Louise Rennison_Georgia Nicolson 06 (13 page)

As Jas got it out (ooer) to read to Jools, I walked on quickly with the rest of the gang. Ouch ouch ouchey ouch. Still got feeling in my feet.

Ellen said, “I think I am going to, like, make
Dave the Laugh jealous.”

I laughed and said, “Oh, yeah, good luck.”

And she looked at me.

“How do you mean?”

I said, “Well, he, you know, he's not, erm, he doesn't really seem like the jealous type, does he?”

Ellen said, “Well, I'm going to, you know, dance and flick my hair about with that friend of Rollo's. I am going to try all those tricks and stuff.”

I said, “Promise me you won't try the infectious laugh.”

By this time we were outside the Buddha Lounge.

in the tarts' wardrobe
8:40 p.m.

We had a last-minute ace gang conference.

Well, Rosie, me and Jas did. Mabs and Ellen and Jools were so eager for boy action that they did a quick lippy check, visit to the piddly diddly department and off out onto the disco dance inferno emporium.

Rosie said, “Go through the checklist.”

I sat on the edge of a sink. (Oh, the relief, the
relief in the tootsies department.)

I began: “Mascara?”

We looked at my mascara.

“Check.”

“Lippy and lurker situation.”

Jas and Rosie looked and said together:

“Check.”

I said, “Attractive smile full of Eastern promise?”

And I smiled.

Rosie said, “Phwoar, give us a snog, I have come over all lesbian.”

I like to think she was joking.

I am ready to take on Lindsay. Flicky flicky. Hip wiggle, hip wiggle. Smiley smile.

 

Left the tarts' wardrobe.

Just as we were about to hit the dance floor Jas said, “What about knickers?”

I looked at her.

“Yes, what about them?”

“Have you got any on?”

Is she truly mad? But then I couldn't actually remember putting them on. When did I put them on? I remember putting the skirt on and my bra
and top, but knickers? Which ones were they? Oh God. Perhaps I had forgotten and then I would fall over and reveal my front and back bottom to the world.

Or Sven would pick me up like he very often did when he was doing his frenzied
Saturday Night Fever
routine.

I dashed back into the loos.

 

Knicker alert over. I blame Jas entirely—she is so obsessed with underwear.

9:00 p.m.

Vair vair dark in the club, and crammed. We edged around to the bar; it took a while to get used to the dark. Especially if your eyes were weighed down with one pound of mascara and talcum powder. Dave the Laugh was about an inch away from my nose before I saw him.

“Hello, kittykat, you're back.”

I smiled at him and then Rachel popped her head over his shoulder.

“Hi, Georgie, cool to see you.”

She was always so alarmingly pleased to see me. Why? There is nothing wrong with her, but I'm
Dave's friend, not hers. She pulled on Dave's arm and said, “Come and dance, babe.”

He looked at me and I for once had the upper whatsit. I said, “Yeah, babe, go dance.”

He gave me a cross-eyed look and went off to dance.

Rollo and his mates were all there at the bar with Jools, Mabs and Ellen hanging on their every word. Pathetico. I would never do that.

Everyone was there.

I said to Jas, “Jas, just nod your head up and down wisely. You don't have to talk. In fact, I'd rather you didn't. I want you to be my decoy duck whilst I look around for any sign of Masimo.”

Jas tried to have a strop but I stopped her by saying, “You know I am only asking you to do this because you are my vair vair bestest palsie in the whole world. Also, if you help me with this I will let you sing Tom's song to me.”

Jas perked up then.

“Yip yip, he's back in five days. I only came out to help you with all your boy troubles, you know.”

I was going to give her a friendly dead arm for being so annoying, when some bulky girl trod on my toe as she was going by with her lardy mates.

I shouted out.

“Bloody hell in a handbasket, ouch ouch! Bollocking bugger bugger bum!”

Jas said, “Are you sure your shoes are okay?”

I said, “Jas, some complete imbecile of gigantic proportions has just trodden on my foot. That is why I am leaping like a loon.”

I might actually have to slip off for a quick lie-down in the loos and put my feet up on the loo seat.

But then “all pain dropped away from my tootsies forsooth,” as Billy so eloquently put it in his famous sonnet “Ode to My Feet.”

Masimo came up to the bar.

He looked megacool (and a half). He doesn't look like English boys. He's more sophis. He is wearing a cool, pale blue Italian suit with a T-shirt. Like me, he is wearing fabby shoes. (Although his don't have kitten heels and he doesn't look like he is going to wet himself.) I put my shoulders back to give a bit of nunga emphasis (looking round first to make sure I didn't knock anyone over).

Also, I let my mouth drop open a bit and put my tongue at the back of my bottom teeth. Like Britney Spears but without the big tongue piercing.

I was deliberately not acknowledging Masimo. I was absolutely tip-top full of glaciosity.

Jas, Ellen and Mabs were, however, full of stupidosity. They all came crowding round me going, “Have you seen him? Have you seen him? He's at the bar, over there—look, can you see him?”

And so on. Soooo annoying and uncool.

I was still doing my tongue-behind-the-teeth thing, so I said, “Thlear off, tho away, thleave me ayown.”

I pretended to wave at someone in Masimo's direction. He caught my eye and smiled. I slightly smiled and he began to come across to me. Oh, I love him I love him. But no! Remember the plan. I smiled again and then I forced myself to walk away.

And not look back. Cor, how difficult was this? It was like walking with my feet facing in one direction and my body facing in the opposite direction trying to snog him. Like a really crap mime artist. But I must do it. I must keep up my glaciosity.

Also I was trying to make a good impression from the back. I was concentrating so much on crap mime-walking, hip-wiggling, hair-flicking and eschewing the Luuurrve God with a firm hand
that I went nunga-nunga–first into Dave the Laugh. Again.

He said, “Settle down, lads,” straight to my basoomas. Cheeky cat.

However, he was the Hornmeister and there was no sign of Rachel, so I told him what I had just done.

I said, “You would have been proud. Masimo came over to me and I walked away with glaciosity at all times. What do you think tacticwise?”

He looked a bit funny. If I didn't know that he was a callous Hornmeister I would have said he looked a bit sad, but I must have been wrong, because he said, “Excellent work. Keep it up. What handbag has he got tonight?”

Then Rachel came bounding up like a friendly red setter. Dave was nice to her but he looked a bit cornered. If I were her I would give him a bit more space. Blimey, I am suddenly full of wisdomosity about relationships. I have become an expert in the oven of love.

9:30 p.m.

No sign of my rival in love, the incredibly useless Stick Insect of the Universe and Back. Good. Oh,
maybe she is dead. How sad, never mind.

The Stiff Dylans are coming on in a minute.

9:40 p.m.

Wow, the place has gone hog wild!!! Girls were shrieking when Masimo came to the microphone and said, “
Ciao
. We are back.”

10:15 p.m.

I am quite literally in a dance inferno. Hit it, lads! The whole club is kicking. All the boys are fit and cool and Masimo is a brilliant singer and sooooo sexy on stage.

10:35 p.m.

Girls were even trying to get up on the stage to get to the Stiff Dylans! One got up and managed to kiss Masimo on the cheek before she was pulled away by a bouncer. Vair vair embarrassing. The final straw was when Nauseating P. Green tried to get up onstage. No danger of her managing that. She got one knee on and then just jumped up about a foot and came back down again. She would have been stuck there for eternity going up and down, but a bouncer came and pulled her away.
Her new enormous glasses were on sideways.

Attractive.

10:40 p.m.

I'm sweating a bit so I had better go and cool myself down in the loos; the last thing a Luuurve God wants is a slippery girlfriend. I have been doing some of my best moves in front of him. Just subtly, you know, nothing flash, although I did have to shove Jas quite hard once or twice to get her to let me in. Now and again I have glanced at him and then looked away. Wet Lindsay has been dancing in front of him with her eyes fixed on him like she was trying to hypnotize him.

I said to Ro Ro, “As the Swan of Avon said in his famous snogging comedy
Midsummer Night's Snog
, ‘When you wanteth to snog a Luuurve God, do not prithee danceth about like a prat with stick insect legs.'”

Rosie said, “Ye are wiseth in the extremeth, my paleth. Billy also saideth, ‘Forsooth and lack a day, do not have ye a tiny forehead, otherwise you are simply askingeth for a duffing-up scenario…ith.'”

Then we laughed like the proverbial draineth.

10:50 p.m.

As I went to the loos I saw Rollo and Jools snogging for England on the steps. And then in the corridor by the loos I found Mabs snogging someone, I couldn't tell who it was boywise as I didn't recognize the back of his head. As I went by, Mabs opened her eyes and winked at me—what was she on about? Then she pointed at her wristwatch. With the other hand she held up three fingers, Then she did the thumbsies up. Still snogging. What in the name of arse? I went into the loos.

in the tarts' enclosure

Blimey good job I did a makeup check. I looked like a red-faced loon.

Then I got it! Mabs was saying that she had got up to No. 6 on the snogging scale, a kiss lasting over three minutes without a break!

Yess! She'll be thrilled as a thrilled thing on a thrilling holiday. Unless it was Spotty Norman.

They were all at it. Apart from me. It was so long since I had snogged anyone, I couldn't even remember what it felt like to snog. Perhaps I had lost my technique. I tried a quick snog on the back
of my arm, but it was very difficult to tell the difference between arm and lipsies.

I must take my shoes off for a moment. I went into a piddly-diddly kiosk and sat down on the loo seat. Hmmm, my feet look a bit red and swollen, maybe I should take my shoes off. But if I got them off I might never get them back on.

Perhaps if I just lay down on the floor and put my feet above my head on the loo they would go down a bit.

I got down on the floor and put my feet up. Ohhh, that was a bit better. I heard a door open and Wet Lindsay said, “What's going on?”

This really weedy voice answered, “Well, it looks like they are going to be having a break any time.”

It was Astonishingly Dim Monica, the missing link between human beings and frogs. Wet Lindsay said, “OK, I'd better get in there.”

ADM said, “Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen!”

And Lindsay said, “I don't think I have any worries about keenness if Thursday is anything to go by. They are very passionate, the Italians.”

And she laughed.

God, I hate her.

 

I lay on the floor for a moment feeling really really bad and miz, but then I remembered that I was not a facsimile of a sham. I was following my dream, I was living the dream! I struggled up to my feet. Owwww…
Sacré
bloody
bleu
.

back in the club

The band were having a break, no sign of them. I could see Wet Lindsay hovering around near the dressing-room door. Appalling tart. The ace gang were all off grooving. Rosie shouted over, “Come and dance, we are having a groovathon.”

I said, “I think I will sit this one out and just, you know, absorb the vibes.”

Rosie said, “You mean your feet are hurting because you are wearing babies' shoes.”

I gave her my cross-eyed Klingon look and she nutcased off.

Sitting down, I was doing a bit of shoulder dancing to the music when an arm appeared in front of me and I was handed a drink. It was a brown arm, it had a gold ring on the third finger. I looked up, and it was Masimo.

He smiled down at me. “
Ciao
, you are having tired from dancing?”

I went red, thank God it was dark…. I took abig gulp from the drink and practically choked myself, but I managed to say, “Yes, I mean,
sí
. I am indeed having a tired from dancing, yes indeedy.”

He said, “It is long since I have seen you. I am glad you came. I would like, if you would like, to have your telephone number.”

Oh now, what was the right response to that? Glaciosity requires that I say something like, “Maybe some other time.”

But he is a Luuurve God. He is bending over me, his gorgey lips are only inches away from mine.

Anyway, I was saved the trouble of doing anything because Dom came over.

“Hi, Georgia, long time no dig, how are you?”

Before I could say anything he went on to Masimo.

“Listen, mate, sorry to drag you away, but some bloke wants to talk to us about a tour in the North. Can you come over?”

Masimo looked at me with those amazing amber eyes. “I will see you later.”

And he touched my shoulder and squeezed it very gently.

Oh no, he had said it. He had said the famous “See you later.”

Donner and bloody Blitzen. Absobloodylutely typico.

I have got such bad snog withdrawal!!!

Merde
and
merdy merde merde merde
. And a half.

 

I hobbled over to the groovathon and bobbed around trying to talk to Rosie as Sven flung her about like a deflated balloon.