Sugar and Spice (10 page)

I desperately didn’t want to wake up next morning. Mum had to come and bawl at me three times.
“Ruth, I’m not telling you again!
Get out of that bed! And get your sisters up. Do you want to be late for school?”

I didn’t just want to be late. Being late wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to go
at all.
I was just so scared that Shay was going to be angry with me! It wasn’t that I thought she’d bash me or anything. But she’d give me that
look,
like I was lower than an earthworm. Like she didn’t know why she’d ever bothered.

“Just a mindless blob!”

Shay despised mindless blobs. I didn’t want to be one of them. I didn’t want her to despise me – I wanted to be someone worth bothering with!

I crept into class just as Mrs Saeed was collecting homework.

“Ruth,” she said, “just in time!” And she smiled at me and held out her hand, with this really happy expression on her face. “Homework?”

I mumbled that I was sorry, but I hadn’t done it. Poor Mrs Saeed! She looked so disappointed, like I’d really let her down. She said, “That’s not like you, Ruth.” I hung my head and didn’t dare look at Shay. As I slipped into my seat, Karina nudged me, like she was gloating, and went, “Hah!”

It was like she thought she’d scored some kind of victory. I wanted to turn my back on her, but that meant I’d be facing Shay. I grabbed my rough book and shielding it with my hand, cos Karina was really nosy, she always wanted to be in on absolutely everything, I wrote, “I couldn’t help it, I had to do things for my mum.” and pushed it across to Shay. Would she write back to me???

She did! She wrote,
“WHAT THINGS?”

I waited till Mrs Saeed was chalking stuff on the board, then whispered, “She made me go down the shops,
twice,
and then she made me go and borrow
some rhubarb from Mrs Kenny, and then I had to help her make a pie, and then —”

Mrs Saeed turned round and I immediately stopped. I don’t know why, since most everyone else was talking. People just talked all the time. If they weren’t talking they were playing games or reading magazines. Brett Thomas was chucking things about the room, Dulcie Tucker was plaiting someone’s hair, a girl called Livvy Briggs was painting her nails. But I guess I felt I’d already upset Mrs Saeed quite enough.

“Then what?” hissed Shay.

“Then…we had to get the lunch-boxes, and then I
did the washing up and made a cup of tea, and then Dad was taken bad and I had to help Mum with his oxygen, and then – then I had to see to the others, and – and by then it was time for bed!”

Shay went, “Hm!” She was looking at me, frowning, but not like I was an earthworm. More like I was…some kind of problem that had to be solved.

“Gotta get things sorted,” she said.

At breaktime she told Karina to “Just go away and do something else. All right?” Karina turned an odd mottled colour, all red and blotchy, and shrieked, “Who d’you think you are, telling me what to do?”

Shay, in this really bored tone, said, “We’ve been through all this before.”

“Yes, we have!” shrilled Karina.

“Well, then…just go away and leave us alone! This is between me and Spice.”

I wanted to say that it didn’t really matter if Karina stayed, but I knew that it did. It wasn’t that we were having secrets, but it was definitely something private. Just between the two of us.

“You’ll regret this!” Karina hurled it venomously over her shoulder as she stalked off. “You’ll be sorry!”

It was me she was saying it to, not Shay. She knew Shay wouldn’t care.

“Forget about her,” said Shay. “She’s rubbish! Tell me again why you couldn’t do your homework.”

I sighed. “Well, there was this Home Bake day at my sister’s school —”

I went through it all, from the beginning. The pastry, the rhubarb, the pie, the lunch boxes, the tea, Dad’s oxygen.

It all sounded completely mad! Well, it did to my ears. But Shay just listened, without saying a word.

“So then it was, like, ten o’clock,” I said, “and I was just too tired!”

“Not surprised,” said Shay. “Anyone’d be too tired.”

I looked at her, gratefully. She wasn’t mad at me!

“Does this sort of thing happen all the time?” she said.

I nodded. “Most of the time. See, my dad’s got this thing where he can’t breathe properly. Sometimes he has to have oxygen, and the oxygen cylinder’s, like, really heavy? And Mum can’t manage it on her own, so I have to help her, and then there’s Sammy, he’s my little brother, and Kez and Lisa, they’re my sisters, and I have to help her with them cos she’s got Dad to take care of, plus she goes out to work all day, so —”

“This is crazy!” cried Shay. “You ought to tell your mum that you’ve got homework to do.”

“I have! But Mum doesn’t believe in homework. She says we get too much of it. It’s not her fault!” I was anxious that Shay shouldn’t think badly of Mum. “It’s just that she’s so worn out, you know? She really needs me to help her.”

“Yeah, but you really need to do your homework,” said Shay. “Know what?”

I said, “What?”

“You oughta go to the library and do it.” I looked at her, doubtfully.

Before Karina latched on to me I used to spend every lunch break in the library (except that it’s actually called the Resource Centre and has more people using the computers than reading books) but no way did I want to stay on at
school at the end of the day. I didn’t want to stay on at school a minute longer than I had to! I said this to Shay and she said she wasn’t talking about Krapfilled’s library, she was talking about the
public
library.

Surprised, I said, “Do they let you?”

“Course they let you! What d’you think?”

I didn’t know. I’d only ever been to the public library once, and that was at juniors, when Mrs Henson had taken us all on a class visit and had shown us how to borrow books. I’d asked Mum if I could have a ticket, but somehow we’d never got around to doing it.

“It’s not right,” said Shay, “not even having half an hour to do your homework. And look, just stop worrying about that stupid Karina.” She’d obviously noticed my eyes straying across the playground, to where Karina was hovering on the outskirts of Amie Phillips and her gang. “She’s not good for you – she’ll just drag you down.”

I said, “I know, but I wouldn’t want her feelings to be hurt.”

“You don’t actually
like
her?” said Shay.

I wrestled with my conscience. I think it was my conscience. I felt that I ought to like Karina, seeing as we’d been sort of sticking together ever since half way through last term; but I kept remembering stuff she’d said, like for instance about Anne Frank, and I knew that I didn’t really.

“You don’t, do you?” said Shay. “You just put up with her. But she’s a blob, same as the rest of ’em, and that’s what you’ll be if you don’t junk her. You gotta think of yourself,” urged Shay. “Won’t get anywhere, otherwise.”

I knew that Shay was right, though I still didn’t want Karina’s feelings to be hurt. She deliberately went to sit somewhere else for our first class after break and I must say it was a huge relief not to have her nudging and poking at me all the time, but she wasn’t sitting anywhere near Amie, and that was a bit of a worry because what would she do if Amie wouldn’t let her be part of her gang? She’d be on her own and then I’d feel dreadful.

I did my best to harden my heart, but it wasn’t easy. Not even when I was leaving school that afternoon and Karina came up to me and hissed, “I hate you, Ruth Spicer! The only reason I ever hung out with you in the first place was cos I felt sorry for you, cos you’re such a pathetic nerd!” I suppose I should have hated her back, but I knew what she was saying wasn’t true. I don’t mean about me being a nerd, but about that being the reason she’d hung out with me. She’d hung out with me because we were both on our own. Nobody wanted Karina any more than they wanted me. And now I had Shay and Karina didn’t have anyone and I felt quite bad about it.