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  “Right,” she said in the brisk sergeant-major voice she always used to rally her troops. “Since Chas and Paul have made up we need to start Operation House Party.”

  “You’re on,” Mimi responded immediately. “We need something to look forward to or we’ll all go stark raving mad.”

  “Actually,” Chastity cut in, looking slightly flustered again, “Paul’s parents are coming back early, so we definitely can’t do it there.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Liv said, ever practical and keen not to let the good mood slip away. “We’ll have a night out instead.”

  “Yep,” agreed Jinx, “it doesn’t matter what we do, so long as we’ve got something to bloody well look forward to.”

  “What about that Sugar Club on the seafront?” Charlie asked. “Liv and I went there with my brother last term—the music was awesome and we danced all night. We’ve all got our fake IDs, right?”

  Everyone nodded. Fake IDs had been an essential part of their lives since they were about fourteen. Liv had one of her twenty-year-old sister Liz’s old driving licenses; Liz had given Charlie one of her friend’s old halls-of-residence entry cards; Jinx had a University of Bristol student card that one of George’s many blonde girlfriends had left behind after a dirty weekend in the New Forest; Liberty had the brunette version—stolen to order by George after she’d banged on about how unfair it was that Jinx had one and she didn’t; and Chastity’s mother’s fiancé had created an amazingly good fake copy of his British Library card on his Mac and slipped it to her on Christmas day. He’d even laminated it—he was so back in the good books.

  All rifts and unhappy thoughts forgotten in their delight at the prospect of some actual fun in their immediate futures, the lower sixth pushed their dirty plates to one side, conveniently forgot to hear the bell announcing the start of the daily chapel service, pulled their chairs forward and gathered in close around the table for a serious discussion about the weekend, headed by Liv and Charlie.

  13 It’s Amazing What Thoughts of a Party Can Do

  Anyone who had Seen them earlier would be shocked at the transformation for the better in the moods of the lower sixth as they marched up the steep, narrow and winding stairs clearly marked DOWN that led to the top floor above the main entrance, the tower of which housed Stagmount’s excellent, world-renowned modern languages department.

  They’d started huffing up the DOWN and vice versa purposefully to piss off their former French teacher, Mrs. Susan Dickinson—aka The Dick. She, to the great relief of the girls, the other staff, and the parents, none of whom had warmed to her, had resigned suddenly at the end of last term, alongside Mrs. Gunn, Jinx’s old housemistress from Wollstonecraft. Only Jinx knew the truth, for it was she who had caught The Dick and Gunn sucking face and probably a lot of other things she didn’t much care to think about—thank God it had been pretty dark in there—in the bike sheds at the end of last term. She had, rather cleverly she thought with a tiny smile, pretended to record the sick event on her mobile phone and used the threat of revealing the imaginary footage to blackmail them both into resigning pretty much straight away. She giggled to herself as she imagined the unspeakable couple snuggling up in bed together every night and getting up to unspeakably filthy activities in their vegetable patch, happy as Larry she was sure. Total gross-out!

  Racing down to the pitch twenty minutes later, on a total high to be out of that boring class, hair blowing in their faces thanks to the wind coming straight off the sea with no breakers in its way, the lower sixth were amused when they clocked a line of blushing third-years coming towards them up the hill in the direction of the changing rooms they’d just vacated and left in a filthy mess. Constantly looking over their shoulders to where Dirk was sorting the pile of red and blue bibs into two piles—incongruously tanned for the time of year and sporting yet another bright white Adidas tracksuit with matching trainers—giggling and waving, the younger ones were clearly even more smitten with the idiot than ever.

  In the summer term this particular pitch doubled as an athletics track, and was surrounded by a high verge complete with lots of benches for parents who didn’t wish to sit on rugs during the traditional summer sports day picnic. But, with the darkly churning sea furiously smacking into the cliffs beneath them, it looked bleak as hell today.

  The triplets—wearing the pink-and-white football shirts with matching socks that they’d purchased in town especially for this occasion to the great hilarity of the rest of the lower sixth—provided light relief from the dour aspect of the environment as they ran elegantly towards their destination. Their long blonde perfect ponytails streamed out behind them like three sheets of golden silk and their long slim legs had taken on a charming pinkish tint thanks to the cold air. Jinx found herself looking at them and wondering if they ever found themselves in embarrassing situations or looking less than their best. The sigh she let out as she inwardly admitted to herself that both of these eventualities were highly unlikely was lost to the wind as the girls came to a stop in front of Dirk. The coach fiddled with the gelled spikes of hair he spent hours every morning training to stand up from his head and grinned like a maniac way more at the triplets than anyone else.

  Katie Green stood outside the swimming pool changing rooms that the girls used before and after their football lessons and stared down at the lower sixth. An expression of wistful longing masked the jealous fury that was running rampant through her veins as she considered Daisy Finnegan’s proximity to Jinx, Liberty, Chastity, Liv, and Charlie—her heroines, the girls she thought about as she tossed and turned in bed every night. Daisy didn’t even like them. So how was it fair that she got to spend all day and night with them when Katie couldn’t? They don’t even know I exist, Katie thought, and resolved to do something to change this. She was convinced that if only the lower sixth knew who she was they would love her. She hadn’t thought of anything to make them notice her yet, but as soon as she came up with a suitable plan she resolved to put it into immediate action. Her crush was definitely becoming unmanageable—these members of the lower sixth who had barely registered her existence were literally all she thought about. Katie’s current thoughts were interrupted however, when Betsy Johnson, one of the most popular girls in her year, sprinted out the door towards the main school, obviously late for something or other.

  “What are you looking at, cock face?” Betsy shot Katie a look of such pitying disdain as she passed her that the other flushed a dull red before turning to trudge through the door towards the shower block.

  Down on the pitch the lower sixth, busily warming up for their first football lesson by sprinting round the edge of the vast field, were unaware of any scrutiny.

  14 Curveball

  Jinx was slumped in the old reference library trying to concentrate on the complicated French translation that was due in Mr. Christie’s pigeonhole first thing tomorrow morning while examining her nails at the same time.

  She picked at a couple of chips in the bright pink Jessica varnish—the bloody stuff was called “flirty,” she thought morosely, not that she’d been doing much of that lately, except in her head—she’d applied in a very slapdash fashion in front of the telly the night before, until she gave them up as a bad job and rummaged around in the depths of her handbag for the small mirror emblazoned with the legend “don’t treat me any differently than you would the queen” on one side and “I’m bored, please send drugs” on the other which she always took about with her. She held it up in front of her face and leant back slightly to study her eyebrows as best she could in the dim February afternoon light that was struggling to stream through the latticed library windows.

  “Oi,” hissed Liv, looking up from where she was sitting, directly opposite Jinx on the narrow library study benches. “Have you finished that French prep?”

  Jinx shook her head and frowned. The last thing she needed was a bloody homework monitor watching her every move from across the way. Especially Liv, for God’s sake!


  “Well crack on, love,” Liv said, running an exasperated hand through her very short hair. “I want to have a look at it when you’re done. I’ll swap you my English essay.”

  Jinx sighed, pushed all thoughts of Jamie and why he hadn’t yet called her to one side and turned her attention back to the boring translation. Why did nothing interesting ever happen to the deathly dull characters in these ridiculous stories? Who gave a toss about Madame Dupont and her boring bloody son going on yet another silly outing to the fucking market, which seemed to be staffed entirely by tossers, morons, and retards?

  The pair of them had been hard at it with their heads firmly down for a good forty-five minutes by the time Jo, Mrs. B.’s secretary, bustled over, shaking her own Titian-coloured head at the sheer injustice of having had practically no time alone to put her feet up and enjoy a good old read about Britney, Paris, and Nicole’s latest goings on.

  “Jinx Slater.” Jo tapped the back of Jinx’s chair to get her attention. “I’ve been all over the school looking for you.” She paused and looked confused. “I didn’t expect to find you in here. Are you working?”

  “Yes,” Jinx said, looking round indignantly. “I DO occasionally work you know. Especially this bloody term—we don’t seem to do anything else these days.”

  “Too true,” muttered Liv, a brief but unmistakable look of disgust passing across her extraordinarily innocent-looking face before she sighed and returned her attention to the large pile of books in front of her.

  “Well anyway,” said Jo, handing one of her black- and red-lined memorandum notes to Jinx, “someone phoned for you. I would have left it in your pigeonhole as usual, but he said it was extremely urgent that you call him back as soon as possible.”

  Jinx raised her eyebrows. She had no idea who would call her at school like this; everyone she knew had her mobile number. She never went anywhere without it and very rarely received calls on the school line.

  “Funny name,” Jo said, directing a knowing smirk at Jinx, “for an uncle.”

  Jo bustled off self-importantly in the direction of her desk and Oscar-night dress disasters whilst Jinx unfolded the paper. When she saw what it contained she couldn’t stop herself from emitting a loud shout of laughter, causing several people in the library to turn round and give her evil looks for daring to breach the peace during important revision time like this.

  “FOR: Jinx Slater,” it read in Jo’s curly, black, and very posh handwriting. “FROM: Your Uncle Jamie Trouser-Snake. RE: He urgently needs to know if you are available to accompany him to special-needs line dancing on Saturday afternoon. Please phone him ASAP.”

  Jinx smiled delightedly. Her heart pounded at what felt like a hundred beats a minute, her face was transfused with a peachy glow, and she experienced a physical clench of excitement grip her stomach and refuse to let go. She transferred the number scrawled at the bottom of the sheet into her phone. She tapped the digits as happily into the little keyboard as if she were banging out a truly amazing house remix on a set of silver decks at the closing night of the Space bar in Ibiza.

  “Bloody hell,” giggled Liv after leaning across the desk—flashing the top of her bright pink lacy French knickers at the whole room in the process—and reading the note herself. “Well Slater…I’m impressed! You’ve done the perve, now it’s time to do the swerve!”

  “What?” hissed Jinx, jumping up and shoving her books haphazardly into her “I Love Me” white canvas book bag with a big glittery purple heart on the side. She chucked her lip gloss, pencil case, phone, and the half-eaten king-sized Mars bar she’d been thoughtfully nibbling on as she wrote into her handbag without much more ceremony.

  “I’ll tell you behind the bike sheds,” Liv replied with a surprisingly lewd wink given her general countenance of beyond-reproach innocence, grabbing Jinx’s hand and dragging her as fast as possible towards the door and freedom. “Come on!”

  Liv and Jinx sat on orange plastic stacking crates next to the grounds man’s tractor in the semidarkness of the garage behind the tuck shop and drew deep tokes from a strong skunk spliff. Liv, who really was an extraordinarily handy kind of person to have around the place, had produced it from her pencil case with a flourish as soon as they’d crawled under the slightly open sliding garage door and settled themselves comfortably a safe enough distance from the front.

  “So what’s all this perve and swerve business then?” Jinx asked with a small, stoned-sounding giggle, clutching the note tight against her thigh, where it lay in the pocket of her Sass and Bide grey skinny jeans and passing the smoking spliff to Liv.

  “First you perve, and then you swerve.” Liv looked at Jinx, inhaled and creased up before continuing. “It’s standard love talk, Jinx. My sister and her friends say it all the time. Basically, when you, like, really fancy someone and you’ve got a major crush on them and you’re thinking about them all the time, that’s called perving—when you perve over them. And then,” continued Liv, “when you decide to do something about it, seal the deal, cross the line, make a move, or whatever you want to call it, that’s when you swerve someone. And the action of swerve is swerving. Get it?”

  “Like total,” Jinx said, plucking the spliff from Liv’s outstretched fingers and smiling with delight. “I love it. In fact, I can’t wait to tell George—he gets off on stuff like this—he’ll definitely love it too.”

  “So, back to the matter at hand,” said Liv, exhaling an impressive smoke ring as she did so, “it’s bleeding obvious that Jamie is, like, totally digging the Jinx-meister’s action. When are you going to call him?”

  “I don’t know,” Jinx squeaked, suddenly terrified at the thought of having to hold an at least reasonably sentient telephone conversation with the object of her heart’s desires. “He said ‘ASAP’ so maybe…um…tonight? And what the hell am I going to say to him when I do get him on the phone?”

  “You’ve got to plan it,” said Liv firmly. “And you’ve got to work out what you want to do on Saturday before you speak to him, too—that way you’ll be able to make things go your way without any effort at all. Hey, you need to relax!”

  “Fuck!” Jinx started as if she’d been shot when the garage door began to creak open. Someone was obviously hauling it open from the other side and she hastily stubbed the rest of the spliff out before shoving it deep into one of her extra tight pockets when she suddenly felt a decidedly warm spot pressing against the outside of her thigh. Dammit! She winced as she thought about the inevitable burn mark in her brand-new, most favourite pair of jeans ever, but there was no time to do anything else about it. The garage door was halfway open before the pair inside breathed two massive sighs of relief and started breathing normally again.

  “Bloody hell,” hissed a somewhat breathless Jinx as she realized the intruders were none other than Liberty and Chastity. “You two gave us such a freaking fright. I thought I was going to get expelled for sure this time! What the hell are you doing sneaking up on us like that?”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” said Chastity, marching to where they were seated and leaving Liberty to yank the door back down into its customary almost closed position.

  “So, what’s new?” Liberty asked, turning round and looking expectantly at Jinx and Liv. “What’s with all the running around like crazies-in-the-rain stuff?”

  “I have perved. And now,” said Jinx with a delighted giggle, “I am going to swerve.”

  Liv offered her hand to Jinx and the pair of them high-fived before collapsing into hysterical floods of laughter.

  “What?” asked Chastity, who was busy fastidiously checking her crate for dirt and dust before she sat down on it, legs crossed demurely at the ankles.

  “Yeah, what are you two on?” Liberty asked.

  “She’s only gone and had a phone message from Sir Jamie himself,” Liv burst out, unable to hold this exciting information inside a second longer. “He wants her to call him and said something about going out on Saturday.”


  “Yeah,” said Jinx, “he’s taking me to a special-needs line-dancing class.”

  “I don’t get it,” Liberty said, looking confused. “Why would he want to take you to that? And you’d better make sure you don’t laugh like that when you’re speaking to him, Jinx, or there’s no way in hell you’ll be going on a second date. That’s for freaking sure!”

  “Okay, okay,” Jinx mumbled, reflecting that she really must learn to be more ladylike in her enthusiasms. “Point taken. Anyway, it’s true. Jamie phoned Jo and said he was my Uncle Trouser-Snake and could I phone him to discuss our plans for Saturday. Well, I take it that was what he meant. It was pretty funny. Look.” Jinx paused, rummaged in her pocket for the note, which she was dismayed to see had a big brown burn mark in it from where the joint had caught against it in her pocket, and passed it over. “Check it out.”

  There was a brief silence as Chastity and Liberty bent their blonde and brown heads together over the note and digested its contents. They looked up at the exact same time a few seconds later, matching expressions of thrilled excitement on their expectant faces, waiting to see Jinx’s reaction at their having read it. They were not to be disappointed.

  “I think it’s fucking ace,” said Chastity, grabbing one of Jinx’s hands and squeezing it hard, “and if you’re worried about missing out on a night with us, well, don’t be!”

  “Me too, and Chas is right,” Liberty agreed before narrowing her eyes at Jinx and staring at her reflexively. “Although what the hell are you going to wear?”

  “Never mind that now,” Liv cut in—she found Liberty’s obsession with fashion somewhat draining to say the least although, it must be said, she never looked too badly turned out herself. “We’ve got to work out what she’s going to say on the bloody phone first!”

  What with all this perving and swerving, wardrobe issues, and phone-call concerns, Jinx barely knew whether she was coming or going. She sat with her knees pulled tightly up to her chest, linked her arms around them, and leant forward towards her pals, an expression of such rapt attention on her glowing face that any teacher who saw it would assume, rightly, that she was giving nothing less than 110 percent to the task at hand.