It's a Girl Thing (3 page)

Then something earth-shattering happens.

Blip. Blip. Bleeeeeep.
Another text! It's Claudette.

Oh, by the way, that's not the exciting bit. This is:

WHY IS JIMI STEELE CHATTIN TO YR DAD OUTSIDE THE VOYAGE?!!!
TEXT ME BACK NOW!!! SCREEEEAM!!—CLAUDE 8:21 P.M.

 

 

The following five heart-thumping minutes are a bit of a blur. First, me and Fleur leap up and down for a bit, waving our hands in the air and squawking. I'm opening and closing my mouth, trying to express the wonderfulness of the news, but nothing comes out. (I look like a pleased cod.) Fleur is shouting repetitively, “Ooooh my Gawd!” and “What does he want?” with the occassional “This is it, Ronnie! This is it!” sprinkled in for hysterical effect. Eventually I catch my breath.

“WHAT IS IT?” I ask Fleur. “Why would Jimi Steele possibly be chatting with my dad?” (And please, God, say Dad didn't tell Jimi to get a “proper well-fitting pair of jeans” on too? I'll implode with shame.)

“Ooh, can you not see!?” squeals Fleur. “He's come to ask your dad if it's cool to ask you out! He's SUCH a gentleman. That is soooo sweet! Oh my God, what are you going to do?”

Life rarely gets more exhilarating, joyous or utterly scrummy than the past three hundred seconds. I sit on Fleur's bed, conscious that Ronnie Ripperton, the schoolgirl, the legend, the foxy strumpet, will never be the same again.

“Er, excuse me,” shouts Fleur, disturbing me from an awesome fantasy involving Jimi, myself and our twenty-bedroom Las Vegas love palace (paid for with Jimi's “World's Number-One Skateboard Champion” zillion-dollar sponsorships). “What
exactly
are you waiting for? Go home and find out what's going on NOW!” yells Fleur, throwing my left shoe just past my head.

Ahhh, I love life!! On my way out, I even give Paddy a big toothy grin and cheery wave.

“Until next time, Miss Ripperton,” says Paddy eerily as I stride up the garden path. “And believe me, Veronica . . . there WILL be a next time,” he shouts after me, accompanied by a booming theatrical evil laugh: “Boo hoo haa haa haa!!”

Mr. Swan really does watch far too much television.

One A.M.: I'm not going to school tomorrow.

I'm waiting until the coast's clear, then I'm running away with the nearest circus. (Almost any circus or traveling fair will do. Well, except for the Chinese State Circus. They don't even have any lions or tigers or dancing elephants or anything, just jugglers and acrobats
—zzzSnorezz.
Who the heck exactly WANTS to see jugglers? Grown-ups mystify me. When I rule the world, anyone caught balancing spinning plates on canes and encouraging people to applaud them will be placed under house arrest and have their crockery confiscated.)

I can't face Blackwell School, Jimi or the LBD ever again, not after tonight. I'm humiliated, utterly. In fact, it's 1:00 A.M. now and I can just about talk about it without hurling.

Deep sigh.

Right, so I scurried home, hoping to catch Dad at a quiet moment to grill him for every second of Jiminess. Every juicy word and sentence, every arch of eyebrow or hand gesture.

Okay, it's worth a shot, even if Dad is typically worse than useless at this sort of thing. Mum once left Dad for three whole days following a row over a new deep freezer; Dad only noticed she'd gone when some customers pointed out they'd waited four and a half hours for a Sunday roast.

So, I wasn't expecting Dad and Jimi to be STILL talking outside the pub. Jimi was wearing extra-baggy dark green combats with quite raggedy bottoms and a Final Warning sleeveless T-shirt. (Jimi always knows about cool bands BEFORE everyone else in the whole school, he's so
now.
) His hair was spiked up and he was nursing Bess, his skateboard, under one arm.

(Oh my God. I know Jimi's nickname for his skateboard. I'm turning into a stalker, I'll have to buy a stained anorak and binoculars soon.)

My first mistake was that I flounced up with a “guys, I know you're talking about me” smug expression plastered across my face.

Because both Jimi and Dad completely ignored me.

Or at least didn't notice I was there. They just carried on talking.

“Ah, the Fender Stratocaster. What a guitar,” Loz was droning on.

Noooo! Dad's on a “when I used to be in the music business” rant.

Run now, Jimi!
I thought.
Run like the wind! Man has evolved extra fingers listening to these stories! Brush the cobwebs from your spiky hair and flee! Save yourself. It's too late for me!

But, no. Jimi seemed fascinated.

He was even joining in with comments about amps, acoustics and guitar strings. So I stood there, grinning like a spare Barbie at a tea party, for, ooh, just under a year, until they both clicked I was with them.

“Oh, hi, er, ooh . . . Bonny?” Jimi said. (His eyes sort of glazed over for a bit while he groped around for my name. Then he got it wrong. Not a good start.)

“Ooh, hello, love!” said Dad. “This young man's just inquiring about using the pub's function room for a rehearsal space for his band.”

Ouch. So, that's Las Vegas canceled, is it?
I thought.

Then, just as I crashed, burned and imploded into a toxic ball of shame, Dad sealed the deal as only a dad can:

“And I was just saying, Ronnie, well, it'll give you and yer little pals something to watch, as you'll not be going to Astlebury, eh? Hee hee!”

Congratulations, Father, you've finally killed me. That's saved me a messy job. Dad could only have bettered this by es corting Jimi up to my laundry basket and showing him my period-knickers. You could have fried bacon on my cheeks, they were so hot.

But, don't worry, with a bit of quick thinking, plus a large helping of style and finesse, I turned this dire situation right around. Coolly, I licked my lips, looked straight at my father and purred:

“Mmmm, well, Daddio, we'll see about that. The fat lady hasn't sung yet.”

Then I turned to Jimi and whispered firmly, but sexily:

“Babe. It's Ronnie, NOT Bonny. You better learn that name, sweetcakes, cos you'll be using it a whole lot more someday soon,” before wiggling off, triumphantly, into the Fantastic Voyage.

 

 

Oh, no. Hang on. I'm getting confused, that's NOT what happened.

What ACTUALLY happened was this:

It's all true—up until the “little pals not going to Astlebury” bit—to which I then pursed my lips like a dog's bum and grunted,
“Gnnnnnn pghhhhh gblaghhh,”
before skulking off to my room.

I've edited from my memory the part where I attempted to push the pub's “Pull” door for almost a minute while Jimi watched me pitifully.

(NOTE TO SELF: As far as I know, neither
gnnnnnn, pghhhhh
or
gblaghhh
are actual words. Well, not ones you would use in front of someone you really fancy, anyhow.)

 

 

Two A.M.: Something freaky-disco is going on. Loz and Magda are having a loud conversation in the den. I'm almost sure I heard Mum crying, which is totally illogical. Mum doesn't cry, not even when making French onion soup. But I'm pretty sure I heard Mum sniffling and Dad almost shouting, “But it's far too late for this, Magda—”

And Mum yell back, “It's never too late!”

Then some doors were slammed.

Then Dad followed into the bedroom where Mum had stormed and the bickering continued.

“Pah! You would say it's too late,” shouted my mum. “That's you all over. Selfish! You only think about how
you
feel.”

That's not really true,
I thought, but I decided, sensibly, to stay under my duvet and not make it a three-way debate.

“But I'm thinking about you! Not just me. And all of us. It doesn't feel right, this happening so late . . . ,” my dad persisted.

Blooming right it's too late. It's two in the morning. Small wonder I've got under-eye bags the size of Peru, living with Freak o' Nature and his missus. I can't put my finger on why, but that little squabble I heard has made me feel a bit weird. It's okay for me to fight with both of them—that's normal—but I don't like it when they do it.

Chapter 2

Mr. McGraw exhales one of his deep trademark sighs.

Long and deliberately mournful, like a punctured airship falling miserably to Earth, Blackwell's headmaster takes to the podium. Tapping the microphone twice with a
thdunch, thdunch,
a squeal of feedback rings around the antique Tannoy speaker system, deafening the hideously jam-packed gym. McGraw (or as he's often known, “Quickdraw,” or lately by some meaner kids, “Prozac Mac”) surveys his six-hundred-strong audience with a heavy heart.

Once . . . ,
I can almost hear him thinking,
Sweet Lord Jesus, just ONCE, can't I get a phone call to say they'd all called in sick?

My eye lingers along the row of ten miserable-faced teaching staff required to be present for today's assembly. All of whom seem to be in another world, entertaining those special thoughts which pretty much
all
teachers do between 9:00 and 9:30 A.M. in schools far and wide.

You can just tell Mrs. Guinevere, our deputy headmistress, is wishing she could be in beddy-bo-bo's, sipping a mug of milky Earl Grey with the
Guardian
cryptic crossword. One look at the twisted face of Mr. Foxton, our new music teacher, shows the appalling hangover he's suffering. Well, what I can see of his face does. His head is practically in his hands. The fact that Mr. Foxton (according to Blackwell gossips), at the age of twenty-four, still insists on visiting local pubs with his friends midweek and staying until almost TEN-THIRTY P.M. sipping lager and laughing is fine by me. It just makes it all the more hilarious watching him sit through a whole assembly, then toddling off to a double Year 7 glockenspiel and drum workshop. The other teachers just stare ahead, seemingly in some sort of depressed trance.

McGraw's third-, fourth- and fifth-year crowd are grumpy and restless, largely due to the early hour (8:45 A.M. For the love of Moses, some of us still have pillow creases on our faces and sleep-snot in our eyes) plus the fact the hall smells of a pungent cocktail of feet, farts and cheap floor polish. Blackwell Sports Hall isn't nearly spacious enough for four hundred chairs, so while Year 10 and Year 11 get a seat, us Year 9 bods make do squatting at the front of the hall, jumbled all over each other on bare floorboards. We look like refugees waiting for a food drop.

Honestly, I cannot wait for next term when I graduate to a proper seat and can live through one assembly
without
rampant pins and needles and someone's pelvis in my face. Everybody seems to have forgotten the “mobiles on mute” rule too, thus a zillion techno bleeps and hip-hop ring tones criss-cross the airspace.

“God has dealt me some very harsh cards,” mumbles McGraw under his breath, raising one hairy hand for silence.

“Good morning, children,” sighs McGraw.

“Good morning, Mr. McGraw,” we all reply.

And we're off! Battering through Song 42 of the
Happy Voices, Happy Lives Songbook for Children.
Ooh, it's a chirpy little number, this one, all about “banging the drum of love” and “putting your arms around the world.”

“I have nothing whatsoever to hug the world about,” I grumble to Claudette, who's resting her
Happy Voices
book atop her generous C-cup bosom.

“Ooh, shut up,” Claude says. “I love this one. It's one of my favorites,” she shrills, turning up her mouth volume to LOUD, savoring every syllable of the chorus.

So, as the rest of Blackwell drones through “Banging the Drum of Love,” Claude swoops and hollers, allowing every word just the right annotation and bags of
whoomph.

“Ban-geeeeng the drrrums of luuurve!” Claude sings. “I waaant to geeeeeeve the worrrrld a beeeeeg huuug!!”

Claude winks at me and begins waving her hands in the air and clapping, satisfied that the entire assembly hall is beginning to stare at us. I'm giggling so hard now, I almost wee. Even the super-cool Year 11 bods are starting to snigger.

Mrs. Guinevere, deputy head, looks up from her sheet music, at first overjoyed that one pupil is putting true grit into the task, until her eyes rest upon the LBD and she sees that on either side of the songbird, I'm rolling about on the varnished floors with snot flowing down each nostril and Fleur is texting Dion a long, pleading love missive on her mobile phone.

 

 

If you had to sum up Claudette Cassiera and why she's so flipping fabulous (and really one of the grooviest people in the cosmiverse too), this is a fine example. With her perfect uniform (three-quarters-length white virgin socks/proper blazer), scrubbed nails (no sneaked nail polish) and face
au naturelle
(just fresh ebony skin and rich brown hair pulled into two neat bunches, held with asymmetric hair bobbles): Claude is the epitome of extreme wickedness, masked by an air of extreme wholesome goodness.

A pretty darn useful trick that only true A-List minxes can carry off. Face it: You can't get told off for “enjoying yourself too much” singing lame nonreligious cheeseorama
Happy Voice
hymns, can you? Nope, course you can't.

That'd be like getting detention for demanding more French homework.

Or suspended for running the 100 meters too quickly.