Charm School (10 page)

Bonny leaned over the table and tapped her fork beside Esmeralda’s plate. In a nannyish voice, she said to her, ‘Stop playing with your food, dear!’

Esmeralda looked up, startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what I say,’ said Bonny, still in her nanny voice. ‘Stop messing, and eat it.’

‘I
am
eating,’ said Esmeralda.

‘No, you’re not,’ Bonny said, going back to her normal voice to explain what she meant. ‘What you’re doing is shunting and mashing and smearing and slicing. But you’re not actually
eating
anything. So, apart from the fact that you’re doing it so daintily, you’re just messing with your food like a giant great baby.’

Esmeralda went scarlet. ‘I am not! I
am
eating. I have eaten
tons
.’

‘
What
? Tell us
what
.’

‘I ate most of the lettuce. And the fishcake. And the beans.’

‘You didn’t eat the fishcake,’ Suki said. ‘You hid it under the lettuce. With the beans.’

Bonny reached over and lifted Esmeralda’s lettuce with her fork. Esmeralda blushed as the evidence was displayed around the table. But several of the others were blushing too. Bonny turned to her right and lifted Amethyst’s largest lettuce leaf with the fork. Out peeped two fish fingers and some mushrooms. She turned to her left, and Serena snatched her plate away.

‘It’s none of your business!’

‘You have to eat,’ said Bonny. ‘If you don’t eat, your brain doesn’t work properly, and you get all tearful and crabby.’

There was a whisper further up the table, and everyone giggled.

‘What was that?’ asked Bonny.

‘Nothing,’ said Sarajane. ‘Angelica just made a little joke, that’s all.’

‘What did you say?’ Bonny asked Angelica.

‘Nothing,’ said Angelica.

‘No, go on,’ insisted Bonny. ‘Share the joke.’

‘I’ve forgotten,’ said Angelica.

‘I haven’t,’ said Serena, getting her own back on Angelica for being so spiteful about the smell of her perfume. She leaned towards Bonny. ‘When you said that people who don’t eat get all tearful and crabby, Angelica said,
“Better
than getting all fat like her”.’

‘All fat like who?’

Everyone was silent. Even Araminta was watching now. And Angelica looked very embarrassed.

Bonny looked down at herself. ‘Do you mean
me
?’

Still no-one spoke. Bonny pushed back her chair and looked at herself. She was the exact same shape she’d been when she left home that morning. She wasn’t built from match-sticks, it was true. Her legs weren’t thin glass rods. You couldn’t have spread your hands round her waist and touched your own fingers.

But she wasn’t fat.

She was perfectly normal.

Pushing her chair back even further, Bonny looked round the table.

‘You should stop worrying about how much you have on your bodies,’ she told them. ‘And start worrying about how little you have in your heads. No wonder the tea boy calls you all Twinks.’

‘
Twinks?
’

‘Toby?’

They were outraged.

‘He does
not
.’

‘Don’t listen to her. She’s just saying mean things to upset us.’

Bonny pointed a finger at Lulu, who was the last to speak. ‘Oh, no, I’m not! Toby agrees with me. He thinks you’re all silly and vain. And you
are
,’ she added fiercely. ‘You spend your whole lives trailing round shops, and parked on your bums trying to look prettier than the person beside you, and strolling round being spiteful to one another. So why should anyone think you have more than half a brain between you?’

Now Cristalle was shaking her finger back at Bonny. ‘You’re wrong!’ she snapped. ‘Quite wrong! Toby actually thinks that we’re something rather special. That’s why he spends as much time as he can watching us through the glass window.’

‘Oh no, it’s not,’ said Bonny. ‘He watches you because he can’t get over how daffy you are.’

‘How wrong can you get, Miss Clever Sparky? I tell you, Toby
likes
us.’ Cristalle gave an arch look across the table to Sarajane. ‘Especially
one
of us,’ she added meaningfully. ‘There does happen to be one
of
us he
really
likes …’

At this, everyone turned to look at Sarajane, who blushed bright pink. But Bonny barely noticed. ‘
You’re
the ones who’ve got it wrong,’ she was too busy insisting. ‘He doesn’t
like
you all. You just
amuse
him.’

Sarajane’s blush turned fiery red, and Esmeralda said loudly to no-one in particular, ‘Talk about other people being spiteful! She should try listening to
herself
.’

There was another giggle and more whispering at the other end of the table. This time Bonny was quicker swinging round, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Araminta dart a look at her, then hastily shut her mouth and wipe an amused smile off her face.

Bonny was astonished at how upset she felt – as if a real, true friend had turned against her. She felt tears gathering and her voice was shaky. ‘I suppose
you’re
being nasty about me now.’

Araminta looked horribly guilty. But it was Lulu at her side who broke the awkward silence. Putting on that sugared poison voice Bonny had heard so often that morning as people said their horrid things, she explained very kindly to Bonny: ‘Oh, no. Minty was trying to be
nice
.
You
see, she was explaining to us all why you can’t help being so rude and disagreeable.’

Minty! They all had one another as friends, and she had none! Miserable as she could be, Bonny said crossly, ‘Oh, really? Why is that, then?’

As she spoke, she tried looking Araminta straight in the eye, but Araminta hastily stared down at the table. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she mumbled very uncomfortably. ‘I’ve quite forgotten what I said.’

Once again, Miss Pass-on-the-Spite Serena pitched in to help someone who’d lost her memory. She leaned over to Bonny.

‘
I
haven’t, though. Minty was just explaining that you were simply jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ Now it was Bonny’s turn to be outraged. ‘
Jealous
? Of all you noodle-brained
ninnies
? Of all you flopsy-mopsy
beanbrains
? Oh, I don’t think so!’ Then, suddenly remembering you couldn’t trust what any of them said when they were causing trouble, she leaned across the table and said to Araminta, ‘Is that
true
?’

Araminta flushed even redder than Sarajane had earlier. ‘Is what true?’

‘What she just said. That you told them I was jealous.’

Araminta didn’t answer. Bonny rose to her feet. ‘Is it?’ she demanded again. ‘Is it true? Is that what you said?’

Again, Araminta took refuge in mumbling. ‘I’ve quite forgotten. I can’t remember what I said at all.’

‘You can’t remember?’ Bonny leaned over the table. ‘Well, I did warn you, if you don’t eat, your brain stops working properly.’ She picked up her plate. ‘What you need, Araminta, is a proper meal, and I’ve got one here for you!’

All Bonny’s fury and upset boiled up in her. And boiled over. And before Araminta could even twist her head aside, Bonny had slapped the lukewarm plate of pizza in her face, and ground it round.

Everyone squealed, and Araminta clawed at the dripping mess of cheese and tomato and onion. Her huge shocked saucer eyes peered out in horror, like two rounds of pepperoni.

‘There!’ Bonny snapped. ‘Feeling any better?’

And off she stomped, in a foul temper, out of the canteen and up the back stairs, all alone, back to Charm School.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

‘YOU HAVE TO
hand it to Mrs Opalene,’ Toby remarked on his next visit. ‘You start a riot, and before she’s even finished ticking you off properly, she’s somehow managed to turn it into a class about taking off make-up.’

And so she had. As soon as it became clear Bonny was stubbornly going to stick to her story of tripping as she so kindly cleared away Araminta’s unfinished meal, Mrs Opalene had simply given her one last, helpless, reproachful look, then turned to poor dripping Araminta.

Holding her at arm’s length, she said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster:

‘Marvellous! The perfect opportunity to try out some cleansers! Thank you, dear Araminta, for giving us a chance to do some real
testing
.’

Bonny felt terrible. She’d been so rude about poor Mrs Opalene. Yet here she was, valiantly making the best of things, scraping the worst of the pizza off with little balls of cotton wool till, gradually, Araminta’s tearful face emerged through the tomato-stained cheese streaks.

‘There! Splendid! Now we’ll divide your face into four separate sections, and try a different cleanser on each, to see which comes out best.’ She looked around. ‘Now who would like to be first to show us their gentle cleansing technique?’

Araminta’s sobs quietened as Pearl stepped forward eagerly. ‘Oh, please! Can I have a go with that green glop?’

Mrs Opalene threw up her hands. ‘That green glop! That green glop!’ Lifting the tiny plastic tub of cream at which Pearl had been pointing, she rebuked her errant pupil. ‘Pearl, dear, this is Glow Girl’s phytolyastil
V.I.A.
Complex tissue peptide VHJ with hygragscopic elements and natural ceramides, and a syntropic blend of unique Derma Bio Tropocollagen. You may not simply call it “glop”.’

‘Sorry,’ said Pearl, chastened.

Toby nudged Bonny. ‘Looks like glop to me.’

‘And me.’

‘Stroke it on
gently
, dear,’ Mrs Opalene was telling Pearl. ‘Don’t
scrape
away at Araminta’s precious face. And, as with all our little skin helpers, dears, what must we always remember?’

She waved her hands like a conductor as all of them chorused dutifully.

‘
Smeary is dreary
, Mrs Opalene.’

‘Smeary is dreary!’ Bonny flipped off the sound. ‘Phytolyastil!’ she muttered scornfully. ‘Tissue peptides! It’s just pretend science, so they can charge the earth for every teaspoon. But Pearl’s quite right. All it is really is glop.
And
if everyone suddenly stopped feeling halfway to ugly, all those glop factories would close overnight.’