Time for Jas (14 page)

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from Flora’s play.

The only time I have seen
Romeo and Juliet
before was the film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and I’m not sure it’s fair to compare it to what we saw tonight. A big Hollywood movie with world-famous actors is not the same thing at all as a play staged in a tiny theatre above a pub where downstairs people are watching football on telly and you know whenever anybody scores because you can hear the cheers, and it smells of beer and chips and the landlord comes in halfway through a lightsabre fight to say, ‘Remind me what time you lot finish in here?’ then gets cross because people tell him to hush.

But still, I think I was expecting something grander.

Also, I don’t think
Romeo and Juliet
works when it’s set in outer space. Maybe if the theatre was bigger, and there were proper special effects, like spaceships that actually look like spaceships instead of someone’s furniture sprayed with bicycle paint, and proper uniforms like on
Star Trek,
and laser beams for the sword fights.

Maybe.

Even then, I don’t think I see the point. Like for the balcony scene, when Juliet comes out and starts to go on about how much she loves Romeo, and he climbs up and says how much he loves her too. In the film, that is a very romantic scene, and then it becomes funny and sweet as well because they both jump into a swimming pool and it makes you laugh but really you’re wishing that Leonardo DiCaprio would climb up to your window and jump into a swimming pool for you.

It’s just not the same when Romeo is wearing yellow tights and waving his legs about like he’s about to get sucked into a space vortex.

It was bad.

So bad the Japanese tourists and a couple of the journalists and even some of the relatives left at the interval, and when we all went down to the pub everyone spent ages choosing what sort of crisps and drinks they wanted and
Romeo and Juliet
(in Space) was like a giant white elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about.

The second half was even more awful, right up to the end when Juliet kills herself after finding Romeo dead and drags him out of the spaceship and the two of them spacewalk away together and she dies because she can’t breathe but they’re joined together
for ever by the bonds of love, except he lets go and floats away and it’s Leonardo DiCaprio all over again except now it’s
Titanic
but considerably less tragic because he’s wearing yellow tights.

There was a long silence as the actors lined up to take their bow, like the audience had no idea how to react. Then Dad got to his feet and started to cheer, then Zoran, and Skye dragged me up too and soon the entire audience of friends and family were standing and whooping, and it was worth sitting through the whole awful thing just for Flora’s happy, shining face.

‘Did you like it?’ she asked afterwards. She was glowing and she couldn’t keep still, but kept on hugging everybody.

Peter and Maud (still in her nightie) and Barney, who are all very good actors, were all ‘Darling you were magnificent,’ and Mum and Dad were all, ‘We’re so proud of you,’ but it was a lot more difficult for the rest of us.

‘It was mad,’ Skye said.

‘Spacey,’ Twig offered.

‘I didn’t understand a single thing,’ said Jas.

‘Blue?’

‘It was different,’ I said, and it shows how happy Flora is that she took these all as compliments.
Marek hasn’t answered my email. I’ve checked about a hundred times, and it did send, and there’s no notification saying it was the wrong address. Maybe he’s one of those people who never actually checks their inbox. But then if he was, why would he give me his email?

He doesn’t like it. That must be the thing. He doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t know how to tell me, and I don’t know which is worse. Him not liking it, or him being embarrassed about not liking it.

Oh God, how am I going to talk to him? Even look at him? Even be in the same classroom?

Maybe it will be all right. Maybe his dad will force him to go to St Llwydian and I will never have to see him again.

But then that would be so sad …

I am going to throw my phone away. No, I need it … I am going to wrap it up in a towel, and stuff it in a plastic bag, and bury the plastic bag in the garden until the end of the weekend. That way, I won’t be tempted to look at it again.

He still hasn’t replied to me.

Maybe my video isn’t good at all, and the others were all just being kind.

Maybe I will never have a film premiere in an Imax cinema, or make an Oscar acceptance speech,
or walk down a red carpet. My life will never be a Hollywood movie, and I will never wear glittering dresses but spend the rest of my days wrapped in old brown cardigans thrown out by my little sister.

Maybe Marek is horrifically embarrassed and doesn’t know how to tell me he hates it.

All the others left this morning, back to Scotland and Devon. Then, at about half-past three this afternoon, the house started to shake as Flora stormed down the stairs, shouting.

‘I hate journalists!’ Flora cried. ‘And reviewers! And critics! And the whole stupid internet!’

The house shook again as she slammed the front door.

We all looked up Flora’s reviews. It didn’t take long, because there weren’t many of them, and most were very short. ‘Absurd’ was the word that came up the most. Also, ‘preposterous’, ‘ridiculous’ and in one case, ‘a complete waste of an evening’. There were a few lines about Angel. One reviewer, who was nicer than most, said she thought it was possible he might one day do something interesting because he
obviously has a lot of imagination, and she also said that Flora was, ‘Not bad given the challenges of the production’ – meaning, I suppose, exactly what I wrote about the play: that it’s very difficult to look tragic and romantic when you’re also pretending to be swimming about in space.

Nobody else mentioned Flora at all, unless you count the review that said, ‘Every single aspect of this production was awful’.

Grown-up theatre critics are as mean as primary school cupcake girls.

I don’t think the show has sold many tickets. Twig went on the ticket-selling website and pretended to do a group booking for thirty people all wanting to sit together, and it wasn’t a problem at all.

Flora came back still in a temper and spent most of the evening in her room. Mum tried to talk to her, but Flora just told her to go away. Dad says that tomorrow he is going to call her drama school and convince them to take her back. He says the show probably won’t last its run and if Ms Foulkes-Watson will have her she can go back before Christmas.

Skye made Peter and Maud look at my film before they left. Maud loved it. She says she’s never going to take her nightdress off, and go about all the time leaping on walls to play the trumpet. Peter told her that one day I was going to make a film with them all in it, and she said, ‘Yes please!’ and also, ‘We’ll all be famous if you make us look like that.’ Peter said again about applying for that film course next summer.

I feel a little better about my lack of talent.

But there is still no news from Marek.

I didn’t have my camera with me this morning on the way to school, but if I had, and I’d decided to film, it would have looked something like this.

That is what it was like this morning on the way to school.

He’s better with pictures. Didn’t he tell me that himself?

And that picture … Those hands, touching! And the angel …

‘It’s Maud!’ said Jas. ‘It’s that video you took of her!’

‘Don’t be silly!’ I blushed. ‘It could be any old angel.’

‘And the girl …’ Dodi peered at her. ‘She looks like you.’

‘Just because she’s got plaits and glasses!’ I cried. ‘She could be anyone!’

They all stared. I marched away before they could see my huge, silly, delighted grin.

He liked it! That was all I could think. He liked it, and he likes me!

My heart thumped and thundered in my chest all the way to school. I’m surprised the others couldn’t hear it, or that they didn’t ask me if I was ill because I felt so sick. My mouth felt dry as sand as I walked in the school gates, and I honestly think if someone had spoken to me at that moment I wouldn’t have heard them, because the world felt like it does when you have a cold – woolly and distant and like you and it are in completely different places – and all I could think, along with he liked it he liked it he liked it was what do I say what do I say what do I say?

But he wasn’t there.

I checked my phone after first period. There was no message from him. I checked again after second and third period, during morning break and during Maths. Still no message. At lunchtime, I realised that he doesn’t have my phone number, only an email address. There’s no Wi-Fi at school, so I went to the library and checked my emails. Nothing. I opened a new email box, typed ‘Hope you’re OK, I loved the drawing’ really quickly and sent it before I lost my nerve, but when I checked again before leaving school, there was still nothing.

It rained this afternoon – heavy, solid rain. The kind of rain that soaks through your clothes in minutes, even if they are meant to be waterproof, that turns gutters into streams and bounces off the ground, and wipes away in seconds the all-night work of a secret street chalk artist. Twig had a match after school (rain doesn’t stop rugby), and Dodi was off with Jake. I ran most of the way home on my own, and as my feet hit the sodden pavement my brain kept repeating the excellent question posed by Gloria’s pigtailed pupil the day the ponies left the stable under the motorway, ‘What’s the point?’ and I started to feel angry.

What’s the point of not answering people when they write to you, like you asked them to?

What’s the point of drawing a stupid picture instead?

And what on earth is the point of pictures that disappear?

When I reached the square, I went to his house. I wasn’t even nervous when I rang the bell, just cross, but it was nothing to how I feel now. Then I was just cross with Marek for not answering my email, for not telling me straight out that he liked my drawing, for not even talking to me since we stood together on Hungerford Bridge.

Now I am massively, ginormously FURIOUS with the ENTIRE WORLD.

Mrs Valenta opened the door on my second ring. Her eyes were puffy, like she’d been crying.

‘Oh,’ she said in a tiny, teary voice. ‘It’s Bluebell, isn’t it? I’m afraid now isn’t a very good …’

Somewhere behind her, two people were yelling at each other.

‘I just came … I mean, Marek wasn’t in school …’

Mr Valenta suddenly appeared behind his wife. His face was very red – almost purple, in fact.

‘Now is not a good time to talk to Marek,’ he informed me.

‘Tata!’ Marek roared, still out of sight, but Mr Valenta said, ‘Goodbye, young lady,’ and closed the door in my face.

As I left, I saw the neighbour’s curtain twitch.

Twig was in the garden when I got back, standing in the pouring rain in full rugby kit, kicking a football against the wall. Water dripped off his hair and down his neck, and his clothes were so wet they were practically see-through except where they were thick with mud.

‘What on earth is going on?’ I asked Pixie.

Pixie looked upset and said I had better ask him, so I opened the door and shouted at Twig to come in. He aimed another kick at the football, decapitated a late-flowering geranium and yelled back that he was probably going to stay in the garden for ever.

‘But why?’

He kicked the ball again. ‘Because …’ the ball bounced back – ‘of stupid …’ he kicked it again – ‘stupid, STUPID …’ bounce – ‘RUGBY!’

The ball sailed into Mrs Henderson’s garden. Twig gave a howl of rage.

‘What about stupid rugby?’ I asked.

‘THEY’RE DROPPING ME!’ he roared. ‘FROM THE TEAM! COACH SAYS I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH!’

I stepped outside – I was already almost as wet as him anyway – and looked at him more closely.

‘Don’t cry,’ I said.

‘I’M NOT CRYING!’

Twig had found an old tennis ball and was hurling that at the wall now instead. Water flew off it every time it hit the brick.

Pixie appeared at the garden door with Pumpkin on her hip. ‘Come inside, Twig,’ she said, and suddenly all the fight went out of him and he started crying properly.

Jas was sitting in the kitchen when we squelched back in, sticking bits of torn-up red tissue paper on to her geranium painting.

‘It’s meant to make it more lifelike,’ she complained. ‘But Mr Boniface doesn’t like it. He says he doesn’t understand how it relates to the circle of life.’

‘How does it?’ I asked cautiously.

‘I don’t know!’ Jas wailed. ‘I don’t even understand what the circle of life is! Do you know what Megan and Chandra and Courtney and Fran are doing? They’re going as the four seasons. The four seasons! They’re being a living painting. Apparently that exists. Megan’s mum is making them each a dress. Courtney is going as an icicle, and Chandra is an oak tree, and Fran is going as an autumn leaf and Megan is going as a daffodil and bringing a lamb.’

‘A lamb? In school? In London? In November?’

‘Her uncle has a farm and there are lambs on it. And Todd has made a tree out of papier-mâché which is as tall as he is, and he’s going to make paper fruit and blossom and birds to hang on it. He says I can share it if I want.’

‘Well there you go then,’ I said. ‘Go and ring him up right now and tell him.’

‘I don’t want to share Todd’s project. They’ll say I’m cheating and also that he’s my boyfriend. I hate school. I just want to die and never go back ever again.’

And then she burst into tears.

Later, when everyone had stopped crying and was dry and warm again, and Pixie had cooked a huge dish of spaghetti and Jas had taken Pumpkin into bed with her to read him a story, and I was trying to do my homework but actually thinking about Marek, Twig came into my room and slumped on the end of my bed.

‘I’m sorry about the team,’ I told him. ‘Though it was kind of obvious you weren’t really enjoying it.’

Twig said, ‘It is extremely difficult in this family to admit that you’re not good at anything.’

He picked at my duvet while I thought about this.

‘Everybody is so brilliant at everything,’ he went on when I didn’t say anything. ‘It’s all, oh Blue is a
secret film genius and isn’t Jas a marvellous poet and Flora’s going to be a star.’

‘But you’re clever,’ I said. ‘You’re so clever. And none of us are brilliant, you know. Flora’s play is awful, and Jas is a terrible artist, and there is really no way I am a genius.’

‘I don’t care about being clever!’ Twig cried. ‘That’s only good for school. I want to be good at something else.’

I felt completely helpless. ‘Maybe sport just isn’t your thing,’ I suggested.

Twig announced he was giving up and shuffled away to his bedroom.

But Marek not talking to me and Jas crying about the cupcake girls and Twig crying over rugby and even Mr Valenta closing the door in my face are not the reason I am so angry.

The reason I am massively, ginormously FURIOUS with the ENTIRE WORLD is this.

Marek did answer my email, eventually. His reply to my question, ‘Are you OK?’ was just one line.

‘No,’ Marek wrote. ‘I am not OK. Dad found out about the drawings, and they are sending me to Wales.’

Marek’s leaving at the end of next week.

He didn’t even come to school today. Mr Valenta says he has to carry on going to Clarendon Free until he goes, but I guess Marek doesn’t care what his father says any more because when I came home he was waiting for me sitting on our wall, wearing a sweatshirt covered in chalk dust and a miserable expression on his face.

‘Can I come in?’ he asked.

I don’t know what Marek makes of the difference between his house and ours. I noticed every chip and scuff and stain on the walls on the way down to the kitchen, but when I glanced at him he was still wearing exactly the same scowl, and not looking at anything at all.

It was the picture of the miniature dachshund that did it, he said.

‘Violet’s been going on about it for ages,’ he told me as I made us tea. ‘I knew it was kind of stupid when I did it, but I couldn’t resist. I feel so sorry for that dog. She’s always yanking his lead and it’s not good for dachshunds to be so fat, because they have very sensitive backs. Anyway, she has been looking for the culprit – that’s what she said, culprit not
artist – for ages. At first she thought it was you, because of the drawings you did in your front garden, but Mrs Henderson told her it couldn’t possibly be, because none of you were good enough. She’s been sniffing around searching for clues, and then yesterday morning …’

He stopped to draw breath. ‘I’m so stupid,’ he said. ‘I’m normally so careful.’

‘What happened yesterday morning?’ I asked.

It was the poor little fat dachshund again, being taken out for his morning walk. How was Marek to know Violet Doriot-Buffet’s husband always went out so early? That he didn’t just let the dog into the garden, but took it out for a jog (or in the case of the dachshund, waddle) around the block? Marek usually gets home much earlier from his night-time drawing sessions, and he usually always covers his chalk-covered clothes with a coat in case anyone sees him. But his father was up late working on the night of the Hungerford Bridge picture, and Marek fell asleep. He didn’t sneak out until after four o’clock in the morning, the drawing took a long time to get right and it was cold that night too. He kept his coat on, and it got covered in dust.

It turns out I was right about one thing: a chalk
artist, after spending many hours drawing, is a very multi-coloured sight, and impossible to ignore.

Marek passed Mr Doriot-Buffet in the street, just round the corner from the Hungerford Bridge drawing. Mr Doriot-Buffet saw Marek, saw the picture, realised who had drawn the picture of his dog doing a poo, put two and two together, and told his wife as soon as she woke up, and she went straight over before breakfast to tell the Valentas.

‘I’ve no doubt the police will want to get involved,’ Mrs Doriot-Buffet said, when she told Marek’s parents their son had been busy vandalising public property all over the neighbourhood and also, incidentally, that she always cleaned up after her dog.

‘And so that was that,’ Marek said. ‘Dad went ballistic, Mum cried and I am off to Wales. I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it after the argument we had, but he rang them first thing and they said I can start immediately. Tata’s over the moon. He ordered the whole uniform online himself, cross-country running shoes and all.’

‘But you can’t go if you don’t want to!’ I cried.

‘You try telling Tata that.’

For once, there was nobody in the kitchen. Marek absently took a chalk out of his pocket and started to draw with it on the table. A mountain appeared
as I watched, and then a little figure, trudging uphill with a bag on his back.

‘I thought your film was awesome, Blue.’

Something swelled up inside me then, growing bigger and bigger till I thought I was going to burst, but this time it wasn’t happiness that he liked my film, but sadness for him.

‘Has your dad actually seen your drawings?’ I asked. ‘Does he know how good you are?’

‘It wouldn’t change anything even if he had,’ Marek said.

The chalks I bought from the toy shop were still sitting where we left them weeks ago on the dresser. I selected a pink one at random, and drew a daisy on the table.