Stolen Girl (2 page)

T
he school was busy. Children raced around the playground in front of me at breakneck speed. I sat there wondering how I could be surrounded by so many kids, yet feel so alone. Unlike other children who played in big gangs, I only had one friend at school and that was Lauren.

Lauren and I were different in so many ways. I was a normal build with honey blonde hair whilst she was as skinny as a rake with shoulder-length dark hair. The fact we looked so different and the fact Lauren was so skinny made her a prime target for the school bullies.

‘Don’t walk across a grate or you’ll disappear!’ a boy hollered across the playground to her. I spun around to give him a nasty look but he didn’t care. Lauren was the skinniest girl in school – she hated it because it made her stand out.

A few days later, one of the popular girls approached us during break time. As she wandered over towards us, she sized
Lauren up and down through beady little eyes. Her mouth sneered as she began to talk.

‘We all think that you’re so skinny because you can’t afford to eat. Is it true? Are you too poor to buy food?’

A few girls sniggered behind her.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ I shouted. I wanted to stick up for my friend but it was no good. Within minutes, we were surrounded by a semi-circle of jeering girls.

‘Look at her, she looks like a stick!’ one squealed, pointing at Lauren.

‘No, she’s a twig,’ another laughed, ‘and look, she’s got two twigs for legs!’

I wrapped a protective arm around my friend’s shoulder and shot them a hateful stare.

‘Leave her alone!’ I screamed, pulling her away.

‘Ooh, we’re really scared now, aren’t we?’ the ringleader teased, smirking at the other girls.

‘Yeah,’ she continued, ‘we’re really scared of you, Katie Taylor – you freak!’

With that they started to laugh again. Like Lauren, I was also the butt of the joke. I glanced down at my ugly black shoes and cringed. I didn’t wear the right shoes, skirt or coat. Self-consciously I put my hand to my hair to smooth it down. I knew it was thick and unruly, not smooth and shiny like the other girls’ hair, but I didn’t want to be like them. They were girly girls, stupid and silly. Even with the right shoes, hair and coat I knew I’d never fit in. I’d never be accepted by them because they weren’t very nice.

‘Just ignore them, Lauren,’ I insisted as I dragged her to the far end of the playground. I pulled her as far away from the hateful girls as I could. I glanced down at Lauren but it was too
late. Huge tears pricked in the corner of her eyes. They swelled up into big droplets and escaped down her cheeks, dripping onto her school jumper. The knitted top soaked them up, sending the royal blue wool a darker shade of navy. Soon, a damp patch of tears had formed upon her chest.

A boy noticed Lauren’s tears and came running over to finish off the job. He hovered in close but shouted out loud enough so the rest of the children could hear.

‘Watch out,’ he hissed, ‘Here’s peg legs. Hey, everybody, it’s peggy legs!’

The girls were at the other end of the playground but they heard and came running over to join in. Soon more and more children had circled us. They were like sharks and now they’d seen her tears, they were going in for the kill. I clutched Lauren close as she began to sob heavily onto my shoulder.

‘Peg legs! Hey, it’s Peggy!’

‘Peg legs, peg legs!’ they chanted over and over again.

Lauren buried her head deep into my shoulder as I begged them to leave her alone. I felt utterly helpless. I wanted to stick up for her but I knew I couldn’t take on the rest of the school. Instead, I just held her in my arms and told her everything would be okay. But I knew it wasn’t, and it never would be. ‘Peg Legs’ stuck and haunted Lauren throughout her schooldays.

It was stupid because I knew Lauren, and I knew she ate more than anyone else – she was just naturally slim. There was nothing she could do.

‘I’m skinny, just like Mum,’ she admitted to me a few days later, the bullying still preying on her mind.

It was break time and we were bored, sat on the playground wall. I could tell by the way she spoke and bounced her heels off the brick wall that she’d thought of nothing else since.

‘Mum tells me I’ll be grateful for it when I’m older,’ Lauren said, glancing down at her own body. ‘She says I’ll be slim when everyone else is fat. But I don’t want to be skinny, Katie…’ the words caught as a sob deep inside her throat, ‘I just want to be normal.’

I looked over at my best friend and thought how tired she looked. She was tired of the constant bullying, tired of being called the same names over and over again.

‘I know,’ I agreed, but I didn’t. Not really.

I wanted to eat dinner alongside Lauren so I could protect her from the bullies, but because I took in a packed lunch I had to eat my food in the classroom. Once, Mum had let me stay for school dinners, but when she found out I’d refused to eat anything because I didn’t like the food, she wouldn’t let me stay again. But Lauren stayed for school dinners, which meant she had to eat in the main hall. It left her wide open to the bullies and their cruel remarks. Every lunch time, the girls would position themselves so they could watch poor Lauren as she consumed every morsel of food. She hated them looking over at her – it made her feel self-conscious. I think they wanted to try and see what her secret was – why she didn’t put on weight like everyone else. We both dreaded dinner times because we hated being apart. Despite my protests, Mum always gave me a packed lunch so I wasn’t allowed in the hall with the paying kids. Instead, I’d sit alone at my desk with my sandwiches and a bag of crisps. Now and again, Mum would pop in a treat to cheer me up but it never worked because I hated being so isolated – I hated eating alone.

I wasn’t the only one with a packed lunch but the other children would sit on a separate table to me. No one wanted to sit next to or be seen with me, no one other than Lauren.

Lonely and left out, I’d watch the clock, willing the next half hour to hurry up and whizz by so that I could meet my best friend in the playground. I’d watch the minute hand tick by, working its way around the clock face until it was time to leave. As soon as I could, I’d zip up my bag and run outside to be with her. Lauren was the only one who knew what it was like to be me – we understood each other. I don’t know why the other girls didn’t like us. They never said but they made it perfectly clear we weren’t allowed in their gang. Instead, whenever we walked by they’d sneer and whisper. Then they’d fall around laughing as if sharing a secret joke, which it always was. It made me paranoid and fearful. And, without Lauren by my side, I felt even more isolated.

Sometimes, even with the nicest packed lunch in the world, I’d have no appetite. I’d watch the other kids and wonder what I’d done wrong. I never knew why they left me out, why I wasn’t good enough to be part of their gang; I only knew the door was closed to me. It hurt me deeply and sometimes I’d catch a sob deep down inside my throat but I’d always refuse to let it surface. Not here, not in front of them. The bullies would never beat me. I’d never let them see me cry because I knew if I did, they’d make my life ten times worse.

Lauren and I were in different classes but we would always arrange where to meet before lunchtime so that we knew where to find one another when morning lessons were over. Usually, I was the first one there waiting by the playground wall because I was so eager to escape the loneliness of the classroom.

Lauren never meant to be late but often the queues and the chattering children would hold her up. I hated sitting around because, apart from a solitary skipping rope, everything in the playground needed more than one person. Games always
involved a group of kids. Instead, I’d sit there forlornly, waiting for my friend, trying not to catch anyone’s eye in case they turned on me.

Even though she’d often be late, I didn’t mind because as soon as I saw her running out of the school hall my face would light up. Once outside we’d run off together into a far corner, where no one would find us. Then we’d be back – safe in our imaginary world, where I was Claire and she was Lisa. We were Steps and no matter how mean the bullies were, we didn’t care because together we’d sing and conquer the world! However, first I had to conquer my times tables. Maths was my worst subject. I knew it and so did the teacher, but most of all, so did all the other children.

‘Hey, dumbo, why didn’t you know that one? It was easy!’ A boy shouted across the class at me one day when I got a simple question wrong. The others soon joined in.

‘Idiot!’ another mouthed in my direction.

‘No,’ a girl hissed, ‘she’s as thick as pig shit!’

I tried to hide at the back of the classroom hoping the teacher wouldn’t notice me. I convinced myself if I hunched my shoulders and kept my head down then maybe I could make myself invisible. If she couldn’t see me then she wouldn’t be able to pick me out to ask me anything, but she always did.

One day she asked me the answer to a simple maths question but I didn’t have a clue.

‘Katie, I asked what is eight times eight?’ The teacher tapped her fingers impatiently on my desk, waiting for an answer.

Suddenly, my heart beat furiously and my mouth went bone dry. The middle of my palms pricked with perspiration and I felt clammy with sweat as I tried to think of something,
anything
to say. But the harder I thought, the more my mind
went blank. By now, all eyes were on me. I felt them burning into me, all waiting for an answer I didn’t have. My head felt light and dizzy as the room began to spin. Everyone was watching me. I saw them but at the same time, I saw no one, only the teacher standing there, waiting. But I didn’t know my times table. I didn’t have a clue what eight times eight was. Maybe I could just say a random number and make her go away? For a split second I considered it. A random number came into my head but what if it was too high or too low? Then I’d look even more stupid; the teacher would know that I’d guessed and I’d be in even worse trouble.

‘Err…err…’ I stuttered, trying to think of something to say.

The classroom was silent except for my fumbling voice. The teacher waited. I looked either side in the faint hope that someone might help me and whisper the answer. But I knew they wouldn’t because I didn’t have any friends here. Lauren was my only friend and she was in another class – I was on my own.

‘Katie, I’m waiting,’ the teacher said, still tapping her fingers. I squirmed under her gaze. By now sweat was prickling across my forehead. I desperately searched her eyes in the hope that I might be able to read the answer from them but it was useless.
I
was useless. I didn’t have a clue and everyone knew it. My silence made the other children restless. I heard stifled giggles in front of me and felt my face begin to flush red. I was stupid and now everyone knew.

‘Loser,’ a boy called out from the back of the class. The teacher pretended not to hear him, which made the others call out even more.

‘Dumbass,’ one boy scoffed.

‘She’s doesn’t know, Miss, ’cos she’s thick!’ a girl hollered
from the other side of the room. They laughed out loud. My face felt red hot as I burned with shame, but the redder I became, the more they laughed.

‘Look, her head looks like a beetroot. She’s a thick beetroot!’ a boy chipped in. By now the whole class was in an uproar.

‘Shush, be quiet!’ the teacher scolded. But the damage had already been done. They’d seen it. They all knew I couldn’t do maths and now they’d make it their business to chip away at what little confidence I had left.

‘I bet she doesn’t even know what one plus one is,’ a girl hissed sarcastically, loud enough for me to hear, as I packed my books after the lesson had finished.

‘Yes I do!’ I insisted, but the girl wasn’t listening anymore, she’d turned away and was giggling with her friends. I never felt so alone in my life.

‘She’s dumb,’ the girl said, momentarily turning back to face me. ‘I think we should call her Dumbo or something. Dumbo or Thicko!’

‘Yes,’ said another, ‘from now on we’ll call her Dumbo!’

I didn’t know what I’d done to make them so angry and nasty towards me. Whatever it was, I decided that if I couldn’t be good at maths then I’d try my best at everything else. Thankfully, I loved English and discovered that I had a natural talent for it. At home, I was a real bookworm. Mum and Dad were always buying me books and would encourage me to read as much as I could. I read so much that my head was bursting with ideas of my own and my nose was never out of a story. When I read, it helped me escape my own world and become part of another inside the story. The more reading I did, the better I became at writing my own stories in school.

‘Very good, excellent in fact. Well done, Katie,’ the teacher
said one day as she placed my exercise book back on the desk in front of me. My heart was in my mouth as I flicked open my homework page. I’d spent ages on this story and I’d hoped for a good mark. As soon as I saw the ‘A’ at the bottom of the page in red ink, I felt so happy I thought my heart would burst. But the other kids weren’t quite so impressed.

‘Look at her,’ one girl said to another at the desk behind me. ‘She thinks she’s it just because she’s teacher’s pet.’ They’d both noticed the ‘A’ in my English book.

I ignored her. She was only jealous because I’d found something I was good at, something I enjoyed doing. But the higher my grades in English, the more the bullying intensified. I’d been Dumbo in maths, yet here in the English class I was called ‘swot’. I was a ‘Goody Two-Shoes’, even a ‘saddo’, for getting things right.

‘Clever cow,’ one girl sniffed at the end of the lesson one day.

‘Yeah,’ her mate chipped in. ‘You’re well gay, writing stories.’

Both girls knocked into me as they barged past. I couldn’t believe it. I was in a no-win situation. I was either too thick or too clever; whatever I did, I just couldn’t seem to get it right. I couldn’t make these kids like me. I was different to them in more ways than one and they saw it in me. They didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t a girly girl. I didn’t have the latest shoes, skirt or bag and I stood out because of it. I took a packed lunch when most kids stayed for dinner, I was rubbish at maths but too clever at English. They didn’t like me and, whatever I did, there was nothing I could do that would ever change their minds.