Artichoke Hearts (15 page)

‘You’re right, Mira. This is a very complicated issue. Of course when it comes to pain relief that’s different.’

Jidé’s eyes are burning into me.

‘
She’s
different,’ Demi whispers under her breath, rolling her eyes into the back of her head to look like a zombie . . . and that’s the moment when something
inside me sparks and the words flare up and spread around the room like a raging fire.

‘Stop it! Just stop! I don’t know what you get out of being so vile to me, but you’ll have to find someone else to pick on. I hope you never have to watch someone you love
dying right in front of you, because the way you carry on you’d better hope there’s no such thing as bad karma . . . because you lot have got it coming!’

As soon as it’s out, I cover my mouth with my hands in case anything else escapes. Where did that come from? I don’t really know what happens to me when I get this angry, because
I’ve never felt like this before. The whole class is stunned into silence and Miss Poplar is gawping at me as if I’m a total stranger.

‘Who exactly are you talking about, Mira?’

‘Demi, Bo and Orla,’ I say in the clearest and loudest voice I can find.

I have never seen Miss Poplar look so stern.

‘You three, to my office, right now. The rest of you get on with some reading. I’ll be sending someone in to sit with you in a minute,’ she barks at the rest of the class.
‘Mira, come and see me at the end of the lesson, please,’ she says in a tone you would use to comfort a wounded animal.

The tears are stinging my eyes now, so I keep my head low as they file out of the room. There is silence. The kind of silence that until now I’ve only ever felt at school in Pat
Print’s class. I hear someone get up, walk towards me and sit down in Millie’s empty seat. It’s Jidé. I daren’t look up in case he sees me crying.

When I come out of Miss Poplar’s office, I feel taller than I did when I went in. Walking between lessons, where you have to criss-cross the school with the thousand or
so other giant-sized people, is usually the bit I dread most about my day. Most days when I make this journey, I concentrate as hard as I can on becoming invisible, but not today. It’s as if
I’m seeing this school and all the kids who come here for the very first time . . . and some are taller than me, and some are smaller, but they all have a human face. As I walk through the
crowded corridor, I feel a buzz in my pocket, so I duck into the nearest loo, locking the door behind me.

Three kisses. I think about texting him back, but it would probably take me hours, and I’m already late for French so I close my phone, check myself out in the mirror,
concentrating hard on losing my ‘Jidé Jackson just texted me three kisses face’, and walk into French.

‘Tu es en retard, Mira.
’

‘I’ve got a note, miss,’ I say, showing her the note from Miss Poplar explaining why I’m late.

Answering Jidé’s text is just about all I can think of through what’s left of French. As I leave the classroom, I catch sight of him across the language corridor as he comes
out of Spanish. I blush just about the most ridiculous colour crimson that I’ve ever turned. He grins at me, and I, without being able to stop myself, grin back, before being mercifully swept
away on a sea of bodies. I duck into the toilets again to text him this.

It took me all of French to pluck up the courage to send those four kisses. Well, I suppose French
is
supposed to be the language of love.

By lunchtime Millie’s back, wearing her new brace. We sit on the high wall and I tell her about the shame of Jidé finding out what a coward I am, and my explosion
in Miss Poplar’s class.

‘Sounds like I missed all the action, but I wouldn’t worry . . . he probably liked playing the hero to your damsel in distress!’ teases Millie.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘So why did he want your number then?’

‘I dunno, because he hasn’t called.’

Strictly speaking that’s not a lie. Who am I kidding? I am even lying to my best friend now. What is going on with me? Why can’t I just tell Millie the truth?

‘Here comes trouble,’ scowls Millie, as Demi and Bo stroll towards us.

I feel my whole body tense up. In a minute I’ll know if they’re going to take their revenge, but they just keep on walking without even glancing up at us.

‘Result!’ grins Millie, shaking my hand.

‘All right, Mira?’ mumbles Orla as she trails along behind the others.

‘All right,’ I say.

The phone rings.

‘Will
someone
please pick that up,’ shouts Dad.

‘I’m in the bathroom. Mira, can you pick it up or they’ll ring off,’ yells Mum.

I don’t know why they even bother. It’s always me who answers the phone anyway. Krish won’t, because it makes him nervous.

‘Hi! Millie . . . Poor you! Does it really hurt? . . . OK, I’ll tell her . . . Yep, I’ll call you later.’

‘Who was that?’ asks Mum, carrying Laila, all cosied up in a towel, down the stairs.

‘Millie. Her teeth are hurting. It’s her new brace giving her headaches. She’s having the day off. Can I go and see her after school?’

‘If you like, but be back by five and take your mobile,’ Mum says, trying to be relaxed about everything, but then she blows it. ‘Do you want me to walk you in to your writing
group, if Millie’s not coming?’

‘No, Mum. I’m fine on my own.’

Pat Print walks ahead of me through the great metal gates. When she spots me, she stops and waits.

‘How was the rest of your stay? I nearly got blown off that beach.’

‘Fine.’

So she really was there. We walk along in silence for a minute or so.

‘How’s your nana?’

‘In the hospice.’

‘I see.’

‘She knows Moses,’ I tell Pat Print.

‘Who does?’

‘Nana. We saw you walking him. We could see you from her room in the hospice. She thinks Piper and Moses know each other.’

‘Now I think of it, I’ve heard Tilly talk about a “Piper”. Tilly walks Moses on weekdays, mostly. I just don’t have the time. Strange I’ve never bumped into
your nana on one of my Suffolk jaunts though . . . So she’s in the Marie Curie. That’s just behind my flat. She’ll be well looked after there,’ she says, touching me on the
shoulder in her awkward, trying-to-be-comforting way.

‘Millie can’t come today. She’s got a new brace and her teeth are aching,’ I explain, changing the subject.

‘Ouch! Poor Millie, but I don’t see why everyone’s got to have such perfect teeth these days. It’s all part of this gruesome path we’re all supposed to follow to
physical perfection.’

Pat Print and my dad have this much in common.

‘Well, you’ll have to fill her in. And then there were . . . three,’ Pat counts, walking into the classroom where Jidé and Ben are sprawled out over their desks as if
they would rather be in bed. Ben’s wearing his baseball cap today.

‘Great cap,’ says Pat Print, pulling the brim down over Ben’s eyes and making him squirm.

She takes off her coat. It’s one of those green wax things Nana wears in Suffolk – you hardly ever see anyone wearing one in London.

‘Where’s Moses?’ asks Ben.

‘I got the impression dogs aren’t allowed in school. So I’ve left him at home today.’

‘Ohhh!’ groans Ben.

‘Have you got any pets?’ asks Pat.

‘Mum won’t let me. She thinks they’re filthy.’

‘She’s got a point!’

Before I can think of what’s happening I hear Nana’s words escape from my mouth, ‘With love comes cack.’

Now Pat Print, Jidé and Ben are all rolling around in hysterics. Pat finally calms down enough to ask, Who says that?’

‘Nana Josie.’

I can’t believe I let that out.

‘I’m tempted to steal that for the title of my next book!’

Pat Print can see that I’ve blushed up bright red, so she tries to change the subject. ‘Now . . . what have you got for me, Jidé?’

I want to talk to Jidé, I want to ask him so many questions about Rwanda, but if I ever did he would know I’d been spying on him and what would he think of me, for wanting to
know?

‘I’ve written the beginning of my book,’ he says.

‘Is that all?’ laughs Pat, rubbing her hands together. ‘Let’s have it then.’

Jidé starts to read:

He could imagine the heat and the red-brown soil, but he could not remember it. When he looked in the mirror he could imagine what his mother and his father looked like. He
often wondered whose eyes he had, whose nose, whose mouth, whose skin, whose voice his sounded like, but he knew that there was no way he was ever going to find out. He didn’t want people to
feel sorry for him, because he was one of the lucky ones. You hadn’t watched his body on the nine o’clock news floating down the river of corpses. If you had known them, you might have
caught sight of his parents though. But would you have recognized them as human beings, or just a mass of disconnected limbs? If your past is hell – where only by an act of good luck . . . God . .
. whatever you believe in . . . only you’d survived – why would you look back? You can have too much history when you’re only twelve years old.

That’s why he always looked tough, joked about, or played
the
fool, because although he didn’t know the ‘derivation’ of his name, at least he was alive.

Pat Print takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes. She’s not a crier like my mum, but when Jidé has finished she stays quiet, looking straight at him and nodding
her head as if to say ‘that’s right’. Her silence is full of respect. You don’t often get that feeling between teachers and students.

My eyes are also brimming over with tears. I stare at the ground so that nobody notices, but I feel Jidé glance my way and I want him to know that I care, so I force myself to look up
into his eyes. We hold each other there for what seems like forever until he nods, releasing me from the spell of his gaze.

‘Jidé, it wouldn’t surprise me if I were to read that opening in a prize-winning novel. You should write on,’ she says, smiling at him.

Then she turns to Ben and me.

‘I would like you both to pick a line or an idea from Jidé’s writing that stood out for you . . . Ben?’

‘I like the last line, where he explains why he’s a joker. Before today I didn’t think there was much behind that.’

Jidé shrugs.

‘There’s always something behind a character. Reasons people behave the way they do,’ says Pat. ‘How about you, Mira?’

I can feel Jidé’s eyes on me, waiting for me to speak.

‘The line about “You can have too much history when you’re only twelve years old” . . . because it made me think . . . it made me feel . . . that you don’t really
know anything about anyone. I thought Jidé was born here, I didn’t know anything about Rwanda, or about him, until this writing group. You think you know the people in your class,
where they come from, but you just don’t. It’s the same with Nana; I thought I knew her, but I only know a tiny bit of her.’

‘Maybe you’re not supposed to know,’ says Jidé, with his eyes fixed on me.

‘If you don’t know, how do you ever really get to understand another person?’ asks Pat.

‘Maybe you only see the sides of them they
want
you to see,’ answers Ben, patting Jidé on the back.

‘That’s an astute observation. Have you written anything for me this week, Ben?’ asks Pat.

‘Not much,’ Ben mumbles. ‘Nothing serious, like Jidé’s, just something about skateboarding. It’s more of a poem really . . . or song lyrics.’

‘Let’s have it then.’

Ben fixes up his baseball cap and begins, quietly for him, as though he’s embarrassed by his own writing.

Pat Print claps. ‘Excellent, Ben Gbemi with a silent G. You’re a performance poet.’

Ben hides his grin under the low brim of his cap. ‘Now, Mira, what have you got for me?’ ‘Some more of my diary, if you want.’ ‘I most certainly do want.’ Pat
Print smiles. I flick through, trying to find something I want to read. I don’t feel like reading about Nana, or the hospice, so I pick out yesterday in the classroom. Just the thought of it
makes me feel stronger.

I can feel Jidé’s eyes on me. When I finish reading, I look up at him and smile. He should know it’s because of him that I summoned the courage to face up to Demi, Bo and
Orla.