Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (9 page)

Jess ran through the maze of corridors to the food technology department. Never had Mrs Kendall’s room been such a sanctuary. Although food technology was one of Jess’s favourite subjects, of course. Today there was a delightful smell of coconut cake in the air. But Jess couldn’t have managed even a mouthful. She felt so sick with anxiety, there was just a chance she might manage to lose a few pounds before finally dying of a broken heart round about 4.30 on Friday afternoon.

‘Today we’re going to look at the calorific value of different sorts of fats,’ said Mrs Kendall, leaning on the teacher’s desk. The veins in her wrists bulged horribly. Jess closed her eyes for an instant and tried to clear her mind of all thoughts of Fred, and replace them with polyunsaturated margarine.

Not for the first time, Jess wished there were no such things as male persons in the world, and women could reproduce just by cloning themselves in a jam jar on the bathroom shelf. Although the thought of a small version of herself, complete with flab, clumsiness and stupidity, was kind of hard to bear.

At the end of school, Jess found Flora by the gates. She looked disappointed and grabbed Jess by the arm.

‘You missed him!’ she hissed. ‘He gave me this amazing smile, but that tall girl with a red ponytail was monopolising him!’

Jess agreed, without really concentrating, that this was indeed appalling, and they set off home. Jess had so often walked home with Fred that every paving stone seemed to miss him.

‘Let’s go to the Dolphin and get ourselves some nachos,’ said Flora. Jess suddenly felt hungry. She was tired of being heartbroken. Why should she risk malnutrition just because Fred was behaving like a dingbat?

‘Yeah,’ she agreed heartily. ‘Or maybe a cheeseburger and fries.’

In fine weather there were tables out on the pavement, but you had to go in and queue for your food first.

‘Hey! There’s a free table!’ said Flora. ‘You sit there and bag it and I’ll go in and get the grub. Nachos and Coke be OK?’

‘Diet Coke – no, juice! Juice!’ said Jess. She was determined to start a new life right here and now. She would torment Fred by becoming fabulous. She would be slim, elegant, intellectually brilliant and fabulously wealthy. OK, so it would take a few days, but there was no way she was going to dwindle away into a small sickly lovesick pool of lovesick. Who needed boys? There would always be dogs – so loyal, so true.

She was just trying to decide whether a golden retriever or a red setter would suit her elegant new hair colour (she was planning to go a lustrous chestnut by the weekend), when the door to the Dolphin Cafe opened and three boys clattered out, laughing: Buster, Tom and – disastrously – Fred.

He couldn’t really pretend he hadn’t seen her, because her table was right there by the door. So he sort of paused for a minute.

‘Miss Jordan!’ he said, in a kind of haughty public voice. ‘Are you still alive? I thought you must have been barbecued in that rather convenient fire earlier today.’

Buster and Tom laughed, the morons.

‘So sorry to disappoint you,’ replied Jess, as a great surge of adrenalin rushed up her throat and fizzed all over her face like fireworks. ‘I thought you were the one who’d perished in the blaze actually – I was sure I got a whiff of roast pork.’

Buster and Tom laughed again, even louder. This comforted Jess slightly.

‘Come on, Parsons,’ said Buster.

‘We have an appointment at the DVD rental place,’ said Fred with a shrug. ‘With a few thousand aliens, I believe.’

‘I do so understand,’ said Jess. ‘In fact, you could all become aliens yourselves without any need for cosmetic surgery.’

‘We’ll leave the cosmetic surgery to you, Miss Jordan,’ said Fred. ‘Except I suppose your only problem would be: where to begin.’

The boys laughed and went off. Jess just went on grinning in what she hoped was a devastatingly sarcastic way, although she was barely able to stop the tears from bursting from her eyes.

She and Fred had always swapped scathing insults, but not like this, not in public, not with the horrible feeling that they were really meant to hurt. Why was he being so cruel?

‘I got you passion fruit and orange, is that OK?’ said Flora, arriving with the tray.

Jess wasn’t sure she could face food or drink after all, especially not passion fruit. It was passion which had got her into this mess in the first place.

‘Mmmm! Don’t these nachos smell wonderful!’ purred Flora, unfolding her paper napkin and placing it on her happy little lap. Jess began to feel she wasn’t living in the same world. She was secretly in one of the blackest pits of hell, and it was going to take heroism of the highest order to claw her way back to the daylight.

Chapter 10

Flora was so happy, kind of fizzing with excitement about Jack and
Twelfth Night
and everything, that Jess felt it was completely the wrong moment to break the devastating news that her life was over. She couldn’t possibly ruin Flora’s day. Could she?

‘Look, sorry to sound like a tragedy queen,’ she burst out after the second nacho, ‘but my life is over, as it were.’

‘What?’ said Flora, her eyes wide in amazement. Jess briefly ran through the whole Fred saga, culminating in his recent hideous insults.

‘But you guys always talk to each other like that,’ said Flora. ‘It’s so cool. He’s mad about you, it’s obvious. This is just a glitch, babe.’

‘Really?’ asked Jess, feeling rather like a sad dog who has just been whipped and meets a kind young maiden who strokes his ears instead. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Yeah, look, this can be sorted, easy,’ said Flora, licking guacamole off her perfect lips. ‘Soon as you get home, just call him. Say something like, “
Come on, for goodness’ sake, Fred, let’s stop this insane messing about and get back to normal
.” Or something. You’re much more eloquent than I am – you’ll think of something better. It’ll all be sorted in a few seconds, believe me.’

Jess felt encouraged.

‘Thanks, you heavenly creature,’ she said, reaching out and squeezing Flora’s hand. ‘May you live for ever in a paradise of palm trees, fast cars and samba music.’

‘Sounds like Hollywood,’ said Flora. ‘That’s Plan B if New York won’t have me.’

‘Whole continents will fight over you,’ Jess assured her. ‘Don’t confine yourself to mere cities. Think big.’

They went back to talking about the new boy and whether or not the girl with the red ponytail could be humanely despatched before she managed to fascinate him.

Jess arrived home feeling much more positive. She would ignore all this foolishness of recent days. She would just ring Fred and bring him to heel. It would be the work of a moment. She wouldn’t send a text. That was cowardly. He was probably even now longing for his phone to ring. OK, it was slightly annoying that she had to be the one to make the move, but males were really clueless when it came to relationships.

Hastily Jess looked around the house to see how the land lay. Mum was in the garden with Mr Nishizawa.

‘What, is he back again?’ said Jess to Granny as they peeped out of the kitchen window.

‘He’s having a lesson every evening, apparently – a crash course,’ said Granny, who was making a cup of tea. ‘He’s not here for long. He’s got to go back to Japan at the end of the month.’

Jess was glad to hear it. She didn’t have anything against Mr Nishizawa personally. Indeed he was about as cool as they came. But she just hated the idea of Mum always being busy with strangers in the evenings, when her main duty should have lain in selfless slavery to her immediate family. However, right now it was convenient to have Mum out of earshot. Jess was nerving herself up for the phone call to Fred.

Granny toddled off to watch the news. (’There’s been a terrible fire in Australia, dear – but they’ve managed to save some of the koalas.’) The kitchen phone was now divinely free and private. It was the perfect moment. Jess dialled Fred’s home number and waited with a thudding heart. Fred’s mum answered.

‘Hi! This is Jess. Could I speak to Fred, please?’

‘Oh, sorry, Jess,’ said Fred’s mum. ‘But he’s not home yet. Apparently he’s gone over to – what’s his name? – Buster’s. They’re doing some kind of project, or so he said.’

‘Doing a project, yeah,’ said Jess ironically, trying to ignore the sinking of her heart. ‘Pigging out in front of mythical violence for the hundredth time, more like.’

‘You’re so right,’ said Fred’s mum with a light chuckle.

‘Well,’ said Jess. ‘Thanks. See you soon.’

‘I hope so,’ said Fred’s mum, with just the faintest hint of regret. ‘We haven’t seen you for a day or two, have we? Well, come round any time. You know you’ll always be welcome.’

Fred’s mum had certainly noticed something. Jess rang off trying to sound as cheery as possible, even though her heart had plummeted back towards the boiling centre of the earth.

She couldn’t possibly phone Fred on his mobile while he was watching movies with Tom and Buster eavesdropping on his every word. She would just have to wait.

Jess was suddenly desperately lonesome. She went to Granny’s room, eager to share even the TV news with her. She was prepared to sit through a whole succession of natural disasters, terrorist outrages and tragic famines if only she could hold Granny’s hand.

But Granny was asleep. How extremely tactless! Jess sighed with exasperation, quite loudly, hoping that Granny might hear and awake, open her cute little old arms and say, ‘Give me a cuddle, darling! I feel so depressed after that weather forecast.’

But no. Granny dozed on, her lips rippling slightly with each breath. ‘No, John!’ she said suddenly, and smiled in her sleep. Granny was dreaming about Grandpa! Possibly, in her dreams, they were both twenty again . . .

Jess tiptoed hastily out, leaving Granny to dream in peace. Granny’s romance with Grandpa had been idyllic – not like Jess and Fred’s turbulent on-off relationship. Jess badly needed a distraction. If only Mum was available. But she was still sitting out in the garden with Mr Nishizawa. There was a kind of picnic table with a couple of benches down the far end of the garden, and they were down there having their English Conversation, even though the sun had already sunk well below the neighbour’s hawthorn hedge.

I know
, thought Jess,
I’ll offer them some tea. Then I might at least find out when he’s going
. She put on a sweet and innocent smile. It wasn’t really her sort of thing, but somehow she felt on her best behaviour with Mr Nishizawa around.

‘Hi, Mum! Mr Nishizawa!’ said Jess. They looked up, and Mr Nishizawa leapt to his feet, which was quite hard to do when you’re sitting at a picnic table with integral benches. He bowed, and his brown eyes sparkled. Wow, was he the business!

‘Good evening!’ he said, then, laughing, he turned to Mum. ‘Not goodnight!’ he added.

They both laughed for what seemed like a rather insanely long time.

‘Yes,’ said Jess, wanting to move the conversation on. ‘
Good evening
, very good, terrific. Sorry to disturb you, Mum, but I wondered if you would like some tea?’

‘Oh, no thanks, love,’ said Mum. ‘And by the way, we’re going out tonight. Nori is taking me to a concert. A Japanese pianist is playing and Nori knows him slightly. We’ll go round afterwards and probably have a drink with him or something, so I might be back a bit late. Don’t wait up.’