The Joiners pt 16.

by
Angharad

---

Penny dropped Carrie outside her new school, she'd felt sick at breakfast but had managed to force down a slice of toast with jam on and a cup of tea. Penny had given her some oatmeal biscuits to take with her in case she got peckish and reminded her that they had a tuck shop which sold crisps and buns and other things.

She had a packed lunch and a drink with her, so she should survive the day. Inside her backpack, apart from her makeup bag and purse, was a folded bag in case she had books to bring home with her. Her pencil case was in there too and a small notebook. She was well prepared and it was just as well because the morning raced by as she found out where she had to go for each lesson and most of them produced a text book and an exercise book for each subject. Some of the text books were the same as the ones from her old school, so she was familiar with them, but the history book and the one for geography were different as was the English book they had.

She was given the English literature novel they were reading, Silas Marner by George Eliot, aka Mary Ann Evans. That made her feel good, another woman who'd been known by a boy's name and she'd read the book last term, so she could skim through it just enough to answer questions in the class or if she had to do a homework essay.

Two girls, Michelle and Jane had taken her under their wings and as they shared most of her classes, helped her navigate the buildings and carry her increasing load of text and exercise books. Struggling to carry them out to the car, she joked to her mum, who'd come to fetch her, she knew why they were called exercise books - they get jolly heavy.

"So how did you get on?" asked Penny, "was it as bad as you thought?"

"It was okay, I suppose," Carrie sighed, "two girls in my first class, Michelle and Jane helped me find my different classrooms and carry my bag of books around. They got really heavy by lunch time.

"What did you eat, just your sandwiches?"

"Yeah, the food there looks about the same as the old place though it's a bit dearer and to eat a meal every day would cost about two pounds a day."

"It is dearer, you only spent £1.50 a day at the old place and that's all Tara takes each day." Penny said thinking, I hope everything isn't going to be dearer, because over the course of a whole year, that would add about a hundred pounds to her costs, they could save on doing her a packed lunch, as she had today, but they get boring very quickly as she knew from working in offices where there was no canteen just a place to make drinks. Still, it's not forever and she was sure Carrie would survive one way or another.

"What are the teacher's like?" she asked Carrie.

"Like teachers, you know, hideously ugly with fangs and they can't go out in daylight and they have very little dress sense. I mean the men are in suits or jackets and trousers except Mr Andrews, he wears a cardigan with leather patches on the elbows and he smells a bit."

"He smells?" gasped Penny trying to stifle a laugh. "He doesn't does he?"

"Maybe it's just his cardi that pongs, like his dog probably sleeps on it at night." Carrie explored several silly ideas as to why her teacher seemed to smell, each one sillier than the last and by the time they got home, Penny was wiping tears from her eyes she'd laughed so much.

"Any homework?" she asked as they went into the house.

"Yeah, some English, I have to write a poem on winter and I've got some geography to do on floodplains."

"Oh, okay, you go and change and I'll make us a cuppa, Tara will be home in a minute."

"No she won't, she's playing netball."

"Of course she is, oh well, she'll be here when she gets here," Penny went off to the kitchen to fill the kettle while Carrie changed out of her uniform and into a pair of jeans and a sweater. She washed out her tights, opaque 60 denier ones, which she wrung out as best she could and left them in her hand towel on the radiator in her bedroom. That was something that was easier as a boy, she'd just wear a clean pair of socks each day and chuck them in the laundry basket each night along with her underpants. Now, she'd have to wash out her tights because she only had three pairs and even though they were fairly thick, they could still ladder. She scuffed on her rabbit slippers (they were fluffy and had a face and ears on the front and little scut tail on the back and were warmer than anything she'd had as Cary) and went down to her mother.

"You're not leaving all these books down here, missy, so take them up to your room now, if you please," instructed her mother and Carrie sighed and humped the heavy bags up to her bedroom and dumped them under her desk. She had a shelf in her bookcase to accommodate school books, but she'd have to remove the old ones and somehow get them back to her old school before she could make space for the new ones.

"Tea's ready," called her mum.

"All right, slave driver," she muttered as she descended the staircase.

Tara arrived about an hour later, her hair was still damp after her shower. "How'd it go?" she asked Carrie.

"Okay, did you win?" she asked Tara.

"Yeah, but only just. They had some giant as their goal shooter and her arms were so long, she could almost drop the ball in the net. She was like a giant gibbon." Everyone laughed at that and by the time Tara had changed, Rob was home and Penny served up their dinner - pork medallion steaks, roast potatoes, carrots and broccoli.

Over dinner Rob enquired about Carrie's experience at the new school and was reassured that she seemed to have coped fairly well and made two new friends into the bargain. He hoped it would continue. He also heard the school cafeteria was dearer than the old one, which Tara suggested was a swizz, and gave Carrie a couple of pounds to pay for the difference for the rest of the week.

That night Carrie slept well, she'd worried a little the night before and tonight was too tired to care. She, therefore, woke feeling more refreshed and less apprehensive, was in the shower before her cursing sibling, and did her hair and makeup, in a subdued version before going down to breakfast where Penny had done her a poached egg on toast.

She took another spare bag in her backpack for any more new books, but as there was only two, she shoved them into her pack and followed Michelle and Jane down to the cafeteria. She had a cheese roll in her pack and added some salad and potato to this together with a mug of tea. The latter wasn't too bad, but not as good as home. She was amazed at the number of students who drank fizzy drinks, which were expensive and rotted your teeth as well as making you fat if you drank lots of them. There were a few lard-balls, both boys and girls, and she saw them guzzling cans of fizzies and wondered if they knew what made them fat, or if they didn't care.

She was introduced to a couple more girls, Josie and Hannah and two boys, Mark and Sean, she felt her tummy flop when the boys arrived at their group but they seemed friendly enough. 'Keep smiling at them,' she thought to herself hoping they wouldn't think she fancied them, mind you, Mark was quite good looking with his piercing blue eyes and fair hair. She wondered as she sat in double maths if his hair could be described as dark blond or very light brown, and he had blond tips to his eyelashes which were quite long and drew you to his eyes. Yeah, he was pretty good looking and quite a bit taller than she or any of her friends were. So not someone to annoy or he could pulp her, then she remembered, most boys are reluctant to hit girls, so hopefully, that wouldn't happen and was just a hangover from her old school experience. Besides, he seemed good-natured, but as she didn't really know him, it would pay to be cautious around him and other boys.

"So, what d'ya think of Mark then?" asked Jane as they sat together in the arithmetic class.

"He seemed okay," whispered Carrie.

"Only okay, the way you were staring at him, he knew you fancied him."

"I wasn't staring at him, but he has very nice eyes," conceded Carrie.

"They are beautiful eyes and his lashes are to die for," sighed Jane.

"They are quite long," Carrie agreed.

"See you do fancy him," smirked Jane.

"No I don't," Carried hissed back blushing like a tomato.

"Anything you ladies would like to share with the rest of us?" asked Mrs Lewis the maths teacher.

"I was just asking Carrie if she'd finished number four, Miss," said Jane fibbing her way out of the question while blushing furiously at the teacher's interest.

"Is that question number four or boyfriend number four?" chided Mrs Lewis.

"It was question four, Miss," said Carrie, "and I have, Miss."

"Perhaps you'd like to come out the front and write your answer on the board," the teacher responded handing her the marker pen and pointing at the whiteboard.

Carrie blushed and staggered out to the front of the class and looking at the workings in her maths notebook, wrote on the board, the logarithms she'd used in her calculation. Mrs Lewis looked at the board and asked the class if she was right.

Not everyone thought so, but the majority decision was that she had. She'd done logarithms last year and found them straightforward to do. She waited for Mrs Lewis to send her back to her seat. "Well it seems, Carrie, that most of your friends agree with you, and you have got it right, well done but keep the conversations for outside the lessons. Carrie nodded and dashed back to her seat, sweating as she went. She had been terrified but had survived.

"You have to watch ole Lulu, if she catches you talking, she does tend to make an example of you and if you get it wrong, she can give you extra homework or even detention. So you were lucky," said Michelle, who'd been sitting the other side of Jane.

Carrie's last lesson was music and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. Apparently, her new teacher, Miss Chivers, whom the girls called, 'Chivekosky' was aware that Carrie had some musical interests.

"Ah, so you're the Carpenter girl, are you? Mrs James said you were musical, are you?"

Carrie looked at the overweight middle-aged woman standing before her and almost wet herself," Um, I guess so," she said quietly back.

"I heard you won some competition recently and sing songs associated with your namesakes, is this so?"

Carrie felt as if she was in the witness box being cross-examined by counsel. "I er, yes."

"I believe you play piano as well?" Miss Chivers wasn't letting her off the hook.

"A bit," Carrie almost whispered back.

"Care to show us?" Miss Chivers pointed at the upright piano standing at the edge of the room.

"Um, not really, Miss," Carrie stuttered back.

"Oh come now, if you can do it in front of a group of complete strangers, surely you can do it in front of your friends?"

Someone said something and Miss Chivers went to deal with them, Michelle said, "Can you play?" nodding at the piano and Carrie nodded back, "better do it then to shut her up."

"Well, Miss Carpenter, are you going to play for us? Who wants to hear her play?" the tormentress asked the class and sensing some drama most of them called back that they would. She all but dragged Carrie out to the piano and sat her at the stool, then she produced the same Carpenter's songbook that she had at home and told her to pick something. "I take it, that you can read music?"

"A bit," said Carrie who suddenly felt a sense of calm spread over her and she thought that Karen was helping her. She opened the songbook to, Rainy days and Mondays and laid it on the rest. Then to surprise the teacher, she started playing Chopsticks for a few bars before starting the intro to the song and closing her eyes she started to sing. 'Talkin' to myself and feelin' old...' As soon as she began to sing she ignored the fact that a music teacher and thirty of her classmates were there, she just got into the zone and her fingers hit the keys and her voice sang the words and the tune just like her famous namesake had done before she was born. She followed the beat of the song with her body and continued playing the melody where, on the album, was a saxophone riff, and then cut back into the vocals at the correct place, finishing the song as Karen had done with a lower pitch ending of 'down'. When she finished she realised where she was and began to feel anxious, blushing and sweating.

A moment later there was huge applause and the teacher was clapping with the rest of them. "Thank you, that was both delightful and impressive, please take a bow and go back to your seat. Carrie did as she was bid and bowed to her classmates who applauded again.

"Thank you, Carrie Carpenter, your reputation is deserved." She went on to talk to the rest of the class and Michelle warned her that she'd be the teacher's favourite from now on.

When they left, Jane said much the same as Michelle, "You'll get lumbered now, whenever they want someone to perform, you'll be it."

"I don't mind if I've prepared for it."

"What out in front of the whole school?" gasped Jane.

"It doesn't matter if it's one person or hundreds, you still have to just concentrate on what you're doing and shut them all out, unless you're trying to get them on side, in which case you have to encourage them."

"You actually enjoy embarrassing yourself in front of a thousand kids?" gasped Jane in disbelief at her friend's seeming calmness in what she considered to be a terrifying ordeal.

"I only embarrass myself if I don't know the song properly. It takes lots of practice but I quite enjoy it."

"Were you sight-reading?" asked Michelle, "Cause you seemed to have your eyes closed."

"Not for that song, I've practised it so often, and I did the chopsticks bit to get the feel of the keyboard, it's different to the one I have at home."

"You have a piano at home?"

"Yeah, a small electronic Yamaha, plus drums and a guitar."

"You really are into music aren't you?"

Carrie shrugged.

"Chivekovsky will love you, every year she hopes she'll have someone to torment, she has this year," both girls laughed as Carrie blushed.

"If she teaches me some more about music, I'll cope with it. I want to study music at uni, so if she can help me get there, I'll give her what she wants."

"Wow, a girl who knows what she wants, does this include Mark as well?" Michelle teased.

"If he likes my music, maybe," said Carrie blushing even more as she surprised herself with her answer. Did she like him? Er, maybe.