Jean Ure - Star Crazy Me

I’d hidden it away in my secret place, beneath the lining paper at the bottom of a drawer. I’d never shown it to Mum. It was something precious, and I couldn’t bear the thought that she might laugh. I think, actually, that was what made me finally turn on Marigold, the fact that she’d dared to bring my nan into it. Her stupid old nan . I wished I’d never, ever told anyone about Nan! But it was back in Year 6, when I’d sung the Christmas carol too loud and upset Mrs Deakin. Defiantly I’d told her that “My nan says I’m going to be a second Judy Garland!” Sometimes when you’re only ten you say things you later wish with all your heart that you hadn’t.

If I hadn’t been chosen to sing the carol – if I hadn’t sung the carol too loud – if I hadn’t boasted about Nan… if none of those things had happened then maybe I wouldn’t have yelled at Marigold and bunked off school. But I had, and all I could think was that it was fate. There’s nothing you can do about fate.

When I got back to the flats I ran into one of our neighbours, Mrs Henson. She said, “Got the afternoon off, have you?”

I gave her a sickly smile and said, “Gotta headache.” I hoped she wouldn’t mention anything to Mum but I feared the worst. She is a notorious gasbag.

The minute I was inside the flat, with the door closed against the outside world, I began to feel a bit less fraught. I spent the rest of the afternoon sprawled on the sofa, headphones clamped to my ears with the volume turned up as loud as I could bear, listening to all my favourite tracks played by all my favourite bands. Mostly Urban Legend, cos they are like my Favourite of Favourites. Mum can’t stand them – she says they’re foul-mouthed and violent. I say that life is enough to make you foul-mouthed and violent, what with wars going on all over the place, and toxic waste covering the earth, and the polar ice caps melting. Not to mention terrorism. To which Mum just goes, “Don’t give me isms! Give me tunes .” Mum isn’t what I would call musical.

Nan, on the other hand, used to really enjoy listening to rock. I don’t think she liked it as much as her beloved show tunes – Over the Rainbow , and Oh What a Beautiful Morning , and all that – but she did once say she’d like to come to a rock concert with me.

“I could scream and throw me knickers on stage! That’s what you do, isn’t it? Throw your knickers? I could get into that!”

Mum said, “At your age? You ought to be ashamed!”

But Nan wasn’t ashamed of anything, which is why I try so hard not to be. Especially not of my own body. After all, it’s the one I was born with and I can’t help the way it is. It’s not like I gorge on junk food. It’s not like I don’t get any exercise. Mum doesn’t; she goes everywhere by car. Not me! I walk to and from the bus stop every day, and more often than not I walk up the stairs as well, all ten flights of them. I only take the lift if I’m feeling really knackered. I hate the lift! It smells of sick and stale pee. But there’s some people I know – Mum, to give just one example – that would get completely out of breath going up ten flights of stairs. I don’t! So I know I’m not a slob, and I’m certainly not a glutton. It is just the way I’m made , and I refuse to let small-minded, pea-brained pond life such as Marigold Johnson make me self-conscious.

That is what I have always told myself. But oh, that day she really got to me! It’s like I’d built up this wall to keep me safe, and she’d gone and brought the whole lot crashing down, leaving me exposed. Like naked, almost. Like a snail brutally torn out of its shell. Now I couldn’t pretend any more: it really hurts when someone calls you names.

If Nan had been there, what would she have said?

“Don’t you take no notice! You just remember, you’ve got something girls like that can only dream of… you’ve got a voice that’s going to take you right to the top. Up there with the stars, that’s where you’ll be! Then she’ll be laughing on the other side of her face, you see if she isn’t.”

But what if Nan were wrong? What if I didn’t have a voice?

I knew in my heart that Nan wasn’t wrong; I knew that I could sing. No one could take that away from me. But no one could make me look like Marigold Johnson, either! And who wanted a rock star the size of an elephant?

I tried so hard to hear Nan again. To hear her old, cracked voice telling me to have faith, to “Go for it, girl!” But it was no use. She wasn’t there, and I couldn’t bring her back. Music was all I had left. I turned up the volume until it was almost unbearable, until my head was pounding with the beat and I felt that I was drowning in a crashing sea of sound. At least that way I didn’t have to think.

If I could have stayed plugged in I’d have been all right, but Mum came home at six o’clock and I had to crawl back into the world, without my shell. Needless to say, Mum had bumped into Mrs Henson – or, more likely, Mrs Henson had bumped into her.

“What’s all this about a headache?” she said. “I never heard of anyone being sent home for a headache. Why couldn’t they just give you an aspirin, or something?”

I mumbled that they didn’t like to give medication. Mum said, “Sooner send you back to an empty flat.”

“They didn’t know it was empty. I told them you were here.”

Mum looked at me, rather hard. “OK! What did you want to get out of?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing!”

“Look, Carmen, just be honest. If it was a maths test, or you hadn’t done your homework, I can sympathise. I know what it’s like, I’ve been there! No one’s expecting you to turn into some kind of mad boffin. Just don’t lie to me. All right?”

I said, “Yeah, all right. Sorry.”

It seemed easier than going on with the headache thing. Mum’s never expected much of me, so not doing homework or avoiding a maths test was no big deal as far as she was concerned. She left school without any qualifications; why should I do any better? It would have upset her far more if I’d told her the truth. Not that I would! Not in a million years. I’d have curled up and died sooner than tell Mum.

Indy rang me after tea. I knew she would; I’d been dreading it. I didn’t want to talk to her! I wouldn’t have minded so much if she’d texted me, but Indy is practically the only person I know that doesn’t have a mobile phone. Or a computer. It makes life very difficult.

Mum took the phone call. She came back into the sitting room and said, “It’s your little friend on the phone. The little plain one.” I do wish Mum wouldn’t refer to Indy as the little plain one! I really hate it when she does that. She knows perfectly well what her name is.

“Well, are you going to speak to her,” she said, “or not?”

I dragged myself out into the hall and picked up the phone. “’Lo?”

Indy shrieked, “Carm! What happened? Where did you get to?”

“Hadda headache,” I said.

“Cos of Marigold? I knew it was cos of her! Honestly, that girl is just so putrefying! I’m glad you told her she was a moron. Everybody’s glad! They all reckon she asked for it.”

I said, “How does everybody know? Did you tell them?”

“No! It was Connie.”

Connie Li; I hadn’t realised she was there. Connie is OK. She is definitely not a Marigold groupie.

“Carm?” Indy’s voice squeaked anxiously down the line. “You haven’t let her get to you? Cos all those things she said, about her sister… they’re not really true! She hasn’t really had professional experience.”