‘Good colour,’ Eva comments. ‘Very vivid.’
‘It lasts for ten to fifteen washes,’ I say anxiously.
‘Great,’ Eva grins.
‘You look like a freak,’ Mikey says, looking up from his toy cars in the corner. ‘Why d’you want hair like seaweed?’
‘It’s cool,’ says Joey ‘He doesn’t look like a freak – he looks like a goth.’
‘Well, I think he looks like a freak.’
That’s what Kit thinks too when he turns up later to hang out with Joey. His eyebrows shoot up about an inch and he mimes sticking a finger down his throat when Joey and Paul aren’t looking.
‘Sheesh kebab,’ he says carefully. ‘Interesting look, Paul. Very… unusual.’
‘I like it,’ Paul says.
‘That’s OK, then,’ Kit shrugs. ‘I reckon Murphy will, as well.’
‘That’s his problem,’ Paul says.
But all of us know that if Murphy has a problem, Paul has too.
Kit and Joey retreat to the bin-bag cavern to listen to clashy, trashy music.
‘Coming down to the beach?’ Paul asks. ‘Let Krusty play in the surf?’
We trail down to the water’s edge, Krusty skittering on ahead. She thinks she is a dog, not a small tortoiseshell kitten. Her tail swishes from side to side and she chases every bit of windblown seaweed, every fleck of surf. She stalks seagulls, sniffs the breeze.
The water is a wide, shimmering stripe of silver hung beneath a steel-grey sky, with Seal Island just out of reach in the bay.
‘D’you ever go out to the island?’ Paul asks. ‘It looks kind of magical, sitting there. Perfect.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I tell him. ‘We camped there once, Joey and me – on one of the beaches. We couldn’t get to sleep with the sound of the waves crashing all around us and the screeching of the gulls overhead, so we sat up all night and told ghost stories and scared ourselves stupid.’
‘Spooky’ says Paul. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the waves or the gulls, though. It might have been the seal people, shrugging off their skins and dancing on the beach in the moonlight.’
‘What?’
‘Well, you know,’ Paul teases. ‘Some people say that seals are the spirits of people who drown at sea, and that they can cast off their skins and take on human form again in the moonlight…’
‘I’m glad we didn’t know that back then!’ I laugh, but I can’t quite shake off the shivery feeling that Paul’s story has given me.
‘How did you get there?’ he asks. ‘Can you swim?’
‘No way,’ I tell him. ‘It’s too far, and there are currents. No, Jed used to row us out. He’s got an old dinghy.’
‘Seal Island,’ Paul says softly. ‘It’s like the land beyond the sea.’
‘Nah, just a lump of rock with wraparound beaches and scrubby grass – nothing much to do, unless you’re a seal or a cormorant.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Paul shrugs. ‘Islands are magic. Special.’
Paul stands for a long time looking out towards Seal Island, and I wonder if he’s thinking about the days when he lived on Mull. Was that special and magical too? Or did it just seem that way, because he had a mum and a home and a cat called Splodge?
Paul frowns suddenly, picking up some stones to skim. I join in.
‘Be cool if the beach magic really worked,’ I say to Paul. ‘Y’know, the tide wishes, the skimming stones.’
‘It does,’ Paul says seriously. ‘Murphy’s lot have been less full-on lately. And Kit’s been almost friendly.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up.’
‘No. No, I won’t,’ Paul says. ‘I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.’
He looks so sad that I want to take his hand and squeeze it tight, stroke his stupid green hair and touch the pale skin of his cheek. I don’t, of course.
Paul picks up a clump of shrivelled seaweed and starts to drag it about the beach for Krusty to chase. She hunts and pounces, leaps and rolls and zigzags into the surf. When she gets wet, she just shakes herself and carries on, a small, bedraggled bundle of energy.
Paul crouches down to stroke her. ‘Crazy cat,’ he laughs. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you you’re meant to hate water? Didn’t anyone tell you how to be a cat?’
‘She’s the best cat in the world,’ I argue, bursting with pride.
‘She’s nuts. Haven’t managed to talk your mum round about keeping her, then?’
‘No chance,’ I tell him. ‘Mum thinks cats are trouble, all fleas and scratched furniture and stinky litter trays. Maybe Krusty should be your cat?’ It hurts me to say it, but if anyone else is going to look after Krusty, I’d want it to be Paul.
‘I’d like to, Hannah,’ he says. ‘But you can’t just decide who owns a cat, didn’t you know that? It’s the other way round. Cats choose you. And Krusty picked you out, way back, right about when you picked her out of the dustbin, I guess. You’re stuck with each other.’
‘That’s OK by me,’ I grin.
‘Cool. I’m here if you need backup, anyhow. Green-haired misfit, good at opening tins, needs all the friends he can get.’
‘I’m your friend,’ I say.
‘I know you are, Hannah,’ says Paul. ‘I know.’
OK, this should be the moment where he reaches over and kisses me, or looks into my eyes, or pulls me close and hugs me while the breeze whips our hair into a tangle and lashes our faces with saltwater and sand. It’s not happening. Instead, Paul grabs up the clump of seaweed and sprints off along the beach, Krusty in hot pursuit.
I watch him go. A hundred metres away, he leaps in the air, hurdling a big driftwood branch, and something small and black drops out of his coat pocket and flaps down on to the sand. I scuff along the tideline, picking up shells. Beside the driftwood branch, I see a black sketchbook on the sand, pages fluttering.
I pick it up, flick through, scanning page after page of cartoon figures in what looks like a comic-book story. There are three superheroes with cat faces, slanting catlike eyes and pointed ears peeking out through their hair. One of the cat characters looks very like Kit, with a wide grin and dark, spiky hair. Another has stripy hair in mussed-up plaits, just like Joey. The third cat character is small and cute and kittenish, with a blunt-cut bob and hairclips just like mine.
What is it with little cartoon cat faces? They remind me of Kit’s valentine tattoo, but I push the thought away. Paul wouldn’t send a tattoo to my brother. Would he?
‘Did I drop it?’ Paul is right behind me, taking the book out of my hands gently, folding it shut.
‘I just noticed it on the sand…’ I say, but Paul has stuffed the book back into his parka pocket and is already walking away ‘It looks brilliant,’ I tell him. ‘Maybe I could read it sometime?’
‘When it’s finished, maybe,’ Paul says into the wind.
‘I’d like that.’
We collect armfuls of driftwood and pocketfuls of shells, and scratch wishes into the sand with a driftwood stick for the tide to take before heading up to Beachcomber Cottage. Krusty sits on my shoulder, her tail swishing the whole way back.
CHAPTER 16
Mr McKenzie is not pleased. He pulls Paul out of lessons on Monday morning and hauls Jed and Eva in for an emergency meeting. He is holding them directly responsible for the green hair. After all, they have already parented one social misfit (Joey) who is incapable of sticking to the school uniform code. Paul is clearly being led astray.
Paul explains all this in the art room at lunchtime, between sips of Cherryade.
‘Mr McKenzie is not a happy man,’ Paul is saying. ‘He told Jed and Eva to get my hair dyed back to brown, so Jed asked if all dyed hair is against the school rules, and McKenzie said it definitely was. Jed said that in that case they can’t possibly dye my hair back to brown, we’ll just have to wait for it to fade out. McKenzie looked like he might explode. Seriously.’
‘So you get to keep your hair green?’
‘Yup. For now. McKenzie
says there’ll be a new school uniform letter going out after the Easter holidays.’
I shake my head. ‘You got away with it!’
‘Maybe,’ Paul grins, ‘but McKenzie is on my case, and Joey had better watch out too. Apparently, green hair is just one step away from drugged-up, child-eating terrorist.’
‘Understandable,’ I say. ‘This is a man who thinks that minikilts threaten the fabric of society. Sad.’
Paul takes out his folder, slides his painting on to the desktop. He studies it, frowning. It’s finished now – Paul has spent plenty of lunchtimes in the art room this term. I should know. I have too.
‘Like the hair, Paul,’ Miss Quinn says, coming over. ‘Mr McKenzie doesn’t, though. We’ve been hearing all about it in the staffroom.’
‘I bet,’ Paul grins.
She turns her attention to the painting. ‘Finished, then? You’ve got something here. Real feeling. Pleased?’
‘Dunno,’ Paul admits. ‘Something’s not working, but I don’t know which bit. Is it the expressions? The light and dark?’
Miss Quinn peers more closely. ‘Could be a bit of both. Did you work from a photo, Paul?’
‘Just from my head.’
‘That’s it, then,’ she says. ‘It’s powerful, but you just didn’t have all the information you needed. Next time, work from life. The model’s there right in front of you. There’s a portrait competition coming up – why not have a go?’
Paul shrugs.
‘Hannah could model,’ Miss Quinn says thoughtfully.
‘Bad idea,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘You don’t want to be stuck painting me.’
‘Don’t I?’
Two spots of colour flare in my cheeks, but Miss Quinn just smiles and wanders off, sipping her coffee.
‘I’d be a terrible model,’ I protest. ‘The invisible girl.’
‘Not to me.’
Paul gets a drawing board and some big sheets of paper, and I sit back in my chair, one hand fiddling anxiously with the neck of my school sweatshirt. When I steal a glance at Paul, he’s looking right at me, eyes narrowed with concentration. I stop fiddling, suddenly paralysed, fixing my eyes on the wall behind Paul.
Why would anyone want to draw me? I may not be invisible, but I am a girl who plays it safe. I am never likely to dye my hair crazy colours or wear stripy tights and chopped-up shirts to school. I don’t come top of the class for anything, or bottom of the class, either. I blend in, like a patched bit of wallpaper. Paul looks at me and sees the outside stuff – does he think that’s all there is?
Across the table, his rucksack lies open, a heap of books spilling out. One of them is the little black sketchbook full of comic-book characters that dropped on to the sand at the weekend. I remember that Paul doesn’t see anything the way it seems. He has a different slant. To him, I am a wide-eyed cat-girl with twitching whiskers.
‘Miaow,’ I say.
He looks up, grinning. ‘Miaow, yourself,’ he replies. ‘And no, Hannah, you can’t see my sketchbook. Not yet’
‘But I’m in it!’
‘No,’ Paul corrects. ‘You’re not in it. KittenKat is.’
‘KittenKat?’
‘That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Don’t want to read it anyway’ I huff.
‘No, I can see that! Stop moving, will you?’
I find a patch of blue sky outside the art-room window and focus my attention on it. A lone seagull flies past, but otherwise that patch of blue is pretty unexciting.
‘McKenzie really is a maniac,’ Paul says after a while. ‘I mean, there are kids in this school who bully, kids who smoke, kids who drink or steal or beat each other up for a laugh. Trouble is, all that stuff is too tough to prove. Easier to pick on the kid with the funny hair.’
‘He was never going to like it,’ I point out.
‘Kenny Murphy dyes his hair,’ Paul says thoughtfully.
He’s right – Murphy has that carefully streaked kind of look where the tips of his hair are blond, the roots brown. It’s the kind of look that requires a hairdresser, not a bottle of cheap hair dye and an old towel in the bathroom.
‘Blond doesn’t count,’ I decide. ‘Blond stands for young, clean, cool. It goes with shiny shoes and suntans and neatly pressed white shirts. No, it’s green you have to watch out for – and pink, purple, red, blue, orange. Dangerous, dodgy.’
Paul peers over his drawing board, grinning. ‘My days may be numbered with green,’ he says, ‘but there’s a whole rainbow of possibilities out there…’
I shake my head sadly. For some people, there is just no hope.
CHAPTER 17
It’s funny how you can get used to green hair, like you can get used to the idea of a cat who thinks she’s a dog or a best friend who thinks she’s in love with your brother.
By the time we break up for Easter, I’m so used to Paul’s hair it seems like he’s looked that way forever. I don’t know how things are going with the bullying, but two weeks’ break from snotty comments and having a football kicked at you every time you pass has got to be a good thing.
School holidays are a lovely, drifty time of sleep-ins and kids’ TV and lazing around in pyjamas with our favourite CDs playing full blast. Mum and Dad are working, and now that Kit and I are both in high school they don’t bother with babysitters or kids’ clubs. That’s OK. Nobody can tell me off for eating toast and jam for lunch or watching too much Simpsons, and as long as the house is tidy and the washing up’s done by the time they get home, they don’t get stressy.
Today, Kit headed off early with Joey and Eva. Eva is delivering driftwood mirrors, wind chimes and rope-handled treasure boxes to posh craft shops all around the Lake District. She agrees to drop Kit and Joey in Carlisle, then pick them up on the way back through.
It’s the kind of day out I used to love, except that Joey and I never bailed out to the nearest city – we’d stick with Eva and help deliver the driftwood creations, wrapped in white tissue paper, to funny little shops in faraway towns and villages. We’d take one of Eva’s fantastic picnics and stop to eat on the shores of Lake Windermere, or at a waterfall, a park, once even a rocky beach on the Isle of Arran where the sun set in streaks of red and pink. Good times.
Today, of course, I’ve been replaced. I flick through the cartoon channels, munching popcorn, refusing to let it get to me.
When the doorbell rings, I expect it to be the postman or the window cleaner, or maybe Murphy or Tom calling for Kit. Instead, there’s Paul, green-haired and grinning on the garden path, his eyes ringed with eyeliner like a panda, a single black crow’s feather hanging from one plait.
I decide not to mention it.
He is standing astride the weirdest bike I’ve ever seen in my life. The wheels seem to be slightly different sizes, the huge frame is painted in pink-and-turquoise zebra stripes, and there’s a lidded basket in front of the handlebars that looks like something my granny might use to stash away her knitting wool and treacle toffee.
‘Paul! What is that thing?’ I ask. I’m grinning all over my face.
‘Been making it out of old parts that Jed found. D’you like it?’
‘Um… it’s very unusual!’ I bluff.
‘Don’t knock it,’ says Paul. ‘It’s transport! With this little cutie we can go just about anywhere we like…’
‘We?’
‘Yes, we,’ Paul grins. He unbuckles the basket lid and lifts it gently, and there’s Krusty, peering out, her green eyes glinting.
I squeal and grab her, letting her squirm up into her favourite position round my neck, and Paul lets the bike clatter down on the pathway and we go inside. I pour apple juice for Paul and a saucer of milk for Krusty, who laps politely, as though she comes visiting every day.
‘You’re really here,’ I tell her softly ‘This is my house. Maybe yours too, one day, if I manage to bribe my mum. What do you think?’
‘Very nice,’ Paul says, sipping apple juice.
�
�Not you,’ I scold him. ‘Look, Paul, she likes it. She’s very well-behaved. If my mum could just see her, see how good she is…’
‘She’d have a fit,’ Paul says, and I know he’s right. Not fair.
Krusty completes her exploration of the living room, climbs up my body and burrows in round my neck again. I lean back, loving the feel of warm fur against my skin, the flick of her tail across my throat.
‘If beach magic works, how come my mum is still dead against Krusty?’ I ask later, following Paul outside on to the path. ‘It’s not a big thing to ask.’
‘Big thing, small thing, it doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘It works. You just have to be patient. Stuff doesn’t always happen the way you expect it to.’
He hauls the bike upright and opens the basket to put Krusty inside. She turns in a circle several times, then settles down on the fold of cloth inside. Paul fastens the lid.
‘Come on, then, Hannah,’ he grins, pinging the bicycle bell a couple of times. ‘Let’s go to the beach!’
‘Yeah, right!’ I laugh. ‘I’m not going anywhere on that old wreck!’
‘Got something better to do?’
‘No, but…’
‘But what? We’ll go to the beach, then back to the cottage. Eva left an apple pie,’ Paul teases, and I’m done for, because there is no contest between supermarket popcorn and Eva’s home-made apple pie.
Paul stands astride the zebra-striped bike, and I sit gingerly on the saddle, bright pink and terrified because I’ve never been this close to him before.
‘C’mon, then!’ he says, exasperated, grabbing my arms and hauling them round his waist. ‘Let’s go!’ We bump off the kerb on to the lane, Paul standing up on the pedals, me leaning back on the saddle, petrified.
‘No-ooo!’ I shriek, but Paul just laughs.
We fly past a group of little kids kicking a ball about down by the church, and they laugh and point. Boy with plaits, green hair and panda eyes, me hanging on for dear life with my legs sticking out straight. I’d laugh too. I stick my tongue out at them and we whoosh past, and my hair lifts in the breeze and flies out behind me.
Driftwood Page 8
