Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson

Author:Ishi Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

‘Bad pasture mek sheep shabby’

‘If you don’t provide the best support, don’t expect the best result’

Contraband

‘It has come to my attention that someone is selling baked goods at school,’ Mrs Roberts, the vice principal, says at Assembly one week later. ‘Let me remind you that the sale of items on school property is expressly forbidden. This is a place of learning. This is not a place for you to run a business! If you are found to be the seller, there will be consequences.’

She pauses for a moment to let her words settle in. I can feel Tamara, beside me, straining not to turn her head to look at me, but a few other girls can’t resist glancing over. I keep my eyes straight ahead for the rest of Assembly, until we are released back into the wild and I can let go of the breath I was holding.

‘What you going do?’ Tamara asks me quietly, as we file out into the sunshine, but before I can answer a couple of girls walk by and whisper, ‘Pumkin, you have the stuff?’ and I whisper back that I’ll meet them after lunch. I feel like a drug-dealer.

I look at Tamara and shrug helplessly before we separate and head in different directions for classes. We’re a week out from the barbecue, and I think, for a moment, that I should stop selling at school until it’s over. If they find out it’s me, they’ll pull me from the stall, I’m sure of it. But I’m so close, so close, to my goal . . .

The Monday after the disastrous sleepover, I came home with more than half of my pastries. A lot of my regular customers ignored me, or walked by in clumps of girls, giggling when they saw me. I don’t know what gossip Mandy was spreading. I was desperate to know and equally desperate not to. I thought of her telling her friends about my father, about . . . whatever had happened in my room. What had he said to her? What had he done? The thought sent a shiver from the crown of my head all the way down to the base of my spine as I sat under the lunch tree, alone, picking at the edge of a square of Toto. The sun was high and hot, the sky blue. Like every day. Every day was the same, except not today.

Tamara came to sit beside me. I’d been at her house the day before, as usual, gone to church with her family. As soon as we’d got back, we’d changed into our yaad clothes and she claimed she had homework to do, or singing lessons, or something vague, and left me to bake alone in her kitchen. I’d wanted to talk to her about Mandy. It was like a bubble stuck in my throat, wanting to burst out, but there’s no time to talk at church and the pastries weren’t interested in hearing my sob story.

‘What is happening?’ Tamara asks me now, and I told her the story.

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