Shrinking Violet

When I saw that my heart started beating really fast. Katie sounded just like me!

I was so excited I grabbed a pen and wrote to her straight away.

Dear Katie,

Hi, my name is Violet! I like reading, writing letters and making up poems. I also like drawing (though I am not very good at it) and doing puzzles.

I have a cat called Horatio and I love to cuddle him, especially in bed. I used to play games with him but he is a bit too old for that now.

I am the same age as you (but will be eleven in April). I am enclosing a photograph so you can see what I look like. I would love to have one of you, and to be your pen pal if you would like me to. Please write back!

Yours sincerely,

Violet Alexander.

PS PLEASE WRITE SOON!

It was the only photograph I had. Well, the only recent one. It was all our class at school, with me at one end and Lily at the other. (We always keep as far away from each other as possible when our photos are taken.)

Mum had got spare copies, like for some weird reason she always does. I can’t think why as they are always foul. But the only other one I had was when I was nine and looking really goofy, so I put in the school one and hoped she wouldn’t notice that there was any resemblance between Lily and me.

It was only after I’d addressed the letter (to Go Girl, Pen Pals no. 372) and gone over the road to the post box that I thought what I could have done. I could have cut Lily out! I could have taken the scissors and simply removed her. I wished that I had! But it was too late, now. The letter had gone.

On Sunday I heard Lily on the telephone, telling Debbie all about her visit to Riverside.

“You know the Green, where Nick and Tina live? Where all the little houses are?”

She told her about the little houses not being real. She told her about the girls with the clipboards. She told her about Tony, acting in a scene with Mara Banks. She told her about Tony smiling at her.

“At me! Not the others. Just me! I know it was me ’cos the others were all looking the other way.”

Later in the day, Big Nan rang up and Lily rushed to the phone before anyone else could get there and told Big Nan about it, too.

“You know the Green, where Nick and Tina live? Where all the little houses are?”

I had to listen to it all over again. Well, I suppose I didn’t have to, exactly, but it was kind of hard to avoid it. Lily’s voice is like a really loud car horn.

On Monday, at school, she told all the rest of the class. Nina and Lucy and Jamila. Justine and Kelly and Meena. They listened, open-mouthed. Even Pandora and Yvonne hovered on the fringes, drinking it all in.

“And then, guess what?” Lily did this little showing-off twirl. “He smiled at me! Tony … he smiled at me!”

Meena squealed and clasped her hands. Lucy went “Tonee!” Jamila fell into a pretend swoon. Kelly Stevens gave a loud screech and staggered backwards into Justine Bickerstaff. They then clutched each other and started moaning, like they were in pain. Even Pandora squeaked, “Tonee!” and made her eyes go all big.

“Soaps are dross” said Yvonne.

I was glad there was someone that wasn’t impressed, though I knew it was only ’cos Yvonne was jealous. She hates it if she’s not the centre of attention. (She hardly ever is, which is maybe why she is so bad-tempered all the time.)

I try very hard not to be jealous as it is such a horrid feeling, you get all twisted up inside and it gives you a headache and makes you sick. Well, it does me. I once got so twisted up when we had a birthday party and I thought Lily was getting all the attention (which she was) that I had to go to the bathroom and put my head in the toilet and throw up. That is so disgusting! I didn’t want it happening while I was at school, so I did this little hum to myself – “Ho di ha di ho!” – and went over to my desk, where I started arranging all my felt tips in order of colour. Pink ones, orange ones, red ones …

I WAS NOT GOING TO BE JEALOUS.

Yellow ones, green ones –

Ho di ha di ho! Blue ones, mauve ones –

“Violet?” Pandora prodded at me. “Isn’t Tony the one you like?”

I made a mumbling sound.

“Isn’t he?’

The trouble with Pandora is that once she’s started there’s no way of stopping her. She’s a bit like Horatio when he decides that he wants something. Usually food, in his case. He’ll just keep on and on nagging at you until he gets it.

Like he’ll spread himself out across your homework that you’re trying to do, or walk about yowling and winding himself round your feet. Pandora just prods and pokes and keeps asking the same question over and over.

“Isn’t he? The one that you like?”

Ho di ha di ho! Black ones, brown ones –

“Yes.”

Gold ones, silver ones –

“Wouldn’t you have liked to meet him?”

“Yes!” I slammed down my desk lid. I’m not usually impatient with Pandora, but I was really trying so hard. I didn’t want to be sick!

Lily’s voice came clanging across the room.

“…going to be a PA when I leave school.”

“What’s a PA?” said Pandora.

I said, “Pompous airbag!” and fortunately at that moment the door opened and Mrs Frost, our teacher, came in.

At first break the airbag was still telling everyone who would listen how she had been smiled at. I kept as far away as possible. I could see that even Sarah and Francine were getting a bit sick of it. The thing with Lily is, she just never knows when to stop.

Me and her went home together at the end of school. We don’t always. Sometimes Mum picks us up, sometimes Dad, sometimes we get the bus and sometimes the airbag goes back with one of her friends. Today we went on the bus together and she started off all over again about Tony and how he had smiled at her – “At me!” – but I just took a book out of my bag and sat there pretending to read it. Not that it stopped her, but at least I was able to make like I wasn’t listening. Which in fact I wasn’t, as far as I could help it. I mean, bits of it kept breaking through but mainly what I was doing was wondering when I would hear from Katie and whether she would want to be my pen pal …

I’d posted the letter on Saturday, but I knew the postman wouldn’t have come and taken it away until today. But I’d made sure to put a first-class stamp on it, so by tomorrow it would be with the magazine, and if they sent it on straight away it could be with Katie by Wednesday, and if she wrote back immediately – which was what I would do – then on Friday morning I could have a letter!

The post comes really late in our house. It comes after we’ve left, so that all of Friday I was, like, counting the hours, waiting for the moment when I could get back home and find out if my letter had arrived!

It hadn’t. All there was, was a bill for Dad and a seed catalogue for Mum.

It didn’t come Saturday, it didn’t come Monday, it didn’t come Tuesday. By Wednesday I was feeling quite despondent. I kept trying to remember what I’d written. If I’d written anything that might have put her off. I wished I’d kept a copy! Maybe I shouldn’t have said about being eleven in April; maybe that had been too much like boasting. Or maybe I’d just sounded totally dim and boring.

Maybe she’d had so many thousands of replies she’d simply picked out the ones that sounded like they’d be most fun. Maybe she hated Riverside. Maybe I should have mentioned that my favourite band is Flying High, except that Lily says it is a nerd’s band and anyway not many people have heard of it.