LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      The day Marigold Johnson called me a fat freak was the day I started bunking off school.

      That is a fact. It is absolutely one hundred per cent true. But is it a good way to begin? I thought that it was, but now I am not so sure. I mean, in one sense it was what set things in motion, as they say, cos if it hadn’t been for me bunking off school – well! Certain things would never have happened. Meeting Mrs P, for one. On the other hand, lots of really significant stuff had gone on in my life before Marigold went and called me a freak. So now I’m feeling a bit confused and don’t quite know how to begin.

      Maybe I should start by explaining about Marigold, and why it was she had it in for me. She still does have it in for me. She’s had it in for me ever since Year 7, and we’re in Year 9 now. That is what I call bearing a grudge. With a vengeance. In other words, she got the hump and has never got over it. It squats there on her shoulder like a big black toad and makes her really mean.

      What it was, it was in drama one day when Mrs Hendricks told us to “Partner off, boy and girl.” Quite honestly I didn’t think anyone would be falling over themselves to partner me. Not that I have an inferiority complex, or anything; Nan always taught me that it’s important to value yourself. But there’s no point hiding your head in the sand. I’m not the sort of girl that boys fight over, and that is just something I have to live with. Me and a few million others. We can’t all look like Marigold Johnson, i.e. stick thin with big pouty lips full of Botox, or whatever it is they put into lips to make them puff up. If she hasn’t had Botox (or whatever it is) then she’s suffering from some kind of birth defect. One which boys, it has to be said, do seem to be attracted to. I guess big pouty lips are good for slurpy kissing.

      Anyway. As soon as Mrs Hendricks said “Partner off”, everyone started shuffling about trying to catch the attention of someone they fancied, with me doing my best to fade into the background, which is not easy when you’re my size. Even Nan wouldn’t have said I was small. Out of the corner of my eye I could see this boy standing just nearby. Well, it was Josh, actually, only I didn’t think of him as Josh back then, cos I didn’t really know him all that well. He was just a boy who happened to be in my class, so I thought of him as Joshua. Joshua Daniels.

      Out of the corner of my other eye I could see Marigold. She was on the move, heading straight past me, straight for… Josh. I guessed that she was out to nab him. See, this was before she started going out with Lance Stapleton, otherwise known as the Thug. The Thug wasn’t going out with anyone at that stage, he was too busy charging about in a gang and beating people up. In fact beating people up is still one of his main hobbies, but now he likes to have a girl to watch him do it. I guess it makes him feel important. He and Marigold are dead right for each other. The perfect couple! She wouldn’t have suited Josh at all. But I knew she fancied him cos I’d seen her flapping her eyes and doing this weird munching thing with her lips. Any second now…

      I could hardly bear to watch. It was like some kind of man-eating spider moving in on its prey. I’m gonna get you!

      And then, quite suddenly, at the last minute, Josh did this about-turn. “Wanna be partners?” he said.

      Who? Who was he talking to? Surely not me?

      He was! He was talking to me! Josh was talking to me.

      I didn’t jump on him, cos that would have been too demeaning; I think you have to have a bit of pride. I said, “Yeah! OK,” making like it was no big deal, whereas in fact I was still practically reeling from the shock. I mean, who in their right senses would prefer me to Marigold??? Not doing myself down, or anything, but I’d been so sure they’d end up together. I bet she had, too! Cos girls like her, they’re always sure. They are not prey to doubts like the rest of us.

      Anyway, she was left with Barnaby Tibbs, who is a sweet boy but seriously uncool. She hated me for that. I mean, hated. She couldn’t stand the thought of a boy she fancied actually ignoring her and going for a lesser being – especially when the lesser being was me. “Carmen Bell! That great jelly.”

      From then on, that was her name for me: the Great Jelly. Or more usually just the Jelly.

      “Where’s the Jelly?” “Trust the Jelly!”

      I guess I could have retaliated by calling her Botox Lips, or asking her if she’d been dropped on her head as a baby, seeing as her brain appeared to have some kind of malfunction, but that would have meant bringing myself down to her level. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

      Indy used to tell me that I ought to hit back. She got really agitated about it. “Why don’t you stick up for yourself?”

      I could have done. I can give as good as I get any day of the week! Mum’s always said I’ve got a mouth on me. Indy just couldn’t understand it. “People like that shouldn’t be allowed to get away with things! She’s a horrible person. She’s a bully.”

      I said that she also had the intellectual capacity of a mushy pea, and it would quite simply be beneath me to engage in any sort of conversational exchange. “Who wants to have a slanging match with a pea?”

      It just made me feel better if I ignored her. That way I could at least pretend to myself that I didn’t care. If I’d done what Indy wanted and hurled insults, it would be like admitting she’d got to me. I wasn’t going to let her!

      But I couldn’t stop Indy simmering and seething. One day she just, like, boiled over and laid into Marigold big time. Marigold’s eyes practically shot out on stalks. I could see she was really taken aback. I was, too! Indy is so tiny, like a little jumping bean, and she’s not at all an aggressive sort of person. If anything, she is quite meek. I thought it was incredibly loyal of her, and that I was lucky to have her as a friend, but at the same time I sort of wished she hadn’t done it cos it just made Marigold meaner than ever. She sneered down at Indy from her great beanpole height and said, “Naff off, squit face!” And then she made her eyes go crossed and sucked her bottom lip so that her teeth stuck out, and Ashlee Stott, who’s like her personal doormat, gave this mad shriek of laughter and started making her teeth stick out, too.

      It was such a disgusting thing to do; Indy is really sensitive about her teeth. I felt so bad for her! I think some of the others did, too, but they weren’t going to say anything. Marigold is one of those people, nobody really likes her, apart from the creep Ashlee, but everyone wants to stay on the right side of her. I told Indy that in future we would both of us ignore her.

      “If

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