Seriously Sassy

by Maggi Gibson

  ‘You’ll never guess what happened right after you left,’ Cordelia gasps as soon as we’re out of earshot. ‘Magnus kept trying to get away from Megan. I mean he obviously did NOT want to be with her.’

  ‘Well, why was he kissing her, then?’ I ask, surprised.

  ‘Oh, they were playing Spin the Bottle,’ Cordelia explains. ‘That was just a dare! But afterwards she kept throwing herself at him… ’ She pauses, her eyes wide. ‘So he walked out! And she stormed upstairs.’

  Cordelia perches on the little kiddy‐swing. ‘Like we weren’t much bothered cos that’s SO like Megan. Anyway a crowd of us all piled out to the back garden cos Beano said he’d seen a shooting star. Then someone said that Megan had locked herself in her mum’s en suite bathroom and Sindi‐Sue went all Omigod I hope she’s all right!’

  Cordelia does a funny impersonation of Sindi‐Sue in a panic, and I smile.

  ‘So she went rushing off and started banging on the door, telling her to open it and not do anything stupid. Course we weren’t there – like we were still out in the garden – but APPARENTLY Sindi‐Sue was getting really hysterical so this big guy forced it open! And they found Megan… sitting on the floor… all tear‐stained with these little brown bottles all around her –’

  ‘You mean she… ’ I gasp.

  ‘Like I said,’ Cordelia sighs, ‘we were in the garden staring up at the sky. First thing we knew about it all was when this ambulance came flying into the street, blue lights flashing and everything. Course we all rushed round to see what was up. Just in time to see Megan getting wheeled away on a stretcher, her face all ghostly white!’

  I stare at Cordelia, and I swear my mouth is hanging so wide open you could float a great blue whale straight in. I mean, how sad and mixed up do you have to be to get so upset about a boy?

  ‘And is Megan OK?’ I ask at last, a sick feeling tightening its fist round my tummy.

  ‘I really don’t know.’ Cordelia frowns. ‘It wasn’t like we could stay around to find out. But I had this dream last night.’ Her voice goes mystic and distant. ‘And it was like I saw her in hospital, in intensive care, just lying there, staring.’

  Cordelia’s gone now and I’m up in my room again, strumming my guitar.

  I think about Megan for a while, and I feel really, really sorry for her. Then my thoughts drift to what Cordelia said about Magnus.

  Apparently he went up to her just minutes after I left and asked where I was. And Cordelia lied and said I’d gone home cos I was tired, and he said, ‘Well, that’s a shame, cos I saw her come in and she was looking really cool. She should wear her hair straight more often.’

  Cordelia watched me carefully as she told me this. I felt my colour rise.

  ‘Sassy!’ She grinned wickedly. ‘You do still fancy him, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ I admitted. ‘If there’s nothing between him and Megan.’

  I pick out a few chords and try to make up a new song – about a boy who swims like a dolphin. But I can’t block out this image of Megan all tubed up, lying on a hospital bed, a little machine going beep beep beep above her, and I feel so bad.

  I mean, I’ve always wanted revenge for her Crime Against Sassy, but I never wanted her to end up in hospital. I’m not that vengeful. A little accident, probably involving her hair, which she is really, really vain about – like the hairdresser messing up and her coming out with it luminous green, oh and totally frizzy. That was the worst I ever wished for.

  The thing is me and Megan go way back. We met at nursery. At the water‐play basin. I’d just put Diver Dan on top of his diving board and she immediately whacked him into the water, which every three‐year‐old knows is just not acceptable.

  Anyway I clobbered her and made her nose bleed and she scratched me and made my hand bleed and all the water went red and swirly and she was howling and I was howling and then we were Best Friends forever. Blood Sisters even.

  Until Primary Seven, that is.

  Suddenly my mobile beeps and I dive for it. It’s Taslima. And guess what? Megan phoned Taslima half an hour ago, and she’s absolutely fine! This big whoosh of relief rockets up through me.

  According to Megan, it was all a silly misunderstanding. She’d eaten nothing but boiled eggs for three whole days so she could get into her fave dress for the party, and then she’d been SO ravenous she’d gobbled a bumper bag of spicy salsa crisps and a whole pile of strawberry laces – not to mention a couple of cheese strings – then suddenly she had this HUGE tummy ache, so she’d gone into her mum’s bathroom and was trying to get some Tummy Soothers from the medicine cabinet when she went all dizzy and knocked all her mum’s pill bottles on to the floor and that’s when someone burst the door open and everyone freaked out completely and next thing she knew she was in hospital trying to convince them not to pump her stomach. What a complete and totally‐blotally FIASCO!

  I’m so glad she’s OK. I really did not want her to die.

  Before she rings off, Taslima asks if I’m still feeling OK, you know, about the Magnus thing. And I say it’s cool, which it is. Cos compared to dying, getting juice spilled over your dress and your heart slightly cracked is nothing. Taslima says it is so obvious Magnus and me should be together, and that the path of true love never runs smooth. She says Megan was just a little bump along the way.

  Then Taslima has to go cos she’s used up all her free minutes, so I chuck my mobile on the bed, pick my guitar up again and try an F chord.

  When I was first learning to play my fingers hurt so much I didn’t think I was ever going to overcome the pain of the metal strings cutting into them. I had to soak my fingertips in vinegar16 to harden them up, and now it hardly bothers me at all.

  I put the F chord together with an A minor and a D, which is kind of tricky, and I start to hum along to it. Then, once I’ve got the rhythm going, I start to sing.

  Oh why can’t people be more like dolphins?

  A dolphin’s face always meets you grinning

  A dolphin is free – he’s got no need to kill

  A dolphin is happy – he swims for the thrill.

  A dolphin just wants to live in the ocean

  He doesn’t pollute, he ain’t got no notion

  Of nuclear bombs and nuclear fusion

  Or killing, or wars, or starting aggression.

  And I’m really getting it together and enjoying it, so I start belting it out:

  Oh why can’t people be more like dolphins?

  A dolphin’s face always meets you grinning

  He don’t need no factories pumping out smoke

  He don’t need no bombs, he doesn’t kill folk.

  He don’t build no roads, he don’t poison the air

  And we’re killing his world, acting like we don’t care

  It makes me so sad, it makes me so mad

  The planet’s in crisis, it’s us are to blame.

  And in my head I’m playing at Glastonbury and the audience is totally silent as I go into the last verse.

  Oh why can’t people be more like dolphins?

  I don’t wanna be human, I can’t stand the shame

  But what can I do, ’cept stand up and sing

  Don’t ruin our world. No! Not in my name!

  Then there’s this rapturous applause and they’re whooping and hollering and I see this gorgeous chico down near the front of the crowd – and it’s Magnus – so I smile and wave him up on to the stage…

  When I realize I’m ACTUALLY in my bedroom.

  But there IS applause.

  Someone IS clapping.

  Someone sitting in the branches of the tree – of MY tree – outside MY window. It’s the boy from last night! Megan’s stepbro. Twig.

  Suddenly he sees me seeing him, and I’m about to shout something really rude when he disappears. I rush over to the window just fast enough to see him legging it across the lawn and leaping the wall at the far end of the garden. Poor Brewster is lolloping around in the flowerbed,
sniffing the air, confused.

  And I’m confused too. I should be angry. Furious, even. I mean, that is TOTALLY not on, sitting outside a girl’s bedroom window, staring in!

  No wonder Megan said he was weird. He must have followed me all the way home last night and watched me climb in through my window in my eensy‐weensy dress. (Blushblushblush!)

  I shut the curtains. Just in case he’s daft enough to come back. Then I pick my guitar up and start strumming again. I try to conjure up the scene with me and Magnus at Glastonbury. I was having such a good time.

  But every time I wave Magnus up on to the stage, Megan’s stepbro barges on in front of him.

  I give in and set the guitar on its stand. My tummy’s rumbly‐grumbly again, demanding attention. There’s a lovely smell floating up from the kitchen. I guess Mum’s having one of her mad baking days. I’m off to see what I can nick.

  All weekend I waited for today, Monday, cos I really wanted to see if Magnus might say something to me about the party. And guess what? He wasn’t even at school.

  Mr Lovelace, the swim coach, whisked him off first thing to time trials in Edinburgh – for the Scotland junior team!

  It doesn’t totally surprise me, though, because he really is a brilliant swimmer. Sometimes we have these interschool galas and Cordelia and Taslima and me go along to watch and Magnus beats everyone easy every time. To be honest, I think that’s maybe when I first fell for him. Long before the original muffin incident. It was his butterfly stroke that did it. Made him look like a dolphin. And, let’s face it, dolphins have to be the most attractive creatures in the ENTIRE universe (apart from polar bears, and seal cubs, and baby pandas, of course).

  It’s Monday night now and Dad and Digby have gone to the printers to pick up the election leaflets and posters. I insisted they were all produced on recycled, unbleached paper to cause as little damage to the environment as possible, and Dad agreed.

  Last week Dad got a publicity photo taken especially for the campaign. Digby says his face will be stuck up on lamp posts all around the town. I’m hoping no one at school will make the connection between the dodgy guy swinging from the lamp posts and me. But why should they? I look nothing like my dad. For starters I don’t have hairs growing out of my ears.

  I let Miss Peabody talk me into standing in a mock election in English tomorrow, so now I’ve got to draw up a political manifesto and prepare a speech. I’m standing for the Save Our Planet Party. SOPP for short. Megan’s standing against me. For the GTPWTW Party. Which, as Cordelia pointed out, is totally unpronounceable and impossible to remember. Megan says it stands for Give The People What They Want.

  The thing about SOPP is it’s specifically for young people. In my opinion – which is what Miss Peabody says I’ve got to give in class tomorrow – people old enough to vote don’t care about the planet or the environment cos it’s not going to be their problem, is it? They’re all going to die soon anyway.

  So I intend highlighting the gross irresponsibility of the older generations, i.e. anyone over the age of eighteen.

  Take, for example, the question of disposable nappies. In the UK alone babies get through 8 million a day! Disgusting or what? I mean, what is Britain going to look like in another fifty years? Just counting from today, at least another 146,000 million baby nappies will have been tipped into landfill sites. Not to mention the giant incontinence nappies from the huge numbers of grand‐parentals who’ll all be turning gaga. Just think what that will add to the nappy mountain!

  What’s more, our parentals and grand‐parentals haven’t just messed up Planet Earth, they’ve even dumped litter all over outer space! Old rockets, satellites, motors, nuts, bolts. There’s even a baseball glove some stupid astronaut dropped, circling around up there. And a golf ball.

  And goodness knows what junk they’ve dumped in the bottom of the ocean. It used to be the worst you’d get was the odd shipwreck loaded with gold doubloons and sunken treasures. But now everything and anything gets chucked in the sea. I mean, did you know that ladies’ sanitary protection (I’m gonna leave that bit out of tomorrow’s speech, of course) takes two seconds to flush down the loo, but zillions of years to decompose? I mean, if I was a dolphin, which, believe me, sometimes I’d much rather be, I would be absolutely furious!

  Yet parents go on a rant yelling at us to tidy our ROOMS, when they’re gonna leave the WHOLE PLANET in a TOTAL MESS when they pop their clogs.

  And we won’t be able to do a thing about it. Just huddle in what’s left of our towns, hoping the hurricanes and tsunamis won’t get us.

  By the time I’ve put the finishing touches to my speech, I’m totally exhausted. And a nervous wreck.

  Sometimes I think I’m more eco‐worrier‐babe than eco‐warrior‐babe. It keeps me awake at night worrying about the planet, global warming, dying elephants, starving children, and everything.

  So I have a lovely hot bath then Pip comes into my bed for a while and I read her her fave bedtime story from when she was tiny – Princess Popsicle and the Naughty Peanut.

  Then I get tucked up with Tiny Ted under my duvet and try to think of good things, happy things. Like dolphins… and Magnus.

  I’m going to get up extra early tomorrow. Magnus should be back. And I’ve decided to straighten my hair before school.

  My alarm beeps at six thirty, which is inhumanly early, but even so I positively ping out of bed and into the shower.

  Next I need to straighten my hair. A strictly temporary measure till Magnus gets to know me better and grows to love its natural curliness.

  Of course, I don’t personally OWN straighteners, on account of the contribution they make to global warming,17 but fortunately my incredibly vain little sis does.

  Pip’s still asleep, so I creep into her room in the half dark. I don’t often go into Pip’s room. The Lolitaz poster smouldering on the door makes me want to run screaming in the opposite direction. Do you know there’s a Lolitaz for every girly fantasy you can imagine? Drama Queen Lolitaz, Clubbing Lolitaz, Biker Girl Lolitaz. Each one as ugly as the other. But Pip loves them. She’s wheedled nine dolls out of Mum and Dad already, even though they don’t approve of them.

  I tiptoe across her room, almost breaking my leg on my old pogo stick. What on earth is that doing in here? It’s not the kind of thing you can boing on inside the house without risking crashing through the floor.

  I’m just about to unplug her straighteners and creep back out when Pip makes this little sighing sound and turns over. Her bed is like a big sugary pink satin marshmallow. It would give me nightmares to sleep in it. Sometimes I think they gave Mum the wrong little bundle at the maternity hospital. Pip is so into girly, frilly things.

  I stand perfectly still and watch her for a few moments. She’s got her thumb in her mouth and her chubby little face is all cherubic and childish. Pip’s eyelids flutter, and a tiny smile twitches at the corners of her mouth, like she’s having a lovely dream. I hope she is. And I hope she stops trying to grow up so fast. There’s a lot to be said for being nine. She’s still a pheromone‐free zone. She doesn’t need to worry about boys, or bra size.

  Or, for that matter, bungee‐jumping hearts.

  WOW! My hair looks so cool. I can’t believe how much longer and shinier it becomes when it’s straightened. (On the downside, it does make me look like every other girl at school, but, you know, I think I could really get used to it.) It’s such a bummer it’s not naturally straight. I hope my sproglets inherit Magnus’s hair rather than mine.18

  I’m first in the kitchen this morning. I can hear Dad yodelling in the shower and Mum wandering around her bedroom bumping into things. She’s as blind as a new‐born kitten till she puts her contacts in. As a special treat for Mum I pop the kettle on.

  Then I throw some fruit into the smoothie maker. Sassy’s Early Morning Wake‐up Special – banana, kiwi and yoghurt, with a dollop of honey.

  I’m just about to take a first slurp when I see one of Dad’s new
election leaflets lying on the table. Oh my gosh‐oh‐golly‐glumpit! The mug‐shot on the front is even worse than I feared. You can make out these little nostril hairs he must have missed when he shaved. It looks like he’s got this tiny moustache – scarily like Adolf Hitler!

  His name – half of which I unfortunately have to share with him – is in big bold letters across the top.

  ANGUS WILDE. A FAMILY MAN WITH FAMILY VALUES.

  I’m still hoping no one knows he’s related to me. Especially Hannah Harrison, who would just love to make my life a misery.

  And I’m just thinking how weird it is, you know, that Dad might end up being a member of parliament, when absent‐mindedly I flick the leaflet open.

  CATASTROPHE!

  A photo of a small child in her bath. Naked. And underneath: Angus Wilde, doting father, bathes his daughter.

  Just as I open my mouth to scream, Dad bounces into the kitchen.

  He halts mid‐yodel and looks startled.

  ‘How could you?’ I blurt. ‘You have ruined my life!’ I sob, tossing the leaflet on to the table.

  Dad picks up the leaflet and peers at it.

  ‘Sorry, Sassy,’ he says. ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘Don’t you see? I can never go out in public again,’ I scream as Mum comes in, blinking. ‘Everyone’s going to tease me stupid!’

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’ Mum asks blearily. ‘I thought somebody was being murdered.’

  I grab the leaflet from Dad’s hand and thrust it under her short‐sighted nose. ‘See what Dad’s done!’ I wail. ‘That’s it! I can’t ever go to school again. Ever.’

  Mum peers at the photo. ‘For goodness’ sake, Sassy. It’s only an old baby photo.’

  ‘Yes, Mum! NUDE! Of ME! NAKED! Like… like… a Page‐Three Pin‐up or something!’

  ‘So that’s what the problem is!’ Dad says at last. ‘But that’s Pip in the photo, isn’t it?’