Belinda Hollyer

You're the Best: Stories about Friendship

The Middle Ground

It goes right back to my first day at school when the whole class of us newbies was lined up in the playground outside Mrs Mercer’s room, ready to be marched inside and start our new lives as scholars. I wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, I knew it wasn’t cool to enjoy school, but I was seriously excited that morning. I’d been excited for weeks. Every time something school-related was mentioned an extra rush of fizzy expectation bubbled up inside me. And now, finally, there I was! With a brand new pencil case in my bag and brand new ribbons on my plaits. I couldn’t wait to encounter all the things I thought I’d learn. School things. Things I didn’t even know that I didn’t know.
  'You’ll learn so much I won’t recognize you when I see you again!' Dad had said the night before. 'When you come home tomorrow you’ll be a different girl, Laurie. You’ll know—' he hesitated for a moment, thinking, and I nudged him impatiently.
  'What? What will I know?'
  'You’ll know – about the great Pacific explorers,' he said, quick as a flash, so I knew he was making it up. Dad always talks too fast when he’s stuck for the truth.   'And you’ll know – how to make pompoms! And you’ll be able to do really complicated sums, like ‘gazinters’.'
  I just blinked at him. My older sister Nola had made pompoms at school and Dad knew I longed to do the same. I was willing to take his news about not losing New Zealand on trust. But I’d never heard of gazinters.
  'You know, Laurie, like ‘eight gazinter sixteen twice’.' 
  I blinked again. I still didn’t get his joke, if you can call it one, and he laughed and kissed me on the nose, and called me his little gazinter. I knew he was teasing me but I didn’t mind. Back then, Dad was the only person in the whole world who could tease me without me bursting into floods of tears.
  'Go for it, Laurie! Knock ‘em dead!' he called out as he left for work the next morning. 
  Anyway, like I say, there I was, about halfway down the girls’ line outside the classroom. I was excited and nervous and trying to seem casual, all at the same time. I was also sneaking quick peeks around me, trying to work out which of the girls might turn out to be my best friend, because I was looking forward to having one. Nola had a best friend, in fact she was on to her third best friend in two years. They went around together, they dressed the same, they even giggled in the same high-pitched tone. They had secret clubs only they were allowed to join. It was all the usual stuff but it wasn’t usual to me then, and I longed to do it too.
  I was so curious to see who’d be my best friend that it never occurred to me to wonder if I’d find one, or worry that I wouldn’t. Self doubt didn’t feature in my mind when I was six, which now I think about it probably means I wasn’t all that well prepared for school.
  I was keeping my eye on a girl with curly red hair who was standing at the front of the line. She reminded me of the heroine in a story my mother was reading to me, so I thought she’d probably make excellent best friend material. I was imagining the two of us cosied up together by lunchtime when there was a tug – a sharp and painful tug – on one of my plaits. It came from behind me. If you’ve ever had plaits, you’ll know how much it hurts when a strand of hair gets caught in something? Well, it was like that.
  It wasn’t only a lack of self-doubt that I brought to school that day. I also wasn’t used to anyone hurting me on purpose. Nola slapped me sometimes if I took her things without asking, but it wasn’t ever a hard slap and we got along fine as a general rule. Mum had once clipped me on the leg when I’d been rude to her, but almost immediately she’d burst into tears, asked me to forgive her, and said she’d never lift a finger to me again. And Dad? He never hurt anyone or anything that I ever knew about. So more than anything, I was surprised by the tug.
  When I turned around, there stood Wilma Martin. I didn’t know her name then, I just saw a tall girl with freckles and little slitty eyes, holding up one of the ribbons from my plaits and waving it in my face. She’d ripped it right off, rubber band and all! No wonder it hurt.
  This was my first encounter with Wilma and I knew nothing about her, no matter how suggestive her mean expression might have been. So I just stared back at her, holding on to my other plait to keep it out of her grasp. I might not have known much about hurting people on purpose, but one look at Wilma told me that she was trouble. (The next year, when we were playing basketball, Wilma threw the ball so hard at me that it broke my arm. By then I knew she’d done it on purpose, she’s just a nasty person. But back then, I didn’t know.)
  Wilma glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Mrs Mercer wasn’t on her way across the playground. Then she stuck her tongue out at me and grabbed for my other plait. When she couldn’t reach it because I was holding it so tightly, she pulled back her fist to punch me. It was clear, even to me, that she meant business.
  So I knocked her over.
  I honestly didn’t mean to. Afterwards I wondered if I’d taken Dad’s advice to knock ’em dead too seriously, but I think it was just a chance shot. Beginner’s luck. Whatever. What I’m saying is, I lashed out in her direction to get her away from me and I caught her by surprise – mine as well as hers.
  My fist didn’t hurt Wilma but it got her off balance. She pulled away from it, stumbled, and went down on the asphalt. Not everyone would have noticed, except that Wilma made a sort of ouuf! sound when she hit the ground and the whole class turned around and gawped. No one said anything for several moments. It was like a dream, or a movie with the soundtrack on mute. I just stood there wondering what would happen next.
  Wilma didn’t stay down for long, of course. She scrambled back up and advanced towards me with evil intent written all over her face. The other kids were making bets or taking sides by now, and some of the boys even started to form a circle around the two of us, like we were prize fighters. Frankly, I felt sick, and the only reason I didn’t turn and run was that I was more or less glued to the spot in panic.
  But then two things happened.
  Wilma was so busy giving me her full-on evil hex look that she didn’t look where she was going.
  And Ken Goldsworthy, whom I’d also never met before but who happened to be across from me in the boys’ line, stepped forward and tripped her up.
  Just like that. On purpose. To stop her from hitting me back.
  After Wilma landed on the asphalt for the second time Ken grinned at me. Then he turned back to her, grabbed the ribbon she was still clutching, and handed it back to me. It was – oh, it was really like a full-on film then. Thinking back now, I can just about hear the swoopy background music.
  When Mrs Mercer finally bustled across the playground to usher us into her classroom, the lines of boys and girls had reformed and everyone was waiting quietly, and although Wilma had a graze on her elbow she didn’t say anything about how it had happened. She was so surprised at being knocked down twice without getting in even one swing herself, she didn’t fully recover her meanness for several days.
  And me? I’d fallen in love.

You’re The Best: Stories About Friendship © Belinda Hollyer, 2007.  Published by Kingfisher.