The It Girl: Superstar Geek. Katy Birchall

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СКАЧАТЬ hope you will. Chemistry is a fascinating subject and I imagine you’ve learnt an important lesson with regards to safety.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘Right, well, while we’ve established this wasn’t intentional, I’m going to have to give you detention lasting the remainder of this term so that you can reflect on the importance of caution. It starts tomorrow. And since it is the end of the day in about ten minutes, you can return to your classroom, gather your things and go home.’

      ‘I’d rather not go back, to be honest.’

      ‘You don’t need anything?’

      ‘It’s just my pencil case and books. People have probably thrown them in the dump by now.’

      ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ Miss Duke gave a thin smile. ‘They all know it was an accident and no harm done. By tomorrow they’ll have forgotten the whole thing.’

      It’s worrying how clueless adults are sometimes.

      When my dad gets concerned his eyebrows become very distracting.

      I mean, he was really concerned about the situation. He made me sit down and everything. Dad and I rarely have conversations where we sit each other down. We both become very awkward.

      The only other times that he’s had to ‘sit me down to talk’ about something was when I signed him up to a dating website because I didn’t like his girlfriend at the time and he got all these suspicious emails that made her cry, and when I threw a pork pie at his head because he gave my Marvel comic book encyclopedia to a second hand bookshop and I happened to be holding a pork pie when he told me.

      Dog later ate the pork pie, which had been cleaned up and put on a plate, because neither Dad nor I were keeping an eye on him during our ‘sitting down and talking’ moment. This just made the whole situation worse because (a) Dad had apparently been looking forward to eating that pork pie and (b) Dog decided to rub his pork-pie victory in Dad’s face by vomiting it back up over Dad’s trainers.

      I don’t know why Dad was so cross. The only reason he owns trainers is so that he can leave them by the door in the hope that women might think he works out.

      Anyway, both those times that he ‘sat me down’ his eyebrows were uncontrollable and I knew, as soon as he asked me to sit to discuss the fire incident and his eyebrows immediately sprung into irrepressible motion, that he was having one of those moments when he wonders whether there is actually something genuinely wrong with me.

      Like I don’t question that every single day.

      And honestly, I really was trying to concentrate on what he was saying but his eyebrows were jumping around all over the place. It really is fascinating how they have such agility.

      Sadly, he has not passed this impressive talent down to me.

      ‘Are you even listening?’

      ‘Of course!’ I lied, unlocking my facial muscles from their state of concentration on this intricate eyebrow dance. I patted Dog absent-mindedly as he lay next to me, clearly hoping for a treat after this act of loyalty in the face of a Dad Inquisition.

      Dad’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘Anastasia,’ he prompted, leaning forwards and clasping his hands together in what I guessed was an attempt at giving an air of understanding.

      ‘Nicholas.’ Two of us could play the I’m So Serious I’m Going to Use Your Full Name game.

      Dad took a deep breath.

      ‘I appreciate that moving schools is an upheaval, especially for a teenager. I’m not mad at you – I know it was an accident. But if there’s anything you want to, I don’t know, discuss ?’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘I don’t know. Teenage things?’

      Oh lord. I bet he wanted feelings. This was ambitious. I wasn’t going to talk about that with my dad. It was embarrassing enough telling my two new and only friends, Jess and Danny, about each of the latest ways I had managed to embarrass myself and, by association, them too. I’d be lucky if I managed to hold on to those two for much longer the way things were going. Either way, there definitely wasn’t any sharing happening with my dad.

      ‘What teenage things?’

      ‘I don’t know!’ His eyebrows leapt frenziedly towards the ceiling. ‘Learning to be responsible?’

      ‘Don’t bother. I wouldn’t listen anyway.’

      He narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you taking this seriously?’

      ‘Yes I am taking this seriously. I set someone’s hair on fire; it was dangerous and embarrassing. I will not be touching a Bunsen burner ever again without supervision. The whole school is going to hate me. I’m going to be a bigger loser than I was before. I hate my life.’

      ‘Well that’s what I mean,’ he said gently. Seriously, I do one tiny thing like set someone on fire and suddenly my dad feels the need to subject me to weird parental counselling. ‘It’s just . . . at the last school . . . you weren’t . . .’ He trailed off.

      ‘Miss Popular?’

      ‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ Dad said, slumping back into the armchair where he usually sits on a Sunday afternoon with his Irish whiskey. ‘You weren’t . . . settled. I just want to make sure that you’re more confident with this new place.’

      I had to start a new school when we moved to London last year after Dad became a lot more in demand as a freelance journalist and he needed to be where everything was happening. Weirdly this happened after he wrote a really boring book about tanks used in the war or something which actually sold quite well. The book is dedicated to me but I’ve never read it, which really bugs him. If you ask me I should be the insulted one – yeah Dad, it’s every girl’s dream to have a book about TANKS dedicated to them.

      Incredibly, somehow the serious tank book led to serious articles on famous people – and they all seem to live in London or come here a lot. But it means he is at home a lot more than he used to be which is good, although he does sometimes go to a celebrity party or whatever. Celebrities like Dad now because he writes big glossy features about them in trendy magazines rather than reporting on their sweat patches in a tiny column of a tabloid.

      I think he felt pretty guilty about making me move but I didn’t mind. I didn’t really have any friends at my old school and even though I was a bit nervous about Dog settling down in London at first, he quickly made friends with a Pomeranian called Hamish down the road.

      ‘Thanks, Dad. I appreciate your concern. But really? You can stop worrying.’

      He sighed, it being clear that I wasn’t going to divulge any of the teenage angst he was looking for. ‘Fine. Well, be more careful in future Chemistry lessons?’

      ‘If they let me enter a science lab again in my lifetime, yes I’ll be more careful. No Bunsen burners.’

      ‘I’m not going СКАЧАТЬ