Zodiac Girls: Brat Princess (13 page)

“What are you thinking about, Leonora?” asked Dr
Cronus as the image of her lingered for a moment.
Then the screen went blank.

“Nothing,” I replied as I fingered the locket around
my neck. “Just plotting my revenge on my parents and
how I’m going to get the press to come here and close
this place down for cruelty to children.”

“Is that right?” asked Dr Cronus. He looked
disappointed. “Fine. You do that then. First of all
though, I have a task for you.”

“Okay no, not more washing up…”

“Come with me,” said Dr Cronus, and he went over
and pushed on one of the bookshelves. It opened up to
what looked like a secret room behind.

“Cool,” I said. “A false door. Is it a way out?”

“Yes and no,” said the doctor as he beckoned me to
go through. “It could be a way out for you if you
complete the task.”

I sighed. “How did I know you were going to say
something like that?”

I went into the small room. It had no window and
was more like a large cupboard. On the right side was
an enormous pile of toys. They were of every variety:
dolls, robots, soft toys, cars, planes, trains, games. Next
to the toys were boxes which on closer inspection
contained bath sets, books, CDs, DVDs, handkerchiefs,
scarves, gloves, perfumes…

“What is this?” I asked. “A collection for the jumble?”

“Certainly not,” huffed Dr Cronus. “It’s all brand-new.
And it’s your next task. Not washing up.
Wrapping up.”

“Wrapping up?”

Dr Cronus nodded and pointed to a table on the left
of the room where there were rolls and rolls of paper,
ribbons, necklaces of tinsel, scissors, glue, sticky tape.
“You can come out when you’ve finished,” he said.
“These are gifts for people who are going to be in the
local hospital over Christmas. Old and young. It is time
for you to take some sort of positive action. You must
if you are to overcome your past and move forwards.”

“Do something positive?”

“You heard me.”

I looked at the mounds of presents. “
All
of them?
You expect me to wrap
all
of them?”

“All of them. Leos can be very creative if they want
to be, fabulously flamboyant in fact. It’s time you got
back in touch with the more giving side of your nature.
And have a think over things while you’re at it. I’m
going to leave you now. There’s some juice in a carton
behind the door and a buzzer to the right of it. You can
press it when you’ve finished.” He gave me a totally false
smile, then left the room and shut the door behind him.

I got up and tried the door. Locked. I glanced
around the room. There was definitely no escape.

I sat on the floor and stared at the pile of presents for
a few minutes.
I could break them,
I thought.
Rip the dolls’
heads off, pull their arms off and wrap them around the teddy
bear’s neck. I could empty all the bath gel over the walls. Stomp
on the toy trains and cars until they were nothing but splinters. Break
everything! That would show old Cronie Baby what he could do
with his precious lessons
. I considered the plan for a few
moments. The old me would have started in an instant
and created havoc, but I found myself hesitating. There
was no point. I knew my captors well enough by now
to know that if I didn’t co-operate, they’d only find
some other miserable task for me to do. And it was
pointless having a tantrum as they’d take no notice or
leave me in here for even longer.

I took a deep breath and picked up the first present.
I may as well get started, I thought. Just do the job and get it
over with. Sooner done, the sooner I get out of here
.

I began wrapping, using the most basic paper and
continued doing each present as fast as I could with no
fancy trimmings. As I worked, my mind drifted back to
Christmases gone by when Poppy had been alive and
she and I would sit together and wrap up all the
pressies. She delighted in every aspect of Christmas –
making handmade cards with glitter and stars,
decorating the tree with baked gingerbread, leaving
out a beer and mince pie for Santa, apples for his
reindeer, then opening her presents on the morning of
December 25
^th
. Her enthusiasm had been infectious and
I’d loved the season and all that went with it – the carol
services, the shopping, the yummy scrummy dinner
with family and friends.

As I continued wrapping, I remembered how I
loved to buy presents for everyone, then wrap them in
my own special way. Mummy said I had a gift for
wrapping, an artist’s touch. My presents always looked
the best and hardly cost anything. It didn’t take much.
I liked to use what I could from the garden. In
December, there was always holly and ivy to pick. I used
to weave the green leaves and red berries with bits of
twigs that I’d spray gold then put it all together with
green ribbon. I was such a different person back then.
I’d even write my own plays about princes and
princesses and fairies in far-off lands. Poppy used to
watch me perform them with her enormous brown
eyes and I’d feel like I was making magic in front of her.

And now I’m here in a cupboard on my own on Christmas
Eve and everybody hates me. And I am so-ooooo saaaaaaddddddd.
Probably the loneliest person in the whole world
.
A tidal wave of self-pity flooded through me. Tears
came to my eyes.
Poor, poor me. All by myself
. I looked
around at the gifts waiting to be wrapped.
And poor them.
Those people in hospital. Among strangers. These gifts are to make
them feel better – how could I have thought about ruining them,
even for a second?! That would have been so mean of me when
they were having a tough time anyway, away from home and
family and friends… like me
. I looked at the untouched
ribbon and tinsels and bows on the table.
I will wrap these
presents. And not only will I wrap them, but I’ll wrap them really,
really beautifully as well, so that the faces of the sick people will
light up when they see them. That will show Old Croniebum. He
won’t be expecting that! Hah! He thinks he knows me, but he
doesn’t. Nobody does. I used to be caring once. I used to have
friends! Yes. I ca-aaaa-aan b…be (sob, sob) n…ni-iiiice.
N…NOBODY (sob, sob) u…understands m… m…
meeeeeeeeee
.

After a good cry, I set about my task with renewed
enthusiasm and found that my old talent for making gifts
look special soon came back. To get myself even more
in the mood, I sang Christmas carols at the top of my
voice. Minutes went by as I tied and glued and cut and
pasted. Hours. I lost track of time as I beavered on and
the pile of unwrapped presents decreased.

When I’d finished wrapping all the gifts, I didn’t press
the buzzer to let Dr Cronus know. Instead I set about
perfecting the finishing touches. Then tweaking and
adding bits and pieces until every gift looked totally
unique, a work of art with paper flowers and leaves and
bows and twirls of coloured ribbon and tape. The posh
present wrapper in the swankiest store in Paris couldn’t
have done a better job.

As I was twirling a length of silver ribbon into a
double bow, the door opened and Dr Cronus put his
head around. He looked at the pile of gifts stacked
neatly to the left of the room. “Wow!” he said.

“Good, aren’t they?” I said with a smile.

He walked in and examined a couple of the boxes
on top. “No. Not good. They’re blooming
astonishing
.”
He turned and looked at me. “Look what you’re
capable of. Just look! What happened, Leonora? What
happened to make you so angry with the world?” He
was looking at me with such kindness in his eyes that
for a moment, I forgot he was one of my captors. I felt
a fresh wave of sadness rushing up to the surface.

“You can tell me, Leonora,” the doctor urged. “Let
it out…”

“I… I… Poppy died. Our house over here was sold
soon after,” I said. “Too many memories, Mum and
Dad said. We moved to the Caribbean but nothing was
the same again. Life for me lost its colour. And so did
Christmas.” I sighed and I was
almost
in tears again but
then I remembered that Cronus
wasn’t
my friend and I
had made a vow not to ever let any of them see me cry.
I shook the sad feelings away and made myself put my
inner wall back up. “But that was then and this is now.”

“You had a happy home,” said the doctor. “A happy
life. And now I am going to let you in on a great secret,
one of life’s greatest lessons and if you can learn it, your
time on this earth will be marvellous. It needn’t be over
just because life dealt you some difficult cards. Life is
what
you
make it. Just like making a movie. In fact, you
write, you direct and you act in
your
own movie. The
movie of your life. Never forget that. You still have a
say in it all. Okay, one of the characters has gone.
Your sister, Poppy. But you’re still here. But what part
are you playing now? Do you
like
the character you have
written for yourself? This Brat Princess that the others
call you? Do you like your script? The dialogue that you
have given to yourself? If you were watching yourself
now on a screen, would you be proud of your part?”

“Oh god, not more psychobabble,” I groaned.
“Pul-
leese
.”

Dr Cronus let out one of his sighs. “I repeat. You are
the writer, the director and the actor in your own play,”
he said. “It is always up to you what you make of it,
just as it is up to you what you make of your month as
Zodiac Girl. And now you can go and join the others.
I think they may be having a carol session as, don’t
forget, it’s Christmas.”

I got up and left the room.
Okay
. I thought.
I write
my own character? So? Yeah. I’m Leonora Hedley-Dent. Rich girl.
Pretty great part if you ask me. I have a life that people envy when
I’m not stuck in this awful place. I do… don’t I?
But seeing
the footage of Poppy then remembering my
Christmases gone by had made me think. I felt strange,
like some of the anger had gone out of me and had
been replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness. I
didn’t know which was worse. Anger or sadness. When
I was angry at least I could blame everyone else. But
this new feeling. This emptiness. I didn’t know what to
do with it. Who to direct it at.

Christmas,
I said to myself.
Hah blooming bumbag!

“We don’t want her with us,” said Jake as I came out
of the front door to find the others from the lodge
hunched around a camp fire with Mr O, Miss Lunie
Petunie and Mario. Although I didn’t show it, I was
pleased to see that Mr O was still around. He seemed
back to his sunny self and was busy toasting
marshmallows. The others were each wearing a pair of
reindeer’s antlers, an anorak and a gloomy expression.
If I hadn’t felt so miserable, I might have laughed.

“And I don’t want to be here,” I said, “but Cronie
Baby says that there might be a Christmas breakfast for
you lot if I co-operate. So what’s going on out here?”

“As a special treat, hah, pardon me while I laugh,”
droned Marilyn, “Mario made us build this fire so
that we could sit around and sing Christmas carols.”

Selene got up and handed me a pair of felt antlers.
I was about to object, then remembered that I had to
co-operate or no posh nosh tomorrow. I took them, put
them on and sat at the edge of the circle.
My Prat of
the Year look is now complete,
I thought.
Curly hair, brown eyes,
navy trackies and now antlers. And to think that, only a few weeks
ago, I was Queen of Style
.

I looked around the camp fire. Marilyn, Lynn, Jake
and Mark’s faces were pink from the glow of the fire.
Each of them looked far away, probably lost in their
memories of Christmases gone by as well. The
atmosphere felt sad. Even Mark’s usual scowl had been
replaced by a look of regret.

How has it come to this?
I asked myself. I never in a
million thousand trillion billion years thought that, at
the age of fourteen, I’d be apart from Mummy and
Daddy on Christmas Eve of all nights. I rubbed
Poppy’s locket between my finger and thumb again,
needing to know that it was there. It had been hers. She
had been wearing it on the day she died. The nurses
gave it to us in a transparent plastic bag along with her
Little Mermaid watch, her blue bead bracelet and her
inhaler. I’d put the locket on and hadn’t taken it off
since that day. Not once. Not even in the bath. At the
thought of that little bag of her belongings, I felt tears
spill out of my eyes and down my cheeks. I quickly
brushed them away before anyone saw.
If only
, I
thought.
If only I’d behaved differently that day. If only. If only.
If only I could turn back time and make it right I would because
her death was all my fault. I am such a bad person. And I will
never forgive myself, ever
.

I glanced around again. One more week to go. And
deck the halls with Christmas holly, tra la la la la, la la
la laaaaaah.

As we sat staring into the embers of the fire and
chewing on the marshmallows that Mr O handed
round, there was the familiar roar of Hermie’s bike and
indeed, a few moments later, he appeared and skidded
to a halt in front of the fire. Even he had made an effort
for Christmas and his usual garb of black leather was
adorned with garlands of tinsels. He reached into the
box on the back of his bike and pulled out five
packages. “I bring greetings from the outside world,” he
said as he chucked them over to us. “Jake, Marilyn,
Lynn, Mark and… yep, one for you, Leonora.”

Everyone was silent as they ripped off the paper.

Mark’s parcel contained a video phone. Jake got a
card and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange which he
immediately opened and passed round. It tasted like
heaven. Lynn got a pink woolly scarf, which she
wrapped round her neck. And Marilyn got a card with
a photo and a bunch of music CDs.