Kitabı oku: «Glitter», sayfa 3
Chapter 7 school…?
The next morning my dad is still sitting where I left him. The beardy stubble on his face has grown a little longer, his skin is a little greyer and his eyes look darker and more tired and far away. He’s staring at breakfast telly like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen in his whole life. I peep in at him and try to say hello but the words get stuck in my throat, I think they’re too scared to come out in case he bites their heads off. I go and have a shower instead. The shower in the bathroom doesn’t work properly. It keeps going from freezing cold to boiling hot and I have to dance in and out of it and try to wash myself quickly when it lands on warm. This bathroom is rubbish. It’s got black mould growing in the bits between the tiles and it’s spreading like some deathly disease all over the walls. I shrink away from it, not wanting to catch anything bad. My bathroom in our London house was made from soft, cool marble and the decorator put things like lighthouses and starfish all about the place to give it a seaside feel. At least I have my old sand-coloured towels here to dry myself with. At least they’re clean and uncontaminated.
I dry myself and wrap up in my bathrobe, which smells all friendly of school, then make us both some coffee and toast with sliced tomato. I’m getting used to the taste of coffee and decide that I actually even quite like its rich, roasty flavour, just like that advert says. My dad’s used to our old housekeeper, Maureen, making his breakfast for him, so if I wasn’t here to do it I truly think he’d starve. There’s hardly anything left in the cupboards and I’m worried about what we’ll have for supper. But I’m not going to ask him what’s going to happen. I don’t care if we die from starvation.
“Your uniform’s in the plastic bag on my bed,” my dad barks, making me jump, because I thought he’d actually forgotten how to speak. “You start school at 8.45. Turn left as you come out of the flats and keep going straight until you get there. It’s simple. Then go to the office and they’ll tell you where to go and what to do and how the whole free school lunch thing works. It’s all sorted, OK?”
“School?” I whisper.
“Of course, school,” he barks. “What did you think, Liberty, that you were going to laze around the place all day long watching daytime telly? Of course you’ve got to go to school, that’s what children do, isn’t it? And with your poor academic record, Liberty, you haven’t got a moment to spare. Go and get stuck in! And I want you to make a good impression, do you hear? Don’t let me down.”
I wish I could ask if I can wait until Monday morning, because starting school on a Friday seems pointless to me. I wish I could ask if I can have some time getting used the idea of a new school and a new life, but I can’t, so I swallow my words down with a bitter sip of coffee.
My dad’s bedroom is a mess. There are a few huge old trunks that I don’t recognise stacked in the corner, loads of plastic bin bags full of clothes and stuff, a suitcase and some dusty boxes that look like they’ve come from our London house attic. There’s a pile of Sebastian’s medals and trophies on the floor and masses of important-looking paperwork toppling off Dad’s bedside table. His bed’s not made up and I can see stains on the mattress left behind from people who’ve lived here before. There’s a fresh pile of starched cotton sheets, cleaned and ironed by Maureen, our old housekeeper, waiting to go on. But they look all wrong here in this stupid old flat, they look all sad and shy and out of place.
I rummage through the piles of stuff until I come across a carrier bag of clothes that look like they might be my school uniform. Next to them I spy a battered old violin case that’s completely covered in dust. I’ve never seen it before and I can’t quite believe my eyes. I rub them to make sure I’ve not gone completely mad and started seeing things that aren’t real. But when I look again it’s still there, lying on the bed like the best treasure I have ever seen in my whole life. I’m dying to open it and pull the violin out and play. My skin is glittering all over with excitement and I can already feel the music washing right over me and carrying me away to paradise. But I can’t open it, can I? My dad would go mad, especially if I started playing it first thing in the morning. He doesn’t even know I can play. I’d make him splutter his coffee all over himself in shock. But what is a violin doing on his bed anyway? My dad hates music, everybody knows that. So how did it get here? Who does it even belong to?
Relief starts flooding through me. Maybe he’s changed his mind? Maybe with the credit crunch and everything he’s decided to stop fighting me about music? A frog jumps into my head with an idea in its mouth. It’s my birthday next week; maybe he got the violin for me as a surprise? Maybe he got it to make up for me having to leave my school and everything else in my life behind? Maybe he isn’t so mean after all? I actually can’t believe it; my dad’s finally got me a violin! I know everything will be OK when I’m allowed to play. It won’t matter where we live or what stupid school I have to go to.
I decide not to say anything because I don’t want to spoil his surprise. Instead, I draw a tiny heart in the dust, and then rub it out quickly so my dad won’t see.
My new uniform is very different from my old one. It’s more relaxed. I have a pair of black trousers, a red polo shirt, and a black jumper with red stitching on it that reads “Cherry Grove Community School”. And there’s a blazer with a badge that has an embroidered picture of a red cherry tree and the Latin words: Prosperitus est non quis vos perficio, est quisnam vos es written underneath. I search in my brain to remember some Latin words from my old school and work out that my new school motto is saying something about success, so my dad will be pleased with that.
Chapter 8 the grave…
The stairway out of our flats is very busy at 8.25 in the morning. There are people in smart suits with briefcases and mums with buggies and babies and kids wearing the same clothes as me, all pushing and shoving their way down the stairs. I turn left like Dad said and follow the trail of black and red uniforms that spills out on to the street. I’m scared. I’ve heard all about state schools from other people at my old school and they sound noisy and rough and big. Alice’s cousin says there are loads of fights and people get hurt. Maybe I should have argued harder with my dad and Mr Jenkins and forced them to let me stay. What I don’t understand is why my dad is always so mean to me and not to Sebastian? Sebastian gets everything he wants. I’ve been as good as gold my whole life and tried so hard not to make a nuisance of myself but still my dad holds me as far away as possible from him, like I’ve got sick all down my front and am covered in a highly contagious rash. But none of that matters now. I can forgive him for it all because he got me a surprise violin for my birthday. A warm little rush of excitement races through my body and makes me want to skip.
Down on the street an old man is struggling to get into his old people buggy car thing. He’s puffing and panting and struggling to get his old legs moving. When he sees me he calls out.
“You seen Cali this morning?” he asks.
“Sorry,” I say, “I’m new here, I don’t know who Cali is. Can I help?”
“I just need a hand,” he says. “If I can just rest on your arm a minute then I can pull this stupid old leg up and get on. It’s lottery day, you see, I’ve got to get my ticket. It’s a £13 million rollover.”
“Hi,” says a girl with a million tiny plaits in her hair tied with multicoloured braid. “You need a hand, Ivor?”
“There you are,” says Ivor, looking relieved at Cali’s arrival. “I thought you’d abandoned me for the day.”
“You know I’d never do that, Ivor,” she laughs, helping him into his buggy, like she’s done it a hundred times before.
“Haven’t seen you around before,” says Cali, when Ivor is safely in his buggy and heading off towards the shops and we’re making our way to school.
“We’ve just moved here,” I say. “I’m Liberty Parfitt, what’s your name?”
“I’m Cali,” she says. “You know, you wanna tone that accent of yours down, it’ll get you into trouble at The Grave. The other kids will eat you alive! But stick with me, Libs, and you’ll be safe. What year you in?”
“Seven.”
“Cool,” she smiles, “same as me. Where did you find that accent, Libs? It’s terrible! You sound like you’re related to the Queen or something.”
“Not sure,” I say, trying hard to listen to my own voice. “I’ve always had it, I suppose.”
Then Cali cracks up laughing and staggers around in fits of giggles. “Well, if you take my advice, girl, you’ll ditch it pretty soon. Fitting in is what it’s all about at The Grave, and accents like yours just don’t. OK?”
“OK. Why do you call it ‘The Grave’?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” she says, “soon enough. You sure do have a lot to learn, Libs, but first off you gotta start dropping your T’s and you gotta shake your voice up a bit. Speak easy, like me. Like cas-u-al.”
“I’ll try,” I say, “but it’s just natural to me, I don’t know how I would even begin to change it.”
“That’s where I come in,” she says. “Just listen real careful to me and you’ll pick it up in no time. Pretend you’re acting or something, you know? Oh, and The Grave? It’s Cherry Grove, Cherry Grave, get it? It’s like a graveyard inside those walls. Nothing good ever happens; it’s just rubbish, Libs. All the teachers and most of the kids are like the living dead, sucking graveyard air,” Cali makes a spooky face, “and no one even cares about the education. It’s more about surviving than learning. It’s a dead-end place from beginning to end, preparing you for rubbish jobs when you leave. Except for me that is, Liberty Parfitt. Me? I’ve got big plans. I’m going somewhere. You’ll see. So, why did you move here then?”
“Credit crunch,” I say. “My dad’s business went bust so I had to leave my school. We’re staying in a friend’s flat until we get back on our feet.”
“Posh school, I bet?” she asks. “I was born to go to one of them, I promise you! I’m bright enough. It’s just the stork got lost on the way and I got delivered to the wrong family.”
“It was just school to me,” I say. “I’d been there since I was seven years old. But I’m not there any more, Cali, I’m here and I need to get on and get used to it, just like everything else in my life.”
When we reach The Grave thousands of kids swarm like black and red bees through the gates. Unfamiliar sounds buzz around me and I can’t quite tell if I’m more scared or more curious. In all of Alice’s wildest dreams and in all of mine, we couldn’t have imagined that I’d find myself in a place like this. But here I am amidst a thousand black and red bees; with my new friend Cali, who has a million tiny plaits in her hair tied with multicoloured braid.
Cali comes to the school office with me and somehow manages to persuade the lady there to let me be in the same class as her. She promises be my “class buddy” and show me around. The corridors here are long and grey and dark and smell of old cabbage and disinfectant. There are no flowers decorating the place, like in my old school and no gold carpets on the floors. Instead, everywhere is decorated with black and red bumblebee children zooming along the corridors and screeching up and down the stairs.
“Slow down, ladies and gentlemen,” shouts a teacher, “and keep your voices down.”
But no one listens. Everyone just carries on running and screaming. No one holds doors open for other people or offers to carry the teachers’ heavy bags. I feel small in this big place and am worried that I won’t fit in. I wish I hadn’t tied my hair back so neatly, I look stupid. I pull off my hair tie and shake my hair loose.
“Cool hair,” says Cali, looking at my bright red curls.
“Yours too,” I smile.
At my old school I knew every single child and teacher by name and everyone there knew me. Here I know nobody, except Cali and I’m glad to have her next to me, she somehow makes me feel brave, like I could even face my dad with her around.
My first lesson is drama. Our teacher is at least 190 years old and she makes us read scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I quite like Shakespeare, but all the rest of the kids are groaning with boredom. Shakespeare’s only fun if you know how to read it properly, otherwise it’s just a string of difficult words that are hard to understand. My old drama teacher taught us to read it in time with a heartbeat, that way the whole thing suddenly comes alive.
A boy with spiky hair, who is called Dylan, is interrupting our reading by having a fight with our teacher, Mrs MacDougall. He’s going on about the fact that she’s infringing his human rights by asking him to turn his mobile phone off during lesson time and Mrs MacDougall is trying to give him a calm and reasoned argument to dispute this. I know she’s not really feeling calm inside because a little stream of sweat is running down her face and on to her blouse collar, making a stain. I am shocked. I have never seen a pupil argue with a teacher before.
A girl with white-blonde hair holds up a red card and runs out of the room.
“She’s allowed to do it,” says Cali, seeing my surprise. “She has an anger problem, which means she sometimes just bursts into one big rage that disrupts the whole class and frightens the teachers. So it’s better for everyone if she gets herself to the ‘green room’ as quickly as possible to calm herself down.”
Clusters of girls are whispering and giggling and not paying attention to any of what’s going on. Some boys at the back of the class are shooting bits of squished up paper through their biros to see who can be first to hit the bull’seye, which happens to be Mrs MacDougall’s head. There’s so much going on in our classroom that my eyes don’t know where to look next and I’m finding it hard to keep my attention on Shakespeare. Cali is sighing and gently bashing her head on the table in despair.
“See what I mean?” she says. “It’s terrible here, we never get anything done. It’s so boring. Why can’t they just get on with it and they might even discover that they actually like Shakespeare! I bet nothing like this ever happened at your old school. You wait, we’ll just about be getting into it and we might even learn something and then the bell will go and we’ll have to pack all our stuff up and go on to our next lesson.”
Cali is right because before we know it the bell’s ringing and we’re off to a P.E. lesson. We all get changed into black and red-striped P.E. kits and buzz around the sports hall trying to play basketball. But basically the whole lesson turns into one big fight and the teacher has to separate the culprits and abandon the game.
“You’re right, Cali,” I say, when we’re in the changing room, “nothing like this ever did happen at my old school. But I don’t know how you can call this place a graveyard. Madhouse, maybe, but graveyard, never!”
Chapter 9 like Pride and Prejudice and stuff…
At lunchtime things get really bad. I stick close to Cali and she shows me how the canteen works. I make sure I get a big helping of Friday fish and chips and a double helping of sponge and custard for pudding. I don’t know if there’ll be anything but coffee and margarine for supper when I get home.
“Hi Cali,” says Dylan, coming to sit with us and unloading his lasagne from his tray. “Who’s your new ladi-da friend then?”
“This is Liberty,” smiles Cali. “Libs for short and give her chance Dyl, she’s learning fast.”
“Hello Dylan,” I say. “Pleased to meet you.”
Then he cracks up laughing and sticks his nose up in the air and starts talking in a funny voice, “Oh, sorry, I’m so very pleased to meet you too, Liberty. Perhaps later I might take you for a lovely wander in the rose garden?”
Then he starts laughing again until tears squeeze out of his eyes and I don’t think he can stop.
“You’re like something out of one of them Jane Austin stories,” he laughs, “like Pride and Prejudice and stuff. My mum loves them.”
“I’m not really,” I say, blushing and feeling awkward. “I just speak differently, I guess. It doesn’t mean anything though. Not really. I can’t help it.”
“‘It doesn’t mean anything though,’” he mimics.
“Calm down, Dylan,” says Cali, “she’s not that funny. Why don’t you turn your attention to helping her instead of laughing at her?”
So Dylan and Cali spend the rest of lunchtime attempting to teach me how to easy up my accent.
“I can’t do it,” I say, after trying really hard. My whole face starts glowing red with embarrassment. Their sounds feel weird in my mouth and however hard I try, my tongue keeps getting all twisted around them.
“You’ll just have to try a little bit harder then, won’t you?” says a very big boy from the end of our table.
“Accents don’t mean anything,” I shriek, turning towards him. I can feel myself losing it again and I can’t control myself. My rage is bubbling up inside, threatening to boil over. Alice’s words about taking responsibility for my feelings are spinning around my head but I don’t know what she means, I don’t know how to take responsibility. “Just because you think I have a posh accent,” I scream, “it doesn’t mean you know anything about me or about my life. You know nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nobody does!” I throw my cutlery down so hard it breaks my plate in two. Cali puts her head in her hands.
“It means you’re rich,” the big boy shouts back. “Loaded, by the sounds of it. Listen to yourself. What you doing in a place like this anyway, poor little rich girl? Shouldn’t you be out on your pony with Mummy? Rich girl, rich girl, poor little rich girl.”
And then like a wave rippling through the dining hall the whole school joins in and chants, “Rich girl, rich girl, poor little rich girl.”
Their loud words tumble over and over me and I’m drowning in a sea of noise. I hate them all. They know nothing about me or my life. If only they really knew what my life was really like and how much it’s fallen to pieces in the past twenty-four hours, then they’d have nothing to shout about. But they haven’t even given me a chance. I wish I could run away and disappear.
Cali starts sighing and banging her head on the table again.
“What is it with you?” she shouts above the noise. “You really let him get under your skin didn’t you? You gotta learn to keep yourself under control here Libs otherwise you’re gonna end up in deep, deep trouble. You gotta learn to stay cool, stay easy.”
Everyone’s still chanting and their noise is crashing over my head like rough, grey waves and there’s nothing to hold on to. Then suddenly there’s a huge uproar and the world’s most massive food fight breaks out. Chips and sausages and lumps of fish and tomatoes and great blobs of lasagne are being flung from every corner of the room. Most of the kids are shrieking and shouting and going crazy. Everyone seems to have forgotten about me, they’re too busy with their own food wars. Cali’s eyes glitter at me and a daring smile tugs on her lips. My fingers dance around the edge of my plate, longing to join in. Nothing so outrageous as this ever happened at my old school and I’m caught in the middle of excitement and fear. Cali smiles and throws a chip at me and I can’t resist it any more. I grab a handful and throw them back at her and then some fish and custard and pudding and we’re all getting covered in food. Custard is sliming its way down my new blazer and Cali has fish batter stuck in her hair.
We’re all laughing and screaming and then the big boy shoots an evil glare at me across the table. I quickly swallow my laugh and freeze and then stare right back at him. A blob of cold custard drips on to my cheek wiping the smile from my face. Alice wouldn’t believe this if she were here; she wouldn’t know what to do. She’d probably say, “Take responsibility, Libby” But I don’t care about what Alice thinks any more and I don’t care what the stupid big boy thinks of me. He’s not going to get away with bullying me, I’ve had enough of that from my dad. I pick up a big chunk of sticky sponge pudding and fling it through the air towards him. The only trouble is that Mrs Cobb, our head teacher, bursts into the room and gets in the way. The sticky sponge splats on her glasses and slides slowly down her face before it plops to the floor. Everyone is silent and my sponge-throwing arm is completely frozen in midair. Mrs Cobb grabs the back of my blazer and pulls me towards the door.
Inside her office I suddenly don’t feel so brave.
“Explain yourself, Liberty,” she says, rubbing cake crumbs off her jumper with one hand and leafing her way through a file, which I suspect is all about me, with the other. “There’s nothing in your notes here to suggest that you’re a troublemaker. Now tell me what happened?”
“Well,” I say, my voice wobbling, and wishing I were back, safe and well behaved, at my old school, “everyone was laughing about my accent and they were calling me ‘rich girl’ and I said that accents don’t mean anything about who you are, because they don’t, and anyway I’m not even rich any more, and then the whole dinner hall went crazy. I’m sorry Mrs Cobb, for causing any trouble.”
“Yes, well,” she says, “I might expect that kind of behaviour from some of the others in this school, Liberty, but not from you. I understand from your father that you’re experiencing a rather dramatic change in circumstance. So in this instance, I suggest you go to the bathroom and clean yourself up and we’ll put it down to that and forget about the whole thing. I will, of course, expect you to join in the dining hall clean-up detention after school and then I don’t expect to see you back in this office for anything of this nature again. Do I make myself clear?”
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