Thyla - Kate Gordon [21]
‘Why doesn’t she like me?’ I asked, swinging my head around to look for Charlotte’s table.
Sure enough, Charlotte and every single one of her pretty friends were very obviously glowering at me. It was quite a terrifying sight.
‘What did I do wrong?’ I asked, looking back at Rhiannah and her friends.
‘You sat with us instead of her,’ said Harriet, shrugging and looking at me as though I were stupid for not realising this myself.
Harriet was one of Rhiannah’s two best friends. She had dark hair, like Rhiannah’s, but hers had sunny streaks running through the black. Her eyes were lighter than Rhiannah’s – a sort of golden brown. Her features were all quite sharp, but her face was friendly. She was taller than Rhiannah, and very thin and wiry. She looked like she should be a long distance runner. ‘Field sports, actually,’ she’d said, smiling, when I asked. ‘Long jump, javelin, triple jump. You name it. I’m not really all that into shot put. I don’t have the leg strength for it. But, apart from that, if it’s a field sport, it’s my bag.’
‘Your bag?’ I asked, wondering how a sport could also be a bag.
‘My thing, you know? I love it!’ She grinned so hard I thought her face would break in two, and I liked her immediately, nearly as much as Rhiannah.
Rhiannah’s other best friend was called Sara. Sara wore thick-framed glasses and wore her black ringlets in pigtail bunches on the sides of her head. Her face was rounder than Harriet’s, and softer, and it wore a permanently perplexed and anxious expression. When she talked, it was at a pace so rapid I sometimes had trouble making out one word from another.
I immediately noticed that both of the girls were wearing copper bangles like Rhiannah’s, but with slightly different patterns on them. I loved those bangles. I wanted one very badly. I wondered if perhaps, should I become very good friends with Rhiannah and the others, they might let me have one too.
But Rhiannah had said that her bangle was a family heirloom.
Perhaps Rhiannah and Harriet and Sara were related. Perhaps they were cousins, and the bangles were some sort of family tradition. The girls did all look quite similar, with their pale skin and dark hair and eyes. I asked Rhiannah.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘It’s just that all the best people have black hair.’
My hand shot up to my own sandy crop, and Rhiannah laughed and said, ‘Well, apart from you, obviously! Though, you know, a couple of shades lighter and you’d be in Princess Charlotte territory, and we really don’t wanna go there.’
I could feel Princess Charlotte’s eyes stabbing two large holes in the back of my head, like icicle daggers.
‘Is that really it?’ I asked. ‘Is she glaring because I am sitting with you? Because she didn’t seem to mind at all when I asked her.’
Charlotte had just cocked her pretty head to one side and said, ‘Really? Rhiannah? You’d prefer to sit with her?’
‘She’s my roommate,’ I replied. ‘And she promised to teach me about waffles. If you would prefer me to sit with you …’
‘No, no! Of course! You sit with Rhiannah, if that’s what you really want,’ Charlotte said, smiling, as usual, with her mouth and not her eyes.
‘Thanks!’ I said, and dashed off to Rhiannah and my waffles.
At the time, it seemed like everything was fine. As I thought back, though, I could hear a tiny hint of scorn in Charlotte’s voice; a tenseness to her smile.
‘She’s not going to act hurt in front of her friends, is she?’ said Rhiannah. ‘That wouldn’t be cool. That would make her look like she cared about you which, obviously, if you are going to hang out with us, she won’t any more.’
‘Why would that be so?’ I asked, feeling quite bewildered.
‘Because Charlotte knows what she likes, and she doesn’t like us. She likes pink, and she likes Sarah Brightman and Vanessa Mae, and she likes maths and science, but she’s not very keen on any