My Best Friend and Other Enemies

by Catherine Wilkins

  So. What has two thumbs and no badgemaker? This guy. (You can’t see me, but I am pointing at myself, with my thumbs. Geddit?)

  My mum has been very unreasonable about the whole badgemaker thing.

  “Kids! Dinner!” she calls up the stairs.

  I mean, she didn’t even listen when I told her about how it would be an investment. It might even make money. I told her I could sell the badges I made to the other students, and everything. She is far too fixated on what is legal, if you ask me.

  “Kids! Dinner!” she shouts again.

  Reluctantly I follow Ryan downstairs and plop down at the table.

  “There you are,” says my dad. “Helmet off, please, Ryan.” Ryan woefully removes his space helmet. We all seem to be a bit bleak.

  My mum serves us up some lamb burgers that had been in the freezer and some mixed vegetables that had been there too. And the last of the Bisto gravy. To be fair, this is much nicer than that weird roast the other day. If anything, this is one of the nicest meals of the money-saving enterprise. What a shame I am too blue to enjoy it properly.

  “So, how was school—” my dad starts, but I interrupt.

  “PLEASE, can I have a badgemaker?”

  “Oh, not this again,” snaps my mum. “No, Jessica! I’ve told you no! No means no!”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  “It’s less than ten pounds to get one.”

  “Ten pounds is too much money.”

  “Yes, but it’s less than that. So that’s good.”

  “No.”

  “Please. I never ask you for anything.” My parents just look at me, so I continue anyway. “Ryan gets everything he wants.”

  “No, I don’t,” says Ryan, sounding slightly annoyed at being dragged into this.

  “No, he doesn’t,” says my mum. “We treat you exactly the same. And Ryan doesn’t have a mobile phone, and we won’t have to fork out for an expensive new school uniform for him in six months’ time.”

  “It’s not my fault I need a new school uniform. And that’s ages away, and you said you can get loads of it second hand.”

  “The answer is no, Jessica. Don’t make me send you to your room again.” My mum sounds so tired and weary that I drop it.

  “OK, fine,” I sigh.

  But now my mum won’t drop it. “You seem to have forgotten we are on an economy drive!”

  “I know,” I say crossly.

  “Do you?” says my mum. “Do you really? Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yes!” I say, annoyed.

  “I’m not sure you do,” she says. “You kids don’t know the first thing about the meaning of work, or the value of money …”

  Oh great, now she’s going off on one about work ethics. So she’s obviously completely forgotten about the time when I volunteered/was coerced by her into helping at that cake sale, to raise money for the old people’s home. (I was actually really good at it, and at the end I got given a free cream slice from one of the old people.) How’s that for appreciating the value of work? Exactly.

  I suppose that actually my parents are quite hard-working, sensible people. I mean, they are quite taken with the idea of good jobs. Tammy says this is because they have a Protestant work ethic, and it’s people like them who are largely responsible for the rise and success of capitalism. (Which is one of the reasons they don’t get on that well.)

  “Mum I get it, and I have dropped it,” I point out.

  “And a badgemaker, anyway?” She’s on a roll. “You’ve never mentioned one before. Just some fad, is it? You’ll use it once and then never again. I expect someone at school has one, do they?”

  “No,” I lie, trying to sound outraged.

  “Well, if I was Superman, or Batman, you could have one but it just so happens that I’m not.” My mum appears to have finished. (As if you would need superhero skills to purchase an £8.50 item.)

  “If you were Batman, you could easily afford one,” I retort. “Bruce Wayne is a zillionaire.”

  “It’s a shame you’re not a superhero called bank manager man,” my dad tells me. “And your super power was managing the economy.” He chuckles.

  “Yes, very funny, Dad,” I say tiredly. My dad looks quite pleased with himself.

  Frankly, it’s a shame I’m not a superhero, full stop. With any super skills. Or just any skills. Although, I do have some skills. And I sometimes joke that they are my super powers … Hey, I think I might have just had a brilliant idea!

  I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. I am a cartoonist. (At least, that is what I want to be.) I will make my own badges. That is, I will draw personalised cartoons of everyone in my gang, and I will stick them on to existing badges that we already have lying around the house. It’s genius!

  I need seven in total. I quickly round up a few I have lying about my room. One is from a Christmas panto and says “I love Buttons”. Another says “I heart Tinkerbell”. I find some in a kitchen drawer that say “Meat Is Murder”, which I think my sister must have left there. And I get the rest from Ryan who says he doesn’t need his Transformers badges any more. I have way more than I need. This is brilliant!

  Right then. I sit at my desk and set about drawing everyone. It’s actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I really want these to be good. I rack my brains trying to think of the best cartoons of what people could be.

  Some are easier than others. For Tanya Harris, I just draw her as a Cadbury’s Creme Egg again. I make Shantair a cartoon chess piece castle, as that is her favourite chess piece. She always uses her castles loads. I make Cherry some cherries. I make Emily a dolphin as she really likes dolphins and sometimes gets me to draw them on her books.

  I do some rough sketches of each one. Then I decide which is the best version of each of the rough sketches. I make that the official one and draw it neater. Then I copy as carefully as I can the neat version of each cartoon on to some white card. I colour them in with my paints as neatly as I can, deciding I will leave them to dry overnight before I cut them out.

  At the bottom of each one, I paint “ACE” in red, with a yellow, zig-zaggy, comic book-style explosion thing behind it. I think it looks pretty good.

  The whole process takes hours. Towards the end my dad starts threatening to turn my light out if I don’t go to bed immediately. But finally, finally (after a tiny row about how many times I have said “ten more minutes”), I am finished.

  Ryan comes in to say goodnight wearing his Buzz Lightyear pyjamas and holding his Winnie the Pooh bear, and admires my handiwork. He seems genuinely impressed. “I want one,” he says.

  “I’ve only got enough for my friends at school,” I explain.

  “Do one for me. I want to be Ryan the cartoon.”

  “But it’s kind of for a gang, Ryan. You’re not really—”

  His face falls. “Please,” he says.

  “Oh, all right,” I say, sighing. “You can be an honorary member. But I’m only doing this once. If you break or lose this, that’s it.”

  Ryan nods enthusiastically. “I’m a spaceman,” he says.

  “Well, duh,” I reply. Ryan giggles. (That was a no-brainer.)

  “Kids? Ryan? Are you in bed yet?” calls my dad.

  “Hang on, Dad!” I call back. “Just ten more minutes!”

  OK, it’s Tuesday morning and my cartoons are cut out and superglued on to actual badges. I am ready to go. We have lift-off. My mum has banned Ryan from wearing his to school. She says it’s against regulations. I have to pointlessly promise her I won’t wear mine at school. (Some people’s priorities are just all over the place.)

  I even told her about how Melissa in our form wears a badge all the time, but she didn’t listen. Admittedly, I didn’t add that Melissa’s badge says “Form Captain”.

  My badge is of a cartoon paintbrush, Megan is a kitten (she just got one and loves it) and in the end I made Fatimah a Jelly Baby (because she loves them). I’m so excited
as I ride the bus to school. I can’t wait to give these out to everyone.

  And I don’t even have to wait that long because we have art first thing on a Tuesday morning. I try and attract the attention of Emily, Megan and Fatimah, without alerting Joshua or Terry, who I fear may mock my endeavours. (But also because it’s a secret.)

  “Hey, psst.” I try and get their attention. “ACE now has badges.” I proffer the little Tupperware box the badges are in. “We should wear them for meetings and stuff.”

  Emily, Megan and Fatimah stare at the box in confusion for a moment, and then as realisation dawns on them they get really excited. “Oh my gosh! These are brilliant!” cries Emily, tipping the whole lot out on to the desk.

  “Amazing!” coos Fatimah.

  “Which one am I?” asks Megan.

  Predictably, all this does get the attention of Terry and Joshua but they don’t say anything at first. I dish out the badges and explain the thinking behind them. The gang members put them on, delighted, and seem really pleased.

  “This must have taken you ages,” says Emily.

  “It did,” I agree.

  “Let’s see, then,” says Terry, and the remaining badges get passed round him and Joshua. They don’t “ooh” and “aahh” as much as the girls did, but Terry says, “Very nice.” And then passes them back.

  “We’re in a gang,” says Megan, by way of explanation.

  “There is rather too much noise coming from this table,” says Mrs Cooper, coming over. I quickly scrabble the remaining badges into the box before she sees. We all go quiet. She seems satisfied and goes back to explaining the difference between tints and tones. We pay attention for a bit and start copying what she is showing us.

  “I like your cartoons,” Joshua says to me quietly.

  “Really?” I say, surprised, looking at him curiously. “Thanks.” He looks like he might be blushing. Is he? Is he blushing? I think he is!

  “They kind of remind me of, well, I suppose you’ve got kind of a manga style,” he says. “Do you like much manga?”

  Ha ha! Joshua is blushing! He’s normally so cool (or at least he thinks he is). I resist the urge to shout “Ha ha! You’re blushing!” and try and focus on the conversation.

  Hmm. How best to answer this question? OK. I know what manga is. It’s a style of Japanese cartoon comics. I don’t know if I can truthfully say that I’m into it, as such. But I have seen a few of the animated films, now I think about it. And I did especially like that one my sister showed me about the environmental princess warrior.

  “Well,” I say, “I quite liked Princess Mononoke.”

  “Oh, cool,” says Joshua, sounding impressed. “I liked it too.”

  We shade in tints and tones for a bit. “So, you’re in a gang?” he asks quietly.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I reply. I suddenly feel like I must sound very interesting.

  “Like the Crips and the Bloods?” he says jokingly. Is he mocking me again?

  OK, maybe I’m not that interesting. But, hello? There are other gangs. Why does everyone have to keep comparing my gang to the Crips and the Bloods all the time?

  “Yes, that is in fact where I got the idea,” I joke.

  “Yeah, I thought it must be. So who are your rivals?”

  “Eh?” (How does he know about that?)

  “Who are ACE’s turf war rivals?” (Oh, right, he’s still joking.)

  “Oh. Um. There is a rival gang, actually,” I say.

  “No way!” He laughs.

  “Way,” I say. And I somehow end up telling him all about Natalie and Amelia having another gang, and how one of their members has a badgemaker, so I had to up my game and pull these cartoons out of the bag.

  Joshua listens to everything with interest, but also with an amused expression on his face. I can’t tell if he’s mocking me. Finally he says, “Wow. Well, I guess you can tell we live in suburbia.”

  He is! He’s mocking me again. The nerve. “That’s a slightly long word for you, isn’t it?” I say. “What do you mean?”

  “Ha ha,” he says sarcastically, blushing slightly. Then he recovers himself. “Most gangs have fights in the inner cities, with knives, you know, urban turf warfare, bloodshed on the streets. You lot are doing a battle with badgemakers.”

  I can’t help but laugh, although I also might be going a tiny bit red. It does sound really lame when he says it like that. But like, hello? That’s not the point.

  “There’s still a principle at stake,” I splutter.

  Joshua has stopped blushing by now, but suddenly he looks slightly unsure of himself again. “Oh I know, I didn’t mean to knock you. Good for you with your principles.” (I can’t tell if he is being sarcastic or not.) Then suddenly he says, “Hey, I’m reading a GTO manga cartoon book at the moment. I’ll bring it in to show you sometime, if you like?”

  “Um, yeah, OK, sure,” I say, feeling confused. “Sounds good.” Whatever, I think. I’ll believe that when I see it.

  Tanya predictably doesn’t want to wear her badge, though she tells me she thinks it is “blimmin’ brilliant” when she grabs me at lunch and I show it to her. She seems kind of preoccupied with how angry she is at having been given another detention. It sounds like she got it for shouting, but she is insisting to me that she wasn’t, and that she has been “stitched up”.

  “I hate this school,” she says. “I hate Hillfern Juniors! Hellfern Juniors more like. Can you make that into a cartoon for me, Toons? This place being like hell?”

  “Er, yeah, sure,” I hear myself say. Great. Now I have cartoon homework.

  OK. Everyone in ACE who’s going to is wearing their badges. I realise that I’ve been slightly dishonest so far. I haven’t told any of them we even have rivals, and now it’s the end of lunch and I’ve made them all congregate outside my form room so that we can “practise” our new secret handshake.

  I know full well that Natalie and Amelia will be arriving back at the form room any minute and will see us in all our personalised-badge glory. And sure enough, almost on cue, they arrive.

  “Oh honestly, this is tragic,” says Amelia loftily, when she realises what we are doing.

  “Who are you calling tragic?” says Emily, annoyed.

  “They’re just jealous because we’re in a better gang than them,” I say to Emily.

  “Oh, are you in a gang as well?” Fatimah asks them. Everyone has pretty much stopped doing the secret handshakes now.

  Amelia gives her a look as if she can’t decide if Fatimah’s joking or not. “And I suppose you all have badges now as well, do you?” she says scathingly. She and Natalie look at us all.

  “Yes, we do,” says Emily. “Jessica was up half the night making them, and they’re brilliant.”

  “Oh wow, you made them!” Natalie can’t quite hide how impressed she is. “Let’s see.” She peers more closely at some of the badges. “I love the dolphin.”

  “Well, I don’t like any of them,” says Amelia, sounding increasingly annoyed.

  “Oh, yeah, I don’t like them that much.” Natalie tries to recover herself.

  “Well, are we supposed to be scared of you, Jessica? Are you going to fight us or something?” says Amelia. “Is that what this is?”

  Honestly, what a hypocrite! She’s perfectly happy to get her gang together to pick on me. At my own desk. And none of us has even picked on her right now, she started on us!

  “No, Amelia,” I say. “This is hardly the Crips and the Bloods.” (OK. I must learn some other gang names.) “But just do be aware that we exist, and you might want to be careful about who you gang up on in the future.”

  “That sounded like a threat,” says Amelia. “Is that what you think you’re doing, Jessica? If I cuss you will one of your gang get me back? Is that what you do? Do you defend each other’s honour?”

  “I’m not bothered,” says Shantair. (Shantair is quite pacifistic, even for a member of the chess club.)

  “What?” says Amelia.<
br />
  “I’m not bothered about that,” explains Shantair. “I think that’s a stupid reason to start a fight.”

  Part of me wants to laugh at how wrong-footed Amelia looks. Nice one, Shantair, I think.

  “Yeah, we’re obviously a more peaceful, fun gang than you,” I say. “We just want to hang out and have fun and stuff.”

  “Oh good, well enjoy hanging out then,” says Amelia. “We hang out, too. A lot more than you do. Probably in better places.”

  Amelia seems to be losing her cool. Natalie takes her by the arm and leads her into the form room away from us. She does have one glance back in the direction of the dolphin badge, and then they’re gone.

  I think that went very well, considering. I mean, admittedly Amelia wants to kill me. But I think Natalie really wishes she had one of my hand-made badges. How good is that?

  I feel really pleased with myself as I sit at my desk later that night, shading in the picture of my school as hell for Tanya. I’ve just kind of drawn a building with fire behind it, and “Hell Fern Juniors” in spooky Halloween writing as the sign on the gate. There are people running around screaming a bit as well, but I think it looks kind of cool. Hopefully Tanya will like it anyway.

  And luckily, none of ACE have been annoyed with me for not mentioning Amelia and Natalie’s gang sooner. They don’t seem bothered by her at all. They just think she’s overreacting and being silly. I always imagine people must be as intimidated by Amelia as I am, but I’m quite glad they’re not.

  Of course, she will retaliate. And it probably won’t be pretty when she does, but for some reason I feel quite buoyed up by the fact that Natalie really seemed to like my badges. Maybe that’s a sign that this whole gang thing has gone too far, and no one meant it to get silly, and maybe we’ll all be friends again soon?