If It Wasn’t For Sarah
By Lynne Roberts
Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts
ISBN 978-1-927241-13-4
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 1.
It is all Sarah’s fault. If it wasn’t for Sarah, no-one would even know who I am. Instead I am the laughing stock of the whole school. She has totally wrecked my life. It just goes to show that you never really know what a person is like until it is too late.
It all started when we went back to school after the holidays. I was in the kitchen trying to make my lunch for the next day before my two little brothers ate all the food in sight.
‘It’s not fair. I don’t see why we have to go back to school at all. I mean, two weeks holiday is hardly anything,’ I complained.
‘You’re lucky to have holidays at all,’ my father said unsympathetically. ‘You should be grateful, Chelsea, that you are getting an education. Plenty of children in other counties would be glad to have the opportunity.’
‘Education is right,’ I said bitterly. ‘I had to spend nearly the whole time working on school projects. There was no time to do anything else.’
‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration, dear,’ Mum said calmly. ‘You certainly seemed to have plenty of time to go out with Sarah whenever she called.’
‘Well, I had to get some fresh air,’ I argued.
‘You could have got fresh air helping me feed the calves,’ Malcolm pointed out.
I glared at him. ‘The weather sucked, anyway,’ I muttered.
‘We know. You told us. Constantly,’ Dad pointed out. Mum agreed with him.
‘I’m actually relieved that school is going back so I won’t have to listen to Chelsea complain all the time. Why can’t you be happy like Malcolm and Billy? They’re pleased to be going back to school.’
‘I want to see my teacher again,’ nodded Billy. ‘She is my friend.’
‘I probably enjoyed school as well when I was little,’ I snarled. ‘But we are bound to get lots of work shoved at us and it will totally ruin Christmas.’
‘Christmas is not for a couple of months yet,’ Mum said briskly. ‘Now go and tidy your room.’
I stormed out of the kitchen and slammed my bedroom door. Hard.
‘I wish I lived in another family,’ I cried despairingly.
It’s a pity you can’t trade in your family, a bit like getting a new car. You could go along and say,
‘Okay. I want a mother who understands the importance of fashion, and a father who earns untold amounts of money.’
Mind you, my lot probably wouldn’t be worth much as trade-ins.
I certainly wouldn’t choose brothers at all. A nice looking older one might be acceptable, especially if he had lots of hunky good looking friends who hung around, but Janice from our class has an older brother like that and she says he is horrible to her. I certainly wouldn’t choose two younger brothers and I complained to my parents that they’d planned their family very badly. A sister would have been good fun to swap clothes with and talk about the important things in life. But small brothers, no way. They are so embarrassing. They call out ‘Hi, Chelsea,’ when they see me on the bus after school, even though I’ve told them I never want to be seen with them in public.
I went to school the next day expecting the same boring old things, but with a secret hope that something exciting would happen. I met up with my best friend Sarah and we went to English class together. That was hardly unusual as Sarah and I did practically everything together.
You probably know someone like Sarah. Long blonde hair and big blue eyes. Slim with long tanned legs that never have skinned knees or sandfly bites like normal people. Perfect skin when the rest of us are breaking out in spots all over the place. And straight white teeth that will never need braces.
Sarah’s the one who is always picked first for all the team games and the one the teacher chooses as the student responsible enough to take time off class to carry messages around the school while the rest of us are struggling with Maths. Sarah never has to struggle at anything. The good things in life seem to come to her effortlessly. The worst of it is you can’t even hate her for it because she’s so nice. She’s been my best friend since Year One when we sat together in Mrs Allenby’s room. She would hang her smart, neat jacket on the hook next to my crumpled coat and beam at me.
‘Hello Chelsea,’ she’d say. ‘Let’s go and play on the climbing frame – or the sandpit – or the slide tower.’
I’d smirk back and go with her like some sort of handmaiden. I don’t think we ever played with anything that I suggested. It was always Sarah who made the decisions. Unfortunately for me, she still does and I still go along with them.
So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened. Ms Cutter, our English teacher, spent the first part of the lesson going over our holiday homework.
‘Have you done yours?’ I whispered to Sarah.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. Of course she had. Why did I expect anything else?
Ms Cutter glared at me. ‘No talking, thank you Chelsea. Perhaps you’d like to start by reading aloud your essay?’
Ms Cutter is such an old bag. I used to think she was really nice. That was until the first English lesson. That was when she showed her true colours.
She set us homework nearly every single night, which was so unreasonable of her. I mean, how does she expect any of us to have a social life? She gave us detentions if we hadn’t done our homework and we had to study these really boring books. You know, where boring old men look back on their boring lives and talk about what life could have been like if they had done something else mind-bogglingly dreary. Or books about war where you wished the author had at least had the decency to get himself shot in the thick of combat instead of coming home and writing fifty thousand pages about it. Ms Cutter not only expected us to read this drivel but also made us answer comprehension questions about it. Our holiday project was– What is your view on Captain Trimmer’s Wartime experiences.
‘I found it totally boring,’ I said. The rest of the class sniggered.
‘Is that the extent of your opinion, Chelsea?’ asked Ms Cutter sweetly. ‘Or have you written more insightful comments with which to entertain us?’
‘No, that’s about it,’ I said defiantly.
Ms Cutter proceeded to go out of her tree. She ranted about how unsatisfactory it was and gave me a detention on the spot.
‘It’s so unfair,’ I whispered indignantly to Sarah while Ms Cutter was interrogating another victim. ‘I mean, they ask you to be honest and then go berserk when you are.’
‘Never mind. I’ll let you read mine at lunchtime. You can copy some of it if you like,’ Sarah offered generously.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said it had changed the whole course of my life.’
I was flabbergasted. ‘What? That’s not even honest at all.’
‘Yes it is, said Sarah smugly. ‘Because I had to stay home and write the assignment I couldn’t go to the
movies with my cousin Eddie. So that counts as changing the course of my life. I had to go the next night instead.’
‘Mum’s going to go spare about me being in detention, and on the first day of term, too,’ I said gloomily.’ She’s going to go on about me doing my homework for weeks now.’
‘I’ll wait for you and we can go home on the late bus together,’ Sarah said kindly. She’s really nice like that.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered awkwardly.
‘No problem, it will give me a chance to do my homework, anyway.’
Then Ms Cutter told us all to hand in our essays and said she had something exciting to talk to us about. We all promptly yawned and looked bored.
‘Now class, as you know we have a parent’s evening at the end of the year and every class is expected to put on an item. So I want you to have a think about what you would like to do. Are there any ideas?’
We all sat looking at her blankly. We’ve done Christmas productions every year since we were babies. We used to dress up as lambs and sing Christmas carols and everyone went, ‘aren’t they sweet,’ even though some of us had runny noses and probably head lice as well. And someone always got sick with the excitement or cried when their tail fell off. One year our class held up paintings we had done of the beach while a couple of the ballet girls put on a dance in front of us. That was quite fun, especially when Ty put his foot out and tripped Phoebe up as she was going past. He got into big trouble for that but he reckoned it was worth it.
‘We could do nothing,’ suggested Aaron.
Ms Cutter looked shocked. ‘No, no, we have to put on an item,’ she insisted. ‘If you can’t think of anything for yourselves then I will have to decide on something for you.’
That got us going.
‘We could do lip synching to heavy metal music,’ Mike suggested.
‘Hey, cool idea. Let’s do that, agreed Jody. ‘We could make it a punk rock thing and dye our hair and stick on fake tattoos and everything.’
Ms Cutter looked alarmed.
‘I think that may be a bit radical,’ she suggested hurriedly. ‘Try to come up with something a little more conventional,’ she went on, ignoring the rolled eyes and gagging noises. ‘There are only nine weeks in the term and we still have a lot of work to get through.’
We groaned at the thought of more work, but then Sarah had to go and have her bright idea. She looked up at Ms Cutter and said,
‘I think it would be a wonderful idea if we put on a class mini drama production.’
Wonderful idea! Pass me the paper bag! It would be wonderful for Sarah, no doubt. Sarah was always the one chosen for the best parts whenever we did plays at school. Because of her long blonde hair she was always the princess who waited asleep until a prince rescued her. Or else she was a fairy dressed in those amazing costumes her mother made, with floaty skirts and glittery wings and even eyeshadow on. I was always a peasant or a woodcutter or a tree that the fairies danced around.
I think that a drama production is a wonderful idea,’ enthused Ms Cutter, smiling at Sarah. The rest of us groaned and started making vomiting noises. ‘It’s terrific to do something that will incorporate the new Arts Curriculum.’
Sarah smiled back. ‘That’s great. Can we choose our own topic?’
I tried frantically to get her attention, by kicking her ankle under the desk.
‘Not Shakespeare,’ I mouthed at her. ‘Anything but Shakespeare.’
Ms Cutter is mad about Shakespeare and insists on shoving it down our unwilling throats.
We’d been studying Hamlet all last term and I’ll bet Sarah could see herself as Ophelia – all pale and interesting and drifting in a boat with lilies. The main trouble with Shakespeare is that all the exciting action takes place off the stage. Ms Cutter explained it by saying that when it was first written and performed, they didn’t have curtains and proper stage sets and scenery and stuff. You couldn’t have a body on the stage as it would have to stay there for the whole play and the rest of the actors would have to walk over it all the time. So it’s offstage, then thump! Aah! Another body has hit the dust. Must have been a bit of a worry for the audience. I mean, this character exits. Is he for the chop or will he come on again?
Fortunately Ms Cutter had no ambitions to put on one of Shakespeare’s plays; they leave that to the senior classes. Instead she announced,
‘I think it would be a wonderful idea if you students wrote the production yourselves. ‘
There was an appalled silence as we all sat there gazing at her with our mouths open. All except Sarah. She asked, ‘Would you like us to base it on one of the books we’ve read this year, such as Hamlet?’
The boys all look stunned at this. That’s because most of them didn’t even read the books. They used the comic version of Hamlet and Mike Savage handed round his older sister’s notes on the other books. She did it two years ago and Mike made quite a bit of money selling the answers. I don’t have a sister and my brothers are both younger, and haven’t even got the decency to be as good at things as I am, so they’re no help at all.
We all starting talking at once. Most people were objecting that they didn’t want to do a drama production and someone, I think it was Gemma, said, ‘Why do we always have to do what Sarah suggests?’ Some of the other girls started agreeing with her until Ms Cutter held up her hand for silence and the muttering slowly subsided.
‘I’ll divide you into groups and you can discuss ideas.’
How mean is that. She didn’t even trust us to choose our own groups. What a cow!