Sugar and Spice by Jean Ure

own personal bodyguard. My minder! So long as I did what she told me, I’d be safe. I know it was a bit wimpish of me, but it did feel good to have someone on my side for once.
    As soon as we were sitting at our desks, Karina turned to me and hissed, “What was all that about?”
    I said, “Oh! Nothing, really. Just homework.”
    “What d’you mean, just homework?”
    I smiled; a bit shamefaced. “Shay says I ought to do it.”

    “Why?” Karina’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What’s it got to do with her? I thought you were going to stop all the goody-goody boffin stuff?”
    I said, “Y-yes. Well – maybe. I don’t know!” I felt like a puppet, being jerked about in all different directions. “It’s difficult,” I said.
    “You’re just weak,” said Karina. Fortunately everyone else was yelling at the top of their voice, so no one but me could hear her. “You just let her push you around! Don’t blame me when everyone turns against you. I could join Amie’s lot tomorrow, if I wanted. It’s what I’ll do,” she said. “I will! I’ll tell Amie we’re not together any more.”
    We never had been together; not really. All the same, I hate upsetting people and I didn’t want Karina to feel like I’d driven her away. I whispered, “I’ll do myhomework but I won’t write stuff that’s going to be read out.”
    “You’d just better not,” said Karina.
    “Well, I won’t,” I said. “Least, I’ll try not to.”
    I added that bit to myself, very low, so Karina couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure, if Mr Kirk set us an essay on something really interesting, that I’d be able to stop myself. Sometimes when I start writing I get, like, carried away, and that’s when the flocks of sheep start appearing, and moons start turning into bananas.
    There wasn’t any problem with that night’s homework cos all we’d had to do for Mr Kirk was read ten pages of The Diary of Anne Frank, and I’d already done that. I’d not only read ten pages, I’d read the whole book. I’d sat up in bed and finished it by torchlight, while the Terrible Two grunted and groaned and snuffled in their sleep. It was so funny in places, and so sad in others, that I couldn’t tear myself away from it.

    Even when I’d come to the end, I couldn’t get to sleep for thinking about it. Imagining how it must have been, when the Nazis came. Imagining how it might have been, if they hadn’t come. If Anne Frank had grown up and got married and had children of her own.
    Karina said it was just utterly boring and she didn’t know what people saw in it. According to Karina, if Anne Frank hadn’t been discovered by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, no one would ever have bothered reading her stupid diary.
    It was when Karina said things like that that I knew we couldn’t ever be friends. I knew that if Mr Kirk had set us an essay on Anne Frank, I’d have dashed off ten pages of my own, just like that, and wouldn’t have cared if Karina had gone off to join Amie Phillips. However, all we had for homework that night was maths. Oh, dear! I really have to concentrate so hard on maths. But I decided that I would. I’d make a determined effort, because dear Mrs Saeed never embarrassed me, or singled me out, even when I did get good marks. Also, of course, Shay would be pleased with me. I wanted Shay to be pleased. At any rate, I certainly didn’t want her to be cross!
    So after tea I cleared a space on the kitchen table and sat down with my maths book and started to concentrate. It was fractions, at which I’m quite hopeless. Especially decimal fractions. But I remembered Mrs Henson tellingme: “You can do it, Ruth, if you just put your mind to it.” That was fractions, too. I seem to have a big black hole in my brain when it comes to numbers. But I could do it!
    I chewed the top of my pen. 0.35 + 0.712 + 0.9…I couldn’t even use a calculator, cos my dear little brother had gone and ruined the only one we had. He’d