Dear Diary,
First of all, I know it’s been practically a whole year since I last wrote in this. I’m sorry, okay? Things have been . . . hard.
And when things get hard, what do I do? I paint. I’m not some writer. This was meant to be a notebook for writing in about all the cool things about secondary school. All the parties I was going to be invited to. All the amazing friends I was going to make.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
So I’ve been doing a lot of painting. And hey, at least that’s going well. I’m definitely the best at art in my year and to be honest probably in the whole school. And I’m not bragging, this is what my art teachers have said to me, and I’ve seen my artwork on display next to some of the older year groups and I’m sorry but mine is better.
Does that make me seem totally arrogant? I don’t mean to be. I promise it’s just this one thing. Art is the only thing making me happy right now, so let me brag about it just a little please. Otherwise I think I might go completely mad. Maybe I already am? This entire diary entry so far has been nothing but craziness.
The art department is this area on the ground floor of the school tucked at the back, so unless you’re going there for a lesson you’d totally miss it. But as you start walking down the corridor towards it, you see all these amazing paintings and sculptures that other students have made over the years. One of my paintings is there now too, next to some sixth formers, which makes me feel pretty special. It’s definitely one of my more tame ones, just a nice field and some girls playing in the grass. The teachers have already told me I go a little bit too experimental on some of my pieces, but I can’t help my mode of expression, or so I tell them, which I think sounds very grown up and important, like I’m a real artist.
There are three art teachers, but my favourite is Miss Wersham, because she’s young and pretty and is always so impressed with anything I do, even if she also tells me to calm it down sometimes. She showed me how to do shading with an ordinary pencil so that it looks really realistic, and I’ve been practising ever since. The other week I drew a picture of a baby bird fallen from its nest and the mother bird looking for it, and she told me although I had really started to get the technique down, it was a bit too sad to put up for display. Which, I mean, honestly! Isn’t art meant to be about emotion?
She put Ollie’s attempt up, his silly little drawing of a rocket ship blasting off into space. He was there when she was showing me the pencil technique and of course had to have a go. Ollie Turner is a boy in my art class. He’s alright, he’s definitely really good at art too, but he’s not as good as me. I’m the best. He has to settle for being second and I think it really annoys him, because he looked so smug when Miss Wersham put his up and not mine. I couldn’t help telling him that was because although mine was “brilliant” (which I promise Miss Wersham really said!) it was too emotional and sad for display. It would upset people.
I quite like that idea, that my talent would produce an emotion from people. Don’t the best artists do that? Make people sad.
And anyway, I am sad! I’m replicating my truth onto art! Which is the whole reason why I’m writing in here again.
So. The big news. The horrible news. The reason why I haven’t been writing in here because I kept waiting for her to turn around and come back to me, because surely seven whole years of friendship means more than some stupid girls who poured stupid Capri-Sun all over me on the first day.
But I know for sure now. So there’s no hiding it anymore.
Tanya and I aren’t best friends. She’s gone off with Annabel and Chloe, and Esther. And I have no one.
It was so gradual I didn’t even notice at first. Tanya got moved to sit by Annabel in the seating plan for loads of our subjects, because their surnames are close together in the alphabet. So obviously they had to talk to each other because they were doing the same work.
As the weeks went by, though, Tanya started being busy after school, when we used to hang out every day. It became once a week, once every two weeks, and then not at all, with her saying her mum told her she had to take school more seriously now she was in secondary so she didn’t have time to go out.
I’m not stupid. I suspected that wasn’t true. I thought maybe some kids at school had invited her to things and she felt too bad to tell me about them. We still hung out every break and lunch, until after Christmas I caught a bad cold and had to be off for three days. When I came back, expecting Tanya to be bored to death without me, I found her having fun and gossiping with Annabel, Chloe, and Esther, and she very reluctantly came back to sit with me.
That lasted a couple more weeks, and then she stopped hanging out with me at all. And worse, that was when she started to join in with all their teasing.
Yeah. That hasn’t stopped. That wasn’t just a first day joke. Every day they make fun of me. Sometimes I pretend to be sick to stay home from school just to get away from them, but Mum is starting to get suspicious now.
At lunchtimes I often tried to stay in Miss Wersham’s room, and she was okay with this at first, but when it started to become every day, even she got tired of me. It didn’t help that Ollie and some of the other arty kids thought I was getting extra help and that it was some kind of art lunch club, so she had to tell us all to leave.
Anyway. Let’s get to the reason I’m writing in you now. My birthday disaster.
When my birthday rolled around, in late June, Tanya and I had stopped talking all together. But the problem was my parents didn’t know that. You’re not going to tell your parents you’ve suddenly become a total loser, are you? It was better for them not to know. But that meant that despite my best efforts at pleading with them, they insisted on inviting Tanya to my party.
“You have to invite Tanya, she’s your best friend,” Mum said, picking up the phone to give Tanya’s mum a call.
“Please,” I begged her. “I just want it to be family. Me, Wendy, you, and Dad. That would be nice.”
“Nonsense,” she replied, and that was that.
Which was why, when we sat at the kitchen table with my birthday spread, waiting for Tanya, I couldn’t bear it. The time ticked by and soon she wasn’t just ten minutes late, she was half an hour.
It’s embarrassing for me to even write this, but part of me did think she might just show up. It was my birthday. She didn’t have to tell anyone. I wouldn’t. It could have been like old times.
Last year we went to a water park together and then had a sleepover at my house, eating takeaway pizza as a massive treat. We made friendship bracelets and said we’d be best friends forever.
Spoilers, but she didn’t show up.
“This isn’t like Tanya,” Mum said with a frown, checking her watch for the third time. “I wonder if something’s happened.”
“Tanya hasn’t been here in forever,” Wendy muttered.
I haven’t told Wendy any of what’s been going on, but she’s perceptive. I know that Mum and Dad think she’s some kind of child genius, and they’re forever stressing that they aren’t doing enough for her when she already has private lessons in violin, Mandarin, and advanced maths. She snuck a sandwich when Mum wasn’t looking and stuffed it in her mouth, shrugging her shoulders at me.
It was true, though. The last time Tanya came round was in the Easter holidays for a sleepover, and that was only because Tanya’s mum had a work event that took her to Manchester. It was awkward the entire time, especially when Annabel, Chloe, and Esther teased me about my house later that week based on what Tanya had told them.
“Let’s just eat,” I said. “I don’t want all of this to go to waste.”
Mum and Dad had gone to maximum effort to celebrate me turning twelve. There was enough there to feed an entire kingdom.
As if it couldn’t get worse, Mum decided to choose chaos.
“Well, hold on now, I’ll just give Jane a ring.”
Tanya’s mum.
I tried begging her to stop, honest I did. “Mum, don’t! It’s fine.”
She ignored me, taking the house phone and dialling Tanya’s home number. She knew it off by heart, that’s how close we used to be. She’d always have to ring there to ask whether I’d be home for tea.
“Hi, Jane, is that you? It’s Sue, Poppy’s mum.” She turned her back to me as I mimed for her to hang up. “We’re just at Poppy’s birthday party and were wondering if Tanya had left yet. We’ve been waiting for her, you see, and—what’s that?”
I closed my eyes.
“When was she meant to do that? No one has called the phone this morning.” Mum looked back at me. “Right. I see. Well, thank you, Jane. No, thank you, I’ll pass that along. All the best.” She hung up the phone and sighed.