Don't Even Think About It (9 page)

She’s in hospital.

Ruth Wallace is in hospital, and I’m to blame.

Dad told me at breakfast, just a while ago. (Of course I was up in time to have breakfast with him before he went off to work – I didn’t fall asleep till around two, and I woke before seven.) I got such a shock when he said it, I almost choked on my Weetabix. He had to thump me on the back.

When I could talk again, I asked him what was wrong with Ruth, hoping he’d say a chest infection, or a fractured skull, or something, but he said, ‘She’s having some kind of operation on her legs, I think,’ and I had to drop my spoon on the floor so I could disappear under the table for a minute.

It’s
definitely
my fault. It has to be.

When I came back up, I asked Dad if he knew what hospital Ruth was in, and he said no, and then he gave
me a funny look, so I stopped talking about Ruth and tried to finish my Weetabix, which tasted even more like straw than it usually does.

And now Dad’s gone to work, and I’m trying to find the courage to do what I have to do.

I have to find out which hospital she’s in. I have to ring the bell at the Wallaces’ house and ask whoever comes to the door which hospital Ruth is in.

And then I have to go and see her, and I have to tell her I’m sorry for attacking her with the milk. If I don’t, I’ll never sleep or eat again, and they’re two things I really enjoy doing.

Right, better get it over with. Wish me luck. If this diary stops suddenly, you’ll know it’s because I’m in prison.

Thank goodness Ruth’s nice brother Damien answered the door. I was really hoping he would.

He smiled and said, ‘Hello Liz,’ when he saw me, and didn’t try to slam the door in my face, which I was half expecting. (So it does look like Ruth hasn’t told anyone what I did, which I still can’t understand, but which I’m not going to worry about right now.)

I told Damien that I’d heard Ruth was in hospital, and that I’d like to go and see her. I still felt a bit scared that he was going to tell me to get lost, since I was the one who’d put her there, but he didn’t. He said, ‘Hey, that’s really nice of you,’ which of course made me feel ten times guiltier, and then he told me which hospital she was in.

It wasn’t until I got back here that I realised I never asked him how she was.

I’ll go to see her tomorrow, which is Thursday, because this is one of those things that will only get harder the longer I put it off – and because I don’t want it hanging over me when I meet Chris on Friday.

The only good thing about being so worried about Ruth is that I haven’t time to worry about Chris.

I’ll take some apples with me – I’ll pick the least wrinkly ones out of the fruit bowl. I’ll tell her that I’m sorry.

Even writing it down makes me want to get sick. The thought of walking into her room, or ward, or wherever she is, makes my stomach do a flip-flop. But I have to.

What’ll she say? I have no idea. Maybe she’ll start shouting at me to go away and leave her alone, and a nurse will come running over to see what all the noise is about, and Ruth will tell her what I did, and the nurse will look at me as if I’m a criminal and make me leave the hospital, probably march me off with a hand on my arm, like the store detective in Boots, and everyone will be looking at me.

Or maybe Ruth will be too weak to say anything. Maybe she’ll just give me a filthy look with her dying eyes. I think that would probably be worse.

I wish I could talk to someone about this, but who? Not Dad, definitely. I absolutely can’t tell him – he’d hit the roof. And not Chloe – I’m not sure that she’d understand.

Bumble would understand, but he’d probably tell Catherine Eggleston, and she’s the last person I’d want to know.

I’d tell Mam, if she was here face to face. But not on the phone. I can’t say it on the phone, I can’t text it, I can’t email it. If
only
she was here.

Have I mentioned how much I miss her?

Well, I did it – it’s over. It was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life so far, but at least it’s over now.

Here’s what happened. I set off after lunch – I mean after the half banana that was all I could eat. (I wonder how much weight I’ve lost over the past week?)

It took me just under an hour to walk to the hospital. I could have got a bus, but it was quite a nice day – and I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to arrive.

It was a quarter to three by the time I got there. I hadn’t even thought about visiting hours, but there was a big notice just inside the main door saying they were between one thirty and three o’clock, so that was OK.

I figured a quarter of an hour would be more than enough. Two minutes would have been more than enough.

The hospital smelt like bleach and rashers. I tried to make myself look as old as possible, in case they had a rule about not allowing children in, but the woman behind the desk didn’t seem too bothered about my age, just told me where to go when I said I’d come to see Ruth Wallace.

I wondered if Ruth had a room to herself, but I was too nervous to ask.

I had to go up two flights of stairs. I could have taken the lift, but lifts make me want to throw up, and since I already felt a bit like that I thought I’d better stick to the stairs. There were loads of people walking about, some just in dressing gowns and slippers.

I didn’t see anyone in a wheelchair.

Halfway up the second flight of stairs, I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten to bring the apples from the fruit bowl. I thought about going back down to the hospital shop and getting something there, but when I checked my pockets I only had sixty-seven cents, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get anything for that.

Anyway, maybe when you were visiting someone to apologise for assaulting them, you weren’t supposed to bring them a present. Maybe that was what Granny Daly would call
ADDING INSULT TO INJURY
.

When I got to the second floor I looked for room 23A. My tummy was flip-flopping like anything, and my legs felt pretty wobbly. I tried taking a few deep breaths, but that just made me feel like I was eating
bleach-flavoured
rashers.

The door of 23A was closed, so I gave a little knock and waited. I didn’t hear anything, even when I pressed
my ear up to it, but there was a lot of noise in the corridor, trolleys wheeling and people talking and cups clinking. In the end, I just opened the door a bit and peeped in.

First I thought I must have got the wrong room, because there was a girl I didn’t recognise in the bed. She was facing the door and she looked very pale, and when she saw me she closed her eyes. I was just about to say ‘sorry’ and back out when I saw the end of a second bed poking out from behind a curtain, and my heart began to thump all over again.

I walked over to the curtain and peeped around.

Ruth Wallace looked at me and I looked at her, and for what seemed like ages none of us said anything. I was too busy trying to find the right words, and she was probably too gobsmacked.

At least she didn’t look like she was dying. She was a bit pale, but not ghostly white. She did look small though, smaller than when she sat in her wheelchair, and not half as tough. I think it was the first time I had seen her without a hat on. I could see the pink of her head under her hair.

There was something big under the bedclothes around where her legs were, like a frame or something – probably to keep people like me from whacking them again.

At last I opened my mouth and ‘I came to see you’ was what fell out. Which I know was pretty idiotic, but it was all I could think of.

Ruth Wallace blinked once, and that was all she did. Her face was blank – she didn’t look cross, or sad, or
anything. Just small and thin, with that big boxy shape around her legs.

There was a tube of something going into the back of one of her hands, and a white plastic-looking strip around the same wrist, like a skinny bracelet, with something written on it that I couldn’t read.

Then I said, ‘I’m sorry I hit you with the milk.’ Quietly, so the girl in the next bed wouldn’t hear me.

And all the time, my heart was pumping away in my chest, and my tummy was doing somersaults. And then, because Ruth was still just looking blankly at me, I said the next thing that popped into my head, which was ‘I forgot to bring you anything’.

Still no answer. I was beginning to feel a bit desperate – was she just going to keep staring at me until I left? Maybe if I asked her a question she’d have to answer, so I said, ‘How are you feeling?’

First I thought she wasn’t going to say anything. She blinked two more times, and then she put up a hand – the one without the tube attached – and rubbed at her nose, and then she turned her head away from me so it was facing the wall.

I snuck a glance at her locker and saw a box of Maltesers and a bundle of Tracy Beaker magazines and a furry white toy cat all sitting on top.

And then, all of a sudden, she turned back to me and said, ‘It wasn’t because of that.’

I said, ‘What?’ because I wasn’t sure what she meant.

‘It wasn’t because you hit me. You hit like a girl. I was going to have the operation anyway.’

And then, before I had a chance to say anything, do
you know what she said? She said, ‘I probably deserved it anyway.’ She kept her eyes on my face all the time and she didn’t blink, not once.

And all I could think of to say to that was, ‘Oh.’ It was a lot to take in:

It wasn’t my fault that she was in hospital.

I wasn’t even strong enough to hurt a helpless invalid.

She didn’t really blame me for hitting her.

And then I realised something else: she didn’t have to tell me that it wasn’t my fault. She could have said nothing, and let me go on thinking that I was to blame, but she didn’t.

Which was the first nice thing Ruth Wallace had ever done for me.

And saying that she deserved it – well, that was almost the same as telling me she was sorry, which was the
last
thing I had been expecting.
I
was the one who was supposed to be saying sorry here.

Just then, a bell rang in the corridor, and she said, ‘You have to go now.’ And then she closed her eyes, and I waited a minute to see if she’d open them again, but she didn’t, so I turned around and walked out. The girl in the other bed still had her eyes closed, but she probably heard every word.

And all the way downstairs, I was still trying to get my head around the fact that I had just had my first ever conversation with Ruth Wallace. And nobody had shouted, and nobody had said anything nasty.

And all the way home, I thought about how I’d been worrying myself sick for the past few days, how I’d tossed and turned in bed every night, waiting for
someone to find out what a terrible thing I’d done, wondering if Ruth Wallace was dead, or seriously injured.

Imagine she reads Tracey Beaker, just like me. I wonder what music she listens to – wouldn’t it be funny if she liked Eminem?

Hit like a girl, indeed. I’d like to see
her
try and hurt someone with a litre of milk.

But thank goodness that’s all over, and I can concentrate on the next terrifying thing in my life – my first ever date, tomorrow night.

I think I’m going to throw up.

Talk about a disaster.

It started off OK. Chris was waiting for me at the corner of the cinema block, which was just as well, because I was ready to run home again if he wasn’t.

He smelt nice, but he looked a bit strange. His clothes were fine – he wore black jeans and a grey shirt, and a leather jacket that looked new – but he had stuff in his hair, some kind of gel, or something, that made it all stick up as if someone had just given him a fright. It was a real pity, because Chris has lovely floppy hair. He probably thought it made him look cool.

Anyway, I began to relax a bit when I saw him, especially when he smiled. He really has the most gorgeous smile. His dimple is so much cuter than mine, it’s not fair.

As we walked towards the cinema, Chris began telling me about the digital camera he’d got for Christmas, but
I wasn’t really listening, because all I kept thinking was ‘I’m on a date.’ I was half hoping, and half dreading, that he’d try to hold my hand, but he didn’t.

And then, as soon as we walked into the cinema, it all went horribly wrong, because the first two people we saw were Bumble and Catherine.

It was AWFUL. We had to talk to them, of course, because they saw us too. And – you’ve guessed it – they were going to the same film as us, so we joined the queue together as if we were four best friends.

For some reason I could hardly look at Bumble, so I concentrated on Catherine, trying to look interested while she bragged about the clothes she’d got for Christmas, and the gold watch her godmother or someone had given her, and the skiing trip she’s going on at mid-term. I was bored after the first three words.

And naturally, we all had to sit together inside. I couldn’t really see Bumble and Catherine, because they were on the other side of Chris, but I sure found it hard to concentrate on the film. If you asked me what it was about, all I’d be able to tell you was that Scarlett Johannsen was in it, dressed like someone from long ago, with a bonnet and stuff, and in the end she died. I think she died anyway – I remember her in a bed looking weak, and crying a lot. (Of course, her make-up stayed perfect.)

I kept waiting for Chris to put his arm around me – I had decided not to slap his face if he did – but he didn’t even try. Maybe the other two put him off. Or maybe that just never happens on first dates.

I can’t believe how little I know about this kind of
stuff. They should teach it at school: the dos and don’ts of first dates. It would be a lot more useful than knowing the capital of the Czech Republic – and you can bet everyone would pay attention.

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to get away from the others afterwards, so the minute we were outside I said I had a headache, and my best friend Catherine tried not to look too happy at the thought of having Bumble all to herself for the rest of the evening.

He barely looked at me when Chris and I were leaving – maybe he was glad to be rid of me too.

Chris walked me home, and he did most of the talking. I tried to be cheerful, really I did, but I wasn’t very good at it. I was in a lousy mood – trust Catherine Eggleston to ruin my first ever date – and all I could manage was ‘Oh yeah’, and ‘Really?’ and stuff like that.

When we got to my house I just turned to Chris and said, ‘Well thanks a lot, see you,’ and bolted up the path.

So much for worrying about my first kiss.

Thank goodness Dad was still out. I left him a note telling him I’d gone to bed and went straight upstairs. I won’t get up tomorrow until he’s left for work, just in case he starts asking me all about tonight.

So that’s the end of my first and only date with Chris. Let’s hope the next time someone asks me out, Catherine Eggleston is a million miles away – preferably rolling down some ski slope and breaking at least one leg.

Chloe gets back from Kerry tomorrow, thank goodness. At least I’ll have one friend to talk to, since
my old one doesn’t seem to want me any more, and my almost-boyfriend is history.

Back to school on Monday, as if things weren’t bad enough. Actually, I don’t really mind going back – at least I won’t be hanging around here thinking about what a mess I make of everything. And I’m starting advanced swimming lessons after school, which I’m looking forward to.

We went swimming once a week in primary school, and I was in the advanced group in sixth class, but this is much more grown up, with all the different strokes, and races and everything. And we’ll be doing life-saving too, which should be really cool.

OK, I just heard Dad coming in, so I’m off to bed in case he looks in.