Best Friends Read online

  Auntie Karen had cut us off.

  It looked like she had cut us off for ever and ever.

  Seven

  It felt so weird being at school all by myself. Well, obviously, I wasn't literally alone. There were twenty-eight other children in our class and nearly five hundred in the whole school and any number of teachers and classroom assistants and Mr Maggs the caretaker – but it felt like it was one enormous echoing empty building without Alice.

  We'd gone to the reception class hand in hand and we'd sat next to each other in every classroom since. I couldn't bear sitting beside Alice's empty chair and desk. I turned my back on it and hunched down small until my chin rested on the table.

  Biscuits gave me a poke in the back with a giant Mars bar. 'Hey, Gemma, how come you're suddenly so little? Have you turned into the incredible shrinking girl? You'd better have a nifty nibble on my Mars bar,' he hissed.

  I turned round. I stared at him.

  My eyes burned like lasers. Biscuits looked as if he was singeing.

  80

  'What? What's up? What is it? I mean, I know you're probably feeling a bit fed up without Alice.

  Would you like me to come and sit next to you in Alice's place?'

  'No, I wouldn't! I wouldn't want to sit next to you even if you were my best friend because I'd get horribly squashed on account of the fact that you are hugely fat. But as you are now my worst ever enemy I don't even want to be in the same room as you. In the same school, street, town, country, world as you.'

  Biscuits blinked at me in astonishment, his Mars bar wilting in his hand. 'Don't call me fat! What are you on about, Gemma? We're mates, you and me. We always have been.'

  'Not any more, as of yesterday,' I said.

  'But I didn't really do anything yesterday,'

  Biscuits protested.

  'You told on us,' I said.

  'I didn't. Well. I did tell my mum your names when she asked me.'

  'Yes, and she phoned up and told our mums, as you very well know. And they came swooping off to the station and stopped us running away together.

  You ruined everything, so you can stop looking all wounded innocence because quite frankly it's a sickening expression and I might just have to punch you straight in your fat chops.'

  81

  'I said, don't call me fat! I can't help it if my mum was concerned about you. And if you try punching me I'll punch you straight back, so there.'

  'Right,' I said. 'OK. We'll fight. At play time.'

  'You think I wouldn't hit a girl but I would, if she hit me first.'

  'Yeah, and I'll hit you second and third and fourth and I'll go on hitting, just you wait and see.' I got so het up I forgot to hiss. I was practically shouting.

  'What on earth are you up to, Gemma Jackson?'

  said our teacher, Mrs Watson. 'Just pipe down, please, and get on with your work. Come along, turn round and leave Biscuits alone.'

  'With pleasure!' I muttered, and hunched back in my seat.

  Mrs Watson seemed to be keeping a special eye on me. She kept looking in my direction. Towards the end of the lesson she sidled over and peered at what I'd written in my exercise book. I held my breath. We were supposed to write a descriptive paragraph using lots of adjectives. These are describing words. I'd decided to describe Biscuits very graphically indeed. I'd been more than a little bit rude in places. I hurriedly scribbled over the worst part.

  'Too late, Gemma, I've already read it,' said Mrs Watson.

  82

  I waited for her to hit the roof. But she didn't explode upwards. She sat down beside me in Alice's empty chair.

  'It's OK,' she said softly.

  I stared at her.

  'Well, it's not OK to write a lot of abusive rhetoric in your school exercise book, especially about a nice boy like our Biscuits,' Mrs Watson corrected herself.

  I didn't have a clue what abusive rhetoric was but it seemed to sum up my Biscuits paragraph pretty neatly.

  'Biscuits isn't nice,' I mumbled.

  'Yes, he is, sweetie. Everyone loves Biscuits, including you. You're not really cross with him.'

  'Yes I am!'

  Mrs Watson leaned towards

  me and spoke in a whisper.

  'Aren't you really feeling

  miserable because Alice

  isn't here?'

  I struggled to say some-

  thing. I didn't quite manage

  it. It felt as if two hands were

  round my throat, squeezing hard. My eyes were hurting too. I blinked and two tears ran down my cheeks.

  83

  'Oh Gemma,' said Mrs Watson. She patted my back gently, like I was a little baby. I felt a terrible baby, crying in class. I hunched down even further, so I was practically under my desk.

  'I know you must be missing Alice very much,'

  said Mrs Watson. She gave me one last pat and then went back to her desk.

  'Missing' was the most ridiculously inadequate description. I felt as if I'd been torn apart. It was like losing half of me, an eye, an ear, one lip, half a whirly brain, an arm, a leg, a lung, a kidney and half a long long long snake of intestine.

  I wondered if Alice felt the same way. At least she wasn't stuck at school next to an empty seat.

  She was hurtling up the motorway to Scotland. It would be exciting for her, almost like a holiday. And she'd have a new house and new pets and a new school . . . and maybe even a new best friend.

  I had no one.

  I didn't know what to do at play time. I always went round with Alice, apart from the times Biscuits and I challenged each other to perform amazing feats.

  I remembered I'd challenged Biscuits to a proper fight. I clenched my fists. At least it would be something to do. I didn't think Biscuits would be very good at fighting. Not that it really mattered. He could squash me flat for all I cared.

  84

  I went looking for Biscuits. I couldn't find him anywhere. I tried the obvious place first, but he wasn't in the tuck shop queue. I trekked the length and breadth of the playground. I searched the corridors, wondering if he might be chomping chocolate in a corner, but there was no sign of him. There was only one place he could be. A place I couldn't go.

  I stopped outside the boys' toilets. I waited, arms folded, tapping my toes impatiently. I waited and waited. Boys pushed past me and said stupid things.

  I made some short sharp comments back to them.

  I wouldn't be budged, even when they barged into me.

  'What you waiting for anyway, Gemma?'

  'I'm waiting for Biscuits,' I said.

  'Oooh, fancy him, do you?'

  'I fancy sticking a skewer in him and roasting him on a spit,' I said. 'Go and tell him I want to get on with our fight.'

  'You're wasting your time, Gemma,' said Jack, one of Biscuits' mates. 'He's not in there.'

  'I bet he is,' I said.

  I had half a mind to march straight in to see for myself, but I had a feeling Mrs Watson wouldn't remain understanding if she caught me fighting in the boys' toilets. I'd be sent to Mr Beaton again. I couldn't go in. I had to winkle Biscuits out.

  85

  I caught hold of a squinty little

  kid with glasses dangling skew-

  whiff off his nose.

  'Here, you. Do you know Biscuits?

  He's that big boy forever stuffing his face who's in my class.'

  The kid nodded, trying to hitch his glasses on more securely. Everyone in the whole school knows Biscuits.

  'Well, I want you to come back and tell me if he's in the toilets, OK?'

  The kid nodded again and backed into the bogs.

  He was in there a while. He looked shifty when he came out. He was chewing several chocolate toffees, his mouth crammed so full he drooled unattrac-tively. 'He's not there,' he mumbled, slurp running down his chin.

  'Oh yes he is. He gave you those toffees as a bribe to say that, didn't he?' I said.

  'No he didn't. He gave me the t