Brave New Girl (10 page)

I hadn't meant to look at Sasha's page. And Keith was sending me a billion messages that made the computer ping like a hyperactive microwave. But I saw it straight away. A picture of me in a heap on the floor of the costume cupboard.

I suppose I ought to thank my lucky stars or maybe my lucky Turkish magic eye that it wasn't a movie, that you couldn't see me shaking or hear the snuffling noises it looked like I was making. I looked totally fishfaced, open-mouthed, red, baggy eyes, ridiculous in a mixture of school uniform and silver sparkles.
Like a broken, spangly puppet.

I felt my heart speed up so fast I thought it would burst. I clicked the page shut immediately.

The messages were pinging into my inbox so noisily they could have been music.

I decided to call Keith.

The first thing he said was, “So you saw it?”

“Did you?”

“It's on Christina's page.”

“Oh no! Hers as well? How come you're her friend?”

“She likes to keep her numbers up, I guess.”

I clicked the page up again.

“You're looking at it now, aren't you?” Keith said. “Don't be daft!”

“I can't help it. I look so gross.”

“Forget it, Seren.”

“Forget it?” I was almost yelling. “It's everywhere!”

“You need to think about something else.” I heard Keith sigh. “This call will cost you way too much. Message me, no, better still, is Sasha there?”

“She's never here.”

“I'm coming round.”

I kept Sasha's page up and clicked through to Christina's. Underneath was a long trail of comments
from her and Shaz and Ruby and loads of people I had never even heard of. The comments grew as I watched. Christina had commented first:

This is a scene from Keith's crap film where Seren breaks down as she realises she has no friends and no talent.

Then Shazna:
lol. That girl cannot act. Keith is ttl weirdo!

Then they got harsher.
Seren C-A is a fugly freak
was one of the nicer ones. I took the magic eye out of my drawer and put it around my neck. I was still reading the comments when Keith appeared.

“Right, turn that off. Now,” he said, and I did.

“Watch this, and feel better.” He clicked over the keys and bought up some of what he'd filmed outside the Olympic park after school. It looked like some science-fiction world of tomorrow and not what had been a building site until what seemed like the day before yesterday.

“Seren? Hello? Lights on and no one's home.” Keith waved his hand in front of my face..

“I can't think about anything, Keith,” I said. “It's all horrible.”

“It's just a picture, Seren. It's just you crying. It's not half as bad as the one of Ed that went up last year.
It could have been much worse.”

“Everything could always be worse, Keith. Anyway, it's not the picture so much. It's the comments. They say I'm crap, and you're weird.”

“Who'd've guessed? I thought everyone knew that already,” Keith said.

I rolled my eyes.

“I didn't read them and neither should you. It's bonkers. It's like torture, you might as well eat broken glass.”

“I can't help it. It's like scratching an itch.”

“Well, don't!” Keith said.

“I thought all this had finished after last Christmas,” I said.

“Christina's obviously got nothing better to do,” Keith said. “Come on, Seren, you know what she's like by now. If you'd have been more... I don't know, you do make it easy for her, though.”

“How? How do I do that? No, wait, don't tell me,” I said, turning the lucky eye over and over in my hand. “I made a fool of myself and I ruined the talent show.” I said it quietly.

“Everyone could see she was out to get you! And you didn't ruin the show, just their dance.” Keith looked at me. “Christina had engineered it so you'd
look crap whatever happened. If you hadn't fallen over she'd probably have pushed you.”

I shut my eyes as I remembered going head over heels in front of the whole lower school. The dress I was wearing, a horrible nylon thing nowhere near as nice as Shazna's or Christina's, flipped up and my days-of-the-week-pants were visible to everyone. Everyone.

“No, you're wrong,” I said. “You weren't at the rehearsals. She wanted to win.”

Keith facepalmed. “She wanted to win without you in the group. You were a bit like some lost puppy, following them around, waiting to be kicked. You wouldn't listen, Seren, you know it.” He took a deep breath. “You know that was a low point for me, the rehearsals. I thought you'd stop talking to me then, stop being my mate.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because that's what she wanted. You know me by now, Seren, I'm not exactly Mr Sociable. I don't play football, I am entirely uncool, I'm smaller than some of the Year Sevens and my voice probably won't break until I'm forty-five.”

I looked at him. I did know all this. I couldn't be Keith's friend and not know all this already. I also
knew that I had been a real coward. Christina had wanted me to choose between staying friends with her or Keith, and when I should have told her how vile that was I just tried to be friends with everyone. It wasn't until the talent show that things all came to a head.

Keith was right. I wouldn't take the ten ton ‘push-off-and-leave-us-alone-now' hints Christina and Shazna kept dropping. Even Sasha had told me to leave it. She'd tried really hard, she said it was blatant that Christina had had enough of me. We'd been mates so long I couldn't see that it was only because of Sasha and Fay. That Christina had left me behind sometime in the summer holidays after Year Seven, when she did Summer Uni with Shazna while I was helping Dad and Sherifa with the girls.

“They didn't want you any more, Seren, and you wouldn't listen,” Keith said.

“I know that!” I said. “Maybe I shouldn't do this film with you, Keith, I'll just ruin it! I can't act!”

“Seren, stop it! Now you are being ridiculous. Christina's just jealous cos you're in my film. She'll get bored. Tomorrow there'll be a photo of a dress she's seen in some shop, or a boy she fancies in Year
Nine, or a kitten making a stupid face!”

I smiled. “So you're on her page rather a lot, then?”

“Totally. It's my favourite site. And you know I would never have asked you to be in the film if I didn't think you were brilliant.” He was on the edge of angry and I felt a bit scared looking at him.

“So you'd have asked her or Shazna if you thought she'd be better for your film?”

“Absolutely. But I didn't, did I?”

“No.”

“So, no more moaning and no more worrying about what those air-heads think.”

“Sorry.”

“You shouldn't be sorry.”

“Yeah, but everything is going wrong. Everything. And some of that has got to be my fault.”

“Look, Seren.” He counted off on the fingers of his hand as he spoke. “Those girls are being bitches. You lost a good friend. You tried to help your sister and it went wrong.” He shrugged. “That's plenty of stuff.”

“I can't stand it, the way it is with me and Sasha. I mean, even Mum has noticed.” I wanted to say there was more, loads more, but how much moaning can one person take? There was Dad closing down and
moving to Cyprus, and me promising Arthur he'd be the Kutest Kiddie in Hackney...

Keith pushed his glasses up his nose. “I bet you never said anything. To your mum.”

“She's got enough on. Work, you know...”

“Yeah, right, and the latest brick of a book she's reading!”

“My mum works hard!” I was angry. It was OK me being cross with Mum, but hearing it from someone else...

Keith put his hands up. “Sorry. I'm just saying. You should talk to her.”

I made a huffy noise, but I knew he was right.

“And don't forget you're starring in my totally epic production of
The Tempest
and if you muck that up you'll lose the only friend you've got...”

“Keith, don't joke about it!”

“You won't muck up. And haven't I always been your friend? Even when you and Christina wouldn't let me in your tent?”

“We were eight.”

“I have a long memory.”

“It was a girls' tent.”

“Christina told me I would turn into a girl if I went in. She never liked me, even then.”

“I know. I'm sorry. She was horrible to you sometimes.”

“Meh.” Keith shrugged. “You were never that bad.”

“If you were her you wouldn't speak to me now. You wouldn't let me be in your film, even.”

“Well, I'm not. And anyway, you're the best at acting in our whole year,” Keith said. There was a pause. “Would you let me in your tent now?”

“If I had one.”

“That's OK, then.”

We were both smiling now.

“Thank you, Keith. Show me your film again.”

I thought that if this was a story I would end up falling in love with Keith and riding off into the sunset. But it was never like that with me and Keith, we were just like brother and sister. There were photos of us in the same paddling pool for starters. For seconds I was a good six inches taller than him.

Keith pressed the start arrow. On the screen the sunlight on the water sparkled, and the light seemed alive. The picture on the laptop was more like a moving painting than a film.

“I like this bit,” Keith said.

I nodded. “It's beautiful.”

“So, you're up for filming tomorrow? At your dad's?”

I nodded again. Then I made a face. “But I don't know about the dress.”

Keith rolled his yes. “It looks really good. I shot some of you earlier. Look.” He fiddled about with the computer. “There.”

It was me posing in the costume cupboard. Because the light was low you couldn't see much of me, but you could see the dress, the sparkles picking up and throwing back points of light, a bit like the water in the canal film.

“See?” Keith said.

“You're right.”

“I am always right. Directors are always right. Hitchcock was never wrong.”

“Hitchcock?” I said.

“I thought you liked
Strangers on a Train
?”

“I did!”

“He was the director. Did
Psycho
too – the woman in the shower?” Keith made stabby movements with his hand and made that scary music sound. “
Psycho
?”

“I don't read the credits,” I said.

Keith pretended to look shocked. “I wonder if there is any hope for you, Seren.”

I kissed my teeth.

“I better go.” Keith got up. “Tell you what,” he said, pointing at the blue glass eye round my neck. “Wear the necklace, it'll keep away the evil eye. It'll look really good close up. Like something magic.”

After Keith had gone, Mum came home. I warmed up her fishcake and arranged Denny's carrot sticks. Maybe I could talk to her while she ate. That's what people were supposed to do, talk at the table, not in buses.

“Put the kettle on, love,” Mum said, and sat down at our tiny kitchen table in her bus-driver waistcoat. She looked knackered.

I flicked on the kettle and brought her a cup of tea. When I took it over to the table she had out the Jenny Darling and was forking up fishcake.

“You always said reading at the table was bad manners.”

“Hmmm?”

“Reading,” I said. “At the table.”

She shut the book. “Sorry. I was at a really good bit. Did the rehearsal go OK?”

I looked at her. Her eyes were tired and her hair could have done with a brush and a really good condition. My mum's not exactly un-pretty, but the bus-driver outfit never did anyone any favours.

I took a deep breath. I wanted to say, ‘No, it didn't go well because I nearly lost Arthur, and they're fighting all the time, and me and Sasha, well, there is no me and Sasha. And who knows what's happening with her exams. I mean, is she revising or what? Does no one care except me? And then my dad is moving away. This family,' I wanted to say, ‘is falling apart.' I opened my mouth and her phone went off. She took it out of her pocket.

“Sasha, love!” Mum said. “You're not home?”

From the front room I could hear Denny and Arthur squabbling over the Playstation. I went upstairs. I was down about a minute later. I heard Arthur shouting “Se-ren!” instead of “Mum!”, and when I looked, she was sitting in the kitchen lost in Jenny Darling.

When it was bedtime I read
Room on the Broom
to Arthur for about the millionth time.

“Seren,” he said when I'd finished. “I'm sorry.”

“What about?” I said.

“This afternoon. I shouldn't have run away and I was loud on the bus. Mum says I should say sorry.” He hugged me. He'd managed to talk to Mum, I thought, why hadn't I?