Friends Forever! (5 page)

“With who?” I asked. Fleur's boyfriends tend to change quickly.

“Spencer Pickett!” she said. “Half-grown goatee? Ate a lot of Oreos? Rode a very small child's bike everywhere?”

“Oh
him,
” I shuddered. “You need to be healed over him?”

“Awww . . . he was quite nice, y'know, Ronnie?” Fleur argued. “He had a good heart, y'know? I could have really fallen in love with him. Well . . . if that judge hadn't put that antisocial behavior order on him so he couldn't visit our side of town.”

“What a spoilsport,” I muttered dryly.

“I know!” tutted Fleur. “He only smashed up one bus shelter. Well, two. Okay, three if you count the big SPENNY he spray-painted on the one on Holmacres Drive.”

“Hmmm. Yes, he was quite the guerrilla artist,” I muttered. “So you're having Reiki over Spencer then?”

“Well, Cressida's not entirely sure,” Fleur said. “It could be a past-life scarring issue I need help with.”

“Past-life scarring?” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

“Yes!” said Fleur. “Cressida says she gets the feeling I've lived before as one of Cleopatra's ladies-in-waiting! Isn't that freaky?”

“Hmmm,” I said, putting down the guitar. “Well, what's freakier, I reckon, is how no one ever seems to have a past life working in a pie shop. Or as a public toilet attendant! Do nonglamorous people never get reborn?”

Fleur's face dropped. She usually laughs at my jokes. “Well, I'm really psyched about it anyhow,” she muttered.

“Oh . . . well,” I said quickly, realizing I'd somehow hurt her. “I'm sure it'll feel amazing!”

“I know!” Fleur said, brightening a little. “And I'll get to see Cressida's house too! It's one of those big new ones on Larkrise Manor, down the road from Panama Goodyear's mansion. Apparently Cressida has the entire basement all to herself! And they've got a hot tub too, so I'm taking my bikini.” “Cool,” I smiled, feeling slightly rattled inside.

I couldn't quite get my head around this whole Cressida business. I mean, okay, it wasn't strange that Claude was studying with her—they had seven classes in common—but now Fleur was warming to her too! It was really unsettling. These days, whenever Claude, Fleur and Cressida came back from biology (a subject I was too thick to take) they always had a side-splitting story or a new-age tip to discuss. Or worst of all, a private joke they'd invented when I wasn't there.

But when I tried to be friends with Cressida, she just wasn't interested.

I tried inviting her to sit with me in German, the only class we had together, but she said she suffered migraines if she didn't sit near the board. I offered to study vocab with her, but she said she didn't need my help. But weirdest of all, whenever Cressida and I had to walk anywhere together, she'd say absolutely nothing at all.

Not a word.

So I'd yadder away, making jokes and telling stories, feeling stupider and more flippant by the second, trying to fill the silence. Eventually Cressida would finish these little agonizing one-on-ones by turning to me, forcing a smile and saying something like, “You're very funny, aren't you, Ronnie? You're simply always the clown. It must be soooo exhausting being you.”

What the hell did that mean?!

The second we rejoined Claude and Fleur, she'd be charm personified, wowing them with tales of crystals and hot stone therapy.

Was I just being paranoid?

Maybe I was so pathetic and needy I just couldn't cope sharing the LBD with anyone? Let's face it: I couldn't even handle Fleur visiting another girl's house for a healing session! Ugh! How freakish and clingy was that?

I vowed right then to try harder to be friends with Cressida Sleeth.

It was a fortnight later, early last December, and the LBD were gathered in HQ, Fleur's bedroom, to discuss some ultra-hot topics, namely:

a. Jimi Steele being really distant and buttmunchy lately. Fleur reckoned he had Asperger's syndrome.

b. Claude's mum's boss, Mr. Rayner, running away to Bermuda with his twenty-seven-year-old big-boobed legal assistant, leaving Gloria Cassiera out of a job. And . . .

c. Fleur's new boyfriend, Thurston Barron, who was turning out to have very wandering hands and spent most dates, it seemed, trying to knead Fleur's boobs into one big central one. Not nice. He had to go.

 

 

So, with all this business to deal with, why were we talking about Cressida?

“Hang on! What do you mean, I give out negative energy to Cressida?” I fumed as Fleur and Claude gazed at me sympathetically.

“Mmm, well, she wasn't really specific,” Fleur mused. “Something to do with your chakras being out of alignment.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” I sighed, feeling my cheeks flush with anger.

“Hey, hang on, Ron, you're taking this all wrong. Cressida wasn't being bitchy,” Claude reassured me. “She wants us all to be friends. She just has a few issues with the, er, darker side of your aura.”

“Darker side of my aura? But I've been really nice to her!” I said vehemently. “I'm always nice to her.”

Why was I defending myself to my two best friends?

“Awww, Ronnie, chill out,” Fleur laughed, leaping over and giving me a hug. “We're not getting at you. It's not that big a deal.”

“That's right, Ronnie,” whispered Claude, grabbing my hand. “Don't get upset. It's just that, well, you have to admit Cressida must be lonely spending every lunch hour studying in the library.”

“And when we invited her to eat with us,” continued Fleur, “she said . . . well, she said she didn't want to increase the bad vibes.”

“There aren't any bad vibes!” I said.

“We know,” said Fleur. “It's just a silly misunderstanding.”

“Y'know what Cressida's like—she's just really sensitive,” Claude said rather fondly. “Let me talk to her.”

 

 

One week later, with our “silly misunderstanding” ironed out, the LBD swept into Blackwell's lunch hall with Cressida Sleeth tottering daintily in our wake. Claude and Fleur were soooo happy. We had truly been honored, in their eyes. They didn't raise an eyebrow when Cressida rejected 99 percent of the food offered because of her lacto intolerance, wheat allergies or vegetarian beliefs. Or when she bitched at Dolly the dinner lady about the “seventy-two different pesticides on a nonorganic apple,” or moved us from our usual LBD lunch table by the window because direct sunlight made her “sneezy.” She even began telling us how her dad worked alongside Panama Goodyear's father at the pharmaceutical factory and that she'd started playing tennis with her!

“Wow! We'll get all the insider gossip on Panama and her gang,” laughed Fleur. “It'll be like having a double agent!”

“How cool is that?” beamed Claude, who I'd never had down as prize chump before.

As Fleur yaddered excitedly about the invites she'd bagged for all four of us to Miles Boon's birthday party, I pushed mashed potato around my plate, trying to appear chock-f of happy-happy-joy-joy vibes. This worked at first, but when the conversation flipped over to Cressida and Claude's jam-packed study schedule, I started to feel rather hot and nauseated.

Because things suddenly became crystal clear.

Fleur Swan was one of the most beautiful, well-known girls at Blackwell School (after Panama Goodyear, of course, who is stunning yet clinically evil). Claudette Cassiera was the brainiest, most dedicated GCSE coach a pupil like Cressida could desire.

Of course Ms. Sleeth wanted to hang with them both. But what did I have to offer?

Nothing.

Suddenly I was on very shaky ground.

I was being phased out.

 

 

February came around way too quickly.

Now, you could barely go five minutes at Blackwell without a teacher bumming your life out with a GCSE reminder.

Thankfully, however,
Mistress Minny III: The Witches of Philadelphia
was finally hitting cinemas that Friday the 13th, and the LBD had a big girlie night out planned. Claude just loves
Mistress Minny.
She has read all the books ten times over and lurks about on the web message boards analyzing subplots and symbolism. What a geek! She even harangued Fleur and me to dress up like Mistress Minny for the screening! Luckily, we presented a united front against the plan, although Claude still wore a green pointy nose and stick-on face boils for the ticket line. She looked really funny.

It felt just like old times, just me, Claude and Fleur. Yet annoyingly, just as we were finding our seats in the dark, a dismally familiar voice shattered my good mood.

“Sorry I'm late, ladies,” Cressida Sleeth announced. “Dad was late home from the factory, so I had to beg a lift from . . . er, the girl down the road. . . . Hey, Claude,
loving
the nose!”

“Cressy!” Fleur and Claude said, laughing and giving her hugs and air kisses. They'd started air kissing lately. It made me queasy.

“Cressida,” I said, nodding acknowledgment.

“Hey, Ron! Fabby jeans,” said Cressida, pointing at my new indigo hipsters before kissing the nothingness past both of my ears.

My skin crawled.

It seemed there was nothing I could do to stop Cressida from infiltrating the LBD . . . well, without me simply looking insane. Worse still, Cressida was finding out more private, personal bambino business every day.

She knew that the Cassieras were broke and getting really worried about it.

She knew that Jimi and I kept arguing about the fact that I wouldn't lie to Mum and sleep over at his house.

She knew Fleur had been getting overly freaky with Baz Kauffman from Chasterton School and had taken to perusing
Your Body, Yourself
lately with a worried expression.

She'd even been shown that shameful home movie of the LBD, in our underwear, performing various hits from
Moulin Rouge,
filmed during Fleur's birthday slumber party. That
Moulin Rouge
tape needed to be burned, not shown to Cressida Flipping Sleeth!

My instinct shouted that letting Cressida so close was a mistake.

During the film, Fleur was her typical hyperactive self. She yaddered incessantly on her mobile phone, began an interschool popcorn battle with some lads from Lymewell Academy, shouted out plot spoilers . . . and probably worst of all, right at the most touching, serious part of the film, let out a long squeaky bottom explosion, before shouting, “Oooh, Ronnie Ripperton! That stinks!” The entire theater erupted in laughter. I could have strangled her!

As we filed out of the multiplex afterward, Baz Kauffman sped up in his VW Golf, wearing sunglasses at night and too much hair wax for my taste, blaring bad 200-beats-per-minute happy hard-core music through his sunroof. He looked ridiculous, but Fleur still climbed inside the car, begging us to cover for her until 9:30 P.M.

Claude and I just rolled our eyes and nodded.

“C'mon, girls,” smiled Claude, linking arms with me and Cressida. “Let's go and get coffee at Ruby's Cafe.”

“Great!” smiled Cressida.

“You okay, Ronnie?” asked Claude.

“Fine,” I said. Cressida put her head down, stifling a smile. We walked in silence.

About ten minutes farther down the road, Cressida eventually spoke. “Fleur was a live wire tonight, wasn't she?” she said matter-of-factly. “That usherette was so angry when she spilled her Pepsi!”

“Oh, that's our Fleur for you,” chuckled Claude fondly. “Acts like a chimpanzee in public. We're constantly embarrassed by her, eh, Ronnie?”

“Hmmm,” I said.

Cressida smiled and said nothing. “So that was Baz?” she asked. “The one she's been snogging?”

“Mmm . . . yeah, think so. Looked like him,” said Claude, distracted by her watch. “She's got a different lad slobbering after her every week. She's probably lost track herself by now. Hey, anyway, come on—Ruby only serves until 9 P.M.”

“But are the smoothies and cakes organic?” asked Cressida.

“Not sure,” said Claude. “We can ask.”

I watched as they wandered off, giggling merrily.

The following day, Saturday, I didn't hear a word from the LBD. I assumed everyone was working on GCSE projects, what with the deadlines being near. But by Sunday night when Fleur ignored my third totally hilarious text message, I decided to call.

“Yes,” Fleur said rather oddly.

“All right, babe?” I chirped. “Why's your phone off? You okay?”

“I'm fine,” she clipped.

“Er . . . been busy?”

“Just studying,” she said. Fleur sounded angry. “Oh, and Cressida popped by with a biology textbook for me last night. We made brownies together.”

“Right,” I said. There was an awkward silence. “You sound weird, Fleur, what's up?”

“Nothing,” said Fleur. “Gotta go.”

“Fleur!” I shouted. “Tell me what's up!”

“Hmmm . . . well, okay then!” Fleur said, taking a deep breath. “I just think that if you and Claude find me such an embarrassment in public, then I won't come out with you ever again!”