Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [15]
Holly looks indignant. ‘Scarlett was expelled from her last school for starting a food riot,’ she declares proudly. ‘She’s not wimpy, OK?’
Somehow, having Holly as my cheerleader strikes me as a bit sad.
Matty glares. He roots around in the bottom of his rucksack for a bit, then draws out a small, crumpled, cylindrical package and sets it on the grass. Ros, Holly and I watch in silence as he unwraps the package to reveal a small, wizened cigarette, slightly bent.
‘Ewww,’ Holly says.
‘Think you’re tough?’ Matty challenges. ‘Prove it!’
My heart sinks.
I’ve been here before – and I didn’t like it. When I was staying with Nan, my friend Ria nicked some ciggies from home and the two of us hid in the school toilets, trying them out. It was disgusting – I coughed so much I nearly choked. A passing teacher heard me and we were hauled up in front of the Head. Ria said the ciggies were mine, and that I’d forced her to try them – the Head believed her.
Nan was furious. She packed up my case and put me on the next bus to Oxford, where Uncle Jon met me with a face like thunder. I didn’t touch a single ciggy while I was there, but Uncle Jon was always sniffing my breath and checking my fingers in case they were getting yellow. He was still stressing out over all that when I got sprung climbing in the window after an evening in the park with my friends. It was gone eleven, hours past my curfew. I got grounded for a month and went kind of stir-crazy, and one night when I was mad at Uncle Jon for confiscating my CD player, I chopped my bedroom curtains into little pieces with Aunty Kay’s dressmaking shears.
Whadd’ya know, it was back to London, faster than you could say snip, snip. Matty wants to know if I’m tough. He has no idea.
‘So?’ Matty asks now, offering me the crumpled, ancient ciggy.
‘Nah, I’m trying to give up.’ I shrug.
‘You’ve never smoked in your life,’ he says slyly.
I’d like nothing better than to light up that fossilized little ciggy and blow toxic smoke rings right into his pasty face, but he’s just not worth the hassle.
‘Look,’ I sigh, rolling my eyes. ‘Ciggies are strictly for losers. Bad breath, yellow fingers – no thanks.’
‘Knew it,’ Matty smirks. ‘You’re chicken.’
I don’t like being called chicken – especially not by a lanky, carrot-haired saddo who thinks that smoking is the height of cool.
I stick out my tongue at Matty, and his eyes just about pop out on stalks as he spots my stud. I have instant bad-girl status, top quality.
‘Wow,’ Holly breathes.
‘Is that for real?’ Matty splutters. ‘You’re only twelve. How did you get a pierced tongue? Didn’t your parents go mad?’
‘My friend Em’s brother works in a tattoo studio,’ I explain. ‘He did it. Em told him I was sixteen – I don’t think he believed it, but he turned a blind eye. My mum went kind of crazy, but it was too late by then.’
‘Did it hurt?’ Ros wants to know.
‘Not much,’ I lie.
‘Cool,’ Matty breathes. ‘Way cool.’
My roar is almost back to full strength. Back in class, Miss Madden hands out Gaelic workbooks and asks Ros, Matty and the older kids to work on exercise fifteen.
‘You’ll be needing the basics, of course, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘You can work with the little ones.’ She throws me a bright, false smile that feels like ice and hands me a worksheet titled ‘Clann’. It is illustrated with drawings of a man, a woman, a girl, a boy and a baby, labelled with weirdo names like athair, máthair, mac, iníon, leanbh.
‘Clann means “family”,’ Ros whispers in my ear
I open my pencil case, pick out a crayon and scribble across athair’s face.
I can’t be certain, but I think Miss Madden is going around the room asking people about their families. Perfect. Dad told me she knows all about me. Doesn’t she know I don’t have one? Has she picked out this worksheet on purpose? I look at her smiling, chirpy face and my fingers itch to slap her.
I’m finding it hard to concentrate on the page. My throat aches, and there’s a lurching feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m not well, seriously. I need to lie down in a darkened room, possibly