Chapter 1

One Step to the Left

Tuesday, 4:30 p.m. (my bedroom, the quiet one)

Hello, Diary.

I'm starting you because Saffy started one. That's not a great reason, I know. But she's been writing in hers on the drama block steps every day this week with her beret tipped like she's being photographed, and I thought, if she's going to tell her side, somebody ought to keep the other one.

I'm Bea. Beatrice Lawal, fifteen, Year 10, best friend of Saffron Beck since Year 3, when she cast me as the donkey in a play she was writing in the lunch hall and then told the dinner lady I was method.

BEA! The Diary of the Best Friend

The cast list went up. Saffy is a tree. She didn't scream, which she'll tell you herself. What she won't tell you is that she went completely white, and her hand found my sleeve without her looking, and held on, and that's how I knew it was bad. Saffy doesn't hold on. Saffy is held on to.

I said, "Trees are really important in that play. It's called The Orchard. You're basically the title." I said it because it's true, and because I could feel her hand.

Then I looked at the list for myself, the way you do. Tree (Chorus): Saffron Beck, Dev Okoro, Tomasz Wierzbicki.

Three trees. Not me.