Strawberry Crush

Maya at once protested that of course she didn’t. “He just happened to be there!”

That was what she said; but I could tell she was seriously taken with the idea. Trust Linzi! This was going to make matters a whole lot worse. All we needed was Maya having fantasies that Jake had as much of a crush on her as she had on him.

People like Linzi are such a menace. And I was stuck with her all the way to school! It’s not really that long a walk from where we get off the bus; it just seemed that it was, with Linzi droning on non-stop in my ear. All about boys. Boys that fancied her, boys that wanted to go out with her. Boys that she might possibly go out with, boys she wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. Nothing but boys, boys, boys the whole length of Sheepcote Road! They are her main topic of conversation. Practically her only topic of conversation. If conversation it could be called, which strictly speaking it couldn’t since I was hardly able to get a word in edgeways. Not that I tried very hard. Mostly I just tuned out, cos who’s interested in hearing about Linzi Baxter and her boring stupid love life? Not me!

Once through the school gates, thank goodness, we parted company. In spite of being in the same class, Linzi and I don’t really have much to do with each other. Nor, for that matter, do me and Maya. I have my friends, Maya has hers. She’d gone waltzing off to join a couple of them as soon as we’d got off the bus, leaving me on my own to suffer permanent brain damage from Linzi and her loudmouth wittering.

Fortunately on the way home that afternoon I was spared the earbashing on account of Linzi having to stay behind for something or other. All the same, I told Maya that in future, until Auntie Megs calmed down and we could use our bikes again, we were going to leave home fifteen minutes earlier. Maya immediately protested.

“I can’t! I’ll never be ready in time.”

I said, “Well, you’d better be or I’ll go without you.”

There wasn’t any reason I shouldn’t go without her. It was only habit that kept us together.

“We’ll need to be here by at least a quarter to eight.”

“But why?” wailed Maya. “We got to school in plenty of time! What d’you want us to leave earlier for?”

“You can do what you like,” I said. “I just don’t want to get stuck with Linzi again.”

“Oh,” said Maya. Her face cleared. “Is that all?”

I said, “Yes. Why?” She didn’t say anything to that, but her cheeks had gone a bright give-away pink. I knew what she’d been thinking. I can read her like a book! She’d thought I was trying to stop her cadging a lift from Jake. Like it was some jealous ploy on my part to come between them.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “it’s up to you. Either we go early or I’ll use my bike.”

Maya heaved a sigh. “Oh, all right! If I have to. But if I’m doing something for you I think you ought to do something for me.”

I was immediately suspicious. I said, “Like what?”

“I want us to join the Music Club!”

“The Music Club?”

Why on earth would she want to join the Music Club? She isn’t in the least bit musical! Nor am I, to be honest. I once tried out for the junior choir, but Mrs Morgan said I wasn’t quite ready for it. According to Mum she was just being kind. “What she really meant was, you have a voice like a screech owl!”

Well, and Maya’s not much better. Worse if anything. She sings flat.

I reminded her of this, but she said just because she couldn’t sing didn’t mean she couldn’t learn how to appreciate good music.

“You mean like classical?”

“Anything,” said Maya.

“Classical’s all they listen to,” I said. “Beethoven and stuff. It’s really boring! Emily Armstrong goes.”

Emily is this girl in our class that is really sweet but has these totally weird tastes in practically everything. She loves poetry. She adores paintings. She worships Shakespeare. She goes to the opera. If it was Linzi you’d know she was just showing off; with Emily you know it’s the real thing. She lives in a totally different world from the rest of us.

“Honestly,” I said, “you’d be bored out of your mind.”

“Mattie, please,” begged Maya. “I want to learn!”

Well, I am never against learning, cos that would just be ignorant, but I didn’t see why I had to do it. Why couldn’t she get one of her friends to go with her? Tansy or Bella, for instance. They were her best mates! Why not ask them? Maya said cos they would get silly.

“They’d only start giggling.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone actually giggling at Beethoven. Fall asleep, more like. It was only when I allowed myself to be dragged along next day during the lunch break that I discovered what it was that would have made them giggle: Jake was there, sitting next to a girl from his class. He glanced up and smiled as he saw Maya. Well, I suppose he might have been smiling at both of us, but from the way Maya turned her usual bright pink I knew she was taking it as being especially for her.

No wonder she hadn’t wanted her friends to come along! When Maya has one of her obsessions she makes it plain for all to see, and Tansy and Bella are gigglers at the best of times. I’m not above getting the occasional fit of the giggles myself, but I didn’t find this a particularly gigglesome occasion. I was quite cross with Maya. I felt like I’d been cheated. Thanks to her I was going to waste the whole of my lunch break! I really don’t know why I allow myself to be talked into these things. She is always managing to get round me. She has this way of smiling very sweetly and looking very fragile and pathetic, and I always, always fall for it.

As it was I had to sit through three quarters of an hour of mental torture. Actually, to be honest, that is not quite fair. Miss Hopwood is young and blonde and really pretty, plus she is new to teaching and still bursting with enthusiasm, so it wasn’t as bad as if it had been Mrs Morgan, who is old and boring. I don’t mean to be ageist, but sometimes old people can be boring, just like young people can, only if they’re old you’re not supposed to say so.

To be fair the first ten minutes were quite interesting. Miss Hopwood told us about this piece of music, Pictures at an Exhibition, by someone called Mussorgsky. (I think that’s how it’s spelt.) She said it was about two men walking round a gallery looking at paintings, and she played twiddly bits on the piano by way of illustration. Like “This is them walking round” and “This is a painting called Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks”. Cool! I didn’t mind that. But then she put on a CD and she said we all had to concentrate and see if we could recognise the bits she’d played, only I couldn’t, except maybe where they were walking around. The rest was just plinking and plonking on the piano. No real tune at all.

Everybody else seemed to get it. Jake was listening really hard, you could tell, and the girl next to him looked like she was in some kind of ecstasy. Lots of people had their eyes closed. Emily not only had her eyes closed but this radiant smile on her lips. How come they all got it and not me? It made me feel I was missing something.

I stole a glance at Maya. She hadn’t got it! She was peering in a lovelorn fashion at Jake from under her lashes, trying to make like she was lost in the music, but only managing to look faintly ridiculous. All daft and soppy. Tansy and Bella would have giggled themselves inside out. I prodded at her, but she swatted me away, angrily.

In the end I started peering at Jake, as well. I had to do something to keep myself awake. He is what my mum would call “tall dark and handsome”. Definitely crush material, if you are the sort of person that indulges in crushes, but for goodness’ sake he was eighteen! Practically grown up. And the girl sitting next to him, Hope Kennedy, was really beautiful. Thick honey-coloured hair in a ponytail, with these long, long legs like a dancer’s that seemed to go on for ever. And she was in his year. And they obviously had the same taste in music.

I stole another glance at Maya. I was beginning to have bad feelings. I did so hope she came to her senses! Maddening though she could be, I would really hate for her to get hurt.

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Well! At least I’d solved the problem of how to get us to school in the morning without Maya dramatically teetering about on the edge of the pavement, peering into cars and waving her arms every time anything small and blue appeared on the horizon. Unfortunately it hadn’t solved the problem of getting back. First off she wanted to wander round the school car park, checking on the cars to see whether Jake was still there or whether he’d already left; and then when she discovered he hadn’t left she purposely dawdled all the way down Sheepcote Road to the bus stop, hoping he would come by and see us waiting there.

I lectured her about it, but there is nothing you can do when someone is in the grip of an obsession. Water off a duck’s back, as my dad would say. I’m not sure she even really listened. Or if she did she didn’t actually hear.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said as we finally got on the bus, “you’re not dragging me along to that music thing again.”

She turned, all innocent, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

I immediately retorted, “Don’t pretend that you did! You just enjoyed staring at Jake.”

Pinkly, she protested, “It wasn’t anything to do with Jake! I didn’t even know he was going to be there.”

Oh, no? What did she think, I was stupid or something?

“Honestly,” said Maya, “it was the lovely music. I found it so interesting.”

“Go on, then,” I said. “Sing me some!”

Needless to say, she couldn’t. She said that she was still learning and that was why she wanted to become a member, so that she could go along every week and hear something new.

“You know you’re wasting your time,” I said.

She crinkled her nose. “How d’you mean?”