Birdy by Jess Vallance

he likes me,’ she said that afternoon after school. We were in her den, sitting in the Egg and drinking big mugs of hot chocolate. ‘Jac, I mean. Do you think he likes me?’
    ‘French Jac?’ I asked lightly, although I already knew who she meant.
    Bert nodded and blew on her chocolate to cool it down. Then she giggled. ‘I think he’s handsome.’
    I scrunched my nose to one side. ‘Really? Do you? But he’s got that … tail thing in his hair.’
    Jac
almost
had a neat short back and sides, but right at the back, at the nape of his neck, he had a little straggly rat’s tail hanging down. It was a bit odd, really.
    ‘I like it,’ Bert said. ‘It’s exotic. Do you think he likes me? I think he might like me.’
    I shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ I said, not quite meeting her eye.
    ‘Or do you think he doesn’t? I don’t know about this … about boys our age. Am I misreading the signs?’
    I didn’t say anything. I concentrated on trying to suck up a marshmallow from the top of my hot chocolate.
    ‘Oh, I am, aren’t I? I’m taking him too seriously. All those things he says … those comments … they’re just part of his comedy routine, aren’t they?’ Bert said, shaking her head. ‘Of course they are. What a wally I am.’
    Conversations with Bert were often like this. I wouldn’t necessarily need to say anything at all. She’d just gallop along on her own, jumping from one thought to another, making connections and drawing her own conclusions. I could just step in if and when I wanted to. I decided to step in now.
    ‘I think it’s just his way,’ I said. ‘He likes girls. Girls like him. I think it’s because he’s French.’
    ‘I see,’ Bert said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘A veritable Lothario. Understood.’
    We were quiet again as we sipped our drinks and listened to the rain on the skylight above us.
    ‘Goodness, imagine if I’d said something,’ Bert said after a while. ‘He would’ve laughed in my face. Quite rightly too.’ She shook her head and sipped her drink. ‘And anyway, what am I thinking? What am I
thinking
? The last thing I need is to be getting into that kind of trouble. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just …? Honestly, what on earth would I do without you, Birdy? You must never leave me to my own devices. Think of the pickle I’d be in.’
    I laughed. I wasn’t totally sure what she was talking about, couldn’t quite keep up with her leapfrogging thoughts, but I figured it didn’t matter too much. Whatever idea about Jac she’d been briefly entertaining seemed to have been snuffed out. She’d managed to talk herself out of it. I was relieved. I could do without Bert getting us dragged into the middle of some hormonal cat-fight about boys.
    And to be honest, I could do without anyone disrupting our peaceful little twosome.

13
    So you’ll probably remember earlier in the story when I told you about the two girls in primary school rejecting me when I tried to join in their chalk-drawing playground project. One of those girls – the bigger, darker one – was Pippa Brookman and, as bad luck would have it, she and I seemed to end up being thrown together almost every year – in the same classes at St Paul’s and the same tutor groups at Whistle Down. I worked out pretty quickly that I’d had a lucky escape that day in the playground: Pippa was horrible.
    She was annoying even to look at – she had a big moony face and the kind of smile that was about eighty per cent gums with little stubby shark teeth just peeping through. She was one of those people who fancy themselves as incredibly important, putting herself forward for anything and everything, from peer bullying counsellor to PE captain to recycling monitor. She had this loud, hooting voice that she’d use to broadcast whatever ever-so-important crusade she was on at the time. She could be mean too, in a really sneaky way. Even though she liked to make a big deal about all her fundraising and charity