Boys for Beginners

by Lil Chase

  Jenny takes about ten minutes to tb, as if she’s really thinking about it:

  I wd wait til he asks 4 ur number dont txt him b4 he asks 4 it

  I text:

  wot? not even 2 tell him i hv a phone?

  Jenny texts:

  NOT EVER!!!!!

  I know Jenny is right about everything to do with boys, but the whole point of me getting a phone is so I can text Charlie Notts. I have to do it. I put it as if I’ve texted it to everyone.

  I text:

  hi everyone. this is my number if u wnt 2 txt me. make sure u do. gwynnie x x

  I then text Jenny to let her know what I’ve done:

  Sorry but i had 2 do it. i just sent cn a txt. it said hi everyone. this is my number if u wnt 2 txt me. make sure u do. gwynnie x x do u think i sound like a muppet? tb

  Jenny tbs:

  ur an idiot! make sure u do sounds soooo desperate. have u already sent it?

  Oh God! I have already sent it! It does sound desperate. It sounds more sad and desperate than when Sarah Louri told Asher Quinn that she loved him in a poem that she read out in English class. I am never going to live this down! Charlie Notts is never going to talk to me again. I am always going to listen to everything Jenny says from now on.

  I text:

  o god! ive sent it. am i more desperate than sarah louri?

  Charlie tbs:

  hey gwynnie, u finally have a phone. how cool. welcome 2 the 21st century. u will find emergency exits here here and here. lol. just obeying your orders to tb. tb x x

  Oh. My. God! Charlie Notts has just texted me! He didn’t think I was sad or desperate.

  I text:

  cn just txt me! omg! he told me to tb. wot should I do?

  Again, Jenny waits about ten minutes before she tbs. She’s putting a lot of thought into this:

  wow! if hes replying 2 desperate msgs like that then mayb hes desperate 2 and u and him and sarah louri can make a desperate people club. woteva u do dont txt him back

  I wait twenty minutes with the phone in my hand and then I text Charlie again. I know Jenny said I shouldn’t but I can’t help it:

  sorry 2 send u a txt with orders, im practising 2 b a sergeant major lol. but ill nvr do it again. u no im a complete nutbag x x

  CN tbs:

  ull nvr send me a txt again? ok. u will nvr hear from me either. i did no u were a nutbag. now i hve it in writing. don’t tb x x

  Oh Goddddddddd! I have completely started and stopped all textual conversations with Charlie Notts in one go. Why did my dad have to buy me a phone? It’s ruined my life in less than an hour.

  I text Jenny:

  i have accidentally just told cn 2 never txt me again. help!

  Jenny tbs:

  lol! only u cld do that G. uve blown it now. i cant help u x x

  I tb:

  wot if i invite him to Julie innis’s partee? i cld ask him 2 come 2 urs 1st? tb x x

  Jenny tbs:

  it wont work. uve blown it. don’t worry we’ll find u sum1 else x x

  But I can’t believe I’ve blown it. I can’t leave it there.

  I text Charlie:

  r u going 2 julie innis’s party? we r. do u want 2 come with us?

  CN tbs:

  my doctor has told me that im allergic 2 nutbags. but ill make an exception, as its u x x

  I text:

  omg he’s coming! wot should i wear?

  CN tbs:

  defo smart /casual

  What the flan have I done?! I have sent the wrong message to the wrong person and now Charlie will guess that I have a tiny little crush on him. Right, I’m throwing this phone away now.

  It rings before I can bin it. It’s Jenny.

  ‘Hi, Je—’

  ‘What’s going on, Gwynnie? I just got a text from Charlie saying he’s meeting up with us before Julie’s party.’

  ‘Yeah, I asked him and he said yes. Isn’t that—’

  ‘He said yes? To you?’

  ‘Yes. He said he’d come only as it’s me.’

  She goes all quiet for a bit and I think I might have offended her by not doing what she told me to. ‘Sorry, Jenny, I know you said—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says, but it sounds like it does matter a little bit. ‘See you tomorrow at school.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I say. ‘Isn’t today your eight-weekiversary? Where’s Paul?’

  ‘Oh, he’s here.’ She doesn’t seem like she’s having a great time. They were supposed to go to Nandos, but the lack of background noise means they can’t have. ‘Look, Gee, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Gwynnie . . . !’

  I have only just noticed that my dad and Kevin are no longer in the room. My dad is calling from the front door.

  ‘Gwynnie, I’m just popping round to see Angela. Back in a couple of hours.’

  When did my dad start spending so much time with Angela?

  ‘Kevin!’ I call out.

  ‘I’m off too!’ he shouts back, and the door slams behind him.

  ‘Jenny?’

  But Jenny’s hung up.

  I text Elizabeth:

  hi Eliz, its G. i gotta fone. This is my numbr so u can call me whenevs

  Elizabeth tbs:

  that’s soooooo cool! txt cn and c if he txts back. do it now, b4 u lose ur nerve!

  I can’t tell her that I’ve already done that, and it didn’t exactly go well.

  Chapter 18

  Jenny and me are talking about Charlie, as usual, as we get ready for Julie Innis’s party.

  ‘Has Charlie been texting you?’

  ‘Yeah. A bit.’ He’s texted me a couple of times this week. I’m so happy. ‘And he always puts kisses on the end of the texts.’

  This makes Jenny go really thoughtful, like she hadn’t expected it. ‘Do you think he likes you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m hoping something will happen at the party tonight. I am going to try your leaning trick.’

  Jenny’s still thinking, and then suddenly she smiles and says, ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘Well, I’ll definitely wear chicken fillets.’

  Jenny laughs. ‘I meant what clothes! But thanks for sharing.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, and go red. ‘Well, obviously I’ll be wearing that really nice blue top that—’

  ‘No. I think you should wear the yellow one.’

  ‘But Kimba said that I can’t pull off yellow. I don’t have the colouring and it makes me look washed up.’

  ‘But yellow is, like, your best colour! She’s trying to stop you wearing yellow because you look so good in it.’

  I should have known Kimba was lying. She pretends to be nice to me, but I know she hates me. Luckily I brought it, just in case. So I get it out of my bag.

  ‘Oh, and btw,’ Jenny adds, ‘the phrase is washed out.’

  Oops.

  ‘And when are you going to finally get your belly-button pierced?’ she asks.

  The thing is, I don’t want to get my belly-button pierced. It will definitely hurt, and, well, I don’t want to hurt myself on purpose. ‘The thing is,’ I say as I pull the yellow top over my head, ‘my dad will definitely ground me if I get my belly-button pierced. And, well, I don’t want to get grounded or I might miss prom.’

  ‘Okaaaay. But just so you know, you might miss out on certain privileges if you stay only a bronze member of the club.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘We haven’t decided yet.’

  She leaves me with that bizarre thought as we head out to meet up with Charlie.

  Kimba and Melissa are sitting on a wall outside Julie Innis’s house as me, Charlie and Jenny walk over.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ I say.

  ‘Hi Gwynnie,’ says Melissa. ‘Nice top.’ She and Kimba look at each other and laugh.

  ‘Thanks!’ (I think.) ‘Where’s the others?’ I ask.

  Kimba frowns at me like I’m an idiot. ‘Tanya can’t come because her mum is really
strict and won’t let her do anything – everyone knows that.’

  ‘And Elizabeth won’t leave the house until she has lost a few pounds,’ says Melissa.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Definitely for the best!’ Kimba says. ‘We don’t want another incident like sports day, Year 5.’

  I remember sports day, Year 5. I won the running race that year and beat most of the boys’ times too. But I remember hearing something about Elizabeth wetting herself.

  ‘But that was ages ago,’ I say.

  ‘So?’ says Kimba, with a mean look.

  ‘What happened on sports day, Year 5?’ asks Charlie.

  Kimba laughs and says, ‘Elizabeth—’

  ‘Oh no,’ I say to Kimba. ‘Charlie doesn’t need to know.’ Elizabeth would be mortified if she thought that Charlie knew about the Incident.

  ‘He’d be the only person in school who doesn’t,’ says Kimba. ‘Besides, like you say, it happened ages ago.’ She turns to Charlie with wide eyes – the look that she always gets when she has gossip. ‘On sports day in Year 5, Elizabeth peed her pants! And as she was only wearing a gym skirt there was no way of hiding it!’ Melissa and Jenny start laughing really hard. ‘The Dazzler had to walk her back to school and she had to wear knickers from the lost-property basket. Yuck! – she really brings the BB stock down.’

  ‘Honestly,’ says Melissa, ‘I don’t know why we let her hang out with us.’

  I can’t believe they are being so rude about Elizabeth. ‘Perhaps because she’s really nice!’ I say. ‘So what if she peed her pants four years ago?’

  Charlie smiles at me. ‘Yeah, I almost peed my pants last week when I found out that Spurs were in the final!’

  ‘Yeah, Kimba,’ Jenny says to Kimba, who’s suddenly stopped laughing. ‘Anyway, talking of stock going down,’ says Jenny, raising her eyebrows, ‘did you not get in?’

  ‘No,’ says Kimba. No wonder she’s so angry. ‘But it’s probably a lame party anyway. Don’t know if I even want to get in.’

  Melissa says, ‘We tried knocking on the door but Julie said she isn’t letting in anyone that isn’t invited.’

  ‘Well, we’re still going,’ says Jenny. ‘Sorry, ladies, but when it comes to getting in places, it’s every gal for herself.’

  Charlie frowns, like he’s not sure that it should be every gal for herself. He looks at Kimba and Melissa and says, ‘I’ll make sure she lets you in. We can’t have you two sitting out here all night – that’s if you want to come in.’

  ‘Yeah! Thanks, Charlie!’ says Melissa, and gives Charlie a smile so big he might have to apply suntan lotion.

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ says Jenny, realizing that she might have sounded a little mean just now.

  We all sort of stand back as Jenny knocks on the door. She looks really confident because she knows she’s definitely getting in. Julie Innis opens it and looks at us like we are a smelly sock that she’s just discovered at the bottom of her locker. ‘What do you Year 9s want?’

  Suddenly Jenny doesn’t look so confident. ‘Heya, Julie. How’s it going? Can we come in?’

  Julie’s not sure.

  ‘My sister Stephanie Gregson knows your brother’s friend Ishi, and he said that you give awesome parties.’

  Julie still looks doubtful. ‘I’ve heard of your sister, but I don’t know you. There’s too many people here already.’

  Charlie steps forward. ‘Hi, Julie. Please don’t relegate us to the league of saddos who couldn’t get into the party.’

  Julie melts like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. ‘Yeah, OK, you guys can come in, I suppose. We’re playing Postman’s Knock in a minute.’

  Postman’s Knock is where you spin the bottle and then you have to spend two minutes in a dark cupboard with the person the bottle points to, kissing and stuff. She looks directly at Charlie when she says this and I know she’s thinking exactly the same thing that I am: I hope that I get put in the cupboard with Charlie Notts. And I hope they lock us in and throw away the key.

  Julie Innis’s party is the coolest party ever, not that I’ve ever been to a proper party before. I have been over to Ranjit’s house when a load of us watched Terminator and ate KFC, but I don’t think that really counts. This is different. Loads of Year 10s line the corridor that leads up to the stairs and line the stairs too. I don’t know what to say to them as it’s doubtful they will know who I am, so I just do the eyebrow-raising thing but add in a smile. Sylvia Rontaller from Year 10 frowns at us like she has no idea what we’re doing here, then checks out what I am wearing. The leer on her lips tells me she doesn’t like it. I move on.

  Looking at Charlie, I can tell that he’s pretty uncomfortable too. ‘Where shall we go?’ I ask him.

  The other BB girls turn to look at us; they want to be part of our plan, whatever it is.

  ‘Head for the kitchen,’ Charlie instructs us, like this is an SAS mission. ‘We can get a drink and see if there’s anyone we know in there.’ We nod. That makes sense. ‘If not, we can look like we just went in to get a drink, move on and reconvene in the garden.’

  ‘OK,’ says Jenny.

  ‘We’ve got to stick together if we are going to make it out alive,’ he says. ‘No man left behind.’

  ‘Roger and out,’ I say, and Charlie smiles.

  The kitchen is packed. It’s only small but we could get a world record for how many people we fit in here. I see Estelle Cole talking to Foz Kassam and, as I once paired up with Estelle in a joint Year 9–Year 10 PE class I risk a ‘Hi’ and hope she remembers me.

  ‘Hi, Gwynnie. Like your jeans.’

  Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!

  ‘Primada,’ I reply, and she laughs and Foz does too. This is going well so me and Melissa and Charlie stop and talk to them for a bit while Jenny moves on. I thought we were supposed to stick together.

  ‘What’s the party like?’ Kimba asks. She tries to give the impression she has a million parties to go to tonight so if this one is rubbish she’ll head off to another.

  ‘It’s really boring,’ says Estelle, not really looking at me, her eyes moving round the room to see who else is here.

  I look around; from an archway in the kitchen you can see into the living room. There are loads more people in there, all Year 10s and even some Year 11s. They have set up decks and there are loads of fit guys standing around them, looking at the records in the record box.

  ‘Yeah, it’s total pants,’ says Foz. She’s looking around too. I follow her eyeline to where Josie Mills is snogging Karl Purbeck. Foz smiles and whispers something to Estelle, who smiles and nods.

  ‘How did she get him to snog her? He’s a total hottie,’ says Melissa.

  There are two other people snogging on the sofa. One of them is Veronica Short. ‘Who’s Veronica eating over there?’ I ask.

  ‘Isn’t that one of the posh kids from Queen Charlotte’s?’ says Foz.

  ‘Social suicide,’ says Estelle. ‘She’ll never live it down.’

  ‘Well, at least she’s snogging someone,’ says Melissa.

  ‘Yeah, but a Tartlet?’ says Kimba. ‘I’d rather snog my hand.’

  Everyone wants to get off with someone – it doesn’t really matter who, just as long as they do it so everyone else can see and as long as snogging them won’t make them look sad. There is no one here that would make me look sad because, a) even snogging the saddest bloke in the world would be a step up for me, and b) they are all in Year 10 at least, which makes them automatically cooler. Oh, and c) I have never snogged anyone so I kind of just want to get it over with a little bit.

  We leave the kitchen and head for the garden, following the mission plan. Jenny is already out there talking to the twins Susie and Sarah Bird.

  ‘So me and my gals are going to make this the most awesome prom ever.’ Jenny is saying this really loudly so that everyone can hear that it’s the BB Club organizing it. ‘I’m gonna get my hair fixed in town and I have
already bought the most awesome dress. It’s timeless and classy.’

  ‘When is it?’ asks Catherine Miele from Year 10. She’s craning her neck to ask but she says it like she couldn’t really care less, like if she’s not doing anything else then she might fit it into her busy schedule.

  ‘Two weeks’ time. The 30th of May.’

  Two weeks’ time! Oh God. Something else is happening in two weeks’ time and I can’t believe I didn’t realize before. All the boys in the garden start looking at each other, wondering if they will be able to come, and I know why.

  ‘Like, what’s the problem, fellas?’ Jenny’s noticed it too.

  ‘Yeah, what’s the problem?’ I ask, but I know exactly what the problem is.

  Peter Jameson says, ‘That’s the same day as the FA Cup final.’

  Jenny rolls her eyes as if there is no contest between prom and the FA Cup final. And she’s right, there is no contest – the FA Cup wins every time. I can tell that she’s worried though. ‘Prom doesn’t start till half seven. Will that be late enough for you to make an appearance?’

  ‘Yeah, the match finishes way before that.’

  The female half of the garden breathes a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘Well, you better be ready in time,’ Jenny says. ‘Don’t want your dates to be kept waiting.’

  ‘We need dates?!’ Melissa shouts what we were all thinking. ‘When did we decide this? Why didn’t this come up in the meeting?’

  ‘Of course you need dates, silly. This is a prom. Don’t you know anything?’

  We all nod. Of course we knew that!

  Jenny continues like she’s giving a seminar. ‘I know all about proms because I was in America this Easter. You have to have a date, and a dress, a corsage, and a limousine.’

  Who am I going to get to ask me to the prom? It’s too much to hope that Charlie Notts will ask me. Everyone in the whole school will want to go with him. (And what’s a corsage? Is it a type of up-do?)

  ‘Will there be a DJ or a band?’ someone asks.

  We panic. The BB Club spends the whole of our Prom Planning Committee meetings planning how we’ll have our hair, who’s going to snog who, what the posters will look like . . . we never thought about music and drinks and all that stuff.

  I have an idea. ‘My brother’s best mate is a DJ in a club in town. He plays at Ministry of Sound in London sometimes.’ This is true. Everyone is looking at me like I am the coolest thing since blue-flavoured slushie. I knew having a brother would pay off eventually.