The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean (5 page)

Reasons not to get involved in school sports:

• I haven’t got a competitive bone in my body.
  
• Being all hot and sweaty doesn’t appeal when there may be no clean shirts in the house until Gran sorts stuff at the weekend.
  
• I’m always one of the last to get chosen when they pick teams in gym lessons (unless Rowan is doing the picking). Why would I want more of that in my own time?
  

When I meet Rowan and David at the school gate on Monday morning, I can tell they’ve been plotting. David smiles at me and I know by his look that Rowan has told him I was upset on the beach yesterday. He is sorry for me, and there is nothing I hate more than being pitied. Rowan’s brown curls are tied back in a red ribbon and she is neat and pretty in the same school uniform that makes me look like a World War Two evacuee.

“Hi Lily,” she says cheerfully. “Are you feeling better?”

“I’m fine thanks,” I reply. ‘Fine’ is one of my most overused words. I hide the truth with ‘fine’ all the time. “So, another week in the hellhole,” I say cheerfully, as I let go of Bronx’s hand and let him loose to run wild in the playground. Hudson has already bounded ahead, having sighted his friends from afar. “I can’t believe the weekend’s over already.”

Rowan and David both know that I’m havering. I love school.
My keenness to be involved in nearly all things school-related is legendary. No wonder Jenna thinks I’m a creep. My jobs at school include being on the pupil council and eco committee, running the Fairtrade shop, litter picking, being a lunch buddy to the wee ones and a wet play monitor when it rains. The only thing I draw the line at is sport. Yes, I would rather pick up empty juice cartons and half-eaten sandwiches than be hit in the face by a netball any day. Rowan plays after-school netball and badminton but I refuse point blank to get involved.

“David and I have a plan,” says Rowan, grabbing my arm and grinning. She clearly can’t wait to tell me about it.

“School breaks up at twelve o’clock on Friday the 26
^th
June. Yes?”

“Yes. Great work, Sherlock,” I say.

“You’ll still be in Millport. So, David and I are going to talk our parents into spending Friday afternoon on Cumbrae. We can all meet up at the Garrison, have a picnic and cycle round the island. It will be great!”

David nods his head in such enthusiastic agreement that his NHS wire glasses slide from his nose, and he has to push them back on, blinking furiously. “We can bring a picnic, or maybe get lunch in the Fintry Bay café,” he says, his face crinkling with the effort of making such a big decision.

David is like a miniature mad professor, with his wild sticky-out hair, round glasses and permanent worried frown. He has been our friend since Primary 3, which was the year he realised that he was never going to fit in with the boys in the class. David hates football and has no interest at all in video games. Back then, all he wanted to talk about was dinosaurs. Now it’s Star Wars.

“I think definitely a picnic. We can bring a rug and have it on the beach. With lashings of ginger beer!” giggles Rowan. “It’ll be like the
Famous Five
.”

“Yeah, except there’s only three of us,” I smile back. “I don’t want
my gran and your dog coming along to make five. Finn would snaffle all the picnic and my gran would nag for Scotland about our table manners.”

David shudders – whether at the thought of the dog (he’s allergic) or my gran’s nagging, I’m not sure.

“Enid Blyton stories are full of negative gender stereotypes,” he says pompously. I expect he got that from his mum. She is always coming out with that sort of thing.

“But George in the
Famous Five
was a fantastic role model for girls,” replies Rowan coolly, “back when we were all expected to be good little housekeepers.”

Rowan always has a smart answer. Not sarky; genuinely smart. Just then the school bell rings and saves David from having to discuss a subject he is clueless about.

We run to get into the long straggling line of other Primary 7s. All the boys look tall and skinny next to wee David and they ignore him when he joins the line. They think he’s weird, and aren’t always very kind to him, but David isn’t that bothered. He says all the other boys in the class are Neanderthals or neds, or both.

My hair feels as light and bouncy as I’d hoped and my uniform is clean and crisp. I feel good about myself for a change, and secretly thrilled that Rowan and David are going to join me at the end of my holiday. And I love that neither of them has freaked about me going away on the last week of term – maybe because we all know we’ll be at high school together anyway. They are my best friends in the world, and I don’t ever want to lose them. There are plenty of girls in the class who would steal Rowan from me if they could.

“Hi Rowan!” shouts Georgia, her friend from the netball club. “You should see the dress Jade’s bought to wear to the Leavers’ Dance!”

“Come round after school and have a look,” twitters Jade. “See what you think.”

“It’s stunning!” shrieks Georgia. “You two are going to look gorgeous and I’m going to look a complete state.”

I sigh. Somebody compliment her quickly, or she’ll shrivel up and die. Rowan and Jade oblige and tell her she is going to look totally beautiful. Her dress is blue satin with spaghetti straps, in case you’re interested. No, me neither.

Georgia and Jade move up so that Rowan can slip into line next to them. She starts giggling and tossing her hair about and I get nervous. “Don’t do that, Rowan,” I murmur to myself, “it looks dumb and you are a zillion miles from dumb.”

I’m on my own waiting in line for Mrs McKenzie, and as always when I’m alone, my anxiety about the voice creeps up on me. Why won’t the voice leave me alone? All it’s doing is asking stupid questions. It doesn’t even seem sure about what it’s saying half the time. Either I’m being haunted by the world’s dumbest ghost or I’m going senile, like old Mrs Simpson at number 45, who thinks aliens are hiding in her dustbin.

“Lily, hurry up!” calls David. “You’re holding up the line!”

I don’t know why I keep calling the voice ‘it’ when I know it’s a girl. Who could she possibly be? She sounds familiar but the only dead people who might be interested in haunting me are my dad and my grandfather and it’s certainly not one of them.

“Lily McLean, do you intend to stand out in the playground all morning?” snaps Mrs McKenzie. “Hurry up and get into class!”

I walk in, still thinking about Dad and Grandpa Jim. Not that I can really remember either of them, and certainly not what they sounded like.

Sometimes I take Mum’s old photo album down from the shelf, brush off the dust, stare at the photos of my dad and try and conjure up some memories, but I can’t. In one of the photos he’s holding Jenna’s hand and carrying me in a kind of backpack. He’s tall and thin, with fair, receding hair and he is grinning at whoever
is taking the photograph. I have wispy hair and a chubby face and I’m scowling. I expect I was hungry. We are on a mountain and it’s a gloriously sunny day.

Mum says Dad loved hill climbing. He was mad keen on it, along with cycling and water sports – a real fresh air and fitness freak, unlike me. He died in a car accident when I was two, which wasn’t fair on any of us, especially poor Dad.

Anyway, it isn’t a man who is whispering in my ear, which is a tiny bit of a relief. That would certainly up the freaky factor.

As Mrs McKenzie takes the register, I relax into the structure and routine of the school day. It’s what I most love about school. It might be dull, but it’s predictable. When things were really awful at home, when my step-dad was at his worst, this school was my safe place. (Our old house in Kelvin Street didn’t have a hall cupboard.)

“Lily McLean, are you listening to a word I say?”

I jump as Mrs McKenzie looms suddenly over my desk.

“I was telling the rest of the class about our school trip to Vikingar! We are going in the last week of term. Isn’t that exciting? Please return your permission slip ASAP, Lily.”

She looks at me rather pointedly. Mum is not good at getting round to filling in permission slips, but I am becomingly reasonably expert at doing them myself. Not that there’s much point in filling in this one. I’ll be in Millport. I remember to pull out a crumpled envelope from my school bag and hand it to Mrs McKenzie. She eyes it suspiciously. I wrote it myself last night so I know exactly what it says.

I am hoping they believe my letter and give me an authorised absence. Unauthorised absences look bad on my record, and I don’t like to look bad. I’d much rather tell a whopping lie. And the added benefit is that next year I will be in secondary school, so this particular lie is reusable.

Mrs McKenzie hands the letter back to me. Her penetrating look tells me that she knows perfectly well that I am a liar and a forger of notes.

“Your mother’s handwriting is so remarkably like your own, Lily,” she says sharply. “Take the letter along to the office, please. I’m sorry about your gran’s illness. She seemed very far from frail when she came up to the school for parent’s evening. And it’s a real shame that you’re going to miss the trip, the Leavers’ Dance and the school service.”

I feel my face redden and almost snatch the letter out of Mrs McKenzie’s outstretched hand. As I walk along to the school office, I try to work out my feelings. I am really gutted about missing the trip to Vikingar!

My feelings towards missing the Leavers’ Dance haven’t changed though. The girls at school have been going on for weeks about prom dresses and haircuts and nail varnish and make-up and sharing limos. Even Rowan’s been caught up in the drama, much to my and David’s shared annoyance.

Rowan’s mum has announced, however, that the whole limo thing is ridiculous and out of the question. Rowan will have to walk up to school like a regular mortal on the night of the dance. Georgia, whose dad is forking out for the limo, will be furious, and Rowan thinks it’ll be the end of the world when she tells her. But I’m pretty sure they’ll live… it’s hard to take those sorts of dramas seriously, and it sometimes makes me feel a bit weird and disconnected from the other girls, even from Rowan.

Anyway, I had been totally dreading the whole Leavers’ Dance horror and I know David has too. He will be feeling a lot worse now that he knows I’m not going with him. We had planned to walk up to the school together, when we still thought Rowan was going to be riding there in style with the netball girls.

David’s mum is hiring him a kilt from Murdo’s and he says he looks like a total wally in it. I can sympathise completely. I specialise in looking a total wally. I’ve lost count of the times I have looked in the mirror and shuddered at the sight of me dressed in Jenna’s cast-offs. Most of her old outfits are pink, which you’d never believe looking at her now, and it’s not a colour which goes well with ginger hair like mine.

So of course the prom dress lined up for me was a pale pink, flouncy, net tutu confection that Jenna wore for her own leavers’ dance.
She
looked gorgeous in it, like a little blonde fairy.
I
looked the exact opposite of that when I tried it on, and that’s not me doing a Georgia and fishing for compliments. When I came out of the bedroom wearing it, Jenna roared with laughter. “Look, boys!” she shrieked. “A wee ginger fairy! Oh, Lily, that’s hideous!”

“Don’t be so mean, Jenna!” snapped Mum, but she looked worried, and later she suggested we dye the whole outfit blue.

Nothing whatsoever was said about buying me a new dress.

So, no, I’m still not sorry to be missing my primary school Leavers’ Dance.

I wander back from the school office and find everyone changing for P.E. I’d forgotten today was a gym day. If I’d only remembered, I could have forged another note.

Or

Or

I like that one. It sounds the most believable. But I’m too late.

“Hurry up, Lily,” snaps Mrs McKenzie.

I don’t think Mrs McKenzie enjoys P.E. lessons any more than I do. Doug the Thug is a danger to himself and others in the gym hall. He wields a hockey stick like it’s a machete.

Reluctantly, I change into my grimy t-shirt and too-tight pink shorts and follow the rest of the class as they surge into the hall. Oh, great. It’s netball. Plenty of opportunity for Doug to charge around the hall like a stampeding bull elephant. Lots of occasions for Georgia to elbow me surreptitiously in the ribs.

“Lily, could you fetch a ball please?”

No problem, Mrs McKenzie; anything to avoid the team-picking nightmare, even the messy gym-equipment store cupboard

I should have known the ghost would be in there. She clearly likes cupboards.

I’m rummaging about in the cluttered semi-darkness for a ball that isn’t burst, or rugby- or tennis-ball shaped, when she speaks, right in my ear.

“Lily, if that is really you – listen to me –
don’t go to Millport
.”

Panicked, I leap in the air, and dislodge an enormous stack of plastic hula-hoops. They cascade in a colossal clatter, bouncing, spinning and rolling around the floor. Mrs McKenzie rushes into the cupboard.