Jennifer's Diary - Anne Fine [2]
He kept on thrashing, so I bopped him, hard. His eyes rolled horribly, but he was no more trouble. So slowly, slowly I hauled him back to the bank, and dragged him out.
A woman flew out of the bushes.
“My son!” she cried. “My own dear son!
How cold and wet you are!”
She scooped him up, and ran off towards a little house some way along the river.
I wondered whether to go after her. But then the school bell rang.
Five to nine!
Quickly, I pulled on my clothes and ran. My knickers are still wet. But otherwise I’m fine. Just happy to have saved a life. And happy I wasn’t late.
Good story, I thought. And it just fitted neatly on the page. So how was I to know it was going to cause so much trouble? How was I to know Miss Hardie would look round the classroom the very next morning, and then pick on Jennifer?
“Remember those stories I asked you all to write yesterday? Jennifer, why don’t you read us yours?”
Jennifer looked anxious.
“I didn’t really get started,” she admitted.
Miss Hardie looked so cross that I thought I’d better come to Jennifer’s rescue.
“She was too busy writing in her diary,” I explained.
“Right, then,” Miss Hardie said cheerfully. “Why don’t you read us some of that instead?”
Jennifer picked it up, and flicked through the first few pages.
“There isn’t really much in it.”
Miss Hardie was getting cross again now.
“Well, read it anyway,” she snapped.
So Jennifer began to read.
“Jan I st. It was quite cold today. Jan 4th. Mum and I went to the shops.”
Her voice trailed off. She turned the next few pages rather hopelessly, waiting for Miss Hardie’s explosion. And then, suddenly, like manna from heaven, she came across my bit.
“Help! Help!”
The words still ring in my ears.
I thought she read the story out rather well, considering it came as such a surprise. I couldn’t understand why she got so ratty after. Everyone was crowding round her, telling her how brave she was, and how exciting it must have been, and how rude the boy’s mother was not to come back and say thank you to the person who had just saved her poor son from a watery grave.
And all Jennifer could do was hiss at me tearfully:
“How could you, Iolanthe! Wet knickers! I’ve never had wet knickers in my life!”
Chapter Four
WE MADE UP later that morning. We had to, because Miss Hardie got so fed up with the noise, she made everybody in the class settle down and write a story called Time Travel.
Jennifer was stuck, and I needed to borrow her second-best ballpoint.
“I’ll only lend it to you if you share your idea with me.”
“I’ll only share my idea with you if you stop being mad at me.”
“All right.”
“All right.”
So I shared my idea with her. It was brilliant.
“Pretend we have to come back to school in fifty years’ time, for Open Day. Just write down what you think this place will be like by the time you and I are about sixty.”
She stared at me admiringly.
“You’re so clever, Iolanthe.”
“Yes, I am,” I said. But she didn’t look shocked, like she usually does when I say that, because she’d already started. I read it over her shoulder. It was really dull. All about how much taller the trees had grown, and how the entrance hall was painted blue now, not green. And how all the pupils had tiny computers built into their desks, and the teachers took them on rocket trips to the moon instead of bus rides to the museum.
“Stop reading over my shoulder,”she complained. “Get on with your own work.”
So I did.
It hardly seems over half a century since I was last here, I wrote. Personally, I still feel, and look, like the vibrant and beautiful young girl I was then. But the rust on the old school gates is something shocking. And, golly, there’s been some litter dropped in sixty years. I had to wade through lolly wrappers to reach the front door.
And what a shock greeted me there!
Miss Hardie (far too old to teach, poor dear) almost fell off her zimmer frame trying to open the door to me. Her hair was snowy-white. The veins on her hands looked like tree roots. Her ill-fitting false teeth