Finding Cherokee Brown

‘What?’

‘You should call him Dad, not Alan.’

‘All right, Dad’s always singing.’ Now was clearly not the time to get into the whole what-I-should-call-Alan debate. Deciding to play it cool, I sat back down at the breakfast bar and yawned loudly. ‘Haven’t I even got a card from my own mother then?’

Mum’s shoulders softened and she gave me a half smile. ‘Of course you have. I’ll go and get it. And the boys. Then I’ll make us all some breakfast and we can give you your pressies.’

I made my face grin. ‘Great.’

As soon as she left the kitchen I darted over to the bin and pulled out the card. The envelope was dotted with grease. I stuffed it inside my dressing gown and ran up the three flights of stairs to my room. Just like Mrs Rochester I live in the attic. (Actually it’s a loft conversion but that doesn’t sound quite as dramatic, does it?) Flinging the pile of books from my beanbag I sat down, pulled out the card and studied the writing. It was in slightly wonky capitals – like it was from someone who couldn’t write very neatly but was trying really hard. I took a deep breath and slid my finger under the seal. I ought to tell you now that if there was a question in Agatha Dashwood’s Character Questionnaire saying, ‘Do they make a habit of opening other people’s mail?’ the answer would be a definite no. But something had got my mum rattled and I wanted to know what it was.

I pulled the card from the envelope. The picture on the front was of a country landscape. It was the kind of card you’d buy for an elderly aunt. Or someone who likes cleaning and lives in Bognor. It wasn’t really the sort of thing I’d imagine someone called Cherokee going crazy for.

I opened it. There was no printed message or naff rhyme inside; instead the person who’d sent it had written HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY in large crooked capitals in the middle. At the top, in smaller writing, they had put To Cherokee and at the bottom from Steve. And at the very bottom, in tiny letters, as if they hadn’t been sure whether to say it at all, they had written: P.S. You can find me most lunchtimes performing in Spitalfields Market. By the record stalls. If you want to find me . . .

‘What are you doing?’

By the time I’d registered that my bedroom door had opened, Mum was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the card in my hand. Then her gaze dropped to the bright blue envelope on the floor.

‘I’m just –’ I broke off, and I could feel my face flushing. What was I doing, opening somebody else’s mail?

Mum marched over, holding out her hand. ‘I thought I told you to leave it,’ she hissed. ‘Give it to me.’

I tightened my grip on the card. ‘You didn’t tell me to leave it, you just threw it in the bin.’

‘Exactly. So why would you want to get it out and open it?’ Beneath the sheen of her morning moisturiser I could see that her face was flushed too.

‘Because –’

But before I could go on Mum made a sudden lurch for the card. I rolled over on the beanbag just out of reach.

‘I wanted to read it,’ I said. ‘I wanted to see what had got you so spooked.’

‘I’m not spooked,’ Mum spluttered, waving her hands about like an extremely spooked person. ‘But you can’t go reading other people’s mail. It’s not right.’

‘Oh, and binning it is?’ I stumbled to my feet, clutching the card to my chest. ‘It’s really weird, because this person, Cherokee Brown, is fifteen today too. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence? That we share the same birthday and someone thinks we share the same address.’ I didn’t have a clue what the coincidence meant, but it was obvious from her flushed face that Mum did.

‘What did he say?’ she asked, staring at me.

‘What did who say?’ I watched as her gaze dropped to the card.

‘What did he say?’ This time Mum almost screamed it. I looked at her in shock.

‘What’s going on, ladies?’ We both turned to see Alan poking his head round the door. He never actually sets foot in my room – I think he can sense the anti-life-coaching force field I’ve erected with my mental powers to keep him out. ‘Fiona? Claire? Is everything OK?’

‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine,’ Mum replied sharply over her shoulder. ‘Can you go and get the boys up for breakfast? We’ll be down in a minute.’

Alan smiled, his teeth all square and straight like the white keys on a piano. ‘Okey-dokey. Happy birthday, Claire-Bear.’

I gritted my teeth and smiled back. ‘Thanks.’

As soon as we heard his feet padding off down the stairs Mum and I turned back to look at each other.

‘What did who say, Mum? And how did you know it was from a man?’ I waved the card at her. ‘You know who sent this, don’t you? You recognised the writing and that’s why you threw it in the bin. Who is he? Who’s Steve? And who is Cherokee Brown? Why won’t you just tell me?’

Mum’s head slumped. She stuffed her hands inside the pockets of her tracksuit top and scuffed one of her bare feet on the floor. She looked like a little girl who’d just been told she couldn’t go out to play.

‘You are,’ she muttered.

‘What?’

‘You are Cherokee Brown.’

Chapter Two

‘It never ceases to amaze me how many writers seem to forget that they have five senses. When you are describing a scene don’t just tell the reader what your character is seeing, write about what they can hear, smell, touch and taste as well.’

Agatha Dashwood,

So You Want to Write a Novel?

When most people hear laughter they instantly look around to see where the joke is and whether they can join in. But when you know that you actually are the joke, even the slightest snigger makes you want to crawl behind the nearest rock and hide. Unfortunately there aren’t any rocks on the way to school. There isn’t anything much except house after boring house, all exactly the same with their paved front gardens and green wheelie bins standing guard like giant toads. I’ve tried loads of things to make the walk more interesting and less like a death-row march. Spying through gaps in net curtains, making up weird titles from the letters on car number plates, only treading on the cracks in the pavement. But today, for the first time in months, I didn’t have to do anything to take my mind off the laughter that I knew was coming. My head was rammed to the brim with my mum’s revelation. I was Cherokee Brown, or at least that was what I’d been called when I was first born, and the card was from my real dad whose name, apparently, is Steve Brown.

But why had he got in touch now – after fifteen years of nothing? Why had he come back from America? What had happened to his ‘commitment issues’? Question after question kept popping into my head, but I still didn’t have any answers. Mum had told me we’d have a proper talk about it after school, when Alan took the twins to Beavers, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it through the day without going crazy from the shock. Once upon a time I had been called Cherokee Brown.

‘Oi, hop-a-long!’

I didn’t need to turn round to know that the person shouting at me was David Marsh. And wherever David went, Tricia Donaldson was sure to be swaggering along beside him, pursing her glossy lips and flicking her straw-blonde hair. David and Tricia are the pretend-gangster king and queen of Rayners High, worshipped by their adoring, pretend-gangster followers. I carried on walking and tried to distract myself. What would someone with a name like Cherokee Brown look like, I wondered. She would probably have long dark hair in braids and wear –

‘I’m talking to you,’ David called out. A load of laughter rang out like machine-gun fire; there were obviously quite a lot of them today. I quickened my pace, still not turning round. Cherokee would wear beads and boots and be really good at horse riding. I felt something hit my back and heard more machine-gun laughter. In my mind I saw Cherokee Brown pull an arrow from a leather sheath on her belt and spin round to face them, her eyes glinting with rage. I took off my blazer. The shattered remains of an egg were sliding down the black nylon, slimy and glistening in the sun.

‘Ew, something round here stinks,’ I heard Tricia say from right behind me. ‘Like blocked drains. Or rotten eggs.’

More laughter; this time it was so high-pitched it seemed to drill right into my brain. The sunshine felt like it was getting brighter too, but no matter how hard I blinked I couldn’t stop my eyes from burning.

Someone shoved into me as they all jostled past.

‘Stupid cripple.’

‘Watch out, she might come after you.’

‘Nah, she ain’t got a leg to stand on.’

This last line got the most laughs, even though it’s complete crap. They just can’t seem to get over the fact that one of my legs happens to be a few centimetres shorter than the other. I walk with a limp; big deal. But the thing is, in our school you only need to have one freckle out of place and it’s enough to have you labelled a freak. When Helen was here it was fine. We didn’t really have many other friends but we didn’t need them. No one seemed to notice my limp back then; it was as if our friendship was like some kind of cloak of invisibility. But now it feels as if I walk around with a big spotlight on me all the time, under a banner saying CRIPPLE.

David and Tricia and the others walked off, still laughing. I stuffed my blazer into my bag. I’d clean it when I got into school. I looked down the road to where Rayners High loomed like a concrete monster, waiting to swallow me whole. And I thought of yet another crappy day spent drifting round the edges of the corridors, trying to make myself invisible. Don’t let them beat you, I told myself for about the millionth time. Anne Frank wouldn’t let them beat her. She didn’t even let the Nazis beat her. Not where it counted, in her head. I took a deep breath, pulled myself up straight so my limp wouldn’t be so noticeable, and carried on down the road.

After washing my blazer in the sink in the disabled loo – I didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into Tricia in the normal toilets – I headed straight for my form room. The bell for registration hadn’t gone yet but I like being the first one there; it makes me feel better prepared. When I got to the classroom I peered through the small pane of glass in the centre of the door. Miss Davis was sat behind her desk with her eyes closed and her chubby hands clasped in front of her. White iPod wires snaked down from her ears, over her huge chest and into her lap. I opened the door and stepped inside. As usual the classroom was baking hot and stank of stale sweat and Miss Davis’s floral perfume.

‘I am strong.’

I stopped dead and stared at Miss Davis in shock.

‘I am strong,’ Miss Davis murmured again, her eyes still closed. ‘I am strong as a mighty oak rooted in the ground.’

I stood, frozen in horror. She was obviously repeating something she was listening to on her iPod; something she thought she was listening to in private. I started tiptoeing backwards towards the door but just as I reached it the bell for registration rang, making us both jump. As soon as she saw me standing there Miss Davis ripped her iPod from her ears and flushed bright red.

‘I was just – it was – it’s registration,’ I stammered.

‘How long have you been here?’ Miss Davis asked, her voice all squeaky with embarrassment.

‘Oh, I just got here, just this second. Literally.’ I felt my own face begin to burn and looked down at the floor.

‘OK, well don’t just stand there, go and sit down.’

I hurried over to my desk and took my copy of Anne Frank’s diary from my bag. I had tucked the birthday card to Cherokee Brown inside it before leaving for school. I opened the book and started re-reading the card. I carried on reading it as my classmates began drifting through the door in giggling, chatting groups. For once I didn’t mind that no one wanted to talk and joke with me. I had more important things to think about.

‘OK, quieten down everyone,’ Miss Davis called out above the noise.

As usual, everyone carried on messing about.

‘Please!’ Miss Davis cried. ‘I need some quiet so I can take the register.’

I peered at her over the top of my book and watched as she took hold of the elastic band she always wears around her wrist and pinged it hard against her pale skin.

‘This is your final warning,’ Miss Davis yelled. ‘If you don’t quieten down I’ll have to –’

The whole class, including Miss Davis, fell silent as the door crashed open and Tricia and her best friend Clara sauntered in.

‘So I told him he couldn’t give me a love bite until he had a shave,’ Tricia said to Clara.

Jeremy and Gavin, two computer geeks who sit at the desk in front of me, started to giggle.

‘Got a problem, virginoids?’ Tricia snapped at them.

They immediately went quiet.

As Tricia walked past me, reeking of cigarette smoke, spearmint chewing gum and hairspray, every muscle in my body tensed.

‘OK, class, can we please take the register?’ Miss Davis called.

‘Are you going down the bus station tonight?’ Tricia said to Clara as they sat down at the desk behind me.

‘John Avery,’ Miss Davis called.

‘Here, Miss.’

‘Helen Buckland.’

‘Tony said he’s gonna bring some bubblegum-flavoured vodka,’ Tricia continued.

‘Cool!’ Clara replied.

‘Tricia Donaldson,’ Miss Davis said, looking up from her register.

‘And after that we’re gonna go round Alfie’s Uncle Gary’s house,’ Tricia went on, totally ignoring Miss Davis. ‘He’s just got out of prison and Alfie’s auntie’s throwing him a welcome-home party. She’s even had a new tattoo done for him on her boob. It says “Gaz’s Forever”. It’s well romantic.’

‘Tricia!’ Miss Davis shouted.

‘What?’

‘I’ve been calling your name.’

‘So?’

‘For the register.’

‘So?’

‘So, can you answer me please?’ Miss Davis gave her elastic band another ping and the skin on her wrist flushed red. ‘Tony Dunmore.’

‘Why?’ Tricia asked.

Miss Davis sighed and looked back at her. ‘Why what?’

‘Why do I have to answer you?’

Miss Davis’s face turned as red as her wrist. ‘So that I know you are here. Jenny Edwards?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ Jenny answered, but she, like everyone else in the class apart from me, was looking right at Tricia.

‘So, are you blind as well as fat then, Miss?’ Tricia asked.

Jeremy started laughing again and I wanted to lean over my desk and shake him.

‘James Evans,’ Miss Davis said, looking back at the register. I could see beads of sweat erupting on her face like dewdrops on a tomato. I looked down at the picture of Anne Frank on the cover of my book and wondered what she would have done if she’d been trapped inside this classroom instead of the annexe.

‘I said, are you blind as well as fat, Miss?’ Tricia said.

Miss Davis continued taking the register.

‘Ha, she’s obviously deaf an’ all,’ Tricia snorted.

‘Wow!’ The word burst from my mouth before my brain had time to censor it.

I smelt Tricia leaning in right behind me. ‘What did you just say, cripple?’

I carried on looking at Anne Frank. If she could deal with the Nazis then surely I could deal with Tricia. ‘I said, wow!’

‘What did you say that for?’

I took a deep breath and turned round. In my head I could almost hear Anne Frank yelling, Go on! ‘Because you managed to say a word with four whole syllables.’ Inside my ribcage my heart started freaking.

‘Theresa Smith,’ Miss Davis called in a ridiculously fake cheery voice, as if her class was one big, happy family and she was the greatest teacher ever.

‘What?’ Tricia growled at me. She was so close I could see the clumps of blue mascara at the ends of her eyelashes.

‘You said obviously. Ob – vi – ous – ly. Four syllables. Well done.’ I clenched my hands into tight fists.

‘No talking please, Claire,’ Miss Davis said sharply.

‘What?’ I turned back and stared at her in disbelief. Why was she telling me to be quiet and not Tricia?

‘No talking,’ she repeated.

‘Yeah, shut your mouth, cripple,’ Tricia said, loud enough for the whole class to hear.

Miss Davis looked back down at the register. ‘Claire Weeks.’

I stared at her.

‘Claire Weeks,’ she said again, but she wouldn’t look at me.

‘Here, Miss,’ I eventually replied. But in my head I was yelling, I’m not Claire Weeks, I’m Cherokee Brown, you pathetic coward.

NOTEBOOK EXTRACT

Agatha Dashwood says that ‘if one is to become a proper writer one must write at every available opportunity’. So I’ve decided to take her advice and do some writing on the train on the way up to Spitalfields. Well, hopefully I’m on the way up to Spitalfields. I’ve never been there before so I’m not exactly sure which station it’s nearest to, so I’m heading east and hoping for the best!! And at least I’m not in school. I couldn’t stay there a minute longer after what happened in registration.

It’s so weird to think that I used to love going to school, that I used to be one of those geeky kids who always got their homework done on time and actually enjoyed learning new stuff. I’ll never forget the day I discovered there were minus numbers – I was so excited there was something that came before zero! And the English lesson when I read Anne Frank’s diary for the first time and realised that books aren’t just there to entertain you, they can actually change your whole way of thinking about the world.

Now when the teachers are telling us stuff all I hear is a drone. Kind of like when a radio hasn’t been tuned in properly and you only catch the odd word here and there. The only people I hear loud and clear these days are Tricia and her idiot friends. I hate being scared of them (I’m not going to put this bit in my book – no one likes a heroine who’s a big old wuss), but it’s just that there are loads of them and only one of me. And I’m so short and skinny too. I’m not short and skinny in my daydreams though. In my daydreams I’m a ninja with all the moves. And when Tricia leans forwards and says something like, ‘How does it feel knowing you’re gonna be a virgin your whole life cos no one wants to sleep with a cripple?’ I do a backflip off my chair, land on top of her desk and kick her so hard in the face her head comes flying off.

Don’t think I’ll put that bit in my book either – I’ll sound like a psycho!

Oh no, some freak has just got on the train and sat down opposite me and started talking out loud. I hope he isn’t a terrorist bomber. He isn’t carrying a rucksack, just a tatty old carrier bag. How big are bombs? Can they fit inside a carrier bag? I saw a programme on Channel 4 once about terrorists in the Middle East and one of them blew up a bus with a suicide bomb clipped to his belt.

This person isn’t wearing a belt. I just checked and he saw me looking and now it looks as if I was perving at him. Oh, God – how embarrassing. I’m just going to write in this notebook from now on and not look in his direction at all. Well, maybe I’ll take a few sneaky glances, just to make sure he isn’t trying to set off his bomb.

I suppose I ought to write a description of him, just in case he does turn out to be a terrorist and I need to give evidence. I saw an episode of Crimewatch once where this policeman said that in ninety-nine per cent of crimes, witnesses can’t even remember the colour of a criminal’s hair. Well, I guess the one per cent who do remember must be writers. Agatha Dashwood says that writers have specially heightened observational skills. They have to, to make their stories ‘truly come alive’.

NOTES FOR POLICE INVESTIGATION

The potential suspect has greasy, dark brown hair. I’m not sure if it’s the grease making it so dark, so it could be a lighter shade of brown when he washes it. He looks pretty old. About thirty, I’d say. And he has a big belly, about the size of one of those green watermelons that are red on the inside, with loads of pips that you end up having to spit out all over your plate. The rest of him isn’t fat though, so it kind of looks like he’s pregnant. But obviously he isn’t pregnant cos he’s definitely a man. Unless he’s like one of those women on Jerry Springer who are ‘tragically trapped in the wrong body’. I don’t think he is though – he has too much stubble.

Oh, crap! He saw me looking at him again.

He has mad, staring eyes. And he likes to mutter a lot. I can’t understand what he’s saying though.

Oh no, he’s reaching into his bag. Should I pull the emergency cord? Do they even have emergency cords on the tube? It’s too late, he’s taking something out. What if it’s a gun, not a bomb? What if he shoots me?

False alarm. It’s a book. It’s called One Hundred Ways to Ice a Cake. He isn’t a crazed terrorist at all – he’s a crazed cake-maker!

He’s stopped muttering now and he’s started to read.

I can’t believe there are actually one hundred different ways to ice a cake.

I would have done something though – if he had pulled out a gun or a bomb. I wouldn’t have just sat here. Because I want to write a book. And I don’t want to have to make anything up to make my book exciting. I was thinking about it on the way to the station. The reason I love Anne Frank’s diary and the Little House on the Prairie so much is because they’re true stories. All the cool things the heroines did actually happened in real life. And that’s how I want my book to be. I’ll still use Agatha Dashwood’s book to help me, but I’m going to stick to the facts. And that way I’ll have to make my life interesting. And I’ll have to become the kind of heroine I like to read about. The kind of person who notices the hair colour of a potential criminal and stands up to bullies and isn’t afraid to fight back.

Chapter Three

‘For your main character your story has to be a journey. This journey can be physical, but it must always, without fail, be emotional. If your character hasn’t grown, learnt and changed by the end of your novel then I am afraid they are destined for the waste-paper bin.’

Agatha Dashwood,

So You Want to Write a Novel?

The minute registration ended I picked up my book and my bag and I started walking. I didn’t stop walking until I was on the London-bound platform at Rayners Lane station. I got the train to the very end of the line to a station called Aldgate. I’d never been there before but I knew it was in the East End and I hoped there’d be a map or a signpost for Spitalfields outside the station.

But there were no maps or signposts at all, just loads of cars and buses and taxies all whizzing by at about a million miles an hour. I stood on the pavement in front of the station trying to decide what to do next, and trying not to get trampled on by a herd of commuters with serious anger-management issues. It’s funny because for the past few months I’ve spent hours in lessons dreaming of the day I can leave school and go to work, but judging by the faces of the people who stormed past me today I don’t think work can be all that great either.

In the end I decided to go left. Because I’m left-handed. I know that sounds really dumb, and I bet an intrepid explorer like Christopher Columbus would never have done something so stupid. Or maybe he did, and maybe America would still be undiscovered if he’d been right-handed . . . but at least Christopher Columbus would have had charts and a compass to help him. I had nothing. So I turned left, and I walked and walked.

I reached a massive crossroads and waited for the green man to appear. Normally I just cross the road if I see a gap in the traffic, but in this part of London cars and bikes seemed to burst out of nowhere like rockets. The cyclists looked like something out of a horror movie, pedalling furiously and wearing those masks that surgeons wear when they’re about to cut somebody open. I clutched my school bag to me, leant against a lamp post and waited. My back was starting to ache from all the walking. I’m supposed to wear specially made shoes to even out the length of my legs, but they look even worse than the limp. The trouble is, when I wear normal shoes it puts loads of pressure on my spine. I think this is what is known as a lose–lose situation.