by Grace Dent
Collette was going to a ball that night in Epping Forest and the theme was Royals and Rogues, which was going to be amazing ’cos all the girls dress as princesses and the blokes dress as gangsters. Collette said that she’d had her eye on Lennox for ages ’cos he plays poker in the salon after hours with Earl who owns Cheeky’s. Collette said the first time she met Lennox she rang him up afterwards and asked him out for dinner herself ’cos “she who dares wins.” Collette says blokes love it when girls take the lead. Carrie listened to all this and then she was dead quiet all the bus journey home. I asked her what she was up to tonight and she said, “She who dares wins, Shiraz.” Then she got off.
WHAT IS CARRIE DRAPER UP TO?
SUNDAY 9TH MARCH
OH BLOODY HELL. Carrie has only gone and sent a bloody message to Bezzie Kelleher’s MySpace saying that she really likes his “sound” and can she come over and meet him!!! And can she bring me too to meet Wesley Barrington Bains II??? Oh god no. Carrie Draper is a proper liberty. Sometimes I wish I kicked about with Sonia Cathcart ’cos at least if I was spending all my time praying to the Baby Jesus it might be better than hanging about Burger King drive-through getting my non-existent baps leered at by a boy who looks like a toad, or going over to bloody Dawson Drive to hear “Who Got Da Beef?” played live. I hope he doesn’t write back. Please Baby Jesus don’t let him write back.
TUESDAY 10TH MARCH
Bezzie has not written back. I always reckoned Bezzie looked a bit up himself. Whenever we sat on the fence near his house when he was fixing his car he always pretended he didn’t notice us when I knew full well that he could hear us singing and could DEFINITELY smell our chips. Carrie says she is thinking of going out with Cotch again just to teach Bezzie a lesson. HOW WILL IT TEACH HIM A LESSON?? I never want to be in love if it turns you this mental.
THURSDAY 13TH MARCH
STILL NO WORD FROM BEZZIE. THANK YOU BABY JESUS!
Homework tonight was to write a letter asking if we could have a work placement. Mr. Brightwell said that we’ve got to think of all the reasons why we’d be a “positive attribute to the company.” This is well hard. I rang Mr. Tilak from Tilak Foods today for more details of the job and he said basically it would involve counting six packets of pakoras or whatever out of a chute and into a box, then taping the box and making sure the food items don’t jam in the machine. I told Mr. Tilak I’ve got a low GCSE guesstimated grade in math, and he just mumbled it doesn’t matter as long as I show up on time and don’t eat the pakoras. He said I have to put my application in writing.
I asked Mum what I should write and she said, “’Ere, I dunno Shiraz. Tell him you won’t pick your nose near the bhajis and you can count to six all by yourself.” Then her, Murphy and Cava-Sue laughed for ages. They are PROPER JOKES.
Mum asked who told me to write to Tilak’s, so I said Mr. Brightwell, my careers advisor. Mum just tutted and said, “Huh, your careers advisor!” Then she said that’s where she went wrong in the eighties, listening to do-gooders like that and if she had her days to live over again she’d have just married someone with cash. Dad’s face brightened when she said that, like he was imagining it. Mum says that Collette Brown from Cheeky’s has got the right idea. She’ll get herself set up with some bloke with a bit of dough like one of them WAGs. She won’t be working in that tanning place long.
Cava-Sue tutted when she said that. Probably ’cos her Lewis goes round looking like a homeless. Mum says if I had any sense I’d get myself a builder or someone who is a bit handy ’cos she’s always wanted the kitchen knocked through into the laundry room and one of them breakfast bars like Carrie’s mum has got — except tasteful.
I said I would try.
FRIDAY 14TH MARCH
CARRIE STILL BEING BLANKED BY BEZZIE — There are only so many fake faces of disappointment that I can pull whenever Carrie mentions it.
Ms. Bracket asked if anyone wanted any help with our work placement letters today as she was happy to assist. I showed her my letter to Tilak’s and she looked at it and smiled a bit then got out her red pen. There is never any time at Mayflower when a red pen means anything good.
Ms. Bracket says that she is very impressed by my vocabulary but sometimes “less is more” when it comes to writing a job application letter. She reckons that I don’t need to tell Mr. Tilak all about how unique or mental I am or how I would cause lots of friction at the factory, as it’s not like applying for Big Brother — they like people to be quiet.
Ms. Bracket says I might be a bit bored putting pakoras into boxes — why don’t I look for a job that stretches me a bit, like at Essex FM radio or the Ilford Bugle newspaper, something where having a lively personality and a bright wit would be a good thing? That sounded much more exciting but I couldn’t be arsed to start the letter again from the beginning so I’m not going to bother.
“What you need to remember, Shiraz Bailey Wood,” she said and looked straight into my eyes, “is that you are the master of your own destiny.”
I don’t know what that meant. I reckon it’s something off Star Wars.
SUNDAY 16TH MARCH
Today was proper weird. I don’t think I can write about it now.
WEDNESDAY 19TH MARCH
Right, so here goes. So on Sunday, me and Carrie are sitting in her bedroom on her massive bed eating a big bag of Cheesy Starships and watching Soccer Idol on Sky One, which we totally only watch for the bits where the boys go in the post-match showers and you nearly see their willies, then Carrie’s phone beeps and it’s a text from a number we don’t recognize. The message is: WOT U UP2? JUST PICKED UP YOUR MYSPACE MESSAGE. WANNA CM OVA? — BEZZIE
So Carrie looks at me and at first she can’t speak and then she runs up to the mirror and starts shoveling on lipgloss and glitter eye-makeup and trying to find her best scrunchy and her thick gold charm bracelet while making a noise a bit like a fire alarm, and at first I don’t know what’s going on but then I finally get the gist of things and even though I’ve been dreading this happening I can’t help but feel excited as Carrie says we are going to Bezzie’s house!!! Deep down I have been dying to see what is behind the front door on Dawson Drive, considering I’ve heard about it so many times in Bezzie’s track “Who Got Da Beef?” There’s a bit where Bezzie raps:
“Roll up at my yard you’ll check nuffin’ finer.
I’ll bring ya’ cup of tea in my finest chin-a.
I’ll bring ya ice bay-be. I’ll wine ya. I’ll dine ya.
I’ll spit you some bare rhymes on my IKEA recliner.”
Personally, I think this is the crappest rap in the world ever. Who drinks tea in finest china? How old is he, thirty?
Carrie, however, thinks Bezzie’s lyrics are proper sick and even suggested to Ms. Bracket that we study “Who Got Da Beef?” as poetry for English as a GCSE set text instead of that Siegfreid Sassoon geezer who waffles on about getting shot at in the Second World War, which Carrie says is too upsetting.
So we roll up at Bezzie’s yard and knock on the door and I swear I can almost hear Carrie’s heart thumping through her T-shirt, and Bezzie opens the door and he’s got on white Nike tracksuit bottoms and a blue Adidas T-shirt and a little gold hoop earring, and the first thing I thought was how bloody enormous he was as he must be six foot three. I also thought how thin he was and what a huge nose he had, but later on Carrie said that she will always remember how gorgeous he was and how pale blue his eyes were and how he said, “Come in ladies, lovely to meet you,” when he didn’t say that at all, he said, “Gnnngnnnn’right? Come in, mind the mutt.” Then a King Charles Spaniel called Shane that was about a hundred years old limped out of the living room and licked us both and gave us a paw and Bezzie’s mum shouted shut the door ’cos we were causing a draft.
Bezzie’s bedroom wasn’t a whole lot different to our Murphy’s. It was sort of messy and there was a funny smell of feet and Axe body spray and posters on the wall out of Nuts magazine of naked women covering their boobs and
their mufties with their hands. Bezzie’s mum must have a “no mufty and nipple on the wall” rule too like my mum. There was quite a lot of posters of cars and stuff ripped out of car magazines too and all over the floor there was wires and recording equipment and a microphone set up as if it was a studio as well as a bedroom. Oh and lots of socks and cups and crisp packets. Anyway, I’m forgetting the main thing. Sitting on the bed watching Time Team on Bezzie’s portable telly was a lad with brown hair and blue eyes in a hoodie and jeans.
It was Wesley Barrington Bains II!
“Y’all right?” I said to him, then I did my best face which said: Look mate, I’m not bothered ’bout you, I’m just here with Carrie, right?
I wanted him to know that I know that I’m not good-looking or anything and have no boobs and flat nipples and look a bit like a lemon so I didn’t want him to think I had any silly ideas about him just ’cos his mate liked mine.
“Y’all right?” he said. Then he smiled at me and he had a nice smile. My stomach felt funny like I needed the loo or something. It was probably all those Cheesy Starships ’cos they ain’t exactly a complex carbohydrate. Wesley had lovely green eyes and wasn’t at all fat up close. He’s about seventeen and he looks like a proper bloke, he’s got wide shoulders and a bit of hair coming out of his T-shirt top, not that I was looking that much. I sat down on the bed beside him and he smelled a bit of Adidas sports deodorant and we both watched that little bloke off Time Team with the specs dig up a plate which proved beyond doubt that people in the olden days had plates.
Anyway, the good thing was that Bezzie and Carrie seemed to hit it off dead well ’cos she started asking him all about EXACTLY how they record their tracks, so Bezzie started showing her the mic and the DAT recorder and how they host their MP3s online. Eventually Wesley said to me, “You at Mayflower, innit?”
And I said, “Yeah.”
And he said, “Are you, like, one of them superchavs innit??”
And I tutted and said, “No mate. You wanna check your mouth tho’, being so prejudicial.”
And he laughed proper loud then and I rolled my eyes at him and folded my arms. Then he said, “Do you live nearby?”
And I said, “What you wanna know that for, bruv? Gonna stalk me?”
And he laughed well loud again and said “No.”
That last bit was meant to sound like a joke, but when I think about it, I sounded like I reckoned I was a rudegirl. A bit like when I told Eric he had brain damage. Me and Carrie stayed for an hour and then we went home.
Bezzie never tried to kiss Carrie or nothing and he never even said he’d send her a text, but on our way home Carrie said that she felt like her life will never be the same again EVER. It is Wednesday night now and Bezzie hasn’t texted or nothing but Carrie says she knows he will as it is DESTINY.
I went to bed on Sunday night and I couldn’t sleep and when I did drop off I dreamed that Wesley Barrington Bains II was coming round and Cava-Sue was trying to put a tiara in my hair and it kept dropping out and smashing on Mum’s new breakfast bar.
I am never eating Cheesy Starships again.
APRIL
WEDNESDAY 2ND APRIL
EASTER BREAK. IT’S SO BORING ’COS I AM TOTALLY SKINT. I asked Mum for hard cash, she got me a Twix egg instead.
I am also bored ’cos Carrie is TOTALLY IN LOVE with Bezzie Kelleher. Yeah, OK, she’s been in love with him since January, but she says it’s MUCH deeper now that she’s actually spoken to him. Carrie’s been over to Bezzie’s house two times over the last fortnight to listen to some of his new tracks. Carrie doesn’t really want to listen to Bezzie’s tracks, she wants to snog him and stick her hands up his T-shirt and nibble his ears, but Bezzie ain’t exactly all over her like an octopus in return.
It’s all a bit weird. Bezzie keeps texting Carrie and saying come over, then when she gets there covered in lipgloss and glitter makeup with her hair all ironed and her best hoodie on, stinking of Still by J-Lo Eau de Parfum, then Bezzie just sticks on some MP3 of a track he laid down that day at his Sound Engineer NVQ course, then they sit on his IKEA futon and eat toasted sandwiches. Bezzie likes string cheese and baked bean ones.
I asked Carrie if she has even properly snogged with Bezzie yet and she said no, not really, although he did try to give her an Indian burn the other night when they were messing about and there was a “definite electric voltage” running between them. Carrie says she knows that Bezzie is a “man with needs” and she knows he has a “great passion bubbling away beneath his layers, aching to erupt.” I think she means under his tracksuit bottoms. Can’t say I noticed it myself.
(I prefer to think that beneath Bezzie’s tracksuit bottoms he has ANOTHER pair of tracksuit bottoms then welded-on underpants “bubbling away,” ’cos the thought of him naked puts me off my fishfingers.)
Carrie thinks Bezzie is “sex on a stick.” Carrie has never been the same since she finished The Princess Diaries on day one of her holidays to Dominican and ended up reading her mother’s Jackie Collins novel which was full of proper filthy bits about people doing it nonstop. Carrie wants to get a grip of herself or Latoya will be calling her a hoochie slut too.
Carrie reckons the problem with Bezzie is he’s a bit shy. I don’t. I reckon he is a bit gay. On the Nine O’ Clock News once I saw a film about a gay pride march in central London and not all gays looked like Sean Burton in our class with the streaks who likes Kylie Minogue. Some of them looked like Bezzie too. Carrie didn’t look very happy when I said this and sat with her bottom lip out all through English, looking a lot like a baby pigeon.
I can’t help it if I tell the truth. This is what I was meaning in my careers talk. This is why I’d be dead good on Big Brother. I can’t keep stuff in my head, it just blurts out of my mouth. I ain’t changing for nobody. I am too real.
THURSDAY 3RD APRIL
I’ve been thinking. Maybe I do need to stop blurting stuff out. I don’t reckon Bezzie is gay really. He’s probably just a bit scared ’cos Carrie keeps turning up at his house with big streaks of blush down her face and glitter eyeshadow that makes her look like one of them New Zealand tribesmen who wait at the airport with spears to scare Prince Charles. I won’t tell Carrie this. I’ll keep it to myself.
I’ll never make 2.2 million quid like Tabitha Tennant if I keep on being this thoughtful.
SATURDAY 5TH APRIL — EASTER SATURDAY
This morning Carrie rang me and told me to tart myself up as we were meeting Bezzie and Wesley at 2:30 pm. So I said, “Carrie, I DON’T WANNA meet Wesley.”
And she said, “Well it’s not like a proper date or nuffin’, more like hanging out together in a four.”
So I said, “Well what do I get out of that?!”
And she said, “Oh come on Shizza, be a mate.”
So it turns out that Carrie really wants to see Bezzie and vice versa, but Bezzie has promised Wesley that he’d hang out with him this Saturday ’cos Wesley had the day off at Argos where he works part time in the storeroom when he’s not doing his NVQ2 in Plumbing. So anyway, Bezzie was meeting Wesley and they were going to cruise about in Bezzie’s Vauxhall Nova and show off his new chrome exhaust and Carrie wanted to ride with them too.
So I said again, “Yeah, Carrie, but why do you need me there?” So Carrie said well ’cos I’m her BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD of course, but also ’cos her dad, Barney, was giving her ’nuff grief about seeing Bezzie and he doesn’t want Carrie going around in Bezzie’s car, so Carrie wanted me to come over to Draperville and pretend we’re both going to the Multiplex to see Hopeless In Love starring Lindsay Lohan, but we weren’t really, we were meeting Bezzie and Wesley in Fatty Arbuckle’s parking lot and going for a ride.
So I said to Carrie, “So you want me to lie to your father?”
And Carrie said, “Oh get you, goody-two-shoes, what about last week when I had to back up your story to your mother about those Niko trainers getting stolen in PE when you really sold them to the Bean twin
s’ big sister for a tenner?”
I shut up then and stuck some lipgloss on and my big parka with the fluffy hood and my big hoop earrings and decided to go and meet her.
Barney wasn’t in when I got to Draperville, but Maria, Carrie’s mum, was. Maria was in the lounge area by their big dinner table arranging loads of orchids that she’d bought from Asda into a big glass vase. Carrie’s mum was asking me all about the movie we were going to see and I felt proper terrible about lying to her as Maria is a nice woman. I felt even worse when she gave us a tenner Easter money to spend on popcorn and hot-dogs. Carrie nearly pulled my arm off dragging me to Fatty Arbuckle’s as quick as she could.
When we got there, Bezzie and Wesley were parked up in the disabled space and they beeped their horn and we got in. Wesley turned round in the front seat and smiled at me and said, “All right Shiraz?”
So I said, “Yeah” and looked out of the window and blew a big Bazooka gum bubble while Carrie stuck her head through the seats and gave Bezzie a kiss, which he looked a bit shocked at.
We set off into Ilford and I stuck my seatbelt on and made Carrie fasten hers too, even though there wasn’t much danger as we never went much over twenty-one miles an hour and there were old people my nan’s age passing us on Rascals.
When we got into Ilford town center Bezzie rolled down the windows and flipped on the CD player and stuck on one of the G-Mayes Detonators’ new tracks called “Gun Bumpin’” which Bezzie told me and Carrie was all about how guns are dead bad and are totally destroying society. The chorus went like this:
“Brap-brap-brap boi
Am gun bumpin’.
Brap brap brap —
a got da crowd jumpin —
Brap brap brap — got gun fingers frontin’
Got ma gun in your mouth — now ya no dis boi is sumfin’.”
Bezzie turned up the volume dead loud so it was blasting out of the trunk and the entire car was shaking and my ears were crackling. People in the street were giving us funny looks as we drove along and some people were smirking. They obviously couldn’t work out that the Detonators’ track was AGAINST guns not FOR them. That’s the thing about grown-ups, they just judge you and act prejudicial without even checking the facts out proper. I hope I’m never like that when I grow up. I hope I never just look at some young people and go, “Ugh, chavs!” just ’cos they’re wearing a hoodie or a Burberry scarf or listening to loud music. I’m not going to turn into a boring old fart who stereotypes everyone like grown-ups do. I’m the master of my own destiny after all, as Ms. Bracket said.