8 An old friend made anew
At lunchtime Elisha carried her tray carefully to
the lines of tables near the big windows in the dining hall. She looked round
for Jas and Steph but didn't see them at first. She did spot Luke, sitting at
the end of one of the last tables, all alone, his scrawny shoulders hunched and
defeated, like he wanted to disappear. For a second she hesitated, thinking he
might bring her mood down, and then she felt bad and remembered what her mum
had said, so she marched right over and sat opposite him. He raised his head
and recognised her but didn't smile or say anything. She had to settle her
elbows carefully to avoid putting them in a puddle of gravy someone had spilled there.
'Hi,
Luke.' She forked up a bit of sausage and dipped it in some mash and gravy.
'Hello.'
He just seemed to be pushing his food around his plate listlessly.
'Aren't
you hungry?'
'Not
really.' He sipped from a glass of water on his tray, three or four tiny sips
like he couldn't manage any more at one go.
'You
should eat something. It's really not that bad today.'
'I
know. How do I expect to get well if I don't eat anything?' She'd never heard
this sarcastic tone from Luke before and didn't really know what to say back.
'If the cancer's going to kill me, it's going to kill me whether I've eaten
today or not.'
'I
know. That's not what I meant. Not that I think the cancer's going to kill you
either. I'm sure it …'. She'd started to babble - it was embarrassing.
'Why
are you sitting with me?'
'Well,
you were all alone.'
He
snorted - he was angry, which surprised her. ‘I've been alone for a long time.
You haven't bothered with me for months.’
She
looked down because she knew it was true. Still, it seemed impolite of him to
point it out.
'Why
are you here now? Because you feel sorry for me, that's why.' He stared at her
belligerently, not at all like the mild boy she used to know.
He
was right - she did feel sorry for him. But that was no excuse for him being
nasty to her. 'I'll move if you're not going to be friendly,' she warned,
abruptly pushing her bench back a few inches to stand up. This caused Josie
Raymond to trip over the end of it as she tried to squeeze by to reach
Veronica's table.
'Watch
what you're doing, stupid!' snapped Josie as she struggled to extricate her leg
from the narrow vee between the benches, while at the same time balancing her
tray of food.
'Sorry, Josie.' Elisha stood up slightly
and dragged her end of the bench forward. Unfortunately, this coincided with
Josie trying to lift her trapped leg up to step over the bench-end and the
sudden release made her lose her balance.
Suddenly she was toppling - Elisha and Luke gazed on - it was
almost as if they could see it in slow motion - the brown tray tipping forward,
Josie's arms outstretched, fingers gripping the sides, everything sliding to
the front of the tray, pink yoghurt in a shallow bowl, cutlery, the white
dinner plate with its beefburgers and peas hitting the rim, tilting, the scoop
of potato mash with hard lumps in flying
into the air ... As Josie crashed down onto the next set of benches and their
occupants, screaming, the mash landed - in Veronica's lap, so that she screamed
too. Elisha's mouth fell open. Everyone was yelling and exclaiming in the
general commotion except for her and Luke, who she looked back to see, also
open-mouthed, turning away from the scene. They stared at each other for a
moment before Luke smiled. It was the first time Elisha remembered seeing him
smile in ages. Somehow it transformed his face back into the one of the boy
she’d been friends with before the cancer.
Veronica
was shouting at Josie, who was now whimpering and in tears. One's face was
twisted in rage and the other's crumpled in self-pity. Elisha and Luke began to
giggle, sneaking looks across at the other girls and the awful mess everywhere.
Josie
turned on them, suddenly angry. 'This is all your fault, Elisha Goodman!
Stop laughing right now!' This made Elisha laugh even more. 'Stop it!
Stop it!' shouted Josie, her face turning scarlet and her voice into a
high-pitched squeal. Meanwhile Veronica was distastefully plucking the potato
mash out of her lap, peas from her perfect hair, moaning to herself.
'Let's
go.' Elisha leaned forward to Luke, who nodded through his laughter, and they
were both on their feet and out of the dining-hall entrance, colliding with
each other in the corridor before walking on, and finding themselves hand in
hand.
As they walked out into the playground, they met
Jas and Steph coming the other way, and disengaged hands in mutual
embarrassment. But Elisha felt happy nonetheless, like they'd mended some
fences and were friends again.
'The
real hopscotch squares are free, Ellie, if you want to play with us,' Jas
announced, a bit breathlessly.
'We're
just on our way over,' Steph added, as she started to skip away.
‘And we’ve smuggled in
Ker-knockers, so whoever’s out can try to break their wrists or whatever
they’re supposed to do.’
Jasmine spoke in a loud
stage whisper that made them all turn their heads to check for teachers before
pulling out the banned toy to show them. Elisha was a little afraid of the
heavy neon coloured balls that were deemed so dangerous. They even looked like
an instrument of torture. But she didn't dare say so.
She glanced at Luke, who
didn't seem overjoyed at the idea of Ker-knockers or hopscotch. 'You go,' he
said. 'I have to meet some friends for cricket anyway.'
She
kind of knew this wasn't true - he hadn't played cricket or any other sport for
ever so long. But she thought it was best that she pretend to believe him. 'Okay,
I'll see you later.' She followed her friends round the corner of the building
to where the hopscotch squares had been painted on to the tarmac, but in paint
quite cleverly made to look like chalk.
In the last lesson, Miss Quigley sat on a cushion
to continue the story, the children all gathered on the floor around her,
competing to be the nearest to the teacher. Elisha squashed in next to Luke,
instead of sitting with Jas and Steph, crossing her legs so that their knees
accidentally touched. She noticed hers were much sturdier and browner than his
pale, skinny ones.
'Hello,'
she mouthed. He smiled.
'Miss!'
A boy's hand shot up.
The
teacher looked over to him. 'Yes, Jack?'
'Can
I go to the toilet, please, miss?' A snigger trickled round the room.
'All
right. Hurry up though or you'll miss the story.' Jack scrambled to his feet
and ran out.
'Mum
says your cancer's all gone now,' Elisha whispered to Luke. 'Is that true?'
'It's
in remission, yes.'
Elisha
had heard the word in movies and on TV shows but didn't really know what it
meant. She resolved to look it up in the dictionary when she got home. It was
good news, that's all she knew.
Jack
bolted back into the room and skidded into his place on the floor at the back
of the group. Elisha wondered if he’d washed his hands, as the words on the
toilet roll told you to.
Miss
Quigley began the story. The children stopped fidgeting and whispering to gaze
at her, entranced. Elisha wanted the story to go on and on for ever, for the
afternoon in the sunny classroom to never end. The kids’ pictures on the walls,
the board with their names and stars on, the smell of the room, of plimsoles
and water paints and pencil shavings, and the atmosphere of hushed expectation
all thrilled her in a different way than before though she couldn't have
explained why.
But
it did end. And when it did and she'd hefted her chair up onto her desk, along
with everyone else, she felt obscurely liberated from the spell of the
storyteller, the web of the story, the heady, hazy, make-believe world that
seemed to exist inside all their heads at the same time.
At home, she reached up to the top shelf of the
bookshelf in the lounge, to get the big dictionary. She knocked down a model
kangaroo her cousins in Australia had sent over one Christmas and kissed its
head as she set it upright again.
The
dictionary pages smelt like old library books - she put her face in them and
inhaled their perfume before flipping through the pages to the Rs: 'remission -
act of remitting; discharging of debt or penalty; forgiveness; pardon;
abatement'. She looked up 'abatement' next and guessed that was what it must
mean.
'Why didn't you call me,
Mum?' she complained.
'You
haven't missed any, darling,' her mum replied, pausing to swig some Tizer from
a long stripy glass.
'That's not answering the
question,' Elisha thought but didn't think she’d better say so.
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