Monday morning does not get off to a promising start.
“What does EP mean?” asks Tally, staring at the family calendar.
“Hmm?” Mum isn’t listening. “Do you want cheese or ham in your sandwich today?”
Tally frowns. She always has cheese. She used to have ham until she saw a documentary on her iPad about pigs, and now the very thought of ham makes her feel squirmy inside.
“Why is it written under my name for next month?” She stares at the letters. She doesn’t know what they stand for, but something is telling her that it isn’t anything good.
“Why is what written where?” asks Mum, yanking open the fridge door. “We’re out of cheese. It’ll have to be ham.”
Tally stamps her foot and Mum finally looks at her.
“Please not today, Tally. I’ve got a major meeting at the art gallery and Dad had to go in to work early, so I need you onboard this morning.”
“I. Hate. Ham,” hisses Tally through her teeth.
Mum starts buttering two slices of bread. “Fine. You can have a bread sandwich instead.”
Tally watches as Mum places the two slices together and then cuts them into neat squares before putting them into Tally’s lunchbox along with an apple, some raisins and a cereal bar.
“What is EP?” she repeats.
Maybe she’s got it wrong. Perhaps it is something good? It could mean lots of things.
Exciting Prize.
Entertaining Person.
Then again it could be bad.
Eavesdropping Pest.
Exasperated Parent.
“I’m going to give you some grapes, too,” says Mum. “Maybe you can make a grape sandwich at lunchtime? And we’ve got an appointment to see someone in a few weeks – just for a chat.”
“Who?” Tally is instantly suspicious. “What about?”
Mum smiles at her, but while her mouth manages to turn itself upwards, her eyes don’t get the message. “It’s nothing to worry about,” she assures Tally. “We just want to get a bit of help for you, lovely girl.”
Those are the words that her lying mouth says, anyway. The words that she actually means and the words that fling themselves deep into Tally’s head are entirely the opposite.
It’s everything to worry about.
“Are you seeing a doctor, then?” asks Nell, looking up from her bowl of cereal.
“Kind of,” says Mum. “She’s sort of like a doctor who helps figure out what’s going on inside people’s heads.”
If someone told Tally at this exact moment that the world had stopped rotating then she would believe it. Everything seems to stand still while she contemplates what Mum has just said. She isn’t sick and she doesn’t need a doctor. And she absolutely does not want to meet anyone who can see what’s going on inside her head, because when she imagines her thoughts, she pictures them a bit like a tangled, knotted-up piece of wool, and she likes it that way. The last thing she wants is someone pulling on the end and unravelling it all.
Unravelling her.
She can’t let this happen.
The morning becomes worse when Nell can’t find her homework book and gets all angry, and then Mum gets even angrier when it’s eventually tracked down in Tally’s room. Tally tells a red-faced Nell that maybe next time she won’t call her an annoying baby, which makes Nell stomp downstairs so loudly that one of the picture frames fall off the wall.
The one with Tally cuddling a baby lamb at the petting zoo, obviously. Not the one of Nell with the alpacas. She’s far too lucky to break one of her own pictures.
Then Tally’s socks feel wrong, and Mum won’t listen when Tally tries to tell her that she needs a different pair. Tally has to hide under the duvet and refuse to come out until Mum finds her a pair that doesn’t feel so scratchy.
By the time they reach the school gates, the playground is empty.
Mum hands Tally her lunchbox.
“I’ll see you later,” she tells her, leaning down to give her a kiss. “You’d better hurry – you’re quite late.”
Tally lurches away, moving her head rapidly from side to side to check that nobody is watching. She can’t remember when Mum trying to kiss her or hug her in public became the worst thing ever, but there’s no way she can cope with the thought of anyone seeing anything so humiliating. It’s bad enough when Mum starts laughing in that loud way that she has. Tally has tried to tell her to stop, but the first few times it just made her laugh even more, and then it made her face crumple up like she was going to cry. Both of these things left Tally feeling all empty inside, like a leaky bucket.
“Oh, Tally,” sighs Mum. “Try to have a good day.”
Tally walks across the playground, not turning to wave at Mum when she reaches the entrance. She’s sick and tired of hearing those words. If anyone ever wrote the story of her life then they’d probably call it Oh, Tally, because that’s all anyone ever seems to say to her these days.
Her feet slow down as she trudges up the stairs. She’s in no rush to get into the classroom. She knows exactly what she’s going to find – everyone eagerly talking about the production and Carrie and the songs and her wonderful voice, and she needs some time to put on her I don’t care face.
She hangs her coat on her peg in the cloakroom and then sits down on the bench that runs beneath it. She can’t stay out here for long, but she can at least delay her entrance to the classroom by a few minutes. The cloakroom is quiet, so when she hears the noise it startles her enough to make her leap to her feet. The high-pitched keening sounds like an injured animal, and her heart starts to race. Spinning round, she stares hard at the corner of the cloakroom where a pile of coats is lying on the bench, wondering if maybe a badger or a fox or perhaps a cat has snuck inside to keep safe. She really hopes it isn’t a badger. Tally loves all animals, but some of them are a bit less cute and cuddly than others.
She takes a careful step forward, and the pile of coats shifts and rearranges itself into something recognizable. Tally releases the breath that she didn’t know she was holding.
“Oh. It’s only you.”
The thing making the noise is the opposite of cute and cuddly, and Tally would rather confront one hundred badgers than one of him.
The noise stops abruptly, and Luke’s face emerges from the coats. It’s wet, and if Tally didn’t know him better then she’d think he’d been crying.
“Get lost, weirdo,” he snarls. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere playing imaginary horse games like a three-year-old?”
Tally glowers at him. “Shut up,” she snaps back. “I’m not the one hiding.”
He straightens up and narrows his eyes at her. “Oh yeah? Cos you don’t exactly look like you’re in a hurry to get into class.”
“I’m telling Miss Balogun that you’re out here,” Tally retorts, turning and walking towards the year six door. She might not want to go in there, but it’s got to be better than staying anywhere that awful Luke is.
“Not if I get there first.” He barges past her and flings open the door. “Sorry I’m late, Miss Balogun! My gran needed someone to get her some bread and there was nobody else to do it.”
Tally follows him inside. There’s no way Miss Balogun is going to believe that. Everyone knows that Luke is vile and doesn’t care about anyone except himself. Not even his gran.
Miss Balogun turns away from the whiteboard and looks at Luke with a strange expression on her face. Tally slips into her seat and waits for the explosion. Miss Balogun is a pretty calm teacher, but the one thing she can’t stand is lying.
“That was very kind of you, Luke,” she says, and Tally shakes her head, wondering if she’s heard correctly. “Your gran is a very lucky lady to have such a considerate grandson.”
Luke smiles and walks to the back of the room, giving Ameet a high-five as he passes. Miss Balogun starts to hand out the English books, and Tally pulls out her newest pencil case, the sequin one that she convinced Mum to buy for her at the weekend.
“I love that!” exclaims Layla, reaching out to touch the sequins. “Where did you get it?”
But Tally doesn’t hear her. Instead, her brain is whirring as she thinks about what just happened and how Luke, the worst boy in the school, managed to convince an actual adult that he is good just by telling her what she wanted to hear.
Miss Balogun reaches Tally’s desk and puts her English book down.
“Have you had any more thoughts about being part of the technical crew?” she asks Tally quietly, leaning forward. “I know that you asked for a bigger part, but I really think you’ll do a fantastic job with the lights, and you and Miles will make a great team. I was a little disappointed with your reaction last week.”
From the corner of her eye, Tally sees Layla anxiously looking at her. Layla knows her better than anyone else at school, and she’s the only person who has ever seen what Tally can do when she’s really upset. Layla will support her if she tells Miss Balogun that she wants a better part, she knows it. And Miss Balogun is pretty kind – maybe she’ll understand if Tally can find the words to tell her how she really feels.
Tally opens her mouth to speak and then a screwed-up piece of paper flies across the room and lands at her feet. Miss Balogun straightens up and glares at the rest of the class.
“Who threw this?” she demands. “You’re all supposed to be writing the date in your book, not wasting my time and school resources.”
“It was Luke!” calls out one of the kids from the back.
Miss Balogun looks at him enquiringly. “Well?”
“Sorry, Miss,” he replies. “I just wanted to send a note to Tally saying that I think she’ll be really good at the lights and stuff.”
Miss Balogun’s eyes soften and she smiles at him. “That’s a lovely thought, if slightly poorly executed,” she says. “Pick it up then, Tally. And have you come to a decision about the production?”
Tally bends down and picks up the piece of paper. Then she looks at Miss Balogun and nods.
“I’ll be fantastic at the lights, and me and Miles will make a good team,” she tells her, echoing the teacher’s earlier words. “Yes. I’ll do it.”
Miss Balogun’s face shines as if Tally has flicked a switch and turned on ten spotlights.
“Fantastic!” she declares. “That’s all sorted then!” She spins away and heads back to the front of the room. “Now then, everybody, today’s lesson is all about using descriptive language to engage the reader.”
Holding her hands underneath the desk so that she can’t be seen, Tally uncrumples the piece of paper and then pulls it towards her so that she can read what’s on it.
It is not a note of congratulations. Not that this is a surprise to her, but even so, the hatred that springs off the page makes her blink.
Tell anyone that you saw me in the cloakroom, and I’ll make your life hell, Weirdo Adams.
Tally screws it back up and shoves it to the back of her desk drawer. She could show it to Miss Balogun, but what would be the point of that? Luke seems to have convinced their teacher that he is perfect, and Tally knows that once adults make their mind up about you, it’s almost impossible to tell them who you really are. It’s the same with Mum and Dad. They’ve decided that she’s a problem, and now they’re going to take her to a head doctor who probably won’t listen to her either. Nobody ever listens to her – so she’s going to stop talking and start showing them what they want to see, starting now.
No more playing Peaches and Shadow games at lunchtime.
No more letting them see how much it hurts when they upset her.
No more giving her opinion, even when she knows that she’s right and that her ideas are the best.
No giving anyone a chance to call her weird or broken or bad.
She has three problems, but she only needs one solution.
Tally Olivia Adams is going to be the best person that she can possibly be, and show everyone that she’s a nice, normal girl with nothing even a little bit wrong.
She’s going to give them the Tally they want to see.
And they’re going to stop thinking of her as some kind of different.