Louise Rennison_Georgia Nicolson 04 (11 page)

I fed her a cheesy whatsit and she munched on it. Then she said, “But will Ellen forgive you?”

“What do you mean? For what?”

“For snogging her boyfriend and…for…for allowing your red bottom to rule the roost.”

“Jas, my bottom is not a chicken.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Don't start all that ‘you know what I mean' business.”

“Yes, but you do know what I mean.”

my room

Jas thinks that I should tell Ellen what happened
vis-à-vis
Dave the Laugh, because then she will know that he is a serial snogger and lip nibbler…or whatever…and then she will not pine for him.

Hmmm. She might not pine for him, but she might pull my head off.

Mum came bustling in. “Are you ready?”

“For what? Nuclear war? World peace? Tea? A surprise inheritance?”

“Dr. Clooney…er, I mean Dr. Gilhooley.”

“Gorgey though he is, Mum, why would I be ready for him?”

5:00 p.m.

I had a quick look at my
Ellbogen
. I haven't thought about them much lately because of all the other emergencies that have been happening. They are a bit odd-looking, actually, when you get them naked. And I won't be able to go around wearing long sleeves for the rest of my life, especially in California. And what about the press when I go to premieres and stuff with Robbie? I don't want headlines pointing my elbows out to the world: “Sex God and Weird Girl with Sticky-out Elbows Go to Top Restaurant.”

As we entered the Valley of the Unwell (Dr. Clooney's waiting room), I said to Mum quietly, “What can he do about them anyway?” I said it quietly because the room was, as usual, full of the mentally deranged.

Dr. Clooney is quite gorgeous. Blue-eyed, dark and sort of sexy. He makes Mum go in a terrible tizz, all flushed and basoomy. He said, “How can I help?”

Mum pulled up my sleeves exposing my elbows and said, “Her elbows stick out.”

Dr. Clooney laughed for about a million years. He said, “Honestly, I would pay you two girls to come to my surgery every day.” Then he walked over to examine my elbows.

Dr. Clooney smiled at me. Phwoar!! “Georgia is a racehorse.”

What in the name of Miss Stamp's mustache and matching eyebrows is he talking about?

He went on. “She's got long limbs and not much fat on her body, so her elbows seem to be more boney and exposed than someone who has a different body shape. As she grows they'll be less noticeable.”

I thought Mum was going to snog him on the spot. “Oh, thank you, Doctor, it was such a worry. Anyway, how have you been doing? Done any dancing lately?”

 

On the way home I said to Mum, “What did you mean, done any dancing lately?”

Mum went all red and delirious. “Well, I've just, you know, seen him out sometimes, when I've been with the girls…dancing, and…”

“Yes…and…?”

“Well, he's very fit.” Oh, dear God. My own mother is displaying alarming signs of the General Horn.

9:00 p.m.

On the plus side, the
Ellbogen
mystery is solved….I am a racehorse.

10:00 p.m.

Rosie phoned. “Georgia. Something really awful has happened.”

“Has your hair gone all sticky-up? I think mine has.”

“No, it's not that.”

“Lurker alert?”

“No, worse.”

“Blimey. You're not having a baby Sven, are you?”

“Sven is being sent back to Swedenland. He has to help out with his family farm, or whatever they have over there.”

“Is it a reindeer farm?”

“GEORGIA, I DON'T KNOW and I don't care!!!”

Rosie is sheer desperadoes. She says if Sven goes to Swedenland, she goes too. I said, “Well, you'd better find out where it is first. You drew the wheat belt across the Irish Sea in our last geoggers test.”

tuesday february 1st

breakfast
8:05 a.m.

This is ridiculous—Mum and Dad are still not speaking. Normally I would be glad of the silence, except it means they both speak to me and ask me things. Like, “So, what's number one this week in the pop charts?” How sad is that?

stalag 14

It's like the Valley of the Damned. Rosie is moping around, Jools has had a fight with Rollo, and Ellen is sniffling around the place like a sniffler
extraordinaire
. You only have to say to her, “Do you fancy one of my cheesy whatsits?” and she runs off to the loos blubbing. And Jas keeps looking at me. Looking and looking.

I said to her, “You should be careful, Jas, one of the first formers was in a staring competition
last week and she stared for so long that her eyes went dry and she had to go to hospital to have them watered.”

She just sniffed. It is a very very good job that I am full of cheeriosity. Also a tip-top hockey captain.

r.e.

Rosie sent me a note. “I've found out where Swedenland is. I'm going to go after Sven and get a job and make new Sweden-type friends.”

I wrote back: “Is there much call for fifteen-year-old snoggers in Swedenland?”

She looked at me when she got the note and did her famous impression of a cross-eyed loon. Then she wrote: “Anyway, what will YOU do in Hamburger-a-gogo land for a job? Your very amusing impression of a lockjaw germ, or…er…that's it.”

evening

Same bat time. Same bat place.

Libby was applying some of Mutti's face powder and lipstick to Angus whilst he sat on my bed. And he didn't seem to mind. In fact, he was purring. Becoming a furry vati has made him
alarmingly mellow. Or a transvestite.

Robbie has gone off for some interview thing. He didn't really explain what it was about. Popstar stuff, I suppose. Rosie is very very wrong if she thinks I will not be able to do anything in Hamburger-a-gogo land. I could form a girlfriends' hockey eleven and play my way across America.

wednesday february 2nd

Hockey tournament today with me at the helm. But more to the point, Wet Lindsay has resigned from the team. HURRAH! She says it is a protest against me being hockey captain, because I am a facsimile of a sham and have the attitude of a juvenile pea. Useless stick insect ankle molester.

6:30 p.m.

Cracking victory!!! The most amazing day. We played six matches and won all six! I scored in each match, and even though I do say it myself…I AM A HOCKEY GENIUS!!!

I had to give a speech when I accepted the cup for our school. It was my chance to show the world and, in particular, the heavily mustachioed Miss Stamp that I am full of wisdomosity and maturios
ity and
gravitas
(not “gravy ass,” as Rosie thought). I said, “I would just like to say that I owe this victory to many people. To my team, to my school, to my mum and dad for having me, to the ancient Britons for giving me my proud heritage, to the early cavemen, without whom none of us would have got here, as they invented the wheel…”

Miss Stamp was about to implode but she couldn't do anything because the head of All Saints School seemed to think I was being
très amusant
and clapped A LOT at the end of my speech.

thursday february 3rd

stalag 14

Hahahahaha. Slim had to mention my name in Assembly and congratulate me!!!

Hawkeye looked like she had poo in her mouth (which she probably did). Slim, as usual, was in a ludicrously bad mood. Her chins were trembling in time to the hymns. She said, “Despite what I have said before, certain elements in this school continue to think they can carry on flouting school rules. Mr. Attwood misplaced his cap a day or two ago and found it today, burnt to a cinder. This is my
final warning to you all: Be very, very careful of your behavior, as all misdemeanors will be treated very seriously.”

 

As we ambled off to English, I said, “Mr. Attwood probably set fire to his own hat on purpose. He hates us because we are young and lively.”

Jas said, “And because we drop skeletons on him.”

“Well, yes…”

“And the locusts ate his overalls….”

“Yes, well there is…”

“And he tripped over his—”

“Jas, shut up.”

r.e.

Rosie has been living in Glum City all day since her beloved Sven got in his Viking boat (Olau Lines ferry) and went off to Swedenland today. He has only gone for one month, but she insists that she is going to go and live in Swedenland with him for that month. Miss Wilson was telling us about her unhappy childhood, so I took the opportunity to draw some fashion items for Rosie to take with her to the Nordic wastes. I drew her
wearing furry glasses and a nose warmer. I even did a vair vair funny drawing of her in a fur bikini, but she could hardly be bothered to join in, even when we started our traditional R.E. humming. (We all start humming really softly and at the same time carry on as normal so that you can't tell we are humming. Or where the humming is coming from.) Miss Wilson thinks it might be the radiators. It drives Miss Wilson round the proverbial bend…not so far to go in her case.

break

In sheer desperadoes to cheer Rosie up, I had a moment of my usual geniosity. We were slouching along past Elvis's hut with its stupid sign that says: “Ring the bell for the caretaker.” I said to RoRo, “
Un moment, mon
pally.” Then I went and rang his bell.

He came looning to his door, like the grumpiest, most mad man in the universe, which he is. He glared at me and then said, “What do you want?”

I said, pointing to his sign, “What I want to know, Mr. Attwood, is why you can't ring your own bell.”

Anyway, he didn't get it. He was rambling on
and I was just about to slope politely off, when Wet Lindsay came round the corner. She was ogling us like an ogler with stick legs, which she is.

Elvis was so red I thought his head might explode, but sadly, it didn't. He was shouting, “It's always you, messing about, coming in my hut. You let those bloody locusts eat my spare overalls….”

I tried to be reasonable with the old maniac. “Mr. Attwood, Elvis, I wasn't to know that the locusts would eat your overalls. I merely thought they would like a little fly around in the blodge lab after being cooped up in their cage.”

Mr. Attwood was still yelling. “…and I bet it was you who burnt my cap!”

Oh, for heaven's sake.

maths

I was just peacefully buffing my half-moons, when Hawkeye put her head round the door. She barked, “My office, now!!!”

hawkeye's office

Oh
sacré
bloody
bleu
. Hawkeye was livid as a loon. She was all rigid with indignosity. “I am sick to death of this, Georgia Nicolson. You have a
perfectly good brain and a few talents, and you INSIST on squandering them in silly, childish pranks and unkindnesses. When Miss Stamp told me that she had chosen you as hockey captain, I had grave doubts. I still sometimes get headaches from your ridiculous display at the tennis championships last year.”

Oh Blimey O'Reilly's vest and pants, what is it with teachers? Do they make lists of things that happened ages and ages ago and just hang around waiting for something else to add to them? Why doesn't she read some of the books I read? Let things go…relax, don't sweat the small stuff, talk to dolphins, go with the flow…etc.

Hawkeye hadn't finished. “However, these latest so-called jokes have confirmed what I said to her: that you have a silly attitude and are a poor example to both your peers and, more especially, the young and impressionable girls in this school. You are relieved of your duties as hockey captain forthwith.”

I started to try to say something, but I felt a funny prickling feeling in my throat. I had to hand back my captain's badge. And what is more, I am on gardening duty with Mr. Attwood for a month!

When I came out of Hawkeye's interrogation
room, Wet Lindsay was smirking around. I bet she snitched on me. I didn't dignify her by saying anything. I have more pridosity than that.

Rosie was waiting for me around the corner. “Was it the forty lashes or has she just cut your basoomas off as a warning to others?”

“She's sacked me from being hockey captain.”

RoRo put her arm around me.

my bedroom
11:17 p.m.

I wanted to phone the Sex God and tell him about the hockey captain fiasco, and I was going to. But I wasn't sure whether he would think that the “Ring the bell for the caretaker” thing was
très amusant
or the act of a twit.

midnight

I bet Dave the Laugh would think it was…er…a laugh.

Why am I thinking about him?

friday february 4th

lunch

I didn't feel much like talking and the gang kept
being nice to me, which was a bit strange. So I went off by myself to think. What was it Billy Shakespeare said? “And as we walk on down the road, our shadow taller than our souls…” Oh no, that was Rolf Harris doing his version of “Stairway to Heaven.”

How crap was that?

The gang were following me around at a distance. Like stalkers in school uniforms.

I really loved being captain, though. Oh, double poo.

Even when you are the girlfriend of a Sex God things can go wrong. And anyway, what is the point of being the girlfriend of someone if every time you want to tell him something you can't? That is like being the ungirlfriend of someone. That is what I am: an ungirlfriend.

And not hockey captain. And with quite sticky-out elbows.

I moped around to the back of the tennis courts and a voice shouted out, “Has naughty Big Nose been in trouble with the scary teacher?” The Bummers were sitting having a fag on a pile of coats.