Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (18 page)

Jess arrived panting at Mr Powell’s door, tried to get her breath back and compose herself, and knocked.

‘Come in!’ shouted Mr Powell. Even his ‘Come in’s were louder than other people’s. Jess opened the door, her legs shaking with fright. Mr Powell looked up from behind his desk. Jess stepped inside and closed the door behind her – though she knew that once he began to shout, mere timber would be no protection for the outside world. Such a marvellous concept, the outside world. Would she ever manage to regain it, or would she die right here on the carpet?

‘I’m very sorry I’m late,’ said Jess, handing over the letter. ‘We’ve had a really difficult time at home recently.’

‘So how is your grandmother?’ asked Irritable Powell, opening the envelope.

Jess was startled. Then she remembered that the last time she had spoken to Mr Powell, he thought Granny was suffering a major cardiac crisis. Oh no! Granny hadn’t mentioned the heart attack scare at all – had instead invented some preposterous line about Jess feeling giddy. Jess herself would never lie again. Absolute truth was her only hope. She would throw herself on Mr Powell’s mercy.

‘She’s fine, thank you, sir,’ said Jess. ‘It was just a heart scare, um – I think it was indigestion really.’ This didn’t count as a new lie – it was just the old one reheated. Jess would start telling the truth immediately, from now on, sure, but she wasn’t quite ready to confess to old lies just yet.

Mr Powell’s eyes ran swiftly over the letter. He frowned slightly. Jess felt sick. How soon after the first frown would the shouting start? He looked up. His eyes were like lasers.

‘What’s this about you staying out to all hours?’ he asked, looking severe.

‘That’s not me, that’s my mum,’ said Jess. Thank goodness that for once it was her mum who had been naughty! It was so wonderful, telling the truth. It felt kind of fresh and safe and shiny. She would always tell the truth from now on. Always.

‘My mum’s had to take on extra work in the evenings. She teaches English to Japanese people.’ It wasn’t really a lie to expand Nori into a whole gang. It made Mum’s job sound even more stressful. ‘She had to go out with them last night – to some kind of meeting – and she didn’t get back till two.’

‘Your grandmother doesn’t mention the heart scare at all,’ said Mr Powell, frowning even more ferociously. Jess’s whole body started to tremble.

‘The trouble is, you see . . .’ she said, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

‘What?’ asked Mr Powell, looking majorly harsh.

What could she possibly say that would touch his heart and completely disarm him? She so longed for him to smile at her and offer her sweets. Or failing that, just to stop frowning and interrogating. Suddenly an idea occurred to Jess, like a bright red apple hanging in the air between them. She reached for it.

‘The trouble is . . .’ she went on, ‘my granny’s, well, she’s suffering from dementia. Just slightly. Just a bit. I don’t know whether she actually did have those heart pains yesterday. But the thing is, today she’s got no memory of them at all. That’s why her letter’s a bit – you know. Odd.’

Mr Powell’s face changed. The frown faded. Instead he looked concerned. He got up and walked to the window.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

Bingo!
OK, it was a lie, and a particularly tasteless one, but because Jess was determined to be good from now on, she hoped God would understand. As the teenage carer of a demented person, Jess was apparently entitled to sit down. She collapsed on to the chair, which made a farting noise:
fwwwwarp!
Jess would just have to save that up and laugh about it later.

‘I see,’ said Mr Powell. There was a long pause while he looked out of the window. Jess saw a plane fly past behind his head, high up in the sky. She wished she was in it. Mr Powell appeared deep in thought for a moment, then he turned and faced Jess. His face, though deeply serious, was not unkind.

‘I have talked with Miss Thorn about the problems you’ve been having,’ he said. ‘And we agreed to put you On Report with Loss of Leisure until the end of next week.’ He handed her a card with the timetable set out on it.

‘Every time you have a lesson, you must get the teacher to sign this card,’ said Mr Powell. ‘You bring the card to me at the end of school every day. You will report to me first thing every morning at 8.45. You won’t go to registration with your class. At mid-morning break you will come straight here and do schoolwork.’

He indicated a desk and chair in the corner of his room.

‘You will be allowed fifteen minutes for lunch, and then you will come here and spend the rest of the lunch break here, too – from one o’clock till afternoon school begins. You’ll spend your time here doing schoolwork and homework.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jess meekly.

‘Right. Go along to first lesson now. I’ll make sure Miss Thorn gets this note. And I expect to see you back here at mid-morning break. Five to eleven at the latest, not a moment later.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jess, scrambling to her feet. She stood, waiting to be dismissed.

‘At the end of next week, we’ll review your case,’ said Mr Powell.

Jess nodded humbly and looked down at the carpet. It was a beautiful, flawless cream.

‘All right,’ said Mr Powell. ‘Go to your lesson now. What lesson is it?’

‘French,’ said Jess.

‘Right,’ said Mr Powell. ‘I’ll see you at 10.55.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jess. ‘Thank you.’

She went out, taking a huge breath of relief. He hadn’t shouted! He hadn’t yelled! He hadn’t been horrid! Maybe he had a headache, too. That mega-lie about Granny having dementia had certainly taken the wind out of his sails. Jess just hoped he never met Granny. Though Granny was quite eccentric, so maybe she would give the impression of being slightly mad. Perhaps that was where Jess had got it from.

Jess arrived in the French lesson, muttered a garbled apology in French and slunk to her seat. Everyone was writing an exercise. Jess started it, but her head was whirling. Fred was only three desks away, his back to her. She gazed at his back for a moment. He was wearing the grey jacket. Just think – only yesterday that jacket had been wrapped round her!

By the end of the lesson, Jess hadn’t finished, of course, and there was homework as well. She took the card up to the teacher’s desk for Madame Sault to sign. Everybody else trooped out to their next lesson. Madame Sault examined the work Jess had done in the lesson, and then told her to finish it off in the lunchbreak and bring it to her by the end of the afternoon.

With a saintly smile, Jess assured her she would, and then rushed off to physics. She absolutely mustn’t be late for anything over the next two weeks. She didn’t even have a spare moment to text Flora, who was in a different science set. And though in the past she had often texted her actually
in
physics, secretly under the bench, this time her mobile would stay switched off and in her pocket. She knew one false move could result in the biggest trouble ever.

She knew that her name would be posted up on the staffroom noticeboard as being On Report with Loss of Leisure. Every teacher would look at her with suspicion and disapproval. Loss of Leisure was familiarly known among the inmates of Ashcroft School as LOL. Typical of teachers not to realise it also stood for Laughing out Loud.

Jess tried really hard in physics, even though it was about ‘How Precautions Can Be Taken to Ensure That Electrostatic Charge Can Be Discharged Safely’. The way things were right now, an electric shock was the least of her problems. In fact, it seemed almost an inviting diversion from her treadmill of gloom and duty. Somehow she had to get a glimpse of Fred – just a glimpse – before her appointment of doom with Mr Powell at 10.55 precisely.

Chapter 22

However, Jess didn’t see Fred at the start of break. She rushed from the science block to Mr Powell’s study, pausing only for the fastest pee since the one in the garden with Mr Nishizawa. She knocked on Mr Powell’s door. There was no answer. She waited, then knocked again. No answer. What should she do?

Jess decided just to wait. Her head was in a whirl. She absolutely had to convince Mr Powell that she was a reformed character – or, even better, that she had never been really bad in the first place. It was so harsh that this term had got off to such a vile start.

Since she seemed unexpectedly to have a spare moment, she got out her mobile and texted Flora.
guess what! i’m on lol till the end of next week. see you tonight?
It was going to be hard keeping in touch with everybody. There was no immediate reply, so she put her phone away.

Ferocious footsteps heralded the arrival of Mr Powell. He looked irritated when he saw her, but did not shout.

‘Go in, go in!’ he said. ‘Knock once, knock twice, if there’s no answer, go in and start work.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Jess, creeping to her desk in the corner. She got out her French work.

Mr Powell opened his filing cabinet and searched for a document. His office was immaculately tidy. His pens were arranged in strict formation on his desk, and all the books and papers on his desk were in careful piles with their edges aligned.

Mr Powell found his document and sat down, reading it with a slight frown. Jess began her French. Then her phone buzzed in her pocket. Mr Powell looked up with a scowl and an actual growl, and held out his hand.

‘Switch the thing off and give it to me,’ he said. ‘You can hand it in every morning and get it back at the end of school.’

Jess switched it off – not before noticing it was Flora replying to her message. She got up and handed the phone over to Mr Powell. He pulled out a drawer of his desk and put it in there. Jess went back to her work.

Strangely, it was much easier to concentrate in Mr Powell’s office. He ignored her and at one stage even went out for a couple of minutes. By the end of break Jess had caught up with the French she had missed that morning by being late. She went off to the next lesson, and spent the rest of the morning in the carefree idyll that was Double Maths.

Then Jess had fifteen minutes for lunch. Where was Flora? And even more crucial, where was Fred? She raced to the canteen. There was a long queue and a tantalising smell of baked potatoes. But no Flora and no Fred. She went to the tuck shop next door. The two Fs weren’t there either, but Jodie was buying some crisps. She wanted to know all about being on LOL and what it was like in Irritable Powell’s office.

Jess told her in gory detail, then glanced at her watch. Oh no! She only had two minutes left to get some lunch. She bought a sandwich and a chocolate milk, but there was no time to eat now. She put them in her bag and ran back to Mr Powell’s office. She knocked, and this time he answered. She went in, and took her place at the desk. Mr Powell barely looked up.

Jess now started on her French homework. It only took about twenty minutes and, as she finished it, her tummy gave a long, rambling rumble like distant thunder. She was starving! Stealthily she reached down into her bag. The sandwich was smiling up at her from inside its clear plastic wrap.
WORRA WORRA WORRA WORRA!
roared her stomach at the sight of it.

Very quietly Jess lifted the sandwich out. She would try and peel off the plastic which sealed the packaging without making a noise. Mr Powell was engrossed in adding something up. He was glued to his calculator with an intense frown. Jess lifted the tab of the sandwich wrap and pulled gently.