“Fine. I learnt that there is a cult in Malaysia that worships a giant teapot.”
It seemed like the best overall response.
They both nod in approval.
“That sounds like my kind of cult,” Dad agrees. “Exactly how big is it? I mean, could you get inside it, or is it just big enough for, like, five cups of tea at once? Normal teapots are far too small, if you ask me.”
“If you want dinner,” Annabel says, lifting her eyebrows at Dad and patting me on the arm, “there’s some toast over there and some ice-cream in the freezer you can spread on it if you want.”
Seriously. I love my stepmother, but by the time this baby comes I’m going to have died of malnutrition.
I grab what remains of the multi-pack instead.
“I’ll just finish these off upstairs,” I say. “There’s something more important I have to do first.”
spend the rest of the weekend eating biscuits, trawling the internet and making a list.
Here are some interesting alternative career options I find for Nat:
None of which is likely to make my best friend want to drop her stage and screen ambitions.
Snakes don’t even have milk, for starters.
By the time Monday morning comes round, I’ve amassed a considerable range of different job interests, from graphic design to history of art to agriculture. There aren’t that many farms in our local area, but you never know what might pique Nat’s interest.
Cows can walk up a flight of stairs, but not back down again … she might find that fascinating.
Unfortunately, I don’t even get a chance to convince her of any of them, because at 7am I get the following text:
Going into school now to wait outside the drama department for The List. This is just like Christmas morning! Nat xoxo
I stare at the text in dismay, and then pull my uniform on as quickly as I can.
Sugar cookies.
It looks like I might have to implement Plan B sooner than I thought.
The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth, and in an emergency it can dive to the ground at speeds of up to 322 kilometres per hour.
Unfortunately, I can’t move anywhere near that fast.
Dad’s left the vacuum cleaner in the hallway and as I rush downstairs – keen to speed to Nat’s side – I trip over it, ripping a hole in my tights. Then I have to detangle myself, go change my tights and unsuccessfully attempt to avoid a conversation with Annabel about why I never, ever do any vacuuming, even though I make the majority of the mess.
Then my stepmother wants to talk to me about a documentary she’s recorded on dolphins.
Then the baby starts kicking, and I spend another ten minutes telling her that at seventeen weeks it is now covered in a layer of thick, downy hair called lanugo, so it probably looks like a little werewolf.
When I finally open the front door, Toby springs out from behind the hedge and starts telling me that 8,000 years ago Britain had so many trees that a squirrel could cross the country without ever touching the ground.
I can’t help myself from getting into a huge environmental debate about deforestation.
And squirrels.
By the time I finally get to school, it’s 9am and I’m late for registration. Nat is already sitting in the seat next to mine, sucking on a strand of her long hair.
I slip in anxiously next to her as our form teacher, Mrs Hart, pauses taking the register and stares at me with an unimpressed expression.
“Any news?” I whisper as I open my satchel and pull out my school diary.
Mrs Hart glares at me, then pointedly continues.
Nat shakes her head. “Apparently they haven’t decided yet.” Her fingernails are bright tangerine today, but the right index finger is already blank. “I can’t stand the suspense, Harriet. I just can’t.”
I relax slightly. That means there’s still time to do something.
Then Nat sniffs and leans towards me.
“Umm,” she adds under her breath, “awkward question, but did you skip your shower this morning?”
“What are you talking about?” I surreptitiously lean down and sniff my armpits. “Of course not. It takes two gallons of water to brush your teeth, seven gallons to flush a toilet and 25 to 75 to have a shower. I assure you I have used all of them today.”
“I believe you,” Nat says, frowning. “Weird.”
Mrs Hart continues with the register, then pauses and looks up with her nose wrinkled.
“Has somebody dragged something unpleasant in with them?”
The whole class is starting to sit up straight and sniff the air like a mob of meerkats. The smell is getting stronger and stronger: even I can smell it now.
Sour, mouldy, sweaty. Utterly disgusting.
“Ew,” Megan says, pulling the sleeve of her school jumper across her nose. “That’s horrible.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Sophie states angrily. “Like, actually vomit.”
“Miss,” one of the boys in the back row calls out optimistically, “I don’t think it’s fair to work under these conditions. Can we go home?”
“All right,” Mrs Hart says tiredly. “There’s no need to overreact. Let’s just work out where it’s coming from, shall we? Everybody check the bottom of their shoes.”
Sixty shoes suddenly get shoved on top of the desks while everybody makes a big demonstration of the fact that the rapidly deteriorating smell has nothing to do with them.
Then Mrs Hart gets up and starts walking slowly round the class, inhaling. We all watch her with our breaths held in anticipation (and because it’s now really quite unpleasant to breathe).
She circles up and down the rows, back and forth, with her nose twitching like it’s attached to an invisible string.
Then she approaches us.
“It’s here,” she says triumphantly and stops directly in front of me.
Apparently lobsters store bright red pigment in their skins that only becomes visible when heat destroys the other colours.
My cheeks obviously contain precisely the same molecule.
“I don’t smell!” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “It’s not me!”
A snigger goes round the classroom.
“She who smelt it dealt it,” somebody says from the back, even though that makes no logical sense because I wasn’t the one to first bring it up.
“Harriet Manners stinks,” somebody else shouts. “Like, gross.”
“Ewwww, geeks are disgusting.”
“Mrs Hart, we shouldn’t be forced to take a lesson with somebody who can’t clean themselves properly. We’re at an educational disadvantage.”
My cheeks get a little redder. “I clean myself properly,” I say, sitting up as straight as I can. “I’ve been doing it for years!”
Then I mentally run through every product I’ve used this morning. Mint toothpaste, chocolate shower-gel, honey shampoo. OK, I might smell like a Christmas stocking, but that’s not a bad thing, is it?
“Excuse me, but Harriet Manners doesn’t reek,” Toby says indignantly from the front desk. “She is beyond such base body functions.”
“I’m not saying you smell, Harriet,” Mrs Hart says patiently as I start frantically looking for a window to jump out of. “I’m only saying the smell is coming from here. Maybe you accidentally stepped in something.”
“Or maybe geeks are just rancid,” somebody else offers helpfully.
“I’m not,” I say as my cheeks flame and the bell finally rings. Everyone in the class abruptly loses interest and starts packing their bags. Thank goodness for the ritual of punctual school scheduling.
They file out, one by one, and then – at the very last minute – I see it: Alexa’s face, shining with the light of a million smug fireflies.
My satchel. What hotel do mice stay at?
The Stilton.
Alexa’s so-called joke.
I quickly dig through to the bottom of my satchel, and ther
e it is: a mound of soft, rotting blue cheese. Covered in mould, releasing slightly yellow juices and absolutely stinking.
I pull out the rancid cheese and hold it up.
“Well,” Mrs Hart says flatly as she starts packing up her files, “please dispose of that outside of my classroom immediately.” She walks towards the door. “I have to say, Harriet, that’s a very strange thing to bring to school with you.”
And before I can defend myself, she’s followed the rest of the class out of the room.
Leaving me, bright red and stinking of cheese, behind her.
o, here are some interesting cheese facts:
1. Cheese has existed for more than 12,000 years, which is longer than recorded history.
2. The world’s most expensive cheese is called ‘pule’, and is made from donkeys’ milk.
3. They’ve created a cheese out of the bacteria found on a human bellybutton and foot.
4. And from the tears of artists and writers.
5. Stilton is almost impossible to clean out of a satchel.
The rest of the morning is spent frantically scrubbing out my bag with bits of wet tissue and a sponge from the art department, to no avail. I still smell like the boys’ changing rooms.
Penicillin may have saved an estimated 200 million lives since it was discovered, but its presence in blue cheese has certainly not helped mine much.
I have literally never been less popular.
Eventually I admit defeat, ask the caretaker for a black bin-liner and put my satchel inside that instead. Then I cram my stationery and books into a supermarket carrier bag and run as fast as I can to the drama department.
Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I can still convince them not to crush Nat’s ego and dreams and—
“Miss Hammond?”
She’s walking down the corridor, necklaces swaying from side to side, rings all the way up to her knuckles. The school has a strict ‘no jewellery’ policy, and from the looks of it everything that gets confiscated gets given directly to the drama teacher.
“Yes, Harriet?” She glances up momentarily from her clipboard.
I don’t want to know how she remembers my name, but it might be from when I managed to fall off the stage while playing a rock in The Wizard of Oz.
“Please may I talk to you?” I say urgently, dumping my smelly black bin-liner on the floor. “It’s very important.”
Miss Hammond nods patiently and I clear my throat. With all the cheese-drama, I haven’t had a chance to fully work out my strategy yet. All I know is it needs to be convincing, I need to do it now, and it needs to work fast.
“Did you know,” I say, holding my hands together tightly, “that Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts before he invented the lightbulb?”
Miss Hammond frowns. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” I squeeze my hands together a little harder. “And Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lacking imagination.”
“Harriet …”
“And Colonel Sanders had his chicken recipe rejected 1,009 times because nobody liked it. Sony’s first ever product was a rice cooker that burnt all the rice …”
“Harriet …”
“Stephen King had Carrie rejected thirty times, and Beethoven was completely deaf and apparently rubbish at playing the violin. And don’t get me started on J.K. Rowling because the amount of people who didn’t believe in her defies bel—”
Miss Hammond puts her hand on my shoulder and all her bracelets start jingling. “Harriet. What exactly is it you’re trying to say?”
Huh. I thought that was pretty obvious. This is clearly the reason why our drama teacher doesn’t work in a law firm. Annabel would have understood historical precedence immediately.
“Please give Natalie Grey a part in Hamlet, Miss Hammond. Please. Don’t write her off already. She just needs another chance, that’s all.”
Miss Hammond looks at me for a few seconds and then smiles amiably. “Harriet, the list is already up. I stuck it on the wall five minutes ago.”
“But—”
“It’s all decided. The dramatic die has been cast, so to speak. Ha. Hahaha.”
“Harriet!” an urgent voice shouts from round the corner. “Harriet! Where are you?”
Miss Hammond beams at me and then spins on her heel and wanders back into her classroom, clinking like the ghost of Marley in A Christmas Carol.
I turn just in time to see Nat, charging towards me with a white face and a bright pink piece of paper held high in her hand.
My stomach drops.
“Oh, Nat,” I say as she reaches me and wraps me in a tight hug. “I’m so sor—”
“I’m in!” she squeaks into my shoulder. “I knew it, Harriet! I’m going to be a star!”
The paper is thrust into my hands and I blink at it a few times over her back, trying to make sense of what’s written there.
But I can’t.
Because I know Hamlet, and it simply doesn’t make sense at all.
I read the top of the list three times, just in case I’ve somehow abruptly lost all my literacy skills.
It still looks the same.
The only two female roles in Hamlet have gone to Raya – easily the prettiest girl in our year, with eyelashes like a beautiful deer – and Kira, the girl whose audition piece consisted of the most terrifying Desdemona I’d ever seen. She looked like she could easily beat Othello up and was seriously considering it.
I look back in confusion at Nat, still glowing.
“But—”
“See?” she says, pointing at the bottom. Underneath Horatio and Polonius and Laertes, it says:
“Uh,” I manage.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Nat says happily, kissing the paper that she must have torn off the wall in excitement. “Yorick is really important, Harriet. ‘Alas, poor Yorick’. It’s, like, the most famous line. I’m Alas Poor Yorick!”
I blink a few times and then scan the paper again.
Just above Nat’s name, it says:
“Rosenstern?” I echo blankly. “But there isn’t a Rosenstern. There’s a Rosencrantz and a Guildenstern. They’re two separate people.”
“Yes,” Miss Hammond says, emerging into the corridor once more with half a sandwich in her hand. “But they are virtually indistinguishable, so I decided to merge them for efficiency.”
Merge them for efficiency? What’s next – Roliet? Prosperello?
“And they’re boys,” I object fiercely.
“Shakespeare was only legally allowed to use men to act in his plays for every part,” she observes, firmly stuffing the rest of the sandwich in her mouth. “I felt it was about time we redressed the feminist balance. Mia will be playing Horatio.”
Great. I don’t even want to be in the play and I’ve essentially been cast as the Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee of the sixteenth century.
“We corrected a false rumour going round that people would be exempt from homework during rehearsals,” Miss Hammond adds nonchalantly. “Bizarrely, quite a few people dropped out this morning.”
Suddenly the list is starting to make a little bit more sense.
Then I look at the bottom of the list and my entire stomach flips over.
Light. And. Sound. Technician.
Are they kidding?
What is wrong with teachers? They might as well give Alexa the keys to the kingdom and be done with it. She’ll be able to pull all the strings from behind the curtains, like the crazed, power-hungry Wizard of Oz.
Except with expensive blonde highlights and a more brutal disposition.
This is a disaster.
“Quick, Harriet,” Nat says, dragging me to the side and folding up the cast list tightly. “I never listen in English. What’s Hamlet about again?”
I swallow. Finally, this is something I can actually help Nat with.
“The King of Denmark has just died,” I say, trying to avoid her eyes. “The King’s ghost tells his son, Prince Hamlet, that he was mu
rdered by his brother, Claudius, so that he could take the crown and marry Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Hamlet swears to seek revenge—”
“Oooh,” Nat breathes. “Exciting.”
I nod. “But in the meantime Hamlet dumps his girlfriend, Ophelia, and accidentally kills her father, so she goes totally bonkers and drowns herself.”
“No,” Nat says with round eyes. “What a pig!”
I smile. I’ve been trying to tell Nat that Shakespeare was the sixteenth century equivalent of a melodramatic TV drama, and that she’d love it as much as I do if she gave it a chance, for years.
“So then Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, wants to kill Hamlet for killing his dad and sister, so it all leads up to this big fight where Hamlet poisons Laertes and Claudius poisons Gertrude and Hamlet poisons Claudius and Laertes poisons Hamlet. Basically everyone dies.”
Nat looks pretty impressed. “Dark,” she says. “What happens to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?”
“They die.”
“And Yorick?” Nat says, taking a deep breath. “Does he die, Harriet? Tell me he dies. I spent all last night working on my death rattle, just in case.”
I take a deep breath and finally manage to make eye contact with my best friend.
“Yes,” I say as gently as I can. “Yorick dies too.”
Which is kind of true.
Because Yorick is a skull. He has no lines, no songs and no costume.
And he’s dead the whole way through.
want to tell Nat the truth, but there’s no chance. Between classes and homework and extra-homework (me) and ‘Yorick preparations’ (Nat) I barely see her for the next forty-eight hours.
It’s not the kind of news I wanted to break to her via text, and rehearsals start in earnest straight after school on Wednesday.
Mr Bott and Miss Hammond have decided that, instead of a full length, four-hour version of Hamlet, it’s probably wiser if they reduce it to twenty minutes and book end it with dances from Year 8 and 9.
“For impact,” Miss Hammond says, dramatically flinging her arms out so her floral sleeve ruffles go crazy. “You know, make it really short and punchy. Really grab the audience and leave a lasting impression.”