A Midsummer Tights Dream. Louise Rennison

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      I put the squirrel slippers into the bed for company. Well, one looks like a squirrel and the other one looks like a hamster. My brother, Connor, set fire to one of the tail bits so it’s just a stump.

      I looked around at the familiar carved wooden wardrobe (acorn theme) and the wooden dressing table (with the carved squirrel legs) and the wooden, well, everything really. You name it, if it was in the room, it was wooden.

      But wood was OK. Everything was OK.

      I put my case on the bed and started to unpack. Georgia and her Ace Gang helped me choose cool things to suit my shape. Like dark tights and bright little skirts. And hats. The Ace Gang said I needed to de-emphasise my bad bits (nobbly knees) and emphasise my good bits (catty eyes and nice swishy black hair). Georgia said to distract boys from my knee area I should swish my hair almost constantly. (Although not to fiddle with my fringe, because she personally thought that was a killing offence.)

      I hung all my stuff in the wooden wardrobe.

      I even have a special underwear drawer. With bras in it. Oh yes!!!

      Yes, I now officially wear corker holders.

      And what’s more, I have corkers to put in them!!

      I’ve got the tiniest corker appliances you can get (30a) but I have high hopes for a growth spurt when I start tap dancing my way to the top of the showbiz ladder. Not that I can tap dance but I could do something on the ladder, I’m sure. It’s just a question of finding it and not falling off the ladder in the meantime. Even though you can’t see the ladder.

      I’m putting my new shiny, fruity performance art notebook under my pillow for when I come up with more whizzo creative projects. I can’t wait to see Dr Lightowler’s face when she has to hand me my golden slippers of applause!

      She doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. It was after I did my owl laying an egg mime in her class. I think she took against me then.

      Maybe she thought I was pretending to be her. She said I was silly, and shouldn’t be at Dother Hall.

      She’s in for a surprise when she gets to see how unsilly I can be.

      I’m going to put my corker measuring tape in my corker-holder drawer, next to my corker holders.

      I wonder if my corkers have grown since I last measured them?

      I did a sneaky measuring in the lavatory on the train, which is only about three hours ago, but growing could happen any time, couldn’t it?

      It could happen the minute after you took the corker-measuring tape measure away.

      Anyway, I am not going to risk doing a measure, it would be just my luck for the lunatic twins to come barging in.

      Last term, unfortunately I tried my method in front of the window. And Cain Hinchcliff was out there in the undergrowth, snogging some village girl, and he’d seen me, seen me doing my method. He’d seen me rubbing my corkers with my hiking socks on my hands.

      To make them grow.

      My corkers not the socks.

      The socks were huge.

      Best not to think about it.

      I shivered at the memory.

      Still, that was all in the past.

      Dibdobs shouted up, “Tea’s ready!!! Boys!! Tallulah! Split splat!!!”

      I shook my hair and gave it a bit of a va-va voom.

      When I opened my door, there they were. The twins. Blinking and sucking on their dodies. As if they knew that I had nearly measured my corkers.

      Perhaps they have a corker-sensing gene.

      Perhaps all boys do.

      What a horrific thought.

      After tea (local eggs and a local sausage), I said, “I’m just going to pop to The Blind Pig to see Ruby and then we might pop and visit the owlets.”

      I’ve entered the “popping zone” again. I like it. It’s very me.

      As I went out of the door Dibdobs said, “Put this hat on in case of rain. It’s my camping hat.”

      I said, I’ll be all ri—”

      But she was ramming the waterproof hat on my head, completely squashing my va-va-voomed hair. I’d have to not take it off now in case of hat hair.

      Dobbins said, “Oooooh, look at you!! You’re gorgeous. You’ve grown! Oooohhhhh.”

      And she hugged me again.

      And so did the boys.

      It’s very hard to walk when you’ve got three people doing hugging.

      Was it going to happen every time I went out?

      Maybe the right thing to do was to hug them back and then they would let me go.

      But that made it worse.

      Dibdobs started hugging more tightly and I think she might have been crying.

      I got away at last by saying, “Bye then!!!”

      I was only going three feet across the green, what if we went on a school trip?

      The Blind Pig was all quiet when I got to it. The sign (a pig in dark glasses with a white stick) was creaking in the cold wind.

      I remembered last sitting here.

      On the wall next to the pub.

      With Alex.

      Dreamy Alex.

      He’d looked at me and smiled his smile. It was the best moment of my life so far. We were so close. I wanted to say so much. I wanted my eyes to speak the words I couldn’t say. Which actually might have been a bit of a surprise to both of us. If they had done.

      So I said to him, “My knees are too far up.”

      Why?

      Why would you say that?

      And then he had wanted to look at my knees and the whole thing had gone wrong, leaving him thinking I was just a stupid little kid. With out-of-control legs.

      Well, I will not be saying that sort of thing to him again.

      In fact I’m going to make a “normal” list in my performance art notebook.

      Topics that a normal person would talk about.

      Topics that are not knee-based.

      Like theatre.

      Yes, yes, I will tell him СКАЧАТЬ