Hating Alison Ashley by Robin Klein

Author:Robin Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742538167
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

here is one thing you certainly can’t hide in an excursion bus, and that is that you haven’t got a best friend. When all the other best friends had paired off, Miss Belmont said, ‘Why are you still roaming around, Erica? There’s a perfectly good seat next to Alison. I expect all of you to remain in those seats until we reach the camp, and I don’t want any unseemly behaviour from anyone, such as rude signals out of the windows at police cars.’

While she was delivering her standard lecture on bus etiquette, I slid into the seat and gave Alison Ashley a look of utter loathing and hatred.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

‘Utter loathing and hatred,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t even be on the same bus as you, let alone the same seat, if I could have caught a virus in time. But I suppose in your eyes I’m not here anyhow. I’m nowhere, according to you. Nobody.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Alison said. ‘It’s just that my mother has a very bad temper. I didn’t want you to get yelled at for making the noise with the skateboard and waking her up. So that’s why I sort of hustled you off.’

‘A likely story!’ I said. (Which is a very dramatic statement and one that I’d always been dying to have the opportunity of using.) ‘A likely story, Alison Ashley!’

‘Please yourself, then,’ she said calmly. ‘If you don’t want to talk, then don’t. It won’t bother me. I’ve got the window to look out of.’

There’s not much at all to look at from the inside seat of a bus except kids’ feet sticking out into the aisle. Nicole and Bev behind us were having a conversation, but it wasn’t worth the trouble of eavesdropping. It was too complicated. All they ever talked about was how horrible Karen and Vicky were. Only they had a bust up every five minutes and changed sides, and then it was Karen telling Nicole how horrible Bev and Vicky were. It seemed to me that our grade had more boring people in it than any other grade in any other school in the country. Irritating, as well as boring. We hadn’t been on the road for more than ten minutes before a whole lot of kids began to say they were hungry and could they eat their packed lunches.

Margeart in front of us called out to Miss Belmont that she was carsick, even though we hadn’t been round one bend yet. Miss Belmont told her briskly that it was all in her mind, and to play some game as a distraction. ‘But the sports equipment’s locked away in the boot,’ said Margeart.

Alison Ashley, that traitor, piped up and said she knew a marvellous game called Hats. I folded my arms and listened while Alison Ashley, traitor and thief, explained the rules of Hats to everyone in the nearby seats. Margeart was hopeless at it. They let her have first try and she thought for ages and said, ‘Hair’.

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