Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the weather had stayed sunny for my whole first term of secondary school. Would I have kept on spending my lunch breaks on the far side of the playing fields? Would Roo have befriended someone else? Would I? Would my life have been very different?
All I know is that about a month into my first term, the weather, which had been beautifully sunny throughout September, changed.It was too wet to sit outside, and I wished I’d never started going to the playing fields for lunch. It was going to look really odd when I suddenly appeared in our form room at lunchtime after not showing my face there for four weeks.
The last class before lunch was geography, and I trudged along the corridor wondering how I’d got off to such a bad, weird start in school. I’d always had friends in primary school, but none of them had gone to the same secondary as me. My sister, Laura, had been in the same situation, but soon she was thick as thieves with two girls who are still her best friends now. So I presumed I’d settle in as easily as she had.
But somehow it wasn’t clicking for me. Everyone had little gangs of friends already and there didn’t seem to be a place for me in any of them. I couldn’t help worrying that I’d never make any friends there, and the more I worried the more nervous I got, and the more nervous I got the less comfortable I felt talking to anyone, and the less comfortable I got the weirder I sounded whenever I tried making conversation …
Hence the solo trudging.
I was almost at my form room when I passed one of the alcoves dotted around the school corridors that served as cloakrooms. That was when I had a brilliant idea. I could spend lunchtime in there among the coats! I could eat my sandwich and read my book and no one would notice me. I ducked into the alcove. It was perfect. It was nice and quiet and cosy and—
‘Ow!’ said a voice from below me.
‘Sorry!’ I cried. ‘Sorry, sorry, I didn’t see you. Are you okay?’
‘Well, I don’t think you broke anything,’ said the voice. A head popped out from between the coats. ‘Oh. You’re in my class.’
I looked down at two large brown eyes peering up at me from under a shaggy black fringe.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m Annie. And you’re … Rosemary?’
The girl made a face. ‘Rosa Maria. Officially. But I’m called Roo.’
Neither of us said anything for a second. I was turning to leave and find another alcove when Roo said, ‘Were you going to eat your lunch here?’
I could have lied, but there was no point in faking it with someone who was clearly in the same boat as me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ There was a pause and then Roo said, ‘Well, I suppose you can stay here and eat with me if you like.’
I looked down at her. Her tone was carefully nonchalant to the point of total indifference, but there was something in her voice, a tiny, barely perceptible touch of hope, that caught at something inside me. Something that needed to be caught.
I kept my own voice as careless as I could as I said, ‘Yeah, sure. I might as well.’
And that was the beginning of me and Roo.
When I get home after my first day atNorthside, Roo is lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, looking almost as young as she did back when I first met her. Her long dark hair is in two plaits, she’s cleaned all the make-up off and she’s changed out of her Veronica Lake frock and into a pair of pyjama bottoms and an original Fleetwood MacTango in the Nighttour T-shirt she found on eBay.
I’m fully prepared to go into a rant about how awful my day was but I stop myself when I see Roo’s sad little face. ‘Are you okay?’ I say.
She sticks out her hand and waggles it from side to side before giving me the world’s most tentative thumbs-up.
The break-up with Justin was a big shock and Roo’s still processing it. When we were growing up, Roo was always the stronger one, the one who was totally sure that even though school was awful, we’d be fine once we got out of there and went to college. I hate that Justin, that game-obsessed arsehole, has broken her spirit, or at least crushed it a bit.
‘So, how was your first day?’ says Roo.
‘Ah, it was grand.’ I don’t want to dump my problems on her when she’s feeling down.
‘No it wasn’t,’ says Roo. ‘I can tell when you’re lying.’
‘Because of your witchy powers?’ I say. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in actual magic.’
‘Because I’ve known you since you were twelve,’ says Roo. ‘Tell me everything.’
And so I do, starting with the surprise appearance of Art (‘Oh my God!’ says Roo. ‘Is he the one you used to call Director Dickhead?’ He was, though I’d forgotten about that until now) and continuing to the evilness of Bernard.
‘I thought he headhunted me because he believed I was talented,’ I say miserably. ‘But he doesn’t even want me there.’