Authors: Candy Harper
‘Well, no one will expect you to understand that. Even French kids couldn’t be expected to pay much attention there. That’s why they’re so famous for that shruggy shrug thing they do. The teacher says
Qu-est ce que le point de l’ecole
? And the kids all do the Gaelic shruggy shrug,
Je ne sais pas!
And the teacher pushes back her beret and says
ah oui! C’est vrai! Il n’y a pas de point de l’ecole, let’s all go to the café and have croque monsieurs instead! On y va!
That sounds civilised, doesn’t it? Come on! There will hot French boys who will fall for our glamorous Englishness.’
‘I’m not interested in French boys. I’ve got a boyfriend, even if you like to pretend he doesn’t exist, and I’m not just going to disappear off and leave him!’
And then she stomped off. Proper stomping. I haven’t clomped along that noisily since the last time Miss Ramsbottom said she had a headache. What on earth is going on with her? She seems properly upset. Which isn’t like Megs at all. Usually she just pretends to be upset and then when I’m leaning in to see if she’s alright, she pulls my hair and punches me on the nose. I miss those happy days. I’ve got to find out what’s bothering her.
SATURDAY 12TH MAY
I’m fed up. Megs is being stroppy. Westy barely responds even when I send him hilarious pictures of kittens pretending to be circus performers. And Ethan . . . well, despite the fact he is the one perverting the course of true love by dating someone who isn’t me, Ethan seems to be managing to be cross with me. Which is outrageous. And quite depressing. I was trying to deal with the fact that he doesn’t want to go out with me and I don’t think I can handle him hating me too.
LATER
Why would anyone hate me anyway? I’m very good natured and always kind to young children and the elderly. Maybe he’s just lashing out because we can’t be together. Except we could, if he’d just dump Dawn. It’s really very simple. Maybe I should draw him a diagram.
SUNDAY 13TH MAY
Josette phoned me earlier. When I picked up the phone she said. ‘Allo? Faith? It’s meeeeee!’
I was a bit confused about who ‘meeeeee’ was; you’d think that the French accent might have given it away, but sometimes on the phone Megs likes to do voices. I enjoy her Swedish accent so much that I’ve told her that when we have to change our identities and go on the run (which Granny has said she is pretty sure is inevitable) she should go Swedish full time. Anyway, I like to keep my cool so I just said.
‘Yes! It’s yooooooou!’
Then we both laughed.
‘It is Josette. How are you Faith? I ‘ope your mother is well.’
Which threw me a bit. I said, ‘She’s never entirely well. She says it’s stress from work and nightmare children, but I think she might be drinking when no one’s looking. To be fair, you can’t expect complete mental stability from someone who lived with my granny for twenty years.’
‘Mmm hmm,’ said Josette. ‘This is good.’
I wasn’t sure how much she’d understood.
‘And I think she may have passed on some craziness to my brother. He’s really odd.’
‘I do not have a brother, but my sister she is called Delphine.’
‘Dolphin?’
‘Delphine.’
I don’t think that’s much better, but I was being polite so instead I asked, ‘Do you get on with her?’
‘Get on?’
‘Do you like her?’
‘Ah yes, she is my twin, but she is a good girl. Me, I am not so good.’
‘No, I’m not so good either.’
We laughed again.
‘So I’m coming to visit you soon,’ I said.
‘Yes, soon. You come to my house and we will have good times.’
That sounded promising. ‘Is there a lot to do where you live?’
‘To do?’
‘You know places to, er,
aller
?
Le cinema
,
la discoteque
, um,
la patisserie
?’
‘Ah, no.’
‘No?’
‘No. My village is . . . little. Very little.’
‘So what do you do? Where do you go to have fun?’
‘
Pas de panique
! I always have big fun. You will have fun also.’
To be honest while communication wasn’t entirely clear, if the amount we laughed is any indication, I think that we really will have fun.
MONDAY 14TH MAY
I had one last attempt to get Megs to see sense. ‘I really think this is your absolutely last chance to get in on the trip,’ I said to her. ‘We should find Madame Badeau at lunchtime and see if they can still fit you in.’
‘Faith, I’m not going. Now, just shut up about it.’
‘What’s the problem? You can tell me.’ I put an arm around her.
She shrugged me off. ‘I just don’t want to go.’
‘Why not? Don’t you think it would be fun?’
‘Maybe. But I can’t just drop everything for a week.’
‘What do you mean “everything”? You’re a fifteen-year-old school girl not the prime minister. Is this about Cam? Is that the whole reason you’re not coming on our trip of a lifetime? Because you can’t leave Cameron for a week?’
‘Just leave it, Faith!’
And then she completely ignored me for the rest of the lesson, which was particularly unkind because Mr Hampton was reading from the text book and I could have done with a little chit chat to drown him out.
TUESDAY 15TH MAY
Megs is still not coming on the French trip, but Icky definitely is. And not only is she going to be in the same country as me, she’s going to be in the same house. It turns out that Josette’s twin sister is also doing the exchange and she’s been paired with Icky.
Since Megs has banned the ‘F’ word and I’m not allowed to talk about anything French with her, I found myself in the ridiculous situation of actually sharing my misery with my mother. She wasn’t very helpful.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she said without taking her eyes off her detective programme.
I huffed. ‘Honestly, anyone would think you were more interested in finding out who killed the vicar than hearing the inner most thoughts of your only child.’
‘You’re not my only child.’
‘You know what I mean, your most important child.’
‘Hmm.’ She peered around me to get a better look at the screen. ‘Like I said, I think you’ll be okay.’
‘I’m not sure you appreciate the magnitude of the problem.’
‘It’s only for a week.’
‘It’s quite hard for me to cope with Icky being inside the same school as me. Even though it is quite a large school and we are rarely in the same classroom, the poisonous nature of Icky means that I have already had a fist fight with her this term.’
Mum finally took her eyes off the telly and glared at me.
Whoops. ‘Well, less of an actual fight and more of a disagreement.’
‘Faith, please tell me you haven’t been in a punch up.’
‘It doesn’t count as punch up if no one draws blood, right? Or maybe there was a tiny bit of blood, but Icky was wearing our horrible maroon PE kit, so it wasn’t like you could notice it much.’
Mum ran a hand through her hair. ‘What on earth is going to happen when you’re put in a house with this girl?’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Listen, I think that if I really focus on ignoring her then I can probably get through this.’
‘Good.’
‘You’re going to need to buy me some pepper spray though.’
‘Faith! Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you don’t like the poor girl, you can’t attack her with pepper spray.’
‘I’m not going to use it!’ I shook my head at her complete lack of faith in me. ‘I’m just going to threaten her with it. Actually, that terrible patchouli perfume you’ve got would probably have the same effect on someone’s eyes.’
Mum took a long shuddery breath. ‘If you still want to go to France, you’re going to have to promise me that you won’t spray anything in anyone’s eyes.’
I spread my hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘All right! I won’t.’
And I totally intend to keep that promise.
Unless Icky is really annoying.
WEDNESDAY 16TH MAY
Since Angharad and I are going to be away for a whole nine days Lily arranged for us to go to Juicy Lucy’s with the boys after debating club. I wasn’t really looking forward to it since Megs, Ethan and Westy all seem to be mad at me.
On the way there Ethan said, ‘Can I have a word?’
‘Okay, as long as you’re not going to try to guilt trip me into a relationship with someone I can’t help not fancying.’
He looked a bit sheepish. ‘Yeah, the word I’m looking for is that one that people say when they’ve screwed up. Obviously, I’ve never been wrong in my life before so I’m struggling to remember what it is. Starts with an ‘s’.’
‘And ends with a “–orry I was a total idiot?”’
He gave me a nervous smile. ‘That’s it. I
am
sorry. It’s none of my business and it’s not your fault that Westy’s a bit hung up on you.’
‘I didn’t want to upset him,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think giving him false hope was the answer.’
‘I know and you’re right. You’re completely right. I was just having a bad day and it made me sad that Westy was unhappy.’
‘It makes me sad too. Is he all right?’
Just at that moment Westy charged past us with Cam on his back shouting, ‘Dino power!’ Westy gave a very convincing roar.
‘I think he’s getting there,’ Ethan said.
I watched Westy leap over a rubbish bin. ‘I don’t want to lose him as a friend,’ I said. ‘Or you.’
Ethan turned to look right at me with his big dark eyes and my insides went a bit swooshy.
‘Westy is still your friend,’ he said. ‘And so am I. And I am deeply sorry for being an idiot, and you are completely free to date or not date whoever you like – it’s none of my business.’
Which wasn’t the best thing he could say because I wish it was his business who I date (i.e. HIM!). But I managed to pull a face which I hope suggested that he was forgiven.
‘Hey, have you and Megan fallen out?’ he asked. ‘You two were very quiet at debating; normally, you keep up a running commentary. I couldn’t believe it when neither of you had anything to say when Ryan took off his jumper and flashed us his nips.’
I sighed. ‘Maybe we just weren’t in the mood.’
Then to really cheer me up I spotted Dawn waiting outside Juicy Lucy’s.
Ethan’s face broke into a grin and he went up and stood really close to her. Imagine what it would be like to be that near to Ethan. With his lovely pouty mouth just centimetres from yours.
‘You,’ he said to Dawn, ‘are exactly the person I wanted to see.’
‘And that,’ she gave him a sultry look, ‘is exactly what I wanted to hear.’
And then she grabbed his arm and pulled him into Juicy Lucy’s.
So that was nice. For them. For me it was mostly a bit of sick in the back of the mouth, followed by an aching loneliness inside.
At least Ethan is my friend again.
Inside, I chatted to Ang and Elliot. It’s a good job they can still bear to have a conversation with me because I had the distinct impression that both Megs and Westy were keeping their distance. When it was time to go I managed to corner one of them, at least.
‘So I’m off to France this weekend,’ I said to Westy.
He looked at my knees. ‘Yeah, that should be good. We went on holiday there once. They’ve got these really good cakes. You’ve got to watch it though, because when you point at stuff in the shop, they’re not that great at understanding, and you might end up with the whole cake. I mean, that wasn’t a problem because, actually, all that cream just slips down, but those posh bakeries are quite pricey.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll be careful. Although I am definitely planning on eating a lot of cake.’
Westy managed to raise his eyes to my left shoulder. ‘You probably won’t have any problems communicating though; I bet you’re really good at French. You’re way smarter than me, that’s probably why . . .’
‘Oh, come on, Westy! That’s rubbish. You’re smart. You’re the only person I know that’s used trigonometry to calculate the best launch angles for water bombs. And you’re the first person I would ask if I needed help with my computer. And you’re not just smart, you’re sweet and funny too.’
Westy was bright red by this point.
I scrunched down so he was at least sort of looking at me. ‘I think you’d make a great boyfriend. I just . . .’ I lowered my voice. ‘I kind of like someone who doesn’t like me back and I have done for a long time, so I’m not really looking for a relationship.’
His eyes widened. ‘Oh. I didn’t know.’ He jammed his hands in his pockets. ‘Sucks, doesn’t it?’
I nodded.
He jiggled about a bit. ‘Listen Faith, can we just, you know, be like how we were before?’
‘I would really really like that.’
He managed a half smile. ‘I hope you have a good time in France.’
I still feel sad about the whole thing, but I think that Megs is right: it will get back to normal eventually. I tried to tell her this, which you would have thought she would enjoy because being right is one of her favourite things, but, shockingly, Meg isn’t as easy to corner as Westy and she’s still being frosty with me.
THURSDAY 17TH MAY
During registration Mrs Webber was flipping through exercise books and scribbling things down in an even more furtive fashion than usual. I think her gambling habit interferes with her weekend marking time.
I watched her for a minute. ‘Why do you keep switching pens?’ I asked.
‘You know me, Faith,’ she said without taking her eyes off the book. ‘I like to make the world a more colourful place.’
It’s certainly true that she’s got an inability to wear matching socks. But I had a strong suspicion that she was attempting to make it look like the books had been marked at different times over the last few weeks.
‘Your dedication to our education is an inspiration to us all, Mrs Webber.’
She looked up. ‘That reminds me: Miss Ramsbottom tells me you’re looking forward to improving your French next week.’
I smirked.
‘Which is funny because I was fairly certain that I heard you tell Lily that what you were most looking forward to was “Hot French Boys and eating your weight in pain au chocolat”.’
‘You didn’t tell Miss Ramsbottom that, did you?’
‘Of course not. Neither of us want you stuck here next week, do we? Anyway, she did tell me to let you know that due to your impressive levels of enthusiasm she wants you to be the person to give a report on the French trip in the celebration assembly the week after half term.’