True Sisters by Keren David

Author:Keren David [David, Keren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781128909
Publisher: Barrington Stoke Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8 / Ruby

Empirical evidence

The family‑liaison officer at my school is called Mrs Kowalski, but she tells everyone to call her Mrs K. That’s everyone who knows her, which isn’t everyone – she’s mostly there for people with special circumstances. Like Adam, and like Clara now, and like lots of people, actually.

She’s in charge of the keys to the Vulnerable Toilet, which is just along the corridor from her small office tucked away behind the Learning Resource Centre. There are no windows in Mrs K’s office, but the walls are covered with pictures. Some of them are photographs of flowers and animals and cities from around the world, and others have been drawn by kids – I guess people that she’s helped at school. A whole load of pictures from a whole load of kids.

Mum went to see Mrs K to talk about Clara a couple of weeks ago, when she first arrived. Last week, Mum managed to persuade Clara to walk with her up the road to school to meet Mrs K. My instructions today are to deliver Clara to Mrs K before my first lesson starts. And I’d do it, but Clara walks so slowly. She is clearly really stressed by the noise and busy‑ness of the kids crowding round the entrance and walking through the corridors. It means we get there five minutes late and I have to rush off to Geography.

That was hours ago, and now I’m in Science and the door has just opened and it’s Mrs K and Clara.

My Science teacher, Mr Donnelly, pauses to say “Welcome, Clara”, and he points at the empty desk in the front row. The desk just happens to be next to me, as Milly wasn’t in first thing and she hasn’t arrived yet. I hope she’ll come in later – sometimes she does come in a bit late because of her anxiety issues. I hope she’s not worrying about her hair and what people might say.

Lena is in school – she must have had an emergency haircut over the weekend, because now her fringe is even but super‑short. Like, there’s a massive gap between the fringe and her eyebrows.

I saw Lena trying to style it out as I walked through the playground earlier, but I couldn’t say anything because of Clara. And anyway, what would I say?

Mr Donnelly is talking about stars. How they are formed from huge clouds of gas and dust that are pulled together by gravity in outer space. Then they get hotter and hotter until there’s some nuclear reaction, and then they release energy and a star is born.

This makes me think about the old film called A Star is Born, with Barbra Streisand, which was my gran’s favourite. It’s all about a girl called Esther, who meets a man who’s really famous as a singer. He helps her career, and then Esther does better than him and he kills himself. It’s completely tragic. (Mum says that, as a feminist, it’s not tragic at all, but I think she’s missing the point.

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