Keeping it Real by Annie Dalton Page A

But when you move on, isn’t that because your friendship doesn’t fit you any longer? Well, that wasn’t Jax and Karmen. They hadn’t just, you know, changed . It felt like they were being driven by some scary force and I had a bad feeling it was this exact same force which had torn their friendship apart.
    I began to run, half-limping, half-sliding, down the icy street in my borrowed shoes, but I had the terrible sense that I was already too late. Because, if Karms and Jax had both gone off the rails, what in the world was happening to Sky?
     

Chapter Eight
    U nlike Jax, Sky Nolan never broke any actual laws (that she told us about anyway), but of all the Shocking Pinks she was definitely the most outrageous.
    The first time we went out together, we were all saying what we wanted to be. When Sky announced that she intended to be a stand-up comic, no one even blinked. We totally believed she could do it! That’s how charismatic Sky was.
    Sky was a fabulously exciting person to have as your friend, but you wouldn’t want to cross her. If you did, Sky would find a way to make you pay. Like that time she got back at Miss Rowntree by painting cooking oil on the blackboard. The next time our teacher picked up a piece of chalk and tried to write, absolutely nothing showed up!
    Weeks later we were all at Karmen’s, kidding around on her karaoke machine, when Sky went into hysterics and finally let us in on the joke.
    “I can’t believe you just went off and did that all by yourself!” Karmen said amazed.
    “Believe it!” Sky said coolly, flicking back her hair. “Sky Nolan is an independent operator!”
    She made it sound like she was this romantic free spirit. But it was because Sky basically didn’t trust anyone. Even if she liked you, Sky had to keep you at a safe distance.
    At various times, Sky convinced each of us that we were her best friend. It was delicious being Sky’s best friend. She’d plan little treats for you, lend you her coolest clothes and tell you incredibly intimate things about her personal life. Then one day you’d wake up to find you’d been mysteriously put on hold and it was someone else’s turn.
    All the Pinks got burned in this way, yet always when our turn came round to be Sky’s favourite yet again, we all kidded ourselves that this time would be different.
    I’m making it sound like she wasn’t a very nice person - and maybe she wasn’t - but she was truly loveable.
    She also had really bad problems at home.
    I don’t know if I mentioned Sky’s mum wasn’t too stable? One morning Sky came to school and she couldn’t stop smiling.
    “My mum was in such a great mood last night,” she bubbled. “She made us a totally massive stack of pancakes. Of course, Olly insists he’s big enough to toss his own pancake, doesn’t he, and now it’s permanently stuck to the kitchen ceiling!”
    In those days Sky still hoped that one of her mum’s good times would eventually stick for good, like Olly’s pancake. Then, after years of being a deeply depressed single mum, Mrs Nolan got a boyfriend.
    For a time everything seemed rosy. Sky’s mum was happy. Sky’s little brothers totally worshipped Dan and Sky adored him.
    Then, late one night, Sky called me on my mobile, to tell me her mum had locked her out. There’d been thunderstorms all day and Sky was terrified of storms; she sounded hysterical.
    I fetched my step-dad, who threw on some clothes and drove off to pick her up. She looked half-drowned when he brought her back, rainwater dripping off her nose, hair in sodden rats’ tails. Her mum hadn’t even let her take her shoes.
    Mum ran her a hot bath while I made up the sofa bed and dug out a clean T-shirt for Sky to sleep in. An hour later, I was still trying, not very successfully, to get back to sleep, when I heard her creep into my room.
    I silently moved over to let her climb in. I could feel tiny tremors going through her, like she was getting flu. I tentatively touched