Girl, 15: Charming but Insane (9 page)

‘Cool!’ he commented, eventually. Then he got to his feet and zipped up his jacket.

Silence fell again. Jess clambered up off her stool – with difficulty, as it was so low. Flora would have soared up gracefully like a gazelle disturbed while grazing. Jess lurched up like a hippopotamus struggling out of a swamp.

‘Um, how about . . . if you want . . . we can get a . . . er, a coffee tomorrow after school?’ said Ben Jones suddenly.

Jess blinked. What? What was that again? Had he just asked her out, or was she imagining things?

‘Sorry,’ she stammered. ‘What did you say?’

Ben Jones blushed. He
blushed
! Wow! This was the best moment of Jess’s life so far.

‘Yeah, well, um, how about a coffee tomorrow after school?’ he repeated.

Jess shrugged and tried to look as if she couldn’t quite make up her mind, because there were so many other things she would rather be doing – extra physics, for instance, involving delightful rubber tubes and pieces of charming metal.

‘Sure,’ she said, with a shy grin. ‘Why not?’

Mackenzie and Flora came downstairs and the boys left. Ben Jones did not mention their date the next day in front of the others. He just gave Jess a kind of curt nod. For a moment they shared a secret. It was almost up to the excitement of the Sir Benjamin costume drama in Jess’s head. Although Ben did not, alas, drive off down the road in a shining carriage drawn by four fabulous white horses. His only means of transport was a pair of trainers, but they were, Jess had noticed, trainers of a particularly classy sort.

‘Guess what!’ Jess hissed in ecstasy, as soon as the boys had gone. ‘Ben Jones asked me out tomorrow! I have a date! He’s asked me out on a date!’

‘Terrific!’ cried Flora, hugging her and squealing with excitement. ‘And guess what! Mackenzie snogged me! In your bathroom! He snogged me and he said I was amazing! If you go out with B.J. and I go out with Mackenzie, it will be so coooooool! Oh, there’s just one thing, though. Guess what Mackenzie told me while we were upstairs.’

‘What?’ demanded Jess impatiently. She didn’t want to think about anything else. She just wanted to think about her date with Ben Jones. She wanted to think about it all night long.

‘You know Tiffany’s brother Jack?’

‘Yes, what about him?’ What on earth did Flora want to talk about this for?

‘Well, do you remember all those flowers and leaves and stuff in the girls’ loo at Tiffany’s party?’

‘Yeah – what?’

‘Well, apparently Jack fixed up a camcorder in there, like, hidden in the leaves, and he’s got footage of all the girls who went in there. Like CCTV or something! Gross or what! And everyone’s going round Tiffany’s the day after tomorrow to watch it! Thank goodness I didn’t have to go to the loo all evening!’

Flora sighed in relief. Jess couldn’t speak. She was absolutely frozen with horror. Flora noticed – eventually. She wasn’t a complete monster.

‘Oh, no, Jess! You were sick in there, weren’t you! You poor thing!’

‘It’s not that I’m worried about,’ said Jess. A paralysing terror was spreading through her entire body, turning every muscle to stone. She didn’t have to worry about being sick on CCTV. What she had done was much, much worse. She had stripped to the waist. She had thrown her home-made bra inserts down the loo. And she had washed minestrone off her boobs – while talking to them and calling them Bonnie and Clyde! Jess wondered how far it was to the nearest nunnery, because her life was definitely over.

Chapter 10

‘Well . . . Jack says you’re the, um, like, star of the CCTV footage.’ Ben Jones grinned.

Jess felt sick to death. Here she was, sitting in the Dolphin Cafe with Ben. She had adored him for months. She’d lost track of the number of times she’d written his name on her hand, on her books . . . OK, even the walls of certain public loos. The merest glimpse of him in school had been enough to make her stomach turn somersaults. She had even, once, sat down on a bench he had just been sitting on, and felt the warmth left behind by his bum.

And now he’d actually asked her out! Here they were, on a date – and instead of being thrilled to bits, she was in agony.

‘Maybe we could pick up a burger tomorrow, yeah?’ he mumbled. ‘Like – before?’

‘Before what?’ stammered Jess.

‘Before the
party
, right? At Tiffany’s.’

Jess’s stomach plummeted through the rather tasteful Italian floor-tiles of the Dolphin Cafe, through the boiling centre of the earth, and emerged somewhere in the outback where men wear hats with corks dangling from them. Her stomach, it seemed, had emigrated to Australia, and after the shame and humiliation of the CCTV footage tomorrow night, Jess would have to follow.

‘I’m not going!’ she blurted out. ‘And please, please, promise me you won’t go either.’

Ben cocked his eyebrow. ‘Hey, chill! It’s only, like, a bit of, y’know,
fun
, yeah?’

‘Fun?’ cried Jess indignantly. ‘How would you like it if the girls had fixed up a camera in the boys’ loo, and you’d been in there doing private stuff?’

Ben sat quietly for a moment, thinking. Jess tried to bite her nails, but there was really nothing left to bite. She fought off a desperate urge to rip off her shoes and start gnawing at her toenails.

‘Don’t suppose I’d mind being on CCTV,’ Ben shrugged. ‘It’s just, like, a laugh, right? Whatever it was you – you know, like
did
, it can’t be bad. You should just . . . come and have a laugh. That would be well cool. If you don’t turn up, people might think you’d, y’know, bottled out.’

Jess knew that the ability to laugh at yourself was a sign of maturity. But she wasn’t sure that even a 30-year-old could get through this crisis without screaming aloud and eating their own jeans.

‘All the other girls are going,’ said Ben. ‘Flora’s going.’

‘It’s OK for her,’ hissed Jess. ‘She didn’t even go into the freaking loo. Her bladder must be as big as a bus.’

‘She always seems kind of, well,
lucky
,’ pondered Ben.

‘Too right!’ agreed Jess. ‘She leads a charmed life. You should see her house. Her dad is this, like, megastar in the bathroom business and her mum looks like a movie star. Their house is amazing. You have to take your shoes off when you go in because the carpets are all cream-coloured. And if their china gets chipped, Flora’s mum throws it away. There isn’t a single piece of china in my house that isn’t chipped.’

Ben stared thoughtfully across the cafe. Jess wondered if perhaps talking about chipped china might not be the ideal way to a boy’s heart. But what could she talk about? Movies? Cars? Sport? Music? She couldn’t think of anything for more than a few seconds before her mind went whirling back to the awful subject of CCTV.

‘D’you think she really, like,
rates
Mackenzie?’ asked Ben suddenly.

Jess forgot about CCTV for a moment. ‘Oh yes!’ she assured him. ‘I think Flora’s always had a bit of a thing about him. Plus we’ve been doing King Charles I in history, and she’s majorly mad about him. And I think Mackenzie reminds her of him.’

‘What? He reminds her of a
king
?’ said Ben, looking puzzled. ‘That’s weird.’

‘Oh no, I mean, that’s not why she likes him. That was just my idea. Because Mackenzie’s small and dark like Charles I. But there the resemblance ends. Mackenzie does have a head after all.’

‘A
head
?’ Ben looked even more puzzled.

‘You know,’ explained Jess. ‘Charles I was beheaded. In the Civil War. Roundheads. Cavaliers. Remember?’

Ben nodded. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘I remember, right. History gets up my nose, so I don’t usually listen. But . . . so you reckon Flora’s definitely, um, got a thing for Mackenzie? You don’t think she’s, er . . . going to chuck him, do you? He’d be gutted.’

‘Oh no!’ Jess assured him. ‘Definitely not. She’s crazy about him.’

Ben Jones looked carefully at her and nodded slowly. ‘Uh-huh. Good.’

Suddenly an awful uneasiness crept into Jess’s head. Ben Jones hadn’t really wanted to have coffee with her – not for her own sake. Mackenzie had asked him to find out if Flora was serious about him! This wasn’t a date. She wasn’t being wooed – she was being
grilled
.

Ten minutes ago, Jess had been in agony about the CCTV footage. But at least she had comforted herself with the thought that she was out on a date with Ben Jones. The comfort had seemed rather faint and remote. But at least it had been there. Now, that idea had gone up in smoke.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I gotta go. I’ve got urgent stuff to do at home.’ She got up, fast.

Ben Jones looked startled. He scrambled to his feet.

‘Wait!’ he said. ‘So – what about tomorrow? Shall we meet in the burger place – round about 7.30?’

Jess hesitated. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about it. I’ll text you, OK?’

Ben nodded, and grinned his slanty grin. Her stomach (which seemed to have returned from Australia) performed a cartwheel.

‘Go for it,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re a star!’

Jess tossed her head in what she hoped was an elegant and mysterious manner, and walked out. She marched down the street, boiling with emotion. He had said she was a star! Maybe he did want to go out with her after all! By going to the party and facing up to everybody, she could become Ben’s
star
. Not exactly his girlfriend, sure, but it was a start. However, Jess doubted if the CCTV footage would show her in a starring role. Instead she had acted like an idiot. A topless idiot – the very best sort. By tomorrow night, Ben Jones would know that she talked to her boobs and gave them names. He would know about the soup. He would have seen her half-naked. And so would everybody else. Who could she tell? Nobody. Not even Flora. Certainly not her mum.

It started to rain. Jess didn’t mind. She walked on, faster and faster. The rain ran down her face. There was something soothing about it. You could cry in the rain unnoticed. Jess was sorely tempted. When she got home she was soaked. Home had never smelt so homely. She would never leave it again. Her mum had got back with Granny while Jess was at school, and Granny had the TV news on, quite loud. As Jess walked in, Granny looked up with a twinkly smile. She switched the TV on to mute and held out her arms.

‘Jess! Sweetheart! You look so grown-up! Goodness, you’re wet! Have a bath straightaway, lovey, or you’ll get a chill. They’ve found a human head in Grimsby.’

Granny’s character was mostly sweet old-fashioned fussiness but with a strange lust for horror. She trawled through the newspapers for gory details of murder mysteries. If she saw a man digging his garden she immediately suspected he was burying his wife. She had watched the DVD of
Pulp Fiction
seven times, while knitting pink fluffy baby socks for the charity shop. She was, in her own loveable way, a little bit weird.

Jess’s mum appeared, carrying a pile of Granny’s things. She looked tired. She gave Jess a curious, expectant look.

‘Hi, Mum,’ said Jess. Her mum seemed very far away. Jess felt that her agony about the CCTV footage had imprisoned her in a kind of glass box. She could see ordinary life taking place out there, but she couldn’t join in.

‘Well . . . ?’ said her mum.