Eleanor Wood - Gemini Rising

Even though I look as though I’m engrossed in my Kerouac, I am ear-wigging furiously and spend the next ten minutes reading the same sentence repeatedly. It’s Elyse and Amie doing pretty much all the talking, while Melanie is largely silent. Abruptly, Melanie looks up and catches me staring; rather than looking startled, as I might have expected, she gives me a friendly smile. I smile back but am so embarrassed that I quickly look away.

‘Obviously you’ll want to come to The Crown with me and the rest of the girls on Friday night – it’s where all the cool people go…’

As she says this, Amie shoots a targeted, bitchy look in my direction, just to make sure that Elyse and Melanie are clear on exactly who is and isn’t included in this invitation. Simply going out on a Friday night isn’t nearly as much fun for these girls as feeling superior to the rest of the population is. I comfort myself with the knowledge that, to Amie, ‘cool’ seems to mean wearing a minuscule outfit and getting groped while puking up WKD in the street.

‘…and this Wednesday night we’re staying over at my house – my parents are away for the week, so it’s just me and my older brother. They go away a lot, so it’s become kind of a tradition – break up the week and have a bit of a party. You two’ll come, right? You can stay over at mine.’

‘Yeah, OK. Cool.’

I suppose I should resign myself to the fact that The Amazing Twins and I are never going to be friends. As the room starts to fill up, their words start to be drowned out, made less distinct with every girl that comes into the room and starts faffing and chatting. Nathalie spills into the room complaining about being behind in Sociology, closely followed by Shimmi and her incessant crowing about some allegedly gorgeous boy who did not stop staring at her all evening when she was waitressing at her dad’s restaurant on Saturday night.

‘Hey, how was sexy Josh?’ Shimmi hisses while registration’s starting.

‘Don’t even ask,’ is all I have time to mutter back before being evilled by Miss Webb.

Just like that, the day is back to a normal start again. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it will come to an equally normal finish, just like all of the days before it and presumably after it as well.

By Tuesday, I’ve been depressingly right so far. As well as all the usual hump day clichés, I hate Tuesdays because that’s my day for Remedial Maths. I’m not supposed to call it that – it’s written in my timetable as a ‘catch-up workshop’ or something – but I find that it actually makes me feel like less of a dunce just to tell it how it is.

I’m the only one in the whole sixth form doing Maths retakes, which makes it all the more galling. Even Helen Kennedy managed to scrape a ‘C’ because it was so obvious to her rich parents that she was struggling, they hired an intensive tutor to coach her throughout Year Eleven. On the other hand, my problem was that I covered it up too well – I was too embarrassed to let on that I didn’t understand a word, so I just stayed quiet in class and copied Shimmi’s homework. I’d hoped I might get lucky in the exam. My Maths teacher, Mrs Ravenscroft, was shocked when I failed. As were my mum and Pete.

I schlep to the Maths room with the scowl that Mrs Ravenscroft must think is my permanent expression – she’s perfectly nice, but my ineptitude for numbers means that she is forced to treat me like a genuine imbecile, which gets annoying pretty quickly for both of us. She isn’t there, so I settle in to the classroom by myself while I wait. I’m just getting out my books when the door opens.

‘Hi, is this Maths for dummies?’

I can’t help but grin as I see Elyse standing in the doorway making a ridiculous face. ‘Yeah, welcome to the remedial class…’

‘I’m so glad it’s not just me, to be honest.’ Elyse chucks her bag onto the floor and pulls her desk up closer to mine. ‘I’m dyslexic, and at my last school I had all these hideous one-to-one tuition classes. Now there’s two of us, we can make it fun.’

‘When you say “fun”, you do realise where we are…?’ I ask her, laughing.

‘You’re Sorana, right? We don’t know each other very well yet, but don’t worry – I can make trouble happen anywhere!’

I have the strangest feeling that from now on I might actually look forward to Tuesdays and to Remedial Maths. As Mrs Ravenscroft walks into the room, we can’t suppress our giggles.

Over the next few weeks, we all start to get used to Elyse and Melanie being around. As well as having some friendly company in Remedial Maths, having the twins here in the sixth form has shifted the dynamic a bit. Elyse and Melanie seem firmly entrenched in Amie’s gang, but they’re still friendly to everyone else. Elyse may be a bit fierce but she’s inclusive; Melanie is much quieter, but seems shy and sweet. Of course, this means that the resident mean girls can’t be as openly catty without looking like heinous bitches. It begins to feel almost cheerful around the sixth-form common room.

The A Group seem subtly different these days. Amie, in particular, has started to look more like the twins – a bit more eyeliner, artfully messy hair. And where Amie goes, the rest of the group follow. Frankly, I’m worried that they might start looking like my idea of cool, which would be somehow just wrong. One morning before class, I even see Amie reading a book on star signs that Elyse lent her – not only would she have dismissed this as tree-hugging hippy crap before, but it’s the first time I’ve ever actually seen her reading a book of her own accord. God, she’ll be asking to borrow my Jean Genet at this rate.

You would have thought that the twins’ dramatic entrance to the class would have put Amie and her group right off, for fear of looking like ‘freaks’ which, to those girls, is the ultimate insult. The twins don’t really fit in at all – yet somehow they have managed to integrate themselves effortlessly into a clique that is all about fitting in. Not only that, but to have some sort of weird effect on the whole group.

One Tuesday before Remedial Maths, I notice that Elyse and Melanie have both come to school with bulkier-than-usual baggage, which looks suspiciously like overnight gear – probably for one of Amie’s free-house parties. This isn’t particularly noteworthy in itself – it’s back at school on Wednesday morning that things really start to get interesting.

It’s not like I’m keeping track but, after one of her big midweek shindigs, I would not expect to see Amie at the usual bright and early hour. Instead, she would be likely to stagger in with all her cronies at the last possible moment, giggling madly, all trying their best to look jaded and saying things like ‘um, it’s a private joke – like, you kind of had to be there?’ if anyone dared to ask what was so funny.

This morning, however, Amie rocks up early, by herself. She tries to make herself look busy and refuses to meet my eye or even look in my direction. She looks, frankly, terrible. As she’s usually so perfectly groomed, to see her looking really, genuinely rough is pretty startling. Normally, I’ll admit, I’d be pathetic enough for this to make me feel better about myself. Confronted with it in the flesh, though, it’s just unsettling.

‘Amie?’ I venture, awkwardly. ‘Are you, um, OK?’

‘Just…’ she closes her eyes for a second, as though she can’t bear even to speak to me ‘…leave it, all right?’

We lapse back into a silence that is even more painful than usual. I kick myself for even trying – of course I was going to get shot down. The rest of the A gang drift in one by one, showing no semblance of having all been round at Amie’s house together the previous night. Without exception, they are purse-lipped and quiet, although none of them looks quite as obviously bad as Amie does – a detail that would usually have pissed her off no end.