The Real Rebecca (8 page)

Monday

I was going to write ‘today was the worst day of my life’,
but the way things are going around here at the moment I’ll end up writing that every day, so I’ll just say that today was as terrible as I thought it would be and it’s all my mother’s fault. As usual. At first I thought that it was actually going to be quite a good day: first of all, I was a bit late but not too late – I arrived just as the second bell was going so I was able to sneak into the classroom with Alice and Cass and not talk to anyone. Then we had English first class (which I had been totally dreading, for obvious reasons) and it turned out that Mrs Harrington wasn’t in so we all had to go the library. We always pray that we’ll have a free class, but our teachers are apparently immune to all germs as they are hardly ever out sick. Us girls will be wheezing and coughing and puking away and not a single germ do those teachers catch. So anyway, we had a free class, and I thought I could just sit there and read something entertaining, but Karen Rodgers was sitting behind me. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Karen Rodgers before. One day during the summer Cass and Alice and I were in a strangely hippyish mood, talking about how cool it is that our class actually all get on pretty well with each other and how there’s a genuinely friendly atmosphere, and then
Cass remembered Karen Rodgers and Alice and I both went ‘oh, yeah’ in exactly the same depressed tone. Karen Rodgers isn’t a bully, but it’s not for want of trying. She’s just kind of mean and sarky and she’s always making unfunny jokes at other people’s expense. Her best (and only) friend is Alison Smith, who is actually okay, if a bit annoying, when she’s on her own, but when Karen is around she turns into a sniggering sidekick.

So anyway. No sooner had I taken
Pride and Prejudice
out of my bag than something poked me in the back. I turned around and Karen was smirking at me and waving a pencil.

‘What?’ I said, in my rudest voice. Well, rudest whisper.

‘I saw you in the paper,’ said Karen. ‘Were you making that face on purpose?’

I felt myself go red with rage, but I couldn’t think of anything clever to say so I just turned around and ignored Karen’s hideous sniggering (I should have said, ‘Yeah, I was doing an impersonation of you.’ Damn. I just thought of that now. Why didn’t I think of that this morning?). She poked me in the back again. but luckily Miss Brady, the school librarian, noticed and told her to stop. Miss Brady is
a bit scary so Karen did stop and as soon as the free class was over I marched out before she could poke me again with her revolting pencil. It really is disgusting. She chews the end so it’s all gross and falling to bits. Why is she eating wood anyway? Perhaps she is part beaver.

But worse was to come. When the free class was over we were walking to the next class and on the way a few girls from other years pointed at me and whispered to each other. I heard a senior girl going ‘yeah, she was in the paper at the weekend. Her mum wrote a book about her or something!’ And then things got even worse. The next class was in Room 7, which is our class 2:2’s form room (which means we have lunch there and our lockers are there) and when we went in, we saw that someone had got the awful photo of me and Mum and put it up on the noticeboard. And they’d blown it up on a photocopier so it was huge. That was all bad enough. But someone had written ‘2:2’s OWN PAGE THREE GIRL’ above the photo. Everyone stared at the photo and then at me and lots of them were laughing. I wanted to die. But then, without saying a word, Alice marched straight over, tore it down, crumpled it up, and without missing a beat she threw it all
the way across the room into the bin. A perfect shot! Who knew she had such good aim? She should join the second-year basketball team. Everyone was so surprised by this that they shut up and then our maths teacher Miss Condren came in so that was the end of that. But the feeling that everyone was laughing at me behind my back went on all day. Alice and Cass said I’m just being paranoid but I know I’m not.

In fact, the world seems to have gone mad. Vanessa Finn was nice to me at lunch today. It was very weird. She usually just ignores me, which is fine by me. In fact she ignores almost all of us because she thinks we’re common. But not today. Me and Cass and Alice and Ellie and Emma Donnelly were lurking in the cloakroom and they were all being very kind and telling me that everything will blow over, and I was actually feeling okay as long as I could hide there forever. But I had to go to the loo (I shouldn’t have drunk that smoothie so quickly) and on the way back Vanessa just leaped out in front of me (well, she didn’t quite leap, she just walked round a corner, but it felt like being leaped out on) and said, ‘Hi, Rebecca!’ in a strangely friendly voice.

‘Hi,’ I said, and tried to walk past her, but she moved in front of me (she is surprisingly nimble for someone who spends most of her time wearing ginormous fluffy boots).

‘So, how are you?’ she said.

‘Grand,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I’m just …’

‘I just wanted to say that I thought that photo of you in the paper was so cool,’ she said.

‘What?!’ I said.

‘Yeah, you looked great,’ she said.

‘Um, thanks,’ I said. And then the bell rang for class, so I sort of smiled and went back to the others to get my bag. I have to admit, I was genuinely touched. Maybe she is not such a snooty cow after all? She is obviously not telling the truth, as I did not look great in that photo, but it is quite kind of her to lie to me. Although she is still a bit odd.

Anyway, the afternoon went past in a sort of blur apart from the bits between classes where it felt like everyone was staring at me until (AT LAST) the final bell rang. I went back to my locker to dump some stuff while Cass and Alice got their blazers and Karen bloody Rodgers was there. She was smirking at me (it seems to be her default expression) and when I was leaving she said, ‘Watch out for the
paparazzi!’ And her horrible sidekick Alison laughed like this was the funniest thing anyone has ever said in the history of the world. I hate both of them.

At least I’m home now. You can take it for granted, by the way, that I’m still not talking to Mum, but I had to give in and eat her food. I couldn’t take any more eggs. Or sausages. So I grudgingly shovelled in some lentil and chicken casserole this evening. Lentils sound disgusting but actually they are delicious when they’re mixed up with chicken and bacon and mushrooms and stuff, and that casserole is one of my favourite things – I think Mum might be trying to win me round with food. I can’t be bought that easily, though. Not after a day like today. When will this nightmare end?!

Tuesday

What is up with Vanessa Finn? She was being weird again today. I was getting stuff out of my locker this morning and when I closed the door she was standing behind it smiling. I would have shrieked if I hadn’t given up
shrieking forever after the Paperboy incident.

‘So!’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘Um … okay,’ I said. ‘Fine.’ Her sudden friendliness is making me nervous.

‘How are you finding being a celebrity?’ She was still smiling in a slightly mad way.

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘A celebrity, I mean.’

‘Oh, come on, you’re like, completely famous now,’ she said.

‘Well, not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, it was just one …’ But Vanessa interrupted me.

‘You were in two papers,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know you paid so much attention to papers,’ I said, trying to edge around her.

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Vanessa (sounding like more like her usual snooty self). ‘My mum was reading it and I saw the photo of you and said, ‘God, that’s that girl from my class at school’. And my mum was, like, so impressed and said that your mum is some super-famous celebrity writer, or something. My mum’s, like, obsessed with your mum’s books.’

Oh God, not another one.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘So yeah,’ said Vanessa, ‘I didn’t know your mum was a famous writer, or whatever.’ Well, at least someone hasn’t been paying any attention to Mrs Harrington all term. That’s kind of good to know. ‘You don’t have the same surname, do you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Rafferty’s my dad’s surname. My mum didn’t change her name when she got married.’ I’d done it! I’d squeezed around her. ‘Um, I’ll see you later, Vanessa.’ And I ran out of the room down the corridor before she could say anything else. But why is she being so weirdly friendly to me in the first place? I don’t think it’s really kindness. She’s up to something. Although maybe she has just taken a good look at the state of my hair and realised that at least one of her classmates is definitely not going to be a hairdresser. Anyway, it is starting to get annoying.

And it was not the only annoying part of today. Karen Rodgers, whose life is apparently so boring she has to look to me for entertainment, had great fun with her stupid little pal at lunch today talking very loudly about SOME PEOPLE who supposedly think they’re SO COOL because their MOTHER wrote a BOOK about them.
This is particularly irritating because of course I don’t think it’s cool my mother wrote a book that possibly has some connection to me (I refuse to acknowledge that Ruthie O’Reilly’s life could actually be mine). I hope that everyone in the class remembers this and that Karen doesn’t brainwash them into thinking I love it.

However, today was not all bad. Mrs Harrington is still sick. Maybe she’ll die? At least that would solve one problem.

I feel a bit guilty about wishing Mrs Harrington would die. I didn’t mean it really. Obviously. But what if she does? Die, I mean. I’ll have cursed her!

I am sort of talking to Mum. She asked me whether I would prefer roast chicken or spaghetti carbonara for dinner tomorrow. I had to answer. After all, we don’t get to have roast chicken that often. Who knew food was my weak spot? I can only cook eggs! I’m hardly a gourmet.

Wednesday

Mrs Harrington still not in. I can’t pretend I’m not glad, but I’m starting to get a bit worried about the whole possibly-cursing-her thing. I’m also getting a bit worried about Vanessa. She was being all friendly again today. She asked me if I wanted to go out to her house after school and look at her designs for her giant birthday party (yes, designs. She is designing decorations for some sort of giant tent marquee thing). I didn’t, obviously, and it was a completely weird thing to ask someone you’ve barely spoken to for a year, but I was polite and said I had to go straight home. I would like to think that she has just realised how wonderful I am after sharing a class with me for a year, but I’m afraid that’s probably not true. What is she up to?

But anyway, I don’t care about her so much at the moment, because this evening when we were eating our dinner (roast chicken, yum yum) Rachel said something that has given me a brilliant idea.

‘Hey,’ she said, pouring nearly all the gravy on to her
plate before I’d even got near the gravy jug. ‘Tom’s friend Sam is moving to America for a year and he has to find someone to look after his drum kit. I’m sure you lot won’t know anyone who could take it in, but I said I’d ask.’

That’s when I had my idea.

‘I’ll take it,’ I said.

‘No you won’t,’ said Mum. ‘I’m not having noisy drums in this house.’

‘Ha!’ said Rachel. ‘Like you could play the drums.’