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CHAPTER TWO

This is where it happened: in the locker room at school. Me and Indy were already down there, putting stuff away and sorting out what we needed for afternoon classes. The Year 8 lockers are in two rows, back to back, with a few odd ones tucked away in a corner, out of sight. Me and Indy were in the tucked-away part. In other words, nobody knew that we were there. We weren’t eavesdropping! We weren’t crouched on the ground with our ears pinned back. But when Marigold came bursting in with her usual crowd of gawkers and her mouth clattering on at about a hundred miles per hour, we couldn’t help hearing.

What she was clattering on about was the Top Spot contest. How her sister, Mary-Louise, that was in Year 10, was almost certain to win because she had professional experience. She had appeared in a commercial. She had made a demo disc.

“It really isn’t fair on all the others, but what can you do? My sister can’t be stopped from putting her name down just because she’s had experience.”

Then we heard Ashlee’s voice piping up: “Know who else has put her name down? The Jelly!”

“The Jelly? You gotta be joking!”

OK, so that was when I should probably have emerged from my corner and shown myself, before Marigold could go on and say something nasty. But I didn’t, and I bet most people wouldn’t have, either. In that sort of situation, you just freeze to the spot and can’t move. The very last thing you want is for anyone to know that you’re there. It’s too humiliating.

I heard Ashlee’s voice again: “I’m not joking! I just saw her name on the list.”

And then Marigold, with her loud braying laugh: “That fat freak? Just cos her stupid old nan reckoned she was gonna be the next Judy Garland. Pur-lease!”

I could sense Indy next to me, holding her breath. Her hand reached out and dabbed at my arm, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I just felt so ashamed.

Someone said, “I think she fancies herself as some kind of rock chick.”

“Rock chick? Excuse me while I die laughing!”

Ashlee said, “Rock elephant, more like.”

“Rock jelly, more like!”

“What d’you think she’ll sing?”

“I know what she’ll sing, I know what she’ll sing! Like this, look… sh-shake, w-wobble and ROLL!”

Delighted shrieks of laughter, as from the sound of things Marigold hurled herself to and fro against the lockers.

“Sh-shake, w-w-w-WOBBLE and—”

“Drop dead, pea brain!”

I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t. But all of a sudden it was like this tidal wave of absolute fury crashed into me, and I leaped out from behind my locker and yelled:

“STUPID PEA-BRAINED BLUBBER-LIPPED MORON!”

There was a kind of shocked silence. Marigold was the one that dished it out, not the one that had it dished up. She stared at me like she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. Then she took up a stance, her hands on her hips.

“What did you say?”

“I said” – I put my face up close to hers – “you’re a STUPID, PEA-BRAINED, BLUBBER-LIPPED MORON! And in case you don’t know what that means, which you probably don’t, it means you’re so dumb you’re practically a walking vegetable!”

Somebody tittered, rather nervously. Ashlee gave a little horrified squeal, and clapped a hand to her mouth.

“Why don’t you go and plant yourself?” I said. “Do us all a favour. Take root!”

With that, I flung open the door and prepared to stalk out. But Marigold had the last word. As I made my grand exit she bawled after me, “Get lost, you pathetic fag hag!”

That was when I bunked off school.

I didn’t do it on purpose. I mean, I didn’t actually say to myself, “I am going to bunk off school and never come back.” It was just something that happened. I got as far as the main corridor and was about to turn up the stairs when this feeling of absolute despair came flooding over me. I couldn’t take it any more! I had to get out. Now.

I muttered at Indy that I’d left one of my books behind – “You go on, I’ll see you up there” – then I turned and fled. Back the way we’d come, through the double doors, across the parking lot and OUT.

The only other time I’d done anything like it was in Year 4, when I got told off for something that wasn’t my fault, and when I protested that “It wasn’t me!” the teacher wouldn’t believe me, and I was so incensed that I slipped out of the gates when no one was looking and ran all the way home to pour out my tale of woe to Nan. Nan agreed with me that it wasn’t fair. She said, “Sometimes, chickabiddy, life is like that. You have to be strong, and take the rough with the smooth.”

Just knowing that Nan was on my side had made me feel better. But Nan wasn’t there any more; she’d never call me chickabiddy ever again, or pass on her words of wisdom. I was on my own, now, cos Mum would never take my side. When I’d told her about the teacher being so mean, all she’d said was that she didn’t blame her. “You’ve caused enough problems in your time.”

No point trying to cry on Mum’s shoulder. I wouldn’t, anyway; it was something too shameful ever to tell anyone. But I would have told Nan! She was the one who had faith in me, the one who made me believe in myself. Just that morning, rummaging about for a clean T-shirt, I’d come across the last birthday card that Nan had ever sent me. She’d chosen it so carefully! On the front it had a picture of a groovy guy with a guitar, belting out Happy Birthday. Inside, in her shaky handwriting, Nan had written, To my own little star, who one of these days is going to shine so brightly!

I’d hidden it away in my secret place, beneath the lining paper at the bottom of a drawer. I’d never shown it to Mum. It was something precious, and I couldn’t bear the thought that she might laugh. I think, actually, that was what made me finally turn on Marigold, the fact that she’d dared to bring my nan into it. Her stupid old nan. I wished I’d never, ever told anyone about Nan! But it was back in Year 6, when I’d sung the Christmas carol too loud and upset Mrs Deakin. Defiantly I’d told her that “My nan says I’m going to be a second Judy Garland!” Sometimes when you’re only ten you say things you later wish with all your heart that you hadn’t.

If I hadn’t been chosen to sing the carol – if I hadn’t sung the carol too loud – if I hadn’t boasted about Nan… if none of those things had happened then maybe I wouldn’t have yelled at Marigold and bunked off school. But I had, and all I could think was that it was fate. There’s nothing you can do about fate.

When I got back to the flats I ran into one of our neighbours, Mrs Henson. She said, “Got the afternoon off, have you?”

I gave her a sickly smile and said, “Gotta headache.” I hoped she wouldn’t mention anything to Mum but I feared the worst. She is a notorious gasbag.

The minute I was inside the flat, with the door closed against the outside world, I began to feel a bit less fraught. I spent the rest of the afternoon sprawled on the sofa, headphones clamped to my ears with the volume turned up as loud as I could bear, listening to all my favourite tracks played by all my favourite bands. Mostly Urban Legend, cos they are like my Favourite of Favourites. Mum can’t stand them – she says they’re foul-mouthed and violent. I say that life is enough to make you foul-mouthed and violent, what with wars going on all over the place, and toxic waste covering the earth, and the polar ice caps melting. Not to mention terrorism. To which Mum just goes, “Don’t give me isms! Give me tunes.” Mum isn’t what I would call musical.

Nan, on the other hand, used to really enjoy listening to rock. I don’t think she liked it as much as her beloved show tunes – Over the Rainbow, and Oh What a Beautiful Morning, and all that – but she did once say she’d like to come to a rock concert with me.

“I could scream and throw me knickers on stage! That’s what you do, isn’t it? Throw your knickers? I could get into that!”

Mum said, “At your age? You ought to be ashamed!”

But Nan wasn’t ashamed of anything, which is why I try so hard not to be. Especially not of my own body. After all, it’s the one I was born with and I can’t help the way it is. It’s not like I gorge on junk food. It’s not like I don’t get any exercise. Mum doesn’t; she goes everywhere by car. Not me! I walk to and from the bus stop every day, and more often than not I walk up the stairs as well, all ten flights of them. I only take the lift if I’m feeling really knackered. I hate the lift! It smells of sick and stale pee. But there’s some people I know – Mum, to give just one example – that would get completely out of breath going up ten flights of stairs. I don’t! So I know I’m not a slob, and I’m certainly not a glutton. It is just the way I’m made, and I refuse to let small-minded, pea-brained pond life such as Marigold Johnson make me self-conscious.

That is what I have always told myself. But oh, that day she really got to me! It’s like I’d built up this wall to keep me safe, and she’d gone and brought the whole lot crashing down, leaving me exposed. Like naked, almost. Like a snail brutally torn out of its shell. Now I couldn’t pretend any more: it really hurts when someone calls you names.

If Nan had been there, what would she have said?

“Don’t you take no notice! You just remember, you’ve got something girls like that can only dream of… you’ve got a voice that’s going to take you right to the top. Up there with the stars, that’s where you’ll be! Then she’ll be laughing on the other side of her face, you see if she isn’t.”

But what if Nan were wrong? What if I didn’t have a voice?

I knew in my heart that Nan wasn’t wrong; I knew that I could sing. No one could take that away from me. But no one could make me look like Marigold Johnson, either! And who wanted a rock star the size of an elephant?

I tried so hard to hear Nan again. To hear her old, cracked voice telling me to have faith, to “Go for it, girl!” But it was no use. She wasn’t there, and I couldn’t bring her back. Music was all I had left. I turned up the volume until it was almost unbearable, until my head was pounding with the beat and I felt that I was drowning in a crashing sea of sound. At least that way I didn’t have to think.

If I could have stayed plugged in I’d have been all right, but Mum came home at six o’clock and I had to crawl back into the world, without my shell. Needless to say, Mum had bumped into Mrs Henson – or, more likely, Mrs Henson had bumped into her.

“What’s all this about a headache?” she said. “I never heard of anyone being sent home for a headache. Why couldn’t they just give you an aspirin, or something?”

I mumbled that they didn’t like to give medication. Mum said, “Sooner send you back to an empty flat.”

“They didn’t know it was empty. I told them you were here.”

Mum looked at me, rather hard. “OK! What did you want to get out of?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing!”

“Look, Carmen, just be honest. If it was a maths test, or you hadn’t done your homework, I can sympathise. I know what it’s like, I’ve been there! No one’s expecting you to turn into some kind of mad boffin. Just don’t lie to me. All right?”

I said, “Yeah, all right. Sorry.”

It seemed easier than going on with the headache thing. Mum’s never expected much of me, so not doing homework or avoiding a maths test was no big deal as far as she was concerned. She left school without any qualifications; why should I do any better? It would have upset her far more if I’d told her the truth. Not that I would! Not in a million years. I’d have curled up and died sooner than tell Mum.

Indy rang me after tea. I knew she would; I’d been dreading it. I didn’t want to talk to her! I wouldn’t have minded so much if she’d texted me, but Indy is practically the only person I know that doesn’t have a mobile phone. Or a computer. It makes life very difficult.

Mum took the phone call. She came back into the sitting room and said, “It’s your little friend on the phone. The little plain one.” I do wish Mum wouldn’t refer to Indy as the little plain one! I really hate it when she does that. She knows perfectly well what her name is.

“Well, are you going to speak to her,” she said, “or not?”

I dragged myself out into the hall and picked up the phone. “’Lo?”

Indy shrieked, “Carm! What happened? Where did you get to?”

“Hadda headache,” I said.

“Cos of Marigold? I knew it was cos of her! Honestly, that girl is just so putrefying! I’m glad you told her she was a moron. Everybody’s glad! They all reckon she asked for it.”

I said, “How does everybody know? Did you tell them?”

“No! It was Connie.”

Connie Li; I hadn’t realised she was there. Connie is OK. She is definitely not a Marigold groupie.

“Carm?” Indy’s voice squeaked anxiously down the line. “You haven’t let her get to you? Cos all those things she said, about her sister… they’re not really true! She hasn’t really had professional experience.”

“You mean she hasn’t appeared in a commercial?”

“Only some stupid thing for local radio. Not telly.”

“What about the demo disc?”

“Yeah, well… anyone can make one of those.”

I said, “Huh!”

“She isn’t any competition,” said Indy. “She has a voice like a… I dunno! Fingernails scraping on a blackboard. Yeeeech!”

Indy was trying really hard, but what she said about fingernails just wasn’t true. Marigold’s sister is chosen every year to sing solo when we do carols. It’s not a bad sort of voice. A bit small. A bit tinny. She couldn’t do rock! But obviously some people like it. Anyway, I couldn’t care less about Marigold’s sister. It was all the other stuff. The stuff that Indy was too kind to mention, or maybe just too embarrassed.

“You’ve always said not to take any notice of her,” said Indy. “So why start now?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I don’t give a damn.” It’s amazingly easy to lie when you’re on the other end of a telephone. You can almost, even, lie to yourself. “Marigold Johnson is just sewage,” I said.

“She is,” said Indy. “That’s exactly what she is! And we’re not the only ones that think so. Lots of people have been going on about her. It’s made her really unpopular.”

I knew Indy was doing her best to be a good friend and make me feel better, but I hated the thought of everyone knowing what Marigold had said. Everyone talking about it. Feeling sorry for me. Did you hear what Marigold called Carmen? She called her a fat freak!

“Dunno what she meant by that last remark, though,” said Indy. “D’you?”

I said, “What last remark?” Though in fact I knew perfectly well.

“Fag hag… what she say that for?”

I said, “No idea.”

“I thought when people called you a fag hag it meant you were friends with someone that was gay.”

I grunted.

“You’re not friends with anyone that’s gay! Unless she was talking about Josh. Was she talking about Josh? Trying to make out he’s a fag?”

I snapped, “Don’t use that stupid word!”

“Sorry,” said Indy. “Was she trying to make out he’s gay?”

I said, “I don’t know! She’s completely mad.”

“But what a thing to say! About Josh. I bet she’s just jealous, I bet that’s what it is, cos she used to fancy him. Probably still does. And just cos he doesn’t fancy her—”

“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t tell him!”

“I won’t,” said Indy. “I wouldn’t!”

“I s’pose people are gossiping?”

“Not about that so much. They’re more saying how Marigold got what she deserved… you calling her a vegetable!” Indy giggled. “Someone said she ought to have a new name – she ought to be called Cabbage. Then someone said she ought to be a root veg, cos of you telling her to take root, so we’re all, like, trying to think of root vegetables, like Turnip. Turnip Johnson!”

I said, “Yeah, that would suit her. But please don’t tell Josh about the other thing. Please!”

“I won’t,” said Indy. “I won’t! Don’t worry!” She added that in any case it was so stupid it was ridiculous. “No one’s going to believe it.”

I said, “That’s not the point! I don’t want him to know.”

If word got round, it would be all my fault. I should just have kept quiet! I’d done what I always swore I wouldn’t: I’d let myself be provoked. I’d insulted Marigold in front of her groupies, and now she’d gone and dragged Josh into it. He was going to think I’d betrayed him! Why, why, why couldn’t I have kept my big mouth shut? Just a few weeks earlier, before I’d even known about the Top Spot contest, I’d gone round to Josh’s place and we’d written a new song – How Cool am I? – and afterwards we’d sat and talked, cos Josh and I do a lot of talking, and he’d said he had something he wanted to tell me. And then he’d hesitated, and I said, “Well, go on! What?” and it all came out in a great rush.

“I’m not absolutely certain but it’s this feeling I’ve had for a long time… I think I might be gay!”

I said, “Oh.” And then, “Really?” And then, “Gosh.” Like something out of Enid Blyton. I gave up reading Enid Blyton when I was about five. To make matters worse I then added, “Wow.”

Josh said, “Yeah. Wow.”

“Well, but I mean…” What did I mean? I didn’t mean anything. I was just, like, totally thrown. It’s not very often I’m at a loss for words, usually I have too many, but for once I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So I went and said something even stupider than wow, I said, “How do you know?”

“I dunno,” said Josh. “It’s just something I feel.”

“Mm.” I nodded. “OK. So…”

He looked at me, rather solemnly. “So how do you feel?”

“Me? I feel like – so what? What difference does it make? You’re still you. So long as we’re not going to fancy the same guys!”

I said that just to show him that I was cool. That now I’d got my head round the idea I was just, like, totally and utterly relaxed.

“You’re the only person I’ve told,” said Josh.

“Not even Robert? Not even Damian?”

Josh said, “Specially not Robert or Damian.”

They are two boys in our class. They’re clever, like Josh. The three of them tend to hang out together.

“Why specially not them?” I said. “Don’t you reckon they’d be OK with it?”

“I guess – yeah! Probably. It’s just… I don’t particularly want anyone else to know.”

“Just me?”

I think that was one of the proudest moments of my life. That Josh had chosen me! But I still had to ask him. “Why me and not anybody else?”

He said, “Cos I feel you’re someone I can talk to. Maybe the only person I can talk to.”

“Not even your mum and dad?”

“God, no!” He reared away in horror. “I’m not gonna tell them!”

“Why not?”

“Are you mad? Would you tell your mum?”

I said, “N-no. But I’d tell yours!” Josh’s mum and dad are really nice. Really supportive. “You should tell them,” I said. “Otherwise you know what’ll happen… they’ll start teasing you about girlfriends, and it’ll just be, like, so embarrassing. It’s what my mum does about boys. It curls me up! You should tell them now,” I said, “so they have time to get used to it. You don’t want to spring it on them later.”

Josh said he didn’t want to spring it on them at all. “There isn’t any reason for them to know. There isn’t any reason for anyone to know.”

Just me. I assured him that I wouldn’t breathe a word to a soul, not even Indy, and I snatched up my guitar and started singing the song we’d just written.

How cool am I?

Think about about about a

NICE cube

Think about about about a

NICE cream

Think about a nice dream

Ice dream

Well, it went on for a bit and now I’ve forgotten the rest of it. But it did seem significant that we’d written it that particular day.

“See?” I said. “How cool am I!”

“I knew you would be,” said Josh. “That’s why I knew I could tell you.”

Everyone needs someone they can tell things to. Josh had told me he was worried cos he thought he might be gay – but I couldn’t tell Josh that I was worried cos I thought I might be too fat to be a rock star. I was too ashamed. I didn’t have anyone I could tell.

He said, “Promise me you won’t say anything!” and I gave him my word. I promised him. He had confided in me in strictest secrecy. He had trusted me. And now that hideous hag Marigold had gone and blown it. How had she found out? I hadn’t told a single solitary person. It had nearly killed me keeping it from Indy, cos me and Indy tell each other everything, but I hadn’t even so much as hinted. I wouldn’t do that to Josh!

My only hope was that everyone would be so busy gabbing about how Marigold had called me a fat freak and I’d called her a moron that they’d forget the words she’d yelled at me as I stalked through the door. Maybe Josh would never get to hear of it.

But I knew that he would. School is just like a seething cauldron when it comes to gossip.