“Don’t know much, do you?” scoffed Sara and she reached out and grabbed the phone. “Neat phone, though.” She flicked it open. “I think it’s one of those video camera phones.” She pressed a few buttons but the phone appeared to be dead. I wanted her to give it back to me as it had been sent to me, not her, but she didn’t seem in any hurry to hand it over.
One of her friends snatched the card and began to read it out. “It’s a website address,” she said as she turned it over and read the other side as well. “For some zodiac thing. Huh. Are you a new-age nut then, Gemma, into astrology?”
I took the card back from her. “No,” I said. I was as baffled as everyone else was by the mysterious gifts. Who could possibly have sent them? I wondered. No way could my mum or dad or my mates have afforded things like that.
In the meantime, Sara was roughly pressing all the buttons on the phone, trying to make it work. Suddenly an image appeared on the screen. It looked like a green blobby monster and Sara leapt back, but not before the face in the screen was joined by the words, “Get OFF me, Madam Snotface.”
A couple of girls who were close enough to read the message burst out laughing and Sara dropped the phone like it was a hot brick.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “It’s weird.” She linked arms with her friends and sneered at me. “And you’re weird. You can keep your stupid phone. And your necklace. It’s probably a cheap giveaway for some sad promotion, anyway.”
It’s not a cheap giveaway, I thought as I picked the phone up from the ground to see that a new face had appeared on the screen. It was an image of Hermie smiling and giving me the thumbs-up. Wow, I thought. It’s one of those camera phones. I’ve always wanted one of those, but… where did the green thing disappear to? Sara was right. The whole thing was weird but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing that I was fazed by it. I glanced up to see that some of the older girls were looking suspiciously at me.
“So who sent you the phone?” asked Fleur.
“Not sure,” I replied as I clicked it shut. “Um. Probably my dad or someone.”
“So did Hermie leave you his number?” asked Fleur.
“Me? No. No way,” I said and glanced down at the card. The girls clearly fancied Hermie and didn’t like the thought of any competition. “I think Sara was right. The card is probably some sort of a promotion for an astrology site. Probably put in the bag when whoever bought my pressies got them. You know how it goes. Sales assistants are always putting all sorts of stuff in bags with your purchases to advertise stuff. Pizzas. Free mobiles. Holidays in the Caribbean. Zodiac stuff. Not my thing.”
I was aware that I was rambling and ought to shut up. “And… anyway, even if Hermie had left me his number, which he hasn’t, I’m not into boys or anything. Yeah. I think I might as well bin the card.”
“Round the back, outside the kitchens,” drawled one of Fleur’s friends as she flicked her hair off her face then slouched back inside.
Phew, I think I handled that okay, I thought as I made my way round the back to get rid of the card. It was going to be hard enough with Sara and her lot treating me like a reject. The last thing I needed was the Year Eleven girls taking against me as well.
Chapter Four
Party time
“Winners never quit and quitters never win,” I said to Ruth, who was at her desk with her head stuck in a book, as usual. We’d just had supper and were supposed to be doing homework, but I had other plans. I put my books away and stuck my Dad’s card back up on the notice-board above my desk in our room.
It was our third day, and besides Ruth, I still hadn’t made any new friends. We were the only new girls in our year and as I’d foreseen, the groups of friends in our class were already well established. It was hard getting in with anyone. Not that anyone – apart from Sara and Co. – was unfriendly, they just didn’t need new friends. So it was me and Ruth. Ruth and I. Not that I could call Ruth a friend. She was as silent as a shadow. She never spoke to anyone, only answered if a teacher asked her a question. The holiday-camp atmosphere hadn’t lasted long and we’d got stuck into our lessons the day after induction. In all of them, Ruth acted as though she wanted to be invisible. She attended her classes, did what was asked of her and then got back onto her bed with one of her books as soon as possible. I wanted more. I’d seen the groups of girls in the dining room or in the common room, gossiping, catching up, having a laugh the way I used to with Jess and my mates. I wasn’t about to give in. I’ve always had friends, I’m a Gemini and Geminis LIKE people, like being with people, I thought. I want to be in and out of someone’s room, chatting, swapping stories, telling jokes, finding out what’s happening. I’m not about to become a loner now.
“I think we should have a midnight feast,” I said, “only not at midnight as that’s too late. At ten. A ten o’clock feast. You know that saying – if you want a friend, be a friend? That’s what I’m going to be. Everybody’s friend. Starting tonight. I’ve done some invites on my pink notepaper asking everyone to come here and I’m going to go and put them under everyone’s door while people are in their rooms doing their homework. It’s bound to work. There’s not much on telly tonight, so who could resist? I’ve got crisps and liquorice allsorts, a whole load of goodie supplies that Mum left me for the term.”
Ruth looked up and I could see panic in her eyes.
“Is that okay with you?” I asked.
“But… but it’s lights out at ten.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know. That’s the whole point. Having a feast when you’re supposed to be tucked up in bed.”
“But it’s against the rules. We’ll… you’ll get in trouble.”
“No one will know. It’ll be fine, but is it okay with you? I mean, this is your room too and… well… you need to make friends too.”
Ruth shook her head. “Me? No. I’d rather not. But then I don’t want to ruin it for you. I’ll… I’ll go to the library.”
“Oh please don’t do that, Ruth. Anyway it will be closed. You won’t have to do much. I’ll do all the talking. I just think I… we… need to put out the hand of friendship. If you disappear, people will think you’re stuck up or you don’t like anyone or something.”
“I’ll go and have a bath then. A very long bath,” said Ruth then she sighed. “I just want to be left alone.”
I sighed. “I’d gathered that.”
Ruth sighed again. “Sorry.”
I sighed again then I laughed. “Look, we can’t spend the whole term with both of us sighing every minute…”
But Ruth wasn’t listening anymore. She was gathering her bath stuff together for later.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t push you. I want us to get on at least. You have a bath if you want. And take some of my coconut-and-vanilla bubble bath. It smells fab.”
Ruth gave me half a smile. “Thanks,” she said as I went back to my invites and sprinkled a little glitter in all the envelopes. When they were done, I delivered them to all the rooms on our floor and even to Sara Jenkins and her friends, Mercedes, Tasha and Lois, as I didn’t want to leave anyone out. It would be great. Everyone would be able to come, as what else were they going to be doing? They’d be so pleased to have been invited and mine would be the very first party of the term.
When I’d delivered the last invite, I went back to my room and got out all the supplies: pop and crisps and chocolate-chip cookies. At five minutes to ten, Ruth got up to go and have her bath, but before she left, she opened her bedside cabinet and got out a bumper bar of milk chocolate.
“Here. This is for your ten o’clock feast,” she said then she scurried out before I could persuade her to stay. I broke the chocolate up into pieces and put it on a plate next to the other goodies. Then I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I got my new mobile phone out for the tenth time since I’d got it to see if whoever had sent it had left a message or better still, thought to give me some
free talk time with which I could call my old mates, but there was nothing. Not the strange face and voice that was rude to Sara. Not the image of Hermie. Neither instructions, nor a message, nor a text. What’s the point of it? I asked myself as I put it back in the drawer.
Five past ten.
Ten past ten.
Quarter past.
Nobody.
I opened the door to check that the number 22 hadn’t fallen off by mistake, but no, it was still there.
Twenty past ten. Still no show. Where was everyone?
I opened the door to see if anyone was coming, but the corridor was empty. I went down to the common room to see if maybe everyone was watching TV but there were only two Year Elevens in there – Fleur and her mate Sophie.
Maybe they’re all asleep, I thought, but as I made my way back up to my floor, I could hear the sound of laughter down at the opposite end of the corridor to where my room was. I followed the sounds.
It was coming from Sara and Mercedes’ room and inside I could hear Sara’s voice and then Lois’s. They must be having their own ten o’clock feast, I thought. Already they’d established themselves as the cool girls of our year and I hadn’t really expected them to come to my room. They would see it as beneath them to hang out with a new girl who hadn’t proved herself to be as popular as they were. Sometimes I think there must be an unspoken law that goes: “If thou art one of the prettiest girls in class, thou shalt not hang out with less pretty classmates with whopping great spots on their foreheads.” But then I heard what sounded like Imogen’s voice, and she’s not mates with them. She’s in the room next to mine with Rose Watson. I pressed my ear to the door. There was definitely a whole crowd of people in there and it sounded like they were having a really good time.
Suddenly the door opened and Rose came flying out. “Ooomf,” she said as she crashed into me. “Oh Gemma. Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”
Now I could see into the room and everyone from my floor was there. Everyone except Ruth and me.
“Oh,” said Mercedes getting up off the bed. “Gemma.”
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. “Yes. Sorry. Um…”
Tasha got up and stood next to Mercedes. “Hi Gemma. Um, yes. We didn’t invite you because… because… ”
Mercedes took over. “Because we knew that you were having your own party…”
“That’s what gave us the idea, in fact,” added Lois with a fake smile.
“Yes…” Tasha stuttered, “and that’s why we didn’t invite you, because, er…”
I could see she was desperately trying to think up some excuse, but it wasn’t coming to her very fast. However, unlike Sara and Mercedes, she looked embarrassed. I thought that she might be nicer than her friends as sometimes I’d caught her looking at me, and once she even smiled.
“We thought you were babysitting your mouse,” laughed Sara from the bed where she was curled up like a cat.
Everyone laughed. In one way I couldn’t blame them, because I’d thought the same thing on my first day. Ruth did resemble a mouse. A sweet mouse but a mouse all the same.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said as I began to stumble back down the corridor. “Um. Just thought I heard something. Never mind.”
Mercedes shut the door and for a moment there was silence. Then I heard them all burst out laughing at the same time.
I crept back into my room and closed the door. All the laid-out food looked so pathetic and Ruth’s chocolate was beginning to melt. I was so hurt, it felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach, so I got on my bed and curled up against the wall. I wished I had Bertie there with me to make me feel better. He’d never reject me or have a doggie feast with his friends without inviting me. Dogs aren’t like that. They’re loyal. Girls can be so mean. There’d been a gang of them at my last school, but I’d never been on the receiving end of their nastiness. Chloe, Jess, Ellie, Charlotte and I looked out for each other. For the first time, I wondered if there had been girls like Ruth, and now me, at my last school. I’d been so busy having a great time with all my friends, I’d never noticed or thought to look.
I really wanted to talk to Jess but it was almost eleven. Her mum would kill me. And talking to her might only make me feel worse. She’d phoned on Monday night from Ellie’s house. All the gang was there and they’d passed the phone around and said how much they were missing me. Didn’t sound like it. It sounded like they were having a whale of a time. Last night, I’d phoned them again, one by one, and I’d soon used up half of my phone vouchers as they filled me in on the gossip from my old school. I hadn’t said too much as I didn’t want to admit that in my first week of school, I was the outsider and I was having a miserable time.
I thought about calling Mum. She’d be home from teaching her classes at the night school, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to upset her, and she’d probably think I was a baby for feeling like this in the first week. Only one thing for it, I thought, as the plate of chocolate stared up at me with a dark, velvety smile.
I’d eaten half the bar when there was a timid knock on the door. I sat up and smoothed my hair. Maybe someone had realized how cruel they’d been to leave me out, and had come to apologise.
“Come in,” I called.
The door opened a fraction and Ruth popped her head round.
“Is it okay to come back in yet?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said turning back to the wall.
“Has everyone gone?” she asked as she crept in.
“No one even turned up.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
I heard Ruth pad over to her side of the room and the bed creak as she got onto it. I glanced over my shoulder to see that she had taken up the same position that I’d been in a moment earlier. So there we were, rejects, both lying on our beds with our faces to the wall.
I turned and lay on my back and looked at the ceiling. I felt like I was going to burst. “Ruth, have you always been so quiet?”
“Um. Suppose.”
“But why? Don’t you ever want to talk to someone? Say how you’re feeling? Find out what other people are feeling?”
“No.”
More silence as I continued staring at the ceiling. Ruth had started reading. Ah well, never mind, I thought as I got my Harry Potter book out of my bedside cabinet. Harry had had a hard time with Draco Malfoy when he first went to his boarding school. Maybe I could find some good advice on how to handle mean girls in the book. Probably helps if you’re a wizard like Harry, though, I thought as I read a few pages. Now that would have been something, if instead of being given a useless phone, I’d been given a magic wand. I could have turned Sara, Mercedes, Lois and Tasha into toads or monkeys or puddles of green slime or made them sprout hair from their foreheads and grow boils on their bums and make their hair drop out and grow back frizzy and bright orange. For a while, I lay on the bed having a most enjoyable fantasy of what I could do if I had magical powers, but as the minutes ticked on, my imagination began to run dry and I couldn’t deny the fact that I wasn’t at a school with Harry Potter, a boy who had great adventures. I was at a school with Ruth Parker, a girl who didn’t want to leave her room if she could help it. I wasn’t a witch. I was me. Plain ordinary me. Miles from home. On a bed, at a boarding school, with no friends. It stank.
“Ruth?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever had any mates?”
Ruth looked over at me with her great sad eyes and nodded. “One. Naomi. She went to live in Australia.”
“And after that?
“Not really. My family was always moving around so I was always the new girl. I stopped trying after a while.”
“But why? Everyone needs friends. It makes life so much better.”
Ruth shook her head. “I… I got picked on after Naomi went. It’s best just to be quiet. The best way to survive is not to bother anyone. You don’t get hurt that way. If you hadn’t tried to have that midnight�
� I mean, ten o’clock feast, you wouldn’t have got hurt and now look, you’re upset.”
It was the most I’d heard her say since she’d arrived. And she was right. So much for my “if you want a friend, be a friend”. No one wanted to know me. No one had come to check that I was okay and hadn’t been upset. I settled back down to my book. Maybe I’d become a bookworm. Get ahead with all my coursework. And I could always catch up with my mates at half-term. I got up to calculate the days left until half-term. It was a long time. Day after day with no friends. Seven days at half-term with friends. It didn’t sound like much fun.
I tried reading again but couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t want to spend my life without any friends.
“No. I’m not giving in,” I said to the ceiling. I glanced over at Ruth to see if she was going to comment but she’d put her headphones on and hadn’t heard me. Huh, I thought, why did I get landed with you? It’s not fair. You don’t want any friends but I do. And if I’d got another roommate it might have been okay. It’s so, so, so not fair. I’m in danger of becoming like you if I don’t watch out, a timid little thing who’s scared to try anything, and that’s not me. Maybe it’s just a bad patch. Darkest hour just before dawn and all that. I wish someone could tell me that it’s going to get better.
“It’s your lucky day,” that stupid messenger boy had told me on Monday. Just shows what he knew, I thought. So why did he give the phone to me? Maybe there was something I missed. Some button I haven’t pressed. I got off the bed and got the phone out of the drawer. I switched it on and was about to try pressing some buttons when it bleeped that there was a message for me. It was so unexpected that I almost jumped out of my skin. I threw it across the bed in case it did anything strange, and then sat and watched it for a while. It didn’t appear to be doing anything too odd, just lying there innocently, so I picked it up and opened the message.
“Go to your computer and visit the site,” it said.
I scrolled down for the rest of the message.
From Geek to Goddess (Zodiac Girls) Page 3
