The Day Of Second Chances (3 page)

Her mind went to Honor as they ran. A fall. She couldn't picture Honor ever falling. She could only picture Honor standing straight.

IT STARTED WITH
yoghurt.

Does that sound dramatic, or dumb? The How To Write book I'm reading says that you should open your stories with a dramatic line, something to pull the reader in. The problem is, of course, what sort of dramatic line do you choose, when nothing really dramatic happens to you ever? Just a series of little events that cause way more worry than you would think, if you observed them from the outside?

Well, there was the one dramatic thing that happened to Dad. But I wasn't there.

Anyway, it did start with yoghurt, so that's how I'll begin my story. I was in the lunch queue trying to decide between a strawberry and an apricot yoghurt. Apricot is vile, but it was low-fat, and the strawberry was full-fat. Personally, I do not give a flying monkey about whether a yoghurt is low-fat or not, but Avril is doing this thing where you check the package of everything you eat for how many grams of fat and sugar and carbs it has, and then you enter it into some app on your phone. Erin and Sophie and Olivia are doing it because they are the eating disorder girls, and for some reason Avril has taken it up too because of some imaginary cellulite on her thighs. It won't last. She can't resist Maltesers.

But right now they're obsessed, and I knew that if I came back to the table with a full-fat yoghurt after eating my entire packed lunch, they would all watch every mouthful I took, imagining it appearing directly on my hips. Not that I care about what the Bulimia Buddies think. I eat when I'm hungry like a normal person.

But Avril. So I reached for the apricot.

‘Hey lezza, move your fat arse.'

It was Darren Raymond, standing ahead of me in the queue – I recognized the spots on the back of his neck, which are my pleasant view every Maths lesson. He was talking to someone standing in front of the service area. Tall, lumpy, holding her empty tray in front of her. That new girl, the one with the funny name.

‘Yeah, get moving, you're holding up the whole queue,' said another boy.

‘Some of us are hungry for something other than pussy.'

The queue erupted into laughter. The new girl's face was bright red. Her eyes were searching for a grown-up, someone to say something, to tell the boys off for swearing, but the dinner ladies had disappeared.

‘I'm – I'm waiting for my lunch,' she stammered. ‘I'm – it's a special lunch, gluten free.'

‘It's a special lunch, gluten free,' mocked one of the boys, I couldn't see which one. But I could see the girl's hands on her tray: white-knuckled, and shaking. I didn't know her name, but anyone could see how she felt.

‘And pussy-flavoured,' said Darren, the wit.

‘Oh, grow up,' I called at him. ‘You're never going to know what pussy tastes like, Darren, except in your dreams.'

Roaring laughter. Darren Raymond's spotty neck went pink. On the other side of the service hatch, a dinner lady showed up with a single plate of food, looking around, half-smiling, to try to discover what the joke was about. I squeezed up the side of the queue and went to pay for my yoghurt (and just for the record, £1.40 is way too much for a small pot of fruit-flavoured bacteria).

At the table, Avril was folding her napkin into a little crane. She perched it on my palm when I sat next to her: it was so light it barely weighed anything. Something about the tilt of its head reminded me of her.

‘That's your best yet,' I told her.

‘It's for you. A little gift to celebrate your return.'

‘Why, thank you, darling.' We traded a complicit look. It's you and me against all the rest of these idiots.

Darling.

Erin was twisting a plastic straw into a gnarled shape. ‘I have no idea how you eat so much and stay so slim, Lyds.'

‘Witchcraft,' I said, peeling the top off my yoghurt, though Erin didn't mean it as a question. It doesn't take a genius to know that I can eat a lot and stay slim because I run about a million miles every week. She just wanted to make me feel self-conscious, because that's the way she'd feel if she ate anything more than a single apple at lunchtime. As if we didn't all know that she ate her own body weight in Doritos every evening before chucking it all up in the toilet.

Anyway, I was taking the top of my yoghurt off and dipping my plastic spoon into it because they don't trust us with proper cutlery – Mr Graham is always banging on about ecology, he should have a word with the school meals service and their plastic everything – when I noticed there was someone standing next to me.

It was that new girl, whatever her name was, something beginning with B. Her tray had a plate with some orange-ish mess on it; her cheeks were still flushed red. Or maybe that was the way she always looked. Her hair was short but it flopped into her eyes, because her fringe was long.

‘I just – I just wanted to say,' said the new girl. ‘You know. Thank you.'

All of the other girls at the table were looking at us. I could actually feel them counting the seats, making a calculation: five chairs filled with people, one heaped with books and pencil cases and jumpers. The new girl's parting was pale against her dark hair. Her jumper was too new and her skirt was too long, above white folded ankle socks.

I shrugged. ‘The boys were being stupid, and I wanted to get my lunch.'

The new girl nodded and paused for a moment, as if she were considering asking us to move the jumpers so she could sit down. But then she carried on walking. She found an empty table at the far end of the room and sat down.

‘What happened?' Avril asked. ‘Why was she thanking you?'

I told them about it. Avril laughed, and the other girls giggled and glanced at Darren Raymond and his table, who were all throwing bits of bread roll at each other by now. Darren is a straight-up geek, maths and computer nerd, and spotty to boot. The type of person who needs someone to pick on to hide how socially inadequate they really are.

‘God, they are so ignorant,' said Erin, sighing elaborately. ‘Anyone can see that she's not gay.'

‘Really?' I said, licking yoghurt off my spoon. I couldn't really taste it. ‘How can you tell?'

‘She doesn't look anything like Georgie and Whitney.'

‘I'm not really an expert, but I don't think that all gay girls look exactly like each other,' said Avril.

‘It's a weird name, though,' said Sophie. ‘It's a boy's name.'

‘And that haircut,' said Olivia. ‘She could do with some make-up.'

‘And losing a couple of stone.'

‘Just because she's ugly, it doesn't mean she's a lesbo,' said Erin. ‘Georgie and Whitney aren't ugly. Well, Whitney isn't.'

‘Ooh, you fancy Whitney,' tittered Sophie.

‘Shut up.'

‘I would hate to be called a lesbo,' said Avril. ‘I'm still hungry, Lyds, can I have some of your yoghurt?'

I slid the container over to her. ‘Have the rest of it. I'm not hungry any more.' I picked up the paper crane she had made.

The new girl sat alone, eating her gloppy lunch. I didn't look in her direction but I knew she was there. I could feel her, and I've kept on thinking about her, for the rest of today, which is why I'm writing about her now.

It was a stupid thing to do. I've forged a connection between us, and now I'm going to notice her everywhere, when up till now I've been blissfully ignorant. I'm going to notice how the new girl doesn't have any friends; how her white socks look nearly the same colour as her legs; how people whisper and turn their backs. I'm going to notice the sniggers when teachers say her weird, boy-name. Which isn't even that weird, it turns out. Someone told me after; her name is Bailey. Girls have boys' names all the time. Nobody picks on Tyler, or Billie. If the new girl were cooler, she could totally pull it off.

But she's not. She lugs that name around with her like she lugs her extra weight, her make-up-free face, her gluten-free lunch. And those little-girl socks.

God, if you could just tell these people. Blend in. Watch, and copy. It's so much easier. People are looking at you all the time. They're making up their minds about you. It's better to decide yourself what they're going to see.

But you can't say that. Not to someone who doesn't know it instinctively. Not to someone with no sense of self-preservation.

I sat at that lunch table today, twirling the crane in my hand, feeling Avril beside me eating from my spoon, feeling the others surrounding me with their chatter and security. A bubble, as fragile as a paper crane.

I stroked my finger against the crane's wings, slowly, one carefully folded wing then the other, watching them bend under my touch.

I still have it. It's sitting on my desk right now, looking at me.

Does that sound dramatic, or dumb?

‘Go on, Lyds, give us a picture,' said Harry Carter. He was lounging against the wall as if he were posing for the cover of a boy-band album.

Lydia would have kept on walking, but the corridor was narrower there and she had to slow down because of the Harry Carter effect on passing traffic. She stopped and struck a pose. ‘Sure, take one now,' she said.

He pouted. ‘You know that's not the kind of picture I mean.'

‘Oh hi, Harry,' said Avril.

‘I know exactly what kind of picture you mean,' Lydia told him. ‘Do I look like the stupid kind of girl who would give you a picture to share on the internet with all of your pathetic friends?'

Harry's smile got wider. He had very white teeth, straight and even like a pop star's, and a dimple that half of the upper school were desperate to touch. Sophie had written his name at least a thousand times in the back of her notebook.

‘I heard what you said at lunchtime,' he said. ‘You told Darren Raymond all about your pussy.'

‘What I said was that he wouldn't get near mine, or anyone else's, in a thousand years.'

‘I think you're hot.'

‘Think all you like, thinking is free.'

Blend in, watch and copy.
Although in this case, Lydia was mostly copying from television, because nobody knocked back Harry Carter in real life.

He leaned forward and whispered, ‘Take one in the bathroom after school and text it to me. I won't share it with anyone else, promise.'

‘In your dreams,' she said, and winked at him, before turning away.

‘Just like Darren Raymond!' yelled Harry after them, turning to his friends and laughing.

She linked her arm with Avril's. ‘Come on, or we'll be late and we won't get to sit together.'

‘Will you?' Avril asked as they reached the English block.

‘Will I what?'

‘Send Harry a picture.'

‘God, why would I do something like that?'

They reached the classroom early enough for there still to be seats together at the back. ‘He's fit,' said Avril. ‘And I think he likes you.'

‘Not my type.'

‘He might send you a picture back.'

‘Bleugh.'

‘Do you really not like him? Oh, do you have a pencil?'

Lydia gave Avril a pencil. ‘Why are you going on about Harry? You don't like him, do you?'

‘No, I wasn't saying I
liked
Harry – I was wondering about him for you.'

‘Because I thought you liked Zane.'

Avril shrugged. ‘He's a little – I don't know, boring.'

‘How do you know he's boring? He never says anything.'

Zane was, in fact, way too thick for Avril. He was totally safe.

‘We Facebooked last night,' said Avril.

‘Zane can type? That's a surprise.'

‘He can't spell.'

Lydia laughed in relief. ‘You need a speller?'

‘I just want someone who has something to say, you know?'

‘Like Harry?'

‘I wasn't saying that.'

‘How bad was his spelling?'

Avril took her phone out of her bag to show her; Lydia hung over her desk.

‘Miss Toller? Miss Levinson?' said Miss Drayton, walking into the room, and Lydia instantly launched herself back into her seat. ‘Is that your phone, Avril? Could I trouble you to turn it off and hand it to me for the duration of the lesson? We only have a few weeks until your exams, and I would like all of your attention, please. Then get out your copy of
Far From the Madding Crowd
and read to us from page 115. Start from the beginning of the chapter.'

Avril shot Lydia a wry look and gave her phone into Miss Drayton's hand. She dug out her dog-eared, annotated paperback copy of the novel as Miss Drayton placed her confiscated booty on the top of her desk, a reminder to anyone else who might think of texting or tweeting during English. ‘
The hollow amid the ferns
,' she began.

Lydia put her finger in her paperback to hold the place and she watched Avril.

When you spent most of your time with someone, you hardly ever got to really look at them. You were too busy looking at other things together. Even when you were talking to each other, you never actually stared at someone. You only glanced, glanced away, looked at other things.

Looking at her now was like a stolen square of chocolate, melting over Lydia's tongue in the secrecy of her closed mouth.

Avril had rich dark hair, almost brown enough to be black, straightened today and spilling over her shoulders. She always tucked it behind her ears. Her fingernails were bitten short. She wore a tiny silver shell ring that Lydia brought back for her from Naxos when she'd gone on holiday there, before Mum and Richard had split up.