LITMIR.BIZ

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are you going to do tonight?’ Steph asked.

      ‘Telly, I s’pose,’ Jess said miserably. She must be the only girl in the class to have a boring Friday night ahead of her. No, not the class, the planet.

      ‘I’d love to be watching telly tonight,’ Steph protested. ‘Gran’s party is going to be a pain – all the rellies telling me I’ve got so big and saying how they remember when I was a baby and they used to change my nappy. Like, how sick and twisted is that?’

      Despite herself, Jess laughed. Steph had an enormous extended family and was very funny when she talked about them. Tonight was her grandmother’s birthday and the entire Anderson clan were going out to the Hungry Hunter restaurant and bar to celebrate. Steph’s mother was anxious that Steph wear this hideous royal-blue blouse and a sensible skirt to the gathering to please her grandmother, while Steph had personally earmarked a funky chiffon blouse with just a hint of bra peeking out underneath, and her skin-tight bootleg jeans. Her uncle’s stepson would be there and he was ‘in-cred-ible’, as Steph drooled. She planned to look nonchalantly amazing, as if she always dressed like someone from MTV.

      ‘At least you’ll be out,’ Jess said.

      ‘Yeah, sorry.’ Steph was apologetic. ‘But at least we’re going to Michelle’s party tomorrow. You could work out tonight what you’re going to wear. I’ll lend you my Wonder-bra, if you want.’

      Jess was touched. Steph’s Wonderbra was her most treasured item of clothing. It would be wasted on Jess, though.

      ‘I better rush,’ Steph added. ‘I’ve got to do my hair.’

      They parted, Steph turning left outside the school gates, Jess turning right.

      She walked to the bus stop to wait for the station bus, fiddling with her Discman earpieces to fix the left one in her ear. She and Steph used to walk home together, when they still both lived in Gartland Avenue, before Mum had become famous and made them move. So what if Dunmore was chocolate-box cute? Jess didn’t know anyone there and she had to take the train out of Cork to get home. She never saw any teenagers around Briar Lane. There were loads of kids, who all went to this cutesy school in the centre of town and played on roller skates all day long at the weekends or raced around on pink Barbie bikes. But there wasn’t one single person her own age. She couldn’t even hang around after school and talk to Steph, because if she missed the train there wasn’t another one for an hour and a half. Moving to horrible Dunmore had ruined her life.

      One other person from school got the train to Dunmore but he was in the year above, the longed-for, exam-free fifth year, and he was clearly far too cool to talk to her. Jess had sat near him the first few days she was commuting because he was the only familiar piece of this new landscape, but he never acknowledged her presence, just kept his dark head down as he played on his stupid Game Boy. So now she ignored him back and would stomp past his seat to sit in another carriage, deliberately tossing her ponytail nonchalantly as she passed to show him that she didn’t care. He wasn’t even waiting at the bus stop today.

      On the bus, she turned up the volume on her Discman, pulled her school scarf over her mouth and nose, and felt miserable. Steph thought it was cool to have a mum who was on TV. It wasn’t.

      Her mum wasn’t waiting at Dunmore station when the train pulled in, and there was nobody there when Jess arrived home. Nothing new, she sighed, conveniently forgetting that only last week she’d had a row with her mother over being treated like a child. Her mother never stopped worrying about where Jess was all the time, and Jess was fed up telling her that other people in her class were allowed miles more freedom, as long as they phoned to say where they were going. But Mum was like Interpol, and wanted details of every moment of Jess’s day.

      ‘Jess, I like picking you up from the station,’ Mum had said in the you-are-my-baby-after-all voice that drove Jess insane. ‘I’d worry about you if I didn’t come and get you. There are a lot of scary people out there.’

      This was a familiar argument. As if Jess wasn’t clever enough to recognise weirdos when she saw them. Honestly.

      ‘I’m nearly sixteen,’ Jess had insisted. ‘I’m not a kid.’

      Dad had stood up for her, which had caused Mum to glare at him with what Jess called her ‘laser eyes’. There was a lot of laser-eye action going on these days. So Jess had won and could come home from school herself. But still, it would have been nice not to have had to walk home today…

      Now Jess looked at her mother’s diary, forgotten on the counter beside the fridge, and flipped to today. ‘Hairdresser 12 noon.’ Lucky Mum, Jess thought. Imagine being able to swan off on a school day and get your hair done.

      There was no sign of Wilbur either. Wilbur was Jess’s cat, a ten-year-old tabby with unusual grey markings and a huge fluffy tail that shot up into the air if he was upset. His cosy bed on the kitchen radiator was empty and there was no point calling him. He was probably asleep somewhere he shouldn’t be: snuggled up amid the towels in the airing cupboard, his favourite and forbidden spot.

      Jess positioned herself at the bleached pine table in the kitchen, spread her schoolbooks out in front of her and then switched on the portable telly. A repeat of Sabrina the Teenage Witch was on. Jess picked up a pen, opened the book where she’d made notes for the Milton essay and began to watch the TV.

      Ten minutes later, weighed down with groceries, Abby arrived home. As soon as she’d shut the front door behind her, she unzipped her high boots gratefully. The problem with being short was that she always felt the need to wear heels, but they killed her.

      ‘Jess!’ she called, shrugging off her jacket. ‘Are you home?’ There was no answer and Abby’s heart skipped a beat. Dunmore was hardly crime central but you never knew. Anything could have happened to her…

      Abby rushed into the kitchen in her socks to find Jess studiously working at the kitchen table, the television switched off.

      ‘Hi, love, you’re hard at it,’ she said, smiling in relief at her daughter’s bent head. Once, she’d have hugged Jess instantly, but recently Jess ducked away from hugs as though she couldn’t bear to be touched.

      ‘She’s a teenager, what do you expect?’ Tom had said sharply when Abby told him the first time it had happened. ‘I see it all the time in school.’

      ‘I know,’ Abby had replied shortly, angry at the implication that just because Tom was a teacher, he knew more about teenagers in general, and Jess in particular, than Jess’s own mother did. Abby knew the teenage years were going to be tough, she just hadn’t expected her darling Jess to change from best friend to worst enemy in a matter of months.

      Now she restrained herself from reaching out to stroke Jess’s hair.

      ‘Yeah, we’ve lots of homework to do for the weekend,’ Jess said gloomily without looking up. ‘And I’ve got to revise.’ The more Jess thought about the exams, the more she felt like taking it out on someone else.

      ‘I dropped by the station just in case you were tired,’ Abby said hesitantly, not wanting a row. ‘I thought you might like a lift. But I missed you.’

      Jess raised her head from her books and focused on her mother at last. ‘New hairstyle,’ she remarked flatly.

      ‘Is it OK?’ Abby ran an anxious hand through her hair.

      ‘Yes,’ relented Jess. ‘It’s great. Mum, I wish I could colour mine again.’ Jess’s first home-bleaching experiment with Steph had gone terribly wrong. It had cost ten times as much to have the straw-like tinge toned down.

      ‘They’d kill you in school,’ her mother pointed out happily, thrilled that Jess seemed to be in a good mood with her. After a rash of pink-toned hair, the principal had banned all hair dyeing except for the fifth and sixth years.

      ‘Subtle streaks,’ begged Jess. ‘I’d go to the hairdresser this time. Nobody would know. Mr Davies only notices punk black and bright pink. A few

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