Free Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles by Sabine Durrant Page A

going to swallow my pride and ring Julie.
    5.20 p.m.
    Oh. Oh. Oh.
    I wish I hadn’t done that.
    Our conversation: Me:
    ‘Hi. It’s me.’
    Julie: ‘Oh, hello.’
    Me: ‘How are you?’
    Julie: ‘Fine, thanks.’
    ‘I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you since Sunday.’
    ‘I’ve been a bit, you know, busy.’
    ‘Nothing’s wrong, is there?’
    ‘No. Why should there be?’
    ‘I just… Oh, never mind. Look, why I’m ringing is something awful’s happened. Someone’s written “Delilah is a slag” in the first-floor girls’ loos.’
    ‘Yeah. I know.’
    ‘But isn’t it awful?’
    ‘Yeah –’ Little laugh. ‘Well, she shouldn’t have got off with Darius, Toyah Benton’s boyfriend, should she?’
    ‘Toyah Benton?’ Toyah Benton is a large, loud Shazzer who wears shiny red tracksuits and gold-hoop earrings. You wouldn’t want to mess with Toyah Benton. ‘Her boyfriend? When?’
    ‘Down at the river.’
    ‘What? After the march? How d’you know?’
    ‘Carmen saw them. As did several others. Toyah Benton’s well out to get her.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘I’ve really got to go.’
    ‘Julie –’
    ‘What?’
    ‘What shall I do?’
    ‘You could tell her to leave Darius alone.’
    ‘What about Toyah being out to get her? Should I warn her?’
    ‘I don’t know. She’s your friend.’
    Oh. I wish I hadn’t rung. She was so icy. Normally she throws herself headlong into any moral or social dilemma. And she was so hard on Delilah, like she thought she was a slag. And she isn’t, is she? I’ve always thought of Delilah as being ν innocent, as experimenting, or collecting. It’s as if she’s discovered something that she quite likes and she keeps having more of it – like ice cream or chocolate fingers – and no one’s telling her to stop. She’s not hurting anybody. (Quite the opposite.) And it’s not like she goes the whole way or anything. I don’t think.
    Oh no, here she is… I’m going to nab her.
    6 p.m.
    I’m back. Mission accomplished. NOT.
    ‘Hey, Delilah,’ I said, shooting out of our front door. ‘What gives?’
    She said, ‘Nothing,’ rather defensively. I might have looked a bit suspicious.
    ‘Can I come round?’
    ‘Yeah. OK.’
    We went into the house, greeted her mother and headed up to her room. She kicked off her shoes, climbed the ladder and threw herself on to her bed.
    ‘God, life’s boring,’ she said. ‘I wish something would happen.’ There was a sort of desperate, yearning expression on her face.
    I climbed the ladder up on to the platform and sat cross-legged at her feet, fiddling with Floppy Elephant. I wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject. Should I warn her directly about Toyah or give her a bit of general moral guidance? I decided, considering her mood, on the latter.
    ‘Delilah,’ I began, ‘this weekend –’
    ‘I might go down the youth club later’ she interrupted. ‘Do you know if William’s going?’
    I said I didn’t.
    ‘Tomorrow I might go bowling with Sam, or some of the girls in my class are meeting at that new shopping centre down the A3. Or I might go to the cinema, and I’ve got to tidy up my room and…’ She broke off and gave a strangulated moan.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, wondering if she already KNEW.
    ‘This weekend, it’s just… Oh God. This boy I like’s having a party.’
    ‘A boy? You mean Darius?’
    ‘No.’ She looked at me as if I was mad. ‘Who? You mean that bloke at the river? No, of course not. No, he’s called Dan Curtis. He’s one of the boys I got off with on Saturday He’s having a party this weekend and he hasn’t even invited me.’ It turns out someone called Sally at her school who hadn’t got off with him was invited and had been making her life a misery all week for the fact that she wasn’t.
    I got a bit confused about who was and who wasn’t and who had and who hadn’t. Sometimes it’s as if the whole world goes to parties that I don’t go to. But it