by Ann Bryant
“I think I need to go and lie down, but don’t worry, I can manage to walk back on my own. I’ll just go slowly.”
“Are you sure?” asked Izzy.
“Yes, I’ll be fine,” I said.
“You can ask Matron for some paracetamol,” said Bryony.
“And then you can have a nice sleep and wake up on top of the world and ready for a fab party!” said Emily.
“Yes, you don’t want to miss the party!” said Izzy, looking suddenly shocked. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” she checked one last time.
I nodded and got up slowly. “Can someone take my plate?”
“I will,” came a chorus of voices.
I walked back to Forest Ash feeling a whole mixture of emotions. I was relieved that I was probably going to be able to get out of the party if I kept up my act, but I was upset about the lie. I was touched at the way my friends had been so kind and caring just now, but I was still angry with Antonia for being so rude last night.
When I went into Forest Ash, the first person I saw was Mrs. Pridham.
“Oh, that was a quick lunch, Nicole! You can’t have been very hungry.”
My heart raced. “I…I’m not feeling well.”
Her eyes filled with concern as she put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me carefully. “Oh dear, what is it?”
“My head… And my legs feel weak.”
“Oh no! What bad timing!” She smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. “Matron’s actually off duty at the moment, but she’ll be back in about an hour and I’ll send her along to you. Would you like to have a lie down till then? I think that’d be best.”
I nodded.
“Come along then.” She steered me towards the stairs, but I didn’t want her coming with me. I couldn’t keep up the pretence of being ill, and anyway, it made me feel too guilty.
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
“Well, if you’re sure… I should take your shoes off and get right under the duvet – then you’ll probably fall asleep, and who knows, you’ll hopefully wake up refreshed and ready to party!” She gave me an encouraging smile and I tried to smile back, but I don’t think it worked, and I could feel her eyes on me as I started to climb the stairs.
By the time I was outside our dorm I was exhausted with the effort of pretending to be ill just in case Mrs. Pridham was still watching, and I thought how nice it would be to get under the duvet and curl up and see if I could get to sleep. Then I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone and I’d even miss out on the party preparations. I didn’t really want Matron taking my temperature or anything though, because I knew it would be normal, and then all the house staff would try to chivvy me along and I bet they’d tell me the party would do me good and it would cheer me up and things like that, when they had no idea how wrong they’d be.
I pushed open the dorm door and immediately had a massive shock. Antonia was lying perfectly still on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Chapter Eight
A small “Oh” sound came out of my mouth.
She didn’t even glance in my direction.
I had no idea what to do or say, especially as I knew that whatever I said she would probably ignore. I wondered if she knew it was me just from my little oh. I felt stupid standing completely still, but it would be a bit embarrassing getting under my bedclothes when no words had been spoken between us.
Antonia hadn’t moved at all and I suddenly wondered if she was ill. I mean really ill. Not pretending, like me. Feeling nervous and unsure of myself, I tiptoed towards her bed, just near enough to see her face. It was streaked with tears. I really couldn’t ignore her now. “Antonia…” I tried softly.
She sighed and turned her head towards me, and then I saw that her eyes were full of new tears now and one or two of them were actually rolling down her face.
“Oh… What’s the matter? Are…are you okay?”
She shook her head, which made the tears roll across her cheeks, but still she was silent. I bet she was wishing that anyone but me had walked into the dorm at that moment. I felt so sorry for her that I went right up to her bed.
“Aren’t you feeling well? Shall I get…someone?”
“I am…unhappy,” she said, in the smallest voice.
Me too, I felt like saying.
“Why?” I asked, because I couldn’t think what else to say.
“Being here…”
“You miss your family?”
She nodded and her face crumpled and big choky sobs started coming out of her. “I don’t…belong…here.”
I swallowed and felt a huge cloud of sadness weighing me down. This wasn’t what was supposed to be happening. It was almost as though Antonia and I were acting in a film – the film of Life at Silver Spires – and Antonia had taken over my part and was saying all my lines and acting like the one who didn’t fit in, when clearly that was me. Wasn’t it?
“Wh…why?” I managed to utter.
“Because I…miss my family…and my home,” she stammered in gulps. “And I do not understand Engleesh well…enough…and because…because…”
I wished I could reach up and hold her hand. That might make her feel a bit better, but I was afraid she’d snatch it away.
“…because of you.”
“Me!” It was like a punch in the stomach. “You’re unhappy because of me?”
She nodded, then broke into more loud sobs and hid her face as she shook.
“But…you don’t like me…Antonia!”
She was trying to say something, but she was crying so hard I couldn’t make out what it was.
“I can’t hear you…” I said.
She moved her hands away and I saw that her eyes were all red and her hair was falling over her cheeks and sticking to her tears. “No…” she said through her sobs. “You do not…like…me.”
“Yes I…yes I…” I was going to say, Yes, I do! but that wouldn’t have been the truth, so I just stopped and bit my lip and felt my throat hurting. It was awful to see Antonia so sad, and something was making my heart bang against my ribs with big alarm.
She suddenly sat up and spoke sharply. “You see! You do not like me. I was right. Just because I am not clever like you. Just because I do not understand theengs, you theenk I am stupid.”
I gasped. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could Antonia have got it so wrong?
“I don’t think you’re stupid. I’ve never said that!”
“But you look at me and I theenk you theenk I am stupid. And you have a scholarsheep.”
My hackles were really rising now. I’d never looked at her in any way at all, because she was never looking at me in the first place.
I climbed up the ladder and sat cross-legged on the end of her bed so we were facing each other. Her eyes were wide and protesting and I had the feeling mine might look the same. “It’s you who doesn’t like me!” I insisted crossly. “You were the only one who didn’t say anything about my scholarship.”
“Because I do not like to find you are even more clever than I theenk. And I do not know what is geeky. And how can I ask when you do not like me?”
Antonia was being totally unfair and I raised my voice even more so she’d really get it. “Look, the real reason you don’t like me is because I don’t come from a family with loads of money.” The moment I’d said those words, I realized that, even though I’d never really let myself think this thought, it had always been there somewhere in the back of my head: Antonia knows I’m poor and that’s why she doesn’t like me. After that, words poured out of my mouth, each one tumbling faster and louder than the last one. “I don’t live in a house in Milan. I don’t have a holiday home. I don’t have servants. I don’t have so many posh clothes that I have to leave half of them in my cases in the storeroom. My mum doesn’t know any big fashion designers. My dad doesn’t own a smart restaurant…”
“So you make everyone laugh with talking about takeaways because you know I do not understand thees.”
>
I felt a stab of guilt then.
“I was trying to help…”
“Then you turn your back on me.”
It was true I’d turned my back, but that was because of Suki. I looked down only for a second, but when I looked back up again I saw that Antonia had stopped crying and her eyes were really blazing.
“How can I know eef you have two houses or eef you have one house when you have never told me? And why should I care eef you have feefty houses or no houses at all.”
“You do care. It’s obvious. You look at me with…with…scorn!” I shouted.
“I do not know what ees scorn. I do not even speak Engleesh properly. There ees so much I do not understand but you talk queek queek queek because you are so clever with your scholarsheep, and you do not want to help me in prep!”
“That’s not fair. It’s not my fault if I talk quickly, and anyway, you never ask me to help you! You never even talk to me at all!”
“I ask in prep how to do the periodeec table and you said eet ees impossible and I was so ’appy that you do not know eet also, and then we take our books back from the teachers, and you leave your book on your desk here and I see that you have done eet all very very well, so you deedn’t want to help me, deed you? Because you do not like me.”
I gulped and looked down. How could I explain what had happened in prep? How could I make Antonia believe that I didn’t want to seem too much of a geeky clever clogs, after what Suki had said that lunchtime? It would be difficult enough if Antonia could completely understand English, but she didn’t, so I wouldn’t know where to start. I wished I’d taken no notice of Suki. She was a horrible girl. And now I felt terrible. I’d no idea Antonia had seen my chemistry book. It was stupid and thoughtless of me to leave it lying around, and even more stupid and thoughtless that I hadn’t tried to help her. I could imagine that if the same thing had happened to me, I’d be feeling upset too.
I swallowed and spoke in scarcely more than a whisper. “Sorry…I didn’t realize…” It sounded pathetic.
Antonia didn’t answer, just stared at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.
“But I honestly thought you hated me,” I said in a gentler voice. “I mean, what about when we went shopping?”
“And you deed not want to seet beside me in the bus?”
Now I was cross again. The only reason I didn’t want to sit next to her coming back in the minibus was because she’d been so mean to me. The memory of the way she’d silently looked me up and down as I’d stood outside the changing room filled me with a new anger and really wound me up. And what about the time a bit later when she’d wanted to go to the bookshop and she actually said she didn’t like the dress I’d tried on? Why was I feeling guilty, when she’d acted in such a horrible way? I couldn’t help raising my voice again.
“It was obvious you thought it was a rubbish dress that I tried on. You said it was no good. Those were your very words! I remember!”
“My Engleesh ees too bad,” she said, putting her hand to her cheek and looking alarmed. “I deed not want you to buy thees dress…”
“Why? Just because you have expensive designer dresses, it doesn’t mean we can all afford clothes like that!”
“Yes, I know that… I do not speak Engleesh well, so instead of speaking, I look and I see you frowning at the prices and I know when someone ees worried…”
“Wh…what do you mean?”
“Eet does not matter.”
“Yes, it does matter. What do you mean, you know when someone is worried?”
Her voice went down almost to a whisper. “I theenk you are worried about spending the money, so I try to help you…not to spend eet.”
All the thoughts in my mind seemed to be swimming around as though they’d lost their anchor. I tried my hardest to pin them down. Surely I was right and Antonia was wrong. “But…I needed a dress. I don’t have a dress!”
And that was when I realized I’d spilled out the truth by mistake, and the whole awfulness of this conversation was suddenly too much for me to bear and I burst into tears and covered my face.
In a flash I felt Antonia’s hand taking one of my hands off my face and she gripped it firmly and prised open my clenched fingers, then held my hand and said something that sounded like “soo”, in a really gentle voice, and then “ma no”, and then “soo” over and over again, while I cried and cried, two weeks of tears.
“I was…just so…miserable because I thought you hated me,” I finally managed to stutter.
“I was also,” said Antonia. “I mean, me too.”
I glanced up at her quickly, because there was something in her voice that seemed to be mocking me. She was smiling, but not unkindly.
“You see, I am even afraid that you have – what ees eet you said? – scorn, for my terrible Engleesh,” she said, her smile turning sad.
I hated that she thought that. “No, no, that’s not true at all,” I said quickly. “I wasn’t correcting you…” I sighed and thought how much misunderstanding had happened between us and how much unravelling there was to be done. “But…but I can see that it must have sounded like I was not being kind,” I said carefully. “Only, it just…came out wrongly.” Then I sighed again. So much seemed to have come out wrongly for both of us. “How could we have made so many mistakes?” I asked Antonia carefully.
“For me, because I am Italian. But for you, there is no excuse!”
I looked at her sharply, thinking she was cross again, but her eyes were dancing.
“I joke,” she said quietly.
“I am joking,” I corrected her, feeling a giggle rising to the surface.
And then she began to laugh and so did I. In fact we both fell apart and finished up collapsing into a big hug. Then Antonia pulled away suddenly and grabbed my hands again. “Amiche?” she said.
I looked at her. “What does that mean?”
“It means…are we friends?”
And I nodded hard. “Yes, definitely.”
“Good.”
I felt so totally happy I could have burst into tears all over again. I’d worked myself up into such a state about Antonia, thinking she really despised me, and all the time she’d been just as miserable about me. I suddenly put myself in her position and imagined that I’d come over to a strange school in a foreign country and I couldn’t even speak the language properly, and this time I really felt her loneliness and then I felt ashamed. My throat was hurting and I knew I was going to cry again.
“Oh no! What ees the matter now?” Antonia asked, leaning forwards.
“It’s okay,” I stammered. “I just wish…we could turn back the clocks…and start again.”
“We can do that, no problem,” said Antonia, smiling. She drew lots of anticlockwise circles in the air, then she leaned forwards and shook my hand. “Hello, my name ees Antonia Rossi. I live een Italy. I love my family. I am feeling homeseeck. I am very bad at Engleesh and afraid that I cannot understand or say theengs properly and I am scared that I will not feet een at Silver Spires.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “Hello, my name is Nicole Williamson. I got a scholarship, which is the only reason my family could afford to send me here to Silver Spires. But I don’t want people to know that I come from a poor background in case they think I don’t belong here. And I don’t want people to think I’m a geek or a show-off, either. All I want is to fit in properly at Silver Spires.”
“We are the same. We are both worried about feetting een. We weell be good friends,” said Antonia simply.
I grinned at her. We were the same. I realized that now. This time I was the one who took hold of her hand, and I tried to remember the word she’d said. “Ameekay!” I said proudly.
“But are you clever enough to spell eet?” Antonia laughed, grabbing some paper from her desk. She wrote down Amiche and I felt surprised.
“It’s not pronounced how it’s spelled,” I said.
“For me eet ees right because eet ees my l
anguage,” said Antonia. “I will teach you other Italian words eef you want?”
“Oh yes, I’d love to learn some more,” I said happily. “And I’ll help you with your English until you never have to worry again that you don’t understand something!”
“But first, let me show you the dress I have chosen for you for the party.”
“You’ve chosen a dress for me?” Part of me thought I should feel annoyed or embarrassed or upset in some way, but all I felt was a lovely glow of happiness that Antonia had thought of doing something especially for me.
“Of course. Eet ees een my case een the storeroom.” She looked a bit embarrassed when she said that, but then we both saw the funny side and cracked up laughing again, and that was how we were when the door opened and in came Sasha, Izzy, Bryony and Emily.
Sasha looked at me with big concern in her eyes. “How are…?” she began in a gentle voice. Then she stopped and stared and I watched the concern turn to confusion. “What’s…?”
“Are you…?” Izzy began uncertainly.
I noticed that all four of our friends were looking from Antonia to me and back to Antonia, as though they couldn’t believe their eyes.
It was Emily who seemed to take command. She strode forwards. “So,” she said, with her hands on her hips like she was our mother, “you two are friends at last! Thank goodness for that!” Then she climbed onto her bed and, just as she’d done on the very first day of term, flopped down as though she was exhausted.
The others looked stunned. There was the smallest of silences and I wondered if they thought that Emily had gone too far. But then one by one, we all six began to crease up with laughter and no one seemed to be able to stop. So it went on and on.
“Help! It’s hurting my stomach!” spluttered Bryony.
“And mine!” said Izzy. “And I don’t even know what we’re laughing about!”
“Neither do I!” said Sasha, setting us all off again.
Antonia and I exchanged a look, and even through her laughter I could see that her eyes were still a bit red from crying, and I expected mine were the same. The others could probably tell we’d both been crying too, and I guessed they might be feeling confused about what on earth had been happening, but I knew that bit by bit we’d try to explain all the misunderstandings to them. And Antonia and I had so much talking to do ourselves. I was sure that she, like me, still had some bad memories stuck in tight knots, and we must take the time to unpick and unravel them together – then we’d really be able to trust each other.
