The Honeymoon Sisters by Gwyneth Rees

trouble was I hadn’t been able to find Anne-Marie’s sketch, though she swore she had definitely put it in my bag. I didn’t think Mr Anderson would mind that much as he always treats his last-thing-on-a-Friday-afternoon tasks as a bit of fun, but Anne-Marie was clearly pretty annoyed. She picked up my schoolbag to search inside it herself as someone on the other side of the room read out their poem.
    The next person to be picked was Sadie.
    She looked very calm as she stood up. ‘I had Poppy’s drawing,’ she announced.
    That’s when I started to feel my heart thumping. Why had I given her my sketch of Amy? Now she was going to make fun of it …
    I twisted round in my seat to look at her and it was all I could do not to turn back to face the front and plug my fingers in my ears.
    ‘ AMY ,’ she read out in a calm voice as she held up my picture. Her poem was very short and nothing like I’d expected.
    ‘ A is for Afro
    M is for mischievous
    Y is for yellow ribbons. ’
    Then she sat down in her seat abruptly.
    I immediately thought of the photo on our fridge of Amy with yellow ribbons in her hair and a mischievous grin on her face. I have to say I felt a bit stunned.
    ‘Very good, Sadie,’ Mr Anderson said. ‘Simple and very effective. Well done.’
    ‘Trust her,’ Anne-Marie hissed in my ear, though I knew she was just jealous that Sadie was getting praised and not her. ‘That wasn’t even a proper poem. At least the verse I wrote about her stupid bird is humorous and does actually rhyme!’
    ‘Wait … you managed to write a humorous poem about a bird that’s had its throat cut and then been stuffed?’ I said. ‘I thought you were an animal lover!’
    ‘I am. I just did it to annoy Sadie. If I don’t get picked to read it out I’m going to slip it into her bag.’ She grinned. ‘Probably safer to do that anyway!’ She returned to rummaging in my bag, which she had half emptied out on to our desk.
    ‘Found it!’ she hissed as she pulled out her missing drawing. ‘It was in your science folder. You didn’t lookvery hard, did you?’ She gave it to me and I saw that she’d drawn a man with a gigantic bum and written ‘Mr Anderson’ beside it.
    ‘Anne-Marie, you are pathetic,’ I whispered.
    ‘What’s this then, Poppy?’ To my horror I realised Mr Anderson was coming up behind me.
    ‘It’s not mine,’ I hissed, but I wasn’t sure if he heard me as the bell rang to signal the end of the lesson. ‘It’s Anne-Marie’s,’ I added, but my voice was drowned out by everyone else’s as they packed up their stuff ready to leave.
    ‘Oh dear,’ Mr Anderson said when he saw it. ‘Thanks for that, girls. Please tell me you haven’t got a poem to go with it.’
    ‘No … there’s no poem,’ we both said together.
    I felt like my whole face had burst into flames as I left the classroom.
    Anne-Marie was trying to stop giggling. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It was meant to be a joke. I didn’t think he’d see it.’
    ‘Well, he did!’ I snarled. ‘You do realise he’s going to think I’m totally obsessed with the size of his bum now?’
    But that just made her giggle even more.

    *

    I went over to the nearest bit of wall in the playground and sat down. I wished I could just run home and hide. If only I could hole up in my bedroom until I stopped feeling like I was … I don’t know … leaking out my worries all over the place or something. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like the invisible barrier that usually does a great job of containing all my thoughts and feelings had suddenly stopped working and the rest of the world could actually see the really uncool mess going on inside my brain.
    ‘Are you OK , Poppy?’ I turned to see Josh in full big-brother mode, looking all concerned as I bit my bottom lip and tried not to give in to the urge to bawl my eyes out.
    ‘Not really,’ I grunted.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Everything!’ I told him about Anne-Marie’s sketch,