But Alistair spoiled it. He shook his head at the others. ‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ he said.
‘Yes there is, Brainbox. What about all them shows on the telly?’ said Mick.
‘They’re just clever tricks,’ said Alistair. ‘And Tina’s played a clever trick on you lot.’
‘So how’s she done it then, Sherlock Holmes?’ asked Selma.
‘Easy-peasy. She’s torn out the scribbled-on page and done her caterpillar over again. Simple.’
I felt very annoyed with Alistair. I sooooo wanted everyone to think I had magic powers. Especially Selma.
After life cycles we had to do writing. Only Miss Lovejoy mixed up writing with life cycles, because she wrote on the whiteboard A Day in the Life of a Caterpillar.
‘You what, miss?’ asked Mick.
‘Miss Lovejoy!’ said Miss Lovejoy. ‘And don’t use that uncouth expression. Surely the meaning of the title is obvious. I want you all to write about a day in the life of a caterpillar.’
‘Yes, but what caterpillar, miss— Miss Lovejoy?’ said Peter.
‘Any caterpillar. Make up a story about one.’
‘Can it be a monster caterpillar, Miss Lovejoy?’ said Mick.
‘Yes, it can. This is a story so you can make up anything you want.’
‘Can it be a story that is one hundred per cent true, Miss Lovejoy?’ asked Alistair.
‘Yes, it can. Now, get started, everyone. Copy down the title into your writing books. And pay strict attention to the spelling on the whiteboard!’ said Miss Lovejoy.
I paid strict attention to the spelling – but not quite strict enough. I got my ‘a’s and ‘e’s a bit muddled. I looked at the board but didn’t manage to write it the same way on the page.
Miss Lovejoy came and checked and sighed deeply. ‘Look, Tina, look! Dear me. I think you’d better write out caterpillar five times before you get started so that you can remember the correct spelling in future,’ she said.
So I had to copy it out very slowly to make sure I got it right. While I was doing this, I started to make up my story in my head. I imagined being very, very, very small, a little black-and-white caterpillar with a red head (or bottom). I would have big problems hiding from birds. All the ordinary green caterpillars would just crawl into a bush or a tree and hide amongst the leaves, and the birds wouldn’t have a clue where they were. I’d have to find a black-and-white hidey-hole.
Simple! I decided I’d make friends with a zebra. I was pretty sure zebras didn’t eat caterpillars. So I trekked all the way to the zoo – a tremendously long trek if you’re a very weeny caterpillar. I didn’t have to pay because caterpillars go free. I saw yellow lions and grey elephants. There was a stripy tiger, but he was too orange. I saw black and white penguins, but they didn’t have stripes. But then I saw a zebra. ‘Hello, Mr Zebra,’ I said in as loud a voice as I could manage. ‘Hello, little Miss Caterpillar,’ said the zebra. ‘Would you care to jump up into my mane? I will carry you wherever you want so long as you give my head a little scratch whenever it gets itchy.’ So I jumped up onto his mane and lived there very happily indeed, and every morning when the zebra woke up with an itchy head, I went scratch, scratch, scratch with my weeny feet and scratched all the itch away.
If Phil or Maddie had been next to me to write it all down, then it would have been a very good story. But they weren’t there – I had to write it all myself, and my hand was already aching after copying the word caterpillar, and I didn’t have much time left for my story.
It didn’t come out right. Miss Lovejoy wasn’t impressed.
At break time Phil and Maddie told me what they’d written. Phil wrote a story about a man caterpillar making friends with a lady caterpillar in a cabbage patch and them having lots of babies.
‘Miss Lovejoy said it was nicely written and I got all my spellings right,’ said Phil, ‘but she pointed out that it wasn’t very accurate because caterpillars don’t mate. I thought that was mean – she said we could write anything because it was a story. And I made up lovely caterpillar babies called Christopher and Carol and Colin and Crystal.’
‘I made up a story about a race between all the insects in the garden,’ said Maddie. ‘The caterpillar was nearly always last because its legs are so little, but then it drank some fertilizer and grew great enormous legs so it could dash along and beat everyone else. Miss Lovejoy said it was very imaginative, but she didn’t like the fertilizer bit because she said it would be deadly poisonous. That was mean too, because fertilizer in stories doesn’t have to be poisonous. It’s not as if I’m going to drink fertilizer.’
‘I made up a story about a weeny black-and-white caterpillar and a zebra. Miss Lovejoy didn’t like the spelling and said that it wasn’t long enough and I hadn’t tried hard enough,’ I said mournfully. ‘I hate it in Miss Lovejoy’s class.’
I thought I might like the next lesson because it was art and Miss Lovejoy had said that I was very good at art. But we didn’t do any proper art in this art lesson. We did cutting out with scissors.
Miss Lovejoy told us about a man called Matisse who did cut-out pictures of snails and strange people and weird shapes. She hung copies of his cut-out pictures on the wall.
Then she got Selma to hand out coloured paper to each table – red and yellow and blue and ordinary white – and a pot of paste, and a pair of scissors each. They weren’t proper scissors, they were silly baby ones without points. Still, perhaps this was just as well as I was sitting next to Selma.
We had to do our own cut-out pictures, sticking coloured shapes onto the white paper.
I wanted to draw my shapes first in case I went wrong.
‘No, no, put that pencil away, Tina. The whole point is to free yourself up and make big bold shapes,’ Miss Lovejoy told me.
I didn’t like doing big bold things. I liked to draw everything, rubbing it out if it went wonky, and colouring it in very carefully, not going over the lines. I liked to choose my colours too. Red and yellow and blue were a bit limiting.
I had a picture in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like.
But when I tried cutting it out, it went all wrong.
‘That’s rubbish!’ said Selma.
She was right – it was rubbish. Phil’s head was too small, and poor Maddie lost one of her legs when the scissors wobbled, and I was lopsided, as if I were falling over. The colours were wrong too. We looked as if we’d been using Gran’s hair-dye and had a bad case of sunburn.
‘My picture’s much better!’ said Selma.
She was right again. She hadn’t tried to make anything up, she’d simply copied Matisse and stuck blobs of paper in a snail shape. But it worked.
It was very, very annoying.
‘Well done, Selma! That’s exactly what I wanted,’ said Miss Lovejoy.
Selma smirked all over her face.
At the end of the lesson Phil and Maddie came to look at my cut-out. I could see that they were all prepared to admire it. They looked for a while without saying anything.
‘Well, it’s quite good,’ said Phil, meaning, It’s very, very bad.
‘Did that horrible Selma nudge you when you were cutting out?’ asked Maddie. ‘I bet she did. She jogged you so you chopped off my leg and a chunk of Phil’s head.’
‘Of course!’ said Phil. ‘And I bet she nudged you again when you were sticking and that’s why you’re all lopsided, Tina.’
Now this hadn’t happened at all. I didn’t say it did.
‘I don’t want to tell tales,’ I said instead. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Then I put my chin on my chest and looked sad. So of course Phil and Maddie thought that Selma really had nudged me and made me spoil my cut-out picture. It wasn’t really my fault – was it?
They were positively fuming. They said all sorts of bad things about Selma. It was very enjoyable.
Then they went storming up to her at lunch time. I tried to stop them – I didn’t want my sisters to get hurt because Selm
a can be horrid. But I didn’t want them to find out the truth either. It was no use. They got to Selma long before I could catch up with them.
‘Just you leave my sister alone!’ said Phil. Selma looked up, very surprised. ‘What you on about? I didn’t do anything!’
‘You mucked up Tina’s cutting out!’ said Phil.
‘I did not!’ said Selma. ‘Now clear off or I’ll thump you one.’
‘You’re a wicked liar. And don’t threaten us, or we’ll thump you,’ said Maddie.
She shoved herself right up to Selma to show that she wasn’t a bit scared (though she was). She shoved a little bit too hard. She bumped into the table and her hand caught Selma’s open lunch box. It went flying off the edge, and Selma’s crisps and Coke spilled everywhere.
It was an accident, but Selma thought she’d done it on purpose.
‘You little whatsit!’ she said – but she didn’t say whatsit at all. She said a much worse word. Mum would faint if she heard any of us use that word.
Selma stood up, her fists clenched. Maddie took a step back. So did Phil. I took several steps back. Selma looked ready to bash all three of us.
But then one of the dinner ladies came charging over.
‘Now then, what’s all this, girls! Oh dear, look at this mess all over my clean floor! For goodness’ sake, why do you have to be so clumsy?’ she said to Selma.
‘It wasn’t my fault, miss! It was that triplet! She did it on purpose!’ cried Selma.
She pointed. She pointed at Phil – which was plain stupid, because Phil would never threaten to thump anyone or accidentally-on-purpose knock their lunch box over.
Selma was stupid to muddle us up. It’s as plain as anything: Phil has the little mole, Maddie has the scar on her chin.
The dinner lady was glaring at Phil. ‘Is that true? Did you knock her lunch box over?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s not true at all!’ Phil looked upset and indignant and totally, totally telling the truth. Which she was.
‘Then you’re a naughty girl to try to blame someone else,’ the dinner lady said to Selma. ‘Now pick up those bits while I get a cloth for all that spilled Coke.’
Selma started to protest furiously.
‘You be quiet, young lady, or I’ll report you to your teacher,’ said the dinner lady. ‘You’re in Miss Lovejoy’s class, aren’t you? What will she say if I tell her you’ve spilled your lunch, blamed an innocent friend, and bad-mouthed me into the bargain!’
That shut Selma up. We went to sit at the other end of the canteen. We had to keep out of Selma’s way now. She hadn’t liked us before, but now we were deadly enemies. And I still had to sit next to her in class!
Chapter Six
‘I’LL GET MY own back on you!’ Selma hissed.
And she did. Terribly. Day after day.
She poked me with her elbows. She kicked me under the table. She pulled my hair. She broke my pencil. She opened my lunch box and bit into my fruit bar, and then spat it out again because she said she didn’t like it. She flipped my special rubber in the shape of a teddy bear over to the other side of the classroom and I never found it again.
She sellotaped a note to my back saying Kick me! She pulled up my skirt in the playground so that everyone could see my knickers. She threw the ball right at my head when I was sitting watching our class play dodgeball.
I didn’t have Phil and Maddie nearby to look after me, so I had to take Baby to school, day after day. Mum noticed she was missing once, when she was tidying our room.
She was very cross. ‘Tina, I’ve told you not to take that baby doll to school! You’ll only break her or lose her. She’s not a toy, she’s an ornament. Gran paid a fortune for those dolls. Now, promise me you’ll leave her on the windowsill with Rosebud,’ said Mum.
‘Yes, Mum, I promise,’ I said.
I couldn’t keep my promise. I needed Baby with me sooooo much. I had to take her to school every single day, but I always kept her completely hidden.
I was very good at it. I could tuck her up in my hand and you couldn’t see her, not even her neat little china feet. If I needed both hands free, I put Baby in my skirt pocket. She liked it in there. I put a tissue inside so she had something soft to curl up in, and a few biscuit crumbs in case she was hungry. She was very good. She never tried to peep out or wriggle free.
Nobody knew she was there. Well, Phil and Maddie did, but they’re my sisters. Nobody else knew. Even Miss Lovejoy with her beady eyes didn’t know that Baby came to school every day. Selma didn’t have a clue about Baby. Until one dreadful day . . .
We were doing life cycles again. Our caterpillars had made their cocoons and then magically emerged as butterflies. We had to draw a British butterfly, copying from a book.
Selma did a large white so that she could just draw it on the white page, putting in two dots on each wing, and then say she was finished.
Kayleigh thought this was a good idea and copied her.
Peter did a small white. It was so weeny you could hardly see it.
Mick did an elephant hawk-moth. He coloured it carefully in pink and brown, but then added a trunk and tusks.
Alistair did a small tortoiseshell. He spent ages trying to get the orange and black markings one hundred per cent right. He got very cross when the wings didn’t quite match.
I decided to do a peacock butterfly because I like red. I drew the four false eyes on its wings very carefully in black and light brown and blue, edged its wings with dark brown, and gave it long distinctive antennae.
I don’t want to sound as if I’m boasting, but it was a truly splendid picture. Miss Lovejoy circled our table, looking to see what we’d done. She tutted at Selma and Kayleigh, saying they hadn’t tried very hard. She told Peter she’d have to start bringing a magnifying glass to school. She shook her head at Mick and told him to rub out the trunk and the tusks. She said Alistair had tried very hard. But when she saw my butterfly she clapped her hands.
‘What a wonderful peacock butterfly, Tina!’ she said. ‘Look, everyone!’ She held it up so that the whole class could see. Phil and Maddie looked so proud of me. Selma was scowling and scowling. I suddenly stopped being happy and started to get very scared. She had scribbled all over my black-and-white stripy caterpillar with the red head (or bottom). What would she do to my beautiful peacock butterfly?
But she didn’t do anything to my peacock butterfly. She couldn’t.
‘I think your drawing is so exceptional it deserves a gold star, Tina,’ said Miss Lovejoy.
The whole class gasped. Some teachers give you gold stars at the drop of a hat. In Miss Oxford’s class in the Infants you got a gold star just for writing your own name. I got one – though I have got a very easy name. But Miss Lovejoy was famous for never ever giving gold stars. You were lucky if you were given a measly tick, even if you got ten out of ten.
‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ said Miss Lovejoy. ‘I’m going to very, very carefully tear your butterfly out of your school book and pin it up on the wall because it’s so special. Then I can look at it when I want cheering up. You can all look at it. You’ll see what you can achieve if you try hard. Are you listening, Selma and Kayleigh?’
Kayleigh looked upset. Selma scowled some more. She seemed to be scowling with her whole body now.
‘But then Tina won’t have a butterfly in her life cycles book, Miss Lovejoy,’ said Phil.
‘Tina can draw and colour a brand-new butterfly while the rest of you are having a dodgeball lesson,’ said Miss Lovejoy. ‘I wonder if you’ve ever had to re-draw anything before, Tina?’
I gave a wriggle that could be yes and could be no. I was pretty sure that Miss Lovejoy knew all about me magicking away the scribbled black-and-white caterpillar with the red head (or bottom). Miss Lovejoy seemed a bit magic herself, the way she always knew about things.
She eased my peacock butterfly out of my exercise book and put it in a picture frame. The picture frame had glass, so Selma co
uldn’t scribble over it, even if she’d dared.
I had a very peaceful time drawing a new peacock butterfly while everyone else played dodgeball. For once I didn’t mind that I wasn’t allowed to play exciting games because I was small and a bit poorly. I kept well out of the way of the balls so that Selma couldn’t thump me with one.
I felt very happy. At lunch time, for the first time ever, I ate all my sandwich and all my crisps and all my fruit bar, and drank all my juice. I drank from the water fountain too. I pretended that I was a thirsty dog going lap, lap, lap and made Phil and Maddie laugh.
I wasn’t used to drinking so much. I was very small. My bladder was very small too. Halfway through afternoon school I realized that I’d forgotten to go to the loo at lunch time. I hoped I’d be able to wait until the end of the lesson.
I got a bit fidgety. I felt all hot and squirmy. I started to worry I wouldn’t be able to wait.
I didn’t quite dare put up my hand and ask Miss Lovejoy if I could be excused. She was always very irritated and gave you great long lectures about going to the toilet at the right time.
The moment the bell went I absolutely charged to the girls’ toilets. I didn’t wait for Phil. I didn’t wait for Maddie. I got to the loo just in time.
It was an enormous relief. I was washing my hands when someone came into the toilets. That someone was Selma. She was still scowling.
I stopped washing my hands. I flapped them wildly to get them dry and then made a dash for it. I didn’t dash quite fast enough. Selma caught hold of me.
‘You think you’re absolutely it, don’t you, you squirmy Little Bug,’ she said. ‘Teacher’s pet!’
‘I’m not!’ I said.
‘You are so. I’m well sick of you. I’m going to get you!’
I wasn’t quick enough. She gave me an enormous shove that sent me flying. Baby went flying too, right out of my pocket. She skittered across the floor, way past the sinks.