Free Time for Jas by Natasha Farrant

would use her straighteners on him, and not just to burn his hair.

The Film Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby
    Scene Five
The End of an Era
    Lunchtime, the stables under the motorway. Twelve huddled horseboxes facing into a tiny yard sandwiched between a leisure centre and a bus depot. A big plane tree by the entrance to a narrow passage, just wide enough for a horse and rider, leading to a sawdust ring beneath a network of busy roads. In the riding ring, non-broken cones sit in an orange circle beside striped jumping poles and cross-shaped supports.
    The doors to the box at the back of the yard are open. Crates of stuff are piled up inside. Halters and leather wax, horse brushes and combs, hoof picks and saddle pads. There is a pileof saddles, a crate full of bridles, another for girths and stirrups, each labelled for an individual pony or horse, crates with tags saying ‘medication’, ‘whips’, ‘boots’, ‘hats’.
    Outside in the yard is a growing pile of junk. Broken saddles, chairs, electric heaters, traffic cones, bits of rope, a burst football, torn waterproofs, an old mattress. The range is astonishing.
    CAMERAMAN (BLUEBELL) crosses the yard, into the tiny office and up the rickety stairs to the flat above. More boxes, full of china, cutlery, books, bed linen. Suitcases bulging with clothes, pictures stacked on the floor, grimy outlines on the walls where they used to hang. Furniture labelled with different coloured stickers – green for the few items going to Devon, orange for everything that is to be sold or given away.
    Back in the yard, ZORAN, GLORIA, TWIG and MOTHER sit on bencheseating crisps with cheese and pickle sandwiches and drinking mugs of sweet, strong tea. JASMINE eats standing up, half-hidden by the open top half of a stable door. A pony (Mopsy, her old favourite) hangs its head over the door. She nudges Jas, who offers her a piece of sandwich. Mopsy signals her dislike of pickle by blowing air noisily through her nostrils. Pony snot lands on Jasmine’s brand new sky blue hoody. She squeals and pushes Mopsy away.
     
    JASMINE
    My new top! It’s all dirty!
     
    MOTHER
    I did tell you not to wear it.
     
    JASMINE
    I had to! What if someone had seen me?
     
    MOTHER
    What could it possibly matter?
     
    JASMINE
    (tossing her newly straightened, super-swishy hair and sounding remarkably like Flora) You wouldn’t understand.

Sunday 10 October
    Jas has changed now that she is friends with the Cupcake Crew.
    Ever since Gloria came back from Devon on Monday, Twig and I have been at the stables every day after school to help her pack, but today was the first time Jas came, even though out of all of us Jas is the one who loves Gloria the most. Being friends with Megan, Courtney, Chandra and Fran means being exactly like them, and hanging out with dirty animals isn’t one of the things they do.
    It started with the hair straighteners. Then, the day after our chalk drawing, there was the shopping expedition with Mum. Now, as well as the right hair, she has the right pastel hoodies from the right shop, the right trainers and the right jeans.
    We watched as Jas, well out of Mopsy’s reach, rubbed away at her sweatshirt, still trying to clean it. Mopsy, who is the cleverest pony in the yard as well as the smallest, reached over the top of her box, pulled the bolt back neatly with her teeth, pushed open her door, ambled over to Jas and blew down her neck.
    Everybody laughed. Mopsy looked round, ears waggling like she was saying ‘Aren’t I clever?’ Jasscreamed and pushed her away again.
    ‘Why can’t you leave me alone!’ she screeched.
    Zoran put his arm round Mopsy’s neck and pushed her back into the box, remembering to padlock the door. Jas flounced away to clean her sweatshirt in the bathroom upstairs.
    ‘If you have to change who you are in order to be friends with someone,’ Gloria observed, ‘that someone is not a true friend.’
    Which is easy to say when you’re a grown-up, and a lot more