Sugar and Spice (5 page)

Until now they’d always been the star performers when it came to PE; them and a girl called Carlie who was in Millie’s gang. They all belonged to the junior gym team and could bend themselves double and walk on their hands and balance without any signs of wobble on the parallel bars. Karina, in her sniffy way, said who’d want to?

“It’s just stupid! Just showing off.”

I didn’t say anything to Karina, cos she’d only have got the hump with me, but I’d have given anything to be able to show off. Sometimes I had these dreams of hanging at the top of a rope, right up near the ceiling,
and everybody being madly impressed and going, “Look! Look at Ruth!” Unfortunately I’m scared of heights, so it wasn’t really very likely to happen. All I could do was watch, in a kind of awe. I wouldn’t have minded if I never got an A- again, if I could only have whizzed up a rope or done the splits, like Julia. Cos she was absolutely THE BEST, it has to be said.

Until now. I couldn’t believe it when Shay started up. She’d been doing her leaning thing, against the wall bars, silently observing everyone. And then it was her turn to run at the horse and she just, kind of, loped up to it, sailed over like it wasn’t even there, and did a somersault with a handspring on the other side to finish off.

Everyone gaped, including the two Js. Karina muttered, “Who’s she think she’s impressing?” but it wasn’t like Shay had done it to impress; more like it was just
something that came naturally to her. “This is the way you jump over a horse.” I got the feeling she didn’t care one way or the other what anyone thought of her. She was Shay, and that was how she was, and they could take it or leave it. Which is the way that I’d love to be!

Afterwards, as we were leaving the gym, I heard Miss Southgate talking to her.

“Well,” she said, “it looks as if we have a new recruit for the gym team! How about it? Would you like to join us?”

To my utter astonishment, Shay shook her head and said no. I couldn’t believe it! How could she say
no,
just like that? To a teacher!

I could tell Miss Southgate wasn’t pleased. She said, “Well! That sounded pretty definite,” and her voice was all sharp and prickly. I thought Shay would apologise, but she didn’t: she didn’t say anything. I asked her later – I mean, like, weeks later – why she hadn’t wanted to join, and she just said, “Not worth it.” She was such a mystery!

That evening, after tea, I shut myself away in the kitchen to do my homework. The kitchen was the only place that was warm enough since the central heating had been turned off. Mum said we couldn’t afford to heat the whole flat, so now we just had it on in the front room, but I was allowed to have the oven on low in the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly quiet out there cos I could hear the television blaring in the next room, and the person in the flat that joined ours had music on, really loud, but I didn’t mind that so much as the way Sammy and the girls kept crashing in and out.

“We’re playing!” yelled Lisa.

When I complained to Mum she said that it was nice the girls played with their little brother, and then she sat herself down at the kitchen table to ring one of my nans on her mobile. They started to talk and I really couldn’t concentrate cos of listening to what they were saying. After a bit Mum put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Get Sammy off to bed for me, will you? There’s a good girl!”

Well.
That was easier said than done. It wasn’t a question of “just getting him off to bed”. First you had to catch him. Then when you’d caught him you had to fight to get him out of his clothes and into his pyjamas, and then another fight to get him to clean his teeth, and another fight to actually persuade him into the bedroom. (Actually Mum and Dad’s bedroom, as we only have the two.) I finally got back to the kitchen to find that Mum was now working her way through a mound of ironing.

“If you did that in the other room,” I said, “you could watch television at the same time.”

“Too much hassle,” said Mum. “Go on, you can work, I won’t interfere with you.”

I took out a sheet of paper and wrote MY FAMILY in big letters across the top. What could I write about my family?

“Look at this!” Mum was holding up one of Lisa’s school blouses. “What on earth does she get up to?”

I nibbled the top of my pen, searching for inspiration. (
Bang,
went Mum, with the iron.) Maybe I could just write one line, like the person that wrote about the night sky.

“My family is so ordinary I cannot think of anything to say about them.”

Then Mr Kirk (
bang, thud
) would read it out and tell me to grow up and everyone would laugh, only they wouldn’t be laughing because I was a geek or a boffin, they would be laughing because I’d dared to be cheeky. They might even start to respect me a little.

What if I did the spelling all wrong, as well?

“My famly is so ornry I cannot thing of anythink to say abowt them.”

Yess!!!!

“Know what?” said Mum. “This iron’s giving out.”

“They are jest to bawrin for wurds. Wurds canot discribe how bawrin they are.”

I was really getting carried away, now.

“
My mum is bawrin my dad is bawrin my sistus is bawrin my b
 —”

“Well, that’s it,” said Mum. “That’s the iron gone.”

“ —
my bruthr is bawrin. This is an eggsample of the bawrin things that happen in my famly. My mum has
jest sed to me that the ion has gon but she duz not say were it have gon. Maybe it have gon to the Nawth Powl. Maybe it have gon to Erslasker. I wil aks her. Were has the ion gon, I wil say.”

“What are you talking about?” said Mum.

“The iron,” I said. “Where’s it gone?”

“What d’you mean, where’s it gone? It’s broke! Why don’t you make us a cup of tea and bring it in the other room? You’ve done enough scribbling for one night.”

I made the tea, but I didn’t go into the other room. I stayed in the kitchen, writing my essay. I found that once I’d got going, my pen seemed to carry on all by itself and I just wrote and wrote, making up all these funny spellings.
Tellervijun
and
sentrel heetin
and
emferseema,
which is what my dad has got that makes him run out of breath. (It’s really spelt
emphysema.
I learnt it, specially.) In the end, I wrote five whole pages! Even longer than my essay about the sheep and the bananas. I felt quite proud of it.

But then, guess what? I got cold feet! I woke up in the middle of the night and I knew I couldn’t really hand in five pages of silly spelling. I just wasn’t brave enough. But it was too late to write anything else, and even if it wasn’t I couldn’t bear the thought of Mr Kirk singling me out again. Specially not if it was about my family. I’d just die of shame! So I tore up my five pages, even though I thought they were funny, and on the bus
next morning, on the way to school, I wrote down my original sentence: “My family is too ordinary for me to say anything about them.”

I wondered, as I got off the bus, whether Shay would sit next to me again. I did hope she would! It had made me feel a bit special, when Shay sat next to me. But I really couldn’t think of any reason why she’d want to.