Cathy Cassidy

Extract - GingerSnaps

Ginger Brown . . . it sounds like a colour on a paint chart, not a name. It sounds like a joke or a new shade of hair dye, or one of those treacly kind of cakes that nobody really likes. What sort of parents would call their kid something like that? Well, mine, obviously.
They didn’t mean to ruin my life. They thought they were being quirky and cool and original, but actually they were working their way through the spice rack, taking inspiration from those little jars with funny names and even funnier ingredients. Seriously, if Dad hadn’t been a curry fanatic it might never have happened.
They named my big sister Cassia, after a sort of aromatic tree bark you put in chicken korma, and me . . . well, they named me Ginger. If I didn’t have hair the colour of grated carrots, I’d maybe be able to forgive them . . . but then again, maybe not.
With a name like Ginger, I didn’t stand a chance.

I worked that out way back on the very first day of primary school when I told the teacher my name and saw her mouth twitch into a smirk. It was worse with the kids – they didn’t just smirk, they laughed. The boys pulled my plaits and asked why my parents named me after my hair colour, and the girls asked if I thought I was one of the Spice Girls because they were still popular back then.
I went home after the first day and told Mum and Dad I wanted a different name, like Kerri or Emma or Chelsea, and they just laughed and told me not to be silly. It was good to be different, they said, and Ginger was a beautiful name – unique, striking, unforgettable.
Well, it was that all right.
I never really knew what to say to the jokes and the teasing. ‘Don’t let it get to you,’ Cass used to tell me. ‘Just laugh it off or ignore it, OK?’
It was easy for her to say. She was in high school by then, cool and confident and always surrounded by friends. She had auburn hair, too, but nobody ever seemed to call her names.
I worked out that the easiest way to avoid being teased was to keep my mouth shut, keep my head down and pretend I didn’t care.
‘She’s very quiet,’ Miss Kaseem told my parents at the start of Year Six. ‘A lovely girl, but she doesn’t join in with the others much. Not at all like Cassia was.’
I suppose I should be grateful Miss Kaseem didn’t tell them the rest of it. How I never got picked for playground games, never had a partner for PE or project work, never got invited to sleepovers or parties or trips to the cinema with the other girls. I was an outsider, a loser. I tried to be invisible, sitting on my own in the lunch hall, eating an extra helping of apple pie and custard because it was something to do – a way to fill the time, a way to fill the hole inside me, the place where the loneliness was.
‘Have you seen her?’ I heard Sophie Martin say to her friends one day. ‘She’s soooo fat! I saw her eat two packets of crisps at break, and she had an extra helping of chips at lunch. Gross!’
I just sat and smiled and pretended I hadn’t heard, and when Sophie had gone I ate a Twix I’d been saving for later, without even tasting it.
I thought it would go on like that forever.
Mum and Dad were anxious by then, always asking if I wanted to invite a friend over for tea, or go to dance classes like Cass or swimming club or karate. ‘It’d be fun,’ Mum would wheedle. ‘You’d make lots of new friends, and get fit too . . .’
That’s how I knew they thought I was fat too, as well as a loser. I wasn’t the right kind of daughter. I wasn’t the kind of girl who could make a name like Ginger seem cute and quirky.
When my eleventh birthday rolled around, Mum and Dad asked if I wanted a party. I said no, I was too old for that kind of thing.
‘You’re never too old for fun,’ Dad had said, and I could see a flicker of something behind his gaze. Worry? Disappointment? ‘You never have your friends around any more. What about a trip to the cinema, or the ice rink? Would that be grown-up enough for you?’
Sometimes you go along with something even though you know it’s a bad, bad idea. ‘What if nobody comes?’ I’d said feebly, to Cass, but she’d just laughed.
‘Of course they’ll come,’ she’d said.
So we planned an afternoon at the ice rink, all expenses paid, followed by burger and chips in the cafe that looked over it. Mum had made a chocolate layer cake for afterwards, with eleven little candles. I was excited, in spite of myself. Cass let me use some of her sparkly eyeshadow, and I wore my new pink minidress with the pop-art flowers and a new pair of jeans. I thought I looked good.
We’d arranged to meet outside the ice rink at two. Emily Croft and Meg Walters arrived dead on time. They were best friends; geeky, serious girls who sometimes let me hang out with them at break. ‘Who else is coming?’ they asked.
‘Oh, everybody,’ I told them, even though there was already a little seed of doubt eating away at my heart. ‘Sophie and Jenna and Carly and Faye . . . everyone.’
I’d asked every girl in my class, because Cass said there was room for everyone at the ice rink, and even if they weren’t all special mates, it would be a good chance to get to know them a bit more. I wanted to be the kind of girl who could invite a whole bunch of kids to her party. I didn’t want to let her down. I asked everyone, and most people had said they’d be there.
So where were they? At half past two, Dad looked at his watch for the hundredth time and said maybe the others had got mixed up about the time. ‘Cass, you take Ginger and the girls in,’ he decided. ‘Your mum and I can stay here for a bit, wait for the others. Perhaps they thought it was three?’
Emily Croft took a folded invitation from her pocket and looked at it. ‘It says two,’ she said, and I hated her for that. For not pretending that there was a mistake or a misprint or a traffic jam in town . . . Anything. Anything at all to take away the sick ache inside me.
Cass took Emily, Meg and me inside. I felt like I was holding myself together, as if the slightest knock might make me crumble. There was a stinging sensation behind my eyes. We handed in our shoes and pulled on ugly white boots with sharp silver blades, lacing them up tightly. Then we clomped across to the rink, wobbling slightly, and edged our way on to the ice. It was cold, and my feet felt like they would slip from under me at any moment.
At first all I could do was cling on to the edge, but Cass wasn’t going to allow that of course. She took my hand and prised me away from the rail, and slowly, haltingly I took my first few steps on the ice. It was fun. Pretty soon the four of us were slithering about, grabbing on to each other and yelping with terror whenever anyone swooped past.
After a while, Cass spotted Mum and Dad watching from the sides, and skated over to talk to them, leaving Emily, Meg and me together. That’s when I saw them – Sophie, Jenna, Carly and Faye – just ahead of us on the ice.
My face lit up. They were here after all – Sophie and the others, the four most popular girls in the class. It must have been a mix-up about the time, like Dad had said. I skated towards them with a grin a mile wide.
Sophie spoke first. ‘Hi, Ginger,’ she said. Her voice sounded mean and smirky, the way it always did when she spoke to me. Then again, that wasn’t exactly often. ‘Thought we might see you here. Sorry we couldn’t make your party . . . we had something better to do.’
Sophie and the others dissolved into giggles while I struggled to make sense of what she’d said. Couldn’t make the party? Something better to do? But they were here, weren’t they? And then it dawned on me.
They hadn’t arrived late. Dad hadn’t paid them in. They’d been here all along, watching, waiting. They were here to laugh at me. My cheeks flamed.
‘Look!’ Faye sniggered. ‘Her face matches her hair!’
I wished a hole would appear in the ice, a hole I could fall into and disappear forever. It didn’t of course. I was vaguely aware of Emily and Meg just behind me, and I knew that Mum, Dad and Cass were here somewhere too. I tried to turn, to get away from Sophie’s cold eyes and Faye’s twisted smile, but the blades slipped beneath me and I fell down, hard, with the sound of laughter in my ears.
Emily crouched beside me on the ice. ‘Ignore them,’ she said kindly. ‘Come on, Ginger. Don’t let them win.’
By the time I crawled on to my hands and knees, Sophie and the others were skating away, looking back at me over their shoulders. ‘Honestly!’ I heard Sophie say. ‘She looks just like a pig . . . a fat, ugly, ginger pig.’
When I think back, that’s the bit I remember. The shame, the hurt, the ice freezing my grazed palms and numbing my heart. I’ll never forget it.
Emily and Meg helped me to the edge of the rink, and I told Mum, Dad and Cass I’d hurt myself falling. We all clomped off the ice, handed in our boots and went up to the cafe for burger and chips – only I couldn’t eat a single bite of mine. Mum brought out the chocolate layer cake and lit the candles, and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’.
My eyes slid away from the cake and down towards the rink below, where I could see Sophie and Jenna and Carly and Faye skating round and round: laughing, tossing their hair, flirting with boys. I hated them, sure, but a part of me wanted to be like them too.
I blew out the candles and made a wish.

They say you should be careful what you wish for, but, hey, I got what I wanted – I’m in Year Eight now, and things are very different.
You can make a wish come true, if you’re determined. You can put the past behind you, be somebody new, and that’s what I did. I moved on. These days, I try not to think about the sad, scared little girl I used to be . . . she’s in the past, and that’s a place I’m not going back to, not ever.

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