Missing Ellen (3 page)
Authors: Natasha Mac a'Bháird
Her voice kept getting screechier – by the end she was almost supersonic. Two fat tears trickled down her face.
‘Oh fine, fine!’ Ellen said.
Mrs B still didn’t move. The honking from the cars behind us seemed to be getting even angrier.
‘Is there any chance you could actually bring us to school now?’ Ellen said sarcastically.
Mrs B said nothing, but she started the engine and drove off, looking straight ahead.
Ellen stared out the window sulkily, but by the time we reached the school gate she had cheered up. She slammed the car door, ignoring her mum’s ‘Goodbye!’ and grabbed my arm.
‘I’ve got a plan,’ she whispered.
Dear Ellen,
Saturday – THANK GOD. No running around the all-weather pitch, no gagging at the sight of Fuddy Duddy’s clothes, no conjugating French verbs or making up silly sentences about
how many people there are in my family. Dad says he wants me to help him in the garden later, weeding and stuff. Apart from that I’m free all day. I think I will go shopping and see if they have those new boots in Ozzie’s. Not that I can afford them, but I can lean against the window and sigh in
admiration
, and work out how many times I’d have to weed the garden to earn enough money to pay for them. How fast do weeds grow? Hmmm, not fast enough I suspect. Why on earth did I let you talk me into spending my birthday money on those hipster jeans? They don’t even suit me, I don’t know if my waist is too small or my hips are too big or what. Yours are perfect on you. Everything is.
I wonder if you ever got the purple boots you wanted. You would never have changed your mind and got the sensible black ones, would you?
Maybe I can earn the money some other way. I could do some typing for Aunt Pat, or walk the neighbour’s dog. Or babysit those snotty kids in no. 22. Urgh. But it would all be worthwhile for a pair of the boots that KISS are calling THE must-have fashion item of the season.
I can’t concentrate on my letter today. Jamie is being a total pest, kicking his ball against my bedroom door. I’m so tempted to yell at him but I’m trying to stay in Mum’s good books. Maybe she will give me something towards the boots if I’m really good all weekend. You never know, it might be worth a try. God, he is really starting to annoy me though.
Now he’s shouting something about Ireland winning the league. Ireland aren’t in a league, you moron.
Oh good, Mum’s shouting at him to ‘come downstairs and leave Maggie in peace’. Excellent. Maybe she thinks I’m doing my homework.
I wonder what you are doing now. I wish I could talk to you. No one else really seems to understand. People are kind but they don’t know what to say to me and I’m tired of being treated as some sort of freak show. And if anyone does try to ask me stuff I never know if it’s because they actually care or if they just want to find out something about you so they can gossip about it.
I can hear Mum coming upstairs, so I’m going to put this away now as I don’t want her to see it. I’ll write again soon.
Love,
Maggie.
Ellen being Ellen, she got her own way in the end. Two days later she arrived into school with a shopping bag stuffed inside her schoolbag. She kept trying to show me what was in it during maths but Bouncer was too on the spot.
At break time she finally got her chance. She dragged me into the toilets and made straight for the mirrors, ignoring the crowd of girls milling around. She took out the
shopping
bag, and, almost with the air of a magician performing a trick, produced some gorgeous new jeans and not one but
three new tops.
‘What do you think?’ She held the tops up in turn,
admiring
her reflection in the mirror.
‘They’re gorgeous. How on earth did you talk your mum into it?’ I couldn’t help being a little envious. I’d be wearing my same old black top that I’d worn a few months earlier, Goth-like or not. I wondered if I could do anything with it, sew some sequins on it or something.
‘I didn’t,’ Ellen grinned. ‘Dad took us out after school
yesterday
so I asked him to take us shopping. He was a bit reluctant but I just said I bet you take The Homewrecker shopping any time she wants. Although I didn’t call her that to his face of course.’
She held the purple top up against me. ‘This would be fab on you Maggie, why don’t you borrow it? I think I’ll wear the green one.’
‘Oh I couldn’t, you haven’t even worn it yet,’ I protested.
‘Doesn’t matter! I’ll wear it with different jewellery when it’s my turn.’
Ellen practised holding all her hair on top of her head to see if it showed off the green top better. I fingered the purple top longingly. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Course not. It’s all yours!’
I held it up against me and looked at our two reflections in the mirror – Ellen with her striking red hair and green eyes that always looked like they were planning something. She’d
had an extra hole punched in each ear, and was wearing four different earrings. And there was me, so dull and
ordinary
beside her – mousy brown hair, blue eyes, proper little schoolgirl expression. Not for the first time I wondered why she was friends with me when all the popular girls wanted her to be in their gang.
‘Won’t we look fab?’ Ellen said.
‘Absolutely. These are just perfect for the disco,’ I said.
Ellen had a wicked gleam in her eye. ‘Oh no. We couldn’t waste these on the disco.’
Dear Ellen,
When Mum came in earlier she asked if I wanted to go into town. Something about it not being healthy to be cooped up in my room all day. You know what mothers are like. So I gave in (you have to just let them have their own way sometimes, don’t you?) and let her bring me into town. At least it meant getting away from the future no. 1 Ireland striker and his
self-obsessed
running commentary.
Mum was being all cheery and talking about it being ‘just us girls’ and how nice it was to have a little shopping trip on our own, and how glad she was to have a daughter to share these things with, and not just boys like Aunt Pat. I played along and nodded and smiled, but I was wishing you were in the back seat so I could roll my eyes at you.
For the whole drive in and the walk from the car park to
Java Bay she was all merry and cheerful, bustling along,
yapping
on and on about golf and Aunt Pat’s fortieth birthday party and Dad’s new lawnmower and Jamie’s football match tomorrow, blah blah blah. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, which was fine with me because there was nothing I wanted to say. Then we’re sitting having lunch, and the waitress brings over tea for Mum, and pink lemonade for me with two straws as usual. And Mum sees the two straws and suddenly dissolves into tears. That’s what it was like – not bursting into tears, that’s too dramatic – her face started to crumble or melt or something, and she put her hand up to her
forehead
, but I could still see the tears leaking out from under her fingers, and the edges of her mouth all sort of droopy-looking. And her shoulders were sort of trembling a bit. Not those big heaving sobs you get when you’re really, really upset, just like she was trying very hard to stay still but somehow her body didn’t want to. I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say. She’s my mother, she’s the one who’s supposed to be looking after me. So I just sipped my pink lemonade with one of the straws and stared at the table, wondering if all those shortbread crumbs were ours or if they just hadn’t cleared the table after the last customers. The waitress came
tiptoeing
over and put a concerned hand on Mum’s shoulder and held a wad of napkins out to her. Mum pressed the napkins to her nose and took a couple of deep breaths like she was trying to calm down.
People were staring at us at this stage. I didn’t look around but I could feel their eyes on us, you know how you just know you are being watched. I said ‘Oh do pull yourself together Mum’ in my best Malory Towers voice, and took another slurp of my pink lemonade. Mum and the waitress laughed, the waitress uncertainly, as if she wasn’t really sure if I was making a joke or not, and Mum in a sort of trembly,
trying-to-be-strong
way, like she did when she told me I needed my tonsils out and I asked if I could live on ice cream for a week.
I think Mum finally realised people were looking at us, because she started gulping down her tea and told me to finish my lemonade. I tried, but you know how big those glasses are, and suddenly there was an enormous lump in my throat which even pink lemonade couldn’t seem to shift. She put on her cheerful voice again (slightly more shaky this time) and hurried me out of the cafe and off in the direction of Ozzie’s.
I didn’t even realise she knew about the boots, but there she was asking the assistant if they had the black ones in yet. The assistant said they did, and asked Mum if they were for her or her little sister. Mum did her tinkly little laugh and said that I was her daughter. (Like the assistant didn’t know that. She probably thought if she flattered Mum enough she would buy matching pairs for the two of us – urgh, can you imagine?)
Mum told her my size and the girl produced a pair from the
stock room. They were every bit as nice as in the magazine – enough of a heel to give me a bit of extra height, but not so much as to have Dad tut-tutting about not having any
daughter
of his going out dressed like a tramp. (I always pretend to misunderstand him when he says things like that, and say that I thought tramps wore patchy old clothes, and
battered
hats, and shoes with holes in them, tied up with string instead of laces. Drives him mad, and he mutters ‘You know very well what I mean young lady’).
Anyway. The boots were gorgeous, though I suddenly decided I wanted the purple ones. Mum said she thought I wanted the black ones because they’d go with more stuff, but I said no, it was definitely the purple I wanted. So she got the girl to bring out a pair of the purple ones and I tried them on. Perfect. But the lump in my throat was somehow getting bigger, and I could only nod when Mum asked if I was happy with them. I wandered off to look at some of the children’s shoes, trying hard to focus on the pink flowery ones with little straps across the front, the kind we would have begged our mums to buy when we were about six and really uncool. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the girl wrapping up the boots and ringing it up on the till, and Mum handing over her laser card – €120, just like that. I tried a little boy’s runner on my hand and made it walk along the shelf so the lights lit up at the back, little flashes of red. Mum came over with the boots in a big box inside a bag, and said something
about the box coming in handy for storing my art stuff. I put the runner back, wondering if they made them with different coloured lights, or was it always red. Mum asked if I’d rather carry the boots myself, but I shook my head, and we left the shop and walked back towards the car.
I’m wearing the boots now. I can see them in the mirror at the end of my bed. They’re lovely, and you were right, they are much cooler than the black, and who cares about being practical? But somehow the excitement is gone. It’s an
anti-climax
or something. They’re just boots after all.
Your friend,
Maggie.
The bell was ringing for the end of break but I ignored it. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked her, half excited, half nervous.
‘Just look at us!’ Ellen said, preening in front of the mirror. ‘We look fabulous. At least seventeen. I bet we could pass for eighteen with make-up on. How could we waste this on a silly teen disco we’ve been to thousands of times before?’
‘But what else is there?’ I realised I sounded stupid, but I really didn’t know what Ellen had in mind.
She pulled a poster out of her schoolbag. ‘I took this from a noticeboard in town. There’s a band playing in a pub just down the road from the disco. Flaming Moes, have you heard of them? They’re fantastic.’ She started humming some song I’d never heard of.
‘Sounds cool,’ I said, taking the poster out of her hand. ‘But there’s no way my parents would let me go to a pub. There’s no point in even asking.’
Ellen laughed. ‘Who said anything about asking? We’ll just get one of our mums to drop us at the disco as usual. We’ll go in the front door and straight out the back door and down to the pub. Easy peasy. We can be back at the disco again before it’s over.’
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of this. I didn’t like lying to my mum. And I was the kind of person who always ended up getting caught. Plus, sad though it was, I was actually looking forward to the disco – especially if I could wear Ellen’s new purple top. The disco was on every couple of weeks in the tennis club near the school, and was a strictly no alcohol zone. Liam would be there, and his friends of course. Ellen had said she thought one of his friends liked me. I didn’t know which one but thought that I might find out at the disco.
Ellen sensed my hesitation. ‘Oh come on, Maggie, say you’ll come! They’re such a cool band, I know you’ll like them.’
‘I’m not sure. What if we don’t get in? What if someone notices we’re not at the disco and asks our mums where we were? What if there’s someone we know at the pub? What if …?’ I trailed off. I think I’d run out of disasters.
‘Maggie you are such a worrier,’ Ellen laughed. ‘Live
dangerously
for once!
Carpe diem
and all that. What’s the worst thing that can happen?’
The corridor outside was quiet. Everyone must be back in their classrooms by now. If we didn’t hurry we’d be late for geography.
I didn’t want to be a party pooper. ‘OK then,’ I said, ‘if you really want to.’
‘Excellent! It’ll be fab, I promise! Now hurry up, I don’t want you to start giving out that I made you late for
geography
!’ Ellen grabbed my hand and rushed me out of the
bathroom
just as she’d rushed me in ten minutes earlier, stuffing the tops back into her bag any old way as she went. Now they’d need to be ironed before we could wear them. Oh well.
