The Endless Trials of Tabitha Baird

by Arabella Weir

  Option 2. Use some of the really, really unusual words I looked up in the dictionary over the summer with Luke when we were bored. We’d take it in turns to let the dictionary fall open at whatever page and then close our eyes and stick a finger on a word and then learn it. I’ve saved them all up to use when talking to teachers – I just know they won’t know what most of them mean. Luke and I deliberately memorised as many weird ones as we could. Being him, he now obviously uses them for real when he’s at school, making them even more convinced that he’s a genius. I am only going to use them to trick teachers – much funnier than using them for real, obvs.

  (My fave is PUSILLANIMOUS – absolutely nobody knows what that means and best of all it doesn’t having anything to do with yucky pus, like you’d think it would. I’ve got loads like that – words that, if you have to guess what they mean, sound like they’re to do with something else but then aren’t. Oh man, that is going to wind my teachers up sooooo much.)

  Option 3. Make sure my pencil ‘accidentally’ rolls off my desk about a million times during class – that’ll drive most of the teachers absolutely bonkers – brilliant! And I’ll obviously have to keep going under the desk to pick it up. Of course I will because they will have rolled ‘ACCIDENTALLY’ onto the floor. Fantastic!

  So, first period, we had Ms Cameron, aka Number Ten (as in the prime minister, geddit?), and because it was her (she gets all het up soooo easily) I decided to go for one of my options straight away. I had been planning on not being naughty until the middle of the day but because she’s always having a go at me I decided I might as well give her the ‘benefit of my wheeze’ as she likes to call me being cheeky! (If she catches me chatting in her class Ms Cameron always says to me ‘Perhaps you’d like to give us all the benefit of your wisdom, Miss Baird?’ in a super-sarky-I’m-so-hilarious voice.)

  I decided to go with pretending I’d lost my voice. I’d just had time to tell A’isha and Emz (Grace isn’t in that class) what I was going to do and I could see they were dying to see how Miss was going to react. I love that feeling. It’s so exciting and makes me feel all jiggly – that feeling when I’m about to do something naughty or funny and I know my mates are waiting for it. It feels super daring too.

  So Miss started handing out some sheets and told us we had to work on them in pairs. When she arrived at our table, I put my hand up and mouthed, but making sure no actual words came out, ‘But there are three of us.’ Miss looked at me like I was mad and immediately snapped, ‘What?!’ I caught Emz and A’isha trying not to snigger. So, again, saying the words with my mouth but making sure no actual sound came out, I mouthed, ‘There are three of us, so we can’t work in a pair.’ A’isha actually snorted with laughter then. I think because I’d held up three fingers when I mouthed ‘three of us’, sort of like I was having to do sign language.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re playing at, Tabitha, and what’s more I don’t care! You can complete this sheet on your own. That’ll teach you. Emma and A’isha can do theirs together!’ Miss barked at me and then stomped off.

  A few people round our table sort of sniggered but it wasn’t over yet. I hadn’t finished. No way. I wasn’t about to let her have the last word and I definitely wasn’t going to do the sheet on my own.

  So I put my hand up and because I was pretending I couldn’t speak obviously I had to flap my arm about to try to get her attention. I could see some of the class looking up and just knowing I was about to do something else, which was just what I wanted. But at the same moment Miss noticed me she also arrived at Dark Aly’s table, who was sitting alone. So, distracted in that moment from having a go at me, Miss looked around, pointed at someone else sitting on their own, obviously to pair them up with Dark Aly.

  And then suddenly, before she could move the other pupil, out of nowhere Dark Aly says really slowly and in a really spooky voice, ‘Do not move that student to my table. I will not work with anyone else. I demand the right to complete this work alone.’

  The whole class went silent. Everyone was staring at her, totes speechless, including Miss. It was so weird and random. First of all, what kind of crazy person actually wants to do any work alone if they don’t have to? Second of all, she can’t actually refuse to work with someone else – it’s not her decision. Third, what was with that voice?! No one said a word.

  I stopped waving and lowered my hand. It was pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere with my winding-up-Miss-project if Dark Aly was going to go all Darth Vader (that is exactly what her voice sounded like!). Eventually, after what seemed like years of Miss staring at Dark Aly with her mouth open – FYI, not a good look, Ms Cameron – and Dark Aly staring back at her without blinking once, Miss said, ‘Very well, you can do it on your own.’

  Can you believe that? This is the same teacher who made me sit alone at the front of the class the very first time she met me, before I’d ever done a single thing. And now this same teacher was not saying anything to a new girl who had been super rude – in fact, more than rude, like extra rude. She was letting her get away with it, just like that!

  Dark Aly didn’t reply, she just nodded as if she was saying, ‘I knew all along you’d give in,’ then she picked up a pen and started doing the sheet. We all looked at each other completely and totally amazed – none of us could believe Miss hadn’t wobbled out. It was so weird and freaky.

  I admit Dark Aly is pretty scary but, come on, she’s still only a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. She isn’t actually Darth Vader. Just because she’s got a miniature dagger stud in her ear plus a skull one doesn’t mean she is, in real life, an axe murderer or anything. The way Miss had backed down was like she was scared of her.

  Huh. Well, I’m not scared of her anyway. I was really cross afterwards because, thanks to that I’m-so-scary-weird-voice-wannabe-goth, my plan had completely backfired and I didn’t get into trouble at all so I didn’t manage to make the whole class laugh.

  I hate Dark Aly. She can’t be that badass all the time – she’s going to ruin all my jokes and pranks if she keeps doing things like that. Oh god, I wonder if she did that on purpose because she’d seen me pretending I’d lost my voice and then waving my arm to get Miss’s attention?! What if Dark Aly has decided to compete with me to be the coolest, naughtiest girl in the class?

  What if she wins? What if no one likes me any more because of her? What will I do if I’m not the coolest, naughtiest girl at school? Who will I be instead? Errr, I don’t like this feeling.

  Oh man, what is wrong with adults? Huh, more like, what is NOT wrong with adults?! I mean, do they literally not have a single clue about anything at all? Sometimes – actually more like most of the time – I cannot believe the decisions they, supposedly as grown-ups, make! I mean, just take something huge like war or something not even that huge like what time it’s okay to show programmes with people swearing and shouting at each on other TV – all those decisions are made by grown-ups, people who are supposed to know everything and have weighed everything up, but then when you see the decisions they did end up making you just think, Erm, are you a complete moron?

  That is so true with what’s just happened to me. You are so not going to believe this, because it is actually totally and completely unbelievable. Right, so you know Mum’s ridiculous blog where she complains all day every day about how awful her life is, how dreadful and badly behaved I am, how hard it is for her to cope now that we’ve got no money and how useless Dad was?

  Yes, that blog (and by the way, it’s the same blog where she hardly ever complains about Luke. Actually, in fact, it’s the exact opposite – it’s usually stuff about how he’s got an A in this or some teacher has written home to say how brilliant he was at something … You know, fascinating stuff – not). Anyway, it’s the blog Mum’s been writing since she split up with Dad and we moved to London, and, as if that weren’t bad and super embarrassing enough, it is always stuff about how extra hard her life is as a single mum. (Does she really count
as a single mum anyway if we’re living with Gran? Hmm, don’t think so. So, in a way, Mum is actually sort of lying on the blog too, as well as being boring and moany.)

  So, because Mum was a journalist before she had me, and because as she keeps saying, thinking it’s hilarious (it is so not), that she’s ‘parked her brain’ (she means ‘gave up work to live in the country and bring up kids’, although I do not see what that’s got to do with parking), she still has some contacts in newspapers and magazines, and anyways – oh man, I can hardly bear to write this down – some idiot has decided to make Mum’s blog a weekly column in a newspaper! An actual newspaper that people buy and read every day, you know?! I might as well run away forever right now.

  Mum is, of course, delighted, which, okay, is quite nice for her, I admit, and, all right, I suppose it is good that she’s earning a bit of money, although they’re not paying her that much she says, but, I mean, just how embarrassing is it going to be for me if anyone ever guesses that column is written by My Own Mum?! Can you imagine the shame? If anyone finds out I would literally never ever be able to go to school again. Never mind school, I don’t think I’d ever leave the house again, not even to walk Basil. Thank god the column, like her blog, is going to be anonymous so it’s not like it will actually have printed at the top every week ‘written by Katherine Baird, Tabitha Baird’s mother’. Obvs if it did I would just die on the spot.

  When Mum told me, she was so thrilled it was quite sweet, and I was happy for her. Well, you know, a bit. I congratulated her and stuff and then said, ‘You have to swear on my and Luke’s lives that you will never ever write about me,’ which, you know, I think is fair enough. It is my life, after all, not hers.

  And then, get this, Mum said, ‘I am going to write about anything and everything that affects me and you’ll just have to live with it.’ Can you believe it?! It’s like she thinks what I do has got something to do with her. It’s my life, not hers. We ended up having a bit of a row and I really didn’t want that. I wasn’t looking for a row. I wasn’t deliberately trying to wind her up. I know I sometimes do that but this time I really wasn’t.

  Mum accused me of being selfish and only thinking about myself and I said, ‘Right back at you’, because I thought exactly the same about her, which is actually right, isn’t it? I mean, if she writes about me in the column, like specific stuff I’ve actually done, then it’s going to be really easy to guess it’s me, even if you don’t know the writer’s name. And then if she writes stuff about Luke or Gran it’s going to be even easier to guess, isn’t it? She’d better never mention Basil and his knitted outfits because there literally cannot be one other family in the world like us if you include our Westie and what Gran makes him wear. In the end Mum stomped off. God, she’s so immature sometimes, especially when she doesn’t win an argument.

  Gran and Basil had been sitting on the other side of the kitchen during the row and after Mum left Gran said, using her voice for Basil, ‘I think it’s a big deal for your mum to get this job and maybe you should have made more of that before thinking about how it would affect you.’

  I didn’t like that. It made me feel bad and it was unfair too. I gave Gran a cross stare, but she didn’t even look round at me and just kept clacking away with her knitting needles, pretending she hadn’t said a word and it really had been Basil who’d spoken.

  ‘Thanks very much for the advice, Basil,’ I replied super sarkily, looking right at him and giving him a smarmy smile.

  Basil looked back at me with his head tilted to one side and his eyes wide open like I’d hurt his feelings! I felt awful, but it wasn’t even my fault. I’m never horrible to Gran and I didn’t really want to say that to Basil, but then, you know, Basil shouldn’t have ‘said’ that to me!

  ‘Well, let’s talk about it on our walk,’ Basil then said (obvs actually Gran again).

  Even though Basil can’t actually talk, ‘walk’ is one word he definitely understands. (A fact – no dog can talk, no matter what Gran thinks about her dog choosing not to talk!) So Basil started skipping about and doing his ‘Ooh, a walk, I’m so excited’ jig.

  I was a bit annoyed because it’s not like I had actually offered to take him for a walk, so Gran had just dropped me in it, completely taking it for granted that I would. I know it is usually, mainly, pretty much always, me who walks Basil, but people shouldn’t assume that I will just like that. I decided not to make a big fuss, though. Gran’s usually on my side against Mum but she obviously wasn’t this time. I guessed it would make no difference if I did object anyway because once Basil’s heard the word ‘walk’ he does not let you forget it. He’d have kept doing that crazy jig until I took him out, however much I tried to ignore him.

  Obviously Basil and I didn’t talk about it during our walk. As if. There was no sign of Sam (aka Snap-Dog Boy, cos of us having matching Westies. I hardly saw him over the summer but I still think he’s totes gorge. That Sam. Not that I’m obsessed or anything, BTW). It was a bit drizzly and so, with nothing to take my mind off it, in the end, I did think a bit about Mum’s news, because of what Gran had said. You know, of course I think it’s good for her and all that stuff but, you have to admit, it is really weird knowing your mum is going to write private stuff about you in a newspaper where millions of people might see it. I mean, if your mum is a … a … I don’t know … works in a bank or runs a business, like Emz’s mum does, or is a childminder, like A’isha’s mum, then their jobs have LITERALLY NOTHING to do with what their kids are doing all day long. It’s, like, completely separate.

  It’d almost be better if Mum had no job at all. At least when it was just a blog it was only a few other complaining mums who read it. Now the whole world is going to. Okay, I suppose her writing stuff is a bit better than no job. Dad’s got no job and that is so lame. GB, his mum, supports him, or I guess she must do because he’s got no money. If people ask, from now on saying my mum’s a journalist, which I can (without letting on where she writes, obvs), is def better than saying she doesn’t have a job, like I have to with Dad. Honestly, he’s hopeless. It’s so embarrassing. Emz’s dad’s got a job, and A’isha’s dad’s got two jobs – he’s a postman and a minicab driver! No one knows where Grace’s dad is because she’s got two mums but both of them have got jobs! Actually, from what Grace has told me, it doesn’t seem like she ever had a dad – well, not in the way most of us have one, because her mums are lesbians so they bought the … you know – yuck! – the ONE THING that only a dad can … bleurgh! Having to go into a shop and buy … totes mankenstein! Anyway, I suppose Dad’s drinking is his job. Hah, hah. Well, he does do it full-time!

  Hmm, I’ll bet super-nice people like Grace wouldn’t make jokes about their dads’ drinking, but then maybe even super-nice people would if they had a parent who was a big drinker. You’re probably not supposed to make jokes about people being alcoholics, but I don’t see why not, especially if they’re your own dad. I don’t see why I should feel sorry for him. He’s a grown-up, or supposed to be. I didn’t ask him to be an alky. It’s his fault we’re all living with Gran in a tiny house now and … Oh, I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to waste my time going on about what’s wrong with Dad. Anyway, I haven’t got long enough. Hah, hah. It’d take all year! I love being in London and I love my mates and I’m so glad we don’t live in the country in the middle of nowhere any more. I just wish Dad weren’t such a waste of space dad-wise. Do you know what I mean?

  Anyhoo, all right, basically, okay, I admit it, it is mainly a good thing that Mum’s got this job. I’m just saying that I’ll have to be on high alert At All Times to make sure she doesn’t write the exact details of things I do. That is out of order – officially, as Grace would say!

  When Basil and I got back, both of us soaking wet, Mum was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop, tapping away as per, so I said it was good about the column. Man, she looked so pleased, and all I said was, ‘Well done getting that column. It is quite funny … if
you’re not me.’ It’s so weird the way parents get over-the-top pleased when you just do the littlest things that hardly mean anything! Gran shot me a smile to show me, I think, that she was pleased that I’d been nice to Mum. That felt good, but, oh god, I’m hope I’m not turning into a goody two-shoes!

  I’m about to go to sleep and I’ve been thinking – I wonder if Emz and A’isha ever feel like they’re more grown-up than their parents. Grace can’t, she and her mum are as grown-up as each other! They’re like two old ladies living together. Hah! They talk about books they’ve both read and politics and stuff like that! I am not joking. It’s hilarious. I cannot imagine me and my mum doing that – ever.

  I’ve got Muzzy in with me tonight. It’s not a big deal and it’s not like anyone’s going to know but, you know, we’re just going to have a cuddle. I know I’m thirteen but that’s still okay … isn’t it?

  OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD. I AM GOING TO BE SICK. AAAAAAARGH! HELP ME! I AM LITERALLY GOING TO DIE OF SHAME, EMBARRASSMENT AND … AND … AND, AAARGH, OH GOD, I DON’T KNOW ALL THE OTHER THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HOT AND RED IN THE FACE AND FEEL SWEATY AND PANICKY AND LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO CRY. MUSTN’T CRY, MUSTN’T CRY, MUSTN’T CRY. PLEASE DON’T LET ME CRY.

  Right, okay, I’ve calmed down a bit now, so I can tell you what’s just happened and why I’m in such a flappy state. Here goes. I walked Basil earlier and bumped into Sam. I saw him first. He was on the other side of the road, walking in the other direction and quite far away, but when he caught sight of me he started waving frantically. So much so, in fact, that I realised he must really want to talk to me.