Rachel took me under her wing when I first arrived at the school, and I was so grateful. She was the most popular girl in our class, which made sense, because she was beautiful, clever, and kind. Or so I thought. She was always doing things for charity, even then – sponsored runs, bake sales, collections for Children in Need. I didn’t think it at first, but after a few weeks, I soon started to wonder if she just saw me as another one of her little projects.
She had invited me to her home, let me borrow some of her clothes, and taught me how to do my make-up. I’d never bothered wearing any before. She liked to paint my nails when we hung out together, a different colour every time we met. Sometimes she would draw letters with varnish, one on each nail to spell out a word on my fingers: CUTE or SWEET or NICE were her favourites. She was always calling me nice. It’s still the word people use most often to describe me now. I’ve grown to detest it. The sound those four letters make translates from a compliment into an insult inside my ears. As though being nice is a weakness. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I am.
Rachel also bought me small presents all the time – lip gloss, scrunchies for my hair, sometimes tops and skirts that were a tad too tight, to encourage me to lose weight – and she even took me to her hairdresser’s one weekend, to get my hair highlighted the same way as hers. She knew I couldn’t afford it, and insisted on paying for everything. I did wonder where the money came from, but never asked. Rachel also let me sit next to her and her friends at lunchtimes, and I was glad about that too. There were some people who sat alone and I didn’t want to be like them.
Catherine Kelly seemed nice enough to me. She was always eating chocolate or crisps, and she looked a little strange – with her white-blonde hair, braces, and scruffy uniform – but she didn’t do or say anything to upset anyone. She didn’t say much at all really, just sat quietly reading her books. Mostly horror, I noticed. I’d heard that her family lived in a strange place in the woods, at the edge of town. Some people said it was a haunted house, but I didn’t believe in ghosts. I thought it was a shame that she didn’t seem to have any friends at all, and I felt sorry for her.
‘Should we invite Catherine to sit with us?’ I asked one day, slowly eating the lunch ladies’ interpretation of lasagne and chips.
The other girls stared as though I had said something offensive.
‘No,’ said Rachel, who was sitting directly opposite me.
‘Are you actually going to eat all of that?’ said Helen, staring at my plate. I had noticed that she always skipped lunch. ‘Do you know how many calories are in that processed crap?’ she continued when I didn’t answer.
I didn’t know, it wasn’t the sort of thing I thought about much.
‘I like lasagne,’ I replied.
She shook her head and put a small bottle of pills on the table.
‘Here, have these. Call them an early birthday present.’
‘What are they?’ I asked, staring at the unexpected ‘gift’.
‘Diet pills. We all take them. It means you can be slim without feeling hungry. Put them in your bag, we don’t want the whole school knowing all our little secrets.’
‘Why do you want to invite Smelly Catherine Kelly to join our gang?’ Rachel asked, changing the subject.
The others laughed.
‘I just know how happy it makes me to eat lunch with all of you, and I thought she looked lonely—’
‘And you wanted to be nice, right?’ Rachel interrupted. I shrugged. ‘You know, being too nice is a sign of weakness.’
Rachel stood abruptly, her chair scraping the floor. Then she picked up her can of Coke and left the canteen. Nobody spoke, and when I tried to make eye contact, they all stared at the uneaten salads on their plates.
Rachel returned a few minutes later, her smile reattached to her face. She put the can back down on the table, and picked up her cutlery to continue barely eating. The other girls did the same. They always took their lead from her.
‘Well, go on then,’ she said between mouthfuls. ‘Invite her over.’
I hesitated for a moment but then dismissed the uneasy feeling in my stomach, choosing to believe that Rachel was being as kind as I knew she could be. It seems naïve looking back, but sometimes we believe what we want to about the people we like the most.
I weaved my way through an obstacle course of chairs, tables and schoolgirls, to reach the sad little corner of the canteen where Catherine Kelly always ate alone. Her long blonde hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush for a while. She tucked it behind her sticky-out ears, and blushed when the other kids called her Dumbo. Despite all the snacks she liked so much – crisps, chocolate bars, endless fizzy drinks – she was a skinny girl. Her shirt was slightly loose around her neck where a button was missing, and there were stains on her tie. I noticed that her navy-blue blazer was covered in chalk, as though she had rubbed up against a blackboard. Close up, I could also see that her eyebrows were almost completely bald, where she was always plucking the hairs with her fingertips. I’d watched her doing it in class, making tiny piles of herself on the desk, before blowing them away like wishes.
She pulled a face as though she thought I was joking when I invited her to join us. She stared at the girls on my table – who were all giggling at something Rachel had whispered to them after I had left – but when they saw her looking, they smiled and waved and beckoned her over. I felt very pleased with myself indeed when she carried her tray to our table, and sat down next to us all.
Until I read the scrap of paper that had been tucked beneath my plate.
Rachel made a little speech before I could say or do anything about it.
‘I just wanted to say sorry if I’ve ever hurt your feelings, Catherine. Friends?’ she said, reaching across the table to shake her hand.
The quiet girl obliged, holding out her own. I could see how badly bitten her nails were, the skin around them red and raw. I noticed a bit of lasagne had got stuck between the braces on her teeth, too.
Catherine’s cheeks flushed red as she shook Rachel’s hand, and her can of Coke got knocked over. Helen – ever the clever and practical one – immediately produced some napkins to soak up the mess, as though she had known it was going to happen.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rachel. ‘I am such a klutz. Here, have my Coke instead. It’s still full and I haven’t touched it.’
‘I’m fine, I’m not even really thirsty,’ Catherine replied, even redder than before so that her face and the can appeared to match.
‘No really, I insist.’
Rachel slid the drink across the table, and the conversation seemed to move along with it.
I kept staring at the slip of paper, reading the words and wondering what was the right thing to do:
I pissed in the Coke can. If you tell her before she drinks it, then you’ll be the one sitting alone at lunch tomorrow.
Of course, I already knew the right thing to do, but I didn’t do it. I just sat there, looking at the plate of food I no longer wanted to eat.
Five excruciating minutes after she sat down with us all, Catherine picked up the drink. Rachel managed to keep a straight face, but Helen looked delighted, and Zoe was already giggling. I wish I could say that she just took a sip, but the girl tilted her head right back, and took several gulps before realising that something was wrong.