Margot & Me Read online

  I say nothing, unwilling to pass comment. I don’t care if Megan’s working her way through all of Year 11 alphabetically; that’s her God-given right as a woman, but I’m not getting involved.

  ‘I’ll have a word with her, get her off your back.’

  ‘No, please don’t.’ That would make things ten times worse. ‘It’s fine. I’ll just stay out of her way and she’ll forget all about it, I’m sure.’

  Dewi looks a little hurt. He’s huge, but he’s still a puppy. A St Bernard puppy. ‘I don’t want you to think you have to avoid me though, yeah?’

  His big hopeful eyes look into mine and I get awful dry mouth. Do I fancy Dewi Allen? The Gallagher eyebrows I could fix, for one. He’s handsome in a hulkish way I suppose, the opposite of Xander, who is all cut-glass Calvin Klein cheekbones. Dewi was born in the wrong millennium: his thick brow and brick jaw would have been just what I needed if I were a cavewoman. We’d lie under a sabre-tooth-tiger fur next to an open fire and, yes, I’d snuggle in the nook of those mammoth-wrestling arms, but as it is, there’s so much in my head right now. No room for a crush. I’ll be thrilled if I can just survive until Saturday. ‘Dewi … I won’t avoid you … but you should know I was sort of seeing someone in London.’ Not strictly a lie. I was sort of seeing Xander.

  Apparently unable to mask his feelings, his face resembles a sad cartoon puppy for just a second before he recovers. ‘Oh no! That’s not what I meant, like! I just meant as friends.’

  ‘Good. That’s cool.’ It’ll have to be.

  The minibus grinds to a halt and a load of Dewi’s friends board, bringing the awkward to a welcome end. I have enough troubles with Margot and Megan without adding males to the mix, thank you very much. Although, I think to myself, it’s nice to know that my appeal translates into Welsh.

  First-period English is Lord of the Flies, a book I’ve already studied. I’m certainly not going to draw attention to this fact by volunteering answers. I scan the class, trying to find my people. A trio of girls kind of look like my old friends in London, shiny hair and nice manicures, but they regard me with suspicion as if I am a cuckoo planning to nudge eggs out of their nest. I try to make eye contact and smile at one of them and get called a lesbian for my efforts. Which is it? Boyfriend-stealing slut or lesbian? I can’t win. I throw myself into the English questions to pass the time until the bell.

  Break arrives and I try to think of ways to kill twenty minutes without looking like a loner. A shadow falls over my desk and I see it’s the Asian guy and ginger girl who tried to save my Vogue from confiscation. ‘Hi,’ says the guy. ‘I’m Danny. This is Bronwyn.’

  People are talking to me. Progress. Danny is beautiful for a boy, but Bronwyn looks like a bit of a freak if I’m honest; she hovers shiftily behind Danny like she’s ready to flee at a moment’s notice. ‘Hello. I’m Fliss.’

  ‘Oh, we know,’ Danny says. ‘You’re from London right? Is it amazing? Is it huge? Do you get lost?’

  He’s gay. I can tell at once.

  ‘Outside, please!’ the teacher yells. ‘Come on, no one inside over break.’

  I swing my satchel onto my shoulder. ‘London is the best,’ I tell Danny as we follow the procession out of the classroom and into the corridor, ‘but you sort of make your own village. Like we live in Clapham so mainly stay south of the river. You don’t get lost! Oh, well, I once got lost coming out of Stockwell tube. It’s pretty hardcore round there.’

  I see from his expression that’s earned me some serious street cred with Danny. ‘I cannot wait to get the hell out of here and move to London. Me and Bron are going to get a flat together in Camden, aren’t we?’

  Bronwyn makes agreeable noises. I stop at the water fountain and take a sip. ‘You shouldn’t drink that,’ Bronwyn says, not making eye contact. ‘If you, like, had the first idea what they add to it, you wouldn’t go near that shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, ignore her.’ Danny rolls his eyes. ‘The government is trying to control us through fluoride or something. Last week it was GM crops.’

  Bronwyn doesn’t see the funny side. ‘OK, Dan, whatever. You keep following the Pied Piper.’

  Danny gives me a meaningful glance. ‘Anyway, we just wanted to say you shouldn’t listen to anything Megan Jones says. She’s a rancid psychobitch.’

  ‘Thanks, I guess.’

  ‘She’s done her best to make my life miserable since Year 7, but her bark is worse than her bite, I promise. She once spread a rumour that my dad cooks stray cats. For real.’

  ‘I’m just gonna stay out of her way.’

  ‘Probably wise. On a lunchtime, we go to chess club in the library. You should come too. Megan Jones wouldn’t be seen dead in there.’

  And neither would I. ‘Oh, I dunno. Thanks, but chess isn’t really my thing.’

  ‘Told you …’ Bronwyn mutters.

  Danny flicks his hair out of his eyes. ‘We can teach you. Or you don’t have to join in if you don’t want to – it’s just a cool place for the losers to hang out.’

  ‘Believe it or not, I was pretty popular at my last school.’ I don’t even know why I said that. In my head it was a lot less conceited.

  ‘Well, you won’t be needing us then, will you?’ Bronwyn scowls at me, puts big, squishy disco-looking headphones on and strides away.

  ‘Oh. No! What I mean is—’

  ‘Wow,’ Danny says. ‘Maybe you really are, and I quote Cerys Hughes, a “stuck-up English bitch”. Gutted.’

  He starts to sashay away, but I grab his rucksack strap. ‘I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean it like that. You’re like the second person to talk to me since I got here.’ I close my eyes and give my temples a massage. ‘I haven’t done anything. I don’t get why everyone seems to hate me so much.’

  ‘Duh! Because you’re different.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes. Welcome to Wales, hun. You wanna try being the only Chinese–Welsh kid in school.’ The only gay Chinese–Welsh guy in school. That’s got to suck.

  ‘You know what? I would love to have lunch with you. Thank you for the invite.’

  Danny’s face lights up and I think I’m forgiven. ‘Lush! I need to take a whizz, but at lunch you can tell me how you get your hair so freaking shiny! Meet you in the library, yeah?’ He blows me a kiss and darts into the boys’ toilet. I smile, giving my hair a congratulatory stroke. It was a near disaster, but I think I may have just salvaged my first new friendship.

  The library is in the basement, which seems a little disrespectful somehow. I descend into the cellar like the idiot girl in a horror film, warily clinging to the handrail. A part of me wonders if this is all a wind-up and I’m about to get jumped by Megan and her cronies. To make matters worse, the canteen must be serving thrice-boiled sprouts today; the farty smell has drifted over from A-Block.

  I reach the bottom of the stairs and see there is a sign pointing left to the library and right to the ICT suite. Heading left, I see closed double doors with an ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ poster in wizardy lettering. Oh, this is some geekfest, make no mistake. I hesitate for a moment. Do I really want to do this? If I go in here, I’m a certified freakazoid. That stigma is like herpes – once you’ve got it, it’s there forever. Maybe if I wait it out a few more days, one of the pedigree girls will see I’m not a pariah and let me sit with them.

  I’m being a snotty English bitch again. I doubt anyone even saw me come down here, and even if they did, I’m sure social mobility is possible. If nothing else, I have lovely hair. I enter the library with a resigned sigh.

  Oh. I wasn’t expecting this. The library isn’t like any I’ve seen before. At St Agnes it was in part of a converted chapel, so it was high beams, stained-glass windows and a dried-up husk of a librarian who only ever said, ‘Sshhhh!’ This is something else. There are a few round tables at this end of the room, at which a few kids are eating their sandwiches, but most of the floor has been cleared and scattered with a Ski
ttles rainbow of beanbags and throw cushions. It’s more like a picnic area than a library. In the middle of the room is a tree. An actual tree. Its curling branches reach all the way to the ceiling. I look closer and see that while the branches are real, the leaves are paper, and on each leaf is the name of someone’s favourite book.

  The stacks are down the far end, rows and rows of books, while at this end there’s a curving librarian’s desk. The nearest walls are covered in graffiti, but not horrid squiggles under railway arches; this is a glorious mural. The painting depicts famous characters, manga-style, with quotes – ‘Wherefore art thou Romeo?’, ‘Pass the damn ham, please’, ‘People always clap for the wrong things’ and more.

  ‘Pretty cool, right?’ says a voice behind me.

  I turn and essentially fall right into kind green eyes, flecked with brown like mint-choc-chip ice cream. They belong to a tall man with broad shoulders, strawberry blond hair and stubble. He is Hotty McHot Hot. ‘Did you do them?’ I ask, suddenly paranoid I might have bad breath.

  ‘God, no – I can barely draw a stick man. Aled did them. He’s allowed time out of class when he gets angry or frustrated, so we cooked up a plan to keep him out of bother.’ It’s such a strange relief to hear another English accent.

  ‘You’re English!’

  He smiles. ‘You got me. I’m Thom – well, Mr Deacon – but in here everyone calls me Thom.’ I see from his name badge he’s Thom with an unnecessary h. Wearing a claret-coloured Fred Perry sweater and beige cords with Converse, he doesn’t look much older than the sixth-formers, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five.

  ‘Are you the librarian?’

  ‘Guilty as charged.’ He smiles and he has lovely white teeth. Thank God: bad teeth are a deal-breaker. ‘You must be Felicity? I was told there was a new English girl.’

  I look at my feet and tuck my hair behind my ear. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I believe Danny Chung is looking for you? He’s on the bench in non-fiction … just follow the bookcases round to the back.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. I don’t know why my mouth has turned doughy; Cosmo taught me how to Talk to Cute Guys with Confidence, but I can hardly string a sentence together.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Felicity,’ Thom says, and offers me his hand to shake.

  I gaze at the outstretched hand like I’m an alien who’s never seen one before. Fricking idiot. I snap out of it and shake it. ‘You too. Everyone calls me Fliss, unless I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Better not be any trouble then!’ He gives me a wink as he backs towards his desk. I feel a familiar hum in my tummy, a buzz I used to feel for Xander back home, but even stronger. I pray the glow doesn’t travel to my face for all to see. Hottest. Librarian. Ever.

  His hotness may go some way to explaining why the library is so popular, although it’s a pretty niche crowd. One table hosts goths and moshers, two tables have chess matches in progress for nerdy types. Another table is set up for painting those little figurine things – the elves and dwarves and stuff. There seems to be a book group of sorts – a trio of girls all reading the same Terry Pratchett novel in silence. I stick out like a sore thumb, but I’m a gazillion miles away from St Agnes so set off to find Danny.

  As directed, I follow the bookshelves all the way to the back of the library and find him and Bronwyn working at a PC. ‘There you are!’ Danny says. ‘We thought you weren’t gonna come. Well, I said you would, but Bronwyn thinks you hate us.’

  Bronwyn’s face doesn’t register surprise. ‘That’s not exactly what I said.’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ I say, embarrassed. ‘You’re the only people in school who’ll talk to me. Why would I hate you?’

  ‘We’re not very cool,’ says Danny. ‘If you hang around with us, everyone’s gonna say you’re a freak. It’s social leprosy and we’re highly contagious.’

  I laugh way too loud for a library. ‘Apparently I’m a freak already, so I’m already infected.’

  ‘Grab a chair,’ Bronwyn says, and I take that to mean I’m forgiven for earlier.

  I drag one over and tuck myself in next to Danny. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You live at Mari-Morgan Farm, yeah?’ Bronwyn asks.

  ‘Yeah …’ I reply uncertainly.

  Danny’s eyes light up. ‘You’ve heard all the stories, right?’

  I recall what Dewi’s friends said yesterday morning. ‘Oh, the terrifying water fairies? Yeah, I heard.’

  ‘Those forests are like totally haunted.’

  I do not plan on telling them I hallucinated a waterfall whispering my name. That really would promote me into a new and off-putting league of weird.

  Bronwyn turns the monitor to face me. ‘I don’t know about haunted, but historically a lot of paranormal phenomena have been recorded in those woods.’

  ‘X-Files fan?’ I ask.

  ‘Little bit,’ Bronwyn replies with a nerdy half-smile. ‘It’s all recorded. Bodies found in the woods, suicides, dogs refusing to follow the paths or go near the stream, car engines suddenly cutting out.’

  ‘Really?’

  She means every word, I can tell. ‘Check it out.’ Sure enough there’s a website page dedicated to spooky goings-on in the woods right behind the farm. Acid-green writing on a black background. ‘This is my website,’ Bronwyn adds, luckily before I slag off the migraine-inducing colour scheme. ‘I just round up all the information. Thought you should see it. You know that whole valley is a convergence of ley lines.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Ley lines … ancient pathways and water fords between points of archaeological interest.’

  ‘Again … what?’

  Bronwyn sighs. ‘Ancient channels of mystical energy.’

  ‘Oh. Right. I see.’

  ‘I told you she’d think we’re freaks.’

  ‘I don’t!’ I argue. ‘It’s just a lot to take in.’ I turn to Danny. ‘Do you believe all this?’

  Danny smiles. ‘Llanmarion is so boring. Please don’t take away the only thing that makes it interesting!’

  I smile. ‘I won’t, I promise.’

  ‘I also believe,’ he adds, ‘that we should definitely have a sleepover at yours! Imagine how scary that’d be – we could go for a midnight walk or camp in the woods!’

  I agree, but there’s no way I’m taking friends home to meet Margot. She’s scarier than any water spirit could ever be.

  Chapter 7

  That evening, while feeding Peanut, I carry him in my arms into the back garden. Already I can feel him getting heavier. Under duress, Margot has been feeding him while I’m at school and I think within weeks he’ll be a right little bloater. Apparently I only have to hand-rear him until he’s on solids, which shouldn’t take too long.

  I carry him past the vegetable patch and into the ‘secret garden’, where I carefully perch on the old swing, not easy when both hands are taken up with a piglet guzzling milk out of a bottle. The branches complain and the ropes creak, but hold, as they take our combined weight.

  I’ll say this for the countryside: there’s a lot more sky. I feel my shoulders sink as I unwind. School, although still horrific, is a little better with Danny and Bronwyn. I also spent much of the afternoon classes daydreaming about Thom the Lovely Librarian. I can’t quite remember his face and can’t wait to see him again tomorrow to remind myself.

  It’s twilight, the night is rapidly turning Dairy Milk purple and the woods are a shifting silhouette, rustling and bickering.

  I think about what Bronwyn said. Dead bodies, suicides, cars cutting out … Really? It’s just a bunch of trees. I inhale deeply and the air is as crisp and clean as an iceberg. The forest is still and, despite the ghost stories, so inviting. Come on in … the sentry trees seem to say, stepping aside to form an entrance. It’s tempting to kick off my shoes and see where the path leads.

  I look at Peanut. ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ I say quoting a Frost poem we learned at St Agnes. ‘But I have promises to
keep, and miles to go before I sleep.’

  After dinner, I decide to make cupcakes for Danny and Bronwyn. And also – ulterior motive – Mr Thom Deacon. Like who doesn’t love a girl bearing cake? It’ll endear me to my new friends and, if I’m honest, my hope is that Thom will take one bite of my baking and want to marry me at once. Back at St Agnes my cupcakes were legendary and won first prize at the Winter Fayre last year. I flavoured them with cinnamon and orange peel for that Christmassy taste.

  All wrong for this time of year of course. I don’t know much about Danny, but I suspect he’ll appreciate something cute, so I root around in the cupboards, pulling out a mixing bowl, icing sugar and some red and blue food colouring to make purple cakes. I even find some of those sugary silver balls for added kitsch.

  I weigh out my ingredients, stopping to retune the radio on the window ledge to Radio 1, much to Margot’s disapproval. ‘What on earth is this racket?’ she calls through from the lounge. The lounge and kitchen are separated by sliding concertina doors which usually remain open.

  ‘Erm, Green Day.’

  ‘More like white noise.’

  ‘You’re showing your age, Margot.’ Mum smiles from the sofa, not looking up from the latest Danielle Steel.

  Margot bulldozes on while replacing a blown fuse in a lamp plug. ‘You ought to be listening to the news. You never know, Felicity, you might learn something worthwhile.’

  I beat my eggs and flour, the bowl tucked under my arm. ‘Ew, no, thank you. It’s so depressing.’

  Margot slams down her screwdriver. ‘Margot …’ Mum warns.

  ‘Is this your influence, Julia?’

  ‘Don’t look at me. I’m her mother, not her warden.’

  Margot looks right at me, her disdain cutting through from the lounge and into the kitchen like a steel arrow. She’s made it very clear what she thinks of me: I’m fluff, worthless pink fluff. ‘What sort of girl,’ she says, a glint in her eye, ‘wants to be a fool?’

  I put my mixing bowl down on the counter. ‘I’m not a fool,’ I say, fighting to keep a sulky tone at bay. Don’t let her know she’s getting to you. ‘I know enough.’