Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(6)

‘Not that I think you’ll have any trouble,’ she added quickly. ‘Look, maybe you should do more out-of-school stuff. Meet new people.’

‘Speaking of new people,’ I said, seeing my opportunity to change the subject and taking it, ‘there’s a new girl in Rosie’s form.’

‘Yeah?’ Tarin had taken my scarf and wound it around her own neck, fluffing out her light brown hair over it. It suited her far better than it did me.

‘Rosie loves her,’ I said.

‘Does she?’ She gave me a look, a small, knowing smile dancing on her face. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

She laughed. ‘No, but I know you. You and Rosie are as inseparable as it is possible to be, and you managed it being in different schools for ten years. Now a new girl arrives right near the end of your educational chapter and Rosie likes her?’ She made an exaggerated ‘oh dear’ face, then grinned. ’New people are always exciting. I wouldn’t worry. It’s the novelty, you know? Have you met her?’

‘Yeah, on Friday.’

‘What’s she like?’

I hesitated. ‘Nice.’

She made an incorrect buzzer noise. ‘Try again with a word that means something.’

‘She’s very confident. But in a relaxed kind of way, not in a showy way.’ I realized as I was speaking that this was close to identical to how Rosie had first described her over the phone. ‘And funny. Sarcastic kind of funny. Oh, and she’s really pretty.’

‘Sounds unbearable.’

I had to laugh. ‘She is much cooler than me.’

Tarin slapped my arm. ‘Don’t say things like that! As if cool matters.’ Only people to whom cool comes easy, like Tarin herself, ever say things like this. ‘Did you like her?’

I thought about it. ‘I didn’t not like her.’

‘Did you want to like her?’

‘Not really.’

‘Maybe give her a chance at least? If Rosie likes her, she must be all right. And remember, it’s only one week into the school year. They might not even be talking in a few weeks’ time.’

I tried to remind myself of this later that evening, when I clicked on to Facebook and rolled my finger over my laptop’s touchpad to look at my feed. I let my eyes follow the updates without really taking them in until they snagged on one. Rosie Caron and Suzanne Watts are now friends.

My chest gave a kick of completely irrational jealousy. Of course they’d be friends on Facebook. In fact it was kind of a surprise that it had taken this long. But still. I moved the cursor to hover over Suzanne’s name, hesitated, and then clicked. This turned out to be pointless, as I could see absolutely nothing of her information, except her profile picture. I leaned forward to look at it more closely. She was with a girl and a boy, all of them dressed in an unfamiliar school uniform, and they were clinging on to each other in an overly exaggerated embrace. The photo had captured them mid-laugh.

I clicked back to Rosie’s page and saw that Suzanne had posted a video on her wall. Feeling ridiculously nervous, I clicked on it. It was a puppy trying to get out of a tent, defeated by its own short legs. It was a cute video, but it made me relax because I knew – and Suzanne clearly didn’t know – that Rosie didn’t really like dogs. She should have chosen a video of a cat.

Feeling brighter, I shut my laptop and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had ten years on this girl, and however interesting or cool she was, time was surely the biggest upper hand of them all.





By Wednesday, it was like the summer holidays had never happened. Daily life at Esther’s was back in full swing and my homework schedule was already suffocatingly full. My supposedly optional after-school activities had once again taken over my free time. The old allegiances and grudges, built up over the last four years and sometimes even longer, had been reinstated.

My own friendship group had remained pretty much the same since Year 7, a somewhat disparate group of girls who didn’t quite belong to any of the cliques. This suited me perfectly, because I already had Rosie and all I really wanted was a group I could fade comfortably into during school hours. Mishka, Allison, Kesh and I had formed our friendship in the first few days of Year 7 and had clung to each other ever since.

‘The thing that you want to think about,’ Kesh was saying as we waited in line at the canteen, ‘is whether he’s actually better than any of the other guys out there. And if he’s not, what’s the point?’

‘That’s irrelevant,’ Mishka said. ‘Other guys, whether they’re “better” or not – and what does that even mean? – aren’t viable options.’

‘Why not?’ Kesh demanded.

‘Because they’re not interested?’ Mishka said, like it was obvious. We were talking about Ty, the boyfriend she’d spent most of her summer with despite the fact that he sounded like a bit of a prick.

‘I’m sorry?’ Allison said, her eyebrows raised. ‘Are you actually saying that the only reason you’re with him is because there’s no one else?’

‘Obviously,’ Mishka said flatly, and I laughed.

‘Don’t you like him at all?’ Allison pressed.

Mishka shrugged. ‘He’s not bad. But I mean, I’m not going to marry him or anything. Caddy, can you pass me that chicken-salad wrap?’