GingerSnaps Read online

  GingerSnaps

  Cathy Cassidy

  Xlibris Corp (2008)

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  Gone are the days when Ginger was an outsider, always on the fringes of friendship. She's swapped puppy fat and pigtails for make-up and hair straighteners and never looked back - until now. Ginger and Shannon are best mates, but when they befriend lonely Emily, everything changes. Even the saxophone-playing boy in the trilby hat can't help - he's part of the problem . . . Are Ginger and Shannon drifting apart or can they stay best friends for ever? A gorgeously tender-hearted story about secrets, friends and fitting in from the new queen of tween, Cathy Cassidy. Sure to ring true with readers of 8-13.

  Have you ever wished you could re-invent yourself, be popular, confident, cool? That’s exactly what Ginger does… or does she? When she falls for the weird, wonderful boy with the trilby hat and the saxophone, her best friend Shannon doesn’t approve — and, suddenly, Ginger is torn. Add quiet, clever Emily to the mix and it looks as if everything is changing — pretty soon Ginger might just find herself back on the outside looking in…

  Gingersnaps is a book about fear, friendship and falling for the wrong boy. Ginger must learn to believe in herself before she can work out who her true friends are. Will she stick with cool, calculating Shannon — or take a risk and follow her heart? You’ll have to wait and see, but one thing’s for sure — this is a story that will get you thinking.

  A true friend is fun, loyal, caring, kind, thoughtful… and always lets you be yourself. Look after your mates, even if they’re of the weird and wonderful variety and not the cool and popular kind! And remember that the ‘wrong’ boy can sometimes turn out to be the right boy after all…

  I hope you enjoy the book!

  Best wishes,

  Cathy Cassidy x

  cathycassidy.com

  Books by Cathy Cassidy

  DIZZY

  DRIFTWOOD

  INDIGO BLUE

  SCARLETT

  SUNDAE GIRL

  LUCKY STAR

  GINGERSNAPS

  cathy cassidy

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi − 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2008

  1

  Text copyright © Cathy Cassidy, 2008

  Illustrations copyright © Sara Flavell, 2008

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written

  permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  978-0-14-191097-0

  Thanks…

  Big hugs to Liam, Cal and Caitlin for the love, the laughs and the endless support, and of course to Mum, Joan, Andy, Lori and all my fab family. Thanks to my lovely friends, Sheena, Helen, Fiona, Mary-Jane and all my fab and lovely friends, far and near; to Martyn for the adding-up; Tim for the web help; and John for driving the van.

  Thanks, Magi, for being a brilliant first reader and convincing me that there was a story there, somewhere… and my fab new editor, Amanda, for helping me to uncover it! Thanks also to Adele, Francesca, Sophie, Sara, Kirsten, Emily, Ali, Sarah, Jennie and the whole cool Puffin team, and, as always, to best-ever agent Darley and his angels. Thanks to the long-ago Coventry kids who once worked on George mag for the inspiration, and the not-so-long-ago team from Dalry Primary who worked on the original S’cool… and, of course, to Donald for the sax playing!

  Last, but definitely not least, thank you to my readers… your emails, letters and pics always make all the hard work worthwhile. Keep reading, keep smiling… and follow your dreams!

  For Dad (always)

  Ginger Brown… it sounds like a colour on a paint chart, not a name. It sounds like a joke, or a new shade of hair dye, or one of those treacly sort of cakes that nobody really likes. What kind of parents would call their kid something like that? Well, mine, obviously.

  They didn’t mean to ruin my life. They thought they were being quirky and cool and original, but actually they were working their way through the spice rack, taking inspiration from those little jars with funny names and even funnier ingredients. Seriously, if Dad hadn’t been a curry fanatic, it might never have happened.

  They named my big sister Cassia, after a sort of aromatic tree bark you put in chicken korma, and me… well, they named me Ginger. If I didn’t have hair the colour of grated carrots, I’d maybe be able to forgive them… but then again, maybe not.

  With a name like Ginger, I didn’t stand a chance.

  ∗

  I worked that out way back, on the very first day of primary school, when I told the teacher my name and saw her mouth twitch into a smirk. It was worse with the kids – they didn’t just smirk, they laughed. The boys pulled my plaits and asked why my parents named me after my hair colour, and the girls asked if I thought I was one of the Spice Girls. Fun, huh?

  I went home after the first day and told Mum and Dad I wanted a different name, like Kerri or Emma or Sophie, and they just laughed and told me not to be silly. It was good to be different, they said, and Ginger was a beautiful name – unique, striking, unforgettable.

  Well, it was that, all right.

  I never really knew what to say to the jokes and the teasing. ‘Don’t let it get to you,’ Cass used to tell me. ‘Just laugh it off, or ignore it, OK?’

  It was easy for her to say. She was in high school by then, cool and confident and always surrounded by friends. She had auburn hair too, but nobody ever seemed to call her names.

  I worked out that the easiest way to avoid being teased was to keep my mouth shut, keep my head down and pretend I didn’t care.

  ‘She’s very quiet,’ Miss Kaseem told my parents at the start of Year Six. ‘A lovely girl, but she doesn’t join in with the others much. Not at all like Cassia was.’

  I suppose I should be grateful Miss Kaseem didn’t tell them the rest of it. How I never got picked for playground games, never had a partner for PE or project work, never got invited to sleepovers or parties or trips to the cinema with the other girls. I was an outsider, a loser. I tried to be invisible, sitting on my own in the lunch hall, eating an extra helping of apple pie and custard because it was something to do, a way to fill the time, a way to fill the hole inside me, the place where the loneliness was.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ I heard Chelsie Martin say to her friends one day. ‘She’s soooo fat! I saw her eat two packets of c
risps at break, and she had an extra helping of chips at lunch. Gross!’

  I just sat and smiled and pretended I hadn’t heard, and when Chelsie had gone I ate a Twix I’d been saving for later, without even tasting it.

  I thought it would go on like that forever.

  Mum and Dad were anxious by then, always asking if I wanted to invite a friend over for tea, or go to dance classes like Cass, or swimming club. ‘It’d be fun,’ Mum would wheedle. ‘You’d make lots of new friends, and get fit too…’

  That’s how I knew they thought I was fat too, as well as a loser. I wasn’t the right kind of daughter. I wasn’t the kind of girl who could make a name like Ginger seem cute and quirky.

  When my eleventh birthday rolled around, Mum and Dad asked if I wanted a party. I said no, I was too old for that kind of thing.

  ‘You’re never too old for fun,’ Dad had said, and I could see a flicker of something behind his gaze. Worry? Disappointment? ‘You never have your friends round. What about a trip to the cinema, or the ice rink? Would that be grown-up enough for you?’

  Sometimes, you go along with something, even though you know it’s a bad, bad idea. ‘What if nobody comes?’ I’d said feebly to Cass, but she’d just laughed.

  ‘Of course they’ll come,’ she’d said.

  So we planned an afternoon at the ice rink, all expenses paid, followed by burger and chips in the cafe that looked over it. Mum had made a three-layer chocolate cake for afterwards, with eleven little candles. I was excited, in spite of myself. Cass let me use some of her sparkly eyeshadow, and I wore my new pink minidress with the pop-art flowers, and a new pair of jeans. I thought I looked good.

  We’d arranged to meet outside the ice rink at two. Emily Croft and Meg Walters arrived dead on time. They were best friends, geeky, serious girls who sometimes let me hang out with them at break. ‘Who else is coming?’ they asked.

  ‘Oh, everybody,’ I told them, even though there was already a little seed of doubt eating away at my heart. ‘Chelsie and Jenna and Carly and Faye… everyone.’

  I’d asked every girl in my class, because Cass said there was room for everyone at the ice rink, and even if they weren’t all special mates, it would be a good chance to get to know them a bit more. I wanted to be the kind of girl who could invite a whole bunch of kids to her party. I didn’t want to let her down. I asked everyone, and most people had said they’d be there.

  So where were they? At half past two, Dad looked at his watch for the hundredth time and said maybe the others had got mixed up about the time. ‘Cass, you take Ginger and the girls in,’ he decided. ‘Your mum and I can stay here for a bit, wait for the others. Perhaps they thought it was three?’

  Emily Croft took a folded invitation from her pocket and looked at it. ‘It says two,’ she said, and I hated her for that, for not pretending that there was a mistake or a misprint or a traffic jam in town… anything, anything at all to take away the sick ache inside me.

  Cass took Emily, Meg and me through to the rink. I felt like I was holding myself together, as if the slightest knock might make me crumble. There was a stinging sensation behind my eyes. We handed in our shoes and pulled on ugly white boots with sharp silver blades, lacing them up tightly. Then we clomped across to the rink, wobbling slightly, and edged our way on to the ice. It was cold, and my feet felt like they could slip from under me at any moment.

  At first all I could do was cling on to the edge, but Cass wasn’t going to allow that, of course. She took my hand and prised me away from the rail, and slowly, haltingly, I took my first few steps on the ice. It was fun. Pretty soon the four of us were slithering about, grabbing on to each other and yelping with terror whenever anyone swooped past.

  After a while, Cass spotted Mum and Dad, watching from the sides, and skated over to talk to them, leaving Emily, Meg and me together. That’s when I saw them – Chelsie, Jenna, Carly and Faye – just ahead of us on the ice.

  My face lit up. They were here after all – Chelsie and the others, the four most popular girls in the class. It must have been a mix-up about the time, like Dad said. I skated towards them with a grin a mile wide.

  Chelsie spoke first. ‘Hi, Ginger,’ she said. Her voice sounded mean and smirky, the way it always did when she spoke to me. Then again, that wasn’t exactly often. ‘Thought we might see you here. Sorry we couldn’t make your party… we had something better to do.’

  Chelsie and the others dissolved into giggles, while I struggled to make sense of what she’d said. Couldn’t make the party? Something better to do? But they were here, weren’t they? And then it dawned on me.

  They hadn’t arrived late, Dad hadn’t paid them in. They’d been here all along, watching, waiting. They were here to laugh at me. My cheeks flamed.

  ‘Look!’ Faye sniggered. ‘Her face matches her hair!’

  I wished a hole would appear in the ice, a hole I could fall into and disappear forever. It didn’t, of course. I was vaguely aware of Emily and Meg just behind me, and I knew that Mum, Dad and Cass were here somewhere too. I tried to turn, to get away from Chelsie’s cold eyes and Faye’s twisted smile, but the blades slipped beneath me and I fell down, hard, with the sound of laughter in my ears.

  Emily crouched beside me on the ice. ‘Ignore them,’ she said kindly. ‘Come on, Ginger. Don’t let them win.’

  By the time I crawled on to my hands and knees, Chelsie and the others were skating away, looking back at me over their shoulders. ‘Honestly!’ I heard Chelsie say. ‘She looks just like a pig… a fat, ugly, ginger pig.’

  When I think back, that’s the bit I remember. The shame, the hurt, the ice freezing my grazed palms and numbing my heart. I’ll never forget it.

  Emily and Meg helped me to the edge of the rink, and I told Mum, Dad and Cass I’d hurt myself falling. We all clomped off the ice, handed in our boots and went up to the cafe for burger and chips, only I couldn’t eat a single bite of mine. Mum brought out the chocolate-layer cake and lit the candles, and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’.

  My eyes slid away from the cake and down towards the rink below, where I could see Chelsie and Jenna and Carly and Faye skating round and round, laughing, tossing their hair, flirting with boys. I hated them, sure, but a part of me wanted to be like them too.

  I blew out the candles and made a wish.

  They say you should be careful what you wish for, but hey, I got what I wanted – I’m in Year Eight now, and things are very different.

  You can make a wish come true, if you’re determined. You can put the past behind you, be somebody new, and that’s what I did. I moved on. These days, I try not to think about the sad, scared little girl I used to be… she’s in the past, and that’s a place I’m not going back to, not ever.

  I met Shannon on my first ever day at Kinnerton High. I held my head high, my shoulders back, the way Cass had taught me. I’d tried so hard to look the part – Cass had taken me shopping for uniform, rejecting the regulation knee-length pleated skirts and lace-up shoes for a mini from New Look and black Rocket Dog pumps. I looked good, but still, I was shaking inside.

  ‘First impressions,’ Cass had said. ‘They count, Ginger. Look confident. Act like you belong. You can do it.’

  I wasn’t so sure. My heart was thumping so hard it felt like all the world would see it, and my stomach seemed to have turned to water. I flopped down in a corner of the classroom and started painting my fingernails with ten different shades of felt pen to camouflage the fear, and I wondered why, after all the hard work, all the effort, I was still alone.

  ‘Things will change for you, at high school,’ Cass had said. ‘I promise, Ginger.’

  But what if they didn’t?

  Then Shannon walked into the classroom, late as usual. She had long, shiny hair, like a waterfall of sunshine, and her skin was golden brown, as if she’d spent the whole of her life up till then in the sun. Well, she probably had.

  She scanned the classroom, looking at each of us in turn, t
hen grinned and pulled out the chair next to mine.

  ‘Love the hair,’ she’d said, one eyebrow raised. ‘Strawberry blonde. Cool.’

  It had taken me an hour that morning to smooth it into place with styling serum and Cass’s straighteners. I knew I’d do the same every day from now on, if it meant that Shannon liked my hair.

  ‘We should stick together,’ she’d said, slicking on some lipgloss while the teacher’s back was turned. ‘Friends, yeah?’

  ‘Friends,’ I’d agreed.

  Everything changed for me then. I had a friend, a cool, careless friend, the kind I’d always wanted. I never looked back.

  All that was a year ago now. It’s the first day of a brand-new school year, the first day of Year Eight, and it’s kind of chaotic. Kids are milling everywhere, little kids in too-big blazers and shiny shoes, clutching their bags and clogging up the pavements.

  ‘Ugh,’ Shannon sighs. ‘Year Sevens. They’re just so… squeaky clean! Were we ever like that?’

  ‘No way,’ I bluff. ‘Not a chance.’

  Shannon laughs. A year ago, she walked into Kinnerton High like she owned the place. She picked me out of the crowd in the mistaken belief that I was cool too, and I kept up the pretence until, somewhere along the line, I started to believe it myself.

  Shannon will never know how scared I was that day. Why should she? I’ve come a long way. Chelsie Martin is a distant memory now. After primary, she went off to a private boarding school in Sussex, but even if she were here, she wouldn’t recognize me, I swear. Jenna, Carly and Faye go to Kinnerton High, though they’re not in any of my classes. I catch them looking at me sometimes, in the lunch hall or at break, and I think I see a kind of respect in their eyes these days.