Zodiac Girls: Brat Princess

by Cathy Hopkins

  I fell to my knees. “Oh PJ please. Make this stop. Come on, this isn’t a dream any more. This is a nightmare. Those shoes are labelled two quid. They’re by Jimmy Choo and they’re worth four hundred!” I tried to say, noooo, leave my things alone to the woman holding the shoes but she couldn’t hear me. It was as if my mouth was full of a huge wad of chewing gum. It was only when I spoke to PJ that my words came out properly and he looked like he was finding the whole scene very amusing.

  “Don’t you vonder vhy your clozing iz here?” he asked.

  “Yeah. No,” I felt confused. “It’s not real is it? Like not really happening? Like, a dream yeah?”

  “Sometimes our dreams show uz our future,” said PJ.

  I felt a shiver of dread go up my spine. “And you’re saying that my clothes will be on sale in some secondhand shop? No. Never. Mummy and Daddy would never allow it. Nooooooo. Why would they? Please. Not this. Don’t show me this. Anything but this.”

  PJ chuckled then beckoned me into a changing room. I got up to follow him wondering what horrors awaited me in there. Some tramp in one of my “Chanel teen” range dresses? Some stinky poor person in one of my Versace tops? It was too too horrible. But no. PJ and I were in a church. There was the sound of a choir. A few people in pews. In the centre was a coffin covered with white roses.

  These people were the most familiar of all. In the front pew were Mummy and Daddy. A wave of joy flooded through me.

  “Mummy, Daddy,” I cried but they didn’t even look up.

  “Zey can’t hear you remember?” PJ reminded me.

  And there were Shirla, Mason and Henry in the second row. And my darling Coco, her fur back to its natural white colour.

  “Oh no. PJ, please. Don’t show me Poppy’s funeral.”

  “Not Poppy’s,” said PJ and with a snap of his fingers, we were outside. We were in a cemetery. My parents were there again under a green umbrella that almost blew inside out in the gale. Rain lashed down, but it didn’t touch me. Shirla and Henry and Mason were standing with my parents under a second huge umbrella. I looked at the gravestone. It was Poppy’s grave. I remembered it well. The engraving of her name had been etched in my heart as well as on the stone. Beloved daughters… WAIT a minute! Beloved daughters? As in plural! Poppy Hedley-Dent and… Leonora Hedley-DENT!!!!!! Leonora. Hedley. Dent. That was me. That was my grave! My name. Nooooooooo. It couldn’t be. Not me. Not dead. Not six feet under! No. No. It’s a dream, I told myself again. Mr O warned me. Neptune. An encounter with the planet where things are not as they appear to be. And Pluto, the planet that deals with life and death.

  “Hah! They’re not even crying,” I said as I turned to PJ. “Surely they’d cry just a little bit? Hey. You’re not Death are you?”

  “Some people might say zat I am. I am Pluto and if you don’t mind, I don’t like ze word ‘death’, I prefer ze words ‘mortally challenged’.”

  I almost laughed. “A politically correct phantom. Oh, get a life will you?”

  PJ gave me a scathing look. “You may laugh, but you should listen to me. I don’t just deal in death. I deal in ze transformation.”

  “So you keep telling me. Look mate, PJ, Pluto or whoever, I’m having a really bad dream and I’d like you to butt out of it if you don’t mind. I…” I pointed at the gravestone. “That’s my grave down there. Least it’s not… because I’m up here, but… look here, I’d like to go back to the dorm now and wake up. For this to be over.”

  PJ nodded. “To dream about death doesn’t necessarily mean a physical death. It can be symbolic. Like ze end of something.”

  “Whatever. Yeah, but was that really my future? Is that what’s going to happen or only what might happen?”

  “Maybe it signifies ze end of something, Leonora.”

  “The end of what? What?”

  “Listen to vot zey are saying,” urged PJ, and suddenly I could hear the people by the grave – as if someone had suddenly turned up the sound on a movie.

  “None of her friends turned up,” said Henry.

  “What friends?” asked Shirla. “She pushed them all away. No-one stayed her friend for long.”

  Henry shook his head. “What a shame. What a lonely little girl she was.”

  Mason scoffed. “Don’t feel sorry for her. She was a total brat. A brat princess. No wonder she didn’t have any friends.”

  “What will happen to her money?” asked Shirla. “Her savings account?”

  “Her parents have become so disillusioned with money and all that goes with it that they are going to give all of their and Leonora’s savings away. Her clothes have already gone to charity.”

  “NoooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOO,” I groaned. “I HAAAATE this dream. Get me out if it!”

  PJ put a finger to his lips as if to hush me.

  “Least we’re off the hook then,” said Shirla. “We won’t have to repay our loans plus the interest. Glory be for that!”

  “Amen,” said Henry. “Amen.”

  “I still feel sorry for her a bit,” said Shirla. “I think she never did get over the death of her sister.”

  “It’s true,” said Mason. “She was a sweet kid before that.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” said Henry. “But that was before my time. What happened?”

  Shirla shook her head as if even to think about it was hard.

  “Her younger sister,” she said. “She had an asthma attack. Leonora, she blame herself although it wasn’t her fault. Poor Poppy. Some nasty kid at their school had been picking on her… a bully…”

  I nodded. “Mo Bolton,” I whispered.

  “One night, this girl and her friends, they’s taunting young Poppy on her way home. She starts to have an asthma attack and Mo runs off with the inhaler, laughing like crazy, not realizing that, without it, the poor girl couldn’t breathe.”

  I felt tears come to my eyes. “That was my fault, my fault. I should have been there.”

  “Vhy vas it your fault, Leonora?” asked PJ. “It vasn’t you who ran off wiz the inhaler. You loved Poppy.”

  A crippling pain hit my stomach and I buckled over. “Enough. Don’t make me talk about this. Think about this. I fear this more than anything else. Please, let it go. Let me wake up now.”

  “You can tell me,” said PJ. “I’m not real. It iz only a dream, remember. Only a dream, so no-one else vill ever know vot you say. It’s just between you and me.”

  I felt my head begin to spin and was finding it hard to breathe, dream or no dream.

  “I… I… can’t…”

  “Leonora, talk to me. You can tell me everyzing. Leonora, you must let it out.”

  I crumpled to my knees on the floor. Without looking at PJ’s face, I began to tell him what happened that fateful night.

  “We went home together after school every day. Mo Bolton didn’t bother her when I was around. She wouldn’t dare. I could see her off easy. But that day…” I felt a huge sob come into my throat, like a bubble stuck there blocking my speech.

  “Go on, Leonora,” PJ urged.

  I forced myself to breathe. “… my friend Jasmine, she wanted to go to the mall and I wanted to go with her. Course Poppy wanted to come with us, but I said no.”

  “Why did you say no, Leonora?”

  “I was… I was worried that Jasmine wasn’t my friend any more. She’d been spending more and more time with another girl in our class and I… I wanted to make sure we were still bezzies.”

  “Bezzies?”

  “Best friends. Jasmine was my best friend and one of the most popular girls in our year. I really wanted to stay in with her because it meant that I was popular too. So I told Poppy to go home on her own. It wasn’t far. Our school was only at the end of our road, but… I shouldn’t have let her go. She was crying and I told her to grow up and stop acting like a crybaby. Mo and her mates were hiding down an alley two houses away from the lane that led to our house.”

  “Had zat ever happened before, Leonora
?”

  I shook my head. “Mo lived on the other side of town. I don’t know what she was doing down our way.”

  “And had Poppy ever gone home on her own before?” PJ asked.

  I nodded. “Sometimes. Not often though. I usually went with her, but this night… it was as if she had an instinct that something was going to happen. Mo had threatened her during the day. We never got to find out as Mo was taken to a special school afterwards. All sorts of people came out after Poppy’s death and said what a bully Mo was. But it was too late by then. Too late for my sister. I felt mean not letting her go with me, but I… I wanted to stay in with Jas. If only, if only I…” And then a dam burst inside of me. All the tears I had been holding back came flooding through like an avalanche.

  PJ placed his hand on my back and let me sob my heart out to him.

  “I’m so sorry. So sorry. Don’t you see now? It was… my… fault and my last words to her were to scram. That she was… a silly crybaby. I didn’t want her around. You should have seen her face. Like I’d b…b…broken her heart. That face has stayed with… me… for ever.”

  PJ gently stroked my hair. “You poor, poor child,” he said. “Poor, poor child.”

  And that set me off crying again. I know I didn’t deserve anyone to be nice. Anyone to call me a poor child and stroke my hair. I was wicked. Hateful. The worst person alive.

  “After Poppy’s death, I thought that I would never let anyone close again, so I put a wall up. Made myself not care. I wouldn’t let anyone in.”

  “Understandable,” said PJ in a gentle voice.

  PJ let me cry until there were no tears left. And nothing more to say. Just a feeling of complete and utter exhaustion. I felt like I hadn’t slept for a million years. But I was asleep, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I? It was all a dream.

  “Am I still dreaming?” I asked.

  “Look around you,” said PJ and, when I did so, I saw that I was in the dorm, back in my narrow bed at the lodge. I opened my eyes and sat up. PJ was sitting on the end of the bed. From the end of the room came the sound of gentle breathing and Lynn snoring. Both girls were asleep.

  “Zey can’t see me,” said PJ. “Or hear us. It iz only a dream.”

  “But how are you here now in reality as well as then in my dream?”

  “To make sure you understood vot you saw, Leonora.”

  “I don’t think I understand anything any more,” I said. It was all so extraordinary. However, I couldn’t deny that I felt better for having told someone what had happened with Poppy, even if PJ was a figment of my imagination.

  “I can see vhy you feel so bad about your sister’s death,” he said, “but zere was nozing you could have done. It vas her time. If she hadn’t gone zat way, she vould have gone another. Zere vas nozing you could do. You must understand zat. But here…” he indicated the sleeping shapes of Lynn and Marilyn, “here zere’s a lot you can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Zink about it. Remember vat you’ve dreamt tonight. You’ll find a vay. You vill, for in your heart, you’re not a bad girl, Leonora Hedley-Dent.”

  And when he said that I felt like crying again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Christmas Wishes

  “And a Merry Christmas to you,” groaned Lynn when the lights blasted on.

  I leapt out of bed. “And a Merry Christmas to you,” I said and I meant it. I felt totally, absolutely, amazingly brilliant.

  Lynn and Marilyn both threw their pillows at me. “Shurrup will you?” they moaned in unison.

  I felt like dancing, so I did. An Irish jig at the end of the bed.

  “Come on,” I said to the girls as the door opened and Mark poked his head around. “Get up. It’s Christmas Day.”

  “But you don’t do Christmas, remember?” said Marilyn.

  Mark came in and sat on the end of Lynn’s bed and he was soon joined by Jake. “Yeah. Are you on drugs, Leonora?” he asked.

  I felt so good I hugged myself. “Nope. Just high on… life! God, it’s good to be alive!” I stood on my head. Just for the heck of it. When I saw the others’ faces, I burst out laughing. Jake, Mark, Marilyn and Lynn were sitting up gawping at me with open mouths.

  “Aliens have been in the night and eaten your brain, haven’t they?” asked Jake.

  “Jake. Jakey baby. Jake my man. My mate,” I said then did a cartwheel down the middle of the aisle between beds, landed neatly at the end of Lynn’s and gave him a hug. “Happy Chrimbole.”

  He pushed me off. “Wergh. Gerroff. You’re frightening me!”

  I went over and hugged Mark. He pushed me off too. “Cut the vomit stuff, Brat Princess. I don’t buy it. What’s the game? Is this some new trick to get out of here? Jake’s already done the mad act. It didn’t work. No point in you trying it, too… although I have to say that you’re a lot more convincing than Jake was.”

  “Do you think we should ask Mario to get a doctor?” asked Marilyn. “I really think she might ’ave flipped.”

  I laughed again. “No. Not really. This is the season to be jolly and I am. Jolly that is. I feel good, no, not good, GREAT!” I began to sing. “Oh… jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the waaaaaaaay.”

  Lynn noticed a small pile of parcels by the door. “Hey look! Presents! Maybe they’re for us!” She raced over to look and, indeed, the names on the labels were

  ours. “Hurray. Presents. I love presents.”

  There were two for me and one for everyone else. I quickly unwrapped my first one to find that it was a phone similar to the phone I’d destroyed on the first day I’d arrived. Gold with a large diamond on it. It was actually cute and I resolved that I wouldn’t break it this time. In the second parcel was the necklace with the lion’s head on it. I’d wondered where that had got to. Mr O must have found it and kept it for me.

  In the meantime, the others had unwrapped their parcels too. Marilyn got a mug with Taurus written on it (that was her birth sign). Lynn got a pink baseball cap with a ram on it (she was an Aries) and a bottle of what looked like paint remover. She laughed then rolled up a sleeve and pointed at her tattoo. “It’s not real. It’s one of the ones that come off with the right remover. I got it done down the market. I don’t even like tattoos.”

  “So why did you put it on?” I asked.

  “To make me look hard but… I guess I don’t need to do that any more.”

  I went and gave her a hug. “No you don’t. We’re all friends here.”

  “You’re weird,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “To be friends. That’s all.”

  She looked at me suspiciously, but I grinned back at her.

  Mark got a tiny laptop and some computer games and a note saying, For the next time you get bored. He looked well pleased with his gift.

  “What did you get, Jake?” asked Lynn.

  “Same as Mark. A dinky laptop and a computer game. A car computer game and there’s a note with it. It’s safer to joyride these cars than real ones. Hmm. I guess. What did you get Leonora?”

  I showed them my phone and the necklace and the girls oohed and aahed. Just imagine if they saw my collection back home, I thought. One of my mobiles was made from real diamonds.

  Mr O appeared at the door. “So did you give each other any gifts?” he asked.

  Jake snorted. “What? Like a mouldy sock?”

  “Or a potato?” asked Lynn. “We haven’t got anything to give or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Leonora…” said Mr O, and he gave me the same pointed look that he had given me the previous night at the camp fire.

  “What?” I asked. “What am I supposed to give?” I put my hand up to my neck. “Not my locket. That’s the only thing I’ve got here.”

  “No-one wants your poxy locket,” sneered Marilyn.

  Mr O sighed. “Your dreams, Leonora. Your encounter with Neptune and Pluto. Didn’t you learn anything from them?”

  “I… I…” I’d bee
n so glad to wake up and realize that my dreams had been just dreams that I hadn’t given them any further thought, but Mr O was staring at me like I’d missed something.

  “Take five minutes all of you,” he said and began to hand out paper and pens. “I thought each of you might like to send your parents a message seeing as it’s Christmas Day. If you write to them, Hermie will be sure they get them some time today.” With another pointed look in my direction, he left us alone.

  I sat on the end of my bed, went through my dreams in my mind and racked my brain as to what it was that Mr O thought that I could do. As the dreams came back to me, the penny began to drop and I began to write my letter.

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  I am so sorry for all the trouble I have caused in the past years. I should have been better, I know I should. Poppy was your daughter as well as my sister and of course you miss her as much as I do. I am sorry I have been so selfish. It was my only way of coping and I cut myself off from you. Can you forgive me for being such a frightful pain?

  I have one more week here and I don’t mind a bit. I really don’t. I have more to learn here and a lot more to do.

  I do love you and I promise that when I come home, I will be a good girl. The old Leonora. I’m not the girl you sent here. I will change.

  With lots of love and kisses,

  Your daughter, Leo

  XXX

  After ten minutes, Mr O came back into the room and began to collect our letters. I glanced over at him and he gave me a nod.

  “Ready, Leonora?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath and nodded back to him. I knew what I had to do. “Okay everyone. Mr O was right before. I do have some gifts I’d like to give you. First for you, Jake. Happy Christmas. I’d like to pay for your little brother to get the best treatment that he needs, that is if you’ll let me.”

  Jake’s face crumpled. “Don’t poke fun, Leonora,” he said. “It’s not funny.”

  “I’m not. Really I’m not, Jake. I have money. Lots of it. Loads of it. I don’t need it all and, well… my little sister was ill once and… and I… I lost her. There was nothing I could do. But I can help you, that is if you’ll let me.”