“That his little sister has listened to it a hundred times, and now they can’t stop singing it even though it’s really annoying.” She said that last part with a relish that I found inappropriate.
“That’s great,” I replied.
“I’m glad you think so.”
“And then Aunt Rachel phoned from Scotland because she’d seen me in it and told Mom that my bangs looked bad.”
“Your bangs look great! They really bring out your eyes.”
She smiled slightly. “Do you really think so? You need to get them. I’ve got scissors somewhere…” She started digging through her bag. So I jumped in before anything terrible could happen.
“Isn’t this a little bit amazing, though? That people in Scotland are watching? I mean, I know it’s embarrassing that everyone’s doing tambourines at you, but isn’t it sort of awesome too?”
Judging from the way that Lacey’s expression changed, I should probably have just let her give me bangs right then and there. In fact, I should probably have let her shave my entire head.
“Why is it still up?” said Lacey. “You said Jaz was going to take it down. Why hasn’t she?”
“I asked her to,” I said, hoping Lace wouldn’t notice that my left eyelid had started to twitch. Besides, I had asked her. It wasn’t a complete lie, so long as you ignored the conversation afterward. “I asked, and then I begged, and she just laughed. You know what Jaz is like. She’s crazy.”
“Ask her again.”
“I will. But…I sort of worry that the more we ask her to take it down, the longer she’ll keep it up there.”
Lacey sighed. “Yeah. There is that, I guess. Kit Kat?” She snapped off a finger and waved it at me.
“Sure.”
Thank the Lord we were finally having a proper conversation. Because it hurts, having your best friend turn on you. It’s like being attacked by your pillow or something.
“I’m sorry it’s so embarrassing for you though,” I said.
“Aren’t you embarrassed?”
“My bedroom’s a disaster, isn’t it?” I admitted. “And I wish I’d worn more makeup.”
“Yeah,” Lacey agreed. “You do look pretty awful.”
“Huh.”
“And that thing you do with your nostrils on the high notes is so bizarre!”
“Um.”
“It’s like your whole face goes into this spasm.”
“Er.”
“It’s a good thing you sound nice. They were playing it on the TV this morning and—”
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Seriously? That’s huge.”
“Yeah,” said Lacey sadly. “A bunch more people to laugh at me.”
“Lacey,” I said, trying to be casual, “can I look at it on your phone? Just for a sec?”
She fished it out of her pocket, still talking about how the guy at the gas station had been asking where he could buy the single and how should she know, and then as I was about to check in on my numbers—
“I’ll take that. Thank you, Lacey.” McAllister materialized in front of us. “No phones in the hallways.”
“But—”
“And Katie, I have a message for you from the principal. She wants you in her office now.”
“But—”
“Now,” said McAllister, who is basically Professor McGonagall only evil. So I left Lacey fuming and phoneless and went upstairs.
• • •
The principal lives in this little office right at the front of the school where she can look out over the playground like a sort of God. I say she lives there even though I don’t suppose she sleeps there, but I can’t imagine anything else. She wears a wedding ring, so there must be a Mr. The Principal out there, but I can’t imagine him either. Some people belong where you find them and nowhere else.
Anyway, I turned up at the office and hung around by all the glossy posters. These had really impressed Mom the first time she came in until Amanda and I explained that they’re only glossy so you can peel the chewing gum off them without causing any damage. They didn’t laminate the first set, and I think they lasted about a day and a half.
So I pretended to admire a poster about how many different types of vegetables you can get in our cafeteria (a very exciting four) until the school secretary looked up and saw me and shook her head in a sort of general disapproval at my existence, following it up with, “Wait here please. There’s a bit of a line today.”
At which point I looked across at the sofa to see the line, which consisted of Mad Jaz.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“The usual,” said Jaz, who apparently had a usual. “You?”
“I don’t even know,” I said. Then because I was clearly in enough trouble that it didn’t matter if I got into more and the itch to find out how the video was doing was unbearable—worse even than when I’d broken my arm and had to use one of Grandma’s knitting needles to scratch inside the cast and then got it stuck in there, and a doctor had to pull it out again, and when she did, it was covered in pieces of fluff and skin goop—I asked, “Can I borrow your phone?”
“Yeah,” said Jaz. I found myself slightly wanting to hug her. Jaz was turning out to be a pretty decent pal after all.
She dropped it into my lap, and I pulled up the video: 808,266 views.
“I know,” said Jaz, hearing me sigh. “You really need to start turning this into money.”
“Katie.”
The principal was peering down at me. She always looked a little like an owl, but today she was particularly owlish, all round glasses and long stares down her pointy, little nose. I tossed the phone back into Jaz’s lap.
“Please come in.”
Believe me when I say that I’m not a regular in the principal’s office. The very few times I’d been in before were due to extreme misunderstandings and were in no way a reflection of my personality, which is to never break the rules unless absolutely necessary.
“Now, Katie.” The principal was watching me closely as though she was seeing all this other stuff instead of just my face.
I tried to look innocent. And academically minded.
“I’ve had some calls. Quite a few calls. About this video.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be. You’re not in trouble.”
“I’m not?”
“A number of journalists want to speak to you.”
“What, like, from the Harltree Gazette?”
“One of them was from the Harltree Gazette, yes. And one of them was”—she cleared her throat, this delicate little ahem—“from the BBC.”
My knees started to shake, and I had to sit down in one of the principal’s special chairs.
“Now, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but we just wondered if you did want to speak to them, whether doing so from here might be…fun?” said the principal. “We could set you up with a little table in front of the trophy case.”
“Won’t we have to win some trophies?” I said. “Because that might take a while. Especially the way the basketball team’s been playing lately.”
“We, er… We do have some backups that we could put in there,” said the principal. “Mr. Griffin has just made an emergency visit to the engravers.” She twiddled a pen. “You don’t have to, of course. But if you did want to mention our music program and the outstanding teaching you’ve received here…”
Hold on, was the principal asking me for a favor?
“If you like,” I said.
She looked very, very happy. “You’ll be in your school uniform, of course.” She peered at me. “Maybe not that particular version of a school uniform. We’ll find you something that’s ironed. If you can just wait a few minutes, I’ll let them know.”
“Wait, let who know?”
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The principal raised her window blinds, slat by dusty slat.
A row of cars, big ones, were parked along the no-parking area at the front of the school. And there was a van with satellite dishes on its roof.
“I’ll tell them half an hour, shall I?” said the principal. She must have caught a whiff of my panic. “Go get yourself a glass of water. And tell Jasmine she should come back at the same time tomorrow.”
I escaped back into the lobby to find Jaz picking holes in the seat of her chair and pulling out the stuffing. She’d gotten about four fluffy caterpillars’ worth and had them lined up next to her.
“You’ve been freed for twenty-four hours,” I told her.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got… This is so… Because I’m about to have a press conference. Jaz, what will I say? And what do I even look like? I haven’t got my makeup with me!”
A smile spread across Jaz’s face.
“Let me help you with that,” she said.
“Right, here we go,” said the principal, full of energy. “Come this way—oh. Oh my goodness.”
“Is it all right?” I said. “I was thinking that I ought to fix myself up a little if people are going to see me.”
“It’s…your choice, I suppose,” said the principal, handing me a new sweatshirt with its tags still on.
I should note here that the principal wears no makeup whatsoever. I thought that was the only way to explain her very extreme reaction to Jaz having given me the tiniest bit of eyeliner.
“It’s all very nice,” said the principal. “And I’ll be next to you.” She led me down the faculty hallway and into the faculty lounge. “Don’t forget to mention our music program. You’ve found it very helpful.”
And then she opened the door onto a scene of complete chaos.
On the one hand, it was just the faculty lounge. So even though someone had put in some effort with a school banner and a nice arrangement of desks and a suspiciously full trophy cabinet, it was still just a stuffy corner of the school that smelled like the teachers’ coffee.
On the other hand, it was kind of a portal to a brand-new, super weird world. The room was absolutely full. On one side were all my teachers. On the other were a bunch of people I’d never seen before in my life.
“One at a time,” said the principal. “If you’re ready, Katie.”
“Not really,” I said, and they all laughed as though I’d made a hilarious joke. I noticed several cameras pointing straight at me.
“Becky Haddon, BBC Look East. How does it feel to have a million hits?”
“I…I don’t know,” I said.
There was this awkward silence. It occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t the answer they’d been hoping for.
“Okay. It feels like…” I thought for a second. “You know those dreams where you’re standing in a very, very, very small room, and you feel like you’re kind of safe? I guess it’s probably a womb thing—that’s what my friend Lacey says. Her mom’s really into all that stuff. So you’re in the room, and you’re feeling like you’re being held and snug, and then one by one, the walls drop away, and you’re actually standing on top of a mountain with the wind whipping around you. And when you look down, instead of the usual mountain stuff like trees or snow or…goats…it’s, like, just people, all watching, and then you realize you’ve got no clothes on. It’s sort of like that.”
Big silence.
“But in a good way,” I added.
“Katie loves our music program,” said the principal. “She’s found it very helpful.”
“Mmm,” I said. “Very.”
“Alex Hayward-Bradley, the Harltree Gazette. Tell us about your influences.”
“I’ve got this major thing for Björk,” I told him. This was easier than I’d thought. “Even though she’s obviously out there. And Kate Bush, who is also pretty wacko. Then there’s Amy Winehouse, which is just basic, and Lily Allen. Remember her? And for pure pop, anything by Cathy Dennis. Lately, I’ve been in kind of a country groove, which started with early Taylor Swift and then got completely out of control, and now it’s all about Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and breakthroughs like Caitlin Rose.”
“Katie has been very influenced by our music program,” said the principal.
“I have,” I agreed.
“And what’s next for you, Katie?”
I had to think about this one. “Geography.”
• • •
When I finally got done, it was lunchtime. A minute before, I’d been feeling almost sick, but one sniff of the cafeteria, and I found myself really hungry for a chicken pot pie. And I don’t know whether the principal had left a secret message, but as I came through with my tray, everyone else sort of melted away to let me pass. I didn’t have to wait in line at all.
“Katie!” Sofie was waving at me, so I took my lunch and joined her.
“Hello,” I said.
“Is it really true that you just did a press conference?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“What did you say?”
I thought back to what I had said. “Just…stuff. It was a pretty crazy.”
“And you did it looking like that!” said Sofie.
“The principal gave me a new sweatshirt,” I said, and then looked down and saw I’d already spilled pie on it.
“No, your face,” said Sofie.
“What about my face?”
Paige suddenly appeared and shouted, “Your face! Katie, what happened?”
I felt it over with my fingers. Everything still seemed to be there. A nose, two eyes…
“She’s making it worse,” said Paige. “Katie, stop smudging it.”
“Smudging what? Will someone please give me a mirror?”
Someone gave me a mirror, which made me immediately regret having asked for a mirror.
It also made me regret giving Jaz a liquid eyeliner pen and full, unsupervised access to my face.
“It’s like you’ve got spiders instead of eyes,” said Paige.
“It’s like you put your makeup on in a car,” said Sofie.
“A bumper car,” said Paige.
“I cannot believe I did a press conference looking like this!” I screamed, at which point the whole table laughed so loudly that we got yelled at by the lunch lady.
“I cannot believe you are having the pot pie,” said Savannah, joining us with her plate. “It’s cruelty plus calories. You have to go vegetarian, Katie. It’s the only feasible option.”
“But you’re eating a burger,” I said.
“Yes,” said Savannah as though she was explaining something to a particularly idiotic child. “But it’s a chicken burger.”
“Chicken is meat,” I said.
“Er, no,” said Savannah. “I mean, yes, it might be meat in the scientific sense, but it’s not meaty-type meat.”
“She’s right,” said Sofie. “It’s not.”
I’d never eaten lunch with Savannah and her crew before. And it was kind of interesting, being this close to the action. Even if the action was currently picking the bun off its burger and saying, “I’m not feeling the carbs today.”
“Katie had a press conference,” said Sofie. “That’s why there were all those vans outside.”
Savannah’s blue eyes slid up and focused in on me, and suddenly, I knew how it felt to be a chicken burger.
“You did?”
I nodded.
“Katie,” said Savannah. “I have been thinking. A lot. About you going viral and my party. And how one affects the other.”
I waited.
“There’s this thing called the butterfly effect,” said Savannah. “How if a butterfly flaps its wings in Japan, there’s an earthquake in New York.”
“Right.”
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�And I was thinking that our situation was sort of like that. Only you’re the butterfly, and your video is the flapping, and I am New York. Mmm?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m having trouble following you.”
“What I’m saying is… Would you like to come to my party?”
“Oh!” This was big. “Yes, please! Thank you!” Don’t sound so grateful, Katie. “I mean, if I’m free.” Don’t sound so ungrateful, Katie. “Which I will be.”
“We should go shopping for something to wear,” said Sofie.
“You do not want to shop with Sofie,” said Paige. “Like, H&M is fine for some people, but not for girls like us. Come with me to Zara. My sister works there. I get a discount.”
“Please,” said Savannah. “If Katie’s shopping with anyone, it’s going to be me.”
You know those great big groups of glamorous girls you see out shopping sometimes? All legs and big hair?
I was part of one!
And not on the outside either, tagging along, trying to keep up. I was right there in the middle.
“So, Katie, help me out here. I’m playlisting my party, and Paige and Sofie are worse than useless.”
We were trotting along the main road into town after school, Savannah managing to walk surprisingly fast given the height of her heels.
“Well,” I said a little bit breathlessly because really, going at that speed is unnecessary, even if the shops are closing soon, “I guess it depends on what kind of vibe you’re after.”
“It’s going to be totally vibing,” said Sofie.
“Shut up, Sofie,” said Savannah. “Katie is trying to speak. Also, vibing is not a thing.”
Amazingly, Sofie didn’t seem to mind being told to shut up. And Paige didn’t look especially bothered about being called worse than useless. I guess you must develop a thick skin after an extended period of being around Savannah.
“If you want people dancing, then some proper disco would be good.”
“Mmm,” said Savannah. “Complete yes. Make the list and send it to me. Okay?”
I spent a moment trying to decide whether I enjoyed being Savannah’s DJ and then decided that I did. Maybe she’d have those cool big headphones for me to wear.
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