Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (10 page)

‘Great, fantastic!’ said Jess, trying not to betray her deep disappointment and disgust at this news. ‘Have fun. Oh, by the way, Mum – could you write me a note for tomorrow, please? About missing school this morning because of my tummy upset?’

‘Yes, sure, of course, darling,’ said Mum, turning back to Mr Nishizawa. Or, as he was apparently now known, ‘Nori’. ‘Shall we break for lunch?’

Lunch?
thought Jess.
What on earth is she talking about?

‘Shall we break for lunch?’ repeated Mr Nishizawa hesitantly. Oh, it wasn’t a conversation. It was a ‘conversation’. Things were so confusing these days.

Jess went back indoors and comforted herself with loud music. At a certain stage she was aware of Mum and Mr Nishizawa leaving for their night out. It seemed Mum was the one having all the fun these days.

After listening to her most depressing songs for two hours, Jess felt life was so futile she might as well do her homework for once. After wrestling for ten minutes with such unpleasant concepts as saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats and – worst of all, apparently – hydrogenated fats, she began to feel extremely fat even by her standards. She spent an hour trying on Mum’s old hippy clothing, while Granny, refreshed by her nap, gossiped away on the phone to her new friend, Iris.

Jess was only too aware that, with Granny on the phone, Fred couldn’t ring, and she checked her mobile every twenty minutes to see if he’d texted her. Eventually she just gave up on everything and lay in the bath, shaving her legs again and again until they shone like boiled eggs.

But while Jess may have felt she was enduring one of the most miserable evenings of her life, compared to what was going to happen tomorrow, it was the calm before the storm.

Chapter 11

Jess arrived at school next day determined to treat Fred with sunny indifference – if indeed she ever found herself in his company. But as she and Flora were on their way to registration, she suddenly realised that her mum had forgotten to write the letter explaining her absence.

‘Oh no!’ she gasped. ‘I’ll have to forge it! Quick! Let’s do it in the loos!’ They dived into the girls’ toilets.

‘But we’ll be late!’ said Flora, looking pale and panicky.

‘It won’t take me a min!’ said Jess, sitting on the floor by the washbasins and grabbing her rough book and a pen. She ripped a page out of the rough book and put her address at the top of the page, in her mum’s rather scatty italic handwriting.

‘What about an envelope?’ asked Flora, hanging about nervously by the door. The bell had already gone for registration and Flora hated being even half a minute late.

‘Never mind – I’ll tell her my mum’s so disorganised we’ve run out of envelopes,’ said Jess. ‘It isn’t even a lie. I hate Thorn so much I’m tempted to invent some kind of totally obscene ailment. Like, “
Sorry Jess was absent from school yesterday morning but her bum fell off
.
”
’

Flora cracked up. Jess felt encouraged. She always felt kind of safe if she was making people laugh.

‘Or like, you know, “
Her intestinal wind was so bad it blew the windows out and we had to call the fire brigade
.
”
’

Flora laughed again, even more loudly, although Jess knew that the second joke wasn’t quite so funny as the first. But Flora was getting a bit hysterical, because she was so nervous about being late. In this state she would laugh at anything.

‘Or, “
I apologise for my daughter Jess’s lateness yesterday, but she gave birth at 6 a.m. to a handsome turbot
.
”
’

Flora dissolved into peals of laughter, leaning against the doorpost and gasping. Jess finished off her note – which incidentally was really just a line or two about the tummy upset.

‘Luckily I’ve been forging my mum’s signature for years,’ she said. ‘I’m just waiting for my opportunity to nick her credit card!’ She looked up with a grin, and then her blood ran cold. Miss Thorn was standing behind Flora with her arms folded, watching them with complete contempt, and Jess had the feeling she’d been there for ages. And Flora hadn’t even noticed!

‘Miss Thorn!’ said Jess, trying to sound as if she was in control of the situation and delighted to see her favourite teacher. Flora whirled round and kind of froze solid. ‘I’m sorry we’re late. I just – felt a bit . . . a bit sick.’ Jess stuffed the letter into her bag and scrambled to her feet.

Miss Thorn walked slowly forward and held out her hand.

‘I believe that letter is for me?’ she said, in a voice as sweet as sulphuric acid.

Jess got it out and dumbly handed it over. There was absolutely no point in trying to say anything perky and attractive. She had to admit she was so NOT in control of the situation.

Miss Thorn perused the letter, then looked up. Lightning flashed from her eyes. Thunder rolled around the craggy heights of her hostility. Jess did notice a tiny speck of dandruff on Miss Thorn’s immaculate shoulder. But it wasn’t much comfort.

‘Flora, you can go and wait for me in the classroom,’ she said.

Flora flinched and sort of lurched off, looking both guilty and relieved.

‘Now, I’ve had about enough hassle from you,’ said Miss Thorn. Her use of the word ‘hassle’ wasn’t lovable – somehow it made her seem even more like a gangster. And her failure to use Jess’s name was especially chilling.

‘Late on day one, writing rubbish instead of your essay, absent on day two without any note, and now I find you forging one.’ Her cold steely eyes slid over Jess with contempt. ‘You can go and explain yourself to Mr Powell,’ she said, tearing up Jess’s letter with a contemptuous flourish and handing the pieces back to Jess.

Jess’s legs went cold and started to shake. She turned and walked off towards the admin centre, where the heads of year had their various offices. She was so terrified, the slightest thing could set off a horrendous bout of projectile vomiting. She was sure if Mr Powell shouted at her, she might just vom straight in his face.

Mr Powell was immensely tall and had big chubby cheeks and curly fair hair. However, despite his curls and dimples he was not heavenly or jolly. He strode about with a frown, looking rather like an angel who has had a row with God. And when he lost his temper he went bright red and shouted so loud you could hear him all over the school. And everybody who heard him reacted with synchronised cringing.

Jess arrived at his door and knocked very timidly. There was no reply. Jess waited. She listened. She couldn’t hear anybody moving inside. She looked up and down the corridor. There was nobody about. She felt, in all conscience, she ought to knock once more, properly: loudly. She knocked again, but somehow it turned out even softer, like a fairy wearing velvet gloves knocking on the door of a dormouse who might possibly be asleep. Jess waited. There was no reply.

Suddenly, the bell rang for the start of lessons. Jess bounded swiftly away. There was always the chance that Mr Powell had been meditating, or sucking a throat sweet or something, and she didn’t want him to come barging out and find her loitering. But she would have to go and see him later. At lunchtime. Perhaps. In case Miss Thorn checked up on her.

Jess headed for the languages department, where she must now endure French. Turning a corner slightly too fast, she bumped straight into Miss Thorn. Jess blushed.

‘What did he say?’ demanded Miss Thorn.

‘He said he was very disappointed in me,’ said Jess, so flustered that the disastrous lies came spilling out of her mouth almost before she could think. Wait, that didn’t sound much like Mr Powell. Mr Powell had never been
disappointed
in his life. Only incandescent with rage. ‘He said it was a diabolical start to the term and if I was sent to him again he’d make me regret I’d ever been born,’ added Jess, trying to make it sound more Mr Powellish.

Miss Thorn nodded approvingly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re on a warning,’ she said. ‘Just one more problem and you’ll be back in his office straight away.’

Jess shivered with fear. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so disorganised so far, but we’ve got problems at home. My dog is dying of a horrible disease.’

Miss Thorn’s eyes flared slightly. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, of course,’ she said, ‘but we all have problems in our home lives which are nothing to do with school. It’s your job to carry out your educational duties without getting distracted or making excuses. I want a letter from your mother or father tomorrow without fail.’

And she snapped her lips shut as if they were a high-class laptop, turned on her heel and clicked off.

There was only one thing Jess could do now: descend into torment. It would only be a matter of time before Miss Thorn met Mr Powell. Maybe they would enjoy a cup of coffee together at mid-morning break.

And Miss Thorn would say, ‘Thanks so much, Clarence,’ (or whatever his name was) ‘for terrifying the living daylights out of that monstrous brat Jess Jordan.’

Then Mr Powell would start that dreadful pre-yelling warm-up. He would frown, and once he’d realised what a terrible crime Jess had committed, pretending to have seen him while being too cowardly to knock properly, well, steam would start to rise from his ears, and he’d come thundering out of the staffroom. He’d hunt her down, and his terrible shouting would turn her entire skeleton to cottage cheese. In public.

Chapter 12

Jess almost enjoyed the French lesson. At least it was safer than the dangerous free-range experience out in the corridors. Out there Miss Thorn could pounce out of a shadowy corner and show her terrible yellow fangs. Or one might hear the distant howling of Mr Powell as he sniffed around the inert body of one of his victims.