Take My Word for It Read Free Page B

ask me, it’s dangerous. Once you start, you don’t stop. There’s things I have to keep secret, and it’s easiest to do that if you don’t talk about yourself too much. It cuts down the risks.
    Marina’s got the right idea, I reckon. Anyway, my life’s so seriously stuffed that there’s nothing I can do about it. My Mum and Dad are never going to get back together, and I don’t even want them to. There’s no way Dad’s ever going to buy ‘Connewarre’ again. That’d be the only thing that would make me happy. No, that’s not true—it’s too late for Dad just to buy it back, as though that would fix everything. My ambition is to get enough money when I’m older to buy it myself, and live there fulltime.
    Oh, I’m too depressed to write any more.
    F EBRUARY 27
    Wow, the fan sure got splattered tonight. Kate caught Marina with one hand in her locker and Kate’s Rock City shirt in the other. Kate went off like a space shuttle, grabbed Marina and chucked her half way across the dorm, yelling and screaming as only Kate can. As soon as Marina got a chance she snuck out of the dorm and disappeared, which turned out to be a major problem when we couldn’t find her again. Eventually we had to tell Mrs Graham, and the prefects got sent out to search. They found her in the Bag Room having a nervous breakdown, so now she’s in Sick Bay for the night, and we’re all in trouble.
    It beats me how Marina can steal stuff and yet we end up in trouble.
    Still, as Mrs Graham said, we don’t know for sure that she was stealing. The trouble with Marina is you never know where you are with her, ’cos she doesn’t defend herself. But I don’t think Mrs Graham was very fair to us. We’ve been pretty good to Marina, if you ask me. She hardly gets a hard time from anyone, and we often do her jobs for her, and we’re always offering to help her or give her things. It’s a bit hard when you don’t get any response though.
    I wonder if she was knocking off Kate’s shirt. She wouldn’t want to be. But she might have just been admiring it, or she could have found it lying around and been doing her a favour by putting it back. Kate’s pretty sure it was in her locker though.
    Anything’s possible, but we’ll probably never know the truth. Wonder if she took my ten bucks?
    F EBRUARY 28
    Rowing was so slack today. Eddie didn’t turn up, so Mr Bostock looked after us, as well as the Thirds, and I mean fair enough he had to give the Thirds most of his time, but he could have given us a few minutes at least. Instead he sent us on a run for about half an hour then just had us do sprints up and down the river. Because he wasn’t watching, no-one tried much. Ho hum, what a waste of time, what a useless afternoon.
    M ARCH 5
    Tracey’s right about one thing. I don’t have any close friends. I don’t know if she’s right about why, but the way I see it, a lot of people like me OK but that’s where it stops. The funny thing is that I haven’t got any serious enemies at the moment, except Ann maybe. Even though I have quite a few fights, I try hard to get on with everyone most of the time. I’m always sharing tuck and lending people stuff and helping with jobs, and I’m pretty good friends with people like Issy and Kizzy and Trace. But no-one was there when I really needed them. Oh I suppose I should learn to ask, but I don’t seem too good at that.
    Today, for instance, we had to clean the boats, and I ended up doing ours myself, ’cos all the others made excuses or hypo’d out of it. Then at tea I sat with Marina ’cos she was on her own again and looking pathetic. Then I spent most of first Prep teaching Sophie how to do sine and cos and tan. Sometimes it all gets a bit too much. Sometimes I feel like doing terrible things. That last time haunts me. I don’t want to