It's a Girl Thing

by Grace Dent

  If you had to sum up Claudette Cassiera and why she’s so flipping fabulous (and really one of the grooviest people in the cosmiverse too), this is a fine example. With her perfect uniform (three-quarters-length white virgin socks/proper blazer), scrubbed nails (no sneaked nail polish) and face au naturelle (just fresh ebony skin and rich brown hair pulled into two neat bunches, held with asymmetric hair bobbles): Claude is the epitome of extreme wickedness, masked by an air of extreme wholesome goodness.

  A pretty darn useful trick that only true A-List minxes can carry off. Face it: You can’t get told off for “enjoying yourself too much” singing lame nonreligious cheeseorama Happy Voice hymns, can you? Nope, course you can’t.

  That’d be like getting detention for demanding more French homework.

  Or suspended for running the 100 meters too quickly.

  Claude Cassiera is as clever as a brain baguette in more ways than one; acing all of her tests, always completing her homework on time, she also frequently earns us lesser Blackwell mortals a slacker half-hour break during lessons by engrossing the teachers in long intellectual debates.

  “But Mr. Reeland,” Claude will inquire, adjusting her reading specs with her index finger, “how exactly did the former Yugoslavia become so war-torn? Was it simply a boundary issue, or is it a deep-seated religious struggle?” she’ll ask.

  Hurrah!

  Obviously, old Pa Reeland’s face will flush with pure ecstasy (let’s be blunt: He’s spent periods one, two and three teaching kids who can’t find their own bottoms with two hands and a map), so he’ll begin waffling away, fiddling with slides on the overhead projector, searching in his drawer for a newspaper clipping that Claude can read at home, while the remainder of the class gossip, sleep, throw ink cartridges at each other, or draw pictures of willies and lady-front-bottoms in their Your World Today textbooks.

  Teachers love, love, lurrrrve Claude, never quite making that link between her angelic face and the naughtiness which lies beneath.

  “And every beeeeat of the drrrrrum is like our hearts beeeat ing as one!” sings Claude, turning to the rest of the LBD and adding a little “All together now!” for good effect.

  I can’t help thinking about a little incident back one warm summer Wednesday afternoon in Year 7, when Claude Cassiera had the bright idea that the LBD should pinch a jar of Bovril from Magda’s kitchen and smear the beef extract down the backs of all the lower school’s door handles, covering four hundred children and teachers in spicy bovine-flavored brown stainage: a good example of Claude walking away without as much as a ten-minute detention.

  “I find it VERY hard to believe you were involved in this, Claudette Cassiera,” muttered McGraw, more depressed than ever at that moment. “You’re a credit to Blackwell School. I was telling your mother exactly this at parents’ evening . . .”

  He then stuck Fleur and myself on school-pond-dredging duties for three weeks. Even when Claudette cried and told Mr. McGraw that Bovril Day was all her idea in the first place, he simply put an arm around her shoulder and said that “trying to cover up for those two was a true sign of her inherent loyalty and generosity of spirit.” Obviously, we would NEVER do anything as childish and pathetic as Bovril Day now, no way, not now that we’re Les Bambinos Dangereuses, with bras and boyfriends (occasionally), but it’s worth noting this injustice simply to give you a taste of Claudette Cassiera’s magic. Claude and her big sister, Mika, have both got this rep for being “lovely girls”; in fact Mrs. Cassiera can barely get down the high street without some grown-up stopping her to relate some act of niceness her kids have been up to. It goes without saying Magda Ripperton does not have this problem.

  NB: Anyone considering a career in serial killing, kidnap or gangland terror, please remember to wear something really smart, like a proper school uniform with very white socks. As far as I can see, you’ll get away with, well, quite literally murder.

  “He’s blocked my number,” yelps Fleur. “That pig Dion has blocked my number, look!!” CALLER DENIED ACCESS is flashed across Fleur’s phone. Ouch. Techno knock-back. That’s gotta hurt.

  “Thank you, Blackwell School, that was very, er, nice,” says Mr. McGraw as finally we limp toward the finishing post, verse seventeen of the drum song.

  “Very tunesome,” he adds.

  He’s just fibbing now.

  McGraw then commences a twelve-minute nag about “things that really depress him about Blackwell School.” This gives everyone, including the teachers, a good chance for forty winks, but I tried to stay with him until I felt my eyelids closing. The bits I caught were: 1. People not bringing their ski trip payments on time. Apparently Blackwell School is “not a bank” and “can’t finance school trips for children up front.”

  2. Children have been spotted waiting for school buses outside of the designated “waiting zone,” thus creating a “potential death trap.”

  3. Somebody questioning the school librarian’s authority to dish out detentions, thus making her cry and mess up the Dewey decimal system.

  4. Somebody has been stealing bread buns from the dinner hall and eating them around the back of the sports hall. Crumbs have been detected.

  (Note: Interpol were not called for any of these aforementioned heinous crimes.)

  “Maybe it’s a mistake?” whispers Fleur. “I’ll text him again.”

  Claude and I both grimace, but let Fleur embark on her own self-destruction.

  “Oh, and finally,” McGraw mutters, “due to various reasons, there will be, ahem, no Blackwell School Summer Garden Party this June.” (Cough.) “And, well, that’s it for today. File out quietly, everybody,” he says quickly, hooking a silver fountain pen back into the lapel of his bottle-green tweed jacket.

  Nobody moves.

  A growing mumble rattles around the assembly hall. “That sucks!” one Year 10 lad says, accidentally on-purposely dead loud.

  “Er . . . excuse me, Mr. McGraw,” shouts Ainsley Hammond, a pale Year 11 gothic type. “Like, why are we not having a fete?” he asks.

  “Yeah!!” choruses a few dozen voices.

  “Why? Why not, Mr. McGraw?” people mutter.

  “Now then, that is a very good question, Ainsley,” says Mr.

  McGraw, turning his gray face toward Mrs. Guinevere, “and one that perhaps the deputy head would like to explain, as I have an urgent meeting to attend . . .”

  Guinevere shoots McGraw back an expression which seems to say, “You’re on your own here, mate, and I will hammer you to death with my own open-toe sandal if you get me involved.”

  “Very well, children, I’ll say a few words . . . ,” he concedes.

  McGraw gazes out at the sulky crew. What on Earth can he say? Everybody knows that our headmaster loathes the annual Blackwell School Garden Party from the bottom of his sensible brogues. Making light-hearted banter with the pond-life parents? Mmm, what fun! Fending off flying buckets of water and custard pies hurled in the name of charity? Yes, please! Judging the “Guess the Weight of the Fruit Loaf/Yucca Plant/Obese Toddler” competition? Swapping glib pleasantries with the Blackwell School “Old Boys,” a dismal shower of ex-pupils, all now making more money than McGraw, all of whom now have kids who attend Blackwell; which is disconcerting enough, but not as scary as the Blackwell Old Boys’ inability to STOP HAUNTING THEIR HEADMASTER FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER LEAVING Blackwell!

  McGraw doesn’t merely dislike the school garden party; he has to be poked and prodded by Edith, our fire-breathing school secretary, every single day of January, February, March and April before penciling a date into the school diary.

  According to school folklore, this simply was not the way Samuel McGraw had envisioned his life panning out. All these headmastery shenanigans, it had all been a huge, hideous mistake.

  “I should have been a poet-in-residence or an astronaut,” McGraw has been overheard lamenting to Mrs. Guinevere as they trudged to their cars together after another long day. “Yet a few wrong turns on life’s highw
ay and my destiny became discussing the weight, to the nearest milligram, of Mrs. Parkin’s fruited slice . . . oh, and dodging buckets of water. I have great hopes for the next life. It has to be better than this.”

  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the Blackwell School inmates are such a shower of bed-wetting weirdos that we treat Garden Party Day like one of the highlights of our lives, comparable, say, to VIP passes to Euro Disney or a night at the MTV Music Awards or something dead fabulous like that. However, the Blackwell School Garden Party was a pretty good laugh and we all wanted it to happen, and for better reasons than an addiction to raffle tickets and homemade lemonade.

  First of all, the garden party usually takes place on a Saturday, so you can make a fashion statement in your fancy schmanciest clothes and stun the opposite sex by emerging like the “After” instead of the “Before” part of a “Dump that Frumpy Look” makeover. The LBD spent weeks planning what to wear to the garden party last year. Eventually Fleur wore hot pants and three-inch stiletto heels. (And punctured the bouncy castle, almost making McGraw cry.)

  Secondly: You can wear makeup too. Well, the girls can (plus Ainsley Hammond and the gothic types who usually wear more lip gloss and blush than a glamour model on a night out).

  Third: So the whole school’s looking sexier (not difficult), the sun’s shining (ideally, putting folk in the mood for summer loving), the teachers are in a chilled-down mood (largely due to the beer tent) and your parents are distracted by the Police Dog Display (as I say, Blackwell Garden Party is NOT the MTV Awards): These are all extremely cop-off-friendly conditions. This makes Blackwell fete a legendary Snogtastic event. Everyone is at it! Even I pulled once. Yes, me! Okay, it was with a Year 9 lad called Adrian—who, Fleur pointed out in the cold light of spring term, “had a forehead like a satellite dish”—but it was a very very exciting event during those nine minutes we stood with our arms draped around each other and lips scrambling about. (Our kissing technique could have done with some polishing up.)

  Nevertheless, there’s just something highly delicious about Blackwell Garden Party that warrants an otherwise unseen intermingling of the year groups. In everyday life, sexy Year 11 boys use Year 9 pip-squeaks like me as footrests during assembly. However . . . as the day tumbles toward its climax and the small, very low-key disco begins (only until nine o’clock, annoyingly), not only do you get the pleasure of watching the teachers dance (ha ha! Most of them are over thirty years old! Old people should stop pretending to like modern music just so they look cool. It’s really pitiful to watch), there is one helluva lotta snogging occurring. All those hours spent flirting, batting your eyelids, complimenting each other on your chosen outfits and “ironically” enjoying the bouncy castle, they’ve got to lead somewhere. And if Lady Luck smiles down, well, you could end up joined at the tongue with some hottiebuns you’ve had your eye on for months. This year I’d had my eye on Jimi Steele. (But I’d have settled now for somebody who my father hasn’t already ruined my chances with by being a prize dweeb.)

  “Ah, but you’re forgetting one small element, Hammond,” snipes McGraw rather forcefully. “Last year’s party was a shambles. In case your memory deludes you, there was an England-Germany soccer match the same day, so few of your families showed any Blackwell loyalty. Does nobody remember that fiasco?” McGraw is really warming to the subject now. “It was a shambles! In fact, the highlight of my entire fete was paying eight pounds on the raffle to win back a bottle of Vanilla Uzo that I’d donated in the first place.” Several Year 7 girls titter, then notice the raised veins on McGraw’s neck and swap giggles for sympathetic nods.

  “But what about the charity money we raise?” argues Ainsley.

  Ha! That had McGraw scuppered!

  “Mmm, well, we’ll have to find other ways to continue our good work. And if anyone conjures up any of these ‘good ideas,’ er, approach Mrs. Guinevere. She’ll talk through them with you.”

  Mrs. Guinevere gives a withering smile. Oh, how I’d love to watch her laying into the miserable old goat once she gets him through those staff-room doors.

  This morning, as I flung back my bedroom curtains and watched Mum in her slippers being sick in the backyard bin (how vile is that? It serves her right for gobbling down past-their-sell-by-date scallops—her luck was bound to run dry one day), I thought that life could not grow any more bleak.

  I was wrong.

  First, no Astlebury and no Astlebury snogging, then no Jimi and definitely no Jimi snogging, then no garden party and no sexy post-party disco snogging?! What have the grown-ups got up their sleeves next? No talking to boys full stop? Full Muslim burkas to be worn by all under-eighteens?

  The way these last two days have panned out, I’ll probably be still living, aged thirty-seven, with Loz and Magda, in a shoe-box at the Fantastic Voyage, my lips sealed together through un derusage, my boobs still untouched by human hands (aside from my own).

  This world certainly does not deserve a hug.

  “So, who else?” I say, burying my head in Fleur’s duvet.

  “Mmm, let’s see,” says Claude, leafing through the back pages of a brand-new issue of New Musical Express.

  “Right,” she announces. “Bands newly confirmed for Astlebury Festival this week are, ahem, the Flaming Doozies—”

  “Oh, I looove the Flaming Doozies! They’re the ones with the lead singer who sets fireworks off onstage,” I moan.

  “And the Long Walk Home have confirmed too,” reads Claude.

  “I’ve just bought their CD,” says Fleur mournfully, tweezing her eyebrows, with a large strip of cream bleach plastered across her top lip.

  Fleur is a bit like the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland: She’s under constant maintenance. There’s always a bit of Fleur that needs painting, waxing, tweezing or scrubbing. Just as Fleur finishes making one area gorgeous, another zone needs urgent preening.

  “And you’re not going to like this . . .” Claude winces. “Spike Saunders is now the headline act on Saturday night.”

  Fleur and I both let out angry yelps, like stabbed pigs. Or even: like totally depressed LBD members who’ve just discovered that the most handsome, sexiest, unbelievably talented and all-around amazing solo male singer in the entire history of world music is playing somewhere that they’ve been barred from. (Sorry, Jimi, for seeming disloyal here, you do give Spike Saunders a good run for his money, but he just pips you to the post.)

  “Spike, tell me it’s not true. Don’t do this without me,” Fleur pleads toward her Wall of Spike poster area, just behind her headboard.

  Spike smiles down a perfect-toothed grin at Fleur, as if to say, “Sorry, mate, you know I love the LBD, but the money for playing Astlebury is amazing. Don’t worry, though, I’ve heard that Walrus World, Penge, is very nice this time of year.”

  Fleur and I sit in silence for about ten minutes, staring into space, while Claude reads quietly, cuddling Larry into her bosom.

  “Prrrrrrrrrr prrrrrrrrrr prrrrrrrrr,” purrs Larry.

  “Well, I’m glad somebody is happy!” huffs Fleur.

  “Oh, c’mon. Things aren’t that bad,” snaps Claude. “It’s nearly summer vacation,” she chirps.

  “Same miserable life, just hotter,” snaps back Fleur.

  We all sit in silence a bit longer. Eventually Fleur speaks.

  “So, what excuse did your mother trump up to ban you from Astlebury?” she asks Claude.

  “Mmm, well . . . I didn’t really ask in the end . . . ,” Claude mumbles.

  “YOU DIDN’T ASK!” Fleur and I shout, hurling assorted teddy bears and pillows in Claude’s direction.

  “There was no point! Mum didn’t let my big sister, Mika, stay out all night till she was almost seventeen. You know what my mother is like. She likes us all at home, present and correct. She doesn’t even like pajama parties, in case some freak accident happens.”

  Claude isn’t exaggerating, her mum is really protective. I think it’s because there’s only
the three of them.

  “Oh, dar-link . . .” Fleur laughs, being about as patronizing as a girl bleaching her mustache can manage.

  “Your sister, Mika, stayed out at sixteen . . . therefore . . . the international rule of the younger sister is to push back that boundary to fourteen! You are so lame,” mocks Fleur.

  Claude looks slightly hurt.

  “Well, fat lot of good that rule did you, huh? Are Joshua and Daphne not both older than you? And remind me again where you’re going to this summer? Oh, that’s it. NOWHERE,” Claude eventually snaps back.

  Hmmmpgh, I think to myself, I really wish I had a flipping big sister or brother . . . or a younger one for that matter . . . or anyone to take the heat off me at home.

  I’ve tried complaining about my tragic only-child status to the LBD on many occasions: It gets me precicely nowhere.

  Fleur always points out that for the last fourteen years of her life, the most meaningful interaction that’s occurred between herself and Joshua, her seventeen-year-old big brother, has been when he farts into his hand, shoves it in her face, then runs off laughing like a drain. Fleur’s nineteen-year-old big sister, Daphne, however, is certainly someone more to be proud of. She’s taking a year off before university to work in Nepal, which is like a total adventure. Some of Daphne’s friends have probably even been eaten by lions and trampled by elephants, which is really cool in a morbid way. Well, it is for me. I live a low-excitement life in only-child solitude. It’s a big deal in my family when the Fantastic Voyage gets a new-flavored box of potato crisps in.

  “You could have AT LEAST asked!” nags Fleur.

  “Well, none of us are going anyway, so it makes no difference!” screams Claude, eventually losing patience.

  “And I’ve got no boyfriend now either,” moans Fleur, checking her phone again, hopefully. “I’ve got nothing to look forward to. Not even Blackwell fete.” Fleur’s bottom lip is really wobbling now.