Girl, 15: Charming but Insane (3 page)

The only problem now was what to wear. And they only had twenty-four hours to decide. They agreed to spend the next morning in the mall. The lack of suitable clothing was a crisis of truly global proportions. It required heroic action. So they decided to meet at ten o’clock in the morning – which, as far as Jess was concerned, was still the middle of the night.

Chapter 3

Jess’s dad had texted her one of his ‘horrorscopes’. But Jess wasn’t worrying about the werewolf in the cupboard under the stairs. She had a more immediate problem: the size of her bum. She stared at herself in the huge mirrors of the communal changing room at Togs ’R’ Us. She was wearing leopardskin stretch pants. Did her bum look big in this? You can bet your sweet life it did.

Geographically, Jess’s backside was a mountain range. The sun rose over it – eventually. Huge birds of prey nested on its craggy heights and hunted in its shadows. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Jess’s bum were balanced by a nice big bosom. But geographically, Jess’s boobs could not balance her bum at all. Her chest was the kind of featureless plain upon which airports are constructed.

If only
, thought Jess,
some gifted cosmetic surgeon could slice off my bum and transplant it on to my chest, we’d be in business
. Then she would have a majestic cleavage. It was wasted out back, under her jeans. Oh well. They say a clever choice of clothes can conceal bad features and emphasise one’s good points. But these leopardskin stretch pants weren’t working. You don’t see leopards waddling heavily across the plains, do you? They tend to streak across in a streamlined kind of way.

‘Flora,’ asked Jess, ‘what’s my best feature?’

Flora was admiring herself in a cute little black top. A pink navel-ring winked cheekily out above her grey hipsters. She looked divine. Flora’s dad didn’t know she’d had her navel pierced. If he ever found out, he would personally build a high stone tower and lock her up there until she was thirty. If that was what Having a Dad Around meant, you could keep it.

‘Your best feature?’ Flora hesitated.

Oh no!
thought Jess.
She can’t think of a single thing!

‘Your eyes are fantastic – and your neck – and your ears – and, well, you’re fabulous all over, Jess. You’re a babe.’ Flora turned back with relief to the ravishing vision awaiting her in the mirror.

‘But my bum is like some terrible gigantic Siamese twin!’ wailed Jess. ‘It follows me around everywhere and gets stuck in doorways.’

‘Your bum is great!’ cried Flora, but her voice went up just a little too high. ‘I wish I had a proper bum. I look like a boy.’ Needless to say, Flora looked as much like a boy as a box of chocolates looks like a side of beef. Jess sighed.

Three hours later, having tried on approximately three thousand garments, Jess decided on a black top with a plunging neckline and a strange shawl-like black skirt.

‘Boho!’ said Flora approvingly. ‘You look stunning, babe! Ben Jones will see you as he’s never seen you before! Suddenly across a crowded room he will feel Cupid’s dart!’ They’d been doing all about Cupid in English with Mr Fothergill. They’d both tried to develop crushes on Mr Fothergill, but he simply was too fat and sweaty. You could more easily fancy a hippo.

Jess doubted if Ben Jones would fancy her, despite the plunging neckline and boho skirt. Life was so unfair. Everybody fancied Ben Jones, no matter what he wore. Although Flora said she preferred his best friend, Mackenzie, who was dark and rather short.

‘It’s a biology thing,’ she explained. ‘Blondes don’t fancy blond guys. It’s to avoid inbreeding.’

Jess was not completely convinced by this. After all, Flora’s entire family was blond. Maybe Flora really fancied Ben Jones, but she was keeping quiet about it because Jess was so crazy about him. That would be a really loyal thing for a friend to do. But also, somehow, really annoying. If Flora did fancy Ben Jones, it would make her rather tragic and picturesque, and she had far too much going for her already.

They parted and Jess went back home to get ready. How could Jess cram it all into six hours? Flora had gone back to her palace where her granny – possibly a close relative of the Queen – would be distributing bags of gold over tea and exquisite little cakes. Jess’s house, of course, was empty except for dirty dishes. Her mother had gone off to demonstrate against the war. She did this every Saturday. There was usually a war to demonstrate against. Jess didn’t mind really. It kept her mum out of trouble and out of the way and it was free. Just as long as she didn’t ever end up on TV, dancing for peace. Naked. This was Jess’s most nightmarish fantasy.

Having a mum who was often out on demos also permitted Jess to surf the internet unchallenged by cries of, ‘Get off that thing now! We’ll get a bill as long as my arm!’ Jess did a search on lingerie. Soon she was in the slightly weird world of bra inserts – not just little cotton pads but, apparently, bags containing water or silicone gel.

‘Curves’ are made of a specially formulated silicone gel, enclosed in a sheer, skin-like polyurethane cover. This material was developed for space research and is extremely well tolerated by the skin.

Wait a minute! Space research? What would be the effect of nil gravity? Wouldn’t your boobs fly off in different directions? Besides, Jess didn’t like the concept of outer space. She liked to keep her feet firmly on the ground.

Thank goodness I’m an earth sign
, thought Jess. Flora was an air sign, of course – kind of angelic and ethereal. Still, never mind air and earth. What Jess needed now was water. She raced to the kitchen and found a roll of those small plastic bags which mothers use to wrap up sandwiches. At least, mothers good enough to make sandwiches for their beloved children, unlike the mother in question, Madeleine Jordan, at present protesting against the war while her child starved helplessly at home.

Jess filled a small plastic bag with water, tied it up tightly and secured it with a rubber band. It was quite gel-like. She wobbled it around in her hand. It did indeed move rather like breast tissue. She didn’t have enough breast tissue of her own to have conducted personal research on the subject. But she had watched a lot of music videos.

She wasn’t quite sure about the water, though. Perhaps a faint sloshing would be heard. And what if she sprang a leak? Jess shuddered at the thought of puddles on the floor. The jokes about potty-training would last a lifetime. Maybe there was a food substance a little less watery than water. Jess ransacked the food cupboard, and her eyes fell on a tin of soup. Minestrone!

Getting it into the bags was a little bit more laborious and messy, but fifteen minutes later, Jess had a cleavage. The bags of soup really worked. Amazing! She was going to have a ball! Now all she needed was a pumpkin coach or, failing that, the No. 109 bus, which would take her all the way to Tiffany’s. She just had to spend four and a half hours on her eyebrows first.

Chapter 4

Seconds after arriving at Tiffany’s, Jess was suddenly face to face with Ben Jones. He loomed up out of the crowd, looking gorgeous.

‘Um . . . seen Mackenzie?’ he said in that wonderfully slow drawl.

‘No,’ stammered Jess. ‘I’ve only just arrived. Maybe he’s . . .’

But Ben Jones had gone. He spoke slowly but he could move fast. And he hadn’t even noticed her cleavage or her boho skirt. Mind you, it was very dark, and very crowded. Perhaps later there would be the magic moment, foretold by Flora, at which his eyes would find hers across a crowded room and he would suddenly realise . . . At least there was a crowded room, ready and waiting.

Tiffany lived in what used to be an old mansion house which had been converted into flats. Her family’s apartment covered most of the ground floor. Their sitting room was huge: half the size of the school gym. Tiffany’s kitchen was amazing, with a high ceiling. Jess found Flora in there, surrounded by boys and picking daintily at a pizza. She was wearing diamanté strips across both her eyelids. Every time she blinked, there was a flash of rainbow light.

‘Where on earth did you get those?’ demanded Jess in amazement.

‘My granny gave them to me!’ said Flora. ‘Aren’t they amazing? But they make my eyelids feel sort of heavy. I think I shall have to go to bed in a minute.’

Nobody had even noticed Jess’s cleavage. Jess didn’t know whether to be pleased or furious. She decided it was just as well. She was beginning to smell of minestrone, which was unfortunate. She had doused herself in her mother’s Calvin Klein. But the sweaty, soupy smell was winning. Jess was a bit worried. You shouldn’t be able to smell the soup, surely, unless it had escaped somehow? She glanced down at her cleavage. Well, somebody had to. There was no sign of anything wrong.

Flora threw back her head and batted her diamanté eyelashes at the ceiling. ‘This is such an amazing kitchen!’ she breathed. ‘It must be really old. It’s like a palace or something. You can imagine a princess sitting here after a night out at a ball, having a cup of hot chocolate and telling her butler all about it.’ Jess sometimes suspected that in her most private dreams, Flora imagined she was a reincarnation of Princess Diana.

Tiffany’s brother had the latest gothic video game and so the boys melted away.

‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’ pondered Jess.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ sighed Flora. ‘Do you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jess. ‘I’m sure I had a previous life in ancient Egypt. As a dung beetle.’

‘Oh, I so love ancient Egypt!’ sighed Flora. ‘I’d really like to have a black wig so I could go to parties as Cleopatra.’

This annoyed Jess slightly. She was supposed to be the dark one. Flora had the blonde beauty of a goddess in a painting. Wasn’t that enough? At the very moment when Jess was poised to start hating Flora just a little bit, Flora slid off her chair and made Jess a cream cheese and gherkin sandwich.