by Nigel Smith
“I heard that,” said Darius, sitting down next to Nat.
Nat jumped. “I thought you were in the Room Of Doom,” she said.
The Room of Doom was actually called the Chill-out Centre. It had little individual cubicles. Naughty kids had to sit quietly and draw pictures and listen to soothing music until they promised to behave. It was run by a mild-mannered teacher called Mr Hibbert.
“Mr Hibbert is off with stress,” said Darius, eyeing up the cupboard full of chemicals. “He threw the CD player out of the window and said he couldn’t listen to the soothing music any more, it was driving him round the bend.”
There must be better schools than this, thought Nat. Maybe if I get rich …
Darius stuck a compass into a gas tap. “Anyway, I think it’s a good plan of yours to invite Marling – she’s bound to get photographed.”
“I’M the celebrity being photographed,” said Nat huffily. “Not her!”
“Yeah, but you look like a squashed goblin next to her,” said Darius. “Get real. Just make sure she’s wearing a SOUPH badge.”
At the bowling alley that night, Nat didn’t even care that Darius was right and the local photographer spent all his time taking pictures of Flora.
She didn’t care that Dane Smarm was rude to her and Ellie Stupid didn’t show up because she got lost on the way.
She didn’t care that she had forgotten all the SOUPH badges.
She didn’t care that she was made to do her stupid dance yet again, or that it was so crowded that she kept getting trodden on, or that they weren’t even given a single free ice cream.
She didn’t care because, just as they were leaving, Flora Marling said to her:
“That was fun. Don’t forget, it’s my secret birthday pool party sleepover a week on Saturday. All my friends will be there.”
All my friends, thought Nat happily over and over as she went to sleep that night. I’ve made it to the top!
Which meant – there was only one way left to go.
Down.
ONDAY MORNING AND SHINY NEW CELEBRITY Nat was in the playground hanging around on the outskirts of a bunch of chattering popular girls. She wasn’t in the Flora Marling inner circle, obvs, but she was flipping close. She was at least now being allowed to talk to them!
The conversation wasn’t brilliant, thought Nat as the girls babbled on about boys she didn’t care about and TV shows she didn’t watch, but she went along with it anyway, smiling and nodding and hoping it would get better.
She found herself wondering where Penny was, but when she’d tried to talk to Penny earlier she’d said she had some last-minute homework to do and had disappeared off to the library.
Darius was nowhere to be seen either, which wasn’t especially unusual as Darius liked jumping out and scaring people. She remembered he had said at the weekend he was plotting something hilarious to liven up everyone’s boring Monday. She looked around the playground for him hopefully.
Just then a shy little Year 7 girl asked Nat to sign her English rough book and mumbled something about Nat being “awesome and funny” while Nat pretended she hated the fuss. She pretended it VERY LOUDLY to make sure the other girls heard.
I’m definitely on my way to the Flora Marling inner circle, she thought, scribbling:
To Shoniqua,
Peace and love,
Nat the Normal Girl.
But then she saw the familiar scruffy little figure of her best friend being marched into school, surrounded by SIX teachers.
That’s bad, she thought. The more teachers carting you off, the more in trouble you were; that was the rule. The previous record was five, held by none other than Oswald Bagley.
“You spelled ‘Shoniqqua’ wrong,” said Shoniqqua sulkily. “It’s got two Qs.”
“Whatever,” said Nat, watching Darius anxiously.
“Do it again,” demanded the little girl.
“I’m busy,” said Nat, breaking away from her to investigate. “Go away.”
But Shoniqqua wasn’t giving up. “You’re rude and rubbish and you’re not even properly famous,” she shouted very loudly. All the kids nearby turned to stare.
“Shush,” said Nat. “Get lost.”
“You’re being horrid. Debbie Melon from Buckfast Manor on the telly spelled my name right and my dad says she’s got a brain like a peanut.”
The girl was barring Nat’s way. Nat saw Darius and his escort go into school. She desperately wanted to catch them up.
“Gimme the book and I’ll do it again,” said Nat.
“I don’t want it now,” shouted Shoniqqua. “I don’t need your stinky name in my book.”
Nat winced, glancing over at the popular girls and hoping they hadn’t heard. Fickle, this fame game, she thought as she nudged her way past Shoniqqua and entered the school’s big double doors.
She guessed Darius would be heading to the Head’s office, but the door was closed when she got there and the bell went for lessons before she could eavesdrop.
But she didn’t have to wait very long to hear what happened. At lunch break she saw Oswald drive up on his noisy black motorbike. It was never nice seeing Oswald, and this time was no different. Darius got on the back and they roared off.
“Haven’t you heard?” said Penny when Nat asked her. “He’s been suspended again. It’s the third time this term. It’s a school record.”
Nat immediately went to find Miss Hunny. When she saw her in the corridor Nat thought she looked a bit cross.
“Is it true, Miss?”
Miss Hunny knew immediately what she meant. She nodded.
“Most teachers want to get rid of him, I know. And most pupils. And most of the people who live anywhere near the school too. But you were supposed to be on his side.”
“I am,” said Miss Hunny. “But he really did it this time.”
“But he’s been working ever so hard at the ugly pets’ home – doesn’t that count for anything? He was only selling the banned pop to raise money for it.”
“He hasn’t been suspended for selling the pop,” said Miss Hunny, looking around furtively. “No one knew about that.”
“Forget what I just said,” said Nat.
“He’s been suspended for releasing rats in the staff room.”
“What did he do that for?” asked Nat.
“It’s interesting that your first question wasn’t, ‘Why do we think it was Darius who did it?’”
“Ummm …” said Nat.
“He did it because it’s apparently hilarious to watch Miss Austen and Miss Eyre stand on chairs holding up their skirts while shrieking like baboons,” said Miss Hunny.
“Not funny at all,” said Nat, biting her lip.
“No,” said Miss Hunny, biting hers.
“So,” added Nat, “how DO you know it was him?”
“Because the rats all had the wrong number of eyes, legs or tails. They were obviously from the ugly pets’ home.”
Oooops, thought Nat.
Miss Hunny smiled sadly. “Of course, the worst of it is all the teachers now think it’s my fault for suggesting he should work there. They say it was a stupid idea and bound to end in disaster.” She sighed.
“That’s not fair,” said Nat.
“Thanks,” said Miss Hunny, smiling.
“I mean, it’s fair they think it was a stupid idea,” Nat continued. “It was a stupid idea. Darius, loose with wild animals? What were you thinking?”
“Thanks,” said Miss Hunny again, in a different tone of voice.
“But Darius really is trying to be good. He’s even trying to save the ugly pets’ home from being closed down.”
“Well, maybe if he can show that he can do good by saving the pets’ home it might just save him from getting expelled,” said Miss Hunny. “But I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for now. Anyway, maybe it’ll do you good to get away from him for a while.”
Nat got away from Darius for precisely four more hours. When she arrived home with Dad there
he was, sitting on the doorstep with his little duffel bag at his feet.
“Hello, Darius,” said Dad, casually letting him in. “Hungry?”
“Starving,” said Darius brightly. “Oh, Oswald says he can’t be expected to look after me while I’m off school, but as you’re a layabout with no job you won’t mind.”
“Did he say that?” asked Dad.
“Taking out the bad words, yeah,” said Darius.
“Well, I think it’s great that you’re here,” said Dad, “because it means we can plan Nat’s big event on Saturday and how to make her even more famous!”
“What big event?” said Nat suspiciously.
“Great,” said Darius, grinning. “Which bedroom’s mine?”
S IT TURNED OUT, THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO WAIT till Saturday, as early the next morning Nat got a text from her new (and definitely totally genuine) friend Julia Pryde saying that Nat was now … A POP STAR.
For a few seconds, staring at the text in bed, Nat felt sick. She was so used to being teased, she just thought: This is it, I’m back to being laughed at again. She felt even worse when more texts bonged in, more of her new friends telling her the same thing.
“Oi, Buttface,” shouted Darius through the wall. “You can’t sing.”
She’d almost forgotten he was staying. Then he made some noises that very much reminded her. She ignored them and plucked up the courage to click the link her friends had sent her.
A band called ‘The Nut Jobs’ had taken the words from Nat’s ‘Can’t you be normal’ video and put it into a song. It was a pretty terrible song – the sort of song they play around the pool at the kind of holiday resorts Mum would never take the family to.
Beep-beep-beep went the song, for ages, without any words. Then something that sounded like a car alarm went off with a great whoop, followed by a horrible deep thudding like giant knicker elastic being twanged.
And finally, the shouty vocals came in.
I am a nutter, do you want some?
Repeated lots of times.
Then there was a lot of bragging. The singer was apparently a rather terrific kind of guy. And finally, Nat heard herself say:
Can’t you be normal? Norm – norm – can’t you be normal?
Then the whole racket repeated itself, endlessly. It was truly, spectacularly, teeth-grindingly awful.
Nat loved it.
She rushed out of bed to play it to Dad, who was in the kitchen sleepily reading the paper. He said it was great and everything, but could she please turn it off now as it was giving him a nosebleed.
Nat was buzzing about being in a pop song. She even tried to fit the Dog into her schoolbag because she’d seen pictures of pop stars with little dogs in their handbags. But a big hairy farty mutt hanging out of her satchel and chewing her maths book wasn’t quite the same, she realised, so she left the Dog with Dad in the Atomic Dustbin and actually skipped through the school gates cheerfully.
“Oh, hello, Nathalia, it’s our own little Beyoncé, is it?” said the familiar snide voice of Miss Eyre, who was on playground duty. Miss Austen, who as usual was standing next to her, sniggered.
But even they couldn’t ruin Nat’s day. Nat just had to listen for ten minutes while Miss Austen told her the school didn’t need any prima donnas floating about like they owned the place. Then she handed her a bit of paper and asked Nat to get her the autograph of the lead singer of ‘The Nut Jobs’.
“There’s no special treatment for celebrities at this school,” she said with an unpleasant wink.
When she’d gone, Nat saw that the bit of paper was actually next week’s history test answers. I’m beginning to see why people like being famous, thought Nat.
In fact, Nat had the best day at school ever. Even better than the day Darius nailed up the staff room door and they missed a maths test.
Everyone wanted to sit next to her. And everyone told her how much they’d always really really liked her. It was brilliant. The only person who didn’t want to be super-friends with her was Penny, but Nat decided that Penny was just jealous, and would come round eventually.
Even Bad News Nan couldn’t put a dampener on Nat’s mood that night. She had heard the nutter song on the radio and had come round to give Nat A TERRIBLE WARNING ABOUT POP-STAR FAME.
“I’m surprised you heard the song, Mum,” Dad said as he handed over the biscuit tin. “You hate modern music. You’ve been saying you hate modern music since I was a kid and you made me turn Top of the Pops off the television.”
“I don’t like it if it’s a racket and you can’t tell what they’re saying,” said Bad News Nan, dropping her dentures in the biscuit tin again. “There’s enough shouting and cursing in the world already. I can get all that down the bingo on pension day.”
She flicked the crumbs out of her false teeth and put them back in. “I heard the song at the hairdresser’s. I didn’t need my hair doing, but I saw Gertie Dingle under the dryer and I’ve been meaning to talk to her for ages so I popped in. I was talking to her for twenty minutes before I put my glasses on and realised it wasn’t Gertie after all; it was a Bulgarian woman called Borislava.”
Nat and Dad both developed a glazed expression as Bad News Nan rambled on. It was a big tin of biscuits so they knew they were in for a long one.
“She was very nice, didn’t speak a word of English, but it didn’t matter. We had a lovely chat until she suddenly stood up and ran out of the hairdresser’s with her curlers still in. Must be the fashion in Bulgaria.”
“Did you like the song, Nan?” said Nat, hoping to hurry the story along.
“It was horrible,” said Nan. “Which I suppose must mean it’s good these days.”
“Thanks,” said Nat.
“But stop interrupting or I’ll never get to my story,” said Nan. “It turns out, Alan’s daughter’s friend was a pop star. It did not end well.”
“Alan?” asked Dad weakly.
“You know Alan. Alan. My friend Gertie’s daughter’s cousin’s friend Alan. You do know Alan, he always asks about you.”
“Oh, OK,” said Dad. “How is Alan?”
“He’s dead,” said Bad News Nan.
Nat put her head on the table.
“Never mind about Alan,” said Bad News Nan. “I’m not talking about him, it’s his daughter’s friend I was telling you about. The pop star. Now, what WAS her name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Nat. “Please tell me what happened.”
“Oooh it was terrible,” said Bad News Nan.
“Really?” said Nat, sounding not in the least surprised.
“Being a famous pop star killed her stone dead,” said Bad News Nan. She turned to Dad. “Do you know you can blend custard?”
“Why did being a famous pop star kill her, Nan?” asked Nat, suddenly slightly worried.
“She was the singer in a band on this big cruise ship. Biggest one ever, it was. Unsinkable, they said. Then it hit an iceberg and that was the end of her.”
There was a long pause.
Then Dad said: “Do you mean the Titanic, Mum?”
“That’s the one.”
“That sank over a hundred years ago, Nan,” said Nat.
“Rubbish. I saw the film on telly last Christmas. It was in colour. They didn’t have telly back then, let alone colour.”
“I promise I won’t get a job as a pop star on a cruise ship anywhere near icebergs, Nan,” said Nat, deciding she could risk a bit of pop-star fame, after all.
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” said Bad News Nan. “Sensible girl, not letting fame go to your head. What time’s tea?”
IDING HIGH WITH HER NEW-FOUND POP FAME, Nat had one of the best weeks ever, ending with the ‘big event’ that Dad and Darius had been planning that Saturday evening.
Nat the Normal Girl had been asked to turn on some new lights in the local park. Mum told her that it was high time she did something useful with her fame. “A lot of people will be listening to you,” said Mu
m. “Make sure you say something important.”
So Nat had spent the day working hard on her speech. It started off with the ugly pets, but as she got more into it, it got grander and grander. She called it ‘Girls are the light of the world’. She thought it was ace.
Dad gave her lots of jokes to put in, and better yet, Mum crossed them all out.
Nat got butterflies in her stomach when they arrived at the park and saw that tons of people had already turned up to see the lights. They were squashed into Mum’s tiny red car because Mum wouldn’t be seen dead in the Atomic Dustbin.
“I’m a bit nervous about this,” Nat admitted to Dad as Mum parked the car.
“Don’t worry, your mum’s perfectly good at parking,” said Dad.
“No, the speech!” said Nat.
“Oh, that! You’ll be fine. Your speech is only five minutes long,” Dad said. “The average military dictator can bang on for six hours and everyone in the audience has to grin and bear it.”
“Why are you talking about military dictators, you daft lump?” asked Mum. “That’s not helpful; it’s not like she knows any.”
Dad looked at Mum in a way that made Nat giggle.
“Very funny,” said Mum. “I’ll deal with you when we get home.”
“Firing squad, probably,” said Dad. Mum laughed and punched him on the arm as they all tumbled out of the little car.
Nat was so nervous she didn’t even notice that she’d left her speech on the back seat.
When they got to the big fountain in the centre of the park they saw Darius.
“I reckon half the town’s turned up for this,” he said. “And they’ll all be looking at YOU, Buttface.”
“I’m only doing it for the animals,” said Nat loudly, so Mum could hear. “Fame is only good when you use it to do good things,” she added.
“Yeah, right,” sniggered Darius. “That and getting loads of cash and friends and free stuff.”
“Mmm, what’s that?” said Dad, sniffing the air. The vans that sold hot snacks were arriving. Dad trotted off in search of food.
“Are you our little celebrity?” came a booming voice that made Nat jump.
A tremendously fat man in a loud check suit and a gold pocket watch was holding out a pudgy hand. Nat took it and wished she hadn’t. It was like being gripped by wet sausages.