Super Awkward

by Beth Garrod

“Oh dear, oh dear. Has the time finally come to admit your lies are a bit out of hand? Just like when you tried to pretend you hadn’t been massively binned off by me?”

  ARGH! How could one person be so evil? Was it a class he took on Saturdays?

  Mum always says the best thing to do when someone was winding you up is ignore them. But she wasn’t here. And I couldn’t keep calm any longer.

  “When will you just SHUT UP?! I didn’t pretend ANYTHING! We broke up. Who cares?! Seriously, if I could take back a SINGLE second I spent with you, I would.”

  “Oh, diddums, still not over me, are you?”

  It took more restraint than I knew I had, not to run around the canteen waving my hands in the air, screaming ‘SOMEBODY DROWN THAT BOY IN THE VAT OF SCHOOL BOLOGNESE’. But this wasn’t the look I needed. I could NOT let this stupid game-playing loser push me over the edge and make a scene.

  “AS IF. I’ve deleted the whole massive mistake from my memory. And then deleted it from my brain deleted items just in case. So can you just do one? Both of you?” I shut my mouth, frustrated I was letting Luke see he was getting to me.

  Luke didn’t budge.

  “Not until you admit you’re lying.”

  Mikey stood up. I shook my head at him, willing him to stay back, keep quiet. I didn’t want to make Luke more mad, attract any more attention. But oblivious, Mikey walked round to my side of the table and stopped right behind me.

  “Mate, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on here.” Luke muttered ‘like normal’. But Mikey was better than his low blows. “But one thing I do know – none of Bella’s business has got ANYTHING to do with you. So just leave her alone. Unless of course it’s you that’s not over Bella? Which is what it’s starting to look like. . .”

  GULP. This was not the definition of how to not make Luke more mad. Luke looked like he was one word away from punching Mikey on the nose. His jaw was clenched so hard his whole face had gone square.

  I did a quick scan for any teachers looking our way, but we were still in the clear. I needed to keep it that way.

  But Luke had other ideas. He was almost at a shout.

  “Over her? OVER HER? I was never even ‘on her’, mate.” He spat the words out, along with a small bit of his lunch. “She was just something to make me laugh. And now I want everyone else to see how tragic she is too.”

  Luke put his face up close to mine trying to intimidate me, but all it did was remind me he borrowed his aftershave from his dad.

  “So if she’s not going to make this easy for me, I’m going to have to prove it some other way. Wonder what that poor newbie’s going to say when he finds out some loser Year 10’s been making up fake dates with him? Poor little Blob’s probably going to get in very big trouble.”

  Luke put his arm round me, giving me a fake supportive squeeze, making sure everyone could see. I wriggled free desperate to get his hands off me.

  But as I opened my mouth, he jerked back, brushing at his hair, like an electrocuted caveman.

  “Who threw that?” He stood up, his voice louder this time. “Who. Threw. That?”

  Flakes of potato were raining down from his head like carbohydrate dandruff. Mikey and Rachel looked like OMG emojis (slash ones that were trying to not laugh). The entire canteen had shut up, like someone had pressed a real-life mute button. People love drama, especially when they’re not involved.

  “I said. Who. Was. That?” He was practically at a yell. Lucky the attendant was still outside with Mrs Hitchman.

  A morsel of potato clung to the top of his spikey hair like a flag on the top of Mount Everest. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so transfixed by its wobbling.

  I looked around to figure out who it was that had thrown it. Who was brave enough to stand up to the one person who would now dedicate their life to making theirs a misery?

  But the second I saw them I knew. It wasn’t something everyone would notice, but behind that calm face, that neutral expression, I saw the glint of someone who had finally had enough.

  THUD.

  A lone baked bean joined its potato friend at the top of Luke’s hair.

  He span round to face Matt, one of the prefects in our year, who always has pink cheeks like he’s accidentally just walked into the girls’ changing room.

  “Was it you, you . . . you red-faced . . . baboon?”

  Matt shook his head, but he didn’t look scared. He looked like someone who wanted to point out baboons didn’t have red faces. And I respected that.

  “Wasn’t me. I’m allergic to haricot beans.”

  Luke spluttered, as some bean juice dripped on to his nose.

  “They’re baked, not Harry Co.”

  The thrower stood up.

  “Haricot beans ARE baked beans. Idiot.”

  OMG. Was I really in the middle of a fight about pulses?

  Luke dug his hand into my meatless-meatballs. Next thing they were flying through the air. Why couldn’t this be happening on a day when I had a rubbish sandwich instead? I guess the three-second rule doesn’t apply to things that are on the canteen floor? The original thrower dodged out the way. They always were the most flexible person in our year.

  Luke scooped up another handful, but just as he went to lob them, there was a loud splat, as some gloopy brie flew into his ear, cheesy globules flicking off on to Lou’s face as it landed. There was only one person who brought posh cheese, not string cheese, to lunch. Mikey winked at me, and gave Rachel her lunch box back.

  Half a second later, cauli-rice was showering across the canteen, as Luke’s friends joined in and a wave of Monster Munch and tiny tomatoes flew in our direction from their table. Lou crouched and fled the danger zone as tomatoes were joined by peas, unidentifiable brown crumbs and some Alphabites (our cheap canteen variety only has Os, Hs and Ns so it looks like ‘OOOH NOOO’) flying through the air. I ducked, trying to avoid the flying feast, grabbing the red and yellow bottles on our table and squirting them at Luke. As a fan of food, it was against my principles to throw it, but these sauces were technically so rank they were inedible, so were fair game.

  Suddenly someone at the back of the room yelled.

  “MRS HITCHMAN’S COMING.”

  Suddenly the prom-point-losing reality took grip of the room. And my don’t-cause-any-drama mission sprang back into life. We shoved our food away, tried to de-crisp/cheese/bean ourselves and scrambled to appear as normal as possible, which is hard when there’s a carpet of peas between three tables and one of you looks like a Jackson Pollock (an artist I’d learnt about during Zac revision, who basically threw paint everywhere, and then got people to think he was a genius for doing it, which is actually incredibly genius-ey of him) but with mustard and ketchup.

  Mrs Hitchman looked like she was going to pop with fury. I silently shouted at my face to not look guilty. Or have any pea on it. Zac and the rest of the sixth formers she’d dragged back looked mortified that they were soon going to be supervising people who didn’t know the difference between a basketball and a baked bean. I couldn’t even look in Zac’s direction in case Lou or Luke were watching me.

  With no obvious culprit (luckily Luke had the sense to take off his splattered blazer), there was no obvious person to blame, so the whole room got a group guilt-trip instead.

  When Mrs Hitchman eventually finished yelling and left the room, the canteen returned to normal. Spitting insults at us (the potato and bean still clinging to his head like triumphant rodeo riders), Luke finally went back to his table.

  But despite his threats, I was a little bit happy.

  I waved the thrower over.

  “What made you do that?”

  “Well, words didn’t seem to be getting through. And when he put his arm around you, I lost it. So, y’know . . . when all else fails, shot-put a potato.”

  I laughed. So did Rachel and Mikey.

  “Shot-potato.” I replied then stopped as I worked out what to say next.

  A lot depended on it.
r />   “Well, as much as I wanted to eat my meatless-meatballs, not use them as darts. . .” What decision was I going to make? “. . . Thank you.”

  Thrower smiled. The kind of smile that made having a chunk of omelette in my shoe OK.

  We still had a lot of talking to do, but for now, it was good to have Tegan back.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  It was only thirteen days till term ended, but for the first time this year, maybe ever, I was looking forward to going to school. Now I had my friends back, everything felt more positive. With their help I could focus on the most important thing during these two weeks of exams. Keeping Luke away from Zac. And hanging on to every single prom point.

  Tegan, Rachel and I arranged to meet in our usual before-school spot outside the post office – which doubled as supplier of emergency morning chocolate and/or crisps depending on how bad the morning was going/how dire Mum’s cooking had been the night before. As yesterday’s dinner had been Tuna and Natural Yogurt Surprise – and the not surprising surprise was that it was entirely unswallowable – I bought both.

  I waited outside, chewing on my chocolate breakfast and checking PSSSST. What had started as something to fill my friendless moments was now making me feel more popular than ever. I had my real-life friends back to tell my real-life dramas to, so could keep PSSSST to share the things that made me laugh. The cheese-in-ear story had gone down a treat. One person’s evil-ex is another’s six-second internet LOL. As well as the followers, I’d also got more people commenting. LilDrummerBoy made me laugh so hard with a post about sniffing his sister’s scented nail varnish, but getting too close and gluing glitter on to his nose for two days, that I was still chortling when Tegan bounced up. She had a massive smile plastered across her face. We’d spent most of last night on the phone, her talking, me listening, her apologizing, me slowly beginning to realize that forgiving her wasn’t betraying me. In fact, it kind of made me happier – give or take the annoyingness I felt at Jo being sort of right. I’d had to keep checking she wasn’t listening at the door, ready to say ‘I told you so’.

  Tegan hadn’t said anything new, but the difference was I was finally ready to hear it. Plus, it’s always nice to talk to someone who hates Luke as much as I do. We’d ended up catching up on everything – from Zac (who I sent photos of to Tegan, while on the phone, causing her to involuntarily gasp and say ‘oh my’ at his beauty, like she was in a black-and-white movie), to Luke making out I was a liar, through to my prom point problem – promlem – and even a new gymnastics student Tegan’s teaching who’s only five and keeps saying Tegan has a gentle face. Except he pronounces it ‘genital’. Despite two threats from Mum to get off the phone, we ended up speaking right up until bed. Friendship Goals 1, German Homework 0. But, I’d woken up, bleary-eyed, to some picture messages from Tegan. Fact – there is no better way to glue a friendship back together than with the surprise gift of conjugated German verbs. I don’t even know what ‘conjugated’ really means. I thought it was something that happens to your eye.

  When Rachel finally turned up, we set off for school. She’d been held up by a manicurist her mum had booked to come to their house that morning. Her mum literally nails life.

  The three of us linked arms and we set off as a six-legged mono-person. I didn’t spoil the moment by mentioning a substantial bruise was forming where the corner of Rach’s maths textbook was whacking into my ribs. Rachel squeezed on both of our arms, happy to be back in the middle of us, rather than stuck in the middle of our argument.

  “Sorry to sound like a cheese, but it’s so nice being back together. We thought we’d lost you to the netball crew for a while.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Pah. As if. Did you not hear that I let in fourteen goals on my team debut?”

  Tegan’s bad attempt at a shocked ‘no’ clearly meant an unshocked ‘yes’.

  Rachel smiled supportively.

  “Oh well. Who needs to stop balls being thrown into nets anyway? It’s not like that’s the one thing you need to become an internet squillionaire, or a music photographer,” she looked at Tegan, “or a human writing lawyer.”

  Correcting her for the millionth time didn’t even scratch the surface of Tegan’s never-ending patience.

  “It’s human ‘rights’. Still, you got the points for playing right?”I nodded.

  “Yup, got the points, lost the respect of thirteen girls, two teachers and around ten parents. So, nothing new there.”

  Rachel laughed, but Tegan wasn’t smiling.

  “Seriously, you two. We need to focus. Rachel – you haven’t lost any all term, right?”

  She nodded. “Yup, still got all twenty.”

  “Good. I’ve got eighteen, as I lost a couple for having to wear my trainers after I forgot to put my shoes in my gymnastics bag. Bells – did you tell Rach where you were at?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s not good.” I cringed at how much I’d let my life slide. “Eleven. I lost three when Mr Lutas caught me on my phone again, but got one back for netball. Which I then lost the next day when Mr Lutas overheard me describe Zac as a ‘sexicle’. He said it was derogatory, cos he doesn’t get that being called ‘sex on a stick’ is a good thing.”

  Rachel OTT huffed.

  “But that’s not fair, because being a sexicle is just a factually accurate description for Zac. And that’s not Bella’s fault. Right, Tegan?”

  Tegan nodded.

  “Yup, definitely right. He’s a bona fide hottie.” I felt weirdly proud at this confirmation, as if I myself had birthed him. “BUT we do need to hang on to every single point. The three of us not going to our first prom together is NOT an option. Especially if it’s Bella’s chance to get Zac back.”

  She was right. Prom was exactly what the three of us needed to put this rubbish term behind us.

  “Agreed.” I nodded firmly. “Times one million. So I suggest we start off with totally avoiding Mr Lutas. He’s the Death Eater of points.”

  Tegan had a determined look in her eye. When she put her mind to something, she made it happen.

  “Totally. And do you reckon we could help get you any bonus ones to be on the safe side? We have –” she closed her eyes in concentration – “fifty-four school hours to get them.”

  I chipped in.

  “And fifty-four school hours feels like at least one zillion normal life hours.”

  She smiled.

  “Exactly. Plenty of time.”

  We carried on walking, racking our brains for inspiration. I was going to have to tread very carefully. And that was literal as well, as I once almost lost a point for accidentally stepping on a ‘Mile of Maltesers’ that the Year 8s had spent laying down in the corridors for charity. It really is surprising how far hundreds of malt balls can travel with one accidental step.

  Tegan squeezed my hand.

  “Look, B, we got this. It’s only a few more days of keeping Luke away from Zac, and staying drama free, and we’ll be there. It’s all three of us going to prom, or none of us, OK?”

  It’s what she’d said on the phone last night and she wouldn’t take no, or even a ‘m-bee, let’s see how it goes’, for an answer. But before I could reply, Rachel dug her elbow into my side.

  “Look!!” she hissed, pointing repeatedly at the other side of the road with a single finger, like she was doing hand aerobics.

  There, just waiting for the bus, as if it was no big deal, was MIAGTM. Blast from the boy past. And what a cute blast it was. He’d been off-radar for a while, but seeing as Zac wanted me to pretend he didn’t exist, I figured it was no longer morally questionable to appreciate how hot MIAGTM was looking. And by the look on Rachel’s face, she wasn’t having any issues about admiring the view either.

  MIAGTM was laughing with his mates, trailing a football under his foot as he leant against the bus stop. Why do boys always take them to school like they aren’t provided? It’s not like you see me pa
cking a netball and desk to be on the safe side.

  I swear the point of school uniforms is to render us all unfanciable in an effort to keep teachers’ lives simple. But I can confirm, looking at MIAGTM, he breaks that rule. (I can also confirm, having looked in the mirror this morning, that I don’t.) He’s so funny too. I mean, I can never hear what he’s saying, but I can just tell it’s hilarious. As he his mates laughed at (probably) his most hilarious joke yet, I swooned out loud, like I was deflating.

  “Oi! We can hear that.” Tegan jerked my arm, narrowly stopping me from striding into a hip-height bin, proving once again why I needed friends in my life. “Haven’t you got enough boy probs in your life?”

  “Surely looking can’t hurt?”

  “It can when you almost land head first in a bin, you nugget.”

  I laughed. And stopped gawping. And gave the bin a dirty look for leaping out on me.

  We spent the rest of the journey talking about the fact we definitely didn’t need to talk about boys any more. But when we arrived at school, there was one waiting for us. And he looked unhappy.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. Wow, you’re all here.” Mikey took a moment to register that it really was all three of us. “I wanted to give you a heads up.”

  Gulp. This didn’t sound good.

  “Mr Lutas is on the war path. Apparently – wait for this – Luke blabbed it was us that started the food fight.”

  INWARD SPEW. How could Luke do this to me? To us? Mikey must have read my mind. Or just seen my face.

  “Apaz he thought he’d get away with it if he dobbed us in, but he ended up getting in trouble too. Word is we might be getting detention.”

  Oh great, I love it when bad gets worse. If I wasn’t trying to hang on to the points I had left, I’d kill Luke right now. Although ‘psychopathic murderer’ probably isn’t the one quality that’s going to score me a prom invite.

  How dare Luke drag the others down with me?! Tegan had never had a detention in her life, and Rachel normally managed to talk her way round anything.

  But Tegan looked like she had more than bad marks on her mind.