In Sarah’s Shadow

Me and Pamela are on volunteer tidying duty, spending our precious Monday morning break trying to make sense of the jumble on the shelves here. I really mean it about the volunteer bit; we haven’t been forced into it and we’re not complete mugs or anything, it’s just that when you’re a stunningly average student, teachers tend to give you a hard time. Unless, of course, you prove yourself to be an exceptionally accommodating and pleasant pupil. So when Miss Jamal asked for help with this deadly dull task, me and Pamela (my equally average accomplice) offered our services straight away. If earning Brownie points with your teacher gives you an easier ride, then hell: I say, go for it. (I did spot a ‘How To Study Better Spell’ in my new book yesterday, but as it involved geranium oil, a bird feather and a piece of coal – none of which I happened to have handy – I never got round to trying it out.)

“Yeah, OK, so you were wearing a towel, but still, Megan! Weren’t you mortified?!”

“No,” I shrug. “I wasn’t. I know I should have been, and I know normally I absolutely would have been, but somehow…he just didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.”

It was true. However shy or weird I felt sitting with Conor for that little while on Saturday night, the one thing I didn’t feel was awkward. Or embarrassed. It’s like a miracle, really – normally, I hate my pear-shaped body so much that I’ll wrap a huge beach towel around me when I go swimming and only drop it at the last minute when I get to the poolside. On holidays abroad, I’m happier in long shorts and T-shirts than the micro-bikinis Sarah flaunts herself in.

“But, my God,” Pamela goggles her eyes at me. “Wearing next to nothing in front of someone you fancy…I’d just die!”

She’s imagining herself and Tariq, I can tell. You know, I’m really beginning to wish I hadn’t told Pamela about what happened on Saturday or that I fancied Conor in the first place. For a start, she’s pissing me off by making the whole thing sound seedy, and second, I’m not doing it to titillate her and get her mind working overtime about being in the same situation with Tariq. As if that’s ever going to happen. They’ve never even been in the same room alone together, never said anything apart from shy “hi”s (still!) to each other. I mean, there’s something fundamentally nuts about flirting by text and then acting too timid to talk to each other in the (fully-clothed) flesh, isn’t there? OK, so I’m no super-confident ladette, who has a posse of male buddies and would think nothing of asking a guy out – I’m just the exact, polar opposite. But even I know Pamela and Tariq are goofing around pathetically. She’s in a win-win situation: she likes him and knows for a fact that he likes her, so what are they waiting for? Some kind of matchmaker, like they had in Victorian times – or like they have in arranged marriages – to formally introduce them? God, I’m going to have to end up doing it, aren’t I…?

“Look, Pamela, me and Conor talking – it only lasted for about one minute, till my sister came scurrying in,” I say to the top of my friend’s bowed head. I try to bring her wandering mind back to the conversation by thunking a particularly huge pile of books down into her arms…

“Oww!”

“Oops! I’m sorry!” I gasp as Pamela clutches the top of her head and tries to rub the pain away with the palms of her hands.

“Are you OK in there?”

Close up, Mr Fisher has the look of an older David Beckham about him, but maybe that’s just because he’s got that Number One buzzcut that Beckham made famous once upon a time. Behind him, Miss Jamal frowns at Pamela’s whimpering and at the scattering of books over the cracked lino floor.

“I dropped them…only she, um, didn’t catch them,” I mumble uselessly in explanation, scampering quickly down the stepladder and immediately crouching down to gather up the mess.

“Come out here where it’s brighter, so I can check you haven’t been cut,” Miss Jamal motions to Pamela, who shuffles past me, her scuffed, black, school brogues sending textbooks skimming off to the farthest corner of the cupboard.

“It’s like an episode of Itchy and Scratchy in here!” Mr Fisher says wryly, squatting down and helping me gather up everything. “What was going to happen next? Was Pamela going to hit you in the face with a giant frying pan?”

“No – I was going to hide a bomb in a copy of David Copperfield and then ask her to read it out loud to me while I ran away!”

Mr Fisher laughs and I get that same spine-tingling thrill as when Conor laughed out loud at something I said on Saturday night. People – male people – finding me funny; this is a real novelty. The only one who’s ever found me remotely funny up till now is Pamela, and that’s ‘cause it’s in her Best Friend contract. (Just like it’s in the contract that I have to listen to endless tales of longdistance longing from her.)

It’s fair to say that my family have never found me funny. You know how you get a certain feeling that people have a set opinion of you, and no matter what you do or don’t do, they’ll always think that way? Well, my family probably think I’m a lot of stuff: difficult, moody, psycho even (hey, don’t forget the scars – they never let me), but I can safely say that it would never occur to them to find me remotely funny. Funny peculiar maybe, but funny ha ha? You’ve got to be kidding.

“Listen, I’ve got a bit of a problem…” says Mr Fisher, suddenly getting kind of serious on me.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, “Well, shouldn’t you see a doctor?” but I bite my lip and hold myself back; there’s only so much fooling around you can do with a teacher, even one who laughs at your jokes.

Instead, I raise my eyebrows in what I hope comes across as an expression of intelligent questioning, but which probably looks more like the look on a bunny’s face two seconds before the juggernaut splats it.

“You know this Battle of the Bands competition that’s coming up?”

I nod. Of course I do. Haven’t I been singing the words to Ash’s Girl from Mars every spare minute of the day since it dawned on me that that was what Conor and Sarah were rehearsing together in her room on Saturday night?

“Well, there’s only two weeks to go and there’s a hell of a lot of work to do with the school band that’s entering—”

Wow! You mean something involving my sister isn’t gold-plated perfection?!

“—actually, it’s more a case of sorting out everyone else, like the lads who are doing the lighting for them, and the crew in the art department who are supposed to be coming up with a backdrop…”

Whatever. But why exactly is he telling me all this? I don’t think Mr Fisher even knows my name – he only joined Bakerfield at the end of last summer, long after I’d opted out of Music.

“Anyhow, the point is, it’s like spinning plates, and I can’t manage to co-ordinate everything, and put the band through their paces, all on my own. I need help.”

“Oh,” I mutter, open-mouthed, for lack of anything else to say. Now I must look like a cross between a startled bunny and a cod, for God’s sake!

“Yeah, so I was having a moan to Miss Jamal about it just now, telling her that what I really need is a runner – someone to zoom around and help me sort everything out – and she suggested either you or…”

He’s bumbling now, throwing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Pamela somewhere out there in the brightly-lit classroom. Told you he didn’t know my – or my friend’s – name.

“Pamela,” I reply, helpfully filling in the blank. “And I’m Megan.”

“Megan. Yes, of course,” he grins, knowing he’s been caught out. “Anyway, Miss Jamal said that you two are always very willing to offer your services, and usually—”

He glances around at the general untidiness swamping the floor.

“—very efficient. So what about it?”

“Um…what?” I mumble, knowing exactly what he’s saying but too stunned to believe what I’m hearing.

“What about helping me out? Being my runner? It means sitting in on every after-school and weekend rehearsal, and then coming to the Battle of the Bands competition too. You’d need the afternoon off school, but I’d sort that if you’re up for it.”

“I’m up for it,” I mutter, hardly able to move the frozen muscles in my face to make the words come out.

He must take my lack of facial expression to mean I’m not keen.

“Are you sure? Because I can always ask Pamela – if she doesn’t have permanent amnesia after these books scoring a direct hit on her head!”

“No!!” I squawk a little too loudly. “I mean, yes, I’d love to help out. And, um, my sister’s actually in the band.”

“Yeah? You mean…Sarah?” I see Mr Fisher frown, instantly ruling out Angel and Cherish as obvious relations and settling on Sarah by a process of elimination.

I can see he’s struggling to see the resemblance. But I don’t care. I’m not offended; I’m elated – already a change is happening in my life, and it seems to be a change of luck. OK, maybe that’s not the exact change I wished for over my PJ Harvey plastic CD cover a couple of nights ago, but it’ll more

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