Mira in the Present Tense (18 page)

When I come out of Miss Poplar's office, I feel taller than I did when I went in. Walking between lessons, where you have to crisscross the school with the thousand or so other giant-sized people, is usually the bit I dread most about my day. Most days when I make this journey, I concentrate as hard as I can on becoming invisible, but not today. It's as if I'm seeing this school for the very first time and all the kids who come here…and some are taller than me, and some are smaller, but they all have a human face. As I walk through the crowded corridor, I feel a buzz in my pocket, so I duck into the nearest loo, locking the door behind me.

That was brave.

See you later.

JJ xxx

Three kisses. I think about texting him back, but it would probably take me hours, and I'm already late for French so I close my phone, check myself out in the mirror, concentrating hard on losing my “Jidé Jackson just texted me three kisses” face, and walk into French.

“
Tu es en retard, Mira
.
”

“I've got a note, miss,” I say, showing her the note from Miss Poplar explaining why I'm late.

Answering Jidé's text is just about all I can think of through what's left of French. As I leave the classroom, I catch sight of him across the language corridor as he comes out of Spanish. I blush just about the most ridiculous color crimson that I've ever turned. He grins at me, and I, without being able to stop myself, grin back before being mercifully swept away on a sea of bodies. I duck into the toilets again to text him this.

Thank you.

Mira xxxx

It took me all of French to pluck up the courage to send those four kisses. Well, I suppose French
is
supposed to be the language of love.

By lunchtime Millie's back, wearing her new braces. We sit on the high wall and I tell her about the shame of Jidé finding out what a coward I am and my explosion in Miss Poplar's class.

“Sounds like I missed all the action, but I wouldn't worry…he probably liked playing the hero to your damsel in distress!” teases Millie.

“I don't think so.”

“So why did he want your number then?”

“I dunno because he hasn't called.”

Strictly speaking that's not a lie. Who am I kidding? I am even lying to my best friend now. What is going on with me? Why can't I just tell Millie the truth?

“Here comes trouble,” scowls Millie as Demi and Bo stroll toward us.

I feel my whole body tense up. In a minute I'll know if they're going to take their revenge, but they just keep on walking without even glancing up at us.

“Result!” grins Millie, shaking my hand.

“All right, Mira?” mumbles Orla as she trails along behind the others.

“All right,” I say.

The phone rings.

“Will
someone
please pick that up,” shouts Dad.

“I'm in the bathroom. Mira, can you pick it up or they'll ring off,” yells Mum.

I don't know why they even bother. It's always me who answers the phone anyway. Krish won't because it makes him nervous.

“Hi! Millie…Poor you! Does it really hurt?…OK, I'll tell her…Yep, I'll call you later.”

“Who was that?” asks Mum, carrying Laila all cozied up in a towel, down the stairs.

“Millie. Her teeth are hurting. It's her new braces giving her headaches. She's having the day off. Can I go and see her after school?”

“If you like, but be back by five and take your mobile,” Mum says, trying to be relaxed about everything, but then she blows it. “Do you want me to walk you into your writing group if Millie's not coming?”

“No, Mum. I'm fine on my own.”

Pat Print walks ahead of me through the great metal gates. When she spots me, she stops and waits.

“How was the rest of your stay? I nearly got blown off that beach.”

“Fine.”

So she really was there. We walk along in silence for a minute or so.

“How's your nana?”

“In the hospice.”

“I see.”

“She knows Moses,” I tell Pat Print.

“Who does?”

“Nana. We saw you walking him. We could see you from her room in the hospice. She thinks Piper and Moses know each other.”

“Now I think of it, I've heard Tilly talk about a Piper. Tilly walks Moses on weekdays mostly. I just don't have the time. Strange I've never bumped into your nana on one of my Suffolk jaunts though…So she's in the Marie Curie. That's just behind my flat. She'll be well looked after there,” she says, touching me on the shoulder in her awkward, trying-to-be-comforting way.

“Millie can't come today. She's got new braces and her teeth are aching,” I explain, changing the subject.

“Ouch! Poor Millie, but I don't see why everyone's got to have such perfect teeth these days. It's all part of this gruesome path we're all supposed to follow to physical perfection.”

Pat Print and my dad have this much in common.

“Well, you'll have to fill her in. And then there were…three,” Pat counts, walking into the classroom where Jidé and Ben are sprawled out over their desks as if they would rather be in bed. Ben's wearing his baseball cap today.

“Great cap,” says Pat Print, pulling the brim down over Ben's eyes and making him squirm.

She takes off her coat. It's one of those green wax things Nana wears in Suffolk—you hardly ever see anyone wearing one in London.

“Where's Moses?” asks Ben.

“I got the impression dogs aren't allowed in school. So I've left him at home today.”

“Ohhh!” groans Ben.

“Have you got any pets?” asks Pat.

“Mum won't let me. She thinks they're filthy.”

“She's got a point!”

Before I can think of what's happening I hear Nana's words escape from my mouth, “With love comes cack.”

Now Pat Print, Jidé, and Ben are all rolling around in hysterics. Pat finally calms down enough to ask, “Who says that?”

“Nana Josie.”

I can't believe I let that out.

“I'm tempted to steal that for the title of my next book!”

Pat Print can see that I've blushed up bright red, so she tries to change the subject. “Now…what have you got for me, Jidé?”

I want to talk to Jidé, I want to ask him so many questions about Rwanda, but if I ever did, he would know I'd been spying on him and what would he think of me for wanting to know?

“I've written the beginning of my book,” he says.

“Is that all?” laughs Pat, rubbing her hands together. “Let's have it then.”

Jidé starts to read:

He could imagine the heat and the red-brown soil, but he could not remember it. When he looked in the mirror he could imagine what his mother and his father looked like.

He often wondered whose eyes he had, whose nose, whose mouth, whose skin, whose voice his sounded like, but he knew that there was no way he was ever going to find out.

He didn't want people to feel sorry for him, because he was one of the lucky ones. You hadn't watched his body on the nine o'clock news floating down the river of corpses. If you had known them, you might have caught sight of his parents though. But would you have recognized them as human beings, or just a mass of disconnected limbs? If your past is hell—where only by an act of good luck…God…whatever you believe in…only you'd survived—why would you look back? You can have too much history when you're only twelve years old.

That's why he always looked tough, joked about, or played the fool, because although he didn't know the “derivation” of his name, at least he was alive.

Pat Print takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes. She's not a crier like my mum, but when Jidé has finished, she stays quiet, looking straight at him and nodding her head as if to say “that's right.” Her silence is full of respect. You don't often get that feeling between teachers and students.

My eyes are also brimming over with tears. I stare at the ground so that nobody notices, but I feel Jidé glance my way and I want him to know that I care, so I force myself to look up into his eyes. We hold each other there for what seems like forever until he nods, releasing me from the spell of his gaze.

“Jidé, it wouldn't surprise me if I were to read that opening in a prize-winning novel. You should write on,” she says, smiling at him.

Then she turns to Ben and me.

“I would like you both to pick a line or an idea from Jidé's writing that stood out for you…Ben?”

“I like the last line, where he explains why he's a joker. Before today I didn't think there was much behind that.”

Jidé shrugs.

“There's always something behind a character. Reasons people behave the way they do,” says Pat. “How about you, Mira?”

I can feel Jidé's eyes on me, waiting for me to speak.

“The line about ‘You can have too much history when you're only twelve years old'…because it made me think…it made me feel…that you don't really know anything about anyone. I thought Jidé was born here, I didn't know anything about Rwanda, or about him, until this writing group. You think you know the people in your class, where they come from, but you just don't. It's the same with Nana; I thought I knew her, but I only know a tiny bit of her.”

“Maybe you're not supposed to know,” says Jidé, with his eyes fixed on me.

“If you don't know, how do you ever really get to understand another person?” asks Pat.

“Maybe you only see the sides of them they
want
you to see,” answers Ben, patting Jidé on the back.

“That's an astute observation. Have you written anything for me this week, Ben?” asks Pat.

“Not much,” Ben mumbles. “Nothing serious, like Jidé's, just something about skateboarding. It's more of a poem really…or song lyrics.”

“Let's have it then.”

Ben fixes up his baseball cap and begins, quietly for him, as though he's embarrassed by his own writing.

On Saturdays I go up the Palace with my skateboard, meet my mates.

On Saturdays I wear my skate gear, like my mates.

No helmets,

caps turned back to front.

No knee pads, bloody scabs instead.

We watch the graffiti artist “O” spray his purple tag on

the wall where you're allowed

And the wall where you're not,

Then we go flying, zipping, twisting mid air.

On Saturdays I go flying

on my skateboard

with my mates.

Pat Print claps. “Excellent, Ben Gbemi with a silent G. You're a performance poet.”

Ben hides his grin under the low brim of his baseball cap.

“Now, Mira, what have you got for me?”

“Some more of my diary, if you want.”