I’d thought secondary school would be even better. My mates would be queuing up to ask for introductions to Andie, Tasha and Hasmita. I’d be the most popular boy in the school.
And maybe I’d be dating Eden by then … eventually, anyhow. Let’s just say that by Year Six, I was nursing a serious crush.
In Year Six, Eden got sad. Her dad had left, taking a piece of her heart with him. It made me want to reach out and hold her hand, tell her I’d never leave her, but I didn’t have the courage, of course.
Soon after there was an awkward phase when I’d realized that Andie was flirting with me. I didn’t take much notice. I thought she was just practising for when she was going to break the heart of every boy at Moreton Park Academy, but there was more to it than that. Andie’s crush was driving a wedge between her and Eden, but I tried not to worry too much. I pretended I hadn’t noticed, waited for it to blow over. Soon everything would sort itself out. Secondary school would be a new chapter for all of us.
The new chapter had started a little sooner than we imagined, and not in the way I’d planned. One day towards the end of Year Six, Tasha came into school looking pink-eyed and shaky.
‘Something terrible has happened!’ she blurted, eyes brimming with tears. ‘Something awful. It’s the end of the world!’
Andie slid an arm around her. ‘Hey, hey,’ she said. ‘Nothing can be that bad, Tash. Calm down; tell us what’s up.’
Tasha bit her lip. ‘My mum and dad,’ she whispered. ‘They have finally done it. They’ve ruined my life!’
Andie laughed. ‘That’s what parents do,’ she said. ‘They can’t help it. It’s a part of their job description. What’s happened?’
Tasha just buried her face in her hands and howled, and nothing would console her. Her mum and dad were buying a house in France with a holiday cottage and a derelict barn attached. They were going to move there and rent the cottage out while they renovated the barn to turn it into more holiday lets.
‘My dad’s been made redundant,’ Tasha said. ‘He keeps saying that it’s a gift – that he can use his payout to start a whole new life. But what about my life? What about me?’
‘It might be OK,’ I said, half-heartedly. ‘You might like it. And we could visit! I’ve never been to France.’
‘Nor me,’ Tasha wailed. ‘And now I have to live there! I won’t know anyone. I won’t even be able to speak the language. And the place they’ve bought is in the middle of nowhere!’
‘What are we going to do?’ Hasmita wailed, an arm around Tasha’s shoulder, brown eyes brimming with tears. ‘You can’t go to France, Tash! You’re my best friend. It’s a disaster!’
Andie sprang into action. ‘It’s not a disaster; it’s an opportunity!’ she announced. ‘Just think, Tash, you’ll get to live in a beautiful house in the country, in a place where it’s sunny and warm! France is cool … they have sunflowers growing all over the place, and artists wandering about, and they eat croissants for breakfast and cycle around in stripy tops with strings of onions around their necks! I’ve seen it in books.’
‘I don’t even like onions!’ Tasha snuffled. ‘And what about … what about us? The Heart Club?’
‘Nothing will break us up,’ Andie said firmly. ‘Friends are forever.’
Tasha wasn’t convinced.
‘You lot will all be together,’ she argued. ‘And I will be stuck on my own, in some school where they do everything differently and they all speak French!’
‘You’ll soon learn,’ Hasmita said, but she didn’t look too sure.
‘You’ll make new friends, too,’ Eden offered. ‘French girls are probably really chic and cool. And I bet the boys are lush!’
‘Almost as lush as me,’ I quipped. ‘Ooh la la!’
‘It’s not funny, Ryan!’ Tasha huffed. ‘I don’t want to make new friends! I want you lot!’
‘You’ve got us,’ Andie said, firmly. ‘Always, forever. Some things are unbreakable.’
But already, a little crack had zigzagged its way through the Heart Club, even if we didn’t want to admit it.
8
Eden
Chloe, Flick and Ima … they could be friends, maybe, if I let them. If I could only be brave and give them a chance, they’d let me tag along with them, include me in their plans. I wouldn’t have to be on the edge of things any more.
Sometimes, I think I might like that.
Other times, I know they could never measure up to Andie, Tasha, Hasmita and Ryan, not in a million years. I lost my best friends once; I can’t risk making new friends and losing them, too.
I was so lucky to have Andie, Ryan, Tash and Hasmita. I knew it even back then. A part of me had thought that maybe I didn’t deserve them, that it couldn’t really last forever.
‘Idiot,’ Andie used to say. ‘Of course it can last. What could come between us? Nothing, Eden. Not ever. We’re the Heart Club!’
I wanted to believe her, but the damage had already begun. Tasha’s parents had signed the papers on the property in France and put their own house on the market. We weren’t allowed to have sleepovers there any more, because everything had to stay ultra-tidy in case someone came to view the house.
Everything was changing. We were all best friends, sure, but just as Andie and I spent a lot of time together, Tasha and Hasmita did, too. Ryan, as always, drifted in and out of the group and spent time with his boy mates as well. Once Tasha was gone, how would we fit together?
Andie had always been the centre of our group, the glue that held us together. She was that kind of person – so sunny, so bright, so full of life. She made everything she touched seem cool. When you stood next to Andie, some of her sunshine spilled over on to you. That was a good feeling.
That was why I was so scared of losing her, because I knew that without her I wouldn’t be quite as cool, quite as fun, quite as real. I wouldn’t be me.
I watched Andie to see if she was getting bored with me, if she found me less interesting, less exciting than she once had. I knew I wasn’t as much fun as usual, now that Dad was gone. I was sad inside; what if Andie got fed up with that? I’d read in magazines that friendships changed as you got older, and old friends might suddenly outgrow each other. I didn’t want to be the one left behind.
‘What d’you think will happen when we go to secondary?’ I’d asked, once. ‘Will we still be close? People drift apart, don’t they? Make new mates?’
Andie had grabbed my hands. ‘Listen up, Eden Banks,’ she’d said. ‘You’re my best friend, right? Always have been, always will be. We’ve been through loads together, bad stuff and good, and we’ll go through loads more. We’re going to go to uni together, right? I’ll study art and you can do English or law or something brainy. We’ll share a flat and have parties every single Saturday night.’
‘And after uni we’ll travel around the world together,’ I’d chipped in, grinning. ‘Hawaii, New York, Paris, Rome …’
‘Exactly. And then we’ll go to London and be rich and famous, and one day we’ll be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings and our kids will be best mates, because we’ll live just along the street from each other,’ Andie’d concluded. ‘So don’t you even think that you can wriggle out of it, Eden. We’re best friends forever, OK?’
She whirled me round and round until the two of us were so dizzy we fell over, laughing, and I forgot to be worried about secondary school. It seemed like the biggest leap, a jump into the unknown, but it didn’t scare Andie, and if it didn’t scare her then it didn’t scare me.
‘It’
ll be an adventure,’ she’d promised. ‘We’re growing up, after all. It’s time to move on. Moreton Park Academy sounds great! New subjects, new teachers, new challenges … it’ll be awesome!’
I could almost believe it was true, as long as I didn’t think too much about Tasha moving away. The ground that had felt so steady and solid under my feet all my life was shaky now, uncertain, liable to give way at any moment.
At the end of that last term at primary school, another disaster struck.
Hasmita announced that she wouldn’t be going to Moreton Park Academy either.
‘My parents want me to go to St Bernadette’s,’ she told us. ‘I’m gutted. What am I going to do?’
St Bernadette’s was a private girl’s school in the next town. The girls had to wear bottle-green blazers with yellow piping and tartan kilts and tan tights with flat, lace-up shoes. They looked like something out of the 1930s.
Andie frowned. ‘Can’t you talk to your parents?’ she asked Hasmita. ‘Reason with them? They can’t be serious!’
‘They’re serious all right,’ Hasmita sighed. ‘It’s all arranged. I’ve tried to talk them round, but it’s useless. It’s not my fault I get good grades! They think that with a little bit of pushing I might turn out to be a doctor or a lawyer or a nuclear physicist, but I want to be a fashion stylist – they just won’t listen! It’s not just being separated from you lot. How am I going to learn to live with the ugliest school uniform in the northern hemisphere?’
‘Those shoes,’ I said. ‘And tan tights!’
‘That blazer,’ Ryan chimed in.
‘And no boys!’ Tasha blinked. ‘No boys at all!’
‘Look on the bright side,’ Andie said. ‘No distractions. And I bet you can adapt the uniform. And we can still meet up on weekends …’
‘Lucky thing,’ Tasha said, with feeling.
‘We’re all lucky,’ Andie insisted. ‘We have each other. The Heart Club … no matter what.’
But the cracks were there, and they were spreading.
By the end of the summer the ground beneath my feet wasn’t just shaky; a huge, gaping chasm had opened up, pulling everything I knew and loved down into its darkness.
9
Ryan
Today, I am the only person in the entire school in lunchtime detention.
An outbreak of good behaviour in the run up to the end of term – who’d have thought it? All over school, kids must be handing in homework on time, being polite to teachers and fellow pupils.
Well, maybe. Buzz and Chris are still their usual wisecracking, unpredictable selves and I don’t suppose the bullies have stopped elbowing little kids in the ribs in order to nick their lunch money, or that the smokers have stopped gathering behind the school gym to cough their guts up. Moz Edwards was here at registration but missing from lessons, so I’m guessing the rates of truanting are pretty much the same as always.
Perhaps it’s not so much that everyone is behaving perfectly, but more that the teachers have stopped caring as much.
I stroll over to the exclusion room, sending a gaggle of Year Seven girls into a frenzy of horrified whispers as I pass. I catch the words ‘threatened an old lady with a spear’ and turn round to pull a growly face at them, which sends them running along the corridor screeching. I try not to think too much about how it came to this, how I have turned into the sort of kid who terrifies Year Seven girls. I’m not proud of it.
Miss Robson looks as bored as I feel as she pretends to supervise the detention session, fiddling with her iPhone and watching the clock on the wall. Ten minutes before the end of lunch, her mobile trills with an incoming call; she glares at me before striding from the room, and I abandon today’s punishment exercise, a short essay on the history of the javelin.
Very short, actually. It’s not a subject I know very much about, in spite of the rumours.
Five minutes later, she’s still not back, so I fold my essay into an origami paper crane, pocket it and leave the exclusion room. I’m just passing the library when I hear Miss Robson in the corridor ahead, still chatting on her mobile. Her boots make a clip-clop sound as she stalks towards me, but she’s too busy with the call to notice me. I make a sharp left turn into the library and she goes clip-clopping past.
The librarian looks up, startled to see me. It’s just minutes before the bell, and the place is busy. There are a couple of kids messing about on the computers, some Year Twelves revising, a few Year Sevens whispering in the magazine corner. My eyes come to rest on a lone dark-haired figure sitting at a table folding what looks like a tiny paper crane out of a chocolate bar wrapper. A Snickers bar, if I’m not mistaken.
Some things never change.
Eden Banks is not even on my radar these days – not usually – but here she is, twice in one day, pitching up right in my path. She looks sad, subdued, but of course that’s nothing new.
We are different people from the Year Six kids who clowned around in the rain and kissed, awkwardly, in the porch of a half-flooded tent in Andie’s garden. The whole world imploded after that, and we came out the other side a little bit broken, a little bit spoiled.
There is nothing to hold us together these days, but my eyes latch on to the tiny chocolate wrapper paper crane, and I smile in spite of myself.
Eden looks up at me through her dipping fringe, and two spots of pink appear on her cheeks, as if making paper cranes is something childish, foolish – something to be ashamed of. I want to tell her that it isn’t.
‘You still remember how to make them, then?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, of course! How could I forget?’
Then the bell goes, and the library kids jump up and into action, hauling on rucksacks, gathering folders, stampeding for the doors. In the chaos, I take the detention paper crane from my pocket and put it on the desk in front of Eden.
I look back over my shoulder as I head for the door, and she’s smiling.
10
Eden
I’m walking out of school at the end of the day when a girl running the wrong way along the corridor crashes into me and drops her shoulder bag on the floor. Books, pens and bits of paper spill out in all directions, and we both dip down to pick up the spills.
‘Eden!’ the girl says, and I look up through my fringe and realize it’s Lara, the party girl Chloe, Flick and Ima were talking about earlier. ‘I’m sorry … wasn’t looking where I was going!’
I smile weakly and hand her a couple of exercise books and a loose-leaf folder that has skidded under a radiator.
‘How’s it going?’ she asks, as if she hasn’t seen me at all in the last two years. She probably hasn’t; I am all but invisible lately. ‘All good?’
‘Yeah, all good,’ I mutter, scooping up a handful of small card tickets that are scattered around us. They are invites for next week’s party, which is slightly awkward, but I shuffle them together like they’re playing cards and push them at her, pretending I haven’t noticed.
‘Oh yeah … the party …’ she says, pulling a face. ‘Are you coming? I’d love it if you did, Eden. I mean, we don’t see much of each other now, but we used to get on well, didn’t we? In the old days … So come if you can, for old times’ sake. Bring some friends!’
She hands me an invitation, then gathers up her bag and skips past me along the corridor.
Looks like I have an invitation to the party of the year.
I used to like parties, once.
The Heart Club did the best parties ever, sleepover parties, picnic parties, camp-out parties, Christmas part
ies where we gave ourselves sugar highs eating home-made yule log and hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. We never got to have a grown-up party, though, unless you count the farewell party Tasha’s parents had thrown a few weeks before they left for France.
The party had been just a few days before our ill-fated garden camp-out and Tasha’s dad had already taken a vanload of stuff to the new house by then, so their place was looking a bit bare. The new people were moving in three weeks later, but Tasha’s mum reckoned they’d probably need that long to clear everything up after the party. ‘Let’s make it a good one,’ she’d said.
Everyone was there – me, Andie, Ryan, Hasmita and our families too, along with all kinds of other people Tasha’s family were friendly with. It was the first time the Heart Club had partied with all five families in attendance, though. Me and Mum had baked a cake for Tasha’s family and iced it in the colours of the French flag, and it made Tasha’s mum cry; she said she’d never seen anything so lovely.
‘She’s been drinking wine,’ Tasha whispered to me. ‘She’s tipsy, and Dad’s worse – he’s started speaking with a cheesy French accent and kissing everyone on both cheeks. He thinks it’s funny. I am so embarrassed!’
‘Don’t be,’ Andie told her. ‘It’s cute. All parents are embarrassing; it’s what they do best – they can’t help it, really!’
It turned out that Andie was right. All the grown-ups drank too much wine and danced badly to dodgy 1980s pop and got too loud or too emotional or too nostalgic, or sometimes all three. Andie’s parents were trying to do the salsa on the lawn and somehow got tangled up in the washing line, and Ryan’s parents tried to untangle them and managed to pull the whole thing down, along with a string of fairy lights.
Broken Heart Club Page 4
