Chapter One – Strong Stuff

Vvvvvvvv.

Ruby felt the phone vibrate and prayed the teacher hadn’t heard it. She held her breath. 15:18. Mrs. Henderson shot a knowing look in her direction. Ruby watched the crumpled bags around her eyes, the lipstick bleeding through the skin round her mouth. Come on, we’re both tired. She willed her to let it drop. I can’t get detention today. Not today.

Mrs. Henderson looked at the clock. Ruby watched the hands. Twenty seconds. Come on. She gripped the edge of the plastic seat.

The bell rang out.

‘Right, get off,’ Mrs Henderson said, sighing. Ruby shut her eyes and exhaled.

Kids scrambled for the door. The Friday ritual of getting away from school as fast as possible began. The familiar end-of-the-week smell steamed off the crowd. Tatty blazers that smelt of damp cupboards, sweat from shirts and sports socks, mildewed rucksacks, body spray, aftershave, pencil sharpenings and sugar-sour breath.

Go the back way. Takes longer, but it’s quieter. She read the text that nearly got her a detention.

Mum: Did u get my tenna at lunchtime? Come home ASAP, nurse coming 2night not 2moro x

Ruby walked faster. Shit. Tonight was my cleaning night!

She thought about the pots stacked up in the sink, the bin wedged open with ready-meal trays, the pile of washing sat in the front room armchair. She imagined the nurse raising her eyebrows and making notes.

If I can just get there ten minutes before her, I can make it look alright…but what if she wants to go upstairs?

She turned the corner and slammed straight into Katrina Wood.

‘Why don’t you look where you’re going, twat?’ Katrina spat down at her, pushing her against the wall. Ruby’s rucksack fell to the floor. She tried to walk away but Katrina caged her in, one hand planted on the wall at each side of Ruby.

‘I said, why don’t you look where you’re going, shortarse spaz?’ Katrina sneered, narrowing her eyes.

Ruby ducked under Katrina’s arm and started to run, but her stomach jolted and she stopped, turning back.

Shit, she’s got my bag!

Katrina and her friends were already rifling through the contents. Ruby made a grab for the rucksack, but it was too late.

Katrina’s eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open. Kids walking past stopped to stare. They knew something good was about to happen.

Everyone who passed by clocked the pantomime horror and delight on Katrina’s face. They knew it must be worth hanging back for. All Ruby could do was stare. Her stomach knotted. She felt her face flush and her hands shake. There’s nothing you can do.

‘Katrina don’t, please –’ stammered Ruby.

She tried to control the pressure willing her to burst into tears, rising behind her eyes, nose, up her throat. It was useless. The tears welled up. She tried to hold them back, blink them away.

‘Oh. My. God. Now I know why she smells so bad…’ Katrina announced to the grinning crowd. She reached inside the bag and pulled out the packet.

‘She pisses herself all the time and has to use TENA LADY!!!’

Katrina brandished the blue and green plastic packet, shining under the corridor strip lights. Ruby watched the reaction of the faces in the crowd, gasping and shrieking with laughter.

Katrina began quoting from the packet.

‘Tena Lady Extra Plus…’

Tears streaked Ruby’s cheeks as she grabbed her rucksack back. Katrina let it go. She had what she needed. All Ruby wanted to do was to run home, but she knew her mum needed the pads. She couldn’t leave anything to chance with the nurse coming to do her assessment.

‘Superior absorption for peace of mind!’ Katrina continued to read from the packet, holding it aloft so everyone could see. Ruby looked at them. They laughed in her face. She could hear snatches of what they were saying: No way! Oh my god, that’s so gross!

She told herself, this isn’t happening. It’s not real. It was, though, and she knew she had to do something about it.

‘They’re not mine okay, just give them back!’ Ruby managed to squeak. The crowd roared. Katrina looked down at her, smirking.

‘Why? If they’re not yours, then you don’t need them back, do you?’ Katrina’s eyes were fierce.

Ruby felt the back of her head hit the wall as Katrina’s hand gripped Ruby’s shoulder and pinned her against it.

‘Do you?’ Katrina shouted.

‘Careful Trina!’ said one of the boys, ‘you might catch the pissing disease!’

They were face to face now, so close Ruby could see flakes of mascara on Katrina’s cheekbone.

‘Say it,’ Katrina hissed, ‘say: I need my Tena Lady because I can’t stop pissing myself like an old dog!’

It seemed to happen in slow motion. The fear in her stomach shot to her limbs, making her move. She felt her fist lunge into Katrina’s stomach, harder than she had ever hit anything in her life. Katrina fell, like a puppet with its strings all cut at once. She dropped the pads. They spun across the lino floor. Ruby snatched them up and ran.

She glanced back to see Katrina staggering to her feet, holding her stomach, gasping. The crowd stared after her, stunned. Ruby turned and carried on running.

***

Ruby ran all the way back. Fast. Faster than she ran in her dreams. Faster even than in her nightmares. She didn’t look back.

The grey concrete treadmill pounded away under her feet until finally it stopped. She was home, the end terrace with the overgrown yard round the side. The one with the Japanese knotweed that annoyed the neighbours. Ruby caught sight of herself in the neighbour’s car window.

Jesus. Best go in the back way. Mum will be in the front room. Make a brew and straighten yourself up.

‘Hi mum!’ she shouted through.

‘Hi love,’ her mum shouted, then coughed.

I wish that cough would go away. It’s been there ages.

‘Did you get my text?’ her mum called through.

‘Yep. Got them,’ she said, leaning her forehead against the wall, adding, ‘wasn’t easy.’

‘Oh I know. That pharmacy is bloody useless. You’re a star.’

Ruby smiled to herself.

Her phone buzzed. Three missed calls from Annabelle. She swore under her breath. You forgot about her. She opened Snapchat.

‘WTF just happened?’ appeared over a selfie of Annabelle. She had masses of crimped brown hair, black thick-rimmed glasses and perfectly sprinkled freckles on each cheek. The photo was of her, stood at the school gates, with an exaggerated shoulder shrug and upturned hand. It disappeared.

Ruby closed her eyes and took a deep breath and called her back.

‘Ruby?’

‘I’m so sorry, I had to–’

‘I heard what happened, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she lied, ‘you’re not still there, are you?’

‘No, don’t be daft. I saw you run up the road. I shouted but you were like some kind of possessed cheetah. I’m at home. Do you want me to come over?’

‘No, the nurse is doing her home visit, but thank you. I’d better go. Got shitloads of cleaning to do.’

She made two cups of tea and carried them in to the living room. Her mum was struggling to change the channel, coughing.

Ruby liked to remember how her mum used to get dressed up for nights out. A little black dress, smoky eyes and her sleek bob. So beautiful.

Lisa was wearing what she always wore, now. Joggers and an old jumper. She couldn’t blow-dry her hair or put make-up on any more. Her eyes always had dark shadows under them. She was so much thinner than before she got ill, yet her body seemed to weigh her down. Skinny and slumped.

Ruby wanted to ask her about the illness.

What does it feel like? Are you scared? Are you angry? What will happen when-

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

Every time she started to ask, the change in her mum’s face was unbearable. She looked as though the question had hurt her, physically, weakened her. As though it was a pain that was always there, dull and throbbing in the back of her head, the bottom of her stomach. Ruby’s questions, even just when she sensed they were coming, gripped and twisted that pain. She couldn’t do that to her.

‘Ruby,’ her mum coughed, patting her chest, then continued, ‘what the hell has happened to you? You look awful!’

Lisa was staring at her sweat patches and half-loose ponytail.

‘Oh, erm, it was P.E. last thing…forgot my kit. Had to play in this,’ Ruby said, looking down at her shirt. Lisa rolled her eyes.

‘Clean yourself up before the nurse comes.’

Ruby gave the downstairs of the house the best five-minute makeover she could manage and went upstairs to have a shower and find something presentable to wear.

Lingering in the doorway of her bedroom, she sighed and smiled. It was still the pink paradise it had been since she was seven years old. Most of the time she was frustrated that they couldn’t afford to redecorate it, but sometimes, times like this, she loved it.

She lay on her back on the pink quilt and took in the security blanket surroundings, staring at the aertex ceiling. Ruby remembered choosing the pink daisy paper, candy floss colour curtains and fluffy rug with her mum. Her dad did the decorating. She remembered him up the ladder, singing Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel, and trying to blow the smoke from his cigarette out of the window. That was her last memory of him before he left.

In the bathroom, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror as she stepped into the shower and winced. She thought of Annabelle’s D-cup boobs and looked at her own in dismay. Since Harv Macintyre called her an ironing board, she had wished every night to wake up in the morning with something more. It hadn’t happened.

No boobs. Mousey hair. Plain face. She hated the way she looked. She tried not to think about it.

In the shower, she tried to imagine how she could face school on Monday. Katrina is going to murder you. Actually murder you. Don’t think about it now. You have to get through this visit. You can add it to the list. The massive list.

Last time the nurse came, she told her to write down a list of the things that she was worried about. Then write down why they worried her. Work out the things she couldn’t control, the things she could. Focus on the things she could control. The things she could do something about. The list was the same, still, except now she could add being killed by Katrina.

I’m worried I’ve lost all my friends, the list began, except Annabelle. They’ve all stopped asking me to do things because I can never do them. Sometimes I don’t have the money, like for cinema or Meadowhall. Sometimes I can’t leave mum, like for sleepovers. I can’t control that. Annabelle is the only one who still puts up with it. Still hangs around with me at school. Still asks me over, when I can make it. But I worry it’s just because she feels sorry for me. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for mum, either.

I worry about what will happen to mum. She doesn’t talk to me about it, but I’ve Googled it. I know what will happen. She’s going to get worse, then she’s going to die. Mum doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her either, so she doesn’t have any help, yet. She says she’ll need it, soon, but for now we’re okay. I don’t want help. I help her in and out of bed. I help her with the stair-lift. The wheelchair. The shower. I don’t want a stranger doing those things for her. But mum says soon, they’ll have to. I can’t control that. I worry about what will happen, after.

Underneath, a new paragraph started ‘I can control…’ but there was nothing she could think of. She told herself she would add to it, but the space was still blank.

She stepped out of the shower and looked at the mirror. It had clouded up with steam. On impulse, she walked over and drew with her fingertip in the steam: You can control how you react. You are strong.

Stepping back, she shook her head. You can’t. You’re not. Ruby stuffed a towel into her mouth and screamed, letting tears fall and melt into the fabric while she sobbed.