The Strawberry Sisters (5 page)

I don’t really like mess. I keep my corner of our bedroom very neat and always try to keep my bits and bobs tidied away. But the Pit does look as if something evil has smashed everything
up so I guess it’s a good place to play zombies. Especially because there’s no window down there and you can make it properly dark.

‘I’m too old for this,’ Amelia said, but she closed the door and turned off the light anyway.

‘I’ll be the zombie,’ I said because I was still trying to be nice and nobody ever volunteers to go first. I positioned myself with my back against the door, counted to three
and then started to walk slowly across the room with my arms stretched out to the sides, trying to be as quiet as possible, which is quite hard when you’re stepping on bits of board games and
something squidgy. When my fingers brushed someone’s hair, I made a grab. ‘I’ll eat your brains!’ I said and gave the victim a very gentle bite. (When we first started
playing, the bites were much harder, but one of the neighbours complained to Mum about the blood-curdling screams coming from our house.) I could tell from the tiny shoulders that I’d caught
Lucy, that and the way she muttered, ‘It’s so unfair,’ because the rules said that Lucy was now a zombie too.

After a few minutes, I found Chloe which meant Amelia was the last person left and when we found her we lifted her up high and proclaimed her the zombie queen.

Even though she tried not to smile, I think she liked it.

She switched on the light. ‘Must be nice being a zombie,’ she said.

Chloe poked her. ‘You’d know.’

Amelia pinched her back. ‘I don’t know why people are always running away from them in films. If the zombies come, I’m not going to wear myself out trying to escape. I’ll
just give in and become one of them.’

‘But your brain would be zombified. You wouldn’t be able to think. Don’t you want to use your brain?’ Lucy said, looking shocked.

‘You sound like my science teacher.’

Lucy’s eyes were wide. ‘It’s not just no thinking: it takes away everything. If a zombie bit me, I wouldn’t be Lucy any more.’

We all laughed because not being Lucy is the worst possible thing that Lucy can imagine.

‘Anyway, I’ll leave you
babies
to your games. I’ve got things to discuss with Mum,’ Amelia said, opening the door. ‘I’m just saying it would be nice
not to think about stuff sometimes.’

Ashandra and Kayleigh sitting silently next to each other at lunch popped into my mind.

I knew what Amelia meant.

The bright side of Wednesdays is that when it’s finished you’re more than halfway through the school week. And I get to go to my dad’s after school.

I had been trying really hard to be nice and to get Ash and Kay to be nice to each other as well. They had been nice, but I was worried that it was
too
nice. They said things like,
‘Please can I borrow your green pen? Or, ‘I like your headband,’ but they never said, ‘Give me a crisp before you scoff them all,’ or, ‘Budge up, big bum’.
Chloe says things like that to me all the time. And Chloe really likes me.

But I started to hope that things were progressing in our music lesson before lunch on Wednesday.

The tables in the music room are in long rows and that means three people can sit together. I had Ashandra on one side and Kayleigh on the other. Ash was doing an impression of her choir leader
accidentally smacking himself in the face with a tambourine and we were all cracking up. This was how I had always imagined things and I hoped that it was the beginning of the three of us being
best friends forever.

When I looked up to make sure Mr O’Brien hadn’t noticed us laughing, I saw that it was only two minutes to lunchtime and the music room was a complete mess.

Even though it was only my third day, I’d already realised that there are basically two types of teacher at secondary school. One lot start getting you packed up before it’s time for
the lesson to finish. They make sure everything is exactly in its place and then you have to sit down and answer questions about what you’ve learnt so that everybody knows that you’ve
done some learning, even if what you mostly remember about the lesson is that Kieran tried to climb out of the window. When the bell goes, those kinds of teachers let you file out tidily. I think
the other lot of teachers missed the day of training when you learn about filing out tidily because they carry on doing stuff right until the bell rings and, when it does, they look really
surprised as if they thought you were all just going to keep on learning about S-bend rivers forever. They start shouting about things you need to tidy up and homework you have to do, but most
people aren’t listening because they’re edging towards the door and Kieran has already got his crisps out.

Mr O’Brien is one of those surprised-by-the-bell ones. When the bell went, his head snapped up and he said, ‘Remember to listen out for examples of the twelve-bar blues!’ and
started hurling tambourines back on their hooks in the cupboard. Half the class were on their feet before he turned round and saw that the tables were covered in singing books.

‘Who’s going to be really kind and put away the books?’ he asked.

If you’re not being nice, you can pretend you haven’t heard a teacher saying something like that because putting away your pencil case is making too much noise. But I was being nice
so I raised my hand.

‘Thank you, Ella.’ With that, Mr O’Brien scooted out of the door and almost everyone else followed him.

‘I’ll help you,’ Kayleigh said.

‘No,
I’ll
help you,’ Ashandra said and she gave Kayleigh a glare like we’d never laughed about her choir leader getting a jingly bit up his nose at all.

I didn’t want them to glare at each other.

‘Why don’t you two just go to lunch?’ I said quickly.

‘Are you sure?’ Kay asked.

I nodded.

I thought they’d go off to queue up together and save me a seat, but when they went out of the door I could see through the window that Ashandra ran to catch up with a girl called Erica
and Kayleigh didn’t bother to follow.

Then I realised that not only were there books all over the tables, they were all over the floor too.

The bright side about getting to the cafeteria when all the ham sandwiches have already gone is that soggy salad ones are 10p cheaper.

After lunch, Ashandra walked to geography with Erica and when they sat down together I didn’t even try to get a table for me and Kayleigh behind them. But, as we walked in, Kayleigh
noticed me watching Ashandra laughing with Erica.

‘I don’t know why you like her so much,’ Kayleigh said, dropping her geography book on the table. ‘She’s so lah-di-dah.’

I stared at Kayleigh. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘You know, she’s got a lah-di-dah voice and I bet she lives in a big house.’

‘Why does it matter how big her house is?’

‘It doesn’t. But she’s always using long words and she said, “I can’t believe you’ve got your ears pierced!”’

‘Maybe it was in a wow-you’re-so-lucky-I-can’t-believe-it way,’ I said, trying to squish the funny feeling in my tummy.

‘It wasn’t. She told me her mum says she doesn’t understand why girls mutilate themselves like that.’

‘Ash’s mum says millions of things. She just wants girls to be equal to boys.’

‘I can wear earrings and be equal to boys,’ Kayleigh said and rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, half of them have got earrings too.’

‘I suppose so. Listen, if you get to know Ash, I think you’ll really like her. She’s dead funny. She was funny in music this morning, wasn’t she?’

Kayleigh shrugged.

‘Hey, sometimes me and Ashandra make funny videos on her phone. Shall we ask her if she wants to do one after school?’ I had been looking forward to seeing my dad, but I really
wanted Ash and Kay to spend time together.

Kayleigh shook her head. ‘I said I’d help my mum at the stables.’

I was trying so hard to be nice and make sacrifices to bring them together, but it didn’t seem to be working. I was starting to think that maybe Mrs Bottomley was right and
‘nice’ didn’t really mean anything much at all.

When the bell went at the end of the day, I walked back to my dad’s house with Ashandra.

‘What do you think of school so far?’ I asked.

‘It’s pretty good. I like moving round to different lessons; it’s better than being with one teacher all day.’

‘I like Miss Espinoza too,’ I said.

‘She’s nice. And I like Mr Garibaldi and Mrs Holt is a really good teacher. The lessons are more interesting than primary school, aren’t they?’ She smiled.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ I didn’t smile.

‘Ella! Stop pretending you’re not super smart. You don’t need to worry about schoolwork.’

‘I’m not worrying,’ I said. ‘I mean, I think maybe Mrs Holt thought that thing I said about book blurbs was silly.’

‘Mrs Holt can see that you’re clever and nice. All the teachers think that, except maybe the scary ones, because when you try to answer their questions you go really quiet and they
can’t actually hear that you’re giving them the right answer. You just look like this to them.’ She opened and shut her mouth like a bashful goldfish.

‘Hey!’

‘It’s all right. You look very intelligent while you’re doing it so they probably give you the benefit of the doubt.’

I couldn’t help laughing.

Ash grinned. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get used to all the new teachers and we’ve got loads of cool stuff coming up. That author project is going to be fun.’

I’m not crazy about doing projects, but I was pleased that Mrs Holt said we could choose our own groups. Most teachers like to tell you who to be with in a group. I think they think you
can’t be happy and do work at the same time so they put you in a horrible group so you just work and work because you don’t want to speak to people who don’t like you.

‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘Which author shall we do for our project?’

Ash looked away. ‘Um . . . I haven’t really decided yet.’

‘We should probably wait till tomorrow to talk about it anyway so we can ask Kayleigh who she wants to do.’

‘Maybe.’

It was the kind of ‘maybe’ that Mum says when Lucy asks if she can have a power drill for her birthday.

‘Don’t you want to work with us?’ I asked.

Ashandra twisted the strap of her bag. ‘I don’t know. I think people are more efficient when they work in pairs. And you know how much I love being efficient – nearly as much I
love telling people the best way to
be
efficient.’

‘Oh.’ I tried not to look upset. It was time to try being nice again. ‘Well, it’s OK if you and Kayleigh work together.’

‘Actually, I’ve sort of already asked Erica to work with me.’

I couldn’t see how we were all going to be best friends if Ashandra and Kayleigh didn’t even spend any time together, but I didn’t say anything.

When Amelia let me into Dad’s house, she looked unusually cheerful. ‘Lucy’s arguing with the Ice Queen,’ she grinned.

My stomach clenched. I’m not keen on arguments and I would never dare argue with Suvi; she’s got quite a stern face.

Amelia disappeared upstairs, probably to text Mum about the fight, and I hovered in the doorway to the kitchen. Lucy was staring at Suvi with her hands on her hips. ‘But why don’t
you have a TV?’ she asked.

Lucy starts this argument almost every time we go to Dad’s. I don’t know why she won’t let it go.

Suvi was very calmly slicing leeks. I think it’s her calmness that scares me a bit. Everybody in our family gets very worked up about arguments. But Suvi just stays the same. Amelia says
it’s because she has no real emotions.

Baby Kirsti was in a basket on legs looking at the ceiling. Chloe was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a packet of crisps and watching the argument instead of the television. I don’t
know where she got the crisps. The only snack that Suvi has ever given me is rice cakes. It’s like eating polystyrene.

Suvi dropped the chopped leeks in a saucepan. ‘Television is not good for your imagination,’ she said.

Lucy widened her eyes. ‘Haven’t you ever watched any TV? It’s full of imagination.’

‘I think that it is better for you to use your own imagination.’