Free Mira in the Present Tense by Sita Brahmachari

through her swimming costume. If you’ve got any fat on you at all, you get a low grade in Orla’s scoring system. I only get four out of ten because I’m a bit rounded. Millie gets a really good body score except that Demi always makes a point of saying something horrible like “shame about the four eyes,” But Millie doesn’t care what they say, and neither do I.
    Nana has a brilliant rant about what a load of rubbish it all is, people worrying so much about how thin they can get. “Haven’t they got anything better to worry about? What a bore to be so weight obsessed!” The other day when I was sitting with her and she saw me looking at how thin she is now, she said, “To think, some people actually aspire to being a size zero.” She kept stroking my cheek over and over.
    â€œDon’t you ever get into all that dieting crap. It’s the quality of your skin, its plumpness, that makes me want to paint you over and over. You’re a beauty, Mira Levenson.”
    I get really embarrassed when Nana talks like that, but I know she really means it, and the truth is that most of the time I don’t think too much about what I look like and I would hate to be bony like Orla. I just am how I am.

    Yesterday, Mum had a word with Miss Poplar and she’s given permission for me to take the rest of the week off as “compassionate leave.” Nana Josie wants us all to go to her cottage in Suffolk. I think she sees it as a kind of family pilgrimage. I actually woke up early this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep, thinking about Jidé and Pat Print’s writing group.
    Clank, clank, clank. Last night I got my keys ready so I wouldn’t be so hassled.
    â€œWe’re late. It’s already quarter to eight,” Millie says, peering through the letterbox and snapping it closed as I unlock the door.
    â€œI’m ready, Millie.”
    â€œI’d be ready too, if I were you, only coming in for the best bit of the day!”
    She runs flat out to school. I trail way behind her, because when I got up this morning I made one of my—don’t ask me why I do it—pacts with Notsurewho Notsurewhat, that if I trod on a single crack in the pavement along the walkway to school, our car would break down on the way to Suffolk. Which is not a great pact to make when the probability is pretty high that our car will break down as it’s so decrepit. Why did I do that? If it does break down with Nana in it, it’ll be really awful, and now, for no reason at all, except for having the stupid thought, I’m going to feel like I made it happen. Not only that, but it also means I look like a lunatic weaving around all over the place when I could be walking in a straight line.
    â€œFor God’s sake, Mira, what on earth are you doing?” Millie shouts as I pick my way like someone demented between the cracks in the pavement.
    By the time we get into the “safe haven” of our year-seven block that Miss Poplar has tried to make all cozy so as not to shock us because our new secondary is one of the biggest schools in London, Ben and Jidé are already talking to Pat Print and fussing over her sheepdog. But when Millie and I come in, the dog spirals round, practically knocking us over with its frantically wagging tail.
    â€œMoses, behave yourself, my boy. You’re so excitable anyone would think you’re still a puppy,” she laughs, dragging him by the collar back to her side.
    Pat Print either doesn’t care, like Nana, or she just doesn’t know that dogs aren’t allowed in school. I love the way she talks to him, as if he can understand exactly what she’s saying.
    â€œWhy did you call him Moses?” I ask, and as soon as I speak Ben elbows Jidé in the side. Jidé elbows him back as if to shut him up. Of course, I can’t look him in the eye but what I do notice is that Jidé has gelled up his hair