Live and Fabulous! (4 page)

“Hmmm,” I say.

“Pah!” Fleur says. “The selfish loser reckons you've nothing better to do than play second best to his flipping skateboard ... which, may I remind you, is essentially just a child's toy. He's in the lower sixth form, for crying out loud! When's he getting a car so he can at least drive us to gigs?
Pgggh?!
I mean, what is the point of him? He's neither use nor ornament, as my granny would say.”

“And he's just too flaky,” adds Claude. “He should have double-checked about the Blackwell Disco arrangements. Then we wouldn't be having to cheer you up, would we?”

“S'pose so,” I mumble.

And yes, I know that sounds totally berserk, but sometimes I think I do.

And then he spoils it by being an earth-shatteringly thoughtless berk.

“Well,
whatever,”
says Fleur, holding up her hand in a “speak to my wrist, it's got an answering machine” sort of way. “All I'm saying, Ronnie, is that you need to take the reins. The ball's always in his court these days, and he's holding all the cards. It's time you battened down the hatches and took the bull by the horns.”

“We're still talking about Jimi here,” Claude assures me, deadpan.

“We certainly are, Claudette. Veronica here is in serious peril of becoming one of those drippy chicks who puts her life on hold for a boy, and we, the LBD, have a duty to stop it.”

“Ronnie,” chuckles Claude, covering her mouth with her hand in surprise, “you're turning into Sharon Spittle!”

“Noooooo! I'm not turning into Sharon Spittle!” I moan, clutching my head.

Sharon Spittle is a Year 11 girl who has been engaged, like, three times already. And every time, she asks Edith the android school secretary to change her surname in the class register. Then she prances around showing off a gaudy ring that usually comes out of an amusement arcade until her finger goes green. Cringe. Sharon once fell in love with Ataf Hussein in the sixth form and began appearing at Blackwell in a full Muslim burka. The girl is an absolute horse's ass. A total prize numpty.

She's the sort of dweebish, bed-wetting mutant who ... rings emergency wards on Friday night to find her boyfriend.

“That's it, then, new LBD legislation has been passed: Blank Jimi Steele. Blank him for a month!” chants Fleur.

“A month's about long enough, Ronnie,” shrugs Claude.

“Okay. A month it is.” I smile, feeling extremely empowered. I switch off my mobile phone and put it in my bag.

“Which brings me neatly to point two,” says Fleur, grabbing a Post-it-note-stuck copy of
New Musical Express
magazine. “Now wait for it...”

“Go on, I'm on the edge of my beanbag,” I say dubiously.

“Two words, a hundred and twenty thousand people, forty-eight hours of LBD fun, one fantastic way to annoy the bejesus out of Jimi Buttmunch Steele,” chirps Fleur with a highly mischievous grin, “blows Blackwell Disco and that little fête we held last year right out of the water. Ta-da! Astlebury Festival!”

Fleur opens the mag at a double-page advert for Astlebury, happening the last weekend of July. Less than two weeks away.

“Oh, God,” mutters Claude. “Fleur, we agreed ...”

“Astlebury Festival?” I say.
“You want the LBD to go to Astlebury Rock 'n' Pop Weekender?”

“Yes!” says Fleur.

“Now Fleur,” I begin, almost as if I'm talking to my mad old nana. “Have you forgotten what happened
last year
when we asked our parents about Astlebury?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We didn't go, did we?” I say very slowly.

“Pah, a minor setback,” scoffs Fleur. “Look, girls, I know we agreed we'd not bother asking this year, blah, blah, blah ... but behold! Our friend, honorary LBD member, pop god and all-round kind of swoon Spike Saunders is headlining the second night! Oh, and Final Warning are playing too.”

“That's Jimi's favorite band,” I say with a slight evil grin.

“And there's a twenty-four-hour dance tent this year too!” Fleur squeaks.

“And an unsigned bands stage! Ooh, I bet loads of gorgeous musician lads hang around that one! And there are tickets left, I've checked!”

“God, how annoyed would Jimi be if we all went, eh?” mutters Claude. “That would be soooo ace.” Then she checks herself and tries to be sensible.

“Fleur, do you realize,” Claude asks, adjusting her specs with her finger, “that a psychiatric symptom of insanity is asking the same question again and again but expecting a different answer?”

“Uggh, eh?” says Fleur.

“Okay, more simply ... Fleur, the LBD won't be allowed to go. Just like last year,” says Claude. “Ergo, you're insane.”

“Ergo, that's a maybe,” argues Fleur, “but you're forgetting something crucial, Claudiebuns. Last summer, when the LBD asked to go to Astlebury, something totally fantastic and unforgettable happened. We ended up having a huge fabulous adventure and meeting Spike Saunders! Ooh, can you not see, girls?! It's our
destiny
to ask again.”

“She's got a point, Claude,” I say, warming to the idea. “But you do both know that my uncle Charlie doesn't work for Spike anymore, or even work in the music business at all, so it's a bit different this time.”

Fleur and Claude nod their heads thoughtfully.

“But hey, it wouldn't hurt to ask our parents,” I say, feeling suddenly maverick. “And besides, I'm well up for another LBD jamboree. I think it might just show Jimi who's wearing the trousers in this relationship too.”

“You're not kidding,” smiles Claude.

“Well, that's our second point of order then,” says Fleur. “We begin applying pester power to our parents about Astlebury forthwith! Oh, this is going to be so great, girls! Everyone say we're agreed!”

“Agreed!” Claude and I chorus, not quite believing our own ears.

“Who needs Blackwell Disco, bambinos? We're off to Astlebury!” giggles Fleur, suddenly clutching her neck. “Jeez, I better get this battle scar covered,” she says. “I'm gonna ask Paddy right away! Well ... the second he gets home after his anger management class.”

The best thing about Fleur Swan is, she'll never truly know just how funny she is.

“Good a time as any!” concedes Claude, giving Fleur a big thumbs-up before lying back on the bed and covering her head with the
NME
magazine.

Oh, thank you, God. Another term practically over.

I absolutely, totally and utterly hate school with every fiber of my being. I hate the hideous uniform, with its hideous gray A-line skirt with kick pleats, and the fetching blue woolen sweater that makes me look like a big shapeless blue and gray splodge. Oh, and not forgetting the snazzy white ankle socks, the most unflattering hosiery choice possible for my chunky ankles and goalkeeper calves. Of course while I look like a barrel on feet, Fleur Swan carries off the whole idiot garb with stylish aplomb. The fact that she's almost 85 percent long brown, toned leg doesn't do her much harm. Claude, incidentally, doesn't mind the Blackwell uniform, because “having her clothes chosen for her every day gives her more time to learn.”

Yes, she did actually say this ... the big book-ogling freak.

But uniformphobia is only the beginning. I hate pretty much everything else about Blackwell. I hate being yelled and harangued at 7:15 A.M. to “get out of my pit” by my drill sergeant mother. I hate arguing with her every single day over the fact that I don't want to eat yucky poached eggs or vile bran cereal eleven minutes after opening my eyes. I hate then being absolutely ravenous by 9:30 A.M. (wishing I'd eaten the bran-poo flakes) and then having to sit through double French while Madame Bassett witters on about delicious-sounding
croque-monsieurs
and
gateaux de chocolate.
I hate being shoved out into the yard at break when it's drizzling because school rules decry pupils sitting in the classrooms. So the LBD loiter glumly around the back of the gray bird-cack-splattered gym to find shelter from the elements, then get shoved away by teachers because it's a hideout for smokers. So we trudge to the far end of the lower-school yard, where we're shouted at again because pupils are now barred from “frequenting within twenty meters' radius of the school pond.” (This new rule emerged after Royston Potter threw Sebastian Smythe, a sensitive Year 8 ballet enthusiast and amateur puppeteer, in among the algae every day for a whole week. Eventually Seb began wearing a lemon Speedo to school and pirouetting in himself, just to cut out the middle man.)

Sometimes I feel as if the LBD spend our entire Blackwell break times being chased round and round the ranch confines like depressed ankle-sock-wearing big game.

And I hate that if you're not excellent at sports and you're not promising at math or English, or on the other hand you're not a total freako uniquo who disrupts lessons by setting fire to desks and punching staff, you start to feel sort of ... well ... invisible. Oh, and I hate, hate, hate those belligerent thickos who work in the P.E. department, like Mr. Patton, who has hairy shoulder tufts poking from under his yellowing T-shirt and thinks we all don't know that he's dating that cafeteria worker with the eczema who always picks her nose.
Bleeeeee!

I hate worrying which corner of the school my lessons will chuck me in, and dreading bumping into any of Blackwell's many vile school bullies who are always armed with a nasty remark or sneering glance. And, yes, this does mean you in particular, Panama Goodyear and your snooty ghoulish gang. Jeez, why are newspapers filled with such tragic deaths, yet bogdwellers like Panama never chance upon a runaway combine harvester?

I hate some of the teachers so much that I actually smirked, yes,
smirked
when one of them fell down the science block stairs and fractured his collarbone. In my defense this was Mr. Graves, who wears a beige car coat, always has white phleggy bits in the comers of his mouth and ... this is the grudge I hold ... once read out
to everyone in my
applied science
class
a note I passed Claudette asking to borrow some lunch money. All the boys called me Parasite Ripperton and threw pennies at me for a week.

I hate being yelled at to “WALK, DON'T RUN” all the time.

Even when I am flipping walking!

And being told, “The bell is for me, not for you” at the end of every lesson. I hate assemblies where we get moaned at for half an hour about our “shoddy uniform standards.” And school trips that are always to somewhere rubbish like the local radioactive power plant, monastery ruins or forgotten seaside towns so we can study their now-obsolete fishing industry.