Read Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco Online
Authors: Sue Limb
Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco
For Alex Meyers
Contents
By Sue Limb (in reading order):
Jess Jordan’s Top Tips for How to Deal with Your Mum’s Online Dating
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.
‘Just . . . a friend,’ said Ben shyly.
Jess wondered who the lucky girl would be. She had a feeling Ben might bring somebody who didn’t go to their school. So many girls at Ashcroft School drooled over him, it was almost a GCSE option. Jess had passed that exam with flying colours – she’d adored him for at least six months, until she’d realised that Fred, though often irritating, was somehow more her sort of guy.
‘Fred!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t just stand there! Make another list!’
‘OK,’ said Fred, getting out his notebook. ‘Uhhh, right: tea, milk, pasta, kitchen roll, talcum powder . . .’
‘Fred!!???’ yelled Jess. ‘What kind of list is that?’
‘Oh, just my favourite foods,’ quipped Fred. ‘Talcum powder is great sprinkled on porridge.’ He put on his brilliant-but-vacant professor’s face, and everybody laughed.
‘Fred,’ insisted Jess, trying to stay calm, ‘make a list of the people who are collecting tickets!’
Fred clicked open his pen. ‘What’s your name, sir?’ he asked Ben.
‘He’s Santa Claus, and I’m Rudolf!’ yelled Mackenzie.
‘And I’m Madonna!’ added Jodie. ‘Hey, stop pushing!’
It was all getting a bit frantic, but Jess could see that, whatever Fred was saying, he was writing down people’s real names – more or less. Although his handwriting was so spidery it was going to take them a week to decipher it.
‘This is such a great idea, babe,’ Jess’s best friend, Flora, said into her left ear. Flo squeezed Jess’s arm. ‘It’s going to be such a blast! I’m proud to even know you. Gimme my eight tickets! Mum, Dad, Felicity and Rob, Freya and her horrible Danny, and me and Jack – I must win the prize for buying the most tickets ever!’
‘I remember your dad’s cheque,’ said Jess with a smile. ‘It was the biggest cheque I’ve ever seen!’ For a fleeting second, Jess hoped that Flora’s dad’s cheque was safe with the others in the plastic box at the bottom of her wardrobe (or was it in a big envelope under her bed?). She and Fred must get around to opening a proper bank account for the dinner dance – at £75 for a double ticket, these were big bucks (by Jess’s standards, anyway).
‘It’s going to be awesome!’ Flora went on, staring dreamily at her tickets. ‘Such a brilliant idea to make it a family thing! So the parents don’t mind shelling out and everything. If it was just for teenagers I don’t think my dad would even let me come.’
‘And think of all the money you’ll raise for Oxfam!’ added Ben.
Jess felt a horrid little lurch of panic: any profit was going to Oxfam, so that made it even more vital to sort out the money side. She suddenly remembered she’d put some cash in her chest of drawers as well – stuffed in a sock or something.
‘Are you going to host it, Fred?’ asked Jodie, grinning. ‘I hope you’ve got some brilliant gags lined up!’
‘We’re going to co-host it,’ Jess informed Jodie coldly.
‘Yeah, the famous Jess ’n’ Fred double act!’ Flora backed her up. ‘That’s why the tickets are going like hot cakes!’
‘No,’ said Mackenzie with a strange, almost mischievous grin. ‘It’s because they’re dirt cheap! My dad said he didn’t see how you could do a decent dinner dance for the price!’
Jess felt a flare of annoyance. Mackenzie’s dad said that, did he? Right! She would single him out for a bit of sarcastic banter during the co-hosting stand-up routine . . .
Walking home after school, Fred and Jess discussed their triumph. At least, it nearly felt like a triumph.