Give Me Four Reasons (23 page)

‘Because your friends will go mad with worry,’ Rochelle says, gently twisting my ear.

‘Hey, you can’t all say the same thing,’ I protest. ‘It’s against the rules.’

‘The rules have changed, Paige,’ Jed says.

For a moment my heart sinks. Of course they won’t want me back in their group after what I did.

‘Because now you need
six
reasons,’ someone says from the footpath outside my house.

I turn to see Miff and Sidney walking through my front gate. ‘Can we play this game, too?’ Sidney asks.

‘Sure,’ I say.

‘Okay then,’ Miff says. ‘My turn. You should never run away because it’s murder on your hair and your complexion.’ She tugs at my limp, messy locks. We all laugh.

Everyone is now looking at Sidney. ‘You should never run away because, even though your life may not be as great and glamorous as other people think, it’s still better than being on your own.’ Sidney looks at me and bites her lip, and I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s not talking about me.

‘I’m so sorry, guys,’ I say.

‘No, no, no,’ Elfi says. ‘We’re the ones who should be sorry.’

‘No, I’m the one who should be sorry,’ Sidney says, looking at me.

‘Why should the Starshine Girl be sorry?’ Miff asks.

‘
She
’s probably not,’ Sidney answers. ‘
She
’s probably off sailing in her imaginary yacht and spending all her imaginary money. But
I
am sorry, Paige.’

I look at the girl with the perfect teeth, the perfect hair, the perfect skin and the perfect life and suddenly I see someone else. Someone I recognise. She winks at me. And with make-up-free eyelashes, I wink back.

‘Well, I’ve got nothing to be sorry about,’ Miff says, crossing her arms. She tries to look haughty, but she can’t stop a smile from twitching her glossy lips.

‘Why don’t you all stop being sorry and start being friends?’ Jed suggests.

‘We are,’ Sidney says, grinning and nodding at Rochelle and Elfi.

I raise my eyebrows.

Miff huffs. ‘I dare you to spend six hours in a police interview room with anyone and not get to know them a bit better. They’re not as bad as I thought.’

‘So the lions are now friends with the warthogs?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know about friends,’ Miff says, ‘but we won’t eat them.’

Rochelle snorts.

Miff shrugs.

I laugh.

‘Why didn’t you tell us your dad had left?’ Elfi says, putting her arm around me.

‘I … I don’t know. It was the holidays and then … you all seemed so busy … and then we weren’t talking any more …’I sigh. ‘There’re a lot of things I should have told you.’

Mum comes outside then and sends everyone home. ‘You can have her all day at school tomorrow,’ she says. ‘It’s our turn now.’

Everyone hugs me again. ‘See you tomorrow in class,’ Sidney says.

‘And at recess in the cockroach hole,’ Rochelle and Elfi say together, laughing.

‘And at lunchtime under our tree,’ adds Miff.

‘I’ll walk you to school,’ Jed says.

‘
Oo-ooh!
’ coo the others.

Jed blushes.

‘Thanks,’ I say, nudging his shoulder with mine. ‘I think I’ll need the support.’

‘I’m just making sure you don’t run off again,’ Jed says, grinning.

Mum leads me into the house where Dad and Felicity are taking some freshly cooked muffins out of the oven. ‘Your sister’s just given me my first cooking lesson,’ Dad says, biting into a hot muffin.

Mum laughs. ‘You can’t live on muffins.’ She reaches above the stove and takes down a couple of cookbooks. ‘You can have these, Ian. All the recipes only use four ingredients.’

‘I thought you were saving those books for Felicity and me,’ I say. ‘For when we move out of home.’

‘I was,’ Mum says. ‘But I don’t think you girls will be needing them for a while yet.’

‘Definitely not,’ I say. ‘I’m staying right here!’

Everyone laughs.

32

In the evening, I take the cards from the front porch into my bedroom. I know the perfect place for them. A place where my friends were meant to write how they felt about me. I reach into my wardrobe and find my Passport. I sit back on my bed and run my fingers over the gilded lettering on the cardboard cover.

‘Is that your Passport?’ Felicity says. ‘Can I see?’ She has been following me around all afternoon, barely letting me out of her sight.

‘Sorry, Fliss,’ I say, slipping the cards inside and hugging it to my chest. ‘It’s private.’

I arrange the two new bears on my bed with all the old bears. Bears from when I was born. Bears from when I came home from hospital. Bears from when I was sick. Bears from when I broke my arm. Bears from when our cat, Zoe, died. Bears from all the saddest and lowest moments in my life. The new ones huddle and cuddle with the old ones, finding their place on the bedspread. I look at them for a long while and then I go and get a large cardboard box.

I don’t want to be reminded of the bad times in my life any more. I don’t want to be reminded that I was a premmie baby, or that I broke my arm, or that I didn’t make the gymnastics squad. Even the bear my friends gave me for Christmas reminds me of my empty Passport. And that’s not who I am. I’m not the girl who ran away. I’m the girl who came back. I’m the girl who wants to look forward to the good times. I’m the girl who wants to discover who she is
now
.

I hug each bear and then stack it in the box. I seal it up.
For Charity
, I write on the top and I take it out to the garage.

On my way back from the garage, I pause in the back garden, thinking how strange it was to be staring over here from Mrs Johannssen’s cubbyhouse and feeling a million miles away from home. I sit on the grass, my legs hugged to my chest, and close my eyes. I sniff the evening breeze. It smells of rain.

‘Paige?’

My eyes flutter open. Janie Harrison, from my class at primary school, is standing beside me. She has got taller over the summer. ‘Janie?’I say.

‘Yeah, it’s me.’

I stand up. ‘Oh … hi. How was your holiday in Denmark?’

‘It was great,’ she says. Then she begins to open a satchel she has with her.

‘Nice bag,’ I say. ‘Did you get that in Denmark?’

‘Yes,’ Janie says. ‘But this is why I came over.’ She pulls out a large blue book with a crest and gold writing on the cover. ‘It’s sat unopened on my desk at home since the last day of school. I was in such a rush to get to the airport, I didn’t look at it.’

My stomach flips. Even though I put all my cards inside mine, I still don’t like being reminded of the Passports. ‘Well, that must have been a nice thing to come home to,’ I say. ‘Did I forget to write in it?’

‘This isn’t my Passport, Paige. It’s yours.’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Mine is in my wardrobe. And this one has got your name on it.’

‘But it’s got
your
comments inside,’ Janie says. ‘The comments meant for
you
. Remember how we had to leave our books open at the blank-page section on our desks for everyone to write in? My open book must have somehow been placed on top of your open book that morning. Everyone would have just flipped over the cover and seen your name on the outside, but my book was on the inside. And that’s where they wrote all these comments meant for you.’

I stop. The world stops.

I breathe. The world breathes.

Janie hands me the Passport. Even in the growing darkness, I can see that the pages are cluttered with comments and scrawls from my classmates.

‘There are some nice comments in there,’ Janie says.

I put the Passport under my arm.

‘Aren’t you going to read them?’ Janie asks.

‘Maybe later.’ I look up at her with tears in my eyes. ‘But … but what about the comments that were meant to be for you, Janie? Do you have
any
?’

‘No, but I’ll just ask my mates to write them in a notebook now,’ Janie says. ‘It’s okay. I saw what had happened. Things just got mixed up.’ She shrugs. ‘It happens all the time. That’s life.’

I think about the last few months and how crazy and mixed up things got. How crazy and mixed up
I
made them. I got half the facts and created a new world. And that world spun out of control.

My Passport.

Felicity’s party.

Dad and Chloe.

And the big mess with my school friends—new and old. The lions and the warthogs. Is that really how life is meant to be? I don’t think so.

I look at Janie and smile.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘
My
life.’