Do You Remember the First Time?

raising my hands.
    Miss Syzlack watched me, shaking her head. ‘What’s got into you, Flora?’ ‘Maybe I’m growing up,’ I said.
    I found the third class, thank God, and sat through a frankly baffling hour on community festivals, none of which I could hear or make any sense of. It was droned at us by a man I didn’t recognise, and fortunately everyone else was staring just as much into space as I was. Finally, the bell rang, and it was – Jesus Christ – playtime.
    I trailed out after Constanzia, who was still sitting next to me, my stomach hitting my stupid Spice Girl loafer shoes.
    ‘Well?’ she said, those crazy eyebrows of hers beetling up and down. ‘You show them you are miserable, huh?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nobody comes to your birthday party – so fucking what, yes? But you plunk it without me?’
    ‘My birthday party?’ I just asked stupidly.
    Oh no. Surely not. What unearthly fucking world had put me back in the WORST PERIOD OF MY LIFE.
    ‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Constanzia, throwing her hands up. ‘It’s like the worst betrayal of all time. We have bad party, you don’t come to school. I think I’m going to hang myself, like all those kids who go to Cambridge when they’re twelve.’ She looked at me, black eyes twinkling, clearly trying to pretend she was having a joke, but feeling bad all the same.
    ‘Don’t do that,’ I said weakly.
    ‘You wanted me to die? Is that why you did it?’
    ‘No,’ I said slowly.
    ‘Well, if you wanted me to die, that’s exactly what you should have done. Take a day off without me, your best friend.’
    ‘You’re not dead,’ I said.
    ‘Oh yes?’ she said. ‘You know when I am at school. What is it we say when we are not here?’
    With a sinking feeling I started to think back to when it was me and Tash. If she wasn’t there, I hated it, because I’d have to sit by myself in class, and vice versa. Fuck, fuck fuck. Why couldn’t I have been a cool kid this time round? Was that really too much to ask? As well as being trapped in this hellhole with no way out in sight, I had to be a complete smeghead at the same time – not that any of the kids herewould even remember the term ‘smeghead’, although I’m sure they had something equally pleasant. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
    ‘I could have been dead. I was Dead Constanzia Walking.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘I had lunch sitting in the stairwell. And for what? So you could go and become a drunk person in the West End. I am very happy for you.’
    ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ I said.
    ‘Oh sure.’ Constanzia kicked heavily at a piece of filthy, mud-encrusted grass, as we circled the grounds. Younger boys were running around and playing football, younger girls were touching each other’s hair and whispering. So much for an extra sixteen years of gender studies.
    ‘Oh, look, the gruesome twosome reunited, innit?’ came a low, drawling voice. For some daft reason, though it wasn’t posh, male or growly, it reminded me of Shere Khan in the film Jungle Book .
    We turned round. It was Fallon, and two acolytes, one blonde, one brunette.
    ‘Don’t tell me – you were on your way to school and you got picked up by the animal pound,’ said Fallon, looking straight at me. ‘Your parents were going to let you get put down and then changed their minds at the last minute.’
    Why couldn’t I have been popular this time round? This wasn’t in my plan. In fact, of course, in my plan, such as it should have been, I was on the way to Paris by now, surrounded by people who wanted to make me their muse.
    Instead I had some witch trying to make my life hell. The first time round it had been Sheena. She’d ended up workingon a supermarket counter, getting pregnant to a succession of guys then dropping off the radar all together. That was meant to happen to the bad girls.
    But Fallon didn’t look like Sheena. Sheena always looked vaguely fashionable, but it was always the cheap, Netto end. She didn’t always smell fantastic and there were rumours of a horrible home life, which, in retrospect I’m sure were true. My mother was right: she did deserve sympathy more than fear, not that I could find it in me at the time.
    Fallon was dressed more expensively than I did as a grown-up. You can always tell, can’t you? You don’t always care, but you can always tell. I was sensing Nicole Farhi, Ralph Lauren, all just for the very plain components that make up a school uniform. Her