Free Worse Than Boys by Cathy MacPhail Page B

Sunday morning moan because I didn’t go with her. ‘I think you’re coming down with something, Hannah,’ she said, feeling my brow. ‘You haven’t been yourself for days.’
    I sat at my window and watched the people on the quiet streets heading for church. Or going off to do some Sunday shopping.
    Sunday had always been the Lip Gloss Girls’ day out. Going to the café on the quay, then walking back and forth along the waterfront, arm in arm, making people step off the pavement to pass us. And here I was, alone, trying to compose a letter that would make them want to walk arm in arm with me again.
    I thought about it for a long time. It had to be just the right kind of letter. Then it came to me. I’d be funny, the way they always liked me to be. Funny Hannah. I’d write a letter that would make them laugh, make them giggle. I would write such a funny letter it would make them all laugh out loud. ‘Trust Hannah,’ Icould almost hear Erin say it. ‘I’d forgotten how funny she could be.’ And they would realise how much they missed me.
    That was it. I would make them laugh.

Chapter Twenty-One
    I sat up all night composing that letter – ripping out pages, crumpling them and chucking them into the wastepaper basket. I had to find exactly the right words. Funny, cheeky and yet … apologetic. (Though I knew I had done nothing wrong, by this time I would apologise for anything they wanted.) I wanted us to start again, go back to square one.
    The letter would be addressed to Erin. She was the one who had been hurt … though not by me. In my head I kept thinking that if I did this right, by next week all that had happened would be a horrible memory, nothing more.
    Mum came into my room at midnight, demanding I put the light out. ‘Just finishing my homework,’ I told her.
    It was hours later before I was done, before I was satisfied. I slipped the letter in an envelope. Should Ipost it? If I posted it she wouldn’t get it until the next day – so I decided against that. Speed was of the essence. I wanted Erin to get that letter today, Monday. I wanted her to read it. I wanted to put all this behind me.
    On a Monday, we had PE, period one, straight after assembly. Erin always hung her blazer on the same hook. I decided that I would slip the letter into her pocket when no one was looking. Surely curiosity alone would make her read it. And once she’d read it, she had to feel something of our old friendship?
    I hardly slept and went to school looking like something out of a zombie movie. The letter shook in my hand as I pushed it into the pocket of Erin’s blazer. I was terrified someone might catch me, assume I was taking something out instead. That was all I needed now, to be accused of stealing.
    I could hardly bear to glance over to Erin as we changed after the lesson, expecting every time her hand went into her pocket that she would find the letter and pluck it out. But she didn’t. Not then. She giggled and whispered with Heather and Rose as they hovered around her like a cloaking device, protecting her from me. Then they were gone. The door banged shut and I was left alone in the changing rooms.
    In our next lesson too it was obvious she hadn’t read it – either that or she was a very good actress. But no, she hadn’t read it. I would have known if she had. Didn’t I know her better than anyone? Wasn’t she my best friend?
    But by the time I walked into the school canteen at lunchtime I knew she’d found it and read it. I knew by the way they all turned and stared at me as I carried my tray up the canteen, looking for a table. I think I stopped breathing as I felt their eyes on me. As I came close, Erin, sitting on the edge of the table, plucked the letter from her pocket and held it out to me.
    I nodded, attempting a smile. A ‘yes, it was me,’ kind of smile.
    And Erin smiled back.
    I almost dropped my tray. It had worked. When Erin beckoned me over to her, I almost ran.
    ‘You sent me