Strawberry Crush. Jean Ure

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      “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.

      

      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?”

      “Going all soppy over him when he’s sitting there with Hope Kennedy.”

      “But they’re in the same class.”

      I said, “I know they’re in the same class! And they like the same music, and she’s absolutely gorgeous!”

      I knew I was being a bit mean, rubbing it in like that, but I was still feeling sore about the way she’d tricked me. Plus it was entirely for her own good. My mum is always saying that things are “for your own good” and it is extremely annoying; but just because it’s annoying doesn’t make it any less true. When Maya gets one of her crushes they take over her entire life.

      She sat there beside me, fiddling with the strap of her school bag. Her face had gone all puckered, so that I immediately felt – as I so often do with Maya – that I had been too harsh. Whatever a person might think of someone else’s daydreams it is not very kind to trample on them.

      “I’m just saying,” I muttered.

      “Whatever.”

      Maya turned, deliberately scrunching herself up against the window with her back towards me. Omigod, she was looking for Fiats again! I might just as well not have bothered.

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