THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS
CRACK.
I swear I hear a crack – loud, sickening. But I don’t know whether it’s before or after I hit the ground. I can’t work out where the pain is coming from. Only that there is a lot of it and it’s getting worse.
Then there’s Jayden’s voice, breathless, asking me questions.
“Ari, are you all right? Are you okay? Oh my God, look at…no, don’t look…but open your eyes, come on, say something.”
He’s right next to me, I think, but he sounds a long way away. I can just about groan in response, but I don’t want to open my eyes. If only I could get my breath back, then I’d be fine.
“I’m just looking for your phone, okay?” I can hear him scrabbling around and murmuring to himself, then, “Yes! Oh damn, that’s no good. I’ll use mine…”
There’s more scuffling. Then swearing. “No reception. I hate the countryside. Nate, you’ll have to run and get Ari’s dad. Quick, go.”
“But, but, but, which one?” says Nate, his voice high and scared. “And I’m not supposed to go without you, Mum said.”
“It doesn’t matter, one of them, both of them, any adult you see. It’s an emergency, yeah, I have to stay with Ari, make sure she’s all right.” His voice gets closer. “Ari, listen to me, don’t fall asleep, okay? You can’t fall asleep.”
I want to tell him that of course I’m not going to fall asleep in the middle of the day. I’m not in my tent, tucked up warm in my sleeping bag, I’m out in the woodland on the edge of the campsite. I won’t be asleep until well after tonight’s end-of-camp bonfire, full of sausages and toasted marshmallows. But I can’t stay focused enough to explain.
“It’s okay, Ari, it’s okay,” says Jayden, over and over again, but nothing feels okay.
By the time Dad arrives, I’ve stopped feeling like I’m going to faint, but the pain is getting worse. My hands are sore and scratched, my head is thumping, but worst
of all is my leg. I’m normally super brave, like I don’t even care about watching gory stuff on TV, but I don’t want to look at it, not yet.
“Jesus, Ari. What have you done? Are you okay?” I just shake my head at Dad’s questions. It hurts so much – like someone’s pounding at it with a giant hammer – that I wish I hadn’t. His voice changes, like he’s trying hard to sound calm, instead of cross or anxious, but he doesn’t quite manage it. “We’ll need to get you to hospital, sweetheart, but we’ll have to get you out of the woods first.”
Despite feeling like I’ve been punched all over, I can’t help a little dart of excitement – maybe I’ll finally get to go to hospital in an ambulance. I’ve been to A&E loads of times before – my dads say I’m a bit accident-prone – but never in an actual ambulance, with sirens and lights and everything.
They told me that I used to love emergency vehicles when I was little. All my favourite toys were police cars or fire engines. I used to point at real ones from my buggy and shout if one went past. I suppose it’s a bit babyish to still want to ride in an ambulance now. I mean, I’m eleven and I’m starting Year 7 next week.
“You poor love.” It’s Janice, Jayden and Nate’s mum. She must have run up from the campsite with Dad.
Both their faces are pale as they look down at me. Jayden and Nate hang back. It looks like Nate’s grubby face is streaked with tears. He is such a crybaby though, that it doesn’t mean anything.
“We just need to get you to the start of the farm track. It’s not far. Your dad will meet you there in the van,” she says.
Great, no ambulance after all.
“Can you get up?” asks Dad.
“No,” I tell him. It’s the truth. It hurts staying here, but the thought of moving…
I don’t know why he asked because he and Janice don’t listen. They heave me to my feet, well, to one of them. There’s no way I could do anything with my right leg, even if I wanted to.
“Take your time. Arms round our shoulders. Put all your weight on me,” soothes Dad.
Every step makes me cry out. I try not to, but I honestly can’t help it. I want to be tough, I am tough, but each jolt on the stony path shoots pain down my right leg. I know it’s bad because Dad doesn’t even bother telling me off for swearing.
After about a hundred miles of slow hopping, I finally see the van. Bright orange, like a beacon, against the green fields. Papa leaps out of the driver’s side and they both
ease me into the front seat. I sit there, panting; it’s all I can do. Papa pops some painkiller tablets into his hand and makes me swallow them with a big gulp from his water bottle.
“Better than nothing.” He smiles weakly, smoothing back my hair.
“Well done, boys, you did just the right thing,” says Dad, turning to Nate and Jayden. He fumbles with his seat belt.
Papa nods. “We’re so grateful.”
“Yes, well done,” adds Janice, one arm round each of them, squeezing them tight. “Although we will be having a chat later about exactly why you thought it was a good idea to climb the one tree with red-and-white ‘keep off’ tape all round it.”
I know what everyone’s thinking, and they’re right. It had nothing to do with Jayden or Nate. I was the one who thought it was a good idea. But no one’s having a go at me, which must be the only good thing about being so battered.
Papa’s normally a fast driver, but today is something else even for him. We speed down the narrow country roads, while his phone barks out directions to the hospital.
I screw up the courage to look at my leg. There’s a kind of lump in the middle of my shin. That definitely wasn’t
there this morning. It must be…no, yes, I think it’s a bit of my actual bone, trying to poke out beneath the skin. We speed round another bend.
“I’m going to be sick,” I moan.
Then suddenly we’re at the hospital and I’m bundled into a wheelchair and pushed through automatic doors and there are X-rays and examinations and some proper painkillers and waiting, so much waiting, and finally a bed. Tomorrow morning will be surgery.
I’m just drifting off to sleep, despite all the noise, when I remember.
“What about the barbecue? We can’t miss it. We can’t. We need to get back.” I try to sit up. It suddenly feels very important that Papa and Dad understand this.
Every summer we go to Camp, and every year, the final night barbecue is the best bit. The music’s loud, there’s tons of food, and we play a massive game of football. We all have the best time, even though it’s sad too because we know we probably won’t see each other for another year.
“Shhhh, Ari, shhh. It’s too late for that now. Don’t try to talk. Just get some rest,” says Dad, stroking my forehead. Papa glances up from his phone and they exchange a look.
“Should have thought about the barbecue before jumping out of a tree and breaking her leg,” he mutters.
“Now, Paul, never mind that,” says Dad softly. “As long as she’s safe.”
“I didn’t jump,” I insist, but he knows this, he’s heard me explain it to everyone who’s prodded and poked me since I got here. “The branch must have snapped.” I know it’s not wise to carry on, but I can’t help myself. “I could see everything, it was amazing, the whole campsite, the tops of all the other trees. You won’t believe how high I climbed.” I wish I was at the barbecue, telling everyone else all about it. They’d be so impressed.
“You shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. Really…I mean…it was taped off.” But Papa doesn’t sound too angry, just tired.
Anyway, I bet he did stuff like this when he was a kid. He’s always saying kids today are overprotected, not like when he grew up and basically ran wild doing whatever he liked. He’s the one who taught me to climb trees, to ride my bike, to play football, who told me that just because I was a girl it didn’t mean I couldn’t run faster, climb higher, be stronger than anyone else.
He shows Dad a message on his phone. “Janice and the boys will pack up all our stuff. They’ll bring it to the hospital car park in the morning.” Dad nods.
I shut my eyes. I don’t think I have ever been this tired in my life.
The last thing I hear is Papa’s voice, talking softly to Dad.
“She must be all right if she’s worrying about missing the barbecue.” He laughs. “Typical Ari.”
“Thank God, you know, when I saw her lying there under that tree…”
“Ssh now. We’re okay. Worse things happen. If you have to worry about something, worry about how we’re going to manage the start of term with a broken leg.”
School, I think fuzzily, Year 7 at St Hilda’s School for Girls on the other side of town. It hasn’t seemed real all summer, not even when I was trying on the itchy uniform or choosing my new stationery, and it certainly doesn’t seem real now.
Ella
My boxes are stacked in the middle of the floor, just where the removers left them. I wouldn’t let Mum help me pack, which means that I know exactly where to find everything.
My new room’s much bigger than my old one. It’s got a sink in one corner and an old wooden wardrobe in the other. The whole house is bigger. The garden too.
That’s one of the things Mum said, when she told me we were moving in with Grandma: there would be more space. She’d have Grandma’s old bedroom now that Grandma can’t get upstairs any more. And I’d have Mum’s old bedroom, the one that was hers when she was a kid, but I could change it however I liked. She beamed at me as she told me I could choose my own wallpaper and curtains, even change the carpet if I wanted to.
Except I’m not very good at that sort of thing – interior design, knowing which colours go with each other. I usually let Mum decide for me. I don’t care if the curtains are ruby or blush, although I know she does, so I try to look interested.
But as soon as I go into a new place, I can tell you how it feels. Are the people relaxed or tense? Is something about to kick off? Has there been a row and now everyone’s trying to pretend it never happened? I can’t believe that other people don’t notice these things, but they don’t seem to. I could tell you all that, but not what colour the curtains were or whether there were floor tiles or a carpet under my feet.
I have to start somewhere, so I take my piano music out of the first box, but then I’m not sure where to put it, so I add it to a pile by the door to go downstairs. Grandma’s excited that someone’s going to be playing her piano again and Mum says, now we’re living here, she’ll get it tuned properly.
Whenever we used to go and see Grandma in the holidays, she’d always ask me to play for her. She’d shut her eyes and listen intently. Mum would be fidgeting around, but Grandma always sat completely still. Then later, after clapping me with her stiff, shaky hands, she’d say something helpful about the tone or the fingering,
and sigh and say that she wished she could still play herself.
“You’re not Ella’s teacher,” Mum would scold her. “Don’t confuse her. Miss Heath might have told her something different.”
But the one time Grandma met Miss Heath, at a concert when she was still well enough to travel, and definitely still well enough to live by herself, they really connected. Miss Heath could tell how strongly Grandma could feel the music, really feel it. Not like Mum. Mum says my musical talent must have skipped a generation, but I’m not sure it works like that. Not when Grandma and I don’t have any genes in common anyway.
The knock on the bedroom door makes me jump. I spin round as Mum pokes her head in.
She looks at the boxes. “I thought you’d have made a start by now,” she says.
I shrug.
“Never mind.” She waves her hand at the boxes. “There’s plenty of time for that. A whole week before school starts. I can help you out later if you like. For now, how about we walk into town and have a bit of an explore, you know, start to get to know the place properly?”
I’m not sure. It’s been such a long day already. I’d rather take my music downstairs and mess around on Grandma’s piano.
“Won’t Grandma mind us going out and leaving her?” I ask.
“She’s having a little rest. I told her we might pop out,” reassures Mum. “Even though we’re all living together now, we’ve still got to have our separate lives, haven’t we?”
I nod. Except I don’t think it’s occurred to Mum that she and I might need separate lives from each other too. I bet she’s going to be just as involved in my life as ever. Even though I’ll be starting a new school so she won’t be home-schooling me any more, she’ll still be around all the time, looking after Grandma, rather than out at work.
Mum sweeps the hair off my face and holds it back.
“Haven’t you got a hairband somewhere?” I shake her off. “Hmm…” She looks around. “I suppose not, everything’s still in those wretched boxes!”
“I like my hair like this,” I murmur to myself as she turns away.
“Such a shame how it hides your beautiful eyes,” continues Mum, without having heard me. “Let’s have a look for a hairdresser’s in town. Get that fringe tidied up before school starts.”
We don’t find a hairdresser’s, but we do find a fancy paint shop where the colours all have ridiculous names, like Moonlight Longing or Back Of An Envelope. Mum picks out swatches and wallpaper samples. When we stop
at a cafe, she lays them out on the table. She starts talking to me about contrasts and feature walls as she sips her coffee. I nod and smile and tune her out.
There’s a group of girls sitting a couple of tables away. I can’t quite hear what they’re saying. They’re listening to music on someone’s phone and, every so often, they all explode with laughter. The one with red hair in tight curls must be the funniest, the others are all turned towards her as she waves her hands around, telling some elaborate story. She’s the prettiest too.
I wonder if they are my age. They look like they could be. Having such a good time that they don’t notice anyone else around them. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like that, not with a group of friends anyway. The only person I’m going to miss from back home is Miss Heath.
Perhaps they’ll be in my year and next week, I’ll walk into the classroom and the red-haired girl will say she’d seen me in town, and ask if I want to be part of their group. And I won’t be anxious or shy or overthink things, I’ll just smile and…
“Ella, are you listening?” asks Mum.
“What?” I focus back on her again. She’s tapping a pale green colour swatch with her perfectly painted fingernail.
She turns her head to see what I’ve been looking at. The girls are getting up to go. The red-haired girl swings
her bag round – it’s got a rainbow flag badge on it, interesting – and knocks a half full can of Diet Coke off the table. A few drops splash the back of Mum’s jacket.
“Oh, really.” She tuts and gets to her feet. It takes me a second too long to realize what she’s doing. Not that it matters. She wouldn’t have stopped even if I’d asked her to. Mum believes in doing the Right Thing.
“Excuse me, ladies, I think you’ve forgotten something,” she calls over to the group. They stop next to us, looking confused. She looks pointedly back to where they were sitting, the puddle of drink on the floor, the empty wrappers that have drifted off the table. They follow her gaze.
“Sorry?” says one of the girls.
“I think you’ve forgotten to clean up your mess,” continues Mum.
I stare at my empty cup, leaning forward so that as much of my face as possible is hidden by my hair. Even without looking, I can tell that the girls are making faces at each other and trying not to laugh.
“Which school are you from?” asks Mum sternly. They mumble a reply. “Well, unless things have changed a great deal over the years, I would expect St Hildegard’s girls to be much less careless and much more considerate to others. Perhaps I should give the school a call.”
“We’re sorry,” says the red-haired girl, gulping back a giggle. “Honestly, we are.” She picks up the can and a couple of her friends gather up the rubbish. They rush for the door, leaning into each other, laughter escaping now. I’m sure I can hear one of them doing an impression of Mum in an exaggerated, posh voice: “I would have expected St Hildegard’s girls…”
“Mum…” I start, but there’s no point. She won’t get it. She won’t understand how embarrassing that was, how any faint hopes I had of making friends at St Hilda’s have now totally vanished.
It’s bad enough starting a new school in Year 9 when you don’t know anyone. But it’s even worse when the only thing anyone does know about you is how your mum can’t keep her nose out of anyone else’s business.
Over the last few months, Mum and I have spent so much time together as she taught me at home, that I’m sometimes not sure where she ends and I begin. It’s like we’re magnets – either stuck much too close to each other or violently pushing apart. I hoped that the move would be a new start, for both of us, that things might be easier between us here. But I guess, even though we’re in a new town, we’re still the same people.
“And what were they wearing?” continues Mum, shaking her head. “When I was at St Hildegard’s, no one would
have dreamed of wearing a top like that, even outside of school. Even when you’re not in school uniform, you’re still representing the school, after all.” She turns to me and pats my hand. “Don’t worry, Ella, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other girls to make friends with, nice girls. Come on, drink up. If we’re quick, we’ve just got time to nip back to the shop to pick up some more wallpaper samples.”
I get up and follow her, nearly bumping right into a girl with short hair, trying to swing her way through the door on crutches.
“Ella, look where you’re going,” says Mum, holding open the door wider for the girl and the man with her. They smile back at her and say thanks. They look like they’re having a good time. I bet they haven’t spent the afternoon trying to look interested in paint and worrying about the start of term.
