Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel Read Free

Sarah, Amy and Jayde talking about
pandas/whales/tigers to assorted Year Five and Six kids. Lately, our numbers have
dwindled and the week before half-term even Sarah made an excuse not to come, so it was
just me, sitting alone in the science room after 3.30, looking at my home-made
endangered species leaflets and wondering if I was the only one who actually cared.
Sometimes I skip the school bus anyway, and walk up to meet Skye, Summer and Cherry at
the high school, and we go into town and drink smoothies and mooch around the shops and
catch the town bus home at half five.
    It looks like I’ll be catching that
bus today. I trudge out of the school gates and turn the corner, my panda hat dripping,
and walk right into a nightmare.
    Lawrie Marshall is in the shady walkway next
to the school gym. He is locked in battle with a small, scrawny kid, holding him by the
jacket, shaking him, growling something angry right into his face.
    The kid looks terrified, his eyes wide with
fear, and I recognize the weaselly Year Six kid from earlier, the one who thought that
pandas should branch out a bit and eat Big Macs and chocolate fridge cake.
    My heart thuds. I hate bullying of any kind,
and this is not name-calling or teasing, it is full-on aggression. Lawrie shoves the
little kid up against the gym wall, and the kid winces. He wriggles helplessly, trying
to get away, but Lawrie is two years older, six inches taller and a whole lot angrier.
The little kid is going to be mincemeat.
    ‘Let him go!’ I scream, and two
pairs of startled eyes swivel to look at me.
    ‘Push off, panda girl,’ Lawrie
snarls. ‘This is none of your business!’
    That does it. I think of my hat, fluttering
from the flagpole, a dozen nasty, snide remarks Lawrie Marshall has made in the year
since he joined our school. I look at the Year Six kid, squirming as he struggles, and I
see red.
    I fling myself at Lawrie Marshall, grabbing
his arms, pulling him backwards, away from the boy. His victim slithers free, grabs his
abandoned sports bag and sprintsoff along the walkway, and Lawrie
Marshall rounds on me, his face dark with fury.
    ‘You idiot!’ he yells.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’
    ‘Idiot? Me?’ I yell back at him.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself! You’re loads bigger than that little
kid, and old enough to know better … bullying sucks! Only losers have to
threaten those who are weaker than themselves to feel good. D’you think it makes
you tough? D’you think it makes you hard? It doesn’t, it just makes you a
lousy, rotten bully!’
    Lawrie Marshall looks disgusted. His lip
curls, his eyes flash and his nostrils flare dangerously. His fists are clenched and
trembling, as if fighting the urge to lash out at me. Suddenly I’m scared, aware
that I have just broken up a fight, yelled at a bully, shouted insults at the school
misfit. Here I am on a shady walkway tucked away from the road with a psychopathic
schoolboy, and trust me, he is not happy.
    ‘Idiot,’ he says again, his
voice thick with scorn. ‘You really think you’re something, don’t you?
You reckon you can save the world, rescue the panda and wipe out bullying all in one
day, then go home and eat your stupid littlecakes. You don’t
have a clue about the real world! You don’t know what you’re talking
about!’
    Lawrie Marshall strides away, leaving me
alone in the rain.

4
    I spot the scrawny Year Six kid in the school
corridor on Friday and corner him, concerned. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask. ‘He
hasn’t bothered you again, has he?’
    ‘Er … no,’ the boy
says shiftily. ‘And yes, thanks, I’m fine. No hassle. No worries.’
    His friends hover nearby, smirking. I can
sense that the kid just wants to escape, but I grab his sleeve and haul him back and he
rolls his eyes and tells his mates he’ll catch up with them. You’d think he
might be at least a little bit grateful that I saved him from being mashed to a pulp,
but I guess that’s boys for