Mira in the Present Tense (9 page)

Each time I go to the loo, I am convinced that someone will hear me unzipping my bag and unwrapping the pads. I swear suddenly the acoustics in the girls' loos are of a concert-hall standard. Just undoing the stupid pads, each wrapped in its own “discreet envelope” cover, makes so much noise I have to flush at the exact same time as I open the packet and tear off the sticky strip. It works if you get the timing right.

At lunchtime registration Miss Poplar calls me over.

Just my luck that it's my day for her to inspect the teacher's notes in my planner.

“Mira, is there any particular reason why you've been late for just about every lesson this morning?”

As she's supposed to be the specialist year-seven tutor you'd think she might have guessed.

“Sorry, miss,” I mumble.

Maybe I should tell her, because every few minutes I shift around on my seat and look behind me to make sure I haven't leaked.

“Mira Levenson, what's got into you today?” asks Miss Poplar. “Have you got ants in your pants?”

At the mention of “pants,” I feel like I'm going to die. Of course, I blush bright red, and Orla, Demi, and Bo fall about laughing.

All afternoon I duck into a loo every time I pass one…just in case.

“Are you sure you're feeling all right?” asks Millie.

“Dodgy stomach,” I lie.

“See you later, zit face!” Bo calls out as she pushes past me through the school gates, which is odd, because Bo's forehead and just about her whole face is covered in acne.

“How was your day?” Mum asks when I get back from school.

“Good.”

And it has been a good day, because Jidé wasn't in and nobody found out.

It's swimming today, but I'm missing it, because we're going on this “adventure,” as Nana calls it. To be honest I wouldn't have minded going swimming today because my period is over. I thought it would go on for longer than this, but when I looked it up in this book called
Questions You Might Not Want to Ask Your Parents
that Mum “just happens” to have had lying around the bathroom for ages, it said that it is quite common for your first period to be really light. It hasn't actually been that bad, except for the appearance of the period pustule, and even that has shrunk to half its size overnight. You could almost call it a normal-sized spot today. So, if it wasn't for going away with Nana Josie, I would have gone swimming today. I like swimming in a pool, but I love swimming in the sea best, when the waves come crashing over you!

We started swimming lessons in year six and I remember thinking that it seemed a bit late because the chances are, if any of us were going to drown, we probably would have done it before we were ten, so I always just assumed that everyone could swim anyway…but then there was Orla, who had never once in all her life been taken to a swimming pool. It's not
that
unusual according to the not very subtle swimming teacher who shouted across the pool to her: “Don't worry, dear. There's usually at least one ‘non-swimmer' in every class.” I think she was trying to make Orla feel better.

Now we're in year seven, and while the rest of us mess around in the big pool, Orla is still in what she calls the “pee pool” with the mums and babies and the beginners. Mostly, though, she pretends she's “got a stomachache.” The last time we went swimming, one of the teachers said, “You can't have tummy ache
every
week,” and Orla looked at the woman and said in a really loud voice, “Actually, I've got my
period
, miss!”

As if you would actually say that!

So, for all the swimming humiliations that Orla has suffered she has come up with a strategy for revenge. Orla and her “glamorous assistants,” as she calls Demi and Bo, have devised a competition about who's got the best (and worst) body. It works like this. There are three judges, Orla, Demi, and Bo. They hand out marks out of ten for each bit of your body. When it comes to judging, Orla is definitely the most scathing. She will literally dissect you, limb from limb. You could have a score of six for your legs and four for your tummy and three for your arms. If you've got boobs growing, you get a low mark from Orla, because that's just embarrassing. She grades the boys too. Ben Gbemi always gets ten out of ten because he's been working on getting a “six pack.” Jidé usually comes in second place. If you asked me anything, I would switch it the other way round.

Orla never gives any of the girls a ten, because she thinks
she's
got the best body. Orla is definitely the thinnest girl in our class. You can see her hipbones and ribs sticking through her swimming costume. If you've got any fat on you at all, you get a low grade in Orla's scoring system. I only get four out of ten because I'm a bit rounded. Millie gets a really good body score except that Demi always makes a point of saying something horrible like “shame about the four eyes,” But Millie doesn't care what they say, and neither do I.

Nana has a brilliant rant about what a load of rubbish it all is, people worrying so much about how thin they can get. “Haven't they got anything better to worry about? What a bore to be so weight obsessed!” The other day when I was sitting with her and she saw me looking at how thin she is now, she said, “To think, some people actually aspire to being a size zero.” She kept stroking my cheek over and over.

“Don't you ever get into all that dieting crap. It's the quality of your skin, its plumpness, that makes me want to paint you over and over. You're a beauty, Mira Levenson.”

I get really embarrassed when Nana talks like that, but I know she really means it, and the truth is that most of the time I don't think too much about what I look like and I would hate to be bony like Orla. I just am how I am.

Yesterday, Mum had a word with Miss Poplar and she's given permission for me to take the rest of the week off as “compassionate leave.” Nana Josie wants us all to go to her cottage in Suffolk. I think she sees it as a kind of family pilgrimage. I actually woke up early this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep, thinking about Jidé and Pat Print's writing group.

Clank, clank, clank.
Last night I got my keys ready so I wouldn't be so hassled.

“We're late. It's already quarter to eight,” Millie says, peering through the letterbox and snapping it closed as I unlock the door.

“I'm ready, Millie.”

“I'd be ready too, if I were you, only coming in for the best bit of the day!”

She runs flat out to school. I trail way behind her, because when I got up this morning I made one of my—don't ask me why I do it—pacts with Notsurewho Notsurewhat, that if I trod on a single crack in the pavement along the walkway to school, our car would break down on the way to Suffolk. Which is not a great pact to make when the probability is pretty high that our car will break down as it's so decrepit. Why did I do that? If it does break down with Nana in it, it'll be really awful, and now, for no reason at all, except for having the stupid thought, I'm going to feel like
I
made it happen. Not only that, but it also means I look like a lunatic weaving around all over the place when I could be walking in a straight line.

“For God's sake, Mira, what on earth are you doing?” Millie shouts as I pick my way like someone demented between the cracks in the pavement.

By the time we get into the “safe haven” of our year-seven block that Miss Poplar has tried to make all cozy so as not to shock us because our new secondary is one of the biggest schools in London, Ben and Jidé are already talking to Pat Print and fussing over her sheepdog. But when Millie and I come in, the dog spirals round, practically knocking us over with its frantically wagging tail.

“Moses, behave yourself, my boy. You're so excitable anyone would think you're still a puppy,” she laughs, dragging him by the collar back to her side.

Pat Print either doesn't care, like Nana, or she just doesn't know that dogs aren't allowed in school. I love the way she talks to him, as if he can understand exactly what she's saying.

“Why did you call him Moses?” I ask, and as soon as I speak Ben elbows Jidé in the side. Jidé elbows him back as if to shut him up. Of course, I can't look him in the eye but what I do notice is that Jidé has gelled up his hair at the front, he's not wearing his tie, and his shirt is all hanging out. I blush again, even though there is no way on earth that Jidé Jackson can know how much I've been thinking about him, even dreaming about him…One day someone will make a fortune inventing an anti-blushing device. Whenever you feel one coming on, you could just press a button and stop it in its tracks.

“You'll have to read my book if you want to find that out. I collect strays!” Pat says, smiling at me.

It's weird how that happens. Before last week I had never heard of anyone actually being called Moses, apart from Moses in the Bible, and now within one week I've met Eco-Endings Moses and sheepdog Moses.

“So what have you all found out about your names?” Pat asks. That's when I remember what we were supposed to do. She looks around the room, letting her eyes rest on Jidé.

“My full name is BabaJidé. It's an African name…it means ‘father has returned,' that's what Jai, my dad, told me anyway. He said Grace liked the ‘Baba' bit when I was a baby, but when I started to grow up they dropped ‘Baba' and just called me Jidé, and Mum says it goes well with Dad's name…Jai.”

I think it sounds really weird calling your mum and dad by their first names, especially when your mum's a teacher at school…she's Ms. Jackson to everyone else.

“Interesting, isn't it, how some names are better for babies and others feel too grown up to call an infant,” Pat Print comments.

Jidé doesn't reply. He seems lost in his own thoughts so Pat Print turns her attention on Ben. He's funny because he just launches into things; he often makes me jump. I peer over his shoulder at his notebook. Ben always does as little work as he can get away with. He's got about three notes written down, that's all, but he tells Pat Print this whole epic story of his name, hardly even glancing at his book. He seems to have no nerves at all.