Katy Birchall - The It Girl - Superstar Geek

* B E E P *

‘Um, Mr Huntley? Uh yeah, hi, this is Jess. You know, Anna’s friend from school. Just to let you know that you can ignore all those messages she left you. I came over and found her in the cupboard hiding behind the Henry Hoover, holding your golf club. She’s a bit better now though so you don’t need to worry. Lucky I know where your spare key is, hey! Anyway, hope you enjoy your evening. Uh yeah, bye.’

Jess was waiting by my locker when I came into school the next day.

‘Morning, sunshine. How are you feeling?’

‘Um,’ I replied, trying to ignore the glares of everyone passing us. ‘Not brilliant.’

‘I thought you might say that, which is why I bought you some of these.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out some Milk Bottles.

‘Thanks, but I’m not sure even Milk Bottles can help this time.’

‘Look, don’t worry about these guys,’ she said, gesturing to a group of Year 9s who giggled as they walked past. It looked like the whole school knew. ‘It will all blow over.’

‘I don’t think it will somehow. I’m destined to be the girl who set Josie Graham on fire for the rest of my school career.’

‘Don’t be silly. It was an accident, everyone knows that.’ Jess shrugged.

‘Really?’

‘Of course. Danny said he overheard Brendan Dakers saying it was an accident.’

‘What?’ I said in utter shock. ‘Brendan Dakers said that? Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Try not to swoon too much. It’ll probably work in your favour, considering for some unknown reason people in this school tend to hang on his every word.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Apparently he also said it was hilarious to watch.’

‘Something tells me that Josie won’t have found it so funny.’ The first bell rang and I sighed. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go to class.’

‘Just laugh about it – no one was hurt.’ Jess gave me a friendly nudge. ‘It’s like I said last night.’

‘Speaking of which, Dad wanted me to thank you again for coming over and rescuing me. Who knows how long I would have been in that cupboard for.’

‘No worries. Right, I better head otherwise I’m going to be late and I’ve already been given a warning about my timekeeping.’ Jess swung her bag over her shoulder.

‘Jess, you can’t leave me. Sophie Parker is in this lesson. She’s going to kill me. You don’t get away with setting fire to her best friend lightly.’

‘How could she kill you? She doesn’t have any weapons.’

‘I’m not sure that would stop her.’

‘I think her sister had a black belt. She used to go to school here. She might have taught Sophie how to karate-chop you.’

‘A lot of saliva is building up in my mouth right now.’

‘Calm down. Sophie is not going to kill you. And if she was then she would definitely wait until after school so as not to make it look suspicious.’

‘Brilliant. Thanks for that.’

‘I hope she doesn’t kill you.’

‘You’re a good friend.’

Jess gave me a cheerful wave and walked off into the direction of her lesson.

I stood there wishing I could be more like Jess. She’s beautiful, super cool and confident and never seems to worry about anything. She has long, blonde dip-dyed hair and always paints her nails loads of different colours. She’s good at every sport she plays and captain of the netball team, which made Sophie Parker really mad.

Sophie expected to be captain since she is pretty much in charge of everything else that goes on, being the most popular girl in our year. Apparently her sister was the most popular girl in this school when she was here and was captain of all the sports teams. When Sophie wasn’t appointed captain of the netball team, her parents were very upset about it and came in especially to speak to our sports teacher, while Sophie cried behind them.

Dad has never had this sort of problem with me. I peaked in physical education when I was eight and was forced to join in with a football activity at school. I was distracted by a pigeon, the ball came my way, deflected off my bottom and bounced into the goal. My sporting career has gone downhill ever since.

Anyway, Sophie dragging in her parents didn’t faze our sports teacher who stuck to her guns and told them Jess was captain, fair and square. Upsetting the most popular girl in the year didn’t exactly do much for Jess’s popularity stakes but Jess got over that pretty quickly.

Our friendship was actually born that day, right after Sophie and her parents stormed out of the sports hall having not got their way. Jess was waiting for her best friend, Danny, and I was waiting for Dad to come to get me to pick up Mum from the airport (who came to stay for a week to see the new house and ask me unending questions about my first week at the new school).

We were standing in silence about a metre apart and I noticed she looked pretty down. I guess because Sophie and her sidekick, Josie, had made it clear what they thought about Jess being made captain. I offered her a cookie but she just shook her head in a ‘stop bugging me’ way. I nodded and we stood in silence again.

‘You had a bad day?’ I asked after a few minutes.

‘Yeah,’ she sighed, folding her arms. ‘Pretty bad.’

I was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Want me to do a tap dance for you?’

She blinked at me. ‘What?’

‘To cheer you up. Here.’ I put my bag down and launched into what was not really a tap dance because I’ve never done tap dancing and I wasn’t wearing tap shoes. But it always made my dad laugh when I attempted it in our sitting room so I thought it might go down well.

Jess watched me, baffled. And when Danny came along to walk home with her, I stopped. She didn’t say anything but threw me a big smile over her shoulder as they left. The next day when I arrived at school, preparing for yet another terrifying morning of being the new girl no one was interested in, they both came over to me and asked if I needed showing around the place.

Ever since then Jess and Danny have really taken care of me at school. They showed me the ropes, like where to stand in assembly so you don’t get spat on by over-enthusiastic teachers during the hymns, and how to get the dinner ladies to give you second helpings.

Jess even picks me to be on her team in PE despite knowing I’m completely useless. I did tell her last term that she didn’t have to do that, and I wouldn’t be insulted as I know I’m one of the worst.

‘Whatever, Anna,’ she’d replied breezily. ‘It’s not a pity thing. I like having you on my team. It’s more of a challenge to win that way. And you know I love a challenge. Plus you provide excellent comic relief.’

She can say what she likes, I know she picks me because she doesn’t want me to be last.

Yep, it definitely would have been good right now to be Jess but I wasn’t. I was me. It sucked. I walked into the lesson apprehensively, noticed that the room hushed, and went to sit down in my chair. Immediately a shadow fell over my desk and I blinked up to see Sophie Parker staring down at me with her arms folded, her light grey eyes narrowing at me and her glossy highlighted hair falling neatly around her shoulders.

‘Hannah, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Um. Anna.’

‘Right. Jess Delby’s best friend.’

Uh oh.

‘So I heard about what happened yesterday, obviously. What you tried to do to my best friend. What is wrong with you? You could have really hurt her.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Sophie. Josie had her hair singed and that was it,’ a voice piped up from the corner.