Karen McCombie - In Sarah’s Shadow

“You sat next to him, practically naked?!”

That’s Pamela, whispering, even though the classroom is almost empty. I say almost: Miss Jamal, our English teacher, is in a bit of a huddle over at her desk with Mr Fisher, the music teacher. Wonder if there’s anything going on with the two of them? Miss Jamal is kind of OK-looking and Mr Fisher is pretty cute for someone who must be about thirty, so it’s not like it’s a totally wild, out-of-the-question idea.

Hmm – and how would Sarah feel about that? I know she’s seeing Conor, but ever since she first mentioned this Battle of the Bands stuff, it’s been “Mr Fisher” this, and “Mr Fisher” that every five seconds. You know, it really wouldn’t surprise me if she had a bit of a thing for him…

“Didn’t you just want to die of embarrassment, Megan?!” Pamela gasps.

“I wasn’t naked!” I whisper back, handing a pile of muddled textbooks down off the shelf to Pamela’s waiting hands and peering out through the door of the walk-in cupboard at the two teachers. “I told you, I was wearing a towel!”

Me and Pamela are on volunteer tidying duty, spending our precious Monday morning break trying to make sense of the jumble on the shelves here. I really mean it about the volunteer bit; we haven’t been forced into it and we’re not complete mugs or anything, it’s just that when you’re a stunningly average student, teachers tend to give you a hard time. Unless, of course, you prove yourself to be an exceptionally accommodating and pleasant pupil. So when Miss Jamal asked for help with this deadly dull task, me and Pamela (my equally average accomplice) offered our services straight away. If earning Brownie points with your teacher gives you an easier ride, then hell: I say, go for it. (I did spot a ‘How To Study Better Spell’ in my new book yesterday, but as it involved geranium oil, a bird feather and a piece of coal – none of which I happened to have handy – I never got round to trying it out.)

“Yeah, OK, so you were wearing a towel, but still, Megan! Weren’t you mortified?!”

“No,” I shrug. “I wasn’t. I know I should have been, and I know normally I absolutely would have been, but somehow…he just didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.”

It was true. However shy or weird I felt sitting with Conor for that little while on Saturday night, the one thing I didn’t feel was awkward. Or embarrassed. It’s like a miracle, really – normally, I hate my pear-shaped body so much that I’ll wrap a huge beach towel around me when I go swimming and only drop it at the last minute when I get to the poolside. On holidays abroad, I’m happier in long shorts and T-shirts than the micro-bikinis Sarah flaunts herself in.

“But, my God,” Pamela goggles her eyes at me. “Wearing next to nothing in front of someone you fancy…I’d just die!”

She’s imagining herself and Tariq, I can tell. You know, I’m really beginning to wish I hadn’t told Pamela about what happened on Saturday or that I fancied Conor in the first place. For a start, she’s pissing me off by making the whole thing sound seedy, and second, I’m not doing it to titillate her and get her mind working overtime about being in the same situation with Tariq. As if that’s ever going to happen. They’ve never even been in the same room alone together, never said anything apart from shy “hi”s (still!) to each other. I mean, there’s something fundamentally nuts about flirting by text and then acting too timid to talk to each other in the (fully-clothed) flesh, isn’t there? OK, so I’m no super-confident ladette, who has a posse of male buddies and would think nothing of asking a guy out – I’m just the exact, polar opposite. But even I know Pamela and Tariq are goofing around pathetically. She’s in a win-win situation: she likes him and knows for a fact that he likes her, so what are they waiting for? Some kind of matchmaker, like they had in Victorian times – or like they have in arranged marriages – to formally introduce them? God, I’m going to have to end up doing it, aren’t I…?

“Look, Pamela, me and Conor talking – it only lasted for about one minute, till my sister came scurrying in,” I say to the top of my friend’s bowed head. I try to bring her wandering mind back to the conversation by thunking a particularly huge pile of books down into her arms…

“Oww!”

“Oops! I’m sorry!” I gasp as Pamela clutches the top of her head and tries to rub the pain away with the palms of her hands.

“Are you OK in there?”

Close up, Mr Fisher has the look of an older David Beckham about him, but maybe that’s just because he’s got that Number One buzzcut that Beckham made famous once upon a time. Behind him, Miss Jamal frowns at Pamela’s whimpering and at the scattering of books over the cracked lino floor.

“I dropped them…only she, um, didn’t catch them,” I mumble uselessly in explanation, scampering quickly down the stepladder and immediately crouching down to gather up the mess.

“Come out here where it’s brighter, so I can check you haven’t been cut,” Miss Jamal motions to Pamela, who shuffles past me, her scuffed, black, school brogues sending textbooks skimming off to the farthest corner of the cupboard.

“It’s like an episode of Itchy and Scratchy in here!” Mr Fisher says wryly, squatting down and helping me gather up everything. “What was going to happen next? Was Pamela going to hit you in the face with a giant frying pan?”

“No – I was going to hide a bomb in a copy of David Copperfield and then ask her to read it out loud to me while I ran away!”

Mr Fisher laughs and I get that same spine-tingling thrill as when Conor laughed out loud at something I said on Saturday night. People – male people – finding me funny; this is a real novelty. The only one who’s ever found me remotely funny up till now is Pamela, and that’s ‘cause it’s in her Best Friend contract. (Just like it’s in the contract that I have to listen to endless tales of longdistance longing from her.)

It’s fair to say that my family have never found me funny. You know how you get a certain feeling that people have a set opinion of you, and no matter what you do or don’t do, they’ll always think that way? Well, my family probably think I’m a lot of stuff: difficult, moody, psycho even (hey, don’t forget the scars – they never let me), but I can safely say that it would never occur to them to find me remotely funny. Funny peculiar maybe, but funny ha ha? You’ve got to be kidding.

“Listen, I’ve got a bit of a problem…” says Mr Fisher, suddenly getting kind of serious on me.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, “Well, shouldn’t you see a doctor?” but I bite my lip and hold myself back; there’s only so much fooling around you can do with a teacher, even one who laughs at your jokes.

Instead, I raise my eyebrows in what I hope comes across as an expression of intelligent questioning, but which probably looks more like the look on a bunny’s face two seconds before the juggernaut splats it.

“You know this Battle of the Bands competition that’s coming up?”

I nod. Of course I do. Haven’t I been singing the words to Ash’s Girl from Mars every spare minute of the day since it dawned on me that that was what Conor and Sarah were rehearsing together in her room on Saturday night?

“Well, there’s only two weeks to go and there’s a hell of a lot of work to do with the school band that’s entering—”

Wow! You mean something involving my sister isn’t gold-plated perfection?!