My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece (19 page)

We haven’t spoken since Parents’ Evening and she won’t use my special pencils any more. There is so much I want to tell her about Britain’s Biggest Talent Show and our plan to send a letter to Mum and leave a note for Dad to tell them to come to Manchester Palace Theatre on January 5th. I want to sing her our song and show her our dance moves and tell her that they will solve everything. When Mum’s back and Dad’s stopped drinking and they’ve forgotten all about Rose, Dad’ll be too happy to hate Sunya. He might not like us being friends but Mum’ll say
Just leave them alone
and Sunya will come round for tea. We will eat tropical pizzas and they will forget that she’s a Muslim.

It’s Christmas Eve in two days. I don’t think the post comes on December 24th or December 25th or December 26th and there was nothing this morning apart from one of those sad letters from a charity that asks you to think of all the starving people in Africa while you’re eating your turkey. I will try to remember them when I have my Christmas Dinner, which is going to be chicken sandwiches this year ’cos Jas’s making it. I don’t think the charity people will mind what I eat as long as I
Spare A Thought For Those Dying Of Hunger
while I am at the table.

If there’s no post over Christmas then that leaves tomorrow for Mum to send a present. I’m trying to get excited. I keep imagining a fat parcel on the mat by the front door, but every time I think of the card with Happy Christmas Son in big blue letters, I get that weird flicker of something that scares me. It never really goes away now.

I asked Mrs Farmer how much warning she’d have to give the Headmaster if she needed a day off. She looked annoyed that I was talking to her and kept glancing at the display above her desk as if all the coffee splashes on the angels were my fault. Eventually she said
If it was important enough, I’d be allowed time off straightaway. Now go outside and play and stop asking silly questions
.

If it was important enough
. I couldn’t get those words out of my head. They whizzed round my brain and made me dizzy. When we wrote stories my pen didn’t touch the paper and when we did Maths I made up the numbers and when we did Art I drew the lambs bigger than the shepherds ’cos I wasn’t concentrating. It looked like a herd of killer sheep was going to trample over the crib.

For the school play surprise surprise we acted out the stable bit and I was a person for the first time ever. I got the part of the man who said
No room at the inn
but no one came to watch so it didn’t matter. Jas couldn’t get back from school in time and Dad hasn’t been out of bed since Parents’ Evening. Sunya got the part of Mary at first but she wouldn’t stop groaning and holding her belly as if she was giving birth when she walked up to the inn. In the last rehearsal, Mrs Farmer pulled Sunya off the chair in the middle of the stage and made her get on all fours and told her that she was an ox and to keep at the back of the stable.

On the very last day, I was desperate to talk to Sunya, but I couldn’t think how to get started. When she wasn’t looking, I chucked my pencil underneath her chair and was about to ask her to pick it up when Mrs Farmer sent me out for throwing sharp objects around the classroom. She said
You could have poked someone’s eye out
, which was a lie. The pencil was blunt and anyway I threw it really low so, unless there was an invisible midget walking around, it didn’t go near anyone’s eyes. When I was allowed back into the classroom, the pencil was still by Sunya’s feet, but I didn’t dare ask for it ’cos Mrs Farmer had made it obvious that I’d chucked it there on purpose. I had to do my graph in pen and I plotted it all wrong and I couldn’t rub it out so I will get a bad mark. Doesn’t matter though. I am not interested in As any more. Jas was right about school. It’s not that important really.

When it was time to go, Mrs Farmer said
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. School starts again on January 7th so I will see you all then
. Time was running out to make friends so I stayed in the classroom as everyone left and watched Sunya pack away. She took ages over it, putting her books in a neat pile and making sure her felt tips had their lids on and were in the packet in rainbow order. I got the feeling she was waiting for me to speak but she was humming really loud and Granny always says
It’s rude to interrupt
. Five strands of hair were dangling over her face and she kept brushing them out of her eyes. Words like
Perfect
and
Shiny
and
Beautiful
flew around my head but before I could say anything, Sunya walked off. She went to get her coat and I followed and she ran down the corridor and I followed and she burst out of the door and onto the drive but stopped when I yelled
OY
.

It wasn’t the nicest word I could have said but it got her attention. She turned around. Most people had gone and it was already dark but Sunya’s hijab glowed like fire in the orange streetlights. I wanted to say
Happy Christmas
but Sunya doesn’t celebrate it so I said
Happy Winter
instead. She looked a bit confused and I panicked that maybe she didn’t celebrate the seasons either. She started walking backwards and she was getting further and further away and I didn’t want her to disappear into the night so I shouted the first thing that came into my head.
HAPPY RAMADAN
.

Sunya stopped moving. I ran up to her and held out my hand and said it again.
Happy Ramadan
. The words were hot in the frosty air and each syllable steamed. Sunya stared at me for a long time and I smiled hopefully until she said
Ramadan was in September
. I was scared I’d offended her but then her eyes started to sparkle and the freckle by her lip twitched as if she was about to smile. The bracelets tinkled. She lifted her arm. My fingers trembled as her hand moved towards mine. They were twenty centimetres apart. Ten centimetres apart. Five centi—

Someone beeped a horn and Sunya jumped and gasped
Mum
. She ran up the gritted path and got into the car. The door slammed shut. The engine started. Two twinkling eyes stared at me out of the front window. My fingers were still trembling as the car disappeared down the dark road.

Jas bought me loads of little Christmas presents, a Man Utd ruler and rubber and a new can of deodorant ’cos I had run out. She wrapped them all up and put them in one of my football socks so it looked like a stocking. I made her a photo frame out of cardboard and stuck the only picture I could find of us two inside it. No Mum. No Dad. No Rose. Just me and Jas and I surrounded us in black and pink flowers ’cos she’s a girl and they are her favourite colours. And I got her a box of her favourite chocolates to make her eat something as she is too skinny.

We made chicken sandwiches with stuffing and microwave chips and we ate it in front of Spider-Man. It wasn’t as good as I remember from my birthday but I still enjoyed it, especially the bit when Spider-Man beats up The Green Goblin. Roger nibbled bits of my sandwich but Jas didn’t touch hers.
Saving room for my chocolates
she said, and she ate three of them later, which made me feel nice. She kept glancing out of the window with a sad look on her face, but every time I noticed, she changed it to a grin.

Mum didn’t send any presents and Dad has no idea what day it is ’cos he just lies in bed and drinks and snores and drinks and snores so he didn’t give us anything either. The only thing he did all Christmas was bang on the bedroom floor and shout
Stop making that racket
when we were singing carols as loud as we could.

At nine o’clock there was a tap on the window and Jas looked at me and I looked at her and we both crept to the curtain. For a millisecond I thought it might be Mum knocking on the glass and I felt annoyed with my heart for beating faster when I knew that it wouldn’t be her. We moved the curtain out of the way and Jas’s breath tickled my ear. I couldn’t see anything, just snow in the front garden, but when my eyes got used to the dark I could see a sentence written in all the white. I Love You. Jas squeaked as if it was for her and I felt disappointed ’cos that meant it wasn’t for me.

She pulled on Dad’s wellies and tiptoed outside and she looked funny with her pink hair and green dressing grown, dragging through the snow. I pressed my face against the window and watched her find the card that Leo had left in the garden. I saw the way her eyes shone and her smile burned and her heart swelled in her chest like a cake rising in the rusty oven we use for cooking at school. She kissed the card as if it was the best thing ever and it got me thinking.

It took me two hours to make. With my special pencils, I drew lots of snowflakes and a snowman that looked like me and a snowman that looked like her and I covered the whole thing in glitter. Roger sat next to me as I worked on my bedroom floor and he kept getting in the way so now he has silver sparkles in his tail. It was easier to write in the card than talk to Sunya’s face, so I put down all the things that I’ve wanted to say since the very beginning. Things like
Thank you for being my friend
and
I like looking at your freckle
and
Dad is a bully but I am not like him so please wear the Blu-Tack ring
. I told her all about the audition and how everything would be perfect once Mum came home and sorted Dad out and how we could be friends after January 5th. Even though I was running out of room, I invited her to come to Manchester Palace Theatre to watch the talent show and said that she would be amazed by Jas’s singing and impressed by my dance moves. I signed the card from the only superhero she didn’t get one from at school. Spider-Man.

I had to wait for Jas to go to sleep before I could sneak out and post it. The first time I crept into her room to see if her eyes were closed she was whispering into her mobile phone and said
Get out you spying little bastard
. But the second time I checked she was fast asleep with her hand dangling off the bed and her mouth open and her pink hair in a tangle on the pillow. The wind chime tinkled as I gently closed her door.

It was eleven o’clock when I put on my wellies. Roger rubbed his orange fur against the red rubber like he knew we were about to have an adventure. His green eyes looked wider than normal as we tiptoed towards the front door.
Sssh
I said ’cos he started to purr. In the quiet cottage it sounded as loud as a truck’s engine. The door creaked as I opened it and the snow crunched as I trod on it, but nobody heard and I walked down the drive without being seen.

It felt so naughty to be outside on Christmas night, I kept expecting police sirens to start screaming and blue lights to start flashing and someone to shout
You are under arrest
. But nothing happened. Everything was silent. All I could see was the moon bouncing off the frosty tops of black mountains. I was free.

I felt giddy and I started to laugh and Roger looked at me as though I was mental. I felt like there was no one in the whole world except me and my cat and we could do anything that we wanted, anything at all. I danced on the spot and waved my hands in the air and wiggled my bum and no one saw. I spun on the spot, faster and faster, the snow a white blur that zoomed past my eyes. I jumped on a wall and walked across it, my smile bigger than it has been since I scored the winning goal. The card flapped in the breeze and I imagined Sunya reading it, maybe even kissing the place where I’d written Spider-Man.

That made me feel I could fly so I leapt off the wall and flapped my arms and for a millisecond I actually hovered above the snow before landing on one foot. My blood fizzed like Coke at a party and my body tingled and I had more energy than ever in my life. Roger said
Meow
, and I said
I know what you mean
and I told him I’d meet him back at the cottage. I kissed his wet nose and his whiskers tickled my lips. Then I ran off as fast as I could and the cold wind stung my cheeks.

My hands slapped against Sunya’s gate. I was panting and my pulse was racing and my feet were aching and my sweat was pouring. This was the bravest thing I had ever done ever and I grinned as I pushed open the gate and ran up Sunya’s drive. When I jumped over the fence, I flew for a bit before landing in the back garden. I was a bird and Wayne Rooney and Spider-Man, all rolled into one, and there was nothing that scared me, not even Sammy the dog who had started growling in the kitchen.

I put the card on the lawn and grabbed a stone. I threw it at Sunya’s window but it hit the wall two metres below. I picked up another. This one went flying over the roof. In books they always make it sound dead easy to hit the glass but it took me eleven goes. When the pebble tapped the window, I ran away and hid behind a bush ’cos I wanted to watch Sunya find the card. I counted to one hundred. Nothing happened. Sammy the dog was going crazy, barking and scratching and snarling, but I didn’t care. I found a bigger rock and this time it was perfect and hit the window hard.

I sprinted back into the bush, cutting my cheek on a thorn, but it didn’t sting one bit. This time I only had to count to thirteen. A curtain twitched and a dark face appeared at the window. A light came on.