It's a Girl Thing

by Grace Dent

  “That music festival was going to be the highlight of my whole life,” she sobs.

  Okay, Fleur has a point here.

  “Well, fine!” shouts Claude. “But if we want to see some live music, and we want to meet some live music fans . . . and we’re not allowed to leave the city limits apart from on supervised walrus fact-finding missions . . . why don’t we stop feeling sorry for ourselves and DO SOMETHING proactive and positive about it?”

  “Like what?” sulks Fleur.

  “Well . . . why don’t we put on our own little music festival? You know, like in place of Blackwell fete?”

  Claude sits back on the bed, looking very pleased with her idea.

  We both stare at her in utter disbelief.

  “Huh?” grunts Fleur after about thirty seconds. “And who would play at this festival?” she mocks. “Spike Saunders? Or will he be busy that day?”

  “No, not Spike Saunders,” says Claude firmly. “But Jimi Steele’s band are pretty good. Aren’t they, Ronnie?!”

  “Er . . . yeah, they’re great,” I say, remembering the time they played a few songs in assembly and Jimi wore a tight T-shirt that showed off his perfect brown six-pack and slightly outy belly button. I’m warming to Claude’s idea now.

  “Er, and what about Catwalk, Panama Goodyear’s group?” Claude continues.

  “Oh, God, they’re so popular. They sing and dance and everything,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  Catwalk, in case you’ve not heard of them, are a Year 11 pop group made up of the irrefutably beautiful Panama plus four of her equally jaw-droppingly perfect-looking chums: two boys and two girls. In Panama’s spare time, when her diary isn’t too hectic with essential school-bully duties or bragging about her modeling career, she’s working on her destiny as an international pop starlet. No end-of-year party or school gathering is complete without a quick number or five from Catwalk. Panama’s group started as a little after-school project; before we all knew it, they were set to conquer the world.

  “We’ve had a lot of interest about our music from some important people,” Panama always brags to anyone who will listen.

  “Yeah, like the Noise Pollution Department at the Town Council,” muttered Claude after sitting through another all-singing, all-dancing presentation. What Catwalk lack in actual talent, they more than compensate for in cute looks and designer wardrobes. I hate to say it: Lots of people really really love them.

  “Yep, the Blackwell crowd love Panama’s band, they’d be a definite to play,” I admit.

  “Tell you who I’d like to see,” cheeps Fleur, surprisingly up-beat for a girl who thinks Claude’s idea is poo. “Ainsley Hammond’s band Death Knell. I’ve no idea what they do, but apparently it involves an electric guitar, a steel drum and a glockenspiel.”

  “Interesting!” Claude smiles, putting her and Fleur’s quarrel behind them in seconds, in true LBD fashion.

  “And if they’re the Blackwell bands that we know about, there’s bound to be more that we don’t know about,” says Claude triumphantly. “We could hold auditions.”

  “Ha ha, good idea, Claude . . . ,” says Fleur.

  We can all sense a “but” coming.

  “But . . . how on Earth are we going to convince old Prozac McGraw to let us hold a music festival in his school grounds? That’s impossible, isn’t it?” Fleur says, furrowing her pimple-free brow. “The bloke loathes music, hates his pupils, doesn’t like crowds of people and isn’t very keen on any type of fun at all!”

  “Ah, Fleur.” Claude smiles mischievously, rubbing the top of Larry’s furry head until he almost explodes with pleasure. “Why don’t you just leave our good friend Mr. McGraw to me?” She chuckles.

  Chapter 3

  the thlot pickens . . .

  So it’s 9:25 and I’ve just arrived at double science.

  It’s the fresh dawn of another of “The Happiest Days of My Life,” which is how Mum refers to Blackwell School as she’s prodding me out the door every morning.

  I find this description ironic in view of Granny informing me that Mother was a terrible truant back in the 1980s, who only attended lessons if chased there “with a swishy stick.” Nevertheless, despite being extra snug as a bug in a rug under my duvet earlier this morning, plus one very good go at feigning glandular fever, I’m here at my bench, eager to embark on some vital Bunsen burner and pipette action.

  This is more than can be said for Mr. Ball, our science teacher.

  Eventually, at 9:35, following a good gossip with Fleur and Claude about which shoes we might buy next term (to heel or not to heel? That is the question), the door to the science lab creaks open and the upper half of Mr. Ball’s body swings into view.

  Ball’s forehead is all wrinkly, he looks confused.

  “Er . . . have I got you lot now?” Ball asks, peering at his watch.

  “No, sir,” lies Liam Gelding.

  “Oh? . . . Right. Sorry,” says Mr. Ball, closing the door again.

  Through the windows we can see Ballsy disappearing off along the lower school’s main corridor on the trail of his lesser-spotted science class. All thirty-two of Ball’s pupils dissolve into sheepish giggles. It’s got legs, Liam’s little joke, it’s run and run since first year. It doesn’t take much to confuse Mr. Ball, so the kids tend to have a little fun at his ditzy expense.

  You see, if you needed to know about quantum physics, or the lowdown on moon landings or man’s evolution from an ape, Mr. Ball is the right man to ask, he’ll truly wow you with his big scary-scientist brain capacity; however, ask Mr. Ball which class he’s teaching next period or even where he parked his car that morning, well, now you’ve got him bamboozled.

  I like Mr. Ball, though, it’s good to be a bit ditzy, I reckon. “You’re evil, Liam Gelding!” hisses Claude, shaking her head, trying not to smile. “Go and chase up Ballsy and tell him he’s got us until ten thirty-five.”

  Liam Gelding, with his pale green eyes, brown cropped hair and rather sexy silver earring, has, for some bizarre reason, become a whole heap more attractive and fragrant this term; however, at this precise moment he’s spoiling the effect slightly by excavating his left nasal cavity with his finger. Liam’s desperately trying not to meet Claudette’s eye as he knows she’s absolutely right.

  “And he’ll be in the admin office getting a right roasting off Edith now too . . . she was exceptionally irate when I was passing by her hatch this morning. Poor bloke,” nags Claude.

  Liam gazes straight ahead, his index finger buried almost near to the knuckle.

  “And he was off sick with flu last week as well,” Claude adds in a melodramatic way. “He must feel terribly weak.”

  Liam’s willpower is cracking, he begins to stand up.

  “Okay! Okay! Cassiera, you win! I’ll go and get him.” He laughs.

  It’s incredible how readily the boys cooperate with Claudette’s wishes ever since she sprouted that stupendous C-cup bosom.

  Too late, however. Mr. Ball has returned, he must have found his timetable. Mr. Ball, I always think, looks a touch like a scientific teddy bear: He’s short and plumpish with a furry beard, a tufty mustache and an abundance of chest hair, which creeps from the top of his creased white lab coat. None of Mr Ball’s lab coats quite fit; the top three buttons are traditionally left unfastened, displaying several unattractive inches of graying string vest. As ever, Mr. Ball is completely unfazed by Liam’s little gag.

  “Are you guys Year Nine or Year Ten?” he asks, still not quite up to speed. “Year Nine!” we all chorus.

  Ball grabs the exercise book belonging to one of the kids on the front bench and flicks to the last written page.

  “What were we doing last time we met?” he inquires. “Crystals or locusts?”

  “Crystals,” we all shout.

  The locusts, lazing about in their cages at the rear of the lab, breathe a collective sigh of relief.

  “Ahhh, I know where we are now!” announces Ball, a broad smile brea
king through his beard. We all give him a little cheer and round of applause.

  Quickly, Mr. Ball springs into action, gathering all the class, including me, Fleur, Claude and Liam, around the demonstration bench to watch his latest trick.

  Now, last time, as far as I can recall, we were distilling some light blue—or, hang on, it could have been dark green—fibers in a conical flask with some other sort of white powdery stuff.

  I think.

  Then . . . after heating the contents of the flask, we discovered that the clear liquid (I didn’t quite catch its name) that Mr. Ball dropped the fibers into had changed color. It turned either blue or green.

  (I’m not quite sure which.)

  Mr. Ball’s experiment proved without doubt that . . .

  Oh, God, I’ll admit it: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS PROVED. I wasn’t listening. I’m not even listening this time either, despite the fact that Mr. Ball seems to be frothing-at-the-mouth excited about the formation, over the previous seven days, of turquoise crusty bits on the sides of his conical flask.

  “This chemical reaction,” Mr. Ball announces, “denotes something very very interesting indeed!”

  In truth, I’d be more interested hearing Mr. Ball explain how I have now been sitting in science for what seems like over four hours while the clock on the lab wall still insists on reading 9:51.

  I really wish I could like science, but it really doesn’t float my boat at all. It didn’t seem to matter in Year 7 and 8, but now I can feel that I’m slipping behind and I don’t even know how I could begin to catch up. What do I do?

  If I tell Mr. Ball, he’ll just make me do extra science tuition, which is like signing up for extra medieval torture or something. He might even make me go and sit in Room 5 in the “special tuition” center, which isn’t something anyone wants to be seen doing. Liam Gelding had to go to Room 5 for English and maths for a while last year, then when he came back afterward to join us for his other lessons, everyone in the class would sing, “Special needs, special needs, spesssshhhhel needs!” to the tune of that old song by the Beatles “Let It Be” until Liam’s face flushed scarlet.

  Kids can be cruel, eh? That’s what grown-ups always say. Unfortunately most Blackwell kids mistake this for one of the school rules, i.e., “Kids are required to be cruel at all times during the school day and even more so at breaks and lunchtime.”

  Okay, between you and me, what terrifies me most about asking for help is being officially certified “dumb.” Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen, I’ve seen the special stickers they put on your personal files to signify “borderline retarded.” I’ve skated pretty close to this with a few school reports too. Not in cool lessons like English or religious studies, no, I tend to A grade them. I’m talking about maths and science. That’s where I blow, big time. Those snidey little remarks written on my end-of-year report cards really keep me awake at night:

  “Ronnie is a capable girl but loses all interest when the going gets tough. Grade: D,” my science teacher bitched last year.

  “Pah, that’s what you’re like with everything. You’ve always been a quitter,” snapped my mother helpfully.

  “Gnnnngn,” I grunted, grasping around for one really difficult thing in my life I’ve actually finished. And failing.

  I am such a loser.

  Worse still was my maths card: “Veronica is quite simply a waste of my time and her own in this lesson. I have grave concerns for her future employment if she persists on lagging behind the year group. Grade: E.”

  I cried when Mum and Dad got home from that Blackwell’s report evening. Because at some points during that term I’d even tried, a bit. Eventually Loz came upstairs and told me not to fret because if I ended up with no qualifications at all, I could get a job with him as a barmaid. “Those new computerized cash registers work all the sums out for you,” he said.

  This made me cry even more.

  But I’m certainly not telling anyone I can’t understand science, it’s not worth the hassle. One good thing about science lessons, I suppose, is that Mr. Ball is typically so busy distilling stuff, pipetting and mucking about with test tubes that you can usually grab a good, lengthy, albeit whispered, chatter. Today, however, I’m feeling more than a little subdued. I’m glad I’ve got the LBD there so I can get a few things off my chest.

  Something fishy is afoot back home at the Fantastic Voyage, I tell Fleur and Claude as we crowd around the microscope, looking for whatever it is we’re looking for. I’m more than slightly bummed that neither Mum nor Dad will tell me what’s going on. I know for certain they’re not speaking to each other, that’s for deffo, not that I’ve even seen them in the same room over the last week to confirm their silence.

  I can just tell. Despite my scientific deficiencies, I’m flipping cleverer than they give Ronnie Ripperton credit for.

  Take last night, when I moseyed home from Fleur’s and was rooting around in the laundry room for a clean school shirt to iron. Innocently I yelled through to Mum, who was prepping parsnips in the kitchen: “Oi, Mum! Do you know where my short-sleeved school shirt is?”

  “No . . . not really sure,” Mum shouted back. “I know where all of your long-sleeved ones are, they’re over the drying horse. Why do you want the short one?” she asked.

  All was well so far.

  “Well, Dad says it’s going to be red-hot tomorrow—”

  Big mistake! Blastoff! Mum’s lips puckered, her nostrils flared and her eyes thinned to venomous slits.

  “Hmmmph . . . well, you had better listen to your father then, seeing as he’s got that hot line to the BBC meteorological department,” she sniped, hurling silky slithers of parsnip into a vast pan of bubbling water.

  Whenever Mum and Dad row, “Dad” suddenly becomes “your fath-er,” almost as if Loz hatched me all by himself in a bin around the back of the Fantastic Voyage and Magda had nothing physical to do with the whole process. It’s almost as if Mum can distance herself from him, and by default from us, the Ripperton clan, with just a few strangely chosen syllables. This time, however, seemed far more serious; there was a real hurt in her eyes, like Dad had done something so heinous that I wouldn’t even want to know.

  This really gave me a jolt. It was at this point I realized that home has been pretty weird and miserable over the last week. And that I’m not coping very well with my parents’ long morbid silences and blatant irritation at each other. Or their midnight mumblings and shoutings the very second they notice my light is switched off. I even had a stupid nightmare last night that Dad had died suddenly, and I was running about trying to plan a funeral while Mum was laughing maniacally and making a fancy cake. That was hideous.

  But whatever is going on, neither side are giving anything away.

  “What’s up, Mum?” I said, anyhow.

  “Nothing,” she said, forcing a thin smile. “Nothing at all. If you want me to iron a shirt, then leave it on top of the dryer, I’ll do it once we’ve sorted the cash registers out.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but what is up with—?” But I was interrupted by the kitchen order phone ringing.

  Then, earlier this morning, on my way out of the pub to school, I tapped Dad for my lunch money. Dad was sitting in the saloon bar, still in his pajamas, slurping a big mug of tea, reading The Daily Mirror. I had decided to forgive him for his Jimi faux pas yesterday, on account of his extreme cack handedness in most social situations like that, it’s all I can expect, really. Oh, and the fact that I wanted my lunch money with minimum fuss.

  “So, Ronaldo,” he asked. “What’s on the agenda today?”

  “Phhghh . . . double science,” I sighed. “And then I think I’ve got religious studies . . . dead boring. We’re doing theology at the moment. Y’know, the meaning of life and all that.”

  “Ooh, the meaning of life? How good’s that, eh?!” muttered Dad as I slung my schoolbag over my shoulder, trudging toward the door. “Hey, Ronno, do me a favor,” Dad shouted. “If you find out that mea
ning of life thing by, say, four-ish, give me a quick call on my cell phone, will yer?”

  “Will do, Pops,” I yelled. “See ya. Love yer.”

  Dad continued in a voice only just loud enough to hear: “It’ll give me something to think about in prison after I’ve strangled your mother. . . .”

  At some level, I think Dad was only half kidding.

  “Ooh, that’s awful, Ronnie,” squeaks Fleur, tweezering turquoise crystals under a microscope so we can all share in its holy wonderment. Mr. Ball is hopping from bench to bench, trying to prevent the stupider kids from tasting the crystals as they’re, like, poisonous.

  “What you need is some counseling,” whispers Fleur earnestly. “You’re, like, practically an abused child. Do you find that Loz and Magda take their aggression out on you when they’re arguing?” she asks. “You might need a social worker.”

  “No, not really,” I say, shaking my head, gazing out the window at the pouring rain. Dad’s hot line to the BBC weather department must have been faulty. “In fact, I got five pounds lunch money this morning instead of two fifty. Dad told me to go spend his profits on false eyelashes for all he cared. I don’t think that’s really child abuse, Fleur.”

  Fleur looks disappointed.

  “You might still need a bit of therapy, though,” Fleur says hopefully. “Like that sort where you swim with dolphins in Israel and cry a lot. I saw it in Marie Claire magazine.”

  “What you need,” interrupts Claude, “is to just let your mum and dad get on with it and try to keep yer shneck out of things.”

  (NB: Shneck is the LBD’s word for nose. Say you see someone with a big nose. It’s the LBD rule that you’ve got to go “Sherrrrneckkkkk!!” really loudly in a squawky way . . . praying that the person in question with the “biggen shnecken” isn’t conversant in LBD.)

  “Mmm . . . I know what you’re saying,” I reply. “Probably I should.”

  Claude looks extra authoritarian at the moment in her lab specs.