Just Peachy

by Jean Ure

  Millie was already there when I entered our classroom. Her desk was right next to mine. As I sat down she whispered, “You OK now?”

  I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to actually say anything.

  “You sure?” said Millie. “You look kind of pale.”

  I frowned, and concentrated on taking my books and pencil case out of my bag.

  “Want to hear something funny?” Millie leaned across, giggling. “The ridiculous Diddy People wanted to know when my fruit friend was coming round again. That’s what they call you – my fruit friend!”

  I pursed my lips.

  “Sometimes they pretend they can’t remember what sort of fruit you are and they start saying Apple, or Pear, or Strawberry, like they’re being so-o-o clever!”

  I tried to smile but my lips refused to do more than just quiver. I was relieved when Mrs Bradbeer came in and we all had to stop talking.

  At break, me and Millie wandered off together as usual. We’d got into this habit of walking round the edge of the playing field, sharing a Kit Kat or a packet of Maltesers, talking as we went. This morning it was Millie that did all the talking; I stayed silent. After a bit she stopped and said, “What’s the matter? Have I done something?”

  “You told them about Charlie!” The words came blurting out of me.

  Two spots of colour appeared in Millie’s cheeks. She said, “I what?”

  “You told them about Charlie! Even though I begged you not to!”

  “Who did I tell?” said Millie.

  “Zoe. You told Zoe!”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “And Lola and Rhiannon. They said, ‘it was your friend Millie’. And now they know about Dad as well!”

  “Oh, boo hoo,” said Millie. “So they know about your dad. Big deal!”

  “But you promised. I trusted you!”

  “Strange way to trust someone,” said Millie, “going and accusing them.”

  “I’m not accusing you! I’m just telling you what they said. They said you told them!”

  “Know what?” Millie screwed up the Kit Kat wrapper and chucked it in the bushes. It was something she wouldn’t normally have done. “You wanna get a grip,” she said. “Going all to pieces just because people have found out who your sister is, and who your dad is. Like it’s some big dark secret!”

  I blinked. I couldn’t believe this was Millie talking. Why was she turning on me? She was the one in the wrong!

  “I mean, look at you,” said Millie. “Getting so wound up you even go and make yourself sick! How pathetic is that?”

  “I couldn’t help it,” I said. “It was food poisoning.”

  “Oh, pur-lease!” Millie rolled her eyes. “What a load of rubbish! You just wanted to run away. Like wanting to come to a different school cos you couldn’t take the competition. And then you go and accuse me!”

  I swallowed, trying to stop the tears welling up in my eyes. “I told you, it was Zoe. If she hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t ever have known.”

  “What, that I’d gone and betrayed you?” The two spots of colour had flared up again in Millie’s cheeks. “Some kind of friend you are!”

  With that she turned on her heel and went marching back into school, leaving me standing there by myself trying to work out what had happened. Why had she attacked me? What had I done? I hadn’t done anything! Just made Millie angry, and I didn’t know why. I was the one that ought to be angry. But I couldn’t be. I was just hurt and bewildered. If Millie had apologised, or said that it was something that had just slipped out by mistake, I could have forgiven her. But she hadn’t apologised! And now it was like would she forgive me? Even though I wasn’t the one that was guilty.

  The bell rang, and I trailed miserably back into school. Millie didn’t even look at me.

  “You two had a row?” said Zoe later.

  Had we? I wasn’t sure. I just knew that Millie wasn’t speaking to me any more.

  I was in my bedroom, staring glumly at some maths homework, when the doorbell rang. Almost immediately there was a loud screech of “I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” followed by the sound of footsteps pounding down the stairs. Charlie. Probably her latest boyfriend.

  I returned gloomily to a page of meaningless figures. I don’t really get maths. Usually I relied on Millie to help me out, but it seemed like Millie didn’t want to be friends any more. She thought I was pathetic.

  “Getting so wound up you even go and make yourself sick!”

  I was still feebly trying to blame it on the yoghurt, though really I had this horrible feeling that Millie might be right. Which could only mean that I was totally mad.

  “Hey, Peachy!” Charlie’s voice came bellowing up the stairs. “For you!”

  Me? I sniffed, in a self-pitying kind of way, and blew my nose, which was feeling a bit soggy. I wasn’t crying. But I did so hate not being friends with Millie!

  Slowly, I shuffled along the landing and peered over the banisters.

  “There you are,” said Charlie. “What took you so long?”

  She is always very impatient. Just because she flies about at the speed of light she expects everyone else to do the same. A small figure stepped out from behind her.

  “Hi,” said Millie.

  I said, “H-hi.”

  “Well, go on,” said Charlie. She gave Millie a little shove. “Go up!”

  “Don’t worry,” said Millie, as we went into my room. “I’m not going to yell again. I just came to say that I was sorry.”

  I swallowed a lump like a hard-boiled egg which seemed to have got stuck in my throat.

  Millie pulled a face. “Me Mam always says I’ve got a temper on me. She says I ought to learn to control it.”

  I muttered, “That’s OK.”

  “It’s not OK!” Millie bounced herself down, rather crossly, on to a cushion. “I oughtn’t to have said what I said.”

  “If you mean about me making myself sick—”

  “Not that! Though you did.”

  I didn’t attempt to argue. I didn’t even mention the yoghurt. I knew that she was right.

  “It was all the other stuff,” said Millie. “Telling you to get a grip, and saying you were pathetic. I only did it cos I was so angry! And hurt, as well,” she added, “if you want to know the truth.”

  I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. It was Millie who’d told them about Charlie being my sister! I was the one that ought to be hurt.

  “Thing is, I didn’t do anything,” said Millie. “You accused me of something without ever bothering to ask me if I was guilty. You just took other people’s word for it. It’s not what friends are supposed to do.”

  I stared at her, horrified. “You mean, Zoe was telling lies?”

  “What did she say, exactly?”

  “It was Lola,” I mumbled. “She said, we know she’s your sister cos Millie O’Dowd said she was.”

  “Said she was. Not told us she was.”

  I wasn’t quite sure that I could see the difference, though I really did want to.

  “Shall I tell you what actually happened?” said Millie. I nodded humbly. “We were standing there, watching, and Charlie kept scoring all these goals, and this girl in Year 9, at least I think she’s in Year 9, said, ‘That’s Charlie McBride – I used to be at primary school with her.’ So then Zoe, all loud and clanging, like the girl had been talking to her, which she hadn’t, said, ‘She wouldn’t be Peaches McBride’s sister, would she?’ And the girl said yes, she was, and Zoe and the others started on about how no one would ever have thought it and how you weren’t in the least bit alike, blah blah blah, so that’s when I got mad and told them that Charlie was useless and spoilt and your mum had to run after her all the time, and—” Millie broke off and waved a hand. “I just told them what I thought.”

  She’d been sticking up for me. Being my friend. I swallowed another hard-boiled egg.

  “Probably I should have kept my mouth shut,” said Millie, “but I just
can’t stand that Zoe!”

  I agreed that I couldn’t stand her either. “She can be really mean.”

  “She’s not just mean, she’s snobby. And she thinks she’s the cream of the cream! Which she most definitely is not. More like cream gone sour. Yuck!”

  I said, “Double yuck.”

  “Bleuuuurgh!” Millie looked at my books spread out on the floor. “What you up to?”

  I said, “Nothing much. Just trying to do my maths homework.”

  “Want some help?”

  “Omigod, please,” I said.

  After Millie had patiently explained to me what it all meant – she wouldn’t ever do it for me; she said it was important that I understood – we settled cosily side by side on our cushions.

  “Other reason I got so angry,” said Millie, “it wasn’t just you taking Zoe’s word without even bothering to ask me, it was cos it drives me nuts when you keep putting yourself down all the time. Like the rest of your family are so much better than you are? Just cos they’re all loud and noisy and convinced they’re something special?”

  I blinked. Was Millie being critical? Of my family? Everybody loved my family! They wrote about them, they interviewed them, they took photographs of them. They were something special!

  “What gets me,” said Millie, “it’s the way you go along with it. Like they’re royalty, or something! It’s this stupid habit you’ve got into. Thinking you’re Just Peachy and they’re all geniuses. I mean, I know your Dad’s a bit of a celeb and your brother writes music, but so what? You’re just as good as they are! Better than some of them, if you ask me. Remember I told you I only make friends with people I find interesting? Well, I wouldn’t find your sister Charlie interesting. I’d find her a total waste of space! Like she’d probably find me a dead bore. But know what? It wouldn’t bother me one little bit! I don’t care what people like her think about me. I don’t care what people like Zoe think about me. And you shouldn’t care what they think about you either!”

  I heaved a sigh. “I know.”

  “So are you going to stop caring and do what you said you were going to do? Concentrate on being you?”

  “I am trying,” I said.

  Millie clasped her hands together and looked at me over a pair of imaginary spectacles. In Sister Agatha’s voice she said, “You must try harder, my dear.”

  That made me giggle, but all the same I couldn’t help thinking it would be a lot easier if I could just find something I was any good at. Like when Mum said I had “my own thing”. She’d been saying it for years, just to boost my confidence, but nobody, least of all me, had any idea what that thing was supposed to be. It worried me, sometimes, that maybe it didn’t really exist. There wasn’t any thing. I didn’t say this to Millie though. I didn’t want her thinking I was pathetic. Instead I asked her if she was looking forward to the Christmas party.

  Enthusiastically Millie said, “Yes!”

  I said, “Me too.”

  The party wasn’t for us, but for pupils at Hill House, the special-needs school just down the road from Sacred Heart. Sister Agatha had impressed upon us that the Christmas party was one of Sacred Heart’s most cherished traditions.

  “One we are extremely proud of. And it’s you people in Year 7 whom we rely on to keep that tradition alive. It’s entirely up to you!”

  We were to play hosts. Millie and I agreed that it was a big responsibility. They could have chosen Year 8s, or Year 9s, but they hadn’t. They had chosen us. Zoe, in her know-it-all way, said, “It’s always Year 7,” like that meant we could stop congratulating ourselves cos it wasn’t anything so wonderful. But we all felt that it was. We often saw the little special-needs kids playing in their school grounds, or being brought in by bus in the morning, some of them in wheelchairs, some of them needing to be helped, and we desperately wanted to give them a good time and make sure they enjoyed themselves. Zoe, again in her know-it-all way, said, “It’s one kid for each of us. Then you have to stay with them and look after them and give them a hand eating and drinking.” She made it sound as if it was a bit of a drag, like she’d rather not have anything to do with it.

  “And it’s up to Sister Agatha,” she said, “which kid you’re given. You don’t get to choose. They don’t ask you which you want, a boy or a girl. My cousin got this kid that couldn’t move, hardly. It was like a nightmare! She didn’t know what to do with him.”

  “I suppose it would be difficult,” I said, as I sat there on my cushion next to Millie, “if you got some poor little kid that couldn’t move?”

  “Even more difficult for the poor little kid,” said Millie.

  I said, “Yes, but what I mean, I’d be scared I wasn’t looking after them properly.”

  Millie thought about it. “I don’t reckon Sister Agatha would put you with someone if she didn’t feel you were up to it.”

  “She did with Zoe’s cousin!”

  “Yeah, well. Zoe.” Millie screwed up her face. “I wouldn’t trust anything she said.”

  I agreed. You couldn’t trust anything Zoe said. Anyway, I didn’t want to think about Zoe. She had almost managed to come between me and Millie. Rearranging myself cross-legged on my cushion, I said, “I can’t believe we’ve been at Sacred Heart almost a whole term. Can you?”

  “D’you remember when we started?” said Millie. “That first day? Zoe and her politics of envy!”

  “And you saying how people thought bus drivers were greedy for wanting more money.”

  “I couldn’t resist it,” said Millie. “That girl really rubs me up the wrong way!”

  We sat happily chatting until it was time for Millie to go.

  “I’m really sorry I thought you’d told them about Charlie,” I said.

  “I’m really sorry I got mad at you,” said Millie.

  We were friends again!

  I was growing quite excited at the thought of the Christmas party. I’d seen one or two really sweet little kids in the Hill House playground. One little girl in particular. She was in a wheelchair, but she was always so bright and happy. If only Sister Agatha would choose her for me to look after! I had these visions of helping her unwrap her present, which might be a doll perhaps, so we could talk about what she was going to call her; or maybe it would be a picture book, and we’d go through it together, with me reading the words. I’d really enjoy that!

  The day of the party arrived and I rushed down to eat breakfast and get off to school, ready to help set up the gym with the Christmas tree and the pressies.

  “You’re looking very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” said Mum.

  It’s not very often Mum notices how I’m looking. Eagerly I told her that today was the Christmas party.

  “What Christmas party?” Mum seemed surprised. “Whose Christmas party?”

  “At school,” I said. “I told you about it, ages ago!”

  “Sorry,” said Mum. “Obviously in one ear and out the other. Charlie, what’s the matter? What are you after?”

  “My contact lenses!” Charlie snatched up a saucepan that was on the draining board and peered into it distractedly. “I’ve lost them!”

  “How can you lose contact lenses?”

  “I was going to put them in and then I went and did something else and forgot!”

  “So where did you leave them?”

  “I don’t know! Out here.”

  “On the draining board?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Mum sighed and went over to the sink.

  “It’s something that happens every year,” I said.

  Coop gave a loud guffaw. “What, her losing her contact lenses?”

  “The party! It’s for little kids with special needs. We have to look after them and make sure they’re having a good time.

  “That’s nice,” said Mum, peering into the waste bin. “I hope you didn’t go and throw them out with the rubbish.”

  “As one does,” said Coop.

  “You shut up!” screeched C
harlie. She spun round to the twins. “What are you giggling for?”

  Nobody ever knows what the twins are giggling for. They just giggle.

  “Everybody stop what they’re doing,” said Mum, “and look for Charlie’s contact lenses.”

  They finally turned up in the food cupboard, next to a tin of biscuits.

  “Now I remember,” said Charlie. “I put them there to be safe while I got myself a glass of milk.”

  “That makes sense,” agreed Coop.

  Charlie glared at him. “I’m going to go and put them in,” she said, “and then I’m ready. I need to be at school really early today – we’ve got a special hockey practice.” She went whisking out into the hall.

  “I’ve got to be early too,” I said. “We have to set up for the party. I’m just so hoping I get to look after this one little girl, she’s so sweet, Mum! She—”

  “Hang on a second,” said Mum. “Charlie!” She called up the hall after her. “Make sure you don’t forget your hockey boots this time! I don’t want to have to come back and get them for you. Sorry, darling. What were you saying? Something about a little girl?”

  “It’s all right.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.” There just wasn’t any point, trying to compete with Charlie.

  “You were hoping you’d get to look after her?”

  “Honestly, it’s not important,” I said. “I probably won’t get her anyway.”

  At school we spent all morning arranging the gym. Mr Eccles, the school caretaker, climbed up his ladder and hung long strings of glittery stuff from the wall bars right across to the windows, while we decorated the tree with tinsel and glass ornaments and little paper lanterns. There was even an angel to go on the top. All round the foot of the tree were presents, pink-wrapped for the girls and blue for the boys.

  “A bit sexist,” grumbled Millie, but even she had to agree that most boys probably wouldn’t thank you for a doll, or for what Coop (to annoy Charlie) calls girly stuff, meaning hair slides and bangles and ‘little itty-bitty things’.