Take My Word for It by John Marsden Read Free Book Online

confidence. You can never pay her a compliment—she won’t let you. She hates her parents. She mucks around at everything—it’s as though she doesn’t want to have a proper go at it, in case she fails. Or in case she succeeds. She takes the biggest risks—she could have been expelled about six times already this year. She and Kate went into town at midnight at the start of last week—they caught a taxi at the roundabout and didn’t come back till about three in the morning.
    Another good thing about Soph is that she really is generous. She’d give you anything. You can’t say you like anything she’s wearing, or she’ll try to give it to you. She’d give you the shirt off her back and the bra off her front. I think her parents must have heaps of money—she’s got the best clothes of anyone in the dorm—but she takes the worst care of her stuff. She loses and breaks more things than anyone I’ve ever seen. She’s also the cheekiest student to teachers that I’ve ever seen. When Mr Bostock was giving back tests the other day Sophie didn’t hear him call her name, so he picked up hers and brought it down the room towards her saying, ‘What do you want, Sophie, Room Service?’ She just said, ‘That’s what you’re paid for isn’t it?’
    He acted like he didn’t hear, but I can’t see how he could have missed it. Everyone in the room heard.
    So, that’s Soph, about the most unboring person I’ve ever met. I don’t know whether I’ll put down to be with her next year, but I know one thing, I wouldn’t have missed it.
    A PRIL 18
    I got a message to go see Dr Whiteley today, which had me a bit worried, but it was only for an Anzac Day service next week—there’re two kids from each year, and she wants Rikki and me to go for Year Nine. It’s quite an honour really.
    We did this beautiful poem in English yesterday, called ‘The Good-Morrow’. It’s a love poem, written four hundred years ago.
    For love, all love of other sights controls ,
    And makes one little room, an everywhere .
    Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ,
    Let Maps to other worlds on worlds have shown ,
    Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one . . .
    It’s so sweet. I’m going to write it out in full and stick it on my desk—next to Peter’s photo, I think. It’s kind of ironic that the day after we did the poem, Cathy got a phone call from Andy to say she was dropped. So that didn’t last long. She was so upset—I didn’t realise she liked him that much.
    We’ve got so much Prep I shouldn’t be writing in this at all. It’s hard to settle down to proper work though—my desk is next to the door into the dorm, and Ann’s in there playing her violin, like she does every night. I know she has to practise, but she always spins it out twice as long as she should, so she can get out of Prep. And it’s so boring. She plays the same tunes over and over, especially that theme from ‘Second Coming’. She sounds like galvanised iron when you’re pulling one sheet of it across another.
    A PRIL 19
    Chloe came to see me again today. It is good that she does it. No guy in tow either, although she says she’s still with Hamish. She said Dad’s getting with someone, too. I really cracked at her, until she said, ‘It’s not my fault. Don’t take it out on me.’ We started talking a bit then. I asked her if she was glad they were divorced, and she said she thought it was better in some ways. She said she couldn’t understand why it happened though—she thought they’d stopped fighting quite a few months before. I realised then that she didn’t know the full story at all. That’s good in one way—that she doesn’t know I caused it. See, she was away a lot towards the end of that