Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (29 page)

‘Watch out,’ she murmured, ‘here she comes.’

Jess looked round and there was Miss Thorn, coming through the crowd towards her. Sheer terror gripped Jess’s soul. But, oh joy! Mr Fothergill was with her – walking with a stick, but looking really happy to be back after his accident. He reached Jess first.

‘Congratulations, Jess!’ he said. ‘That was absolutely first-rate. I’ve been telling Miss Thorn that you’ve always been my star pupil as regards comedy.’

Miss Thorn looked uneasy. She was avoiding Jess’s eye. Jess’s heart was racing. But Mr Fothergill just went burbling on, bless him.

‘I was particularly impressed with your Susie Sunbeam.’ He turned to Miss Thorn and smiled. Miss Thorn flinched slightly and gave a thin, grudging smile.

‘It’s rather unnerving to see oneself on stage, of course,’ said Miss Thorn. ‘But I have to admit I did recognise a few of my own irritating mannerisms.’

‘It’s lucky Miss Thorn is such a good sport!’ Mr Fothergill beamed. Jess wasn’t sure Miss Thorn would have been quite so sporting if Mr Fothergill hadn’t been standing beside her, radiating bonhomie.

‘Yes, thanks for being OK about it,’ said Jess graciously. Miss Thorn gave another unconvincing twitchy smile.

‘Well, I must go and congratulate the others,’ she said, and moved away. Mr Fothergill stayed, beaming at Jess and looking like a happy pig.

‘Are you coming back next term, Mr Fothergill?’ asked Jess. ‘We’ve really missed you.’

‘Yes, I’ll be back next term,’ he said. ‘I’ve made a good recovery and I can’t wait.’

‘Is Miss Thorn . . . leaving, then?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Fothergill. ‘She was just covering for me this term.’

‘Phew!’ said Jess. She couldn’t help heaving a little sigh of relief. ‘She was really nice to me just now, but usually she’s, well – she’s terrifying.’

‘You know why that is?’ said Mr Fothergill. ‘It’s because
she
is scared witless of
you
.’

‘Of me? No, no, that can’t be right.’

‘Of all of you,’ said Mr Fothergill. ‘She was telling me earlier. It’s her first job, and she was so terrified, she was sick every morning for the first week.’

Unbelievable! Who would have thought it? So, Miss Thorn, personally responsible for an outbreak of Fear and Loathing at Ashcroft School, was secretly scared witless herself.

Eventually the crowd thinned. Mr Powell appeared briefly and told them they had done so well they could go home early. Dad and Phil had already left, taking the costumes. They had a supper date with Jess and Fred that night at a Chinese restaurant.

Jess leant back and let out a long, long sigh of relief. Fred came and sat by her while she put her socks and shoes on.

‘The verdict seems to be that we were simply brilliant,’ said Fred. ‘Hey, guys!’ He turned to Flora, Mackenzie and Ben. ‘I want to give credit where it’s due – thanks to Jess, without whom this would never have happened. Lady and gentlemen, she took four nerds and transformed us with her genius into fabulous stars of stage and screen – well, stage anyway, at least for the present. Friends, I give you – Jess Jordan!’

They cheered, and Fred leant over and placed a kiss on her cheek. It was the first time he had ever kissed her in public. A sparkling thrill ran up Jess’s spine, like liquid tinsel.

‘And now,’ said Fred, ‘we ought to start planning our show for the Edinburgh Festival next year.’

They strolled off out of the dressing room and down the corridor. Fred and Jess went on ahead; Ben, Flora and Mackenzie followed, joking and relaxing. They walked through the reception area, past gangs of adoring little kids, and out into the fresh air.

Fred put his arm around Jess’s shoulders. ‘I’m proud to be seen with you now,’ he said. ‘Obviously, public caresses were out of the question while you were a loser wearing no pants. But now you have become a terrifying success I think I might hang on to you for dear life.’

‘Public caresses were also out of the question while you were being a complete wuss,’ said Jess. ‘Now you’re a successful producer and director I might just tolerate your presence. But don’t push your luck, Parsons. Don’t turn into a doting freak. You can go off a person just like that, you know.’

She grinned at him. This was one of the really great moments. Suddenly, something spiralled down out of the sky and landed on Fred’s hair. A snowflake!

‘It’s snowing!’ cried Jess. ‘How immensely cool!’

‘Quite literally!’ agreed Fred, putting his tongue out and catching the next snowflake. They ate snow for a while, and then they began to feel the need for something a little more filling.

‘Hold my hand,’ said Fred. ‘It’ll be good practice for when I’m ninety.’ His hand felt extra warm in the cold Christmassy air. Fairy lights twinkled on the tree beside the school gate and, across the road, an obese halogen Santa wobbled menacingly at them from the roof of the supermarket.

As they walked out through the school gates, Jess saw the low wall where she had sat, waiting in vain for Fred during their first major misunderstanding, before they got together. That was six months ago.

So much had happened in six months! Certain mysteries had been unravelled: her dad’s exotic life down in St Ives, and the reason why her parents had separated. There had been real progress on every front.

Grandpa’s ashes had been scattered on the sea, so he was laid to rest. His soul was probably even now frolicking with mermaids – if that sort of thing was permitted in the afterlife. So Granny could stop fretting and devote her whole attention to homicide.

Mum had become more confident and, after years of mere gardening, had actually had a relationship with a man – a glamorous Japanese toy boy, no less. There was still work to be done on Mum’s wardrobe, however. Jess was planning a maternal makeover in which her mum’s charity shop hobo coat was replaced by a glamorous outfit.

As for Jess herself . . . she had come a long way since midsummer. She’d realised that her feelings for Ben Jones had just been a crush. She’d refused to be intimidated by Miss Thorn. She’d found a way of standing up for herself through – rather appropriately – stand-up comedy.

But, best of all, she’d got together with Fred. Jess knew she was never going to go off him. And in future, if they had any more major misunderstandings, she was sure they’d be able to sort them out. They’d talk. They’d hug. And if things got really bad, she was prepared to put Fred in his place with a swift kick in the teeth.

Life was just about perfect. OK, she was a tad overweight. But she would sort that out in a couple of weeks via a New Year’s Resolution. But right now . . .

‘Dolphin Cafe?’ asked Fred. Jess nodded and squeezed his hand.

It was a bit too early to walk into the sunset, so they just strolled off happily down the road, towards the smell of doughnuts.

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Five Star Fiasco

Chapter 1

Jess ran practically all the way to school. There was Fred, looking very tall and gangling in his parka, talking to Mackenzie by the gate.

‘Fred!’ called Jess. ‘Here they are!’

The guys looked towards her, Fred’s mysterious grey eyes peering out from his hood as if he was some kind of shy rainforest animal. Jess grinned. Fred was her favourite kind of rainforest animal – after gorillas, of course.

Jess tore open the envelope and pulled them out.

‘Ta-ra!’ she yelled in a triumphant fanfare. ‘Tickets for Chaos, the Dinner Dance of the Century! I can’t believe we’ve organised this! They look really professional, don’t they?’

Fred picked one up and peered at it.

‘Hmmm,’ he pondered. ‘They’re certainly the best since the tickets to the coliseum in Rome, you know:
Lions, Lemonade and as much Linguine as you can eat
. . .’

‘Brilliant!’ cried Mackenzie, who was short and curly-haired and bristling with energy. ‘Can I have mine? I ordered four.’ He ripped some out of Jess’s hand.

‘Wait, you animal!’ yelled Jess. ‘You’ve paid, right?’

‘Last week!’ Mackenzie assured her, counting out four tickets and pocketing them.

‘Wait, wait!’ wailed Jess. ‘I have to cross you off the list!’ She scrabbled around in her school bag. There was a cosmetics purse, half an apple core, a spare pair of socks, a copy of a trashy magazine, a few random school books, three pens (two broken), the remains of a cheese sandwich dating back to prehistory, two scrunched-up pieces of paper containing used chewing gum, and half a bottle of cola, which had already leaked a tiny pool of dark-brown gunge into the bottom of the bag – but no list.

‘Fred!’ said Jess urgently. ‘I think you had the list – look in your bag!’

Fred continued to admire the ticket. ‘We chose the right font,’ he murmured. ‘I told you Dotum would be better than MS Gothic.’

‘Where’s the list, Fred?’ hissed Jess.

‘I haven’t got it.’ Fred shrugged, handing the ticket back to her. ‘You must have left it at home.’

‘Urghhh, wait.’ Jess remembered something. ‘I think there were two lists – or maybe three. There was the list we were working on early last week, because we sold loads of tickets on Tuesday, and then you left that list at home, so on Thursday we made a new list. And I think there was an extra list with a few names on it on Friday.’

‘Way to go!’ Mackenzie grinned. ‘You could be the Queen of Lists!’

Jess smiled faintly, but inside she was panicking. She’d been so sure that Fred had all the lists. But now she wasn’t so certain. She’d been concentrating on keeping the cheques safe, and thought she’d handed the lists to Fred.

The bell rang. As they walked into school, Jess grabbed Fred’s elbow.

‘Listen!’ she whispered. ‘We can’t go dishing out tickets unless we’re sure people have paid! And unless we have the lists we can’t be sure they’ve paid or not!’

‘We could always make another list,’ said Fred. ‘I’m in the mood for it. I can feel another list coming on. I’m going to make a list of the people I know who look like characters from history. Starting with that guy in the corner shop who looks like Bugs Bunny.’

‘Fred, concentrate!’ groaned Jess. Fred’s kidding around wasn’t always appropriate. ‘We have to get this right! Otherwise people could gatecrash! We’ll have to pretend the tickets aren’t available until we’ve found the list of people who’ve paid.’

But, of course, they had already let Mackenzie have his.

By break, a crowd had gathered. ‘Tickets, tickets!’ they were chanting. Pushy Jodie was at the head of the queue – although it wasn’t really a queue, more a kind of rugby scrum. Jodie snatched a fistful of tickets from Fred’s rather limp, long fingers.

‘
Bar, bands, buffet!
’ yelled Jodie. ‘Excellent! What bands are we having?’

‘We haven’t quite . . . finalised it yet,’ said Jess.

‘But there’s going to be jazz, right?’ asked Ben Jones, his divine face peering over Jodie’s shoulder.

‘Oh, defo, yes, don’t worry!’ Jess assured him.

‘I ordered six tickets,’ said Ben, holding out his hand. ‘My mum and dad and my sister and her boyfriend –’

‘Who are you taking, then, Ben?’ demanded Jodie, turning and staring brazenly into his face.