The Rise and Rise of Tabitha Baird

by Arabella Weir

The hospital’s nearby, but Miss drove me there in her car because she said she thought it was getting urgent.

  While we were waiting at A&E, Ms Cantor, who said I should call her by her first name, Eva – cool, eh? – told me that her job at the school was trying to keep bad behaviour ‘in check’. She wants to be a teacher but needs to experience a school before starting her training.

  ‘So, basically,’ I said, ‘you’re there as a sort of unofficial police officer, but with no real powers, to keep an eye on the out-of-control kids.’ I meant to be cheeky but I was also telling the truth because that is what she’s there for, isn’t it? All the bad kids know members of staff don’t have that much power – except, I suppose, they can get them expelled, but it takes a lot for that to happen.

  She actually laughed when I said that though, which made me like her more. It was quite easy talking to her so I didn’t think she’d go mad when I said I thought teaching would be the worst job in the whole wide world.

  ‘Helping shape a young mind, especially a quick one like yours, is probably one of the most important and rewarding jobs in the world,’ she replied calmly.

  No one has ever said I’ve got a quick mind before. Actually I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything at all about my mind before. A couple of teachers back at Greyfriars told me ‘You’re not fulfilling your potential’ but there they probably meant my potential to own a pony and get my hair dyed blonde.

  I didn’t let on, but I was actually quite pleased. It’s not like saying I’m a swot – it’s just like saying I’m bright, which I am, I hope. I just don’t want to do any schoolwork. Who does?

  Anyway, we got shown into a cubicle and a young, quite good-looking male doctor, Dr Tarbath, came along and checked my finger out. While he was examining it I gave Miss a he’s-not-bad look and she smirked back at me and we both laughed. It was weird behaving with a sort-of teacher like I’d normally behave with my mates.

  ‘Right, I’ve had a look and there’s nothing else for it, I’m afraid – this finger is going to have to come off,’ the doctor said.

  Miss gasped out loud. I felt sick and wanted to cry. Oh god, my whole life was going to be over with only four fingers on one hand – how completely and totally mankenstein would that be?

  ‘What?! You aren’t serious, are you?’ Miss asked him.

  ‘Please tell me you’re not serious,’ I said, really trying hard not to cry.

  The doctor looked at Eva like, ‘I’m very sorry but it can’t be helped,’ and gave me a long, sympathetic look.

  Then he started laughing and said, ‘Of course I’m not. I’m pulling your leg. Or rather your finger.’

  And before I knew it, he’d got out a large pair of blunt, scissory things, and started cutting off each plastic ring. ‘That’s the end of your precious rings, though, I’m sorry to tell you,’ he said, as he clipped off the last one.

  ‘Thank you so much, doctor,’ Eva said to him as I was massaging my finger back to life. It had lost all feeling, like super-bad cramp.

  The doctor smiled back at her. I think they both liked each other. ‘Are you going back to school?’ he asked, and when Miss said we were, he turned to me. I thought he was going to give a big, long lecture about being stupid for jamming so many rings onto my finger and wasting doctor’s time and all that sort of boring grown-up stuff, but what he actually said was, ‘Shall we play a little trick on your schoolmates?’ I couldn’t believe a doctor could be so cool.

  He took some bandages and strapped the finger that the rings had been on to the palm of my hand from the knuckle down so it looked like the top was cut off. Then he wound more bandages around the whole hand leaving the other three fingers free from the knuckles up.

  ‘Right, that’ll do it. Tell them I had to amputate your finger to get the rings off!’

  When I held up my hand, it really did look like my finger had been cut off.

  When we drove back, Miss told me she’d got the doctor’s number. So cool, and all thanks to my finger! By the time we got back it was second break and Miss left me at the door of the canteen and gave me a big wink. I went in, making sure I had a really sad, boo-hoo-poor-me face on.

  Emz and A’isha rushed straight up to me. I didn’t say anything (I knew I couldn’t or I’d have laughed out loud). I just held up my hand.

  They both literally shrieked out loud at the sight of my hand with the ‘missing’ finger, and everyone in the canteen looked over at us. A few people came over to see what was going on, including Grace. I explained that my finger had had to be amputated because of ‘the onset of gangrene’ (that’s what the doctor told me to say).

  Everyone was a bit shocked and then, guess what? Grace fainted! She actually fainted. How extra is that? I saw her look at my hand and then at me, and then she swooned and dropped dead, right onto the floor! Everyone suddenly crowded round her to see if she was all right.

  I was a bit annoyed because I was the one with a real, well, okay, not actually real, but they thought it was a real, genuine amputation. I had actually ‘lost a finger’ but now they were more worried about someone who’d just fainted!

  Luckily Grace came to pretty quickly and everyone went back to asking me what had happened, what the doctors had said and where the cut-off finger was. I hadn’t thought about that, but I said the hospital had kept it. I wanted to say it was in my bag. It would have been awesome to see people’s faces when I told them that – Grace would have fainted again, for sure!

  It was so brilliant! Absolutely no one realised it was a joke. Not one single person asked me if it was really true. I could not believe it.

  I felt bad about not telling Emz and A’isha the truth. When it was going-home time and we were walking along, loads of other kids gave me pitying looks and nudged each other and pointed at me. Emz and A’isha put themselves either side of me, sort of like protection, so then I decided to tell them. I had to. I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.

  They both doubled over, holding their sides laughing. I was so pleased, and relieved, because I was worried one of them, most likely Emz, would be cross that I hadn’t told them straightaway.

  When I got home, I tried pretending to Mum that I had had my finger cut off, but before I even got to the actual true stuff about going to hospital and everything, Luke said, ‘I can see the top of your so-called amputated finger bulging underneath all that stupid bandaging.’ I could have killed him.

  Mum said, ‘Oh darling, you are so clever, only ten years old and you know the word amputated.’

  Luke replied, ‘Of course I do and I can spell it, too.’

  So, no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to me or my story. As per usual. I almost wished I had actually had my finger cut off and then they’d have been sorry, huh?

  Later on, I Instagrammed a picture of my hand showing all my fingers on it. I didn’t want everyone to think that I really had lost a finger forever. That would be mankenstein and not funny.

  As I walked into school today I noticed various groups of kids from various different years giving me looks that were a mixture of yuck-did-she-really-lose-a-finger? to wow-she’s-at-school-the-day-after-losing-her-finger, and then smiles from the ones who’d obviously seen it on Instagram, like they thought it was funny and a brilliant prank. It felt really good to know that so many people had heard about my stupendous joke.

  As I made my way to the classroom I super casually waggled my left hand around to show it had ALL of my fingers on it. I didn’t bother to check people’s reactions. I felt a thousand metres tall. I could not believe I’d done something that so many others had heard about. It was just totally, completely brilliant – the best feeling in the world. The amputated finger had made me a legend. It felt like it didn’t matter any more that I wasn’t the prettiest or thinnest girl – it felt like I had earned a new status because I was the most daring, the bravest, possibly even the funniest girl at school. I had managed to convince an entire school that I had had a whole finger cu
t off and during school time, too! It was amazing.

  But, just as I got to class a Year 7 kid, who I’d never seen before, came up to me. ‘Are you the girl who pretended to have her finger cut off?’ he panted, all out of breath. I was just about to explain my brilliant wheeze when he went on, ‘The head, Miss Wright, wants to see you in her office now,’ and then he shot off.

  ‘Oh great,’ I thought. ‘I’ll bet she isn’t going to think my fake amputation is as hilarious as everyone else obviously does.’

  And I was soooo right. Hah, hah! I was right about Miss Wright. Geddit?

  I went down and knocked on the door of her office. Mrs Brassington, the secretary (who, Emz had told me, everyone calls Mrs Bras because she’s got the most enormous boobs – she so does!), nodded at me through the glass panel to come in.

  ‘Hmm,’ was all she said, in a really grumpy way, when I entered. Obviously she’d heard what I’d done and her grumpy ‘hmm’ was her letting me know what she thought. Like, I could care less what Mrs Bras thinks of me. Actually she should really be called Mrs No-Bra-Fits-Me because her boobs seemed to spill out of every side of her bra – her top half was like a mountain range of squishy lumps and bumps.

  ‘Send her in!’ I heard Miss Wright call out from her lair – the inner office where she lurks.

  Mrs Bras raised her eyebrows at me, really high, like she was saying, ‘You’re in for it now.’

  I scowled back at her and walked into the head’s office.

  ‘Tabitha Baird, it has come to my attention that following an incident involving some plastic rings you pretended to have a finger amputated,’ Miss Wright said, without even asking me to sit down!

  ‘Yeah … and?’ I replied, deciding I might as well go for it. Well, there was no point in pretending I hadn’t done it and I wasn’t about to apologise … not straight away, that was for sure.

  ‘You have caused a number of people a considerable amount of distress. People who genuinely believed you had a major disfiguration, an amputation …’

  I had to stop myself laughing at that point.

  ‘… I gather one pupil, Grace McKnight, even fainted.’

  Oh god, I just knew it’d somehow be my fault pathetic Grace had fainted! I didn’t make her faint. I didn’t even wave my ‘missing’ finger in her face. I can’t help it if she’s that wet. It is not my fault.

  I didn’t say anything back though. I knew she was waiting for me to apologise, but I was not going to.

  ‘Have you got anything to say for yourself, Tabitha?’ Miss Wright eventually said after we’d both left a long gap, each of us waiting for the other to speak first. And it was her! Miss Wright spoke first! Result.

  I hate it when grown-ups ask that. They definitely do not expect you to say what you’ve really got to say for yourself, like, ‘Yeah, I thought it was hilarious and so did everyone else and I’m definitely going to do something like that again,’ that is for sure. So, they don’t really mean, ‘Have you got anything to say for yourself?’ They actually mean, ‘Are you going to say what I want you to say?’

  ‘Erm, not really, I just did it for a laugh,’ I replied, super casually, which was like a way-politer version of what I wanted to say.

  I thought about saying it was the doctor’s idea in the first place, but I didn’t want to drop him in it, especially if he was going to go out with Miss Cantor, and also it kind of made the whole thing seem less brilliant if I admitted it hadn’t actually been my very own idea.

  ‘I take a dim view of this whole episode, Tabitha. It can hardly be said you’ve made a good impression since your arrival. As a consequence you are now “on notice”. I will be watching your behaviour with a keen eye,’ Miss Wright said, using the tone of voice that means, ‘Do not reply, you have been warned, now leave.’

  I suppose I should have felt worried and upset, but I didn’t, I felt the exact opposite. I felt brilliant! I was really beginning to make my mark here at HAC. Miss Wright was soooooo wrong – I actually had made ‘a good impression’ since my arrival, obvs just not in the way Miss Wright meant, but in the way that mattered to me. I so had! I mean, if I’d done something bad enough to get called into the head’s office then that officially meant I was pretty cool. Also, I don’t happen to believe my finger-joke thing was that bad anyway. I’m sure Grace fainting had made it seem like a much bigger deal than it really was but, I have to admit, I was glad it had got me into the head’s office.

  After class I went up to Grace and said, ‘Thanks a lot for telling the head I made you faint.’ Although I didn’t really mind, I felt like I had to let her know that I knew she’d snitched on me.

  ‘I didn’t tell her – someone else must have,’ Grace replied softly, almost whispering. I felt a bit bad because she was obviously telling the truth, but she is quite annoying with the whole shy, nerdy don’t-look-at-me thing she has going on, plus the oh-so-extra hairband thing, you know?

  At lunch Emz and A’isha were full of questions about what had happened with Miss Wright. Emz said, ‘It’s quite bad if you have to go to the head’s office, you know, Tab?’

  ‘Yeah, you don’t want to get suspended or anything, do you?’ A’isha chipped in.

  ‘I am so not going to get suspended, trust me. It was just a lark. You don’t get suspended for playing a prank.’

  And that is true – no one gets kicked out of a school for that sort of thing. But I could tell both of them were a bit worried that I might end up getting into real trouble and that made me feel so good – they cared about what happened to me.

  I hadn’t wanted Mum and Dad to break up and I hadn’t wanted to have to live at Gran’s, but because of that, I’ve now got something I’ve never really had before – two really good mates who seem to like me as much I like them. And that is the best thing in the whole entire world.

  Later on, during study period (where you’re supposed to study quietly, obvs, but everyone just talks and then if a teacher shushes us we pretend we were talking about the thing we’re studying … and the teachers believe us!), I told Emz and A’isha about Snap-Dog Boy.

  They couldn’t stop laughing at the name I’d given him! A’isha suggested I talk properly to him next time I see him instead of calling out across a busy road to get his attention.

  ‘Duh, like I hadn’t thought of that,’ I replied, sarkily. ‘But what do I say? “Oh hello, we’ve got the same dog, how funny, but then you’d already noticed that and said ‘snap’ when I saw you, so, like, you already know we’ve got the same dog.” Hmm, that’s going to make me look really cool and brilliant.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything about dogs. Ask him if he lives near, or where he goes to school. You know, a normal, non-dog-related question,’ A’isha said.

  We started laughing because we all realised that a non-dog-related question would be basically any question in the world anyone could ever think of asking, because most questions are non-dog-related. Unless you work in a kennel, I s’pose.

  When I got home, guess what? Mum was on her computer, almost certainly writing her blog. What a surprise. Honestly, I think she’s addicted to it – addicted to moaning about her life, which is basically what her blog is. She is literally never off it.

  ‘What exactly is so fascinating about your blog, Mum?’ I asked, partly because I wanted to annoy her, but also because I didn’t want her to notice I was getting biscuits out of the cupboard where Gran’s told me she hides them – not from me, obvs, she’s all right about me eating biscuits, but from Mum who would take them, not to eat them herself but to stop me finding them.

  ‘I’ve created a wonderful support network for single mums like me, darling, and I am not blind, please don’t eat biscuits, my fat little sausage. They aren’t good for you, and you can’t afford to eat things like that, which are filled with sugar,’ she said without even looking up from her keyboard.

  I hate the way Mum goes on about what I eat as if I was some sort of ‘special case’ – a huge lump who will
eat everything in sight if not monitored night and day by a control freak – her!

  I didn’t reply, but as I put the biscuits away I stuffed another two into my mouth. I didn’t even want them. I’d only wanted two or so in the first place, but I ate the extra ones just to annoy Mum and let her know that she can’t control what I eat.

  And then I realised that as Mum hadn’t actually seen me eat the two extra biscuits then there’s no way it could really annoy her – and then I realised that if I put on weight because of eating extra biscuits, that will annoy her. She always mentions it immediately if she thinks I’m looking fatter. How’s this, though – Luke gets uglier and spottier every day and she never says anything to him about that!

  I don’t want to get fatter, obviously – even to annoy Mum. And I am not trying to get fatter, but I should be able to eat a biscuit now and again without my own personal police-officer mother going on and on about how bad biscuits are for me and how fat I’m going to get.

  I’m upset now. The only thing Mum ever seems to notice about me is how fat or thin I am. She never asks me about school or homework (which is just as well, I guess, since I don’t do homework very often!) or if I’m missing Dad or anything. Come to think of it, Mum only mentions Dad when she’s complaining about him and blaming him for losing everything, and why we’ve had to come and live here.

  Gran’s the one who asks all those normal mum-type questions, which is one of the really nice things about living here. Luckily Gran’s a bit too scatty and her memory’s not great, so when she asks about homework I usually say I haven’t got any or I’ve done it or whatever and she never checks up. Result.

  Usually I love getting what Ms Osborne insists on calling ‘negative attention’, i.e. when the teachers keep having to tell me off for whatever funny thing I’m doing in class and everyone is laughing and egging me on – except, of course, the teacher! I definitely want everyone to think I’m cool at HAC and it looks like that is working out.