Rivalry at Silver Spires (6 page)

“It's true, it's not fair on poor old Georgie!” I quickly said.

“I've got a good idea,” said Katy, in an excited gabble. “Why don't you change your username, Georgie? Then no one will know whether you're online or not.”

“Brilliant!” said Jess. “Let's help Georgie invent a new username. What's your old one?”

“
Castles in the Air
,” Georgie answered promptly, with a proud look on her face. “I couldn't resist having the name of last term's play.
And
, get this, my clever username also helps me to remember my password, which is ‘
bouncy
castle'! How cool is that?” She suddenly looked a bit alarmed. “If I've got to change it, I really want something to do with drama, you know.”

“Don't worry, we'll think of something just as good,” said Katy encouragingly.

So the decision was made for us all to think of ideas till after prep had finished, then get together and see what we'd come up with. My five friends spent most of supper staring into space with frowns on their faces, and I knew they were concentrating on coming up with a great new username and password for Georgie, but personally I was in a state because Hannah and Bibi were at the next table and I could just feel their eyes on me, which made me shiver inside.

Walking over to Hazeldean after supper, I suddenly had a brainwave out of the blue and I didn't know why I hadn't thought of it before. It was lovely to be thinking of something that had nothing at all to do with messages or swimming for a change.

“Why don't I ask Jan if it's okay for you to spend the half-term week with
me
, Jess? I'm sure she won't mind. Then you'd get to come to Thorpe Park and everything.”

“Wow, that would be brill!” said Jess. So I rushed off to e-mail Jan straight away before prep.

I usually quite enjoy prep because it gives me a lovely calm feeling being with all my friends, silently working away. It was maths this evening, which is one of my favourite subjects. Jess needed a bit of help so I did her first couple of questions for her, but then she got the hang of it and managed the rest on her own. If it had been Miss Fosbrook on duty she wouldn't have minded my helping Jess so much, but Miss Carol is much stricter and makes us work completely on our own for the whole hour, so I had to take care not to let her notice what I was doing. Usually, I don't like breaking rules like that. But some things are more important than rules. Like friendship.

As we were finishing the prep, Katy slid a piece of paper across the table to me with the words
William Shakespeare
on it. She raised her eyebrows as if to ask me what I thought of it, and I gave her a thumbs up, then went back to checking my maths. I couldn't concentrate though. Those two little words had jolted me right back into that chat-room world. The world of my fears.

Afterwards on the way up to the dorm, Georgie wrinkled her nose. “
William Shakespeare?
It's not very original, is it? Anyway, what would my password be?”

“
Shake it!
” said Katy.

“Brilliant, Katy!” said Naomi. “What's wrong with that, Georgie?”

Georgie sighed a massive sigh. “I just really like my old username. Look, let's go back to plan A. I'll give up messaging for a while, okay?” She broke into a grin. “Now for important things. Who's coming to flop onto a nice soft beanbag and watch TV with me?”

We were all laughing as we set off along to the common room, but once we were there and had sunk into the sofas and beanbags everyone fell quiet. I tried to concentrate on the programme, but my mind kept wandering because something was niggling away at me. What if Hannah and Bibi were busy typing horrible things about me right now? They probably weren't, as Georgie wasn't online. But what if they
were
? What if there were other people joining in their conversation, all dissing me as I lay here on this beanbag.

Suddenly I had to know. And I realized I could easily find out. After all, I knew Georgie's password now.
Bouncy castle.
And I already knew her e-mail address because we'd all e-mailed each other over Christmas. I could go online and pretend to be her. I didn't have to make it into a big deal and tell my friends. Once the idea had taken root in my mind I couldn't let it go.

“Back in a minute,” I whispered to Jess.

She nodded without taking her eyes off the screen and I didn't think the others even noticed that I was leaving the room, they were so into the programme. All the same, I knew I had to be quick in case one of them decided to come along to the computer room and e-mail their parents. We often e-mail at this time of evening leading up to bedtime.

My hands were shaking as I typed in Georgie's password and saw the list of people who were online. There were five of them and I only recognized one of their usernames. Someone called
x little emms x
was probably Emma Horn from Forest Ash, because she's very small. A moment after I'd signed in there came a message from
Helen of Troy
, who might have been Helen Banister from Willowhaven or Helen Sukra from Elmhurst or another Helen. She wrote,
Any1 got any nail v remoo?

Someone called
Dreads
wrote,
Soz babz.
Then someone else wrote,
Yo. Givit ya 2moz.
The conversation went on to different nail varnish colours and shades and I noticed that after that quite a few usernames seemed to have colours in them, like
Scarlet Pimpernel
and
Bluebell Woods,
which made me realize how people sometimes changed their usernames according to the conversation they were having. I kept on thinking I ought to be writing something myself otherwise the other people who were online might think it a bit odd, but I couldn't work out what Georgie would write. Instead, I clicked on
Away
, so then people would think I'd had to go away from the computer for a while. After that the conversation changed to swimming and I held my breath waiting for a nasty comment.
Torpedo Gal
wasn't online, but of course Hannah or Bibi might have changed their usernames.

It was good at swimming squad
, someone called
Evita
wrote, and I suddenly wondered whether it was Evie. I couldn't understand why people liked messaging so much when half the time they didn't even know who they were talking to. The next message to come up was from
Razzle Tazzle.
She wrote,
Din u av nuff torture last Fri? Y turn up 4 more? Evita
replied,
Luv ya but ur a wimp. I was rubbish. My team came level last, but I still
B
it.

Now my heart was racing furiously because I was so sure that any minute I'd see a message about the show-off who did the tumble turn or the girl who couldn't even get out of the pool on her own, or something like that, but nothing came, and the subject changed to a discussion about TV programmes. Then everyone started saying
Bi
and
Nite
to each other, and
Watch the bugs don't bite
and
Quik! Matron alert!
which made me realize I had to sign out and get up to the dorm before someone found me. I'd been lucky to have the whole computer room to myself for so long, but it's true that on Wednesday evenings there are good TV programmes on, so most people go to the common room after prep.

“Where did you get to?” asked Jess, looking confused, as soon as I went into the dorm.

I had my reply ready, although I didn't like lying to Jess, even if it was only a small one.

“I went to see if Jan had replied to my e-mail, but she hadn't, so then I e-mailed my sister.”

Thinking about my sister sent a pang of homesickness whizzing round my body, but only for a second, because I was so relieved that there hadn't been any nasty messages and I could actually relax.

We have to hand in our phones every night to Matron's office and we'd all picked a day of the week to be phone monitor, but on Sundays it was a free-for-all. Tonight was Mia's turn, and I was just about to switch mine off and hand it over when it rang.

“Oh hi, Jan!” I said, which made Jess shush everyone so she could listen.

It was lovely to hear Jan's voice. She always sounds so bright and bubbly. And it was even lovelier to hear what she was saying. “Of course I'd love to have your friend for the week, Grace. I just need to be sure that it's all right with her parents.”

I didn't think there'd be a problem with Jess's parents but I wanted to give Jess a lovely surprise at the end of the call, so I kept my voice level and said, “I'm not sure. We were just asking you first.”

Jess opened her eyes wide and raised her open palms, as if to say,
What's happening?
But I turned my back and carried on talking with Jan for another minute, being careful not to give anything away. After I'd said goodbye, I turned round slowly to see Jess bursting with curiosity. Then I smiled and spoke quietly. “Yes! You can come!”

“Yay!” said Jess, giving me a hug. “Just my mum to ask, then we'll be all sorted.”

I thought about that as I went off to the bathroom. Jess was right, things did gradually seem to be sorting themselves out. The messages seemed to have stopped, and I'd got the support of all my lovely friends. Not
everyone
thought I was a show-off. I was cross with myself for having used Georgie's password like that without asking, though. All I'd done was make myself feel nervous at first and guilty afterwards. I wouldn't do it again.

Good decision. And now I'd got lovely Chinese weekend to look forward to, and then half-term with Jess. Yesssss!

The build-up to the Chinese New Year weekend was nearly as good as the weekend itself. We all had to be responsible for tidying and cleaning our own dorms and one other area of the boarding house, because apparently in China there's a huge clean-up in the days before the New Year to sweep away bad luck. I liked that idea, and really threw myself into my main job, which was polishing our wooden floor in the dorm. I wanted to make quite sure there wasn't a single trace of bad luck hanging around anywhere.

Maybe I didn't do it thoroughly enough, or maybe Jess didn't wipe the window sills very well, because we did get one piece of bad luck. Jess's mum had said she wasn't sure about Jess being away for the whole of half-term, but Jess had confidently told me that she could easily get her mum to change her mind. What actually happened, though, was that her mum phoned to explain that she was sorry but she'd thought about it and she was afraid she'd miss Jess too much, as she'd only get to see her during the main holidays then. Because of having to work during the week, she'd want to have Jess at home for both the weekends and she'd seen from the map that Jan and Peter lived too far away for Jess to travel back and forth. Jess and I were both really disappointed, but Jess did admit that she'd miss her mum and dad too if she didn't get to see them till the Easter holidays, so in the end we had to forget about plans for half-term.

It was a good job we'd got Chinese New Year to keep us cheerful. Another tradition in China is decorating your windows and doors with little verses about things like happiness, riches and long life. So we did the same at Silver Spires, decorating our boarding houses with the rhyming couplets we'd had to make up for one of our English preps.

We'd been told by Miss Carol to dress in as much red as possible on the Saturday evening, and definitely no black, as it's bad luck, or white, because the Chinese associate it with mourning. And when it came to Saturday afternoon Katy gave us all a lovely surprise by handing each of us a very broad red belt that she called a hip wrap.

“So
that's
why you bought that red dress!” said Georgie.

“Fancy making all these!” said Mia. “You're so clever!”

And the rest of us totally agreed.

We wore our hip wraps over our jeans and some of us had got more red on our top halves too. I happened to have a red T-shirt, so that was perfect. Katy had the most beautiful red sequined top with floaty sleeves. She'd also got brilliant red trainers. Jess had made red flowers out of paper for our hair. I couldn't make mine stay in because my hair's so straight and fine, so in the end I pinned it to the top of my jeans. Naomi looked absolutely wonderful because she had a red-and-gold silk top
and
matching trousers, which she'd brought specially for the Chinese weekend. It seemed strange seeing her so dressed up, because although she's got some beautiful traditional African outfits, she only ever brings one or two of them to school in case she has a photo shoot or something. Normally she just wears jeans and tracky bums and things, like everyone else.

Miss Carol had put up a notice for the Year Sevens, Eights and Nines to meet at five o'clock in the common room, because she wanted a brief talk about the swimming gala before the Chinese New Year celebrations started. As my friends and I gathered with the others, everyone wondered what Miss Carol wanted to talk about, since it was supposed to be Mrs. Mellor organizing the swimming gala.