Being Bee (9 page)

‘What?' This wasn't a story I understood. ‘Why did the dog die?'

‘I can't remember. I can't remember everything. I'm not one of those people who remember. I'm a forgetter most of the time. I forget everything. It's better to forget. They'll let you begin again. Pepi was frightened by the breaking glass, and he ran out on to the road. A car came. See it's better to forget.'

‘Oh, Harley, that must have been dreadful.'

‘It was. It was awful. I shouldn't have taken Pepi. He was Jasmine's dog, not even mine.'

I felt a little bit sick. It was the sticky bun, I thought, and too much toast for breakfast.

‘Maybe I'll just have to find a phone,' I said, getting up. I was going to take my glass and plate to the sink to wash them. That's all I was going to do, but Harley jumped up and grabbed my arms.

‘You can't do that,' he said fiercely. ‘I won't let them get you, Little Bee. They'll turn you from To Be to Not to Be. That's what they do. They keep you in rooms like phone boxes and there's no one there except other ones that aren't you but they say you're the same as them and you miss Jasmine who cried and cried but didn't ever stop loving you even after what you'd done. But it wasn't your fault. If there'd been windows you
wouldn't have smashed anything. If it hadn't been raining. If it wasn't so dark. You can't go, To Be. You don't want to go there.'

He was much bigger than I was and he was holding my arms really tightly. He bent down so his face was too close to mine and I could see the patches where he hadn't shaved very well and little black hairs were bristling out of his skin. But his eyes looked very scared and his mouth sort of looked like mouths do before their owners begin to cry.

‘Harley,' I said, not moving. ‘Harley, it's not raining today and it's still very light outside. Is there anyone else here? The people who live here with you, are they here?'

I felt his grip on my arm lessen a little.

‘No, they aren't here. They've run away too. They've run from my drawings. The drawings give us nightmares. But Tony says the drawings are good and need to be drawn. I don't think you need to run away, Little Bee.'

‘I'll be safe,' I told him firmly. ‘I'm going to Uncle Rob and Aunty Maree's. You've met them. They were at Jazzi's dinner party.'

‘Jasmine will be so sad. She came to find you and even though you had taken Pepi and Pepi was dead she walked you home, holding your hand. She cried and cried behind her door but she kept looking after you.
Your mother got sick because the cancer grew in her. Jasmine will keep crying.'

‘My mother's dead, Harley, and I haven't taken anything of Jasmine's so she can't be sad. She doesn't even like me.'

‘No, you're wrong. She will miss you and miss you. She wants someone small like you. Always. And the Worrier, of course, but you too. She will be scared and sad all over again forever.' Harley's chin began to wobble. I knew what that meant. I could almost feel mine start.

‘Don't cry, Harley,' I said. ‘Please don't cry.'

‘You have to take me with you,' Harley said. ‘You have to. The dark and the rain and the sudden lights will come and I won't be able to stop them. Not by myself. Not just me, Harley Raddle. I couldn't before and you're too small, Bee. You're only To Bee, you need to be more and bigger.'

‘Harley,' I said, ‘I think you might be getting sick. Maybe we should both go back together to Jazzi, I mean Jasmine. She'll know what to do, won't she?'

‘I can't.' Harley dropped my arms and sat right down on the kitchen floor. He drew his knees up under his chin and wrapped his arms around himself as though he was very cold.

‘You can,' I said kneeling beside him. ‘You can, Harley. I know the way and there are no phone boxes
at all. We don't need to make a phone call, we can just walk there. You and me together.'

‘What about the dog?'

‘I haven't got a dog, Harley.' I thought quickly. I had to make him come with me. I was too worried about him to leave him by himself. ‘I have these guinea pigs. They're pretty cool. You haven't seen them yet.'

Harley was rocking backwards and forwards, but when I mentioned Fifi and Lulu he stopped for a minute.

‘What have guinea pigs got to do with it?'

I shrugged. What had anything got to do with anything? Harley was crying soundlessly now, big tears rolling down his face, streaking the charcoal worse than ever.

‘They're pretty good,' I said. ‘They write me notes.'

‘You're mad,' he said. ‘Guinea pigs don't write notes.'

‘Mine do,' I said.

‘You're crazy,' he said. ‘You're not To Be, you've been there, too.'

I didn't know what he was talking about but at least he'd stopped rocking. I stood up and held my hand out to him.

‘Come on,' I said. ‘You can meet them.'

‘I will,' he said and took my hand. He was surprisingly heavy to pull up but we managed and I
put my bag on my back so he knew I really meant to go. I talked him out of the house. No, Harley, you don't need to bring a tea bag. Yes, Harley, it would be okay to bring a hanky but we need to go now. No, I think your hair looks fine but you might want to wash your face. Okay, if you don't want to, that's fine. It was just an idea. Fifi and Lulu won't mind.

‘I have to take the guardian doll,' he said just when I thought we were out the front door at last. ‘If I don't, Jasmine will think I let her die too.'

He darted inside while I tapped my foot on the front step. When he finally emerged again, he was cradling one of Jazzi's dolls in his arms.

‘I look after it,' he said, ‘and it should be the other way round if it's a guardian doll. I'm always picking it up off the floor.' He showed me the face he'd painted on it. It looked sort of like Jazzi, with a mouth that wanted to smile but didn't seem able. He'd painted little hearts, like teardrops, on one cheek. One of her eyes was open and frightened and one was shut with words written across the lid but I didn't have time to read them.

‘She's not pretty,' he said. ‘I didn't have to make her pretty.'

‘She's not pretty,' I agreed, ‘but I don't see why she should be. She's who she is and that's what's important. Let's go.'

We had managed to walk half a block, with Harley looking behind him for the darkness and up to the clouds for the rain, so we were walking pretty slowly, when I saw Jazzi's little car zooming towards us. She did a screechy U-turn in front of us.

‘Oh, my heavens,' she said, getting out all in a rush. ‘Oh, my goodness. Bee, Harley!' And she ran and hugged us both together, so hard we were all crunched up and I'm sure my elbow went into Harley's stomach but he didn't say anything.

‘I think we're safe,' Harley told her, pushing her away. ‘To Be is a Been and she knows what's going on.'

‘I went to the op-shop when I got up,' Jazzi said, pulling me into her, ‘and I found the bee skirt. It won't fit you any more but I wondered if we could make it into a cushion cover. I went home to find you but you weren't there and I was so worried. I went down to Fifi and Lulu and found the note. Then I went back to the shops and that nice woman in the bakery said you'd been in for two sticky buns so I knew where you were and I just flew here as fast as I could. I was so worried.'

She was crying and trying to smile at me all at the same time. Her eyes were very wide and frightened, just like the open eye of Harley's doll. For a moment I could see her walking down the dark raining street to find her brother in the smashed phone box. ‘It's all right,' I said. ‘We're okay, Harley and me.'

‘I'm not doing another group hug,' Harley said. ‘The last one punched my belly.'

‘Oh, Harley,' Jazzi said and squeezed my shoulders as though I knew what she was sighing for, and she was right, I sort of did.

Dad didn't even know I'd gone and Jazzi asked me not to tell him because she thought he'd think badly of Harley for not coming straight home with me.

‘I was so scared,' she said. ‘I thought, if anything has happened to Bee, I'll never ever ever forgive myself. I'm so sorry, Bee, so very sorry, about the box and you seeing Harley like that and everything.'

‘It's okay,' I said, over and over again. ‘It's really okay, Jazzi.'

‘He can't help it.'

‘I know. But we were okay. We were just going to walk back to you, slowly and calmly. The way you have
to with anything scared.'

‘Oh, Bee, you are so brave and you have so much uncommon sense. I wish, I wish you could like me better. I wish I could be someone you wanted as a ... you know...'

We were sitting at the back of Maxi's Cafe where no one could see us. Jazzi had rung Dad on her mobile phone and told him we'd be back by lunch, that the shopping was taking a bit longer than she'd expected. She'd sounded all bright and breezy on the phone, but she didn't look like that. She had cried all her make-up off and then she'd had to go to the Ladies to clean up the smudges. She looked naked and prettier, as if all the crying had washed away more than the make-up.

‘I think,' I said, putting my hand on hers and noticing for the first time how our fingers were nearly the same length, ‘that we've misjudged each other. I think maybe we should have told each other more.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The story about Pepi made me so sad,' I told her. ‘The way he died when the car hit him and Harley was scared to come out of the phone box. That's a real story.'

‘I don't like to talk about it.' Jazzi twisted up the paper napkin so it was a spiral. ‘I like things to be perfect.'

I remembered her dinner party and the glasses glowing in the candlelight. ‘You can make some things look beautiful,' I said, ‘but other things are just
different. Like Harley's doll. You made that and the dress is perfect but he had to paint on the face he wanted. Just like my Bee box had stuff in it that didn't look good to anyone else.'

‘I'm sorry about your Bee box. If I'd known. Or if I'd paid more attention. It's all my fault. I want so much for Nick and me and you to be happy together.'

I knew that one day I'd tell Dad what happened, because it was a true story and you have to tell those when you can. But for the time being I was content to do it Jazzi's way. When we got home we didn't talk about me running away or calling Tony, Harley's doctor, and getting Harley to take his pills. We didn't talk about Pepi, who ran on to the road and got killed. I didn't tell Dad that Jazzi had written the guinea pig letters to me, but I read them all again because they were like seeing Jazzi without her make-up on and I liked that.

‘You know how it's Jazzi's birthday soon,' I said to Dad that night when he tucked me into bed.

‘Is it? Oh, Bee, what would I do without you to remind me about these things!'

‘Well, I've thought of a present,' I said. ‘I know she'd really love it.'

‘Yes?'

‘A dog. A little kind of dog. Not too little and not yappy but not a big dog either. Something medium-sized with soft fur.'

‘Are you sure this isn't a Bee present dressed up to look like a Jazzi present?'

‘Honest, Dad. I love puppies, of course, but this would have to be Jazzi's dog. I'll help look after it but it would belong to her.'

‘Well, I suppose all kids should have a dog in their lives at some stage and you are old enough.'

I rolled my eyes but I didn't say anything because in the end it didn't matter. Jazzi and I and the dog would know who really owned it and if we all loved it, well, isn't that better anyway?

I chose the dog, of course, because I knew exactly what I was looking for. She was little but not too little. She wasn't a complete breed of anything but she looked as though she could have been. She had the kind of fur you wanted to stroke. It was soft, not hard, and it was kind of grey and kind of brown. She had long eyelashes and floppy ears and a little curled tail that she wagged all the time.

Jazzi named the dog Coco, after Coco Chanel who designed dresses years ago and also to fit in with Fifi and Lulu who were guinea pigs with a French accent.

I woke up on the morning after Jazzi's birthday to find, written on my mirror in Jazzi's plum lipstick: ‘Coco, Fifi and Lulu, ze three musketeers, rule the world!' I didn't clean it off for ages, because it made me smile every time I read it.

Serena Sweetmay is
perfect.

Serena Sweetmay is beautiful and clever; she's good at school, is always chosen for the best part in any activity, and so when Aimee's class is selected to perform the school's Christmas play, everyone knows exactly who's going to be the star of the show.

But for once, just
once,
Aimee wants to shine, and to do that she has to out-angel the perfect Serena Sweetmay.

Luckily though, she has a plan, so nothing can go wrong.

Can it?