I had friends at my last school, but only sort-of. I wasn’t a total no-mates, but I wasn’t part of the in-crowd either. I spent my time circling the outside edges of one group or another. Sometimes I got asked along to things and sometimes I didn’t and there seemed to be no particular logic behind it. I often thought that, to be honest, it might be better if no one ever spoke to me. At least then I wouldn’t get to hear about all the things I missed. All I really wanted was a best mate, but somehow they were all taken.
When I left, the class made me a great big card and it said things like ‘Anna, we love you, we will really really miss you xxx.’ This was from girls who’d hardly glanced my way in three years. My mum went a bit teary-eyed when she read all the messages and said she was sorry to be taking me away from so many friends. I shook my head and said it didn’t matter, because it really didn’t. Not that.
I moved away from Dad and in with just Mum, in a tiny little box of a place. Mum kept saying it was just right for her to manage and the rent wasn’t bad and that it would all work out somehow. She was so wrong.
I met Zoe on my first day. It was May, which is a rubbish time to start a new school. The school secretary showed me to my new class and the teacher said my name while I stood there like an idiot beside her desk. I looked at the rest of the class and their blank faces.
‘I think,’ said Mrs Bennett in an overly-bright tone of voice, like someone who’s just had a fantastic idea, ‘I think I will sit you next to Zoe Sawyer.’ I followed her gaze to the back corner of the classroom and the only spare desk. Next to it was the girl who must be Zoe. She was doodling and didn’t even look up.
‘Zoe.’ Mrs Bennett raised her voice as I made my way down the aisle towards the empty seat.
‘Hi,’ I said, scraping back the chair. My voice came out in an embarrassing squeak. Zoe lifted her head. She had a long curtain of straight, milky-brown hair. Her skin was the palest and smoothest I’d ever seen, like paper. Her nails were painted black with scarlet tips.
‘Zoe, I want you to look after Anna and show her where things are and where the lessons all take place. And make sure she settles in.’ I could tell Mrs Bennett was already wondering if she’d made the right decision.
Zoe hardly said anything to me that first morning, apart from telling me where to find each room and adding, ‘Enjoy,’ in a bored monotone each time. At break time, I hoped we could sit and chat. But she opened a sketch book and started drawing.
Three girls strolled up to me, smelling of their boyfriends’ or brothers’ cheap body sprays. ‘Wow, you really got the short straw,’ one of them said. ‘You can come round with us instead if you want.’
I glanced back at Zoe’s black and red nails and the amazing manga-style drawings she was doing, all out of her own head. And back up at the three girls with their identical blonde haircuts and their matching label bags.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
The others shrugged and turned away. I didn’t catch what they said to each other, but after a few seconds the sudden sound of their laughter sounded like glass being smashed.
Zoe carried on scribbling and still didn’t look up.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she said, after a few minutes. ‘Don’t expect me to be grateful.’
‘I don’t,’ I said, but when I thought about it, that wasn’t true. I had some Disney-fied idea in my head that I’d just stuck up for her and so we’d suddenly become best friends.
I watched the sort of sketches Zoe drew on her book and I made a note, in my head, of some of the little things about her. She liked drawing the same sorts of things, again and again: skulls with spiders coming out of their eyes and witchy-looking girls with clothes that looked like cobwebs. Knives with jewelled handles and snake-like creatures with bloodied fangs. She was just doing them with a cheap ballpoint, but they nearly leaped out of the page, they were so real-looking. When she showed me where the girls’ toilets were, she brushed her satiny hair in front of the mirror and tipped some strong-smelling, herby scent out of a tiny bottle onto her wrists. It wasn’t anything I’d seen or smelled in Boots. When she got changed for gym she did it really quickly and modestly, like you might wriggle into a swimsuit behind a towel on a busy beach. She had bruises on her back. Blink and you’d miss them, she was so fast, but I didn’t blink.
It turned out she lived a couple of streets away from my new house, but she didn’t seem keen on walking home with me.
‘I take it you can find your own way home?’ she said. ‘Don’t need me to show you that?’
‘Well, no, but I thought –’
‘See you tomorrow then.’ She strode off in the opposite direction, leaving me breathing in the last of her scent.
When I walked into the house, it was the first question Mum asked. ‘Was there anyone nice to be friends with?’
I sighed. ‘Maybe.’
‘Come on, then, Anna. I’ve been worrying about you all day.’
‘No, you haven’t, Mum, you’ve been selling houses.’
Mum
