by Sue Limb
‘And the rest of you!’ shouted Miss Dingle. ‘Be quiet and get on with writing your list of reasons – unless you all want to stay behind after school! I’m quite tempted to put the whole group in detention!’ At the word ‘detention’, another drop of spit went sailing across the room.
There was a muffled explosion as everyone tried to avoid laughing out loud by eating their own tonsils, but frenzied scribbling was also resumed. Nobody wanted to stay behind after school. Jess picked up her dictionary and tried to look intelligent. She turned the pages, hoping for a rude word. Suddenly she had an idea. Hey! Maybe you could consult the dictionary, a bit like the Tarot. Think of a question, then open it at random. Jess closed her eyes and concentrated. Will Ben Jones and I ever be an item?
Her finger jabbed at a word. Parsley. A well-known garden herb, used for flavouring soup. Well, not a brilliant result, obviously. But maybe there was a hidden meaning. Perhaps you could make a boy fall in love with you by rubbing parsley behind your ears, or sprinkling chopped parsley in his pants while he was swimming.
Jess suddenly caught Dingbat’s eye again. A dangerous moment. Hastily Jess copied down the title of the history essay. ‘Reasons Why King Charles I Was Unpopular.’ All she had to do was read chapter six of the history book. Jess flicked through the book and looked at the pictures. Charles I had sad, haunted eyes and a stylish goatee. Flora had told her that he had been only about five feet tall. Some kind of Hobbit, obviously. And then he had had his head chopped off – pretty bad news for anybody of course, but for a short guy clearly a disaster, style-wise.
‘Reasons Why King Charles I Was Unpopular.’ Jess looked across at Flora, who was writing so hard that her whole body was shaking. She had written three whole pages already, and if Jess was going to catch up with her, she had to make a start. Jess picked up her pen and let her imagination run away with her. This was always dangerous.
Reasons Why King Charles I Was Unpopular
1. He never changed his pants.
2. He refused to grow.
3. He passed a law saying everybody taller than him had to have their legs cut off.
4. He slurped his soup.
5. He used to bottle his farts and sell them to the tourists.
Somehow, at this point, Jess’s inspiration dried up and she began to think about Ben Jones again. She formed a plan to steal a bit of DNA from his football boots or a hair from the shoulder of his blazer. There would be instructions somewhere on the internet, so she ought to be able to genetically engineer a Ben Jones lookalike, in case the real one proved unavailable. She gazed in adoration at the tattoo of Ben Jones: the Demented Iguana. How she longed to have his babies. Or possibly lay his eggs.
Jess started another list: ‘Reasons Why Ben Jones Is Popular.’ This was much easier than the history list.
1. Hair like golden grass (if only I could picnic on it).
2. Eyes blue enough to swim in (he’s beginning to sound like a holiday destination).
3. A cute, slow, slanty smile that could defrost Antarctica.
4. Doesn’t speak much, i.e. not loud and trashy, and . .
5. Oozes mystery and charisma.
Suddenly, the bell rang. A massive sigh of relief spread through the room. Everybody put down their pens, yawned and stretched. Tiffany, a plump, dark-haired girl with savage eyebrows, turned round to Jess and hissed, ‘Don’t forget my party tomorrow night! Be there or else!’
‘Sure,’ said Jess. ‘I was gonna stay in and darn some divine socks, but for you – I’ll make that major sacrifice.’ Tiffany’s family was quite rich – at least, by Jess’s standards – and Jess was quite looking forward to quaffing champagne and swinging from the chandeliers.
Jess’s best friend, the goddess Flora, was the only person in the class who hadn’t finished working yet. She scribbled away harder than ever, her golden hair glittering. One grain of her divine dandruff could make the blind see again, and revive small insects that had been trodden on.
Flora finished off her sentence with a flourish, tossed back her hair with a great flash of supernatural light, turned to Jess and grinned. It’s a good job the beautiful, over-achieving glamour puss is my best friend, thought Jess, or I might just have to kill her.
‘Jess Jordan!’ thundered Miss Dingle in her tiny fairy’s voice, above the noise of people packing up their bags. ‘Will you come up here and show me your list of reasons, please!’
Get to Know Sue Limb with her Q & A!
Name: Sue Limb.
Star sign: Virgo.
Favourite colour: Green.
Favourite number: Seven.
Favourite thing to do: Give my dog a bath.
Favourite food: Anything with pesto.
Where were you born? Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England.
Where do you live now? On a remote farm in Gloucestershire.
What were you like at school? A tomboy-ish nerd.
Have you got brothers and sisters? One older brother, who’s a jazz musician.
What did you want to be as a child? Secretary-General of the United Nations (I told you I was a nerd).
How did you start writing? At age two, I liked doodling the letter ‘S’. When I grew up, I tried teaching, couldn’t cope, and writing seemed to be the only thing possible.
What did you do before you were a writer? I was a teacher, screaming in vain for quiet while my classes rioted gently around me.
Where do you write? Anywhere – I particularly like writing on trains. But when I’m at home, in a room with windows opening into a wild wood.
What was your favourite book as a child? The Railway Children by E. Nesbit.
What’s your favourite children’s book now? Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
What’s your favourite adult book? Persuasion by Jane Austen.
What tips do you have for budding writers? Read a lot!
What’s your favourite TV programme? Frasier.
What makes you laugh? Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse as the Surgeons.
What’s your favourite movie? Some Like It Hot.
Who do you imagine playing Jess, Flora and Fred in a movie? Carey Mulligan would be Jess, Emma Watson would be Flora and Jamie Campbell Bower would be Fred.
Books by Sue Limb (in reading order):
Flirting for England
Charming But Insane
Absolute Torture!
Pants on Fire
Five-Star Fiasco
Chocolate SOS
Coming soon:
Party Disaster!
Girls, Guilty But Somehow Glorious
Girls, Muddy, Moody Yet Magnificent
Girls to Total Goddesses
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in January 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Sue Limb 2007
Revised text copyright © Sue Limb 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781408812754
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