me. They shout things at me phrased as questions that are meant to make me feel like a flat-chested, polony-sandwich-guzzling bursary kid who gets a ride to school in the dead peopleâs car. Iâm all of these things. And Iâve heard it all a million times. The mean-girl gang has never scored high on originality: âWhat car does your dad drive?â, âWhat bra size do you wear?â, âWho pays your school fees?â. If we were on The Weakest Link I would have walked off with the jackpot, but itâs not that sort of a game and I can feel the circle of kids closing in on me. I need to get away. To get some air. To breathe. White dots are dancing at the back of my eyes, forming a pattern in which I slowly recognise two words: Walk Away. I do the elbow walk through the crowd again. As I walk away I hear them start on Fatty for a second time: âTell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth.â I walk away from the mean-girl circle and find some silence in the Lost Property Room with the manky socks and the spare shoes and the lunch boxes of forgotten cheese sandwiches. I breathe and breathe until I canât hear the chants in my head any more. Then I get my satchel and cut school. I run from that red-brick building with its blind clock tower that tells me that people like Fatty and me will never belong. I go home and sit on the couch with Nameless Dog. We watch reruns of Big Brother and Idols and Survivor and The Weakest Link . And none of it seems very real. Before I go to bed I phone Groote Schuur Hospital and speak to a cross nurse in Ward Seven. She says that information about Melanie can only be divulged to family members and she knows for a fact that I am not Mara Louw, nor am I Melanieâs mother, because Melanieâs mother is sitting outside the intensive care ward. Click . There is another thing that I have learned in my short time in this world. This other thing is that if my friend Melly had been on the soccer field she wouldnât have stood by and watched Fatty being bullied. No. She would have shouted out for it to stop with all the breath in her chopped-up little lungs. But she couldnât, because sheâs lying in intensive care. And I didnât. I walked away and left him. I know that by taking that walk of shame I am guilty of being the weakest link. And Iâm not sure who I hate more for making me a coward. The mean-girl gang, Fatty or me. Soccer World Cup Update â Days to Kick-off: 55 Match of the Day â Fluffy vs The Builders
Eight Dodgy Dreams Fluffy says heâs exhausted. Heâs been having problems falling asleep of late, and when he does finally drop off he has bad dreams. I ask him what heâs dreaming about. Fluffy says itâs the same dream. Heâs running. Someone or something is chasing him. But as he runs, his feet get heavier and heavier. Then they get sucked into a muddy bog â or is it cement? And he canât move his feet any more. Heâs frozen to the spot. He wakes up just as someone or something catches him. I tell Fluffy that his dream is possibly the second most unoriginal dream since the falling-off-a-tall-building-and-waking-up-just-before-you-hit-the-ground dream. Itâs text-book Freud. Fluffy says, âBut what does it all mean, April?â I tell Fluffy that heâs running away from something and he is terrified of getting caught â which is the textbook Freudian explanation for the run-away dream. Fluffy says, âAh, yes, Julia and Sam are going out for the morning.â I can see that Fluffy is still in denial. Still running in the hope of getting away. Itâs not who is going out this morning, itâs who is coming in. âItâs the showdown with the builders today,â I say gently, and watch Fluffyâs face collapse into a puddle of tired lines as he feels the concrete sucking away at his ankles. The builders are having a crisis