Artichoke Hearts (16 page)

‘School can be a brutal place,’ agrees Pat. ‘I remember from my own school days; I hated it so much I was always playing truant, but you only need one or two true friends to
change everything. I was thinking, as you’ve all been brave enough to read out your own work, I should probably read you something of mine. Mira’s already had a sneak preview of this
one. I can tell you, it’s certainly no better than your writing.’

‘What’s it about?’ asks Ben.

Pat Print thinks for a moment. ‘I suppose it’s about loyalty . . . Now, where are my specs?’ She rummages in her satchel for her glasses, which hover halfway down her nose. She
leafs through her book with great care, as if she’s looking for a particular moment. Then she peers at me from under her glasses, smiles and begins to read.

There should he a moment when you decide enough is enough, and you can seriously have enough of being smacked on the hack of the legs with a wide metal ruler because you
can’t remember what twelve times eight is. Can
you
remember? Too long.
Thwack.
That’s how long you got. But there was no single defining moment. It was just one ordinary
drizzly day of quiet torture that made me walk through my school gates mid-morning. It was the ordinariness of it all . . . the once-too-often wound that made me lift
the
latch and walk free,
out on to the open moorland. That day I made a promise to myself never again to go back to school.
I
don’t remember how many hours
I
walked before I came to the beck.
That’s when
I
saw it . . . a picnic basket washed up on the riverbank.
My
first thoughts were of bull-rushes and Sunday school but, when I opened the hamper lid, there, lying
curled up in a mole-like ball, was the small brown form of my first dog.
I
called him Moses for obvious reasons.

The bell rings and Pat Print closes her book straight away, as if she can’t wait to stop reading. I think she’s still shy! She rummages in her satchel and pulls out
three copies of her book, handing them around.

‘I’ve called every dog I’ve ever had by that name . . . just a whim.’

‘Would you sign it?’ I ask her.

She nods. I can tell she’s pleased.

‘Can I take one for Millie too?’

In mine she writes:
To Mira. Schooldays are not the best days of everyone’s life! Love, Pat Print.
In Millie’s she writes:
To Millie, a loyal friend, with love, Pat
Print.

As soon as she writes that I feel a pang of guilt. Millie Lockhart has always been my most loyal friend. Why can’t I just be honest with her about Jidé? It’s not like
there’s much to tell anyway. Tonight, I think.

If she asks me about Jidé, I’ll tell her about the texts.

Pat Print peers over her glasses at Jidé and Ben. They are hovering in an awkward place between not wanting to miss out, or look too keen. Eventually, Ben thrusts his book in front of Pat
without saying anything at all. She smiles to herself.

In Ben’s she writes:
To Ben, for whom the bell tolls, with love, Pat Print.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asks Ben.

‘It’s just another great book you should read.’

Ben groans.

Last, it’s Jidé’s turn. Pat’s pen pauses for a moment over the page before she decides what to write
. . .To Jidé, a brave and fearsome warrior, with a heart
of gold, with love, Pat Print.

No matter how hard he tries to look like he doesn’t care what she’s written, Jidé has a smile curling at the corner of his mouth, a smile that I can’t help but wear too
until it’s wiped off my face by the sight of my dad, of all people, coming out of Miss Poplar’s office. He thinks I haven’t seen him as he makes a swift exit out of the side door.
A deep well of sadness starts to swirl in the pit of my belly, but I still it with this thought . . . if Nana has died while I’ve been at school today, he would be taking me home right
now.

‘Pat, have you got a minute?’ Miss Poplar calls to Pat Print down the corridor. She is not her usual cheery self.

I watch them for a moment. Pat Print looks serious, glancing nervously back to the classroom we’ve just been in. She nods her head at whatever Miss Poplar’s talking about, but when
Pat Print starts to talk Miss Poplar keeps interrupting her. Even from this distance you can tell by the way their hands dance around that the conversation is getting quite heated.

I pass Miss Poplar in the corridor before break, and she just smiles at me and walks straight past. I want to ask her why my dad was in her office, but as she hasn’t said
anything I think maybe I’m not supposed to know.

At break, I sit on the wall on my own. Nobody bothers me until Jidé walks over to join me.

‘Want to hang with Ben and me?’

I nod and we walk over to the bench where Ben’s dealing out three piles of Simpson’s Top Trumps. I can’t believe he’s still playing this, but Jidé and Ben laugh as
they exchange ‘Huggability’ scores. In primary school they used to play car Top Trumps so I suppose they have moved on, a bit. Any kind of Top Trumps is, as far as I can see, a
completely pointless waste of time, but I am grateful, all the same, to Jidé, for asking me over because nothing makes you more likely to be picked on than being on your own.

After school I drop by Millie’s and give her Pat Print’s book.

‘So what happened today?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘What did you talk about with Pat?’

‘We read out our writing . . . Ben did something about skateboarding, I wrote about yesterday in class and Jidé talked about his birth-parents in Rwanda.’

‘That took some courage. Has he called you yet?’

‘No, not yet . . . How are your teeth?’ I ask.

‘They ache, badly,’ sighs Millie, covering her mouth and opening Pat Print’s book.

‘To Millie, a loyal friend, with love, Pat Print;
she reads, smiling up at me.

‘It’s true,’ I smile back at her. ‘You are.’

‘You too,’ she says, closing the book.

So much for being honest with Millie.

Millie is still off sick.

At break, Jidé comes over to sit next to me on the wall. I feel stupidly proud to be so close to him, as if he’s some kind of badge of honour.

‘Where’s Ben?’ I ask.

‘Not here. No Millie?’

I shake my head.

‘You’d better not sit here,’ I warn him, pointing to Bo and Demi who are nodding in our direction.

‘Why not?’

‘They’ll probably have a go at both of us now,’ I say, trying hard not to look in their direction.

‘Let them!’ Jidé flashes his film-star smile at them. ‘How’s your nana?’ he asks me.

‘Dying.’

He just nods and we sit there in a silence stuffed full of things we would like to say to each other.

‘I didn’t know about your parents, about what happened in Rwanda,’ I finally pluck up the courage to say.

‘It’s not the sort of thing you shout about. Anyway, I was too young to remember . . . Grace and Jai are my mum and dad now.’

‘What are they like?’

‘Just like anyone else’s parents, except worse, because, well, you know Grace, she’s always telling me what to do,’ shrugs Jidé.

Another silence. This time Jidé breaks it.

‘What do you think of Pat Print?’

‘She reminds me a bit of Nana Josie,’ I tell him.

‘I wish she was our teacher,’ sighs Jidé.

Why?’

‘Pat Print’s deep . . . She looks into you and really sees what’s there.’

‘I know what you mean.’

The bell rings. Demi and Bo are still eyeballing us, as if they can’t believe that Jidé Jackson is actually taking the time to talk to
me.
Jidé jumps off the wall, and
before I can do anything about it he has grabbed my hand to help me down. Bo and Demi just can’t help sniggering, but Jidé gives them the finger and refuses to let go of my hand.
Instead, he starts swinging our arms backwards and forwards in a huge ‘I don’t care who sees’ arc through the air. I suppose this means that me and Jidé are not a secret
any more.

‘Jidé, let go,’ I laugh.

‘But I don’t want to,’ he laughs back.

When I walk out of school, Demi and Bo are hanging around by the gates.

‘Are you and Jidé going out?’ Demi shouts.

I just keep on walking, trying to wipe the smile off my face. The truth is I’m glad she shouted it out for everyone to hear. It’s what I’d like to do myself.

Dad opens the door. He’s hardly ever at home when I get back from school. It’s turned out to be such a great day that I had almost completely forgotten about him
coming out of Miss Poplar’s office this morning.

‘Hey, Mira. How’s school?’

Always the same boring question.

‘Fine.’

Always the same boring answer.

‘How’s Nana?’ I ask.

‘The same . . . I wanted to have a little chat with you. Sit down a minute, Mira.’ Dad budges up on our kitchen bench. This does not feel like ‘a little chat’ to me -
this is more like family-conference territory, even though there’s only me and him at the table.

‘I dropped in to see Miss Poplar this morning.’

‘I know, I saw you,’ I snap back at him.

‘Did you?’ he asks, looking a bit taken aback. ‘Well, the thing is your mum and I, we were a bit troubled by that project you told us you were doing about Rwanda, and what with
everything that’s going on with Nana . . .’

‘Oh! For God’s sake, Dad.’

‘The point is, Mira, Miss Poplar told me that you’re not doing a project about Rwanda and she also told me about the bullying incident and . . . you know, Mira, if you’re
struggling with anything, we just want you to know that you can always talk to us.’

He’s waiting for me to say something, but I feel that spark of red-hot anger light up in me again so I keep my mouth clamped shut.

‘Maybe it’s because we’ve all been so focused on Nana-’

‘Stop treating me like a baby. I’ve sorted it out myself. I don’t need you wading in all the time.’

‘That’s good. Miss Poplar told me that you faced up to it, but if you’d have told us before, we might have been able to help you.’

My jaw aches with the effort of clenching my mouth closed tight.

‘OK, I understand, you want to fight your own battles, but I don’t understand why you lied to us about the research into Rwanda.’

‘It’s not a
project,
all right! For some people it’s real life, Dad,’ I yell at him, storming off upstairs and slamming my bedroom door so hard that a crack
appears in the wood.

Unlucky for some.

At breakfast Dad watches my every move as if I might be ill or something. When the smoke alarm goes off
again,
I feel as if my head is about to explode. I am out of that
door at 8.30 on the dot to find Millie striding along the pavement towards me. I am so pleased to see her after the blow-up with Dad that I feel like hugging her. I don’t, but on the walk
into school I do start to tell her about Jidé and me. Not everything, not about the texting – some things you just want to keep for yourself – but I tell her that he sat in her seat the day
I faced up to Demi and I tell her how he came and sat on the wall with me yesterday.

‘The cheek of it. Sitting in my seat! I was only away for two days and now you’re going out with Jidé Jackson!’ she laughs.

‘I didn’t say we were going out together.’

‘What else would you call it?’

Ben comes meandering towards us with his funny, trying-to-be-cool, slopy walk that he’s adopted since we came to secondary school; it’s the kind of walk where he looks like
he’s dragging an injured leg belonging to someone else behind him.

‘You’re back then?’

‘Looks like it,’ grins Millie, showing off her double row of braces with fluorescent rainbow-coloured bands that glint in the sunshine. Trust Millie to choose the brightest
colours.

‘I should have brought my shades!’ jokes Ben, shielding his eyes from the glare.

‘Where’s Jidé?’ Millie asks.

‘Dunno. He’s not in today.’

‘Probably lovesick,’ Millie whispers, so I elbow her in the side.

Ben looks a bit awkward, like he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. I suppose Jidé is to Ben what Millie is to me . . . One is lost without the other, or that’s how
I used to feel anyway.