When I Met Alysa

1. When I Met Alysa

There's a flowerbed down in Keats Park three streets away from I live.

I mean, that's nothing new - there's a lot of flowerbeds in Keats Park - and all the other parks in the world, presumably. 

But this certain flowerbed in Keats Park? It's special. 

It's where I first met Alysa. 

We were both seven years old and our heads were full of ponies and princesses. Well, every other seven year old girl's head is full of ponies and princesses - mine wasn't. And - apparently - neither was Alysa's. 

But, anyway, when I met Alysa, I was sitting in a flowerbed, launching a model aeroplane. It sailed all the way through the flowerbed, and - BANG! - onto the head of a girl sitting underneath the honeysuckle, crying her eyes out. 

I shifted closer to her. I didn't want to freak her out - I mean, I'd started Kent Prep thirteen days ago, and was already more unpopular than the mouldy, rotten apple deep in the bottom of the Lost Property basket. I didn't want to lose a possible friend. 

Anyway, this girl looked up, and sniffed. I think it was because she was crying - I don't think she was sniffing at me. But anyway, she sniffed, and said 'Why are you sitting in my flowerbed?'

I kind of looked at her strange for a minute, and then said 'I don't think it's your flowerbed. It's a public park. And anyway, I was launching my aeroplane.'

'It's a hard aeroplane,' she said, picking it up and handing it to me. The nose was bent. 'Wanna throw it into the fountain? The water will go all sploshy. I'm Alysa Mayden. Who're you?' 

'Maddi Bell,' I said. 'You really think it will?' 

'Yeah. And this is my flowerbed. I've been coming here since I was two.' 

She was right, actually. The water did go all sploshy. And then, of course, the aeroplane sank. She looked at me - I was biting my lip, eyes going swimmy, and I was feeling like I wanted to cry. 'That took me four hours to make,' I burst out. 

'Come to my house,' she said, and took my hand. 'I've got a collection of a hundred aeroplanes... Maddi Bell.' 

And, just like that: we became best friends. 

It was simple, really. I had a brain like her; she had a brain like me. We liked the same things, we hated the same things. We were even both allergic to kiwi fruit. I don’t know how, but we were almost... drawn together.

You might be wondering why she was crying that September afternoon, in the flowerbed in Keats Park. Well, it’s because her dad, Private Mayden, was a soldier, fighting a war in a country far, far away. His plane had gone down behind enemy lines and was missing. During those three weeks where her father’s fate was unknown, I comforted her, took care of her, helped her paint her bedroom black, then two days later, grey, then two days later, a lighter shade of grey. It became a ritual – every two days, we went and painted her bedroom a lighter shade of grey. We were both convinced that on the day the wall was painted white, Private Mayden would return.

Call it coincidence, call it fate, call it I don't know what, but, sure as eggs are eggs, the day we tearfully began to coat Alysa's bedroom in white, there was a ring the doorbell, and there was Alysa's father standing there. 

From that day on, whenever something was stressful or scary or just plain annoying in our lives, we painted Alysa's bedroom - well, her door, as it was less in your face when you walked in - in varying shades of grey, and we were certain that when we got to white, the stress, fear or annoyance would stop. Just like that. 

We used it with SATS results in Year Four, we used it when we watched a horror film together on a sleepover in Year Five, we used it when we were being bullied by Demi's gang in Year Six. We used it with our Admissions to Kent High in the summer leading up to Year Seven (Alysa moved to Kent Prep in Year Four). 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is: we grew up together. We were seven when we met, and now we're both thirteen (well, Alysa's thirteen, I'm thirteen in seventeen days). We know each other back to front and inside out. We're the closest best friends you've ever known. We're non-romantic soulmates. We're perfect for each other. We're both disorganised, we're both socially struggling, we both can't tell the difference between one pop song and another, or one shade of eyeshadow or another. I know everything about her, and she knows everything about me. 

For instance, she's scared of unicorns, and she pretends that she hates Swiss cheese, but really she loves the little holes inside it, and she once dyed her hair orange for World Book Day, when she went as Pippi Longstocking, and it didn't come out properly, so she's got a carrot-orange layer beneath her blonde bob. But, of course, I've never told anyone that, and I never will. 

She also knows all the little things about me, like how I'm secretly obsessed with anything knitted, and how I hate those little freebie keyrings that come with the What's Hot magazine, and that my secret ambition is to be an actress, and that I once painted the nail on my ring finger on my right hand with clear nail varnish when I was nine (she watched me do it) and I never took it off. But, of course, she's never told anyone that, and she never will. That's what best friends are for, right?

In Year Four, the first year that she was at Kent Prep, we made these tatty little friendship bracelets out of wool during one Wet Break when we had nothing else to do, and we still wear them. In fact, my wrist's got a little groove in it from where I wore it for three and a half months while she was on vacation in America, and I never took it off, not even to shower. 

She goes on vacation to America a lot, sometimes for months at a time. She has relatives living there - lots of them. One lesson in Year Five, we had to make family trees, and mine was easy - Mummy, Daddy, me, my baby sister Mari, and our cat, Woof. Done. It took me about five minutes, so I spent the rest of the lesson helping Alysa with hers. Her family is really complicated - her mum and dad were both married to different people before they divorced them and got married to each other, and even though Alysa's an only child she's got stepsiblings galore. She's also got about a million aunts and uncles, and step-grandparents, the lot. It took us hours - we even had to stay in at break to finish it. She's got the end product on her wall - it takes up most of the space. We decorated it with glitter and little photos of everyone in her family - even her niece, Kaley, who had just been born and lives in Venice. 

I always miss her when she's in America, but she sends me a postcard practically every other day, with really sweet pictures of donkeys and lemurs, and once a generated image of her with her arm round me in front of the Statue of Liberty. Sometimes, in the middle of her visit, she'll send these little parcels, with packets of sweets or little fluffy toy animals in them. I have a whole drawer full of those little animals. I even restrain myself and don't eat the sweets till she comes back, and then we have a sleepover and eat them together. 

She moved house last year, so now she's just across the road from me, and every school morning we walk to school together. We have our own special route - we start off on the road to school, then turn off and go those three streets to Kent Park, to our own Maddi-and-Alysa flowerbed. 

That's how it's always been, almost ever since I can remember. Maddi-and-Alysa. There was never any 'other people' come to join in our group; we made it pretty clear that we weren't inviting anyone to join in. There were our special games, 'just for two', and whenever we had to choose partners in school... well, we were already sitting next to each other, right? Even when the teacher chose pairs and we were put on different sides of the classroom, we'd bribe and beg our classmates until we were together. 

I'm not saying we never had an argument - who doesn't? - but it was always about pretty minor stuff - 'You drew on my pencilcase!' 'Oh, right, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to,' 'That's fine, that pen is pretty splodgy anyway, here's a spare one of mine,' 'Oh, thanks!' - and we always made up afterwards. 

She got her mobile phone at the same time as I got mine - in fact, it was on the same shopping trip when we were ten -; she went through the same crazes that I went through at the same time; we just did everything together. She told me everything, and I told her everything. Nothing could go wrong. 

Could it?