorry for poor Sasha.”
“Yeah, well, what do you expect from Seren? She’s like – like a giant idiot.”
I winced. If there had been any chance of some kind of, not truce exactly, not me and Christina being best mates again, just being any kind of mates – then that was over. I was sort of surprised that it still hurt.
I wanted to say something back, but I had done the standing-up-for-myself thing, and look where that had got me. I bit my lip and looked away.
Keith stopped talking, looked at me, then at them.
“Breathe slowly, deeply and slowly,” he hissed. “It’ll make the redness go away.”
“Oh God, I’m not going red, am I?”
“At least you know why they’re looking at you,” he said.
“And everyone else will know why too!”
“Seren, allow it. You can’t let it get to you. They’ll just be worse if they think you care.”
He was right of course.
“Anyway, giant idiot’s not so bad as far as insults go. Try and think about something else,” Keith said. “Think about the film, think about that IT homework I bet you never did, and how you’re gonna have to ask to copy mine.”
The rest of the morning was the same. Christina and her lot doing the wind-up thing, talking about how she would never humiliate her big sister, ever. Then me almost going off, and Keith calming me down.
By lunchtime, I thought I had got through the worst. I had worried that Luke Beckford and his lot would give me a load of trouble. But they didn’t seem to care or notice. I was just some Year Eight girl like hundreds of others. It was a relief to be a nobody. But I had forgotten Sasha and Fay in the dinner hall, giving out dirty looks like Jehovah’s Witnesses give out leaflets.
Keith and me went outside.
“So I see it like a story, obviously. About this girl who’s never been out of her estate, who doesn’t realise there’s this whole world just on her doorstep.” Keith was talking about his film. “But, it’s like every shot is gonna be really beautiful too.”
We were sitting on the old metal bench by the chain-link fence. It was OK at either end but the middle was battered and slightly warped where someone had tried to make a fire underneath it.
Suddenly I realised we had company. I sat up and nudged Keith.
It was Christina and Shazna.
“Lost Ruby?” I said, and wished I sounded less snarky and more cool. Snarky showed I cared.
“We want to talk to Keith,” Christina said, not even looking at me. This girl had been my best friend for years. I couldn’t count the number of sleepovers I had spent in her room, or even the times I’d been to her nan’s house in St Alban’s.
I looked away. Took a deep breath. All last term they’d hated me for being mates with Keith. Now they wanted to talk to him.
Keith took a spring roll out of his plastic lunchbox. “So?” he said.
The girls flicked a look at me. Keith shrugged.
Christina sighed a big overdone sigh and crossed her arms. “Look,” she said. “Miss Tunks says you’re making a film. For that competition?”
“Yup,” Keith said, dabbing a bit of food away from the side of his mouth. Keith is not like some boys who think that shovelling and eating are the same thing.
“She says,” Christina said, “Miss Tunks thinks, you’ll need help and that, and me and Shaz, well...”
Keith shook his head. “No, really, thanks, but no thanks.” He smiled quickly and took a glug from his water bottle. He looked at me. I wondered if he was thinking ab
out the time Christina called him a loser.
Christina folded her arms. “Keith, Miss Tunks thinks you’re good.” There was an edge to her voice. “I mean, everyone knows you know everything about films. And she’s seen your idea.”
I looked at Keith, I couldn’t keep it in. “She has?” I said.
Christina smirked an I know something you don’t smirk, and exchanged looks with Shazna.
Keith was cool. “Thank you, Christina. That’s very kind of you to say.” He closed his lunch box and put it back in his bag. Didn’t look at them, took another drink from his water bottle.
“Keith! Do I have to spell it out?” Christina said. “You’re gonna need help. Actresses? Me and Shaz?” They both nodded. They looked at him and then at each other and then back to Keith.
“Yeah,” Shazna said. “Miss Tunks said, it was sort of like The Tempest and that? And I was Miranda and everything that one time, so I pretty much know the part inside-out already.”
Keith did up the cap on his water bottle slowly and calmly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He took a paper hanky from his bag and wiped his hands. Then he looked up at them.
“I think, girls, that might be a matter of opinion. And as I’m the director, you’ll find that I make the decisions. So, thanks, but no thanks.”
The girls made furious, huffy noises but didn’t go away.
“But I can do it, Keith.” Shazna sounded almost desperate.
“Sorry.”
The girls looked at Keith, utterly gobsmacked that anyone would ever say no to them.
“Actually, wait,” Keith said. “I’m not sorry. Remember last term?”
I flushed, remembering last term, and Christina did too, bright red. She opened and closed her mouth.
“I don’t know why you two would want to have anything to do with me,” Keith said coolly. “I certainly don’t want either of you in my film.”
Christina glared at us. “It’ll be rubbish anyway.” She looked back at Keith. “With her.” She pointed at me. “You know it. You two are pond life.”
Shazna tried her hardest at an evil look, but half her face seemed sort of frozen. I had to try hard not to laugh.
“Yeah,” Shazna said. They linked arms and stalked off.
Keith took another swig of water, cool as anything.
“What did they think? That you’d be so honoured by their offer you’d be grateful?”
“Who knows?” Keith shrugged. “I wouldn’t have those two anywhere near a film of mine. They are bitchy and vindictive.”
“Good word. Vindictive.” I nodded.
“And what’s worse,” Keith went on, lowering his voice as if Christina could hear round corners, “is that thing she does with her hands when she’s on stage, no, scratch that, she does it in Drama too, when she’s acting.”
“I thought it was only me who noticed that!” I said. “It does my head in! She holds her hands flat at her sides like paddles, or like those plastic doll’s hands where the fingers are all stuck together.”
“I know. It makes her look as if she’s made of wood,” Keith said. “And if those two think I had forgotten how they treated us both, they must be mad...”
I watched Christina and Shazna disappear inside the school. I was a bit surprised how good it felt. My KitKat tasted even more chocolatey and delicious than usual.
“So,” Keith said, “I want to get it all shot as soon as possible. The closing date’s in a month and I’m going to need all the editing time I can get.”
“You never told me Miss Tunks had seen your idea!” I said.
“You don’t like Miss Tunks.”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“I’ve said it before, that is so not true.”
“So who are you going to use in the film then, as the Miranda girl?”
“Well, it’s not exactly Miranda,” Keith said. “It’s more like a character that’s sort of inspired by Miranda, grown out of Miranda, not an exact copy just taken straight from The Tempest and stuck in 21st century London.”
“I know all that!” I said. “I did read it. So who’s it going to be? You can tell me, you know.”
From across the other side of the grey tarmac playground the bell whirred for afternoon registration.
“Well, I was going to talk to you about this...” Keith said, getting up.
“So talk now. Tell me it’s not Justine in the other class, or that Tasmin-who-thinks-she-knows-everything, please!”
“Justine?” Keith screwed up his face at the idea. “Give me some credit!” Keith pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Look, Seren, I was worried you’d say no, you’ve been in a bit of a bad way with all this stuff, with Sasha and that. But I was always going to ask you.”
“Me? You want me to be in it?” I felt suddenly very excited and happy. “I mean, I know we’re mates and that, Keith, but this is not just to make me feel better, is it? Cos that would be a mistake, obviously, and it’s not just cos you want to film in my dad’s place? Cos you know I would help out, Keith, even if I wasn’t...” I was gabbling.
“Seren! Listen! No. It’s none of that.” Keith rolled his eyes. “I’m asking you because you would be best. You’re my mate and I can talk to you, sure, and that helps. But also you’re really good at acting.” He took a deep breath. “Now, are you coming to English or are you planning on being late?”
5
THE KUTEST KIDDIE
It was after school. Keith had gone to talk to Miss Tunks about cameras, and I thought he would be better off going on his own. I was off to Dad’s to ask about the café, and still walking on air because I was going to be Miranda. I promised myself I would make Keith really proud.
Dad’s place wasn’t just any café. He always told people it was a bistro, or a restaurant. I thought restaurant was pushing it a bit myself, but seeing as I’d only ever been to Maccy D’s, the bakers by the station, and a caff round the corner from Christina’s Nan’s in St Albans, I didn’t really know. But restaurants on the telly always had candles and those enormous pepper grinders and Dad’s place didn’t.
Dad’s place was proper Turkish like him, and he did really good shish and lamacun (say it lamajzhoon) which is like pizza. He’d also had the inside of it done up like a cave with grey-painted, pretend stone walls. It looked mad, believe. Anyway, that’s why Keith wanted to film some of his film in there, because it was totally bonkers and not like any place that exists in real life.
So I waited at the bus stop, thinking about all this. It was on Mum’s route and I was sort of hoping it would be Mum’s bus. We always had a little chat when she was driving along. It made me feel proud, standing up there near the driver’s bit. Plus it was the one time you could be sure she wasn’t stuck into a book. She had to be in the real world, looking for little kids who just might run into the road, stopping the bus early if there was an old lady who’d not quite made it to the stop.
But it wasn’t Mum who came along, it was her mate Carol. “Hiya love, you up the High Street to your dad’s?”
I said “yeah”, swiped my oyster card, and sat down near the front.
Mrs Gold, one of Mum’s regulars, got on and sat down in one of the priority seats for old people and pregnant women. Mrs Gold smiled at me and asked after Mum. Then her mate, Mrs Morris, got on and Mrs Gold started chatting with her, which to be honest, was a bit of a relief.
I put my earphones back in, but even with my music playing I could hear them laughing and giggling like fifteen-year-olds.
I loved these buses, these little buses that went anywhere – not like the double-deckers. These buses, Mum’s buses, went through all the back streets, crisscrossing the estates. Once I’d got over the stupid idea of Mum smelling of bus, I was really proud. I would wave at her when she went past. Most of the time she was concentrating really hard so she never saw me, but I would always point her out. There’s my mum. I stopped doing that when Christina said it was stupid, she was only a bus driver.
I shuddered, remembering. Mum always said no one was ever only anything.
On the empty seat next to me was the local paper, folded up so you could only read half the headline: Olympics. All the headlines round here had been Olympic this or that for so long it felt funny thinking the Games were actually going to happen.
I shook the paper out and flipped past the latest stories of jackings, school plays, and celebrities opening shopping centres. The only decent thing about our local paper was the problem page, but this week even the problems weren’t as problemy as my life. Not a patch on it: Girl, 13, shunned by sister even though she was trying to do something good.
I turned another page. School Singing Stars Chosen for Olympics. There was Denny’s choir with Denny beaming out from the middle of the photo. Mum would be over the moon.
I took out the page and folded it carefully so the picture was in the middle. They’d even spelt his name right underneath, Denzel Campbell, age 10, and he didn’t look too bad, not like the big-headed, little brother, wind-up machine he could be in real life. I smiled back at the picture before putting the page into my bag. Denny would have it framed, and Mum would tape it up on the flip-down mirror in the front of her bus, next to the one of Arthur dressed up as the Gruffalo when they had Book Week at his nursery last year.
I turned the rest of the paper over. Kutest Kiddie Kontest, it said. Underneath the headline were twenty or so square portraits of kids, some babies but some as old as nine. Keep those entries flooding in, it read. Local photographer in Kingsland Centre this weekend, all welcome! If Arthur wanted to get his picture in the paper, maybe there was something I could do about it.
“High Street!” the bus driver called out. I’d been so busy I hadn’t noticed we’d arrived.
“Thanks, Carol.” I always say thank you to bus drivers, it makes them happy.
The Cave was empty. Mehmet, Dad’s cousin, who’s around twenty and head waiter, was having a cig on the pavement outside.
Brave New Girl Page 4
