Poppy's Garden (3 page)

“Poppy! Are you still doing homework? You haven’t even got ready for bed!”

Poppy blinked up at her mum owlishly. She
was
quite tired. At some point she’d put the light on, but she didn’t quite remember when.

“Is this your garden design?” Her mum sighed. “You sounded very enthusiastic about it at dinner, but I didn’t realise you were planning to finish it tonight.”

“I wasn’t,” Poppy murmured, yawning. “It was just hard to stop, once I got going on it. It’s fun.” She held the sketch book out to her mum a little nervously. Her mum loved being in the garden. It would be awful if she took one look at Poppy’s design and said it was horrible, or that it just wouldn’t work.

“Oh, Poppy, this is really pretty,” her mum said, smiling. “It reminds me of something…”

“Your kitchen tiles,” Poppy said, with another massive yawn.

“Yes! A sort of Moroccan pattern. But it’s based on a medieval garden, I can see that. It’s lovely.”

“There’s a wild flower patch,” Poppy called to her as she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. “To attract butterflies. And I thought that could be in a butterfly-shaped bit of hedge. That bit took ages, trying to make it look properly like a butterfly. Do you think you can make hedges grow in shapes like that?”

Her mum looked round the bathroom door. “I’m sure you can. Think of topiary. You know, when they make hedges into statues? Like Mr Simpson’s peacock hedge down the road.”

“Oooh!” Poppy bounded out of the bathroom. “Topiary! I haven’t got any of that. That would work brilliantly in the sight bit.”

“Not now!” her mother said sternly. “Bed. I know you, you’ll be drawing it at the breakfast table tomorrow. Well, you can just get some sleep in first.”

“Wow!” Izzy peered at Poppy’s intricate design.

“Do you think it’s OK?” Poppy asked her anxiously.

She hadn’t wanted to get the design out until they were in the classroom, in case it got rained on. It was spitting a bit, but it had to be tipping it down before Mrs Angel, the head, would let anyone into school early.

“It’s beautiful. It’s so detailed, Poppy. It must have taken hours.”

“Yeah, it’s lucky we only had that little bit of science homework last night. I did that in the car on the way to school,” Poppy admitted with a yawn. She was really tired. She’d been so excited about her design and all the ideas that she’d taken ages to get
to sleep, and then she’d dreamed about princesses and unicorns wandering through her garden. The unicorns kept bumping into the wind chimes.

Izzy tried not to look disapproving, and almost managed. She was one of those people who couldn’t not do homework. Like she couldn’t write the date at the top of her work without drawing a line under it. With a ruler. But Poppy loved her anyway.

“Have you brought yours in?” she asked.

Izzy shook her head. “Not finished. But don’t worry, Poppy, it’s not going to be any competition for that! And I’ve seen Lara’s…”

Poppy rolled her eyes. “Did it involve a pony, by any chance?”

Izzy nodded, grinning. “A pony-shaped flower bed
and
an actual pony…” She giggled. “Well, horse manure is very good for your garden. But it didn’t really have anything else in it, except a carrot bed.”

Poppy frowned. “Oh, of course! For feeding carrots to the pony.”

“Uh-huh.”

Maya and Emily came in and dumped their bags. “Oh, Poppy! Look, Ems, it’s beautiful!” Maya squeaked. “OK, I’m definitely not entering. No point.”

Emily put an arm round Poppy and hugged her.
“That beats Nick’s design,” she whispered, nodding to the noisy table of boys behind them. “He was waving it about on the bus, wasn’t he, Maya?”

“Yup, and it’s basically a skate park. With a tree in the middle.”

“You didn’t draw that.”

Poppy snatched up her design in a hurry and looked round at Ali and Lucy and Elspeth. They were such good sneaker-uppers, she hadn’t seen them at all. “Yes, I did,” she said stubbornly. Ali had a piece of paper in a smart see-through pink folder, and she snatched it behind her back as she saw Poppy looking at it.

“No copying!” she snapped.

“I don’t want to copy yours…” Poppy started to protest.

Ali smirked. “You don’t need to, do you. You already copied that one.”

Poppy shook her head. “No, I didn’t, I drew it.”

“I bet she copied it straight out of a book,” Elspeth said. “Don’t you think so, Ali?”

“Of course she did,” Ali said scornfully. “No way she came up with that by herself. She cheated.”

“I didn’t copy,” Poppy said faintly, but she was starting to wonder. How much had she copied her
design out of Cam Morris’s book? Maybe she
was
cheating. She stared down at her beautiful design, her eyes troubled, and Ali smirked at her two sidekicks.

“See? Look at her. She’s gone all red. You’re such a cheat, Poppy. Mr Finlay’s going to be
so
disappointed.”

She’d copied the way the little hedges surrounded the flowers from those photos in the book, Poppy realised. And it was a book by Cam Morris – he’d recognise it, wouldn’t he? So even if she won the competition at school, when all the different schools sent their designs in, he’d spot it at once.

Poppy stuffed the drawing into her bag, crumpling it a little. She didn’t care any more. She couldn’t give it in now. She felt her eyes burning, and bit hard into her bottom lip. No way was she going to let Ali see her cry. But she felt so stupid. She’d been really, really proud of her design, and she hadn’t even thought that it was copied.

“Don’t listen to her,” Izzy hissed as Mr Finlay came in and started to do the register. “Poppy, you know how horrible she is. It’s a brilliant design.”

Poppy sniffed and put her pencil case back in her rucksack on top of her entry form. She didn’t even want to be able to see it.

THREE

“Poppy, are you OK?” Izzy asked her anxiously as soon as the bell rang for break. Poppy had been working silently all morning. She managed a tight little smile a couple of times when Izzy nudged her, looking worried, but she hadn’t wanted to talk. She was too disappointed, and angry with herself. She’d felt so pleased with the way her design had come out. It had looked really professional, and her mum and dad had been so impressed with it. Even Jake and Alex had grunted at it in an approving sort of way, in between shovelling in half a packet of cornflakes each. All that effort had been for nothing, and there was no way she could come up with another design. There was time enough, but she just didn’t want to. She couldn’t face starting all over again. And anyway, she didn’t have any more ideas.

She tried to smile at Izzy again, but it didn’t
work very well. She could tell she didn’t look very convincing, and Izzy stared at her anxiously.

“You mustn’t listen to Ali. Seriously, Poppy. I don’t believe you copied it. You wouldn’t do that.” Izzy glared at Ali and Elspeth and Lucy, who were huddled at their table, making admiring noises over Ali’s garden design.

“But I sort of did,” Poppy told her miserably. “I didn’t think of it that way until she said it, but I did – I got the idea out of one of my books on essential oils, and then I added bits to it from another book. So I did copy it…” She sank her chin on to her hands. Talking about it made her want to cry, and she blinked fiercely at the table.

“That doesn’t mean you copied it!” Izzy hissed crossly.

“She’s right, Poppy.” Maya nodded decidedly. “Show it to us again.”

Poppy shook her head. She didn’t even want to see it.

“Please!”

“I don’t want to!” Poppy gasped, grabbing the piece of paper out of her bag and jumping up from her chair. As she went past Mr Finlay’s desk she shoved the design into the bin – it was the wrong
one, not the recycling bin, but she didn’t care. Maya could tell her off about it later. She hurried out into the corridor, wondering where to go. She didn’t want to have to talk to anybody right now.

“Poppy!” Someone was calling her but Poppy darted off down the corridor. It didn’t matter where she went. She needed to get away from everybody. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? She didn’t want them laughing at her for being so stupid.

The library! She’d go and hide in there. Poppy hurried in and grabbed a book off the first shelf she passed. A nice big one. She could hide behind that, and even if Izzy and the others came looking for her, they wouldn’t know she was there.

Unfortunately, the book was extremely boring. All about aeroplanes, with lots of diagrams of how jets worked and things like that. It didn’t distract Poppy from how miserable she was at all, but she couldn’t seem to find the energy to get up and change it for something she’d like. She just stared at it grimly, and tried not to remember the triumphant look on Ali’s face. She knew that Izzy and Maya and Emily would probably be really sweet about it if she went back, even though she’d snapped at them and run off. But they’d think she was so silly. (Because she
was.) She couldn’t bear the thought of them being all sympathetic and nice.

Eventually, after what felt like hours of staring at a jet fighter, the bell rang and Poppy reluctantly uncurled herself from her position on the window sill. She stuffed the book back on to the shelf and hurried to her classroom, her head down, trying to hide behind her hair like Izzy did. She wasn’t used to trying to hide from people. Ali and her gang were nasty to her sometimes, but just the same way they were mean to everybody. (Except Maya, now that they’d discovered her mum was a celebrity.) Usually Poppy could just shrug it off, or give as good as she got.

She glanced sideways at Izzy and Emily and Maya as she got to their table, hoping they weren’t annoyed with her. She smiled faintly at Izzy, thinking she ought to say sorry for running off. But Izzy gave her a weird look and then stared at the whiteboard, as though she didn’t want to talk to her. Poppy stood there for a second with her mouth half open, ready to say she hadn’t meant to be rude.

There was no one to say it to. Emily and Maya were staring at the whiteboard too, and Poppy shut her mouth quickly and slid into her seat, feeling about
ten times worse, even though five minutes before she wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

At lunchtime, all of them went to the dining hall together as usual. Izzy asked Poppy what she’d got in her sandwiches – she was known for having weird things sometimes – and Poppy said only cheese, but she did have lavender-flavoured biscuits that she and her mum had made, which Izzy cheerfully told her sounded disgusting. So that was pretty normal. But no one mentioned garden designs at all, and there kept being odd little silences. Once she saw Emily giving Izzy a funny look when they thought she was busy finding something in her lunchbox.

Maybe they were all annoyed with her and they were pretending not to be, Poppy thought unhappily. Maybe they hated her for cheating. She hardly ate any of her lunch – even the lavender biscuits, which she usually loved, tasted all dry and dusty. She pushed them back into her lunchbox, crumbled into little bits.

“Umm, Poppy?” Izzy was staring at her.

Poppy blinked. “Yes?” She hadn’t been listening. It looked like Izzy had been talking to her, and she’d missed whatever she said. “Sorry, I was thinking…”

“We’re— Er—” Izzy swallowed and looked nervous.

“Just going to do something for Miss Grace,” Emily put in firmly. “See you after lunch.”

Poppy gaped after the three of them as they hurried away. She definitely had upset them then. It was obvious that Emily had made up the thing about Miss Grace. Poppy hadn’t been paying much attention that morning, but she’d have seen it if their classroom assistant had asked the others to do something. She’d have asked all four of them, anyway. She knew they always hung around together.

Until now, clearly. Poppy swallowed, and pretended to eat a bit of biscuit, so no one would think she’d been abandoned. Then slowly, trying to look unconcerned, she got up, and put her lunchbox away in the class storage box. What was she going to do now? If she went out to the playground, she couldn’t just wander about on her own. But no one was likely to invite her to join in a game. And to be honest, she didn’t feel like it anyway. She’d have to go back to the library, she decided miserably. Then she gave a little sniff of laughter. She could go and read the book on aeroplanes again.

Emily and Maya and even Izzy were still acting weird when Poppy crept back into the classroom after lunch. Their school librarian, Mrs Peters, was really nice when you wanted to ask her something about books, but she was a monster if people were noisy. She only worked part-time, but on days when she was in the library, everyone had to be silent or she’d just throw people out. And she wouldn’t let them borrow the book they’d been looking at either. After a whole break and lunchtime being silent, Poppy felt weird, as though she couldn’t have spoken louder than a whisper if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t, much. Especially when Izzy and the others kept giving each other conspiratorial looks, and smirking, and nudging each other.

What she actually felt like was walking out of the classroom and going home. Except there wouldn’t be anyone there. Mum and Dad would both be at work, and Jake and Alex would be at school. She had to get all the way through afternoon school before she could go home and find the right essential oils for dealing with a really mean group of ex-friends who were laughing at her behind her back. She had a feeling she might have to make that one up for herself. It probably wasn’t going to be in the book.

By the end of the afternoon, Poppy was feeling desperate. Izzy had tried to be nice to her a couple of times, but Poppy was already so confused and upset that she didn’t know what to say, and Izzy started frowning at her and looking just as confused as she was.

What was going on?

Maya and Emily had to rush off to catch their bus, but Izzy’s dad was picking her up so she hung around, trying to talk to Poppy while they put their things away.

“Poppy, are you still upset about what Ali said?” Izzy crouched down and tried to peer up at her, as Poppy had her head ducked. “Honestly! She’s so horrible, you know that! You’re always telling me just to ignore her. Please don’t let her get to you.”

It isn’t her! It’s all of you!
Poppy wanted to wail, but she couldn’t face it. “I’ve got to go,” she muttered. “After-school club.” And she grabbed her bag, racing out into the corridor and making for the main hall, where after-school club was set up.

Except she wasn’t going to after-school club, she decided as she got halfway down the corridor. She couldn’t stand all the lovely, fussy ladies who ran it right now. They wouldn’t let her get away with
sitting in a corner being miserable, like she wanted to. They’d be trying to cheer her up. Telling her to come and join in with the others and play a game, or something.

Poppy darted into the girls’ loos and took a deep, panicked breath. What would happen if she just didn’t turn up? Probably no one would notice for a while. Then they’d think she’d been away that day and no one had told them. That happened quite often; the after-school club staff were always complaining about it. Someone would go to the office eventually, and make sure. But she had a while before that happened.

She turned back the way she’d come and headed out towards the school gate. She didn’t go to after-school club every day, so the staff who were seeing their classes off wouldn’t notice anything unusual. Mr Finlay was there, but he was “having a word” with Jensen’s dad about Jensen and Nick throwing wet paper towels at the ceiling in the girls’ loos, so she could just hurry past. As long as she looked like she was heading for her mum’s car, no one would say anything. Poppy pasted a smile on to her face, pretended to wave at someone and just walked down the street towards the shops, and no one stopped her.

She’d never been in Millford on her own before. Her mum and dad weren’t really fussy and overprotective – they let her take Billy out for walks on her own, provided she took a mobile with her and she promised to be back by a certain time. But there was no way they’d let her go wandering around the town on her own. Mum had said once she was in Year Six they’d think about it. If she went with some of her friends, maybe.

Poppy sniffed and stared miserably into the window of one of her favourite shops, the health food shop that sold the essential oils she liked. She couldn’t really go in. She didn’t have any money to buy anything, for a start. And Fran, who ran the shop, would recognise her, and she’d know that Poppy wasn’t supposed to be wandering round town. Poppy wasn’t sure she could pull off pretending that her mum was just in the bookshop, or something. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of lying to Fran.

“Poppy!”

Poppy whirled round, her heart thumping anxiously. “Izzy!”

Izzy was standing there with her dad. She looked worried, and her dad looked surprised, and a bit confused.

“Why aren’t you in after-school club?” Izzy demanded. “Did your mum come and pick you up early? Did they call her because you were all upset? Poppy, please tell me what’s wrong.” She looked so worried that Poppy couldn’t help wondering if she’d made a mistake. If Izzy
hadn’t
been laughing at her behind her back earlier on. If she had been, wouldn’t she have understood why Poppy was upset? She wouldn’t be looking so confused now, would she?