Free The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Page B

send him updates on what was going on. I wanted to punish him, I think. I wanted to punish him for making friends with someone, which goes to show what a horrible person I am. How could I have blamed him for doing that? Oscar was the friendliest guy I’d ever known. It was in his nature to make friends with people, especially new people who were starting at school and didn’t know anybody. Newcomers, as everyone knows, are vulnerable and in need of decent treatment.
    It was wrong of me to be so jealous. But the sting from those thousands of miles away was sharp and deep and it seemed to harden me and make me turn away from him, which, as I said, is a thing I’d never have predicted I’d have been capable of, until I did it.
    Oscar wasn’t put off by my lack of communication. He kept on writing, but I knew. I knew how different things had become, and from then on, I felt his sense of duty stamped on the messages he wrote—and that stung me too. He wasn’t writing to me because he really wanted to, at least I didn’t think he was. He was writing to me because he felt it was the right thing to do, seeing as I was so far away and seeing as he’d said he would.
    Oscar, I’d thought bitterly, I don’t need your duty. I’m going to show you how much I don’t need you. Wait till you see how well I can do without you.
From: Oscar Dunleavy
To: Meg Molony
Subject: Talent show disaster
I’m not sure what’s happened, but everyone has turned against my apple tart showcase. Thought you might be able to help me figure it out.
Here’s what happened. You’ll probably find out sooner or later anyway: practice was in front of the class, and it was so much of an embarrassing disaster that now I’m seriously thinking of not going forward for the competition.
Luckily, Paloma has been working hard on a lot of her designs and she’s told me she will be happy to go in my place if I decide not to, which will be the perfect solution, as I don’t fancy being the one to let the school down by backingout. I think this could be much better all around really. Not sure why everyone’s done such a massive U-turn, but it seems that lots of people have started to think that
nobody
wants to see a kid cooking apple tarts. That could look a bit weird. What do you think?
Paloma is being great and says that maybe I should try to develop a different talent that more people will “get.”
Wish you’d write and let me know how you’re doing. It would be great to hear from you. Feels like a pretty long time since . . . you know . . . you wrote to me.
Your friend,
Oscar
    I wasn’t able to stop thinking about the letter he’d accidentally got from me and how bloody
mortified
I was that he’d read it—and how even more completely embarrassed I was about how horrified he’d been at the idea of me being in love with him.
    I couldn’t blame him for not feeling the same way I did. Of course I couldn’t—not logically. You can’t force people to feel things they don’t feel, or to say things they don’t mean. But even though it was unreasonable to be angry with him and even though I tried hard not to be, I was, and it’s why, even when I did get around to writing to him, this is what I said:
From: Meg Molony
To: Oscar Dunleavy
Subject: Everything fine, thank you
Hello, Oscar, sorry it’s been a while. Hope everything is good and that you and your next-door neighbor continueto have a great time hanging out together. I’m doing really fantastically over here myself, thanks. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw the huge bunch of new friends I’ve made. They’re all really, brilliantly good fun. We practically never stop laughing. We go to the lake after school every day and water-ski and have barbecues and whatever we feel like. It’s cool. Plus you know, we’re so lucky with the climate