I’m at the Rave, which is just another boring school party in the main hall. All I want to do is go home again.
The storm is still raging and everyone arrives screaming with their hair wet and telling insane stories about flooded roads and lightning strikes on trees. The Jayne family come in, arm in arm, wearing the same outfit: denim shorts, black tights, glittery vests and shaggy knee-high boots. Jess Jayne takes one look at me in a T-shirt and jeans and sneers, “Come in fancy dress, did you?”
She always makes me feel so small. Cow!
I look around for Kim but she’s already made a beeline for Steven Goddard who plays trumpet in the band. He’s helping her with her audition for the Youth Orchestra next week. She’s so wired up about it when he hands her a cola she nearly drops it.
Why’s Kim hanging out with him tonight? I thought we were going to find our 12th Years. Steven’s such a geek. He’s got his shirt belted into his jeans and his hair’s slicked down with gel and parted at the side. His uniform is always immaculate too and he brings his books to school in a briefcase. His mum picks him up sometimes and I see her leaning against her silver Toyota, cell phone to her ear.
I can’t see Mrs. Goddard with safety pins in her jeans.
I go over and say hi, but they’re too absorbed in Mozart to notice me.
Steven’s saying to Kim, “Remember the change to allegro in the fifteenth bar, they’ll be looking for that.”
Kim groans. “It’s the fingering,” she says, and Steven nods sympathetically.
I drift off and pretend to be interested in drinking a can of lemonade. Kim doesn’t even look up. My 12th Year hasn’t appeared. I’m alone again as usual.
In the end I go into the bathroom, lock myself into a cubicle and check my cell phone for texts. Maybe Samir has borrowed a phone and is trying to get hold of me. I gave him my number in case of an emergency.
There’s no sign of him at the Rave. Probably couldn’t afford the ticket. I had trouble scraping together five pounds to get in and I’m not even enjoying myself. But there’s nothing on my phone.
Then I hear a crowd of girls shoving through the door, chattering and laughing, and it makes me feel even more miserable and lonely and unpopular. What has happened between me and Kim? We don’t seem to be close anymore. There hasn’t been a minute to speak to her about everything that’s happened with Samir and our man. Whenever I try to start a conversation with her she just says, “Yeah, in a minute, just got to finish this concerto.”
It’s hard to know who to trust if you don’t know what they’re thinking. Can I trust Kim with my secret? Am I doomed to get everyone wrong all the time?
I can hear Jess Jayne, the leader of the Jayne family, with Sarah Jayne and Emily, going on and on about boys and it’s so boring.
I flush the toilet and just as it stops I hear Jess say, “Well who cares, everyone calls that muppet Two Percent now.”
There’s a general laugh and then a small voice says, “Alix doesn’t.” It’s Kim! And she’s standing up for me against the combined meanness of the entire Jayne family.
I open the door and everyone turns to look. There’s a couple of girls leaning on the sinks at the far end and they’re waiting to see what the Jayne family will do next.
Jess Jayne gives a snort and says, “Lindy’s right. You must be desperate to stick up for him.”
“Since when did you care what Lindy Bellows thinks?” I say, and Kim gives me the thumbs up. But my heart’s thumping away in my chest. Emily and Sarah lean over and whisper behind their hands and giggle.
“Lindy’s okay,” says Jess, and she’s tapping on her iPhone. The Jayne family are all rich snobs. “She’s almost as mean as us.”
Sarah and Emily shriek behind their hands.
“She likes to keep her nails sharp,” hisses Sarah, and she pretends to rake Emily’s face.
I feel a shudder go through me and Kim starts tugging at my arm to go.
Jess gives a snort and says, “At least she’s not a dwarf like your little mate,” she says, nodding at Kim, who only comes up to her shoulders.
Everyone’s staring at me and Kim is almost wrenching my arm off but I can’t leave it at that, can I?
“Yeah, Lindy’s really lovely,” I say, “until she decides to carve her name on your face with her nails. Still, it’ll match your lip gloss, won’t it?”
A ripple of laughter goes around and Jess’s mouth drops open. Result!
Kim literally shoves me through the door and we race down the corridor and leap in the air doing a high five.
We’re back, I think. Then she starts going on and on about how nice Steven is and doesn’t he have lovely lips, perfect for playing the trumpet, as if I’d notice, and how he keeps offering to go over her audition with her and should she invite him home to practice or should they keep it professional and only meet in school, until I can’t stand it anymore and I blurt out, “So what did you mean about Samir when you said, If you like that sort of thing?”
Kim stops and stares at me, probably because I’m practically shrieking in her face, and says, “What?”
Her eyes are sort of clouded with worry and confusion and I wonder if I’ve got this wrong. “Samir isn’t a sort of thing; he’s a boy in our form who gets bullied for being foreign. They call him a Paki and push him around. He doesn’t need Lindy on his back as well and I always thought me and you were the same on stuff like that.”
My voice sort of trails off and then Kim grabs my arm, really tight, and says in this strained voice, “Of course we are. We think the same about everything, how mean the Jayne family are and Lindy Bellows and how yuck tuna melt paninis are and how dumb parents are most of the time and you know we think exactly the same about bullying and racism. We’re against it. That’s final.”
“So what did you mean?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” Kim says.
But I can’t leave it at that. “So why did you ignore me in the playground?”
“When?” she says amazed.
“I was shooting baskets with Samir yesterday lunchtime after Lindy had called him Two Percent in front of everyone. He’s always on his own at break times. But you walked along the edge of the playground with your head down and just ignored me.” I sound like a hurt puppy whining away but I can’t help it.
“I had a practice audition and I had to get the Mozart absolutely perfect or Mrs. Whitehead would scream at me. I wasn’t ignoring you. And just so you know, I never listen to anything Lindy Bellows says, I am not racist, I would never be racist and I can’t believe you would think that of me.” And her eyes begin to fill with tears.
Oh God!
I stand there feeling like a bit of rubbish washed up on the beach and then I feel Kim’s hand slipping into mine. She gives it a squeeze and says, “Sorted?”
She grins up at me and the red lights in her hair are gleaming under the strobes.
“Sorted,” I say.
And I nearly tell her right there and then all about Mohammed but everyone is screaming and the DJ is winding the crowd up and Kim pulls me into the middle and suddenly we’re all jumping up and down to the Arctic Monkeys and I can’t think about anything except the music and the strobes.