Emily on Ice

 

 

Emily’s birthday is in February. She doesn’t invite everyone to her party like Matthew did his. She just asks me and Alexander.

“What about us?” says Matthew.

Emily shakes her head. Her eyes get big and round.

“Don’t be so rude,” says Mrs Angus. “Emily can invite who she likes. I’m not surprised she doesn’t want you there, after what you do to her.”

Matthew and Josh were showing Hannah kung fu yesterday. Only Josh got fed up with the whole unarmed-conflict thing and whacked Matthew over the head with Emily’s chair. While Emily was trying to sit on it.

I don’t say anything to Emily when I get my invitation, but I can’t stop smiling, all through spellings-and-tables.

 

The party is a skating party.

“Have you ever been skating before?” Emily’s mum asks us, in the car.

“Once,” I say.

Emily can skate already. She slides straight off on to the ice and spins around. She looks like a ballerina.

“Come on, you two!” Emily’s mum says, to Alexander and me.

Alexander looks terrified. He holds on to the side and edges his way round. Even I can do better than that. I don’t hold on to the edge. I inch forward, arms held out. Emily skates round me.

“Push sideways with your feet,” she says. “Like this.”

I try and I go forward. Emily holds on to my hand.

“Let’s go fast,” she says. I’m sure I’m going to fall. I’m sure. But I push with my feet and I seem to do OK.

Emily on ice is completely different to everyday Emily. She talks, like a proper person. We skate all the way around and then we pick up Alexander, who’s still clinging to the side. We hold one hand each and pull him.

“Oh,” he says. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it.”

“Not even fast?”

“Especially not!” he says, and falls over.

He goes off with Emily’s little brother to buy crisps. Emily and I go round again. Emily shows me how to go backwards and I almost do it. And I only fall over twice, the whole time.

“That’s a lovely skating skirt, Molly,” says Emily’s mum. She can skate too. My skirt is the red one Mum made me. “It goes lovely with those dark curls.”

“I hate my hair,” I say. “I wish I had blonde hair.”

“I wish I had curls,” says Emily.

Afterwards we have chips in the café, and I teach Emily Mum’s spy game, where you have to work out which of the people around you are secret agents in disguise. The hunched-up old lady with the wrinkles and the pink lipstick definitely is – why would someone so small and shrivelled-looking want to go ice-skating?

“Unless she’s an alien,” says Emily, and we both go off into giggles.

“Emily, behave,” says Emily’s mum, but she smiles at me and Alexander. “I’m so pleased Emily’s met you two. She had a hard time when she started at that school.”

“School’s horrible,” says Alexander. I look at him, surprised. I thought Alexander liked school. I thought everyone did except me (and maybe Hannah). And actually there are lots of things at school that I like. Miss Shelley, and art, and nature, and playing games all together and the play and Emily and Alexander and. . .

“. . .if she’d say yes?”

Emily’s mum is looking at me.

“What?” I say.

“I said, you seemed to enjoy skating,” she says.

“Oh yes.”

“Well,” says Emily’s mum. “Emily comes here every Wednesday. It’s a bit lonely, being the only one from here. We’d be happy to take bring you along, if your grandma doesn’t mind.”

Emily sits straight up. “Yes!” she says. “Come, come, come!”

“And you too, of course, Alexander,” Emily’s mum says, but Alexander looks horrified.

“Will you?” says Emily. “Will you, will you?”

I don’t say anything. I’m thinking – about having friends. About learning to spin and go properly fast. If I could be a skater when I grow up, it wouldn’t matter that I don’t have blonde hair. Or maybe I’ll be an artist, or run a shop like Grandma, or write books, about all the magic in the world. Or maybe I’ll do them all. I could do anything, I think, and I feel the corners of my cheeks turning up, turning into a smile so big it’s like my whole face is beaming.

“Yes, please,” I say.