Worse Than Boys(44)

‘Have you done your homework for old Malcolm?’ Sonya asked me as we walked on.

‘I hope you didn’t ask me to join so I could help with your homework. I’m rubbish at maths.’

‘Tell him you couldn’t finish it. Make up some sob story. Your cat died and you’re in mourning, or something.’ Wizzie laughed. ‘I’m going to tell him my Rottweiler ate my jotter.’

‘Sounds like the title of a book,’ I said. ‘A Rottweiler Ate My Jotter.’

Grace looked at her. ‘You don’t have a Rottweiler, Wizzie.’

‘Everybody else on our street does. I could borrow one of theirs.’ Wizzie gave her a shove. ‘Grace, it was a joke! Right.’

Grace still looked as if she didn’t understand what the joke was.

I began to laugh and couldn’t stop.

‘It wasn’t that funny,’ Wizzie said.

‘It’s just … I didn’t think I would be running about with the Hell Cats and talking about maths homework. That’s what we used to talk about as well.’

Grace cut in. ‘Don’t dare say we have anything in common with that lot.’

Lauren agreed. ‘No, we’d never turn on a mate like them. We stick up for each other.’

‘But be fair,’ I said. ‘Erin thought I’d told everybody she wet the bed. That must have been mega embarrassing for her.’

‘And did you tell on her?’ Lauren asked me.

‘No. I would never grass up a mate. It was a secret, and I know how to keep a secret.’

‘Everybody’s got secrets,’ Wizzie said. ‘Hers was nothing special. So how did she not believe you?’

‘I suppose she thought as I was the only one she had ever told, who else could it be?’ Here I was, practically sticking up for Erin. Would I never learn? ‘But it wasn’t me,’ I went on. ‘Somebody must have been listening.’ My face went red as I suddenly remembered who I suspected had been listening. Lauren’s sister.

Lauren didn’t get mad. Instead she burst out laughing. ‘And you thought it was our Ellen. Even if she could hear you, she wouldn’t care. She’s rubbish at passing on gossip.’

‘Next to Sonya,’ Wizzie said, ‘her sister, Ellen, is the nicest lassie you’ll ever meet. She makes Mother Teresa look like Adolf Hitler.’

I glanced at Sonya. She was blushing with pleasure at the compliment.

So it definitely hadn’t been Lauren’s sister. The mystery was still there. Who was it who had spread the story?

‘Anyway, it was a whole load of rubbish for nothing,’ Wizzie went on. ‘So, she pees the bed. Who cares?’

‘Five-minute wonder,’ Grace agreed.

‘You don’t think it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world?’

Wizzie looked at me as if I was daft. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘But that Erin’s really clever, you have to admit it,’ Lauren said.

‘How do you mean, clever?’ I asked.

Wizzie answered me, as if they had discussed this before. ‘One minute everybody’s talking about Erin’s “little problem”.’ She sketched the inverted commas in with her fingers. ‘And the next she’s managed to turn all the attention on to you. Everybody forgot Erin. Who mentions Erin’s little problem now? That was fly. She’s manipulative.’

Lauren choked on her chewing gum. ‘She’s what?! Have you just swallowed a dictionary? Manipul … wha’?’

‘Heard it on the telly last night. It was a film about this lassie, she’s a serial killer, who makes everybody do what she wants … only they don’t realise it. They think she’s really their friend. And I thought it sounded like Erin Brodie.’

I had never thought about it like that, but it was true. Erin was manipulative. She told me I was her best friend. Had she told Heather that too, and Rose? Winding us all around her fingers. And I had fallen for it. How could I have been such an idiot?

‘I’m going to get her back for that,’ I said.

Wizzie grinned. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’ll help you.’

And our loud tribal roar echoed through the mall.





Chapter Forty


And so I became one of the Hell Cats. We spent the days at school lolling on the stairs, not letting anyone past, and at night, usually we would meet up and strut our stuff through the town centre. I began to dress like them, wearing my school skirt too short, my blouse open at the neck and my tie always loose. A disgrace to the uniform, the teachers would say. I didn’t care. I was having a great time.

Mrs Tasker didn’t like it one bit. She kept me back in class one day to have a ‘serious talk’ with me.