His & Hers(48)

“Diet pills. We all take them. It means you can be slim without feeling hungry. Put them in your bag; we don’t want the whole school knowing all our little secrets.”

“Why do you want to invite Smelly Catherine Kelly to join our gang?” Rachel asked, changing the subject.

The others laughed.

“I just know how happy it makes me to eat lunch with all of you, and I thought she looked lonely—”

“And you wanted to be nice, right?” Rachel interrupted. I shrugged. “You know, being too nice is a sign of weakness.”

Rachel stood abruptly, her chair scraping the floor. Then she picked up her can of Coke and left the cafeteria. Nobody spoke, and when I tried to make eye contact, they all stared at the uneaten salads on their plates.

Rachel returned a few minutes later, her smile reattached to her face. She put the can back down on the table, and picked up her cutlery to continue barely eating. The other girls did the same. They always took their lead from her.

“Well, go on then,” she said between mouthfuls. “Invite her over.”

I hesitated for a moment but then dismissed the uneasy feeling in my stomach, choosing to believe that Rachel was being as kind as I knew she could be. It seems na?ve looking back, but sometimes we believe what we want to about the people we like the most.

I weaved my way through an obstacle course of chairs, tables, and schoolgirls to reach the sad little corner of the cafeteria where Catherine Kelly always ate alone. Her long blond hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush for a while. She tucked it behind her sticky-out ears, and blushed when the other kids called her Dumbo. Despite all the snacks she liked so much—chips, chocolate bars, endless fizzy drinks—she was a skinny girl. Her shirt was a little loose around her neck where a button was missing, and there were stains on her tie. I noticed that her navy blue blazer was covered in chalk, as though she had rubbed up against a blackboard. Close up, I could also see that her eyebrows were almost completely bald, where she was always plucking the hairs with her fingertips. I’d watched her doing it in class, making tiny piles of herself on the desk, before blowing them away like wishes.

She pulled a face as though she thought I was joking when I invited her to join us. She stared at the girls on my table—who were all giggling at something Rachel had whispered to them after I had left—but when they saw her looking, they smiled and waved and beckoned her over. I felt very pleased with myself indeed when she carried her tray to our table, and sat down next to us all.

Until I read the scrap of paper that had been tucked beneath my plate.

Rachel made a little speech before I could say or do anything about it.

“I just wanted to say sorry if I’ve ever hurt your feelings, Catherine. Friends?” she said, reaching across the table to shake her hand.

The quiet girl obliged, holding out her own. I could see how badly bitten her nails were, the skin around them red and raw. I noticed a bit of lasagna had gotten stuck between the braces on her teeth, too.

Catherine’s cheeks flushed red as she shook Rachel’s hand, and her can of Coke got knocked over. Helen—ever the clever and practical one—immediately produced some napkins to soak up the mess, as though she had known it was going to happen.

“I’m so sorry,” said Rachel. “I am such a klutz. Here, have my Coke instead. It’s still full and I haven’t touched it.”

“I’m fine, I’m not even really thirsty,” Catherine replied, even redder than before so that her face and the can appeared to match.

“No really, I insist.”

Rachel slid the drink across the table, and the conversation seemed to move along with it.

I kept staring at the slip of paper, reading the words and wondering what was the right thing to do:

I pissed in the Coke can. If you tell her before she drinks it, then you’ll be the one sitting alone at lunch tomorrow.

Of course, I already knew the right thing to do, but I didn’t do it. I just sat there, looking at the plate of food I no longer wanted to eat.

Five excruciating minutes after she sat down with us all, Catherine picked up the drink. Rachel managed to keep a straight face, but Helen looked delighted, and Zoe was already giggling. I wish I could say that she just took a sip, but the girl tilted her head right back, and took several gulps before realizing that something was wrong.

“You just drank my piss!” said Rachel, an enormous smile on her face once more.

Everyone laughed, and news of what had happened soon spread from our table to the next, until the whole school seemed to be pointing and laughing at Catherine Kelly.

She didn’t say a word.

She just stared at me.

Then she got up and left the cafeteria, without clearing her tray or looking back.





Him



Wednesday 07:45



“I need you to come back with me.”

Anna and Priya both turn to look in my direction, but it’s my ex-wife that I’m talking to.

“Please say she hasn’t touched anything in here?” I say to Priya, who looks strangely sheepish.

“Only the phone.”

I close my eyes. I think I knew she was going to say the words before she said them. It was my idea to ask Anna to wait in the secretary’s office, so I can’t really blame anyone else. I turn to face her, anxious to see her reaction.