Excerpt from BIRTHDAY BLUES by Anne Cassidy
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It took me a week or so to pluck up the courage. Tina helped me to get my things together. She said it would be a good way to draw a line under my recent romance. I was nervous, but when she called for me at about eight I was waiting. My bag was heavy and I was tense. We walked to school rehearsing it. Neither Ben nor Sara were on the footbridge or at the school gates.
“See if Romeo and Juliet are in the common room,” Tina said.s
She went off to the library. She was feeling under the weather and was going to sit on the soft chairs near the magazine racks and wait for me there.
It hadn’t taken long to find all the things that linked me with Sara and Ben. I’d sat in my room the previous evening and gone through my bag, my drawers and my cupboard. I made two piles on my duvet. Ben’s pile was the smaller: a Christmas card that said, To a Diamond girl, love Ben XXX; some cinema tickets; a programme for a football match and a Valentine’s card. On top sat a maroon satin box — It’s for small pieces of jewellery, he’d said and I’d foolishly thought he’d been hinting about a ring. Sara’s stuff was less personal. A T-shirt that she’d loaned me; a fleece that she’d hung up in my room and forgotten about; a make-up set she’d given me for Christmas and a CD of hers that she’d said I could keep.
I’d packed them into my bag neatly, one thing on top of the other. When I finished I looked round my room with satisfaction. There was nothing of either of them left.
They were in the common room sitting together. Ben had his arm around Sara and he was talking into her hair. She was looking down at her lap and gave a little smile at whatever it was he said. When he saw me walking towards him he seemed puzzled and sat up straight. Sara must have felt the change in him, because she looked up and saw me just as I got to them.
“Julia,” she said.
Ben stared straight at me, without a word.
A couple of other kids nearby had turned towards them. I could feel their attention on us, a change in the atmosphere of the room.
“I brought your stuff,” I said, huskily, my voice on the verge of breaking.
“What . . . You didn’t have to . . .”
“I wanted to. I didn’t want anything of yours.” I looked at Ben, my eyes drilling into him. “Or yours,” I added lightly, glancing at Sara, avoiding eye contact with her. “I didn’t want any of your stuff dirtying up my room or my house.”
I up-ended the bag and the things inside fell out on to the floor. On the top was the satin box; deep purple under the poor lighting of the common room. Sara stiffened when she saw it.
“What’s that?” she said, more to him than me.
“Have it. Have all of it. You’ve got him after all.”
Why had I added that? Idiot. Idiot. It hadn’t been in the script. I took a breath and gave the stuff a soft kick with my foot and turned to go. As I walked away I heard Sara’s whisper, low and angry.
“You gave me one of those bloody boxes!”
I smiled to myself. He’d given her one too. Perhaps he’d said, It’s for small pieces of jewellery, and she’d seen herself choosing a ring. Only it wasn’t that special because he’d bought one for me. I walked out of the building, my bag lighter, my feet moving quickly towards the library to tell Tina what had happened.
From Birthday Blues. Text copyright © 2005, by Anne Cassidy. All rights reserved.
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