Paper Butterflies. Lisa Heathfield

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СКАЧАТЬ see that I want to run far away from here.

      We go through the school doorway and the corridor is swirling with people. I think I might cry, but I won’t let myself.

      ‘Ugh!’ the girls from the bus shout loudly. They squeeze their noses with their fingers. ‘Someone’s wet themselves.’ And they’re pointing at me and everyone is laughing as the bell rings.

      ‘You’ll have to come to class now,’ Ryan says. ‘You don’t want to get into trouble, do you?’

      Somehow, I get to the classroom. Miss Hawthorne is already here. She’s sitting on her chair, talking to the children on the carpet in front of her. I go to my peg, take off my coat and hang it up. I hang up my bag too. When I turn round, all I can see is them pointing and sniggering and waving their fingers under their noses, their voices screwed up in disgust.

      ‘What is it?’ Miss Hawthorne asks. Her smile is warm, but she looks confused. My feet won’t move. I don’t know what to do, where to go.

      ‘June had an accident,’ Cherry says. They’re all laughing and looking at me. The smell of what I’ve done stings my skin.

      Miss Hawthorne comes towards me. She knows, as soon as she comes close, that it’s true.

      ‘Come with me, June.’ We step outside the classroom, all eyes watching. Miss Hawthorne closes the door so they can’t hear us. And so I can’t hear them laughing. I look down at the floor. I feel myself blushing violently, but she will barely see it through my skin. I wish I could sink into the ground and never come back.

      ‘What happened?’ she asks kindly.

      ‘I couldn’t hold it in.’

      ‘You should have gone before you left home.’

      ‘Sorry.’ I won’t cry.

      ‘You’ll have to go to the nurse. She’ll sort you out with clean clothes. Then you can come back to class,’ she says. I look up at her. ‘I know it’ll be hard, but you have to come back. They’ll all have forgotten about it, you’ll see.’ Her hand is on my shoulder and she’s smiling, but I know she’s lying.

      It’s quiet in the corridor. It’s just the sound of my feet, soft on the floor. I could walk along here, turn the corner, push open the door and never come back. I would survive – I know I would. I would hitchhike all the way to the coast and I’d meet a family on the beach. They would love me and they would be mine.

      The nurse’s door is slightly open and I barely knock before I go in. She’s standing by the chair, shaking a thermometer. A girl sits with a bowl on her lap. Her skin is so white she looks dead, and I know I shouldn’t stare.

      ‘I’ll get the office to phone your mother,’ the nurse says briskly. ‘She’ll have to come and pick you up.’

      ‘She’s at work,’ the girl says.

      ‘Well, she’ll have to come back.’

      The girl nods and hunches further over the bowl. The nurse squeezes past me, heads out of the door and is gone.

      ‘Are you OK?’ I ask the girl. She looks up at me briefly and turns away.

      The window is pushed halfway up. Somewhere, someone is mowing a lawn. The hum stretches into the room.

      I can hear the nurse coming back before I see her. Her shoes click on the polished floor.

      ‘Right. That’s sorted,’ she says.

      And then she turns to me.

      I could tell her, tell her the truth, tell her everything.

      ‘I need some clean clothes,’ I whisper. And now I know that she can smell my damp ones.

      ‘Right,’ is all she mutters as she reaches into a cupboard. She holds up some underpants and chooses a pair. ‘A little bit small, but they’ll have to do.’ She passes them to me. ‘Come over here and I’ll draw the curtain.’

      I do as she says. I pull my wet underpants down. I don’t know what to do with them and she looks like she doesn’t want to touch them, so I put them on the floor.

      I step out of my skirt. The material is damp to touch. I don’t want to look at the size of the wet patch that everyone has been laughing at. My shoes feel sticky. And the smell is glued to my skin.

      ‘Let’s wipe you down a bit,’ the nurse says. She’s at the sink, squeezing out a cloth and then using its warmth to clean me.

      When she’s dried me, she helps me into another skirt. It’s tight over my legs and on my belly. I know what she thinks. It’s what everyone thinks.

      The nurse picks up my clothes and puts them into a plastic bag. She ties a knot in the end of it and passes it to me. I’ll have to walk through the corridors holding it, but I can’t throw it away. I can’t go home without it.

      ‘Thank you,’ I say, and I look hard into her eyes. Please ask me, I beg her. Ask me now and I’ll tell you everything.

      ‘You’re really a bit old for this,’ she says. ‘Try not to let it happen again.’

      And I’m gone, walking back to the class of circling sharks, my bag of clothes waiting to be hung like bait on my peg.

      I wake up early the next morning, because it’s my special day. I imagine plucking the butterflies out of my belly and putting them in a box by my bed – I’d like to watch their colours, to see their wings beating against the glass.

      The door opens and they’re all here. Kathleen, Megan and Dad. He promised he’d go into work late this morning.

      ‘Here’s the birthday girl,’ Kathleen says. Her hug is tight and smells of soap. She kisses me on the top of my head.

      ‘Ten years old today!’ my dad says ‘Here, hold this.’ His smile takes over his whole face as he passes me the end of some string.

      ‘That’s all you’re getting!’ Kathleen laughs, and my dad puts his hand in hers.

      ‘Follow it,’ he says. So I get out of bed and I pull on the string and I twist it into my palm as it leads me from my room.

      It goes into Megan’s room and over her bed. They watch me from the doorway as I step over the mattress, pulling my nightdress over my knees. They all laugh excitedly as I follow the string around the chair and back out again.

      ‘So it’s not in there,’ my dad laughs. I don’t look at Kathleen and Megan. I don’t want them to spoil this.

      The string goes down the stairs, into the kitchen. I gather it clumsily in my fist as I crawl under the table. Back across the hallway, into the living room.

      And there it is.

      Attached on the end is a shining new bike. It’s painted pink, with yellow handlebars. For a moment, I think my heart stops. I look up at my dad and try to speak. He puts his arm round my shoulders.

      ‘It’s all СКАЧАТЬ