Friend Request(3)

The new girl’s name was Maria Weston. She looked OK, sort of normal uniform, not trendy but not square either. Miss Allan made Sophie look after her, but Sophie basically showed her where the toilets were, and the lunch hall, and then ignored her for the rest of the day. Esther Harcourt tried to make friends with Maria, but even a new girl could see that Esther, in her hand-me-downs and thick-rimmed glasses was not the route to social success at our school. Funny to think that I used to hang out with Esther all the time at primary school. I loved going to her house because her mum let us go off into the woods for hours, although they were vegetarian hippies so we got some odd stuff for tea. I sort of miss her in some ways; we did used to have a laugh. Couldn’t be friends with her any more though – nightmare.

Anyway, at lunch Sophie hadn’t even sat with the new girl, and Esther was already staying away by then because Maria had been so cold to her at morning break. As I got closer to the tills, I started on the daily task of scanning the cafeteria trying to work out where I was going to sit. Maria was sitting on her own at one end of a table with a group of real swots at the other end, including Natasha Griffiths (or, as Sophie calls her, ‘Face and Neck’ due to her orange foundation and white neck). Face and Neck was holding forth on the subject of her English homework and how brilliant Mr Jenkins said it was, and how he’d asked her to stay back specially after class at the end (I bet he did; everyone reckons he’s a right old perv). I was about to pass Maria, wondering whether it was going to be OK to sit with Sophie (she was with Claire and Joanne on the far left corner table which for some reason is the cool table – basically unless you are only having a yoghurt for lunch it’s fairly embarrassing to sit there), when I caught Maria’s eye. She was eating her jacket potato and listening to Natasha banging on about her Shakespeare essay, smiling like she could already tell how full of crap Natasha is, and something made me slow my pace.

‘Is anyone sitting here?’

‘No, no one!’ she said, moving her tray to make room for me. ‘Sit down.’

I unloaded the shameful fat-filled lasagne from my tray and sat down, pressing the sharp end of my apple juice straw into the little silver disc until it popped, a bead of amber liquid oozing from the hole.

‘So, how’s your first day going so far?’

‘Oh, you know, good; of course it’s difficult… you know…’

She trailed off.

‘So, crap basically?’ I grinned.

‘Yeah.’ She smiled in relief. ‘Total crap.’

‘Where did you go to school before? Did your mum and dad move?’

Maria concentrated very hard on cutting the skin of her potato. ‘Yes, we lived in London.’

‘Oh right,’ I said. April seemed like a funny time of year to move, so near the end of GCSE year.

She hesitated. ‘I was having a bit of trouble with some of the other girls.’

I sensed she didn’t want me to press her, so I didn’t.

‘Well, everyone’s really nice here,’ I lied. ‘You won’t have any problems like that. In fact there’s a group of us that goes into town most days after school, you should come.’

‘I can’t today, my brother’s picking me up outside school to walk home. But I’d love to another day.’

First lesson after lunch was maths, and Sophie swung into the seat next to me, freshly made up after a bitching session in the toilets and reeking of Christian Dior’s Poison. I told her that I’d been talking to Maria and that I’d invited her to come into town with us. She turned to me.

‘You’ve invited her out with us?’ There was a dangerous edge to her voice.

‘Yes… is that OK?’ I tried to check the tremor in my voice.

‘Does Claire know?’

‘No… I didn’t think anyone would mind.’

‘You could have checked with me first, Louise.’

‘Sorry, I thought… she’s new, and…’ I rearranged the books on my desk needlessly, panic building. What had I done?

‘I know that. But I’ve heard some things about her already, stuff that happened at her old school.’

‘Oh, it’s OK, she told me about that.’ Maybe this would be OK. ‘None of that was true.’

‘She would say that though, wouldn’t she? Did she tell you what it was about?’

‘No,’ I admitted, my cheeks beginning to burn.

‘Right. Well, maybe you should get your facts straight before you go inviting people out with other people.’

We carried on doing our algebra in silence for a few minutes, although I noticed Sophie was still looking over my shoulder to copy my answers.

‘She can’t come tonight as it happens,’ I ventured eventually. ‘She’s got to meet her brother.’

‘I heard he was a bit of a weirdo as well. Anyway, I can’t go into town tonight. I’m doing something with Claire.’

I clearly wasn’t invited to this mystery outing, so I said nothing. I was surprised Sophie couldn’t feel the heat radiating from me, shock and worry oozing through my pores.

When the bell went she scooped up her stuff and went straight off to the next lesson. At the end of the day she didn’t even say goodbye to me, she just went giggling off, clutching Claire Barnes by the arm, without looking back. I was so frightened that I’d ruined everything with her. Shit shit shit. What was I going to do?