and she had to admit, it did look pretty cool.
Stella kept on talking, “Kate says she still can’t decide whether to get one or not. But we were talking to Louisa Bull – she’s really cool, she’s a fourth former but I know her because she’s in my house—anyway, she has one and it looks so fab and she says it didn’t hurt much at all.” She poked Issie in the tummy and grinned. “You would look so good with one, Issie. So what do you say? Are you in?”
Issie winced and pulled up her jersey to look at her naked belly button. It was an innie, not an outie, a small, delicate whirl in the middle of her olive-skinned tummy. She imagined the piercing gun clamped over it, driving a steel ring through her skin.
“I don’t know…” Issie muttered. “Mum wouldn’t be too keen on it…”
“It’s OK,” Stella insisted. “I asked Penny and she said she would take us, so you don’t need to ask your mum.”
Penny was Stella’s older sister. She was much older than Stella and was in her first year at university. The two sisters both had the same curly red hair and freckles—and the same naughty streak too. If anything, Penny was even wilder than her little sister. And Stella always wanted to do what Penny did. Penny already had her belly button pierced – and her tongue!
“Come on,” Stella was whining. “Your mum won’t even notice. We’ll all do it together. It’ll be fun.”
Issie took her hand off her stomach and tucked the thin cotton of her school shirt back into her skirt, smoothing it down flat. She had always wanted to get a piercing. Even plain pierced ears weren’t allowed at Chevalier Point High. But a belly button? Who would ever notice it underneath your school uniform?
OK, so her mum would kill her if she found out. But who cared? Besides, why shouldn’t she have some fun and do something exciting for once? She was so tired of feeling this way, tired of being numb and depressed. Maybe Stella was right. It would look pretty cool to have a belly-button ring like Kallista.
“What sort of rings are there?” Issie sighed.
Stella let out a squeal of delight. “Yay! I knew you’d say yes! This is going to be great! There’s plain silver ones, or you can get ones with a stone in them,” Stella continued. “I was thinking of getting maybe a purple stone like an amethyst but you can get whatever you want.” She looked at Issie’s screwed-up face. “I swear. Honestly. It doesn’t hurt!”
A couple of hours later, Issie wished she had never taken Stella’s word for it. There she was, lying flat on her back on the thin white chemist shop bunk bed, looking down at her skin stretched taut under the clamp of the piercing gun. There was a felt-tip dot on her belly button where the ring would pierce the skin, and a woman with too much make-up on was busily daubing her tummy with antiseptic solution.
“Now take a deep breath and breathe out as the needle goes through,” the woman instructed. Issie looked away from the gun, trying not to think about it as she sucked in a deep lung full of air. As she breathed out she felt a sudden rush of pain.
“There. You’re done.” The woman smiled. Issie looked down at her newly decorated navel. It was red and tingling. “You’ll have to keep it very clean for the first couple of weeks while it heals, and whatever you do, don’t take the ring out,” the woman instructed, passing Issie some antiseptic to take home with her. “And try not to wear clothes that rub on it and irritate the site.”
“I can’t believe you two went through with it!” Kate shrieked as the three girls came out of the chemist into the bright sunlight to meet her.
“What? I can’t believe you chickened out on us!” Stella teased her back.
“I didn’t!” Kate insisted. “I never said I would get one. I only said I was thinking about it.” She leaned down and peered closer at Issie’s red, swollen belly button and pulled a face. “Eugh! Does it hurt?”
Issie looked pleased with Kate’s reaction. “Not really,” she lied. In fact, she could feel her tummy button all hot and throbbing where the ring had gone through.
“You know,” Stella began, “when Louisa Bull had hers done she told me that it went all infected and she woke up one morning and, oh, this is really going to gross you out, her mum had to take her to hospital because—”
“Stella! I thought you told me that Louisa’s belly button looked really cool?” Issie yelped. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Penny snapped. “Stella! She didn’t go to hospital, she just went to the doctor and he gave her some ointment to put on it and sent her home again. Stop exaggerating and making up horrible stories.”
Penny pulled up her own t-shirt to show them her belly button. It had a silver ring with a green glass leaf dangling down from it. “Look, I’ve had my piercing for two years now and it’s fine,” she reassured Issie.
“I was just joking!” Stella insisted, grinning mischievously. “Hey, Issie, let’s go back to your house and try on clothes. I need to find a tank top that will show off my tummy button.”
The Browns had lived in the same house ever since Issie was little. It was a two-storey wooden home, surrounded by rambling, overgrown gardens. From Issie’s bedroom upstairs she had a view down over the big back lawn to the grove of trees at the end of the garden.
The view inside Issie’s bedroom, however, was one big mess. The girls had spent the past hour trying on everything in Issie’s wardrobe and the place looked like a stall at a jumble sale. There were pairs of jeans and shoes thrown all over the floor, and the bed was stacked so high with piles of clothes that you could barely see Stella and Kate, who were flopped down in the middle of it all on top of the duvet.
Issie stepped out of the wardrobe. She had stripped off the light-green pleated skirt and white shirt of her school uniform and was wearing a purple floral crop top and dark blue camouflage pants. She stood in front of the mirror to admire her new look. For once, her skinny boyish figure was working to her advantage. The pants hung down so low on her hips they exposed her stomach, showing off the freshly pierced navel.
Issie stared at her tummy button. It was still swollen and red, and even though she would never admit it, she was a little worried about what she had done. Stella’s story had scared her. What if the piercing really was turning septic? The skin around the ring did actually look all red and raw and it was hurting a lot more than she had thought it would.
Issie shrugged off her fears. At least Stella had been right about one thing, she thought, that silver ring did look pretty cool. It suited her, the slim metal circle resting perfectly against her tanned belly.
Issie was wiggling the ring and gazing at her reflection when she suddenly noticed the other two girls staring at her. Feeling embarrassed to suddenly be the centre of attention, she struck a ridiculous supermodel catwalk pose, pouting and throwing her head back, one hand on her hip, the other raised to blow a kiss to an imaginary camera.
The two girls fell about on the bed laughing. Stella was snorting so hard she was almost choking and Issie collapsed on to the duvet next to her in a fit of giggles.
As she lay there panting with laughter she realised this was the first time since the accident that she had been able to forget about Mystic and have some fun.
“Wait, wait!” Stella leapt up and grabbed a pair of sunglasses off the dressing
