Authors: Cathy Cassidy

Tags: #General Fiction

Indigo Blue (17 page)

BOOK: Indigo Blue

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I have a new pencil case, new felts, new ruler, pencils and pens. I have a new school bag, a big black backpack that fastens with a wide, diagonal strap across my body. I look in the full-length mirror in the pine wardrobe door. It could be worse. I feel grown-up and five years old, both at the same time.

Mum’s in the pine kitchen-diner, dishing up muesli and chopped strawberries. Misti balances on the edge of a chair, still pink and pyjamaed, stealing the ripest ones.

I splash on cold milk and eat a few spoonfuls, anxiously.

‘You look great,’ Mum says. ‘So grown-up.’

And I feel it, even though I know we’ll be the littlest kids at school now, lost, out of our depth, squeaky clean, marked out by our shiny new shoes and freshly ironed uniforms.

I wonder if I’ll miss Calder’s Lane Primary with its rumbling radiators and corridors that smell of disinfectant and boiled cabbage. Can you get nostalgic for school stew, bumped knees dabbed with witch hazel, spelling tests and chalk dust? You can.
I
can.

I wonder who’ll be sitting in my old desk this morning, under Miss McDougall’s eagle eye.

She wasn’t so bad, in the end. For a teacher.

The doorbell rings. It’s a bright, loud burst of sound, a million miles from the long, reedy peal at 33 Hartington Drive.

‘That’ll be Aisha,’ I say. ‘She said she’d call over. I’ll be off now, then.’

‘OK. Bye, love,’ Mum says, hugging me. ‘Good luck.’

‘Good luck, Inky,’ Misti says, hugging my legs.

I open the door, and Aisha’s grin lights up the little lobby. I spoke to her last night on the phone, but this is the first time we’ve got to see each other. We only made it back from Wales yesterday afternoon.

‘Missed you,’ Aisha says.

‘Missed
you,’
I echo shyly.

‘Hello, Aisha,’ Mum calls. ‘Take care, girls. Be good!’

‘We will!’ Aisha laughs, and she hooks her arm through mine and walks me away. The door clicks shut behind me and we clatter down the steps.

‘Scared?’ Aisha asks.

‘Nah,’ I bluster. ‘Course not.’

We walk in silence, then turn to each other, pulling terrified faces.

‘OK, I’m scared,’ I laugh. ‘Petrified.’

‘Me too,’ Aisha admits. ‘You look great, though. All sort of rosy-cheeked and healthy. D’you think you’ll miss Wales?’

I will, I know. I’ll miss Gran, and the cottage, and the warm bread and the home-made jam. I’ll miss the way it felt safe and steady and picture-book perfect, and how all of us, Mum, me and Misti, learned to relax, let go and breathe again.

‘A bit,’ I say cautiously. ‘But it’s good to be back. The flat’s amazing.’

We’re in a Housing Association flat, and though we’ve only just moved in for real, and it’s still all boxes and bin bags and clutter, it’s heaven after Hartington Drive. It’s smaller, but it’s also clean, dry, warm and modern. The doors and cupboards and built-in wardrobes are honey-coloured pine. The floors are carpeted, wall-to-wall, with soft green carpet. The windows are double-glazed and there’s central heating, and we’ve got a phone and a shower and a small, second-hand TV. Mum’s saving up for a video player too. She reckons we’ll have it by Christmas. She starts back at the supermarket next week, and Misti’s starting Nursery. We won’t have to scrimp and save any more.

‘I think your flat’s kind of like ours,’ Aisha is saying. ‘We’re only round the corner, and they’re both Housing Association, aren’t they? I mean, it won’t be as cool and arty as the basement flat… remember the flowers and the bluebirds your mum painted all around the wall in the bedroom?’

‘I know. It
was
beautiful. Mum’s going to do a mural in our new room too. It’s going to be a rainbow, arching right across the corner, and a big, spirally, yellow sunshine with wiggly rays.’

‘Wow! How come your mum’s so cool? I’m not even allowed so much as one measly Eminem poster in
my
room,’ Aisha moans.

‘That’s because your mum is trying to save you from yourself,’ I point out. ‘I mean, Eminem – yeeuchh!’

Aisha whacks me with her school bag and we fall about laughing.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she demands. ‘It’s a free country. Just cos he doesn’t have sandy hair and travel by skateboard!’

‘Aisha!’ I protest, but she fixes me with a stare and I give up trying to argue, shrugging, grinning.

She fishes a bundle of strawberry laces out of her pocket and divides them up.

‘How’s your mum?’ she asks.

I concentrate on my strawberry lace. This is a question that Jo would never have asked. We didn’t do deep and meaningful, Jo and I. We did giggles and fun and jokes, and nothing ever got gloomy and sad. Except that when we couldn’t keep the giggles going, the whole friendship fell to pieces. I stopped pretending that everything was fine, and Jo stopped being my best mate.

Aisha wrote me five letters over the summer. Jo didn’t write any.

There’s more to life than giggles and make-believe.

‘Mum’s OK,’ I say thoughtfully. ‘I mean, she’s got a scar on her face, but you’d never notice it. Not really. And I think, at last, she’s over Max. She didn’t press charges in the end. Max wrote to Mum and told her he’s living in Brighton, setting up in business with his brother. He said he was sorry. Mum chucked the letter into Gran’s Aga.’

‘Wow,’ Aisha says.

I shrug. I hope things work out for Mum, of course I do. Sometimes I dream of Ian Turner and nights in with daft videos and takeaway pizzas, but mostly I just feel glad that Max is gone, for good. Mum has to find her own happy ending, I know that much. I can’t do it for her.

‘She doesn’t wear blue any more,’ I tell Aisha. ‘Not all the time, anyway. She reckons that fortune-teller got it all wrong. She went shopping with Gran last week, and she bought a purple top and green suede boots and a big Oxfam-shop jumper with rainbow stripes.’

‘Maybe that’ll be lucky for her, then, all the colours of the rainbow,’ says Aisha.

‘Maybe.’

As we get closer to Kellway Comp, the streets fill up with kids. Nobody wants to be late, especially not on the first day of term. And we’re dawdling, Aisha and I, catching up on three whole months of stuff.

We stop on the corner to share the last strawberry lace. Up ahead, a queue of double-decker buses spills teenagers out on to the pavement by the gates of the high school. Cars stop and crispy-new Year Sevens emerge, looking startled. Giant-sized Year Elevens mooch along, looking bored and cool and vaguely crumpled.

‘Hiya.’

A couple of Year Seven boys lope towards us, almost unrecognizable in perfect black blazers and new-term haircuts. Iqbal – and Shane.

Aisha elbows me in the ribs.

‘He’s
walking
!’ she squeaks.

‘Hiya, Shane, Iqbal,’ I say, pretending to be more interested in the strawberry lace. I can’t hide my grin, though. And my heart is thumping.

Shane and Iqbal walk past, swaggering a bit. There, laced tightly on to the back of Shane’s brand-new backpack, is his battered old skateboard, rainbow bright.

He looks back, grinning, and winks at me, and my insides turn to melted chocolate.

It’s good to be back.

As Aisha and I turn into the school gate, we see a small, brown-haired girl in an outsize blazer standing alone beside the huge sign that says
Kellway Comprehensive
. Her eyes scan the rabble of kids, searching through the faces, biting her lip. She looks very young, very lost, alone.

‘Hi, Jo,’ I say.

We stop, uncertain, and the tide of students flows right on round us, bumping our elbows, knocking our school bags.

‘I was waiting for you,’ Jo says.

‘Right.’

She stares at her feet. Shiny black lace-ups, fancy white socks. Then she looks up, right at me.

‘I want to say sorry,’ she says quietly. ‘I was rotten to you last term, stupid and mean and selfish. I – I don’t know what happened, but I know things went wrong, and I wasn’t there for you.’

‘No,’ I say slowly. ‘No, you weren’t.’

‘Indie, I’ve been a useless mate, but I’m sorry, I really am,’ she says. ‘Will you give me another chance?’

I look at Aisha, and Aisha looks away. It’s my call.

Aisha is a better mate than Jo ever was, someone I can trust, someone I can really talk to. She knows stuff about my life that Jo never even thought of asking. She’s my best friend. Somehow, I think she always will be.

But don’t you need all the friends you can get?

I smile at Jo and give her the tail end of my last strawberry lace. Across the busy playground, the school bell rings out, loud and jangly and persistent.

I link arms with Jo, and Aisha grabs my other arm, squeezing it softly.

‘Come
on
,’ she says. ‘We’re going to be late…’

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Indigo Blue