The Girl Who Rode the Wind

I excused my lateness to Miss Gilmore, flung myself down into my seat and opened my textbook as she began writing up stuff on the white board.

Jake was looking at me funny.

“Hey!” he hissed.

I ignored him.

“Hey, Campione!”

I looked up. “Yeah?”

“Where’s your horse?”

There was laughter from Tori and Jessa who sat in the row behind us.

“Hey, Campione!” Jake leaned over towards me. “You know you smell of manure, right?”

I looked down at my boots. They were dirty from the stables I guess, but I hadn’t really noticed. I would have changed them if I had time. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it now. I pretended I hadn’t heard him and began furiously copying down the lesson from the board.

Then suddenly, in front of everyone, Jake flung himself across his desk and began convulsing, coughing and spluttering like he was going to die or something. The whole class was watching him and Miss Gilmore stopped writing on the board.

“Are you all right, Jake?” she asked, looking concerned.

Jake stopped performing and sat up.

“Sorry, miss,” he smirked. “It’s like I can hardly breathe in here because of Campione! She stinks of horse poo!”

The whole class fell apart laughing at this and Jake gave me a look of satisfaction. His humiliation of me was complete.

I thought it would end there, but it didn’t. At lunch he gave a whinny as he walked by me in the cafeteria and made a big deal of holding his nose. I could see him at his table with the other populars, all of them looking over and laughing about it.

I walked home that day and for the first time ever I couldn’t wait to get out of my riding boots.

I didn’t want to talk about it, but Nonna has a way of winkling things out of you. She could tell something was wrong and that night after dinner she sat down on my bed and we had a big talk.

“He’ll have forgotten you by tomorrow, you’ll see,” my nonna said. “With a bully, you have to ignore them, like you don’t care. Then this boy will give up and start on someone else.”

“I am!” I insisted.

I kept on ignoring him, just like Nonna told me. But it didn’t stop. The next day Jake managed to get the seat next to me again and spent the whole class whinnying at me, doing it under his breath, just quiet enough so the teacher couldn’t catch him. He did the same thing in the playground every time he walked past me, and by the end of the week all the other kids were doing it too.

“Do you want me to talk to one of your teachers about it?” Nonna offered.

“No!” I was horrified. “No, honest, I’m fine. Just forget about it …”

I stopped talking about Jake at home. I was worried that Nonna would tell Dad and then the next thing I knew he’d be marching into school to “sort him out”. I was desperate to avoid this happening – almost as desperate as I was for Jake to stop picking on me.

Dad worried about me in a way he’d never done with Johnny and Vincent, or even Donna. She had been a popular when she was at school. Now she was studying to be a beauty therapist, which accounted for the fact that she spent all her time at home practising her make-up in the mirror and painting her nails. We shared a closet – half each. Her half was overflowing. My half was all T-shirts and jeans.

“Can I try on one of your skirts?” I asked Donna.

“Why?” she looked suspicious.

“Because.”

“As long as you don’t ruin it.”

I pulled out her blue skirt with the black spots.

“Can I wear this to school?” I asked.

“Since when do you wear skirts?” Donna arched her over-pencilled brow at me.

“Please, Donna?” I went red in the face.

“OK,” she sighed. “I don’t like that one anyway – you can have it.”

I tried it on.

“It feels strange to have bare legs,” I said.

“You have lovely legs,” Nonna said.

“She has legs like hairy toothpicks!” Donna shot back.

“Donna, be nice to your sister!” Nonna Loretta warned.

“You need some shoes to wear with it,” Donna pointed out.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

“All the populars wear white trainers,” I said.

“Trainers?” Nonna asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Like white sports shoes.”

I looked at the shoes in my half of the closet.

“I can wear these I suppose.” I fished out my usual shoes – a pair of battered old red Converse and put them beside the skirt in my half of the closet.

The next morning, when I got home from helping Dad at the track, Nonna Loretta was waiting for me. She’d made me lunch and there was a box beside it on the kitchen table.

“What’s in the box?” I asked.

“Take a look,” she said.

They were white tennis shoes.