Me Myself Milly (15 page)

‘I’d never do that!’ I interrupted.

‘Yeah, well I know that now – now I know you better, but at the time I wasn’t sure. And then . . .’ he said, ‘you asked me if I wanted to go swimming and that just
about did it! I couldn’t think of another way to say no. I knew I was coming over as rude but I couldn’t help it.’

I thought back to that day and suddenly I started laughing.

‘Hey, you promised not to laugh.’ Devlin looked offended but I couldn’t stop.

‘Oh God, and then the café . . .’ I spluttered, remembering his face when we came out beside the river. ‘I’m sorry; I’m not laughing at you. I’m
laughing because I never knew there were so many water-based activities – and I had to pick them all.’

Now Devlin was laughing too.

‘Anyway, that’s why I was behaving so weirdly. It wasn’t because I didn’t like you. Although, to be fair, I did go off you when you kept going back to the
river.’

‘Oh God, I didn’t know! I’m really sorry. You should have told me!’

‘Yeah, well, I’d only just met you and it’s hard admitting it. I mean, I feel so stupid but I can’t help it. It’s pretty bad and there’s absolutely no reason
for it.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘I thought you didn’t want to do anything because you didn’t like me,’ I finished up lamely.

Devlin said, ‘Yeah, I realised that after I got home. I thought you must think I was really rude and ungrateful, you know – because you didn’t know about my problem and why I
kept saying I didn’t want to do any of those things.’

‘It must be awful,’ I said. I didn’t like spiders much, they made my skin crawl but it wasn’t a full-blown phobia. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like.

‘I get by okay most of the time. Of course, I have to see a shrink. That’s the best thing about coming here. I get a break from that. The last one I had was terrible; she tried to
get me to face my fears. If anything it made it worse. It just fuelled my nightmares. I can avoid water all I want in the day but I have nightmares and I don’t sleep much.’

I remembered that nightmare I’d had about the water and Lily looking at me and not being able to breathe. I jumped up and took his mug.

I wanted to tell him about The Incident and how I understood about not sleeping and nightmares. I think I might have told him but he got in first.

‘I came to apologise and I thought I might be able to make it up to you. I thought we could go out again, to a movie or something, and I promise not to behave like a jerk.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘that would be great. I’d like that. Let’s do that.’ Shut up, I thought. Don’t overdo it.

He was grinning at me again. ‘It’ll be great as long as they’re not showing
Titanic
or
Jaws
.’

‘Or
The Little Mermaid
.’

‘Enough!’ said Devlin, laughing and shuddering at the same time. He got up to go.

‘How about Saturday, then? I’ll come down and get you after lunch.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said.

He opened the kitchen door. ‘See ya,’ he said, and was gone, taking the steps two at a time. I had that happy feeling again. Had he just asked me out? Was it a date or was he just
being polite? I decided that this was probably just his way of saying sorry so there was no point in getting carried away. But he had said he liked me, hadn’t he?

I pulled my homework towards me. Must concentrate. This was due in tomorrow. Mrs Clark had said something about reading them out in class. I didn’t have a clue what to write. I knew it
wasn’t all that important; it wasn’t going towards our grade or anything, but I’d have to come up with something in case she picked me. I’d written
The Worst Day
at
the top of the page and it was taunting me.

I thought about my journal and how I’d nearly finished it. I was going to see Ted tomorrow after school. Suddenly I wanted to get it done; I wanted it out of the way. I wanted to be able
to tell him I’d faced up to it. Damn Mrs Clark and her stupid homework. I’d just have to tell her I hadn’t done it. What was the worst that could happen? A detention? Well, big
deal.

I stuffed my school books back into my bag and got out my journal. I wrote
The Worst Day
at the top of the page and began to write.

It wasn’t much of a lunch. Archie sat dipping his banana into his yoghurt while Lily and I peeled our boiled eggs. We tore off pieces of bread and squirted salad
cream onto them. Lily missed and the salad cream ran down her wellie boot, which Archie thought was hilarious for some reason, so Lily squirted some onto his chocolate biscuit, which he
didn’t find so funny. But he did let us share his packet of biscuits. Then we realised we’d forgotten to bring a drink and we were all claggy from the chocolate biscuits. Lily ate the
apple and I shared the satsuma with Archie, which helped a bit. Then we rolled down the bank. Archie wanted to do it again and again. Lily and I left him to it and we lay on our backs in the grass
watching the clouds and trying to find pictures in them.

‘There’s a face,’ said Lily, pointing at a shifting, thin cloud. ‘Oh, it’s gone, did you see it?’

‘That’s a dragon, look! There.’

Archie had stopped rolling and was looking for stones in the long grass which he could throw into the muddy bowl.

‘No, it’s not a dragon, it’s a train,’ said Lily.

I was trying to see what she meant when I heard a crashing from the woods. I sat up so I could hear it better. I remembered the sign on the gate saying No Admittance. Was it the boys or was
it an irate farmer?

Lily heard it too and obviously decided it was Blue Hoodie and his mates.

‘Let’s go back now,’ she said. I knew what she was thinking. She wanted to flaunt herself at the boys again. As if they’d be interested. She seemed to have forgotten
that she was wearing wellies and an old duffle coat.

‘Let’s wait a bit,’ I said, unsure what to do. It hadn’t been much of an adventure and I was getting worried in case no one at home had found the note we’d left.
Mum wasn’t the neurotic type and wouldn’t have worried about me and Lily going off for the day, but I wasn’t so sure about Archie’s parents. We might be in real trouble when
we got back. On the other hand, I didn’t really fancy entering the woods if the boys were in there. I don’t know why; they just made me nervous.

‘Well, I’m going,’ said Lily, standing up. She picked up the rucksack and put the stone that we’d got for Mum into it and then handed the bag back to me.

‘I’m not carrying that,’ I told her. ‘The stone was your idea so you can carry it.’

Lily tried to put the bag on but it wouldn’t fit over her duffle coat.

‘You’ll have to lengthen the straps,’ I said. She pulled them until they were at their longest and tried again. She got it on but it was a tight fit.

I turned round to call Archie, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.

I didn’t finish writing in my journal until three o’clock in the morning. Then I slept until my alarm went off at seven forty-five. Tired doesn’t begin to
describe how I felt. I wondered about telling Mum I wasn’t feeling well and taking the day off. But in the end I dragged myself out of bed and got ready for school. I put the journal in my
bag because, although I knew Ted didn’t want to read it, I wanted to show it to him anyhow.

Writing the final bit last night was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but now I’d done it and it felt like I’d done something important. I worried briefly about the fact
that I hadn’t done my homework, but that seemed so unimportant in the light of what I
had
managed to do that I brushed it aside and went to get the bus.

At lunchtime I nearly told the others about the visit I’d had from Devlin and the fact that he’d asked me to go to the cinema with him. I didn’t, though, because I knew
they’d get all excited, thinking I had a date with him and I didn’t want to have to explain. It would mean telling them about the disastrous day we’d had and about his phobia and
everything, so in the end I decided to keep quiet.

The last lesson of the day was RS with Mrs Clark. Effy and I got there a bit late because our previous lesson had run over. Mrs Clark was already there and she told us to hurry up and sit down.
My hopes of sitting at the back and dozing off were ruined because the only two seats left were on the front table and one of the seats was next to Amy. I sidled in first so that Effy didn’t
have to sit next to her.

The lesson was about worldwide disasters, political and celebrity scandals and how they were portrayed in the media. I think we were meant to be thinking about ‘truth’ and the angles
the media chose when narrating the stories and whether or not they could be trusted. Then we were meant to think about how the internet had changed reporting and how the public were now all
involved with mobile phone cameras and social network sites.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t listening that closely because I was so tired. Then it occurred to me that the longer Mrs Clark talked, the less time there’d be to discuss our homework.
There’d never be time for everyone to read their stuff out, so I asked a couple of questions to try and prolong the discussion. I’d tell Mrs Clark at the end of the lesson that I
hadn’t done the homework; I just didn’t want to have to explain in front of the whole class.

When she finally asked who was going to start by reading out their own ‘worst day’ there was very little enthusiasm. So she picked on a girl who’d written about how her mum had
gone into hospital and her dad had forgotten her tenth birthday because he was too busy and worried about her mum. She said she kept waiting for him to say something or give her a present, but he
never did and she didn’t like to ask. Then she started thinking that maybe there was going to be a surprise party or something so she got all dressed up, but it never happened and she went to
bed and cried herself to sleep.

The spin, or up-side of the story, was that her mum got better and then she got double presents when her mum found out she hadn’t had a birthday.

Then it was the turn of the girl who’d got fake goods for Christmas.

After that was a girl who started going on about her boyfriend and how she’d found out he was seeing someone else when she’d walked in on them at a party. There was a bit of
sniggering during this one, but the girl wasn’t taking it very seriously and I began to wonder if it was even true. I suppose that was the point. We were meant to be questioning what we were
told by the media after all. The girl ended up throwing her drink all over the couple.

I was watching the clock and trying to keep a low profile so the teacher didn’t pick on me. But then her gaze fell on our table. I held my breath.

‘Amy, let’s hear your contribution.’

I let my breath out, but I didn’t relax because Amy never did her homework so she was unlikely to have anything. I slid down in my seat so Mrs Clark wouldn’t move on to me next. But
Amy was standing up and looking pleased with herself. I hoped whatever she had was long because it was ten minutes until the end of the lesson. Amy started to read.

‘
The Worst Day,
’ she said in a dramatic voice. Then:

‘
I called Archie’s name, looking round wildly for him.

‘“Milly, help!” The voice was coming from beyond the bank, from inside the bowl. Lily and I scrambled up the slope and peered over the edge.

‘It was instantly clear what had happened. Archie’s yoghurt pot had rolled down the inside of the bowl and come to rest on the black sludge where its whiteness stood out starkly
against the black. He’d obviously thought he could retrieve it and had gone down after it, but there was no footing on the slimy bricks and he was pressed against the side with his feet
resting in the mud.’

It took a minute for me to realise what Amy was reading. I couldn’t believe it. I could hear the words coming out of her mouth and I knew they were mine but I was gripped by a horrible
fascination to hear them coming from somebody else, like it didn’t have anything to do with me any more.

‘“Oh, Archie, for heaven’s sake,” said Lily. She sat on the rim and leaned over the edge and tried to reach him.’

A small part of my brain was thinking dispassionately that Amy had a very good reading voice for someone who pretended to be so stupid.

‘“Listen, Archie. I want you to raise one of your arms above your head.” Archie was as stiff as a board with his arms firmly clamped by his sides.

‘I joined Lily and lay on my front, carefully keeping most of my weight behind me. I didn’t intend to end up with my head in the muck.

‘I couldn’t help myself from twisting round and taking one more look towards the wood. I definitely saw a flash of blue against the green. The boys had followed us after all. I
was about to tell Lily. Perhaps we could call to them and they could help us get Archie out. But then I thought, they’ve been in the pub and probably had a couple of pints. I remembered how
they’d pointed and leered at us.’