It's a Girl Thing

by Grace Dent

  Okay, McGraw’s joke is slightly amusing, but no girl gives the big spoilsport the pleasure of a chuckle, especially not Mrs. Guinevere, who is possibly even angrier than Fleur at this point.

  Claude is rustling about in her folder. She produces a single sheet of paper covered in what looks like percentages and equations.

  “Okay, I understand your concerns, Mr. McGraw, but if I can refer you back to the results of the Blackwell questionnaire that we filled out last year.” Claude waves her piece of paper. “It seems that pupils probably would pay to see music, if we put on a good enough show for them, that is.”

  “Questionnaire? What questionnaire? We’ve never done a . . . ,” argues McGraw, looking confused.

  Mrs. Guinevere catches Claude’s drift.

  “Ah, Claudette’s talking about the physical and social education department’s life science questionnaire. You know? The one we gave out to all one thousand Blackwell pupils to fill in last June?”

  “That’s the one!” Claude smiles. “Do you not remember it, Mr. McGraw?” she says.

  “Pgh, splagh . . . Of course I remember it . . . ,” mutters McGraw. “We wanted to . . . er . . .” McGraw admits defeat. “Oh, remind me again what we wanted, Mrs. Guinevere?”

  “To find out Blackwell pupils’ likes, dislikes and attitudes toward school and home lives,” prompts Mrs. Guinevere.

  “Ah, yes, I remember it now. I was just a little, er, confused for a second,” snaps McGraw, dredging the darkest corners of his memory for any info whatsoever about that PSE project. Eventually tiny bits start seeping back.

  “What’s this got to do with anything?” he says. “All I can recall is several pupils filling in a lot of insolent remarks about my tie collection and some bright spark suggesting we build a Blackwell Tarzan Swing. Pah! It simply underlined to me the percentage of utter buffoons I’m employed to baby-sit between eight A.M. and four P.M.”

  “Actually, we did gain a lot of useful info from that questionnaire,” says Mrs. Guinevere patiently, turning back to Claude, who’s waiting to read from her sheet. “What did you find out, Claudette?”

  “Well, according to official Blackwell statistics, it seems that ninety-five percent of our pupils said that one of their main pocket money and Saturday job wage expenditures was . . .” Claude pauses for effect. “Music.”

  Mr. McGraw’s face is an absolute picture. He looks a bit like a lottery winner who’s just discovered he’s boil-washed and tumble-dried his winning ticket.

  “Oh,” he grunts.

  Claude continues, “They buy CDs, concert tickets, dancing and singing lessons, guitar strings, ballet shoes . . . they download MP3s off the Net, rip CDs . . . that sort of thing . . . it seems that Blackwell is sort of united by a common love of music.”

  Claude places the piece of paper back into a folder she has rather presumptuously felt-tipped Blackwell Live across.

  “Riiiiiiiight,” says McGraw crossly. The one thing more annoying than thick pupils, he’s just discovered, is flipping smarty pants pupils, they must drive him mad.

  “Oh, dear, is that the time?” announces McGraw. “Sorry, girls, your time’s up, I’ve got a class to supervise in two minutes.”

  Our headmaster rather abruptly winds up our appointment; obviously he’s heard quite enough. “We’ll get back to you forthwith on this matter,” he says, nodding toward the door. “Off you pop now, you don’t want to be late for third period.”

  There’s nothing much else we can do now, well, aside from claim squatters’ rights and refuse to leave his office.

  Claude looks crestfallen; she packs her orange folder into her little black rucksack, thanks both the teachers for their time and makes toward the door; Fleur and I follow closely behind. However, as Mrs. Guinevere holds open the door, directing us three disheartened LBD members through, she whispers under her breath, just loud enough for us to catch, “Don’t hurry away, ladies, wait outside for a moment,” before snapping the door shut, leaving us on the other side.

  “I thought I had him there for a minute,” says Claude, her eyes seeming a little bit red-rimmed. “He was on the ropes, I just needed a few more jabs at him . . . ,” she says.

  Fortunately for the LBD, however, behind the door, the bell for round two seems to have already dinged and donged.

  At first, we hear Guinevere and McGraw having a civilized discussion . . . but this turns quickly to just Mrs. Guinevere’s voice, its volume increasing with every sentence. We can’t hear every word from where we are in the corridor; however, the LBD can still make out a few fantastic sentences.

  “I cannot believe you sometimes, Samuel!” Mrs. Guinevere says, followed quickly a few moments later by: “You need a rocket placed you know where to get you moving, that’s what you need!”

  Claude and I look at each other, our eyes wide with excitement. I’m really hoping Mrs. Guinevere doesn’t suddenly fling open the door, because Fleur has her ear pressed so firmly against it, she’d certainly fall in and end up perched upon McGraw’s lap.

  But the next part we overhear is the very bestest bit of all: “I can leave anytime!” Mrs. Guinevere screeches, obviously not realizing that we can hear her. “I’m not the only staff member combing the Guardian job section for a one-way ticket out of Blackwell, you know!”

  The LBD all place our hands over our mouths at the same time, suppressing fits of giggles.

  After that, everything inside McGraw’s office goes suddenly very silent, the next few minutes dragging by extremely slowly. Claude turns to me with an anxious expression.

  “Maybe Mrs. G’s got the sack?” Claude whispers. “It’s very quiet in there now, isn’t it?” Claude gazes down at her polished black shoes, then looks me straight in the eye.

  “Oh, God, this is all my fault,” she says.

  Just then, the door opens and Mrs. Guinevere appears with a calm, triumphant smile. She claps her hands together in a businesslike manner, then places one carefully manicured hand onto Claude’s shoulder.

  “Right, ladies. We’re in business,” our deputy head announces. “You’ve got four weeks to kick this thing into shape. I’m suggesting Saturday, July twelfth for the concert, that’s end of term. Let’s kick summer vacation off with a bang, eh?”

  We all stare at her in disbelief.

  “But you’ve not got a lot of time, so it’s all systems GO from this moment on . . .”

  I wish one of us could think of something to say back.

  “What did you call the concert on the front of that folder, Claudette?” Mrs. Guinevere asks. “Blackwell Live, wasn’t it?”

  “Uhhh, yes, miss?” Claude replies, smiling widely.

  “Blackwell Live!” repeats Mrs. Guinevere. “I like that name, it has a ring to it, doesn’t it? So as I say, ladies, get shaping with a plan, have a root around for some bands, singers and, well, whatever you can come up with, then give me the latest news in a few days’ time. We’ll take it from there.”

  Mrs. Guinevere turns on her heel and clip-clops away down the administration corridor.

  “I’m sure it will be great craic, girls . . . great craic!” she says as she walks away. “The best of luck with your planning!”

  And then she’s gone.

  “Did that really just happen?” asks Fleur, grinning not just from ear to ear, but somewhere around the back of her head too.

  “OH. MY. GAWWWWWD,” I squeal. “That was a yes! It was a yes!! . . . Hang on, that was a yes, wasn’t it, Claude?” I double-check.

  “Too right it was a yes!” says Claude. “We’re putting on Blackwell Live! We’re going to do it, just like we talked about last night!!”

  SCREEEEAAM!

  After confirming and double confirming that Jimi Steele isn’t anywhere in close proximity . . . I throw my arms in the air, wave ’em like I just don’t care, holler, whoop, then join with the LBD in a celebratory Funky Monkey dance routine right along the administration corridor, through the middle school cloakrooms, then t
wice around the school pond. Life has taken a fantastic, brilliant, amazing upturn!

  How glad am I now that, when I put the oven on last night and threatened my dad that I’d commit suicide by sticking my head in if he didn’t allow me go to Astlebury, I changed my mind at the last minute and just made a baked potato instead? Imagine if I’d have missed this!

  and there’s more

  I’m back home at the Fantastic Voyage now. I’ve just finished playing a few rounds of “Guess My Mood Today” with Mum (today’s answer, in case you’re wondering, was Distant and Angry). But this won’t depress me tonight, not after so many amazing things have happened today.

  For example, the bit when McGraw spotted the LBD stacking our trays in the dining hall after lunch and was forced to, through Britain’s tightest lips, tell us he was “really pleased” to see us “taking on such a worthwhile project.” That was great. Especially as it was quite clear that it was giving McGraw physical pain similar to hemorrhoids to say so.

  Another fab bit was sticking up our first Blackwell Live audition posters, just outside the assembly hall, and watching the first small crowd of looky-loos gathering to read all the details. How cool is that?

  By the way, our posters say:CALLING ALL BLACKWELL SINGERS,

  MUSICIANS, DANCERS, ROCK BANDS

  AND BUDDING POP IDOLS!

  We need you for Blackwell Live on Saturday, July 12th—

  Blackwell School’s very own

  MUSIC FESTIVAL

  Auditions are this Monday, June 23rd, 4:00 P. M. in the gym.

  Speak to Claudette Cassiera, Veronica Ripperton or

  Fleur Swan for further details or simply show up and

  show us what you can do.

  Within less than an hour, people began stopping the LBD in the corridors, in the school yard and on the playing fields to ask us what the devil we were playing at, or even funnier still, to sing us a few verses of their favorite songs, do a bit of break-dancing, or tell us about the Grade 3 piano exam they’d just passed! One lad even jumped out from behind the geography shelf in the library and serenaded me at the top of his voice:“Has anyone ever seeen my bay-beee?

  The one with the beautiful eyes

  Cos there ain’t nooooooo dis-guisin’

  The way I luuuuurve her!”

  Then he did a bit of a tap dance . . . which would have been quite flattering, except that the lad was Boris Ranking, a sturdy fourth-year lad with bright orange hair and amazing tangerine lashes who looks exactly like a Highland calf.

  By the time we’d arranged with Johnny Martlew, the Year 13 lad who designs the Blackwellschool.com website, to post the details on the Latest News page, then persuaded Edith to stick a note into the class registers so that form teachers could tell every class, we’d started to feel a bit like pop stars ourselves. In fact, by about 4:00 P.M., everybody was talking about the LBD. It was brilliant!

  However, better than all of this was what occurred at about seven o’clock this evening, just as I was lying down on my bed to do my French homework.

  Okay, I’ll admit that I’m not usually a big homework-done-on-time sorta lady, and let’s face it, I had a lot more than feminine and masculine pronouns on my mind after today’s events, but I had to get this stuff learned. You see, I’ve got one of Madame Bassett’s legendary vocabulary tests tomorrow morning and I cannot fail.

  No way.

  It’s simply not worth the hassle of giving M. Bassett a less than 50 percent result. She’d probably just pick on me for the entire double period, making me stand up and describe, in French, the complex details of planning a music festival or something equally horrendous. Can you imagine?

  “Errr . . . J’aime beaucoup le, sorry, I mean, la musique . . . et, ooooh la la . . . Je n’ sais pas . . . er . . . Et j’ai besoin d’une tente. . . . Errr . . . and j’aime le veggie burger . . . Oh, God, pleeeeease can I sit down now?” (Dissolves into tears.)

  She would love that, Madame Bassett would.

  La bitche.

  So anyhow, I’d just opened my Tricolor textbook and was becoming quite engrossed in a very interesting story involving a man from La Rochelle named Monsieur Boulanger who, rather spookily, also worked as a baker (fancy that, eh? What a coincidence) when a loud noise reverberated through my floorboards, almost shaking all of the teddy bears off the top of my wardrobe.

  This kinda made me angry.

  You see, not only was I the last to arrive in this family, therefore I got the bedroom which is the size of a gerbil hutch; worse still, I’m also situated directly above the Fantastic Voyage’s function room; hence, I’ve got to endure being woken up some Sunday mornings by noisy christening parties, or even kept awake some evenings by tipsy lunatics singing “I Will Always Love You” over the karaoke.

  (Hang on—maybe I am an abused child after all?)

  Okay, to be fair, Dad hardly ever hires the function room out these days as he says it’s not worth the bother (I think he means my moaning), but it certainly sounded like something was going on down there now.

  KEEEEEERRRRWWWAAANNNNNNNNG!!!!

  Yep, that sounded like a great big noisy guitar riff to me. So, after a lot of sighing and throwing myself about my room, blaming my father for my inability to break out of Ability Stream 2 for French, I popped down to stick my shneck around the function room door . . . only to find something so wonderful and unbelievably cool that I fully plan to bore my grandkids senseless with the memories of it when I’m a white-haired, false-hipped old nana.

  Jimi Steele and Lost-flipping-Messiah were practicing underneath my bedroom!

  I didn’t know Dad had said yes to this!

  I was frozen to the spot for the first few moments. I even considered running back upstairs, having a shower and ironing my best going-out clothes, then appearing back downstairs in full makeup. But even I could see the vague lunacy in that plan; they might have gone by then. So I stood at the back of the room, watching Jimi and Naz tuning up their guitars and arguing over chords. Now, okay, I do remember what I said about becoming a stalker, so I was trying to be cool about it, but heck, I was there long enough to notice how Jimi’s sandy hair seems to have acquired gorgeous honey-blond highlights since summer began. (These are certainly, I feel, naturally bleached through all those long outdoors hours Jimi spends in search of nice waxy benches and handrails to skate along.)

  Oh, God.

  I really do find Jimi so unbelievably gorgeous that I almost feel sick every time I look at him.

  Is this normal?

  Yes, I know “love hurts,” but does it also make you puke and want to sit on the toilet a lot too? Or am I a freak?

  The worst thing is, I can’t even put my finger on what I actually want to do with Jimi. Do I want to snog him? Or just hang out with him and make him laugh? Or lock him in my room and make him listen to CDs with me? Or maybe I just want to be seen kicking about with him, holding his coat while he practices skating or helping him with his crutches when he has a fall, so all the other Blackwell girls say: “Oooooh, look! That Ronnie Ripperton’s going out with Jimi Steele! I’m sooo jealous.”

  Is that it?

  I really don’t know, I just know I want to be somehow more part of Jimi’s life than I am right now. Anyway, whatever it is I want to do, when I found Jimi actually standing in my home, I settled for standing gazing at him without blinking for so long that my eyes became all dry and fuzzy, like old sweets down the back of the sofa.

  Not a good image to portray.

  “Hey, Ronnie!” shouted Jimi.

  Gulp.

  “Oi, oi, it’s the landlady!” yelled Naz. “Hey, what do you think of the show so far, then, Ronnie? Not bad, eh? Considering our singer’s tone-deaf, eh?”

  Everybody, including me, giggled. Jimi blushed a bit and told Naz to shut his mouth.

  “Well, as far as I could hear, you’ve just sounded like a car crash for the last hour,” I chirped. “Have you lot got any actual songs, or just . . . noisy noises?”
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  “Ooooooh, get her!!!” Naz laughed. “She means you, Jimi, of course.”

  “I meant all of you,” I said, grinning cheekily. “I thought there was a fight going on down here, or something.”

  I’m not really this cool, I don’t need to tell you this, I was just pretending to be cool, and somehow it was working.

  “We’d better practice a bit harder, then.” Jimi smiled, staring directly at me.

  Uccckkk—he was giving me that “nearly hurl” sensation again.

  I took the practice bit as my cue to leave, but just as I reached the door, Jimi shouted after me, “And you’re in luck, Ronnie, I’ve checked with our manager. Turns out we ARE free on July twelfth to appear at Blackwell Live. Lost Messiah can be your headline act, eh?”

  Jimi flicked his hair out of his eyes and played a loud B chord, shaking the foundations of the room, while Naz looked at him, sort of confused, trying to work out when in the last few hours Lost Messiah had acquired “a manager.”

  I waited until the sound subsided, cocked my head to the side and said rather cutely, “Well, first you best make sure you’re free this Monday after school, cos you’ll have to come to the auditions. You know? Exactly the same as everybody else.” Then I took a few steps away, turned and added, “Oh, and you better get some singing practice. Because, well, standards are going to be very high.”

  Then I shimmied out of the door, back up to my bedroom, to further screams of “Ha ha ha! She told you, Steelo, didn’t she, eh? You Muppet!” from the rest of Lost Messiah.

  What a triumph, eh?!

  And, yes, I did remember to pull, not push, the pull door this time.

  Chapter 4

  the best of times . . . the worst of times

  After all the high spirits and jolly hoo-hah of the past few days, at precisely 3:00 A.M. this morning, I discovered what Mum’s been wittering on about all my life when she says: “Things always seem blackest in the middle of the night.”