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the bomb-bay doors (my mouth) and pressed the release button and, plop!, the bomb (the words) landed right in Lisa’s lap. Then she took it to school and laid it in the middle of the playground and detonated it. Blammo! Everything I’d had at that place was gone.
    I
hate
that girl. She’s
evil
for doing that. (I’m crying; I can’t believe I’d let them make me cry. It must be PMS. It’s about that time, I think. It must be.) But I should’ve known I’d get it wrong. After four years sitting quietly with Natalie in a corner of the yard, of course everyone knew I was pretending when I startedcutting loose with Donna and Lisa. Now I figure they all saw through me. They just sat around waiting for me to blow it, and it was only a matter of time before I did. Nobody told me that if something stupid happens to you, like getting pregnant, you
don’t
tell your best friend, if she’s a ‘best friend’ like Lisa. I should’ve been able to see that—if I hadn’t been pretending, if I hadn’t wanted friends so badly that she wheedled the story out of me, if I hadn’t been trying to impress her with how experienced I was, if I’d bloody well
thought about it
! I mean, I knew that Lisa, underneath the dizzy surface she uses, is a really hard person, really judgemental. Sometimes she turns on the charm and sometimes she turns on the freezer. I remember (it hurts) how she tried to keep the charm going when I started telling her. Suddenly we were both acting. We weren’t best friends any more—some security wall, like they have in banks, had shot up between us. On one side she was staring, her eyes hard with dislike, her brain whirring; on the other side I was spitting it out, gobbet after gobbet, the stuff of juicy gossip.
    I managed to stop myself before I named Brenner. I managed to not say a few things when she turned on me and asked. I stopped and sat perfectly still, biting my lips closed.
    Then suddenly she remembered she had to go home ‘to help her mum’. And as she was going I said ‘This is just between us, right, Lisa?’ as fiercely as I could, but it was too late. ‘Sure,’ she said, and looked away. She was already freezing over. ‘See you later.’
    Yeah well,
see
you later, but we haven’t
spoken
to each other since. I thought it’d die down over Christmas, but this year is worse than ever. The looks I get! That awful feeling when anyone who finds themselves near you immediately starts inching away. It’s foul! I keep my head down and work, trying to focus my panicking brain, come home, collapse on the bed, and when I wake up do homework, watch TV, try not to think about the nextday unless the next day’s Saturday or Sunday. Weekend memories keep me strong for the first couple of days before desperation for the
next
weekend takes over. Sometimes on a Friday I think I’m really going to crack up. There’s a really wild feeling at our school on Friday—everybody’s stirred up and practically partying already. Fridays I can’t tell whether people are going to leave me alone or come on extra strong to counteract their boredom. I mean, Mondays I
know
Brenner’ll be in a foul mood and Lisa’ll be hung over and Donna freezer-faced and powermongery, but Fridays I just
can’t tell.
All day I have to watch my back, and when I get home … the relief, the freedom—it’s dizzying.
    We went to the clinic, Mum and I. Outside, after the counselling, a clutch of people flaunted aborted-foetus placards. One caught my eye and mourned,
’Don’t
kill your baby!’
    ‘Take no notice,’ Mum said when we got out of earshot. ‘A person’s entitled to a choice.’
    I thought about the person inside me, who next week wouldn’t even exist.
No, not person. Not baby.
Growth, to be excised, like a fibroid. Humungous anxiety, to be removed. Or so I thought, before I’d opened the bomb bay.
    I jig school at lunchtime to go to Pug’s. It’s too easy; I just wait until the teacher on yard duty’s up the