Time for Jas (16 page)

Then I thought of Mr Valenta driving past our house during the party before Flora’s play, his face so sad.

‘He might surprise you,’ I said softly.

‘It’s over, Blue.’ Marek sat with his arms wrapped round his knees, the picture of tiny crushed miserableness. ‘Tata’s won. He’ll never let me go to art college, and he’ll never let me do what I want. It’s sweet of you to try, but …’

‘I’m not being sweet!’

Sweet made me bubble with anger and disappointment.

Sweet is even worse than sensible.

‘It’s not sweet to stand up for yourself,’ I told him. ‘Or to fight for what you want. It’s … it’s brave, and defiant and strong.’

‘That’s just stories,’ Marek said.

‘It’s not!’ I insisted. ‘Look at me and Dodi!’

‘Dodi?’

‘She was always bossing me about and telling me what to do. But I stood up to her …’

I trailed off. I still don’t like remembering how I stood up to Dodi, or how wrong that could have gone.

‘And what happened?’ Marek asked.

‘Things changed,’ I said. ‘And we’re still friends. You’ve got to stand up to him, Marek. You can’t just give up your dreams like he did. You’ve got to show him how much it matters to you. If you don’t, how is he ever going to understand you?’

Marek rested his forehead on his knees so I couldn’t see his face. For a minute, I thought that he was going to cry. Then he unfolded himself and got up without another word.

‘It’s been great knowing you, Blue,’ he mumbled.

He walked away. Suddenly I felt furious again.

‘You’re just scared!’ I yelled after him.

But he didn’t turn around.

Todd was waiting at our house when I got home, playing with Flora’s old makeup while Jas stuck dead leaves on her geranium collage and Twig did a nature magazine crossword.

‘Well?’ Todd asked when I came in. ‘What did he say?’

I shook my head.

‘Probably just as well,’ Twig said.

He’s miserable because Coach has said no to a second chance.

‘Not just as well,’ Todd said. ‘Not just as well at all.’

‘I have no more solutions,’ I told them, and went to bed.

I have tried to help. I have tried to be brave and ambitious and come up with the sort of solution you would get in a film, where whole communities are saved by pulling together and putting aside their differences, and audiences come out feeling that anything is possible, but now I have run out of ideas and it is very, very sad.

Flora came in to see me. ‘So,’ she said. ‘I saw you and the posh boy in the square.’

‘Did you?’ I said.

‘He is your boyfriend.’

‘He really isn’t.’

‘But you want him to be.’

I love Flora, I honestly do, and I feel sorry for her and everything, but she is the most annoying person in the world.

‘You are perfectly absurd,’ I told her. ‘Now please go away and never talk to me again.’

I called Zoran in Devon.

‘How do you make someone do something they don’t want to do?’

‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘What are you up to now?’

I told him my plan. ‘Don’t you think it’s brilliant?’

‘No,’ Zoran said. ‘I think it’s crazy and I’m not surprised people don’t want to do it.’

I said goodbye, because I am tired of people telling me I’m crazy, and called Skye instead.

‘It’s not crazy,’ Skye said. ‘It’s big. That’s not the same as crazy.’

I love Skye.

‘And you can’t do it without this Marek guy?’

‘We really can’t. He’s a proper artist. Without him it’d all just be mess. And anyway, I wanted to help him too. It’s supposed to help everybody.’

Skye said that was a shame, and then he changed the subject and said seriously, Blue, was it true that horrible girl who’s been bullying Jas was bringing a lamb to school?

‘Seriously,’ I said.

‘That’s mental,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘And cruel to animals.’

‘Welcome to the Cupcake Crew.’

Skye went quiet and then he said, ‘I wish I could help you,’ and I said, ‘That’s nice but you can’t because you’re in Devon,’ and we both said goodbye.

The last person I called was Peter.

‘It’s all off,’ I told him.

‘We’ll come anyway,’ he said. ‘Just don’t tell Flora yet.’

There was a bad atmosphere at home until the drama students came. I stayed in bed. The others spent most of the day in Flora’s room, whispering, probably about me.

The doorbell rang and it was Barney and Peter and Maud. Mum shouted up the stairs for Flora to come down. Flora said what for, and then there was the sound of three people coming up the stairs, all ‘Flora, Flora wherefore art thou Flora,’ which is what Juliet famously says to Romeo. I thought that was a bit tactless but then I heard Flora fling open her door and shout, ‘You guys!’ and they were all falling into each other’s arms and hugging and kissing, and Maud and Peter and Barney were all, ‘Darling, bad luck about the show but you have to come back,’ and Flora was,
‘I can’t’ and they were all, ‘But sweetheart you must, I swear it’s dead up there without you.’ And then Flora said, ‘I’ll think about it’ and they all squealed and my bedroom door was flung open and Flora said, ‘Blue, did you ask these guys to come?’ and I said, ‘maybe’ and they all jumped on my bed and tickled me until I had to scream for them to get off.

‘Dearest,’ Peter said, tucking his arm behind my head. ‘Why so glum?’

‘Blue’s in love,’ Flora informed them.

‘Pauvre petite,’
crooned Maud.

‘That means “poor little you”,’ Barney told me.

‘We’re doing
The Three Musketeers
next term and now Maud only speaks French.’

‘I am NOT in love,’ I said.

‘Get out of bed then and come and plot,’ Peter said.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I am thinking of staying in bed for ever.’

I checked my email about a thousand times, but there were no messages from Marek.

Everything is over.

All afternoon, people tramped up and down stairs to Flora’s room with cups of tea and packets of biscuits. Jas and Twig were there. Pumpkin too, when Mum and Dad went out, after his nap. Pixie came home from her yoga class and joined in as well. The
phone rang a lot, and the front door slammed quite a few times too.

It got dark. I thought of watching my videos, but couldn’t find my camera. I watched TV shows on my laptop instead. Eventually, I pulled on a sweatshirt over my pyjamas and shuffled into Flora’s room. There were people everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, at her desk.

Every single one of them looked guilty.

Pixie said she had to get supper. Maud said she had to practise the
trompette
. Jas drooped tragically and said she had to put the finishing touches to her dead leaf picture for the art show tomorrow – not that anyone would notice it – and Twig sighed and had better do his homework, since there was nothing else in his life now.

They all dispersed.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Flora.

‘Nothing!’ she said brightly, and I have never been more certain that she was lying.

It’s three o’clock in the morning. Something just woke me – a noise, like people moving about. I went
out on to the landing, but everything was quiet. I looked out at the street but there was nothing there. I’m back in bed now, writing to make myself not be afraid.

I must have dozed off with the light. There was another noise. A creak on the stairs, a bump, a muffled curse.

Someone was in the house.

This time I didn’t dare get up. I lay flat in bed and pulled the duvet around me. ‘I’m imagining things,’ I told myself. ‘There’s no-one there.’

The steps drew nearer.

My bedroom door creaked open. I opened my mouth to scream, but someone was already leaping across the room, so fast I couldn’t see him, and was right beside me with his hand over my mouth.

I bit the hand. Its owner yelped. His smell, his voice, everything about him was familiar.

‘Shut up,’ whispered Skye. ‘Don’t wake your parents.’

‘What are you doing?’ I hissed, when he removed his hand.

‘I’ve come to get you. Quick, get dressed. Warm clothes, it’s freezing outside. I’ll wait on the landing.’

In front of the house, Zoran sat at the wheel of a horsebox.

‘What …’

‘Don’t ask,’ he said.

From the horsebox behind us came the sound of a plaintive whinny. Skye grinned, his glasses more crooked than ever.

‘A pony’s way more impressive than a lamb,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go!’

‘Where?’

‘Where do you think? It’s Monday morning. School, of course.’

Jas’s display was spectacular.

People will be talking about what we did today for years. For ever, maybe. It was A WORK OF BEAUTY.

My work of beauty. My bonkers, ambitious, completely unsensible idea for a fabulous feel-good ending.

‘I called Jas,’ Skye said in the horsebox this morning on the way to school. ‘I said how brilliant your plan was and how we had to do it. I said, I know how scary it will be, but we would all be there to help her. Then that kid Todd got involved.’

‘That was Twig’s idea,’ Zoran said. ‘He thought the smallest people would be the most convincing, and that Jas and Todd together should go and talk to Marek. He’s obviously as crazy as the rest of you, because he was already having second thoughts. Then when Todd and Jas turned up on his doorstep, telling him how badly they were being picked on at school … well, I think your Marek is a nice person, as well as mad, because he agreed immediately.’

‘Twig’s kind of a genius, sending those two,’ Skye said. ‘Jas and Todd together – I don’t think anyone
could resist them. I tell you, he’ll be running the country one day.’

We pulled into the parking bay in front of the primary school.

‘So we’re doing it,’ I breathed.

Zoran glanced over and smiled. ‘Just don’t tell Gloria, OK?’

I was first in line when the school gates opened, with my camera in my jacket. We figured the school wouldn’t let us in all at once without questioning us. Flora came next with Maud, with hats pulled low over their made-up faces, then Barney, Peter, Twig and Todd and finally Marek and Zoran.

Skye and Jas saved their entrance for later.

I filmed everything. Everything.

A star-spangled night sky of indigo and silver. A sunset of purple and orange. A dawn of rose and yellow and purple. A summer’s day of blazing gold and blue, a snowstorm on a winter landscape, rain falling from fluffy clouds on to green rolling countryside. The astonished faces of hundreds of children as they walked into school and found it transformed from brick and concrete and tarmac into an explosion of colour. Some of the drawings were better than others, but it didn’t matter. Night, day, summer, winter: the circle of life covered every
inch of that playground, and all together they formed a perfect salutation to the new dawn.

Maybe it was too much when Barney struck up his violin and Flora and Maud threw off their coats and hats and started to dance around a small papier-mâché tree hung with paper birds and fruits and flowers. Except that if they hadn’t started the dance, others wouldn’t have joined in. Lots of others. Little kids joined hands with Flora and Maud and danced in a circle round the tree while older kids stood by and watched as the violin went faster and faster, until even the teachers started to tap their feet and clap.

It was definitely too much for Jas to turn up on Mopsy, bareback with a crown of flowers in her hair, reciting her ‘Circle of Life’ poem through a megaphone stolen from the secondary school rugby coach. I’m not sure anyone could hear the words, but I don’t think that matters. And oh, the look on Megan’s face when she turned up in a long flowery pink frock, dragging a lamb on a lead!

I remembered what Dodi said about Halloween being all about Flora, and that Jas should be normal. The last thing Jas could or should ever be is normal. This morning, as she recited poetry on horseback, it was all about her. And Skye is so right. A pony is way more impressive than a lamb.

Megan saw the pony and dropped the lead. The lamb, who was having a horrible time and had no idea what it was doing in London, let alone a school, ran away, scattering droppings as it went. Skye caught it and became an instant star attraction with children wanting to pet it.

Ms Smokey started shouting about health and safety but nobody listened.

Kids passing the gates on their way to the secondary school stopped and took photographs on their phones. The local paper, seeing, ‘Farm Animals Run Wild in West London Primary School’ trending on Twitter, sent a reporter to cover the story. The crowds grew bigger and bigger. Ms Smokey gave up on starting a normal school day and asked people to form an orderly queue instead. ‘Viewing of this exceptional art installation will be time-limited to five minutes per visitor,’ she shouted into a loudspeaker, and also, ‘All cash donations will be gratefully received.’

The under-fourteen rugby team turned up (by now, loads of the secondary school were here). The captain informed the local paper that rugby players made excellent artists, and also that Twig, though a really terrible rugby player, was awesome at telling people what to do. The team picked him up and carried him around the playground on their shoulders.

Twig turned scarlet.

Everything has to end, I suppose. Eventually the police arrived to find out what all the fuss was about and, after admiring the chalk paintings, asked everyone to start moving along now please. The headmaster stormed over from the secondary school to find out why half his students hadn’t turned up for morning lessons. People remembered they had to go to work, and drifted back to the morning bustle of Blenheim Avenue. Mr Boniface remembered that other pupils had also contributed to the art project and deserved attention.

The playground emptied. Jas slipped off Mopsy, hugged us all, and ran into school with Todd to the sound of her classmates’ cheers.

Nobody paid any attention to Megan, Courtney, Chandra and Fran.

Skye and Zoran led Mopsy back to the horsebox, together with the lamb. The caretaker leaned on his broom beside me, surveying a pile of pony droppings. He looked at the chalk paintings one by one, and his grumpy face turned into a reluctant smile.

‘Suppose the rain’ll clear that lot away in due course,’ he said.

‘It will,’ I promised. ‘And the forecast’s wet for tonight.’

Flora, Maud and Peter stopped dancing and walked towards the gates, talking loudly about coffee. Barney didn’t follow. Eyes closed, lost in his own world, he stood alone by Todd’s tree in the middle of the playground, still playing his fiddle.

‘He’s playing Tchaikovsky,’ Peter said. ‘You don’t interrupt Barney when he plays Tchaikovsky. Tell him where we’ve gone, Blue, will you?’

And then, apart from the caretaker sweeping in his corner and Barney playing with his eyes closed, only Marek and I were left.

We walked towards each other from opposite sides of the playground. Marek ran his hands through hair so dusty with chalk it practically stood upright, and when he smiled it was the proper smile I saw on Hungerford Bridge.

‘We did it,’ he said.

‘You
did it.’

‘We
all
did it.’

And now we were standing right in front of each other. Barney’s playing was getting faster and faster, building to a finale. Marek reached out both hands for mine and we started to spin like a couple of kids.

‘We did it!’ I shouted, but Marek didn’t shout back.

He slowed down. He stopped spinning. I staggered to a halt and followed the direction of his gaze, to the
entrance gates which were deserted now except for one person.

Mr Valenta – tailored-suited, cashmere-coated, custom shod and hatted – stood stony-faced beside his wife on the edge of the playground, surveying his son’s work.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Marek asked.

‘I may have had a word with your mum,’ I admitted.

Time froze. Nobody moved. There was no sound except for the violin.

‘This was a disaster,’ I thought.

And then Marek was walking across the playground, with his crazy hair and his clothes full of multi-coloured chalk dust. He stood before his father and held out a piece of chalk.

‘You did this?’ Mr Valenta asked.

He spoke very carefully, like he was daring Marek to admit that he had. Like he might explode if he did. And then Mrs Valenta put her hand on his arm, and a look passed between them, and it was like when they came for drinks, when she told us that he used to be a great violinist.

‘Tell him, Marek,’ she said quietly.

‘Just because you could not play the violin …’ Marek’s voice shook. He paused, swallowed, and started again. ‘It doesn’t mean I can’t be an artist. It’s
what I love more than anything in the world, and if you stop me, it will be like killing me.’

Mr Valenta opened his mouth. Mrs Valenta squeezed his arm, and he closed it.

‘I want to be an artist.’ Marek was sounding much firmer now. ‘But I don’t want to do it in secret. I want to do it out in the open, and I want you to be proud of me.’

As Marek spoke, Mr Valenta’s face changed from a glare to a frown to the sort of crumpled look people get when they are trying not to cry.

‘Well?’ Marek’s voice wobbled again. ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’

Mr Valenta opened his arms, and Marek fell straight into them.

They stayed for ages. Mr and Mrs Valenta walked around the playground with Marek, looking at all the drawings, but I didn’t go with them. I sat on a wall and watched and smiled, because as they walked and looked Mr Valenta’s tie seemed to come looser too, and his Paris hat sat at a jauntier angle. He reached out to touch one of the drawings, His coat brushed against the wall and came away covered in chalk. And all the time, Barney kept on playing, softly, softly, until Ms Smokey came out to ask us to please go away once and for all.

Barney packed his fiddle away and went to join the others in the café. Mr Valenta went to work, still dabbing at his eyes. Mrs Valenta kissed us both and went with him.

‘Wow.’ Marek looked dazed.

‘I told you it was a good plan,’ I said.

‘It was the violin that did it. That was a stroke of genius. It reminded him what it was like. What he used to be like.’

I smiled modestly, because there’s no denying it. Getting Barney to play the violin was a brilliant idea.

‘Did he say anything about Wales?’ I asked.

‘Tata? No. But Mum said before she left that we would talk this weekend.’

‘The violin,’ I admitted, ‘was sort of a fluke.’

Then neither of us knew quite what to say.

‘I guess we’d better go to school,’ I said.

‘I guess.’

There is a tiny piece of green between the primary and secondary, just big enough for a couple of benches and a few bushes tall enough to hide them. And there are times when life is just too big for school.

We stopped at the green and sat on one of the benches and we talked and talked and talked.

At one point, Marek took my hand in his. And he didn’t let go.

Once I had a twin sister called Iris. She was like half of me. I loved her more than anyone else in the world, and when she died I thought I would never be happy again. My diaries then were all about her. Oh, not just her. They were about all of us, the people we met, the things we did – and we have done a lot. But all the same, at the heart of them there was me, missing Iris.

Now it’s different.

It’s not that I don’t still love her, and miss her, and wish that she was here every single day. It’s just – it’s not at the centre of everything any more. It’s more of a shadow in the corner of the room. I know she’s there, watching me. I know she loves me. I know she doesn’t mind.

The most important thing is for us all to be happy. I know it’s what she wants too.

Jas didn’t win the art prize. Mr Boniface thanked her for bringing joy and colour to the school (his words), but said that with so many people involved who didn’t actually attend Clarendon Free Primary, he couldn’t honestly give the prize to her. He gave it to Todd instead, which was perfect. As Jas said, the whole point was for Megan and Courtney and Chandra and Fran not to win, and obviously they
didn’t. Jas and Todd were their school heroes for about week. Then other things happened, the way things do in school, and people began to forget about them. Jas doesn’t mind though. She says she doesn’t care about being popular, as long as people just leave her alone. She has given up art for ever and has started writing a novel in verse. At the weekends, she and Todd get together and make clothes.

Twig has given up on sport and taken up debating instead. He’s pretty good at it.