Hazel Wood Girl (2 page)

I nearly
died
today, and I’m so glad that it was the last day of term. I am too furious even to cry. I still can’t believe it. It is MENTAL. Mum went behind my back last night and phoned Barbara’s mum (who she sees at yoga) to suggest that I go with them to the island to keep Barbara company. Then her mum went and asked Barbara who said ‘no way’, that she didn’t even know me. And then Barbara’s mum lied to my mum and said that she already had a friend going and that there wasn’t enough room for anyone else.

And then it was all around the school, which is how I know the whole story, and people were pretending to ask me on holiday with them and 
laughing. Also, no one told me that you are allowed to wear your own clothes on the last day of term so I was the only one wearing school uniform.

The good news is that it can’t get any worse. And the bad news is … that it can’t get any worse.

I didn’t want to go back along the main road after school in case I bumped into Barbara, so I went the long way home by the library and took out this home-study kit for learning French. In our class we don’t start French until next year and I really need to get going sooner than that, I might get rescued and whisked off to Paris any day now (yeah, as
if
). I wish I thought of it before, I could have been listening to the audio stuff on the walk to-and-from school. Mindy always listens to music when she walks with me and sometimes she gets to borrow Mum’s bike and cycles on ahead of me, so it’s not like I was crazy-busy doing anything else.

Going the long way round meant I had to pass the Egg Farm. Of course Mr and Mrs Granger were there, and of course they yelled at me, screaming,

‘What are you doing on our land?’

But I wasn’t, I was just on the edge of the road. Weird because they’ve met me before when Dad took us around for an introduction, but they were nasty then too. I think that’s why they work with chickens, 
because they can’t work with people. They are like storybook baddies, with him all heavy and red-faced, and her stick-thin and wringing her hands together that way. Except they don’t have ‘redeeming features’, which book-baddies always seem to have. They’re fairly hilarious, not that you’d ever dare laugh or they might, I don’t know, set a pack of rabid chickens after you.

Anyway I was so depressed that even they couldn’t make me feel any worse. I am giving up and will just go and lie in a field until someone scrapes me up and sends me somewhere.

Dad took the lambs away today and put them back in the sheep field, although you couldn’t really call them lambs any more. They get boring once they’re big, so I wasn’t bothered. It’s funny how me and Mindy sometimes do get along, like when we would tie a string around the lambs’ necks and walk them like little dogs and get them to jump over fences and things. But that was weeks ago, and now they are like sheep and only eat. Even giving them bottles became a pain when we had to do it three times a day. I do like looking at all the cows and sheep in the fields, but you get used to that too. It’s not all that thrilling living on a farm, not like I thought it would be when they first told us. I think I will ask Dad can I
have something new and original like a snake or a chinchilla or a duck, just to see his reaction, but he will probably say it’s too dangerous. I wonder how mature he’ll say you have to be to own a duck.

I just sat on my bed all day listening to the French course, learning basic phrases. If I land in Paris tomorrow I will be fine for fruit tarts and hotel rooms.

I wish someone would ask me how I am.

I brought a blanket into the greenhouse and some stuff to kill the woodlice and earwigs. It is now not nearly as bad as it was before. Then, because there is nothing else on the planet for me to do, I fixed the broken bit of glass with a wooden tray from the kitchen, which I have never seen anyone use. One really good bit is the way I can see the summer cattle-field from the greenhouse. I must find a chair to bring in.

During lunch (one more meal a day to suffer through now that it’s the holidays) Adam said that two little boys and their mother are moving in to the house at the far side of the summer cattle-field. I bet they find this greenhouse and wreck it with stones. 
Adam said I could spend the summer babysitting for their mother who isn’t well, and he even said it like it was a good idea, which is part of his mental-ness.

That made Mum ask me what I wanted to do for the summer and I didn’t dare open my mouth in case she got busy organising, so I said

‘I don’t know.’

I say that a lot.

Then, even though I was eating in a way that made it obvious that I didn’t want a conversation, she said what a pity Barbara already had a friend going with her to the island. Mum really super-size doesn’t get it. I think the coffee wrecked her brain a long time ago. She bought me something unwearable in town, and I said thank you and did a pretty good pretend smile.

I worked out that most days I say about fifty words out loud (but always in a nice, polite voice, not sulky or looking for attention – Mum and Dad really stamp down on ‘tone’). When you include ‘pass the milk please’, and ‘sorry’ and all the ‘I don’t know’s’, that’s not a lot of things said. There’s a gazillion words inside me, they just seem to get stuck on the wrong side of my mouth. I get scared that I will make people angry or make them not like me, unless I pretend to be OK and say OK things.

My cousin Jen phoned and said she will not be coming over this summer so now there is only Paris in four years to look forward to. In town with Mum earlier I waited for her outside the post-office and saw that friend of Barbara’s who is not in our school, who I think is called Emma-Jo. A few months ago I saw them and their mothers together in the café, and Barbara gabs on and on about how her friend Emma-Jo is going to be famous some day. So I’m adding one-and-one together and getting this blonde girl.

She walks like a cat or a film star, and has very short fair hair and the greenest green eyes. I wish my eyes were a real colour like blue or green or brown 
and not just the colour of beer, as Adam so kindly puts it. Dad tried to make me feel better by correcting Adam and saying my eyes were in fact the colour of barley, but beer is made from barley so he just confirmed it really.

Breakfast is made more bearable by Mum’s new passion for baking muffins. She thinks it makes her creative, but it doesn’t, it just proves she can tell a blueberry from a banana. Dad let slip that Adam is going out on a date with some teacher from our school. I hope she dumps him quickly so he doesn’t get round to talking about me. Adam is ancient in every way, so either the teacher is desperate, or is Miss Abingdale (forty-ish maths teacher) or both. Dad thinks it’s hilarious and Mum thinks it’s sweet, and I think it’s a bit sick. For God’s sake, he doesn’t even eat most supermarket or restaurant food without asking loads of questions. Where will he take her to dinner? The carrot and parsnip furrow in
our kitchen garden maybe?

I must make something happen. Life is not made up of muffins and sheep. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Now that I know how to dress in French, and tell the time in French (as long as it is something past something and not something to something), I feel more than ready to leave the farm. Twitchy, even.

I phoned Michelle to see if I could come and visit. It’s weird seeing someone every day since you were four and then just not seeing them again. Her dad answered and told me she was away at ballet camp, which I knew but forgot.

My next plan was to phone Mindy and get her to casually ask Mum and Dad to let me join her at French summer camp, and hope that they were feeling unnaturally optimistic at that moment. But she said she didn’t want the extra responsibility of having to look after me. She is
such
a pain, she has never had to look after me, even when we were little I always took care of myself. She thinks because she is two years older than me that she’s a million times better than me. Only her hair and boyfriends make her a bit better than me, the rest is about even. I didn’t argue with her because I never do because there’s no point.

Plan C was to eat, and that was successful 
because it didn’t require anyone being not at ballet camp, or being not annoying. There was some butternut squash soup and I took a mug of it out to my greenhouse to write this.

Just now I saw one of the new little boys from the house across the way, standing stock-still in the summer cattle field. He looks about eight years old and has really black hair and dark-brown eyes. He doesn’t seem like someone who would wreck your greenhouse on you, in fact I felt a bit bad for him, just standing there staring into space. I remember how I did that when we first moved. Like if I stood there long enough it would all disappear and go back to being the old place.

I saw the strange little boy again this morning. He just stands there, gazing out with those big brown eyes, like he’s sleepwalking or something. I think it was the same little boy, but it might have been his brother. If I see him again I might say hello.

Adam is smiling
way
too much. Not happy about that, and still no more clues. It might even be Miss Jenkins in which case I might have got Adam all wrong.

Today I decided I would be an intrepid adventurer and fully explore the farm, all around the edge of it. It doesn’t take much to be intrepid around here, just way too much time and a bottle of orange juice in your pocket and maybe a banana muffin. I was 
careful not to go by the big stone barn because that’s right beside the Egg Farm and I didn’t fancy the Grangers having a go at me again.

I always thought there was nothing but roughland between the sheep field and the falling-down cottage, but in that bit where it dips and curves around the corner, there’s a little wood-type place in the hollow. There’s only about forty little trees, which are really huge big bushes I guess. They are hazel trees, and it’s meant to be called a coppice. I found out when I got back and looked it up in Dad’s tree book. I am still going to call it a wood because it is one really. I like the idea of having my own magic Hazel Wood.

Adam said that if I had found the hazel coppice in the spring I would have seen all the lambs’ tails hanging there, which are like furry bits that hang off the ends of the twigs. Not real lambs’ tails obviously, because that would be more than a big bit weird. He told me they used to use the wood from hazel to make fencing and baskets when he was little. I pretended to be surprised that baskets had already been invented back then.

Today wasn’t even worth writing about.

I hope I am not getting ruined for life by all this.

It was hot today so I had my peanut-butter toast-sandwich and blueberry muffin outside, sitting on the drystone wall beside the Hazel Wood and the old, ruined cottage. I don’t know why I like it there so much, I suppose because it’s sort of off-to-the-side and ignored, and I can relate.

I spent the whole morning there, daydreaming about having a boyfriend and walking past Barbara with my boyfriend’s arm around me (and the rest of him attached to his arm, obviously).

Whenever I feel really alone, I always imagine JL, the boy from my old class in the city. In the real world JL is probably spending the summer at the youth club like last year. He used to play table tennis 
with Mindy and her best friend. If I’d had any clue then that I’d be leaving in six months I would have definitely talked to him, definitely.

Someone I did talk to today was the little boy who was in our farmyard. Well, I said ‘hello’ and he sort of stared more. What is wrong with everybody that no one can say hello to me? Anyway, Mum says that his mother is sick and that their dad left them when the youngest son was born, so it’s got to be tough.

They call him Sammy-boy (sounds like an old American cowboy name!) and his brother is Christophe, but Christophe must be even shyer because I haven’t even seen him about at all.

Mum sent me over to the new lady’s house with a welcome gift of oatcakes, goose eggs and fruit and things, while she went to yoga.

I figured as long as they weren’t as nasty as the Grangers I’d be fine.

The Hoopers (that’s their name) have been so creative with the house and it looks like something you’d see in an expensive magazine. Mrs Hooper is really gentle and interesting and doesn’t look sick, but Mum says that’s because it’s a condition that comes and goes, worse some days and better others. She invited me to drop in any time and hang out with Sammy-boy and Christophe. I don’t want to be rude, but I’m certain that hanging out with a 
fourteen-year-old girl would be last thing on earth eight- and ten-year-old boys would want.

On the way back through the summer cattle-field one of the cows tried to butt me, so I called it a Sunday Roast and told it where to go. I thought I heard someone laughing, but maybe I am just a bit paranoid after all that’s been going on.

I then did something that is so stupid that the word ‘stupid’ doesn’t even cover it. I found JL’s number from directory inquiries and called his house. He answered and I hung up. I would so not be good as a spy.

By that stage I was determined to do something positive. Anything to not have it be another wasted day. I read somewhere that rinsing your hair in beer makes it shiny, so I took a bottle from the fridge and Dad caught me going upstairs with it and now he and Mum want to have a chat with me. It’s funny really, I’m probably the last person to drink beer and now I have to have a heavy full-on conversation. It’s typical, I never do anything wrong and things always go bad.

Something good has to happen soon. Has to.

Broccoli does not by rights belong in a muffin. You would think that would be obvious.

I think they believe me about the beer being for my hair, but I’m not certain. Still they told me that it’s a very busy time, their first year at the farm, and they need me to keep out of trouble.

I was in a full-on strop after that, but I smiled and didn’t let them see. I’m sick to death of being nice no matter what, so I stayed away all day, with a serious amount of cheese crackers in one pocket and some grapes in the other. 

I headed straight for the Hazel Wood and it was so weird, there was this note hanging from one of the branches of the first big tree. It said ‘To the Hazel Wood Girl’, and I wanted so badly to have a look inside, but was afraid that the Hazel Wood Girl would catch me at it and be angry, so I just left it and went back to ….

OH MY GOD! I am such an idiot. It might be for me! There are no other girls around now that Mindy’s away and we own the wood, so it must mean me. I’m big-time ridiculous, I’m so slow, just like when they called me ‘The Farmer’, only this is better if it is me. It’s only just getting dark so I’m going to run out and see if it’s still there. Why am I still here writing this? Oh my God!!!

It was still there!! It says,

I’d think Mrs Hooper left it, except that from the handwriting it seems to be from a teenager. It’s no one’s handwriting from our house and it can’t be the 
Grangers on the Egg Farm because they are biologically incapable of being nice or interesting, and if they did send a note it would be to yell at you on paper.

I just showed the envelope to Mum and she said that seeing as it was in our bit of woodland that it must be for me and that we know everyone in the area so it must be a friend of the family. Of course she thinks it’s Barbara, not knowing that she’s left already. I’m glad Mum wasn’t that interested as it still feels like my own secret. I’m psyched now about getting up and finding out those bits of info asked in the note. It’s not the most thrilling thing to do when you compare it to what Mindy and Barbara are up to, but hey, at least it’s something.