My Other Life by Polly Ho-Yen & Patricia Hu

Author:Polly Ho-Yen & Patricia Hu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

Mandy

I spent all day in what felt like a kind of fog. I couldn’t quite tell where my feet were or what was ahead of me.

Just after Rav stalked off, a girl called Mandy, who I’d never spent much time with before, ran up to me and reached for my hand, squeezing it tightly.

“What were you talking to him for?” she said, looking at Rav through narrowed eyes. It wasn’t a nice look.

Before I could respond she leaned into me closely.

“So did you do it?” she asked.

“What?” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Did you tell them?”

“Tell them... tell them what? Who do you mean?”

“Mae! Stop being funny!” Mandy said. She gave a tinkling little laugh.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Stop it! Be serious.”

“Um...”

Mandy’s eyes started to narrow again and flashed darker. “You didn’t, did you. I knew you didn’t have it in you.”

“It didn’t seem like the right time,” I said vaguely. Mandy frowned and she dropped my hand.

“We were going to see Grandma for her birthday,” I said. “And then I started to get an asthma attack. I thought I was going to have to go to hospital again.”

“What do you mean again?” Mandy demanded.

“You know – I have to go to hospital when my asthma gets bad.”

“You’ve never been to hospital the whole time I’ve known you and you don’t have asthma. What are you talking about?”

“How long have I known you?”

Mandy laughed again. But this time it sounded much more brittle.

“Seriously, how long have we known each other, how long have we been... friends?” I asked.

“Stop being so weird, Mae. It’s not funny any more. I’ve known you since the start of school.”

‘We met on the first day of school...” I said slowly.

“Yeah – we’ve always been friends, since the very first day,” Mandy said.

“Just like Rav,” I murmured. I looked over to where he was still talking to the two boys. He was standing in between them and looked like he was telling a joke. I thought I saw him looking over at me. I smiled hopefully but he turned away.

“What did you say?” Mandy spluttered.

“I mean... and we tell each other everything,” I said quickly.

“Yes,” Mandy said, looping her arm in mine. “You tell me everything.”

“And I haven’t always been in and out of hospital. And I don’t have asthma.”

Mandy looked at me strangely and dropped my arm.

“I’m not going to talk to you if you keep being weird,” she said.

Then she walked away and I was left standing alone in the playground. I could still see Rav in the corner of my eye but he didn’t look over at me again.

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