Love from Lexie

by Cathy Cassidy

  The tears I’d worked so hard to push away stung my eyes then, rolled down my cheeks like rain, but in the end I did let go of the past, just a little bit. Bex was bored with the whole detective thing within a couple of weeks, so we gave up. I was pretty sure that the light-up shoes had ended up in the bin, part of a vendetta between Wayne and Brandon, and the scarf had been found floating in the fish pond, culprit unknown. I still worried about the tortoise, though.

  Time moved on. Wayne and Brandon went back to live with their mum, and Mandy and Jon told the social worker they’d like to make my temporary foster place more permanent. I wanted to tell them not to bother, that my mum might come back for me any day now, but I knew they’d just look at me with pity in their eyes and I didn’t want that.

  I was practising handstands against the garage wall on the morning of my eleventh birthday when I saw it … a small grey tortoise, legging it across the lawn of 3 Kenilworth Road. Even upside down, I’d have known that tortoise anywhere. I ran across the grass, scooping her up as she rustled into the flowerbed.

  ‘Mary Shelley!’ I exclaimed, looking her in the eye, and I swear her scaly little mouth twitched a little as if she knew her name. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  Upstairs, a window opened and Bex looked out. ‘What’re you doing? What have you got?’ she called down.

  ‘It’s Mary Shelley!’ I yelled. ‘At last!’

  Bex ran out and the two of us legged it along the street to the student house, me carrying Mary Shelley. I knew it was the right place because there was a one-wheeled bicycle upside down on the grass and a pair of skinny jeans hanging from an open upstairs window, dripping slightly. Bex rang the doorbell, and eventually a girl appeared.

  ‘We’ve found your tortoise!’ I said. ‘Mary Shelley!’

  The girl frowned. ‘My name’s not Mary, and we don’t have a tortoise!’ she said.

  ‘No, no, the tortoise is Mary Shelley,’ Bex explained. ‘Don’t you remember? She escaped a while ago. You put up posters offering a five-quid reward!’

  ‘Is this a scam?’ the girl wanted to know. ‘Because I have no idea what you’re talking about. We’ve only just moved in. And we don’t have a tortoise!’

  I blinked, and Mary Shelley blinked too, slowly and thoughtfully. She edged one front leg up against my collarbone and I noticed how warm her skin was, much warmer than you might think.

  ‘It’s not a scam,’ I said.

  ‘We do not have a tortoise,’ the girl said, folding her arms. ‘We do not want a tortoise. Last year’s lot are all gone, and we don’t have any forwarding address. Plus, there is no five-pound reward, no way …’

  ‘Nice to meet you too,’ Bex said, as the door slammed in our faces.

  I sighed. It seemed kind of tragic that Mary Shelley should be found at last, only for her original owners to be lost. I spread a protective hand across her shell.

  ‘They don’t deserve her,’ Bex said, as we walked back to the house. ‘Ungrateful pigs. But on the upside … it’s your birthday … Mandy and Jon have to let you keep her, right?’

  Mary Shelley pottered around on the kitchen floor, sniffing politely at a cabbage leaf while we ate chocolate birthday cake and planned her future.

  ‘We struggled to find a birthday present you’d really love,’ Mandy commented. ‘Now I know why … fate was taking care of things! She’s lovely, Lexie!’

  ‘I can keep her?’ I checked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course!’ Jon said. ‘She’ll be no trouble. I’d better check the garden fence so she doesn’t go walkabout again … and according to Google she needs a heat lamp …’

  I was so elated I could have hugged them, but I held back. I smiled politely at Mandy instead and she smiled back, a little sadly. I felt bad, but I didn’t want them to get the wrong idea. We wouldn’t be staying there much longer, not once Mum came back.

  Meanwhile, though, Mary Shelley had landed on her feet, and I guess I had too.

  4

  The Misfits

  These days, although Bex Murray is still fierce and full-on, I have learned to love her. She’s like the eccentric and slightly savage older sister I never had.

  Right now she is lying on my bedroom carpet with her legs up against the wall at a ninety-degree angle, her tartan-print Docs scuffing my jigsaw-map wallpaper a little. She says this is yoga, but I am not so sure, partly because she is simultaneously reading an English Lit textbook and listening to retro punk through her headphones. The Clash, it sounds like.

  Bex is in Year Ten now. Mandy got her into yoga and Jon bought her a bass guitar for Christmas. Whenever she gets bad-tempered or cross she either hammers the bass guitar on full blast for a couple of hours or morphs into Tree Pose, wobbling slightly on one leg.

  As for me, I’m in Year Eight, and people have mostly stopped giving me those wary, wide-eyed looks that mean they think I’m acting weird. I fly under the radar, pass unnoticed: a quiet, bookish girl, a little bit serious but always willing to help someone in trouble. Bex and Happi are my trusty sidekicks – we’re misfits, the lot of us, but so what? In a world of mixed-up, messed-up, broken jigsaw pieces, we fit together, and that’s kind of awesome.

  We see each other every day at school, and Happi comes over most Saturdays too. As if on cue, the doorbell rings and I run down the stairs to answer it. Happi is on the doorstep, clutching a cake tin.

  ‘You told me to come over,’ she says. ‘A plan, you said. A big plan. So here I am … and I have cupcakes. Can I come in?’

  ‘Always,’ I say, holding the door wide. ‘We’re up in my room …’

  I grab glasses and cold orange juice from the kitchen and head upstairs after Happi, who settles herself cross-legged next to the bed, feeding strawberries to Mary Shelley.

  Happi is still tiny and waif-like. Her passions are maths and baking and the violin. Her parents are strict; they won’t let her wear make-up or cool clothes, and she goes along with this. She is not a rebel – she’s actually full-on geek, and very religious. None of these things are really plus points at our school, but somehow Happi has escaped being bullied. It might be because she’s usually with me and Bex, but I think it’s also because she’s beautiful in a dramatic, ethereal way. Loveliness just shines out of her.

  As misfits go, we are the lucky ones. Every single day I see tons of kids who are lost and struggling. The awkward, overweight girl from my English class who sits at a table on her own in the canteen every lunchtime and never seems to have any friends; the scruffy, sandy-haired new boy who joined Year Eight last September but hasn’t quite found his feet; the pretty Year Eleven girl who always looks lonely. Millford Park is misfit central – there are sad kids, mad kids, bad kids, bullied kids … every variety of troubled teen you might think of.

  What if there’s a way to bring them all together?

  ‘So,’ Happi says with a grin. ‘C’mon, Lexie. You said you had a secret plan … spill!’

  Bex swings her legs down and helps herself to a cake and orange juice. ‘Secret plan?’ she echoes. ‘Nobody told me! I thought we were just hanging out, drinking orange juice and eating cupcakes …’

  ‘It’s nothing major,’ I tell them, although it is kind of major to me. ‘I had a thought, and I wanted to run it past you, because Mary Shelley is being her usual inscrutable self and won’t give me an opinion. I was thinking about us, and how lucky we were to find each other …’

  ‘Lucky?’ Bex scoffs. ‘I’ve been trying to shake you two off since forever. Don’t mind the tortoise, though.’

  ‘I’m trying to be serious here!’ I say. ‘We are lucky, and you know it, Bex. If the three of us had never met, you’d still be a borderline juvenile delinquent, scaring the teachers and terrifying the kids and running away every couple of weeks.’

  ‘I still scare the teachers,’ she argues, an edge of pride in her voice.

  ‘I’d still be crying the whole time and making my counsellor tear his hair out,’ I push on. ‘Instead o
f which I don’t need counselling any more, and I haven’t cried since you made me watch that DVD of Watership Down on Happi’s birthday.’

  ‘You’re still quite sensitive,’ Happi tells me. ‘That’s a good thing, though.’

  ‘She says sensitive; I say weird,’ Bex chips in. ‘Don’t deny it!’

  I shrug. ‘I’m not denying anything,’ I say. ‘I’m weird and proud. The point is, I’m nowhere near as lost and sad as I was. Bex, you’re loads better too and, Happi, you’re just awesome, getting top grades in every subject and being a total violin genius …’

  ‘Genius might be pushing it,’ she argues.

  ‘No, you are,’ I insist. ‘You’re better than the teacher, I reckon. Look, there are loads of things I’d never have done if it hadn’t been for you two, and that’s down to the power of friendship. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Happi agrees. ‘With friends we’re better, aren’t we? You can be yourself, without feeling judged or laughed at!’

  ‘You’re nuts, the pair of you,’ Bex scoffs, but I can see two telltale spots of pink in her cheeks. ‘Good job you’ve got me to look out for you, that’s all I can say.’

  I laugh. ‘Fair enough. But what about all the people who don’t have good friends? Don’t fit in?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Here we go,’ she says. ‘Please tell me this isn’t some mad plan to rescue the waifs and strays of Millford Park Academy! Seriously, Lexie. No.’

  I try to look wide-eyed and innocent.

  ‘It’s just … think about all those awkward kids, outsider kids … ones who are messed up, mixed up. Feeling lost and alone, getting into trouble even, when actually they just need to connect. We all know kids like that! C’mon, Bex! They’re the kids who have nowhere to go, nobody to talk to. They’re the kids we used to be …’

  Bex leans over, squeezes my hand. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘I know what you’re saying. But you can’t rescue everybody, Lexie, the way you did Mary Shelley. The teachers should be sorting out the misfit kids!’

  ‘Like they did with us?’ I ask, and Bex sighs.

  The truth is that the teachers at Millford Park are stressed and overworked. They try to look out for kids who are struggling, but mostly those kids fall through the net and stay lost.

  Mary Shelley crawls up on to my lap, and Bex and Happi look at each other and sigh.

  ‘It’s a whole new concept,’ I explain. ‘A group that brings together the misfits, makes them strong and cool and awesome. Like a club where being odd or lost or misunderstood is the only requirement for joining. I even came up with a name – the Lost & Found.’

  Happi nods. ‘It could work, I suppose …’

  Bex pulls a face. ‘I’m not convinced that bringing all the odd kids together will magically result in some kind of huge happy-clappy friendship gang,’ she says. ‘It could be dangerous, like inviting the lions and hyenas to hang out with the gazelles. I mean, seriously … you’d be asking for trouble.’

  My shoulders slump, and Bex shakes her head, exasperated.

  ‘I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,’ she says. ‘Still, I can see what you’re trying to do, Lexie. I’ll help if you need me to.’

  Hope fizzes through my veins, and I grin at my friends, hugging Mary Shelley close.

  ‘I’m going to make a poster,’ I say, stroking her shell. ‘I’ll put it up at school. I’ve already asked Miss Walker at Bridge Street Library if I can use the meeting room, and she said we could have it for free.’

  The three of us spend a lot of time at Bridge Street Library – our school library closed unexpectedly over the summer break, the fiction books shipped out to make room for more computers. Miss Walker helped to set up the YA fiction reading group Happi, Bex and I are a part of.

  People from the council have been lurking about a bit lately, sizing up Bridge Street Library and holding consultation meetings to see how much people care about the place. The meetings have been packed, according to Miss Walker, and the general opinion is that people want the library to stay just the way it is. The place is always buzzing, so I reckon it’s safe, but if holding my Lost & Found meetings there helps even a bit, I’m happy. Plus, the lovely Miss Walker has promised to let me bring cake and make hot chocolate.

  I kiss Mary Shelley’s wizened nose and put her down on the floor before taking an especially battered old map of North Wales from the pile in the corner. I spread it out across the bedroom floor and Bex helps me to chop out a large rectangle while Happi fetches black ink and a couple of brushes from my desk.

  I pick up a paintbrush, dip it into the ink and begin to write in big, wobbly letters, all across the Snowdonia National Park.

  5

  Poster Girl

  Nobody pays much attention to the noticeboard at Millford Park Academy. It’s enemy territory – a place where announcements about clubs and trips and sports fixtures jostle for space with posters about cleaning your teeth or calling Childline. Most kids swarm past as they cross the foyer on the way to lessons, a stormy sea of black blazers and stripy ties pulled dangerously askew.

  It’s breaktime now and I take the poster from my bag, unroll the rectangle of Ordnance Survey map and smile at the wobbly handpainted words. I have just pinned one corner to the noticeboard when an ear-splitting yell curdles the air. I whirl round to see two boys circling each other warily, a small crowd gathering in case something kicks off. One of the boys is tall, a Year Eleven maybe; the other is smaller, an infamous Year Nine kid called Marley Hayes. His younger brother, Dylan, was in my class when I switched primary schools; he still pops up in some of my classes now. Dylan’s OK, but his brother is most definitely trouble.

  I bite my lip, watching warily to see what he’ll do.

  The older kid seems to be taunting, teasing, because suddenly Marley launches himself forward, shoving the other boy backwards. The two of them are on the ground, wrestling and grunting; the air crackles with swear words and threats. More kids appear, screening the fighters from view, but I hear a crunching sound as an especially powerful punch hits home, a muffled whimper, the sound of ripping cloth.

  ‘Quick, Simpson’s coming!’ someone hisses. ‘Run!’

  The foyer empties in a blink. Kids stampede in assorted directions until the space is deserted except for me, my poster and Marley Hayes. It’s pretty clear that Marley has taken a beating. He struggles to his feet and takes a few faltering steps towards me, dazed. Another few steps and I notice the tear in his shirt sleeve, the thin rivulet of blood that seeps from his nose.

  Even in this shell-shocked and damaged state, Marley has something about him, a bad-boy aura that has lots of my classmates in thrall. His messy brown fringe and piercing blue eyes just add to the appeal. He stumbles to a halt beside me, resting a hand against the noticeboard to steady himself.

  Mr Simpson the head teacher strides into the foyer, and I remind myself that rescue missions are not just for runaway tortoises and boxes of old maps and sheet music. I take a clean tissue from my pocket and hand it to Marley, who grabs it to staunch the nosebleed, wiping the evidence away.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mr Simpson roars, his voice echoing around the foyer. ‘Has someone been fighting?’

  His eyes fix on us, and I grab the poster and shove it at Marley to hide his ripped sleeve and rumpled shirt, which seems to have a muddy footprint on it.

  ‘No, sir,’ I reply. ‘No fighting. It’s … just us.’

  ‘I definitely heard something,’ the head teacher growls. ‘No noise? No trouble?’

  ‘Didn’t see a thing, sir,’ I say, shrugging.

  He scans about, looking for clues. There are plenty – a small splash of blood on the dark lino floor, a lost shirt button, Marley’s rucksack hidden behind a bedraggled potted palm. It hardly takes a trained detective to spot these things and put the evidence together; Mr Simpson doesn’t manage it.

  ‘What are you up to, Hayes?’ he demands. ‘No good, I expect!’

  Marley coughs into the b
orrowed tissue and shows Mr Simpson the poster. ‘I’m just … helping with this,’ he says in a muffled voice. ‘Not a crime, is it?’

  Mr Simpson grits his teeth. ‘Not a crime, no,’ he says. ‘And that makes quite a change for you, Hayes. What exactly are you doing with that handkerchief? Got something to hide?’

  ‘Got a cold, sir,’ Marley snuffles.

  The head teacher rolls his eyes, exasperated, and glances at me. ‘This young man isn’t bothering you, I hope? Lexie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I reply. ‘And no, sir, he’s not bothering me. He’s helping.’

  ‘First time for everything, I suppose,’ Mr Simpson mutters. ‘Well, put your poster up and get outside. There’s five minutes left of break. Bit of fresh air will do you both good.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ we say in unison, as he stalks away.

  The minute he’s out of sight, Marley slumps. He stuffs the tissue, now streaked with blood, into a trouser pocket, but the nosebleed seems to have stopped.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Seriously. What made you do that? Stick up for me?’

  I shrug. At times like this, telling the truth is the best option, so I do. ‘You looked like you needed rescuing.’

  Marley grins, then winces. ‘Rescuing? Yeah, maybe I do. Ouch … that loser kicked me in the ribs!’

  ‘Looks like he kicked you everywhere,’ I comment. ‘You’re a bit of a mess. Better go see the school nurse.’

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Thanks anyway … Lexie, right? I’ll live.’

  He looks down at the poster still hiding his ripped sleeve and footprinted shirt, perplexed. ‘What is this, anyway? Lost & Found? What’s it about?’

  I grin. ‘Well, it’s going to be a group, sort of –’

  ‘A group?’ Marley interrupts. ‘Cool! Yeah, definitely! This place needs something like that! I’ll come along, no worries!’

  My eyebrows shoot up, surprised. ‘Will you? Brilliant!’