That puts a different light on things. If my ancient mother can run that far, surely I could do it too? Well, Rachel could anyway. I’m not sure I actually want to try. Besides, I don’t have any proper running runners. I just have three different pairs of Converse and, even though I’m not a running expert, I know they are a lot less sturdy than the ones my Mum wears.
Spot is still glowing, by the way. When will my face go back to normal? When?
I haven’t told either Cass or Alice about how I feel about Sam. I’m not sure why. When I liked Paperboy, I certainly went on about it enough. And Cass kept telling me she knew I fancied John Kowalski long before I actually did fancy him (though, in that case, it took me a while to accept I liked him because I was still pining for Paperboy). Now I come to think about it, Sam is the second boy whose charms just kind of grew on me. Maybe I am just not very good at figuring out exactly what, or indeed who, I want?
Anyway, I don’t want to say anything about it right now. I really have no idea whether he fancies me back or not, and there is a good chance he doesn’t. But if my friends know I fancy him, I’ll feel like there is more pressure – well, not quite pressure, but they’ll want to know what’s happening and the answer will probably be ‘nothing at all’ and then I’ll feel a bit stupid, even though they would never want me to feel like that.
But I think the main reason I don’t really want to tell anyone is that then, if nothing ever happens or, which would be much worse, if he actually just tells me he doesn’t fancy me, no one will feel sorry for me. Which I would hate. If no one knows and nothing ever happens then I will still be sad, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed. And I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed about this, and I know my friends really wouldn’t think differently about me if they knew I liked someone who didn’t like me, but I think I would still feel crap. So I will keep it to myself for now.
Of course, a part of me is dying to tell them. Mostly because I keep wanting to talk about him, and I don’t really have a good excuse at the moment. We were sitting out on the playing fields during lunch today, partly because the weather was surprisingly warm and sunny and partly because we were avoiding Vanessa and Karen. Karen and Bernard’s drama group actually does sometimes provide actors for films and plays and, yes, ads, so Karen seems to think she will be the next Kookie. What a terrible thought. Though to be honest, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I’d rather she became famous than Vanessa. I mean, Karen has shown she actually has a soul and some humanity buried deep down inside her. Vanessa hasn’t. And Bernard the Fairytale Prince is quite decent really.
Anyway, when Karen first mentioned her intention to look for auditions the other week, I thought Vanessa would be more bothered by her and Bernard’s dreams of fame, but now she clearly thinks that she is already so successful and famous that there’s no chance of Karen stealing her thunder, so when Karen told us all about how she and Bernard had asked their drama teacher Sarah about auditions, Vanessa started patronising her instead.
‘I’ll be happy to give you and Bernard some tips on the craft,’ she said today. ‘Consider me your mentor.’
‘You’re an inspiration, Vanessa!’ said Karen.
Sometimes, I don’t know which of them’s worse, I really don’t. Oh, okay, I do. It’s Vanessa.
Anyway, after a few minutes of listening to this, Cass, Alice, Ellie, Emma and I couldn’t bear it anymore, so we escaped from the classroom and went out to lie on the grass with our sandwiches.
Ellie started talking about the art studio and how she loves having all that space to draw.
‘The only downside,’ she said, ‘is that it makes the crappy little desk in my bedroom seem even smaller.’
‘Can’t you use that big table in your kitchen?’ said Alice. Ellie’s house is an average-sized, three-bedroom redbrick on Home Farm Road, but it has a great kitchen extension and in it there is a lovely big old table that looks like something from a country farm house.
Ellie sighed.
‘My mum’s always using it for her own projects,’ she said. ‘And besides, I can’t leave stuff on it because we still have to use it as, like, an eating table. So it’s just easier to draw in my room and not have to think about tidying away my stuff every two minutes because dinner’s ready or Mum wants to make another goddess head-dress.’
And even though there was no need to mention him, I found myself saying, ‘Sam said it made him want his own studio too.’
As soon as I said his name, I could feel my face getting a bit hot and I was sure I must have been bright red, but no one seemed to notice anything. And, believe me, if there was anything to notice, one of them would have said something. I haven’t forgotten the way Cass carried on when she was sure I fancied John Kowalski (and, in fairness to her, she was right about that). But, in this case, I must have just sounded and looked totally normal, because Ellie just said, ‘Yeah, we were talking about it on Saturday. He said he was working at the kitchen table last week and his sister plonked down a big glass of orange juice and nearly wrecked the comic he was working on. This is why we need proper studio space!’
‘I love our practice space,’ said Alice. ‘And it’s good to have an excuse to go into town.’
‘I like not having to go all the way from the garage to your house in the rain whenever I need to go to the loo,’ said Cass. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful, Alice. Hey Dollface would not exist without your garage.’
‘True,’ said Alice. ‘But I do prefer the Knitting Factory. And we’ll get to see Kitty there on Saturday!’
‘She’ll be able to tell us the best way to end “Pistachio”,’ I said. ‘Which is, of course, my and Alice’s way.’
I really am excited about working with Kitty again. I can’t wait until Saturday, and not just because I’ll see Sam again. Now I come to think of it, I’ve started taking it for granted I’ll see him there. Maybe he won’t come every week. I mightn’t see him for ages. I know I went for weeks on end without seeing him after the summer camp, but it’s so weird, everything feels different now.
I suppose I could tell Rachel about the Sam stuff. She is surprisingly good at listening to my woes and giving advice in these situations – in fact, when John and I first kissed I told her about it before I told either Cass or Alice. But maybe she won’t want to talk about love and romance now that her heart has been broken by evil Tom? It might be a bit insensitive. I don’t remember any of the ‘cheer up someone who’s been dumped’ articles telling me to go on about my own love problems.
I just did go to Rachel for advice, but it has nothing to do with my romance problems (unless it makes me so hideous no one can bear to look at me). My stupid spot is showing no signs of disappearing. It’s still lurking under my skin, but it seems to be getting bigger and my chin actually feels sore. I stared at it for so long in the mirror, I started to worry it was actually swelling up before my very eyes, so I went in to Rachel to see what she thought.
‘Is this spot getting bigger before your very eyes?’ I asked.
Rachel stared at my chin for a minute.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just a lurker. Everyone gets them. Just be glad it’s not on your nose.’
Some comfort she is. I did weirdly feel a bit better though.
‘So it’s normal?’ I said.
‘As normal as anything about you could be,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s normal. It’ll go eventually. Here, use this on it.’
And she took out her little tube of expensive spot gel and handed it to me.
‘This should calm it down a bit,’ she said. She is not too bad, really. Maybe I will tell her about the Sam stuff soon.
I feel ashamed of myself. Clearly I have no principles. Today at lunchtime Vanessa produced a big bag full of boxes of Bluebird Bakery Yummy Scrummy Cookies.
‘Share these among yourselves,’ she commanded, handing around packets emblazoned with the Bluebird Bakery logo. Her loyal chums joined in.
‘They’re really good!’ said Caroline,
handing me an open packet of cookies.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, and took it. It felt rude not to accept. But once I had the packet, it felt hypocritical to eat the cookies after all the time I’ve spent giving out about Vanessa and the ad. My friends felt the same way.
‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ said Alice quietly. ‘I mean, we hate the ad …’
‘And we don’t like Vanessa much either,’ said Emma.
On the other side of the room, Vanessa was saying something about being a ‘Bluebird Brand Ambassador’.
‘They do look like nice cookies, though,’ said Ellie. We looked into the box. They did look nice, all big and fresh and crunchy. ‘Aw, I don’t care, I’m going to try one.’ She got out a cookie and took a big bite.
‘Well?’ said Cass.
‘Whoah,’ said Ellie. ‘That is one delicious cookie. Seriously, it’s really good. I’m going to have another one. Sorry.’
Cass sighed.
‘Oh go on then, pass one over,’ she said.
A few moments later, we were all eating them. And Ellie was right, they were totally delicious. Much nicer than any of the chocolate chip cookies my parents usually buy. Not that our house is ever full of biscuits. My parents are very stingy when it comes to buying delicious treats. No wonder I have to make my own fudge.
Of course, Vanessa soon marched over to see what we thought.
‘Well, aren’t they the best cookies you’ve ever tasted?’ she said.
And much as it pained me to agree with her, I had to say, ‘Yeah, they’re really good.’
‘They’re gorgeous,’ said Alice. Everyone agreed.
Vanessa, unsurprisingly, looked very smug.
‘I knew you’d all like them,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be handing them out at special public appearances soon – in character as Kookie, of course. She’s really taking off. People are even dressing up as her now.’
We all stared at her. Had she finally gone mad? Surely no one loved the ads so much they were actually trying to be Kookie? But I’m afraid it’s true. I have now seen it with my own eyes. It turns out that the Bluebird Bakery asked people to send in videos and pictures of themselves being ‘a little bit kooky’ and lots of people have obeyed this irritating request.
There is now a whole page full of videos and photos of people prancing around with small dogs and musical instruments, wearing frilly frocks and drinking tea out of old-fashioned cups. One girl sent a photo of herself knitting some rainbow-striped socks next to a Yorkshire Terrier which was wearing a little bonnet. This looks like animal cruelty to me (the bonnet part, not the knitting socks part). At least Handsome Dan performed naked, as nature intended him to be.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with all the activities in these photos and videos, apart from dressing up animals in outfits (and, in fairness, the Yorkshire Terrier didn’t seem to mind much – it wasn’t as if the bonnet was hurting him). As I said, I like most of these things. In fact, now I really wish I could knit my own socks because it not only looks fun – you knit the sock as a sort of tube with five pointy needles – but you get a nice cosy pair of socks at the end of it. But when you make a big deal of how kooky these activities (and dogs) supposedly are, then they become extremely annoying. I am not sure why this is. It is quite mysterious.
Anyway, Vanessa thinks the photos and videos are all a tribute to her own brilliance, and I suppose they are, depressingly enough. I mean, people do seem to love that ad. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got to encourage her egomania by eating her hand-outs. If she brings in more biscuits, I must stay strong and tell her I’m not hungry. Maybe I could write some song lyrics about the importance of staying true to your beliefs, no matter how difficult it is? It would encourage not just myself but other people too. We were messing around with a possible new song on Saturday – it sort of has a tune, so I could try and work out some lyrics to fit it.
I have written some lyrics. Every time I’m tempted to be a huge hypocrite and take Vanessa’s cookies, I will sing it (just in my head, obviously – I’m not going to start suddenly singing in public).
You know the right thing to do
You know what you stand for
But then something is offered to you
And it’s too good to ignore.
CHORUS
It doesn’t matter
How tasty it will be
Because what tastes better
Is honesty.
I think it has potential. I’d like to incorporate a great word I found in my rhyming dictionary to rhyme with ‘do’ – it is ‘smew’ and it is a sort of diving duck. I’ve got some good bird and animal lyrics from the dictionary before, like when I compared John Kowalski to a ‘tercel’, which is a sort of hawk. Though he does have a bird of prey air about him, and I’m not quite sure how I could fit diving ducks into this song. ‘You’re avoiding problems like a smew’? I will think about it some more.
Just three more days until I see Sam again. It’s a bit sad to be thinking about it, but I can’t help it. I hope I don’t act all weird. Or that he doesn’t march in talking about how he’s just met the love of his life or something. Maybe he’ll suddenly fall for Ellie. Or Cass. Or Alice. Not that he’d have much luck with any of them.
School wasn’t too bad today. Vanessa was no more annoying than usual (which obviously still means she was quite annoying, but we’re used to that), and Miss Kelly was in a surprisingly jovial mood, even though she spent a lot of the class talking about the environmental consequences of urban expansion. And Mrs Harrington was even more cheerful – when we were leaving our English class for lunch, she told me she’s sent her book off to a literary agent. Or at least the first few chapters of it.
‘It’s called The Road Through the Bluebells,’ she said proudly. ‘And it’s about a woman in a small Irish town who decides she wants to be a gardener.’
It doesn’t sound very exciting to me, but then neither do my mum’s books and loads of people love them. So maybe Mrs Harrington will actually be a big success. I don’t think it’s very likely, I’m afraid. Though if this does happen, we might get a new English teacher who isn’t obsessed with my mother, which would be a very good thing. Still, even Mrs Harrington doesn’t annoy me as much as she did a year ago. Maybe I have become a more patient and noble person?
In other news, the lurker has finally burst forth. It looks hideous but is strangely less sore. Now I must just let it take its course (hopefully aided by that posh spot stuff) and make sure I don’t touch it. And I must resist the temptation to squeeze it, because I don’t want to be scarred for life. I’m just hoping it will have passed its peak and started to fade away by Saturday. I don’t want Sam to think I’m covered in boils too.
Oh dear. I was right again. And I sort of wish I wasn’t.
I mean that I was right when I told Rachel I thought Dad was going too far in his attempts to jazz up Henry Higgins. Obviously I am often right about other things too. I’m right about where to end ‘Pistachio’ (sorry, Cass), I was right about Vanessa getting the ad, and then I was right about the ad being the worst thing that has ever been shown on television, and I was right when I dumped John Kowalski. But in all those cases I was glad that I was right. And I am not glad about Dad turning into a sort of deranged show off. It’s one thing seeing him dance around when it’s part of the actual show. It’s quite another watching him add his own bits.
This is how I found out. The hall hasn’t found a new class to fill that spare slot, so the musical society are still having two rehearsals a week. As usual on My Fair Lady nights, I had got my homework done nice and early so I could enjoy the luxury of lying on the couch and watching telly without my parents coming in and insisting on turning over to something boring like the news, or making stupid and unfunny comments about whatever programme I’m trying to enjoy. I had just turned on the TV when my mum rang the landline. Rachel was upstairs on the phone to Jenny (again) so I answered it.
‘Oh Bex, it’s y
ou,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I need you to do something for me.’
‘What is it?’ I said, suspiciously.
‘I left my dance shoes at home and we’re blocking a scene at the moment so your dad and I really can’t go home and get them. Could you pop down here with them?’
‘Mum!’ I said. ‘It’s miles away!’ Which is only a tiny little bit of an exaggeration.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rebecca,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a ten-minute walk. Fifteen at the very most. Please!’
‘Why can’t Rachel do it?’ I said.
‘Because she’s had a very hard time recently,’ said Mum. ‘And by the time I persuade her to do it the rehearsal will be over. Come on, Rebecca!’
‘Will you give me money so I can get a nice sandwich after band practice on Saturday?’ I said, cunningly exploiting this rare moment of weakness.
‘Oh, you’ve resorted to demanding bribes, have you?’ said Mum. ‘Alright, you win. I will give you sandwich money. Now, get down here with those shoes! They’re in a bag in the hall.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you down there.’
I yelled up the stairs to tell Rachel I was leaving, grabbed the shoes and headed down to the hall where the musical society practise. It actually is just about a kilometre away, but it feels longer when you were planning to spend the evening sitting on a sofa watching telly instead of walking along Gracepark Road.
When I arrived at the hall, the cast were in the middle of a scene so I didn’t want to interrupt. I just slipped in and took a seat at the back of the room. The cast were just starting the scene in which Alfred Dolittle, the dustman and father of the heroine, Eliza, is singing down the pub with all his dustman pals about getting married in the morning. Of course, Henry Higgins is not meant to be in this scene because he is a posh person who is trying to turn Eliza into a fancy lady and he doesn’t hang around in pubs with Edwardian bin men. But as the actor playing Alfred strutted about the stage with his pub pals (including my mother, who was waving around a bunch of paper flowers in a very suggestive manner), suddenly Dad appeared at the side of the stage.