Heart of Glass by Lindy Dale Page A

made any plans and the
weeks had ticked by. It was odd after such a romantic phone
call.
    Jen and Prue looked at their
feet. Lucy started talking to the other girls, ignoring my
presence. What was going on?
    “ Should I ring
him?”
    Prue looked at Jen, raising
her eyebrows in a gesture of helplessness. It was so embarrassing.
Why weren’t they talking to me?
    “ I don’t think you should,”
she answered, ignoring Lucy’s glare. “In some ways, I think I agree
with what Lucy told you. Ben was only after one thing. I mean, you
told him you wanted to slow down, and since then he’s never made a
single plan to see you.”
    “ But he told me he doesn’t
mind, that he’ll wait till I’m ready.”
    “ I…” Lucy kicked Prue’s
shin with the accuracy of the striker for Manchester
United.
    “ Ouch.”
    Prue was silent.
    I didn’t know what to do. I
had no idea what was going on but Lucy seemed determined to make me
suffer and everyone else was too scared to override her. Prue, out
of all of them, would never stand up against Lucy and now she was
the meat in the sandwich. She was the chicken between the sliced
bread. The big fat roast chicken.
    ***
    As the days wore on and the
winter ground burst into the glorious colours of the early spring,
the ‘big freeze’ of St. Brigid’s College continued, no heed paid to
the splendour of the bulbs sprouting in the courtyard or the
blossoms budding on the trees outside the chapel door. I was in a
quandary. My boyfriend had done a Houdini vanishing act and my
friends were acting as if I had leprosy. I wished someone would let
me in on what was going on. It was very confusing.
    At lunch times, I was
relegated to the group of Wannabe’s outside the circle. It was
where I belonged, anyway. I didn’t know what ever made me think I
was part of the ‘in’ crowd. Day after day, I sat forlornly on the
bench seat and tried to engage in conversation with a bunch of
girls I hardly knew. They were nice girls but it wasn’t the same.
We had no history at all. Still, it made me see that perhaps our
behaviour, as the cool group, had not always been as accepting as
it could have been. There was no reason why we couldn’t get
along.
    Jen and Prue were cemented
to the orange lounge, casting sorry glances in my direction but
doing nothing to appease the situation. I wanted to make clucking
noises to show them how chicken they were but contented myself with
pretending they didn’t exist instead. They were led by peer
pressure, unable to make a decision for themselves. It wasn’t their
fault they were weak, or was it? It was possible, however, that
they had a great deal more sense than I did. I had stuck up for
myself and look what had happened. My new ‘friends’ tried hard to
lift my flagging spirits by confessing further facts that had come
to light from other girls in our class. They thought Lucy Roberts
was a snotty stuckup cow and on that point alone, I could have been
their best friend for life. Nobody had ever made a stand against
her before.
    “ You’re so brave to stick
up for yourself,” Rachel said, one day, as we sat under the huge
oak tree that stood sentinel on the edge of the oval reading “To
Kill a Mockingbird”. I turned my book over on the grass and smiled
at her, glad to have some company.
    “ You think so? I was under
the impression I was some sort of idiot savant. They hate my
guts.”
    She put her hand on mine.
“Well, they do, but it’ll pass. Those bitches’ll forget about it
soon and find someone else to have a go at. Believe me, I know.
Lucy is spewing, though. She didn’t like being called a liar and a
slut in front of everyone.”
    “ Guess the truth
hurts.”
    We sat crossed legged in
silence for some minutes, our backs propped up against the stringy
bark of the tree, until Rachel spoke again.
    “ She’s been telling
everyone that you’re self-absorbed and stuck up because you have an
older boyfriend. She said the girls were tired of your