Mum came home from the hospital today, which seems fitting as it is Halloween tomorrow and she is a witch. Things have been better while she wasn’t around. I thought that Taylor’s mum would be really cross with me after what happened with the bracelet, but she’s been even more kind to me than normal, taking me to school and picking me up afterwards for two whole weeks because Dad was working.
I tried to give Taylor her bracelet back and said sorry for accidentally borrowing it for such a long time, but she said it was OK and told me to keep it. She even fixed it for me by hooking a small safety pin through the broken links. I think it looks cool, even better than before. I think she was just really grateful after what happened at school last week and that was her way of saying thank you.
I really don’t know what it is about Taylor that makes the other girls dislike her so much. She’s pretty and kind and clever but those aren’t reasons to be mean to her. I’m glad I found her when I did in the Girls’ toilets. There were two of them: Kelly O’Neil and Olivia Green. They were holding clumps of wet tissue in their hands and they were laughing. They stood on the toilet seats in the cubicles either side of Taylor, looking down at her over the wooden walls. I could hear her crying behind the closed door in the middle. Kelly told her to stand up and give them a twirl. The other girl whistled. ‘We’ll go away if you let us see,’ she said and they laughed again. ‘Don’t be shy, show us.’ The crossness started to churn inside my tummy and I kicked their toilet doors. Kelly glared down at me, then turned back to look at Taylor over the wall. ‘Your girlfriend is here and she’s getting jealous. Better pull your knickers up.’
The bathroom door swung open and Mrs MacDonald appeared, telling us we should all be outside. Kelly and the other girl left, both smiling at me as they walked past. I said I had to use the bathroom and would be straight out after that. When they were all gone, I knocked on the door of the cubicle in the middle, but Taylor still wouldn’t come out. So I climbed up on the toilet next door, exactly the same way as Kelly had done and looked down at her. She was sitting on the toilet seat, her pants around her ankles. She was covered in wet toilet roll – balled up like people do when they want to throw it on the ceiling. I don’t think it had landed on her by accident. I told her to unlock the door and this time she did.
I climbed down and gently pushed the door open. She just stood there. Her eyes were all wet, her cheeks were red and her pants were still around her ankles, so I bent down and pulled them up. We don’t talk about that day. I’m not sure I should have even written it down. We stick together at all times now and the other girls keep away from us, which is fine by me.
Until Mum came home, things were pretty perfect. I was so happy when I got out of the Volvo this afternoon that I danced all the way up the driveway. Taylor’s Mum has been bringing dinners for me and Dad to heat up in the oven too; things she’s cooked herself that smell and taste amazing. Dad hasn’t been drinking as much as he sometimes does and I’ve been allowed to stay at Taylor’s house for loads of sleepovers when he’s been working late or visiting the hospital. Mum didn’t want me to visit her. Nobody told me that, I just know. I didn’t want to go anyway; hospitals remind me of Nana dying. Dad said Mum had to have a small operation on her tummy, which is why she didn’t come home for such a long time. He said she’s been very poorly. He said it wasn’t my fault.
I knew she was coming home today, but I guess I forgot. So when she was standing at the top of the stairs when I got back from school, it sort of made me jump and I felt scared. She didn’t say anything at first, just stood there looking down at me in her big white nightie, like a ghost. Her eyes had even darker circles underneath them than before and she looked really skinny, like she’d forgotten to eat while she was at the hospital.
I didn’t know what to say, so I went into the lounge to watch the big TV. The remote doesn’t work any more, so you have to push a button beneath the screen and then wait a little while for the picture to blink itself alive. A cartoon I don’t like came on, but I was already sitting on the sofa so I watched it anyway. I was still wearing my hat and gloves because it is always cold in our house since the radiators stopped working. We’ve got a fireplace and we have a real fire on Sundays, but I’m never allowed too close and today isn’t Sunday.
I could hear her coming down the stairs really slowly, like Grandad used to do when his hip had gone somewhere. A bit of me wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run to. I went to bite my nails but the gloves got in the way, so I sat on my hands and swung my legs instead, as though I was on a swing instead of the sofa.
She stood in the doorway and asked me if I had anything to say to her. I shook my head and carried on looking at the TV. The cat in the cartoon chased the mouse but it got away again, clever mouse. I laughed, even though it wasn’t very funny.
‘It’s happening again, isn’t it?’ she said.
The mouse took some matches and stuck them between the cat’s toes, the cat didn’t even notice, it was too busy looking in the wrong direction. Then the mouse lit all the matches and ran away. The cat could smell the smoke, but didn’t see the flames until it was too late. I laughed again, a pretend loud laugh, hoping she would just go away and leave me alone.
‘I said, it’s happening again, isn’t it?’ She spoke in her cross voice, the one that means I’m in trouble.
I shrugged my shoulders, stood up and walked out to the kitchen. My colouring things were still on the table from the night before, so I started doing that while Mum followed me and sat down on the chair opposite. I didn’t look up. My pencils were too blunt, all of them. I looked at her then and asked if she would sharpen my pencils for me. I’m not allowed to do it myself. Our eyes spoke but her lips didn’t move. She shook her head to say no. I wanted to use the red pencil even more then, but it was so blunt it hardly left a mark. I pushed harder, making a pattern of clear, jagged dents in the paper. Mum tried to take my hand to stop me but I pulled it away. She said we needed to talk, but I didn’t have anything to say to her, so I just carried on pretending she wasn’t there and picked up the black pencil which still had some colour left in it. It was hard to stay inside the lines with my gloves on, so the black pencil went all over the picture until I couldn’t see what it was any more.
Mum told me to look at her. I didn’t. She said it again but broke up the words so they were on their own:
Look. At. Me.
I still didn’t look up, but I whispered something very quietly. She asked me what I had said and I whispered it again. Then she stood up so quickly that her chair fell backwards making me jump. She leant over the table and grabbed my chin, forcing my face up to look at her. She spat in my eyes a little bit as she asked me again what I had said. She was hurting my face, so I told her:
I. Hate. You.
It was the opposite of a whisper.