reading

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Extract from Pea’s Book of Best Friends, published in paperback by Puffin Books
Text copyright © Susie Day, 2012

I’M SELMA JOHNSON. If you go to my school you’ll have heard of me. I was the worst girl in the whole of the Infants. I got suspended three times, even though I was just a little kid.

I was even worse when I went up into Year Three. Everyone was scared of me, even the really big tough boys in Year Six. Well, Year Five. OK, they might have been in Year Four, but they were still really horrible to everyone else. I showed them, though. I was a champion fighter – biff, bang, wallop – using my fists.

I said all sorts of stuff too. Sometimes I didn’t even need to say anything, I just looked, frowning so that my eyebrows almost met and my eyes went all squinty and mean. My look was famous. Even the teachers shuddered when I gave them my look. Except Miss Lovejoy. She’s famous for being a fierce old bag, almost as fierce as me.

Only I’m not fierce any more. I’m not mean or mouthy and I don’t even nick stuff. I haven’t been in a fight for ages and ages. It’s all because of Tina. You know, Tina Maynard. Do you know her too? She’s one of the triplets. They’re identical, Phil and Maddie and Tina. Three sisters with short fair hair and big blue eyes. To be absolutely truthful, I still sometimes get Phil and Maddie muddled up.

I always know which one’s Tina. So does everyone. It’s easy-peasy picking her out because she’s half the size of her sisters. Well, maybe a bit more than half. But she only comes up to their shoulders, honest. It’s because she was born with a funny heart and she was very ill when she was small. Smaller than she is now, I mean. She’s still a little squirt. She’s by far the littlest in our class. I’m the biggest.

I think I liked her right from the start, when Miss Lovejoy made us sit together right at the front of the class. Maybe I just envied her. She was the sort of girl I’d always secretly wanted to be. Little, cute, pretty. Everyone liked her and made a fuss of her, especially her sisters. When their mum picked the triplets up from school at the end of the day, she always smiled at them and asked them all sorts of stuff. She often picked Tina up and gave her a special hug, as if she was still a little baby. It made me feel all hot and aching and envious.

So I started being mean to her. It was easy-peasy because she was such a little wuss. I kicked her under the table and jogged her arm when she was drawing. She was soooo good at drawing, whereas I can’t draw for toffee. Once I scribbled all over her special butterfly picture. It felt good when I was doing it, but then, seeing the black scrubby mess on the page and knowing I’d ruined it, I felt sick.

I couldn’t stop being mean to her, though. I liked seeing her funny little face screw up because she was trying not to cry. It meant I was top dog – big, powerful, menacing Selma. She was just silly little squirt Tina, and I could always get the better of her.

One day Tina brought this teeny little china dolly into school in secret, and I snatched it off her and pretended I’d flushed it down the toilet. I was going to, but that would have been too mean. And I wanted the dolly for myself. My horrible little brother Sam had just got hold of my old Princess Elsa doll and stamped on her. I asked Mum for another one, but she said I was too old for flipping dolls and to quit bothering her because I was doing her head in.

I loved Tina’s little china dolly. I could keep her tucked safe in my hand so Sam couldn’t see her. I’d go to sleep holding her, though sometimes I lay awake worrying that Tina didn’t have anything to hold any more.

But she’s my dolly now. Tina said I could have her – because we’re not worst enemies any more, we’re best friends! Our teacher, Miss Lovejoy, picked us to make a butterfly garden out of an old patch of earth at the end of the playground. I did nearly all of it myself, digging and digging and digging.

Tina knew which flowers we needed, and we planted them all, and by the time school broke up the butterflies had started coming. Not heaps and heaps – Miss Lovejoy says it will take time – but we’ve seen some cabbage whites and a brimstone and quite a few red admirals. They’re all types of butterfly. Tina’s drawn a picture of each one in this Butterfly Diary we’re keeping.

Miss Lovejoy has given us special permission to come into school during the holidays so we can look out for more butterflies in our garden. Not the whole class. Not even Phil and Maddie. Just Tina and me. Like I said, we’re best friends now.