Authors: Cathy MacPhail
It wasn’t going to be the story of mine! I’d always said I didn’t want to be like my mother. I wasn’t going to feel sorry for myself, or put myself down the way she did. Yet here I was, doing just that. I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t even tell her it wasn’t a boy. As if I’d be so upset over a boy! I just wanted her to go away.
Mrs Tasker saw how upset I was too. She kept me back in class, saw my red-rimmed eyes, saw how the others ignored me, passing me notebooks and pencils by their fingertips as if they might catch something off me.
‘This has gone on far too long, Hannah.’
I knew she had heard the story and I wanted her to know I wasn’t responsible. ‘I’d never do anything like that.’
‘Have you tried to talk to Erin on her own?’
‘She won’t listen. You see how none of them talk to me.’
She was silent for a moment, as if she was thinking about something. ‘If I find a way for you to speak to her, do you think that would help?’
My heart leapt with hope. ‘That’s all I need, Mrs Tasker. If I had a chance to talk to Erin without other people butting in I know I could explain. She’s my best friend.’
Mrs Tasker steered me towards the door. ‘Come here at lunchtime, just before you’re ready to go back to class. I’ll have Erin here too.’
‘She won’t come if she knows I’m going to be here.’
‘Then I won’t tell her, Hannah. It’ll be our secret.’
Our secret. The words were like a knife slicing through me now, but at least I had some hope. In the quiet of Mrs Tasker’s classroom I would make Erin listen. Make her believe me. I knew I could.
All that morning I was like a cat on hot tiles. I couldn’t stay still. Couldn’t think of anything but meeting up with Erin.
I walked the corridor to Mrs Tasker’s class as if I was a dead man walking. I was getting my chance and I wasn’t going to waste it. If I could explain everything to Erin, then this would only be a hiccup in a perfect friendship.
Erin almost jumped out of the window when Mrs Tasker opened the door on me. Her face flushed with anger. ‘So, this is why you wanted to see me. Well, I’m not staying. I don’t want to talk to her.’
She got up from her seat but Mrs Tasker ordered her to sit down again, and Mrs Tasker is one of those teachers who, when she tells you to do something, you do it. She motioned me to the seat across from Erin.
‘Now, I’ll speak, and you will both listen,’ she began. ‘I’ve brought you here, because I see two girls who have always been friends. I’ve not always been happy about the direction that friendship was taking, but you were friends.’
‘Not any more!’ Erin snapped.
Mrs Tasker snapped back at her. ‘You’ll have your chance to speak, Erin.’ Then she went on, ‘Now,
because one of you has inadvertently let something slip about the other …’
This time it was me who jumped to my feet. ‘No. That’s the whole point. I didn’t let anything slip.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate, Hannah,’ Mrs Tasker said, as if she was making things better. But this wasn’t what I wanted at all.
‘Erin has to know that I didn’t tell anyone. Honest.’
Erin tutted and sucked in her cheeks and looked out of the window.
Mrs Tasker only looked at me for a moment as if she was considering whether what I said could possibly be true. ‘Well, that is something for Erin to think about too.’ Yet I could see that she didn’t believe me. I could see that in her eyes. She didn’t blame me. She was sure it was accidentally done, but she had no doubt I had done it anyway. What chance did I have of convincing Erin?
‘Why don’t you speak to Erin now … have your say, and you, Erin, I want you to listen to all Hannah has to say without interrupting.’
I poured out my heart then, and Erin did listen. Her lips were pursed and her face was grim, but she listened.
I spoke till I had nothing else to say, till I was just
repeating the same thing over and over. ‘It had to be someone else, Erin. Had to be.’
‘But who?’ Mrs Tasker asked.
My eyes flicked from Erin to the teacher, trying to convince them both. ‘I thought at first it was Lauren’s sister. She was a waitress at Erin’s sister’s wedding,’ I explained.
‘She’s deaf,’ Erin said flatly.
‘I know, but what if one of the other waitresses overheard us and she told Lauren’s sister. She could have used sign language or something. Then Lauren’s sister tells Lauren and, zoom, it’s all over the school by next day. That’s the only explanation.’
Erin didn’t say anything at first. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor. It was Mrs Tasker who spoke. ‘Well, Erin, that seems a perfectly reasonable explanation. Hannah has sworn it wasn’t her. Has she ever let you down before?’
Erin still didn’t look at me, but she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Well, are you willing to shake hands on that?’
Erin still didn’t say anything. I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Please, Erin, this has been horrible for me.’
‘Horrible … for you?’ Erin said, as if she was shocked.
‘Horrible for you too, I know that.’
Mrs Tasker leant over and touched Erin’s hand. ‘Come on, Erin. Think of all the good times you’ve had together. All the years of friendship you’ve shared.’
Erin looked at me at last. I couldn’t fathom her eyes. She held my gaze for a long time before turning to our teacher. ‘All right,’ she said. Her voice was barely a whisper.
It was as if the sun had burst into the office. ‘All right.’ Magic words. My hand was shaking as I held it out to her. Mrs Tasker nodded and smiled. ‘Go on, Erin.’
Erin took my hand. Hers was cold and clammy and limp. I shook it so hard I thought it would fall off. ‘Oh, thanks, Erin. Thanks. You won’t be sorry. I’ll be the best friend you ever had from now on.’
I knew I was on the verge of tears, felt them welling up in my eyes. But I didn’t want to cry. I was too happy to cry.
Mrs Tasker stood up and sighed. A job well done. ‘Now, you two girls run along to class. I told your teacher you’d both be a little late.’
She stood at her classroom door watching us as we walked off, side by side. I couldn’t stop babbling. ‘Oh
Erin, everything’s going to be so good now. You’ll see. We’ll get Lauren back for it, don’t you worry.’
Erin stopped walking and turned to me. She glanced at Mrs Tasker’s door. It was just closing. Erin’s face twisted into an ugly grin. ‘Did you really think I believed any of the crap you were spouting in there?’
I reached out to touch her arm and she drew herself back as if I was a leper. ‘You must think my head buttons up at the back, Driscoll. Because I am no friend of yours and never will be again.’ Then she leant close to my face. ‘And we are going to get you for this. Don’t you worry. We’re going to make you sorry.’
And then she was gone, clattering down the corridor at full speed. And I knew then it was no use. I was no longer her friend. Never would be again.
It was over.
The days seemed to merge into a nightmare – a nightmare I never seemed to wake from. I was literally without friends. I had never needed any others except for the Lip Gloss Girls – hadn’t bothered making any. In fact, I’d shunned most of the other girls. We all had. They weren’t good enough for any of us. Now they were all getting their own back on me. They shunned me.
‘Don’t try to be our pal now, Driscoll,’ I would be told. ‘We don’t want Erin’s cast-offs.’
That was the message whenever I tried to be friendly with anyone. I was Erin’s cast-off and nobody wanted me. I would stand silently in a corner of the yard and watch as they passed me by.
I would see Wizzie and the rest forward their text messages about me from one phone to another, giggling at me, laughing out loud at whatever was written. I was
a joke. And I had no answer for them.
‘Where’s your smart mouth now?’ someone asked me one day. Yes, where was my smart mouth? I couldn’t find the joke in this at all. Didn’t know how to handle it.
I was pushed and jostled in the corridors, left to sit alone in the canteen. Always alone.
‘How does it feel to be bullied yourself?’ Nan Gates, one of the other girls in my class, asked me one day.
‘I was never a bully!’ I said to her. Yet I remembered the times we had made fun of her frizzy red hair, called her a ‘ginger’, rejected her attempts to be one of us. Had I been a bully?
How I hated going to school. I made futile excuses to stay home. They seldom worked. Mrs Tasker watched me closely. She knew her little ploy hadn’t worked, but she didn’t try again. I couldn’t blame her. It would have been no use. There was nothing left. It was as if me and the rest of the girls had never been friends.
Mum asked why my friends never came round to visit any more. Why was I never round at Erin’s? Why didn’t they phone? I made excuse after excuse. I became an expert at lying.
‘We’re all studying hard.’
‘Heather’s been grounded.’
‘Erin has flu.’
I even took to going to the cinema myself, and pretended I was meeting the girls there. Sad, or what?
One awful night I was sitting in the back row when they all came in, Erin and Rose and Heather. They were giggling, chucking popcorn at each other and everyone else, making too much noise, talking too loud. I slid so far down in my seat I was practically on the floor, terrified they would spot me – see how pathetic I’d become. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I was mesmerised watching them, wishing I was still one of them, still sharing all that fun.
I wondered if they ever missed me too. Missed my jokes. Missed all the fun we’d had together. I watched them for ages in the dark of the cinema, then I snuck out, almost crawling on my hands and knees. Crawling like a dog. Ridiculous, and funny too. Even I could see the funny side of it.
That night I cried myself to sleep. I hated myself for being such a wimp. I wanted to be angry at them, but I couldn’t. It was me I was angry at, always feeling sorry for myself, drowning myself in misery.
Next morning, I came to a decision. I would make
one last-ditch attempt to explain things to Erin. What did I have to lose? I was going to write her a letter. She couldn’t erase a letter. Surely, she would be intrigued enough to read what I had to say?
It was Sunday. Mum went off to Mass without her usual Sunday morning moan because I didn’t go with her. ‘I think you’re coming down with something, Hannah,’ she said, feeling my brow. ‘You haven’t been yourself for days.’
I sat at my window and watched the people on the quiet streets heading for church. Or going off to do some Sunday shopping.
Sunday had always been the Lip Gloss Girls’ day out. Going to the café on the quay, then walking back and forth along the waterfront, arm in arm, making people step off the pavement to pass us. And here I was, alone, trying to compose a letter that would make them want to walk arm in arm with me again.
I thought about it for a long time. It had to be just the right kind of letter. Then it came to me. I’d be funny, the way they always liked me to be. Funny Hannah. I’d write a letter that would make them laugh, make them giggle. I would write such a funny letter it would make them all laugh out loud. ‘Trust Hannah,’ I
could almost hear Erin say it. ‘I’d forgotten how funny she could be.’ And they would realise how much they missed me.
That was it. I would make them laugh.
I sat up all night composing that letter – ripping out pages, crumpling them and chucking them into the wastepaper basket. I had to find exactly the right words. Funny, cheeky and yet … apologetic. (Though I knew I had done nothing wrong, by this time I would apologise for anything they wanted.) I wanted us to start again, go back to square one.
The letter would be addressed to Erin. She was the one who had been hurt … though not by me. In my head I kept thinking that if I did this right, by next week all that had happened would be a horrible memory, nothing more.
Mum came into my room at midnight, demanding I put the light out. ‘Just finishing my homework,’ I told her.
It was hours later before I was done, before I was satisfied. I slipped the letter in an envelope. Should I
post it? If I posted it she wouldn’t get it until the next day – so I decided against that. Speed was of the essence. I wanted Erin to get that letter today, Monday. I wanted her to read it. I wanted to put all this behind me.
On a Monday, we had PE, period one, straight after assembly. Erin always hung her blazer on the same hook. I decided that I would slip the letter into her pocket when no one was looking. Surely curiosity alone would make her read it. And once she’d read it, she had to feel something of our old friendship?
I hardly slept and went to school looking like something out of a zombie movie. The letter shook in my hand as I pushed it into the pocket of Erin’s blazer. I was terrified someone might catch me, assume I was taking something out instead. That was all I needed now, to be accused of stealing.
I could hardly bear to glance over to Erin as we changed after the lesson, expecting every time her hand went into her pocket that she would find the letter and pluck it out. But she didn’t. Not then. She giggled and whispered with Heather and Rose as they hovered around her like a cloaking device, protecting her from me. Then they were gone. The door banged shut and I was left alone in the changing rooms.
In our next lesson too it was obvious she hadn’t read it – either that or she was a very good actress. But no, she hadn’t read it. I would have known if she had. Didn’t I know her better than anyone? Wasn’t she my best friend?
But by the time I walked into the school canteen at lunchtime I knew she’d found it and read it. I knew by the way they all turned and stared at me as I carried my tray up the canteen, looking for a table. I think I stopped breathing as I felt their eyes on me. As I came close, Erin, sitting on the edge of the table, plucked the letter from her pocket and held it out to me.
I nodded, attempting a smile. A ‘yes, it was me,’ kind of smile.
And Erin smiled back.