Finding Cherokee Brown. Siobhan Curham
an extremely spooked person. ‘But you can’t go reading other people’s mail. It’s not right.’
‘Oh, and binning it is?’ I stumbled to my feet, clutching the card to my chest. ‘It’s really weird, because this person, Cherokee Brown, is fifteen today too. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence? That we share the same birthday and someone thinks we share the same address.’ I didn’t have a clue what the coincidence meant, but it was obvious from her flushed face that Mum did.
‘What did he say?’ she asked, staring at me.
‘What did who say?’ I watched as her gaze dropped to the card.
‘What did he say?’ This time Mum almost screamed it. I looked at her in shock.
‘What’s going on, ladies?’ We both turned to see Alan poking his head round the door. He never actually sets foot in my room – I think he can sense the anti-life-coaching force field I’ve erected with my mental powers to keep him out. ‘Fiona? Claire? Is everything OK?’
‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine,’ Mum replied sharply over her shoulder. ‘Can you go and get the boys up for breakfast? We’ll be down in a minute.’
Alan smiled, his teeth all square and straight like the white keys on a piano. ‘Okey-dokey. Happy birthday, Claire-Bear.’
I gritted my teeth and smiled back. ‘Thanks.’
As soon as we heard his feet padding off down the stairs Mum and I turned back to look at each other.
‘What did who say, Mum? And how did you know it was from a man?’ I waved the card at her. ‘You know who sent this, don’t you? You recognised the writing and that’s why you threw it in the bin. Who is he? Who’s Steve? And who is Cherokee Brown? Why won’t you just tell me?’
Mum’s head slumped. She stuffed her hands inside the pockets of her tracksuit top and scuffed one of her bare feet on the floor. She looked like a little girl who’d just been told she couldn’t go out to play.
‘You are,’ she muttered.
‘What?’
‘You are Cherokee Brown.’
Chapter Two
‘It never ceases to amaze me how many writers seem to forget that they have five senses. When you are describing a scene don’t just tell the reader what your character is seeing, write about what they can hear, smell, touch and taste as well.’
Agatha Dashwood,
So You Want to Write a Novel?
When most people hear laughter they instantly look around to see where the joke is and whether they can join in. But when you know that you actually are the joke, even the slightest snigger makes you want to crawl behind the nearest rock and hide. Unfortunately there aren’t any rocks on the way to school. There isn’t anything much except house after boring house, all exactly the same with their paved front gardens and green wheelie bins standing guard like giant toads. I’ve tried loads of things to make the walk more interesting and less like a death-row march. Spying through gaps in net curtains, making up weird titles from the letters on car number plates, only treading on the cracks in the pavement. But today, for the first time in months, I didn’t have to do anything to take my mind off the laughter that I knew was coming. My head was rammed to the brim with my mum’s revelation. I was Cherokee Brown, or at least that was what I’d been called when I was first born, and the card was from my real dad whose name, apparently, is Steve Brown.
But why had he got in touch now – after fifteen years of nothing? Why had he come back from America? What had happened to his ‘commitment issues’? Question after question kept popping into my head, but I still didn’t have any answers. Mum had told me we’d have a proper talk about it after school, when Alan took the twins to Beavers, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it through the day without going crazy from the shock. Once upon a time I had been called Cherokee Brown.
‘Oi, hop-a-long!’
I didn’t need to turn round to know that the person shouting at me was David Marsh. And wherever David went, Tricia Donaldson was sure to be swaggering along beside him, pursing her glossy lips and flicking her straw-blonde hair. David and Tricia are the pretend-gangster king and queen of Rayners High, worshipped by their adoring, pretend-gangster followers. I carried on walking and tried to distract myself. What would someone with a name like Cherokee Brown look like, I wondered. She would probably have long dark hair in braids and wear –
‘I’m talking to you,’ David called out. A load of laughter rang out like machine-gun fire; there were obviously quite a lot of them today. I quickened my pace, still not turning round. Cherokee would wear beads and boots and be really good at horse riding. I felt something hit my back and heard more machine-gun laughter. In my mind I saw Cherokee Brown pull an arrow from a leather sheath on her belt and spin round to face them, her eyes glinting with rage. I took off my blazer. The shattered remains of an egg were sliding down the black nylon, slimy and glistening in the sun.
‘Ew, something round here stinks,’ I heard Tricia say from right behind me. ‘Like blocked drains. Or rotten eggs.’
More laughter; this time it was so high-pitched it seemed to drill right into my brain. The sunshine felt like it was getting brighter too, but no matter how hard I blinked I couldn’t stop my eyes from burning.
Someone shoved into me as they all jostled past.
‘Stupid cripple.’
‘Watch out, she might come after you.’
‘Nah, she ain’t got a leg to stand on.’
This last line got the most laughs, even though it’s complete crap. They just can’t seem to get over the fact that one of my legs happens to be a few centimetres shorter than the other. I walk with a limp; big deal. But the thing is, in our school you only need to have one freckle out of place and it’s enough to have you labelled a freak. When Helen was here it was fine. We didn’t really have many other friends but we didn’t need them. No one seemed to notice my limp back then; it was as if our friendship was like some kind of cloak of invisibility. But now it feels as if I walk around with a big spotlight on me all the time, under a banner saying CRIPPLE.
David and Tricia and the others walked off, still laughing. I stuffed my blazer into my bag. I’d clean it when I got into school. I looked down the road to where Rayners High loomed like a concrete monster, waiting to swallow me whole. And I thought of yet another crappy day spent drifting round the edges of the corridors, trying to make myself invisible. Don’t let them beat you, I told myself for about the millionth time. Anne Frank wouldn’t let them beat her. She didn’t even let the Nazis beat her. Not where it counted, in her head. I took a deep breath, pulled myself up straight so my limp wouldn’t be so noticeable, and carried on down the road.
After washing my blazer in the sink in the disabled loo – I didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into Tricia in the normal toilets – I headed straight for my form room. The bell for registration hadn’t gone yet but I like being the first one there; it makes me feel better prepared. When I got to the classroom I peered through the small pane of glass in the centre of the door. Miss Davis was sat behind her desk with her eyes closed and her chubby hands clasped in front of her. White iPod wires snaked down from her ears, over her huge chest and into her lap. I opened the door and stepped inside. As usual the classroom was baking hot and stank of stale sweat and Miss Davis’s floral perfume.
‘I am strong.’
I stopped dead and stared at Miss Davis in shock.
‘I am strong,’ Miss Davis murmured again, her eyes still closed. ‘I am strong as a mighty oak rooted in the ground.’
I stood, frozen in horror. She was obviously repeating something