Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel (3 page)

‘I’m going to run back and get
my hat,’ I tell Sarah. She lives in town, so she walks home, and at my words she
just pulls up her jacket hood and shrugs.

‘See you then!’ she says.

I am sprinting back up to the school,
dodging the crowds of kids going the other way, when I catch sight of something very odd
fluttering from the school flagpole in the breeze.

My panda hat! I am outraged. Who would do
such a thing?

I frown as a memory surfaces.

‘Like the panda hat,’ Lawrie
Marshall had said at breaktime. And what he meant was that he
didn’t
like
the panda hat – the curl of his lip and the tone of his voice made that very clear.

I don’t think he likes me and I
definitely do not like him, but still, he wouldn’t do something like this – would
he? He seems too gloomy, too sour – I am not sure that practical jokes are his style.
Then again, he sits right across the aisle from me in science, and if the hat had been
at the top of my rucksack he could have swiped it easily.

I take a deep breath and storm across to the
flagpole.

It takes forever to work out how to control
the lines that hoist things up and down, and by then my hair is
frizzy
from the rain and I am very cross indeed. Eventually I manage to haul down the hat and
untie it, and even though it is dripping wet I pull it on because at least that way I
won’t lose it again.

Seriously, if I find out that Lawrie
Marshall is responsible for this I will make sure he is an endangered species himself. I
leg it across the grass towards the bus stop, but as I run through the playground I have
a bad feeling, a very bad feeling. It is too quiet, too empty. There are no clumps of
kids, no waiting school buses, just a few stray students hurrying away, umbrellas angled
against the rain. I must have been messing around with that stupid flagpole for longer
than I thought because I’ve gone and missed the bus.

Great.

I slow to a walk. Once upon a time Skye and
Summer would have made sure the bus waited for me, but they are at the high school now.
My friends from junior school, Amy and Jayde, usually save me a seat, but I can’t
blame them for not getting the driver to hang on – they probably thought I was doing
something after school.

I have riding lessons on Fridays, at the
stables on the edge of town, and on Tuesdays I have Save the Animals Club, which I
invented and which usually consists of me, Sarah, Amy and Jayde talking about
pandas/whales/tigers to assorted Year Five and Six kids. Lately, our numbers have
dwindled and the week before half-term even Sarah made an excuse not to come, so it was
just me, sitting alone in the science room after 3.30, looking at my home-made
endangered species leaflets and wondering if I was the only one who actually cared.
Sometimes I skip the school bus anyway, and walk up to meet Skye, Summer and Cherry at
the high school, and we go into town and drink smoothies and mooch around the shops and
catch the town bus home at half five.

It looks like I’ll be catching that
bus today. I trudge out of the school gates and turn the corner, my panda hat dripping,
and walk right into a nightmare.

Lawrie Marshall is in the shady walkway next
to the school gym. He is locked in battle with a small, scrawny kid, holding him by the
jacket, shaking him, growling something angry right into his face.

The kid looks terrified, his eyes wide with
fear, and I recognize the weaselly Year Six kid from earlier, the one who thought that
pandas should branch out a bit and eat Big Macs and chocolate fridge cake.

My heart thuds. I hate bullying of any kind,
and this is not name-calling or teasing, it is full-on aggression. Lawrie shoves the
little kid up against the gym wall, and the kid winces. He wriggles helplessly, trying
to get away, but Lawrie is two years older, six inches taller and a whole lot angrier.
The little kid is going to be mincemeat.

‘Let him go!’ I scream, and two
pairs of startled eyes swivel to look at me.

‘Push off, panda girl,’ Lawrie
snarls. ‘This is none of your business!’

That does it. I think of my hat, fluttering
from the flagpole, a dozen nasty, snide remarks Lawrie Marshall has made in the year
since he joined our school. I look at the Year Six kid, squirming as he struggles, and I
see red.

I fling myself at Lawrie Marshall, grabbing
his arms, pulling him backwards, away from the boy. His victim slithers free, grabs his
abandoned sports bag and sprints
off along the walkway, and Lawrie
Marshall rounds on me, his face dark with fury.

‘You idiot!’ he yells.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’

‘Idiot? Me?’ I yell back at him.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself! You’re loads bigger than that little
kid, and old enough to know better … bullying sucks! Only losers have to
threaten those who are weaker than themselves to feel good. D’you think it makes
you tough? D’you think it makes you hard? It doesn’t, it just makes you a
lousy, rotten bully!’

Lawrie Marshall looks disgusted. His lip
curls, his eyes flash and his nostrils flare dangerously. His fists are clenched and
trembling, as if fighting the urge to lash out at me. Suddenly I’m scared, aware
that I have just broken up a fight, yelled at a bully, shouted insults at the school
misfit. Here I am on a shady walkway tucked away from the road with a psychopathic
schoolboy, and trust me, he is not happy.

‘Idiot,’ he says again, his
voice thick with scorn. ‘You really think you’re something, don’t you?
You reckon you can save the world, rescue the panda and wipe out bullying all in one
day, then go home and eat your stupid little
cakes. You don’t
have a clue about the real world! You don’t know what you’re talking
about!’

Lawrie Marshall strides away, leaving me
alone in the rain.

I spot the scrawny Year Six kid in the school
corridor on Friday and corner him, concerned. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask. ‘He
hasn’t bothered you again, has he?’

‘Er … no,’ the boy
says shiftily. ‘And yes, thanks, I’m fine. No hassle. No worries.’

His friends hover nearby, smirking. I can
sense that the kid just wants to escape, but I grab his sleeve and haul him back and he
rolls his eyes and tells his mates he’ll catch up with them. You’d think he
might be at least a little bit grateful that I saved him from being mashed to a pulp,
but I guess that’s boys for you.

‘Have you told the teachers?’ I
push. ‘Bullying is out of order, you know. Only lowlifes and losers pick on little
kids. If that creep can do it to you, he can do it to others
too, so
speaking out really is the only way to stop it. Do you want me to say something to your
guidance tutor?’

‘No!’ the kid gulps. ‘No,
honestly, don’t say anything, I don’t want a fuss … I’ve
sorted it now. It won’t happen again, I’m pretty sure of that. But thanks
for looking out for me the other day. You saved my skin, and I appreciate
that.’

I smile. ‘Well … as long as
you’re sure everything’s OK now?’

‘I’m sure,’ he says.
‘And … look … I’m sorry about the hat.’

He races off along the corridor like a mad
thing, bashing into a couple of Year Fives as he goes.

Boys. I will never understand them. And what
did he mean about my hat?

‘That was the kid Lawrie Marshall had
a hold of the other day?’ Sarah enquires.

‘Yup. Poor thing.’

Sarah frowns. ‘He doesn’t look
like a victim,’ she says. ‘More of a troublemaker. And what did he mean
about your hat? Perhaps he hoisted it up the flagpole!’

‘No, that had to be Lawrie,’ I
frown. ‘He hates me,
and he hates the hat. And he sits across
from me in science, so …’

‘So what?’ Sarah shrugs.
‘That proves nothing. You could have dropped the hat, or the Year Six kid could
have taken it out of your locker …’

‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ I
frown. ‘But whoever pulled the stunt with my hat, it doesn’t change things.
Lawrie Marshall is a bully, pure and simple.’

‘He’s definitely a loner,’
Sarah says. ‘He never seems to have any friends around. Maybe that’s because
of his temper?’

‘Probably,’ I agree.

‘He’d be quite nice-looking if
he ever smiled,’ Sarah considers. ‘In theory, of course. He never DOES smile
– he is the sulkiest boy I know.’

‘He never smiles because he is a
horrible, bad-tempered bully,’ I say. ‘You should have seen him the other
day, Sarah, it was horrible! He practically had that little kid by the
throat!’

‘Maybe the kid deserved it?’
Sarah suggests.

‘Nobody deserves that. Trust me,
Lawrie Marshall is bad news.’

As I finish speaking, the boy in question
appears in the distance and stalks along the corridor towards us. As usual, he treats me
to his best glare.

‘Idiot!’ he snarls as he
passes.

My eyes widen in shock and my cheeks burn
with embarrassment as I try to dredge up a reply.

‘Oh boy.’ Sarah blinks. ‘I
see what you mean!’

‘Loser,’ I mutter, but
it’s too little, too late, of course.

Lawrie Marshall has long gone.

I am out of sorts all day after that, but I
have a riding lesson after school and that is the one thing that is pretty much
guaranteed to put the smile back on my face. My lesson isn’t until four, so I have
lots of time to walk down to the stables on the edge of town. With every step the
day’s irritations loosen and lift away.

I have been learning to ride since
Christmas, and although I know I still have a lot to learn, I love it. I love the smell
of the stable yard, all fresh hay and ponies and leather. I love the paddock exercises
my instructor teaches us for balance and confidence, scissors and frogs and
round-the-world turns and riding with no stirrups. I love hacking
through the countryside or riding along the beach, trotting or cantering with the wind
in my face and the feeling that I’m free, soaring, that anything at all is
possible.

Most of all, though, I love a pony called
Caramel.

I liked her first of all because of her name
– caramel, as you know, is my favourite sweet treat. Then I fell for her looks because
Caramel is possibly the most beautiful pony in the world. She is a pure-bred Exmoor
pony, twelve hands high and a beautiful dark bay colour, rich as caramel. Around her
eyes and muzzle are pangaré markings, mealy-cream, and her mane and tail are thick and
coarse and wild. She looks timeless, noble, magical, as though she could have ridden out
of the Dark Ages, been the pony of a princess warrior or a Celtic queen from thousands
of years ago.

She is my perfect pony, but I have never
ridden her because unlike most Exmoors, who are steady and calm and trustworthy, Caramel
can be hard to handle. The bosses at the riding school, Jean and Roy, think she was
ill-treated in the past – she can be jumpy, unpredictable, flighty. There have been a
couple of unpleasant incidents with Caramel this year, and Jean and Roy are wary. They
make sure that only older, more experienced riders take her out
these days.

It’s the story of my life – everybody
thinks I am too young for everything. They don’t take me seriously at all.

For example, a couple of weeks ago there was
a part-time job advertised at the stables for someone to help with mucking out and
grooming, just a few hours for a couple of days a week after school. When Mum picked me
up after my lesson that day, I was full of it – how I could spend more time with
Caramel, get more experience with horses, cover the cost of my lessons and bring a
little cash in on top of that. I thought she’d go for the idea for sure, but I was
wrong.

Surprise, surprise, she said I was too
young.

‘You’re only twelve,’
she’d said on the drive home, as if I might have forgotten this vital fact.
‘They probably wouldn’t consider you for the job at that age, and besides,
there’s no need to start thinking about part-time jobs just yet! Just focus on
your friends and your animals and your studies!’