Cathy Cassidy

Extract - Driftwood

My best friend Joey Donovan is weird. She is clever, she is kind, she is seriously cool, but still, she’s weird, in a take-it-or-leave-it kind of way.

She always has been, ever since she marched into my classroom seven years ago, wearing pink wellies, reindeer antlers and a don’t-mess-with-me look in her big blue eyes. She pitched up in Kirklaggan like a small tornado, and she’s been like that ever since.
It’s Monday morning, and Joey stomps down the aisle of the school bus, a vision in freckles and black lipstick.

She’s wearing a grey school skirt with the hem chopped off so its all frayed and ratty, and long stripy socks that reach up over her skinny knees. One sock is black and white, the other black and red. On her feet are clumpy black biker boots with shiny silver buckles, and her jacket is a huge, drooping school blazer like something your great grandad might have worn in 1947. Where the school badge once was, she has stitched on a Good Charlotte patch, slightly squint.

She is on a one-woman mission to overthrow school uniform, or redesign it as her own version of punk/goth/scarecrow chic. She is 12 years old.

‘Like the socks,’ my brother Kit calls down from the back seat of the bus. A few kids snigger, and Joey sticks her tongue out at him, but hey, my brother probably does like the socks. He is 13 years old and lately I have seen a moonstruck, fuzzy expression seep over his face whenever Joey is around.

I haven’t mentioned this to Joey yet. I don’t want to scare her.
She slides into the seat beside me. Her hair, ash blonde with random stripes of pink and green, is bundled into two stubby plaits that stick out alarmingly above her collar.

‘Major news!’ she says, eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘I mean, seriously major, Hannah! You will never guess what happened yesterday!’

Yesterday, Joey was meant to come round to my place to hang out, use my PC for her English homework and get her usual fix of the Simpsons. Jed and Eva don’t have a computer or a telly in their house, and Joey gets withdrawal symptoms, sometimes. At the last minute, she rang to cancel.

I didn’t mind too much, but Kit was crushed, all dressed up in his best jeans and hoodie, hair gelled into hedgehog spikes and trailing a cloud of toxic aftershave. He’s got it bad.
‘So,’ I say now, tugging at Joey’s plait. ‘What was it all about? Tell!’
She settles into her seat, breaking a stick of gum in half so we can share. ‘Guess what? Jed and Eva are only going to foster a new kid! After all this time!’

Joey and her little brother Mikey started out being fostered, but their family, Jed and Eva, got the legal bits sorted and adopted them for keeps a few years back. If you saw the Donovan family all together, you’d never guess they weren’t related. They are a perfect fit – the whole bunch of them are seriously flaky.

‘No way!’ I grin. ‘A new kid? Is that good, or bad?’
‘Oh, good, definitely,’ Joey laughs. ‘Paul, his name is. Paul Slater. The social workers said he’s from a troubled background, whatever that is, but they reckon he’ll settle in great with Jed and Eva. They brought him down from Glasgow yesterday. Cool or what?’
‘Cool. How old is he? Will he be a friend for Mikey?’
‘Nah,’ Joey says. ‘Paul’s older than us – 13. He’ll be in S2. Maybe Kit can look out for him?’
My brother Kit is a pain in the bum, but he’s funny and streetwise and popular with the other kids. And, in spite of the teasing, he’d do anything for Joey.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I suggest. ‘I think he’d do it.’
‘I will. Paul’s starting school today, but Eva drove him in early to get the paperwork done, and to talk to Mr McKenzie and the guidance teachers and everyone.’
The bus lurches to a halt and a sea of rackety teenagers rolls down the aisle. Joey and I take our time. It’s January. It’s only just light out there, and definitely sub-zero, so what’s the hurry? When Joey stands up, my brother Kit just happens to be in the aisle behind her.
‘Fancy seeing you girls,’ he says carelessly, as if he hasn’t spent a whole week planning this exact moment. ‘After you, Josephine.’
‘Why, thank you, Christopher,’ Joey says sweetly.
Kit moves smoothly along behind her, bashing me in the arm with his rucksack, so I know this sudden attack of good manners doesn’t extend to me.
Joey is telling Kit about the new foster kid, and by the time we spill out, shivering, onto the frosty pavements, she’s got him to promise he’ll keep an eye on Paul Slater.
‘Just until he finds his feet, y’know,’ Joey is saying. ‘He’s quite shy I think, but he is from Glasgow. He must have a bit of street sense somewhere.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Kit replies. ‘I’ll look after him.’
‘Oh, Kit, thanks,’ Joey says, fluttering her eyelashes and laying it on thick. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

By the time she turns away from him, my brother is bright pink and grinning like a madman. No change there, then.

We link arms and mooch up towards the school gates, giggling.
‘Your brother blushed,’ Joey tells me, although just about everyone south of Aberdeen must have spotted the beacon that is Kit’s face. ‘D’you think he likes me?’
‘Just a bit.’
‘Whoa,’ Joey laughs. ‘Don’t know if I can handle that.’
‘Don’t know if I can!’
Then we spot Mr McKenzie, the Head, patrolling the school gates. We stop dead in our tracks. Mr McKenzie and Joey Donovan do not see eye to eye. His aim in life is to stamp out all signs of rebellion, disorder and individuality. School uniform offences are punishable by death, or week-long detentions, anyhow. Joey does not stand a chance.
‘We’ll sneak in through the staff car park,’ I decide, dragging Joey along the pavement, away from the main gates.
Joey looks glum, because she enjoys arguing about uniform with Mr McKenzie. Since she started at Kirklaggan High School last August, he’s had to write two new clauses into the school uniform list. The first outlaws black PVC mini skirts, the second declares that dog collars and studded wristbands may not be worn on school premises.
‘Freak,’ spits out an S3 lad as we dodge past him.
‘Loser,’ Joey responds automatically.
When I look over my shoulder, I can see Kit giving the S3 kid a row for picking on Joey, and I have to smile.

We sneak through the teacher’s car park and skirt around the back of the dinner halls. A heady aroma of boiled cabbage and custard assaults us from the kitchens, even though it’s barely ten to nine.

‘What’s that noise?’ Joey demands suddenly, frowning.
‘Can’t hear anything. C’mon, Joey, we can’t be late.’
Joey is standing still, her face anxious, eyes scanning the kitchen yard with its skip full of cardboard and the piles of plastic crates and the trio of dustbins huddled together near the wall.
‘I heard something,’ she insists.
‘I didn’t,’ I huff. It’s so cold the words seem to gather in the air before me, a small white cloud, like dragon’s breath. ‘Joey, it’s freezing. Can we just go now?’
She shakes her head, putting a finger to her lips. Exasperated, I shiver inside my duffel coat.
‘What kind of a noise?’ I ask. In the stillness I can hear the sound of kids shouting in the distance, someone scraping a pan inside the kitchen. Behind us, Miss Quinn’s clapped out VW beetle wheezes across the carpark and shudders to a halt.
‘Shhh.’

The school bell clatters out then, and Miss Quinn rushes past us, pink scarf flapping, on her way to the art block.
‘Hurry up, girls,’ she grins. ‘You’ll be late. Later than me, even!’
She disappears around the corner, but Joey still won’t budge.
And then I hear it, a thin mewling cry that’s coming from the dustbins.
Joey’s there in a flash, tipping up the lids, rooting through the rubbish. Scrunched up kitchen roll and long strips of cellophane flutter down onto the concrete.
‘Hannah,’ she breathes. ‘Look, Hannah, just look what I’ve found.’
Together we peer inside the third bin. They’re in amongst the vegetable peelings and the cold baked beans, curled in a squashed up cardboard box, chucked out in the freezing cold January morning like so much rubbish.
Three tiny, shivering, blue-eyed kittens.

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