Paper Airplanes Read online

  RENÉE

  As Margaret and I sit and compare how corn beefy our legs are, a note hits me on the back of the head.

  Renneeeeeeeeeeee

  How was your summer? Can’t believe we are back at school already, the holidays went so fast. We can’t believe our exams are this year . . . Do you still think you won’t bother doing any revision? We missed you and your funny little ways. Sorry we didn’t see you, you know how it gets. Are you and Lawrence together now??

  Friends Forever, Carla and Gem x

  I turn around and make a silly face at them. They laugh. I’ve missed them too, but I’m upset they haven’t saved me a place nearer to them and that they only phoned me once all summer to tell me what a great time they had on holiday together. I hardly went out for the whole six weeks because I had to work to pay back Paula Humphreys after I had a go on her moped at a party and rode it into a ditch. Her mum called Pop and insisted I pay the full cost of the bike back. He went nuts at me and didn’t even care that it wasn’t my fault because the driveway was really bumpy and it was pitch-black. It’s not fair, because Carla’s and Gem’s mums give them loads of pocket money so they never have to work during the holidays. I bet they never have to get jobs.

  Everything’s just so nice for them, and that’s pretty hard going, when I have to go home to Nana and Pop every night. Their mums, their dads, their brothers and sisters, they all just get on. I don’t feel normal around them, and I know they think my family is weird. Especially since the time they came over and Pop yelled at them to shut the front door even though they were literally just saying good-bye. What is it about old people that means they feel the slightest draft from two rooms away? Carla and Gem both said it was fine, but it wasn’t fine, and I know they’ll never come to my house again after that. Why would they, when their dads crack jokes and their mums make amazing food? No wonder they never phone me. Pop scares everyone.

  Hey

  Don’t worry about it, I was busy anyway. Saw Lawrence loads. He told me he loved me a few weeks ago so it wasn’t like I was on my own. See you at break time. x x x

  Miss Anthony sends me into the corridor for passing notes in class. Not a great start to the new school year. A brand-new teacher has already pegged me as a troublemaker. I eat a Mars bar in the corridor as I wait for everyone to come out for assembly. School is just the same as ever.

  FLO

  Flo

  I’ll come to your house after school but let’s sit in the living room with Julian instead of in the kitchen like we usually do. That reminds me—do you want me to steal Mum’s Weight Watchers book for you? She’s picking us up. Be ready when the bell goes.

  Sal x

  As soon as the bell rings, she’s packing her bag and telling me to hurry up.

  “Are you sure you want to come to my house? There’s a weird atmosphere at home with Dad moving out. It’s not exactly fun there right now,” I say, hoping I’ll put Sally off.

  “Your dad moved out? Hurry up, Mum will be waiting,” Sally says as she pushes me by the elbow out of the building.

  Downstairs in the car park her mum is doing just that, waiting. In her big Mercedes, wearing her posh clothes and way too much makeup.

  “You’re taking us to Flo’s, but I do want dinner later,” says Sally aggressively.

  “OK, dear,” her mum replies, as dead behind the eyes as ever.

  We get into the car—me shoved in the back surrounded by shopping bags and Sally in the front with her seat pushed all the way back.

  “I’ve been in town all day,” says Mrs. Du Putron. “I got everything but the red shoes, because they don’t have them in your size. But they have my number and will call when they come in.”

  I think that sounds quite reasonable, seeing as it isn’t Christmas or Sally’s birthday, and her mum has spent the day traipsing around town buying random items of clothing that Sally had picked out for herself the weekend before. But Sally has other ideas.

  “Can’t you just do a simple thing?” she huffs. “I said if they don’t have the red to get the blue with the platform in the six instead. They definitely had those because I put them aside. I’ll just do it myself. Just drive, Mum.”

  As soon as we walk in the front door of my house, Sally’s entire disposition changes. It happens every time. I call it the Julian Effect. Girls forget themselves around my brother. Sally’s voice gets shrill. She goes all red and shiny and her words come out in the wrong order. The weirdest part of the Julian Effect is that Sally wants to get physically close to me. When he walks into the room she rubs against me like a cat and does weird things like holding one of my fingers in her hand while she twirls her hair with the other. If I sit down she sits on my knee, which always makes me uncomfortable.

  “Did you like the summer holidays?” she blurts out as Julian comes into the kitchen.

  “Did I like them?” he replies with a patronizing smirk.

  Sally’s mouth is so dry I can hear her lips move across her teeth. Her top lip is covered in tiny beads of sweat. I swear I can hear her heart beating. She swishes her tongue around her mouth, and just as she starts her question again he grabs a bottle of Sunny Delight, slams the fridge shut, and leaves the room. Within a second she is standing up, looking like she’s just done a cross-country run.

  “Why do you ALWAYS do that?”

  “What? What did I do?” I ask.

  “Embarrass me in front of Julian. He is going to think I am such a dick now because of you. Why didn’t you say something?”

  I walk over to the cupboard, cover a slice of white bread in thick peanut butter, and stuff as much of it in my mouth as I can. She stares at me with such disgust that I think she might actually be sick.

  “Do you really want to be here?” I say, deliberately spitting food out of my mouth. “Mum will be home soon, and she’ll probably be in one of her moods.”

  She grabs her bag and heads for the door. “This household is so fucked up.”

  The front door slams.

  A minute’s silence is bliss. I take small bites of the bread and chew them slowly, loving the sensation of my hunger disappearing and the silence in my ears. Then—bam—Mum bursts in, pulling my four-year-old sister behind her.

  “Feed her, will you, I’m knackered,” Mum says as she pulls a chair out from under the table and puts Abi on it.

  I give Abi the rest of my bread, and she takes it like it’s the most exciting thing she’s ever seen. My mother glares at me with her usual contempt. I feel unaffected by it. The feeling is mutual. She pours herself a glass of water and goes upstairs. I don’t see her again until the morning.

  RENÉE

  By the end of the day it’s like the summer holidays never happened, which isn’t a bad thing. I know that fifteen is a perfectly acceptable age to get a job, but being stuck in a sweaty trailer on a building site doing admin and making endless cups of tea with a dirty kettle is not my idea of a good career move. It’s so uninspiring to be spoken to like a moron by a load of men who stink of BO and eat fry-ups between meals. If you ask me, women should be kept away from building sites for the sake of evolution and the human race.

  Carla and Gem watch me have a fag at the end of the school lane, and I blow a couple of smoke rings to impress them. Their endless positivity still surprises me. How come they never have anything bad to talk about? They have perfect families, their mums and dads love each other, they don’t fight with their brothers and sisters, and nothing ever seems to go wrong. One time, I was at Carla’s house for a sleepover and her younger sister came in, kissed her good night, and said, “I love you.” I waited for Carla to freak out, but she didn’t. Apparently that is what happens every night. How weird is that?

  Then, of course, they have each other.

  Carla and Gem have never been lonely. They met at primary school when we were five and became inseparable. They’re so close that over time even their mannerisms have become the same. Carla is blonde and Gem is brunette, they’re bo
th the same height and shape and they blend together like soup. Their clothes are cool, their bodies are perfect, and they’re always happy. Well, unless one of them breaks up with a boy, but that sadness never lasts. They just get over it, together.

  “I’m going to have a party in a few weeks,” says Gem. “Mum and Dad are going to a charity dinner and said I can have people over. I’m going to invite all the boys from the year above. Will you bring your boyfriend to this one, Renée? Or will you not tell him about it so you can snog loads of other boys like you usually do?”

  They fall into fits of giggles. I join in and let out a “Yeah, probably, but he isn’t my boyfriend,” then tell them I have to get home.

  Home is around a fifteen-minute walk from school. I used to get lifts with Pop but when Nell decided to hate me the way that she does, I told them I’d rather walk. Luckily, Pop won’t let Nell walk because he says she’s too young. I’m not really sure how the one year between us makes that much difference in terms of a fifteen-minute walk, but I’m glad he won’t let her because it means I get some time on my own. Kind of.

  I see Lawrence sitting on the wall at the end of the school path. His big, blond curly hair will be gone by the end of the week when the teachers tell him to cut it off. The boys’ school, Grange College, isn’t as strict as Tudor Falls, but the boys are definitely not allowed hair like that. He looks a bit like a poodle.

  As I walk toward him I wonder what our headmistress, Miss Grut, would do if she saw me sitting on a wall swinging my legs in my school uniform. She’d probably scream at me to get down and then give me a mark or a detention. My next thought is how strange it is that I’m walking toward Lawrence thinking about school punishments. I used to run toward him thinking about kissing.

  Lawrence and I met at a party last New Year’s Eve. We’d always known of each other, in the way that most people on Guernsey know of each other, but this was the first time we’d ever really spoken. I was trying to light a cigarette in the rain and doing such a bad job of it that the fag broke in half because it was so wet. He came over to me, threw his coat over both of our heads, lit a fag in his mouth, and told me to take it. Half an hour later we hadn’t moved and were snogging, his coat on the floor.

  When we went back inside, people were wishing each other a happy 1994. We’d missed midnight completely, which was annoying because it was the first year I’d been allowed to go to a party instead of watching the telly with Nana and Pop. But I couldn’t really complain. Lawrence was lovely. He made me laugh all night, kissed me without trying to get his hand up my top, and even walked me home.

  I’ve never particularly fancied Lawrence. His face has small features, and he’s shorter than me. But from the day we met he’s paid me more attention than anyone I know, and for that reason being around him is lovely. He really likes me. He listens to me and asks me questions about home. No one else ever does that. So the fact that I don’t fancy him hasn’t really been a problem. Until now.

  “I’ve been waiting ages,” he says as he jumps down off the wall.

  “Sorry. Carla and Gem were in one of their chatty moods. Anyway, how was I supposed to know you’d be waiting for me?” I say, sounding intentionally uninterested.

  “I wait for you every day. It’s my thing. Fag?”

  I take a cigarette out of the packet and go to put it in my mouth, but he grabs it from me and puts it into his to light it—another one of his “things.”

  “I missed you today,” he says, giving me a fixed and intense glare. “I miss you every day.”

  “You see me every day, you muppet! Don’t be silly.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  I take a long, hard drag of my cigarette and stare back at him, my expression more sarcastic than his, which is so loving it makes me feel stupid. He’s about to tell me he loves me again, I know it. I feel my insides tense up.

  I drop my cigarette and press my face against his. I kiss him as hard as I can, as much of my tongue in his mouth as possible, as much pressure against his lips as I can manage without hurting him. I kiss him like this until I feel his words go back down his throat and disappear into his belly. When I am sure they have gone, I break away. I didn’t enjoy it at all.

  “Shall we go and get chips?” I ask, wiping my mouth.

  His eyes are hungry, but not for chips. He thinks we’re ready to have sex. I know that’s what he thinks, even if he doesn’t say it out loud. But I know I’ll never want it with him. I don’t want him to even try it. Why did he have to ruin everything?

  “Yeah, sure. Chips, that sounds good.”

  We head toward Cod’s Wallop in town. I can tell from the way he’s walking that he has an erection, but I pretend not to notice.

  “I’m starving. I’m having batter bits too.”

  “You eat like a man,” he says.

  I decide to take that as a compliment.

  RENÉE

  The problem with having double math first thing on a Friday is that I can’t be bothered to do it. I know our GCSEs are only two terms away, but I find math so boring. I refuse to believe that Pythagoras and his random theorem are going to get me anywhere in life. This is why four weeks into the winter term, at 9:30 on a grim Friday morning, I am lying on the floor in the toilets with Margaret Cooper, eating my packed lunch and writing swearwords on the bottom of all the sinks with a black marker.

  “Have you done any ‘crap’s yet?” asks Margaret.

  After a short laughing fit I say, “‘Crap’ isn’t a swearword!”

  “I think it is. ‘Crap,’ ‘boobs,’ ‘balls’ . . . They’re all swearwords.”

  This is why Margaret and I will never be best friends. Anyone who thinks “crap” is a swearword is way too innocent for me.

  “Craaaap!” screeches Margaret, scaring the crap out of me. “I think I just heard the double doors.”

  I’m always amazed by her hearing. Margaret can hear an approaching teacher at a hundred feet, which is why I rely on her for skiving lessons. Without her I would be in detention every Wednesday. We grab the remains of our lunches and dive into the nearest stall. Like clockwork, she sits so her feet are facing the front to look like she’s on the loo, and I stand on the seat holding on to her shoulders for support. We take deep breaths and freeze.

  The toilet door bursts open, but instead of the usual sound of the slow footsteps of a teacher on the prowl, it is a girl running and quite obviously crying. She bolts into the stall next to us and wails. The sobbing is loud. Haunting. Full of pain.

  Margaret looks up at me, and we both mouth swearwords at each other. She goes with a succession of “crap”s, and I go with “shit” because the “shhhh” part works well with a finger over my mouth to remind her to keep quiet.

  I feel guilty listening to this person. This is real crying, and she doesn’t know we’re here. She came here to escape something, to be alone, and here I am standing on a loo seat with Margaret Cooper between my thighs, hijacking her privacy. It feels wrong.

  I hope it’s Sally. That something has happened to her that’s made her realize how awful she is. That this is the beginning of a huge apology that will put an end to us hating each other even though we barely know each other. Because as much as I dislike her, I would prefer not to have an enemy.

  My head reaches the top of the partition between the cubicles, my foot digging deep into the palm of Margaret’s hand as she shakes violently trying to get me high enough. I pull myself up and tip my nose over the edge to see which desperately unhappy girl is sobbing so violently in a stall all by herself.

  It’s Nell.

  FLO

  It’s difficult trying to concentrate in double math when you’ve been up most of the night looking after a child. I laid there for ages thinking Mum would go in and get Abi, but she had gone out somewhere, so as usual it was down to me. Abi woke up at eleven, then again at two, and then for good at five, each time asking me why Daddy isn’t at home anymore. I feel so exhausted that I can’t focu
s on the blackboard. I’m fifteen years old and bringing up a child. Mum doesn’t seem to understand, or care, what it’s doing to me.

  I never have fun, not like everyone else seems to. It’s either Mum getting on me at home or Sally putting me down at school. Other people seem to live so differently. It makes me feel totally unlikable. Why would anyone want to try to have fun with me? I follow Sally around like a lost sheep because I don’t have the courage to say what I want. It’s force of habit now, I guess. I don’t bother saying how I feel, because one of them will make me feel so stupid for it. I’ve turned into a boring tagalong who watches everyone else have fun while I feel more unsure of myself every day. The only person I can be myself around is Dad, but being with him isn’t the same anymore. He’s more pathetic than me at the moment.

  At break time Carla and Gem invite Sally and me to a party. Sally says yes for both of us, but I really don’t want to go. I’ve nothing to wear, and I can’t afford booze.

  “Do you think your mum would buy me some ciders when she gets yours?” I ask, thinking that getting drunk might be the answer to all my problems.

  “Flo, you’re a nightmare when you’re drunk,” says Sally. “Don’t you remember puking into Mum’s rain boot in the back of her car the last time you had some of my ciders? It was disgusting. Face it, you’re not a drinker. You’re good at other things, like”—she trails off and pretends to squeeze a splinter out of her finger—“making sandwiches.”

  My life is a disaster.

  RENÉE

  I feel so mad I almost run out of school three times today. How have we gotten to the point as a family where Nell is so full of pain that she sobs by herself at school and I don’t have the guts to knock on the toilet door and ask her if she’s OK? What kind of person does that make me?