Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl (8 page)

Amy smiled and nodded.

‘Her special stash? Her personal supply?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘When?’

‘I always find the first five minutes of
Desperate
Housewives
is the safest time.’

‘You sneaky thief !’ Min exclaimed.

If Gina had wondered what they were talking about, her answer came just as soon as Amy threw back her duvet to reveal four packets of biscuits in a variety of flavours: chocolate, chocolate orange, caramel crunch and jam-centred.

‘Nice one!’ Niffy told her.

In between mouthfuls of biscuit, Amy decided to get Gina up to speed with the entire sexual history of the dorm.

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‘I’ve snogged, obviously – that’s kissing with tongues,’

she added, not sure if ‘snogged’ translated into American, ‘and had my boobs felt and just the tiniest bit of knicker-tweaking. Niffy’s snogged and boobed, and Min, well . . . Min has her mind on higher things.’

Min snorted at this.

‘What about you?’ Amy asked, handing round the caramel crunches once again.

‘Oh, snogging.’ Gina said the unfamiliar word, then, because she was feeling just the tiniest bit more at home with these girls than she had the night before, she confided, ‘I had this gross boyfriend – I only refer to him as Squid Boy because—’

But she didn’t finish the sentence because her words were already drowned out by the groans and giggles of the others.

‘Squid Boy!’ Amy repeated. ‘I don’t think we need to know more! Soggy?’

Gina nodded.

‘Slimy?’ Amy asked.

Gina nodded again.

‘Arms like tentacles?’

When Gina nodded to this too, Amy said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ve all been there. Plenty more fish in the sea—’

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‘Plenty more
squid
in the sea,’ Niffy interrupted.

‘And only four more days till the weekend,’ Amy went on, ignoring Niffy. ‘That’s when we go fishing.’

‘Watch out, Jason Hernandez!’

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Chapter Seven

Amy and Niffy had spent an hour every evening out on the hockey pitch with Gina, practising before the match on Saturday morning. But now that the game was about to start and Gina was in her hideous games clothes, shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot as she stood close to the goal mouth, she didn’t exactly feel confident.

Well, the practising had been fun . . . She had had a laugh with Amy and Niffy and had felt as if she was starting to get to know them better. But this was serious. Everyone here today wanted to win, that was obvious.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll hardly have to do anything.

We’ll win,’ Niffy had assured her before the start of the match. Their team was made up of some Year Fours and some Year Threes. Apparently it was something called a ‘house’ match: everyone in the school was in 82

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one of four different ‘houses’ which competed against each other.

‘
Why?
’ Gina had asked.

‘I know,’ Amy had agreed. ‘Completely antiquated.

It’s not enough for us to have to compete against other schools, we have to compete against each other as well.

But that’s the St Jude’s way: you’re not doing anything useful unless you’re winning.’

As this was the last match of the hockey season (postponed from last term because of flu, apparently), Niffy’s team had to win it to secure the house junior hockey cup. ‘But don’t freak out,’ Niffy had insisted to Gina. ‘There’s no pressure on you. We’ll win.’

But Gina had found out that Penny’s team had beaten Niffy’s 3–1 in the house match last term, so she had continued to ask slightly desperately, ‘Isn’t there someone else who could do this?’

Niffy had just rolled her eyes. ‘Year Three is full of weak-armed weeds,’ she’d insisted. ‘I need someone who can belt the ball up the field, if required. You’re good, honestly.’

Before Gina could worry further about whether or not she should be there, the referee blew the whistle and, with a hearty thwack, the rock-hard ball was on 83

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the loose, with girls brandishing wooden sticks thundering after it.

Within moments, Penny had the ball and was moving at a terrifying rate towards Gina’s end of the pitch. She crossed the ball deftly to Louisa and, with a lurch, Gina saw Louisa move skilfully towards goal.

Gina fumbled her stick and saw Penny charging towards her, shouting out, ‘I’ll get it! She’s the new girl and she’s useless!’

As the ball sped towards her, Gina realized it was a now-or-never moment. She had just a second or two to stop the ball and hit it away with all her strength or else Penny was going to take it from under her nose and score.

Gina’s first thought was to throw down her stick and run as fast as her legs could carry her. She hadn’t wanted to be in the stupid team anyway. She couldn’t play this dumb game! If she was totally honest, she was only here because she thought it might help her make friends with Amy and Niffy, but now she saw that it was much more likely that they would never speak to her again. Because she was going to mess up!

Then Penny, still running, began to laugh. Feeling a rush of anger, Gina made her decision. She wasn’t going to run; she was at least going to try.

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She swung her stick as hard as she could. There was a crack as she made contact with the ball. But the rebound, which shot up into her hands, made her drop the stick in pain.

‘Ow!’ she couldn’t help wailing as she tucked her smarting fingers under her arms.

‘Dangerous play!’ Penny was shouting, and Miss Chrysler was blowing her whistle. All Gina could see was Niffy’s thunderous face. Although the ball was right up at the other end of the field, clearly Gina had not done a Good Thing. She suspected her stick had gone above her shoulder again. And hadn’t Niffy warned her about this? ‘It’s not frigging golf !’ she’d told her.

In the blurry moments that followed, Gina was sent off; Penny was awarded a free shot and scored, making it a terrible 1–0.

It was nearly an hour later when Amy and Niffy returned to the dorm to find Gina sulking angrily.

Before they could even get out a word about how the rest of the match had gone, Gina let rip. ‘Don’t blame me! I never want to be in your team again! I didn’t want to be in it in the first place! It was a really bad idea. I just felt guilty about Willow.’

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Both girls just smiled at her.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Amy. ‘You’re right.’

‘We were desperate, newbie,’ Niffy agreed. ‘But it’s OK,’ she added, her smile spreading further.

‘Oh!’ Gina got it. ‘You totally won, didn’t you?’

‘Yes!’ they both replied together, and Niffy gave some sort of bizarre little victory jig.

‘You total daftie.’ Amy laughed at Niffy.

‘It was a good shot,’ Niffy assured Gina. ‘You’ve got very strong arms. Do you do weights?’

‘No. It’s probably from tennis,’ Gina told them, ‘and swimming. We have a pool – and a court – at home.’

For once she didn’t say this boastfully: she didn’t want to put these girls off. She was beginning to realize they were the only chance of friends she had in this dump.

‘A tennis court?’ Niffy asked, looking excited.

‘Yeah . . . but it’s not such a big deal over—’

‘You play tennis?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you play well?’

‘I’m OK . . . but just a minute . . .’ Gina was suspicious. ‘Don’t tell me – there’s a junior house tennis cup as well, isn’t there?’

Niffy just nodded and said, as if to herself, ‘We need 86

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six: three pairs and two people good enough to play singles as well—’

‘Don’t even think about it!’ Gina told her.

‘Oh yes! The hockey season is now officially over and it’s tennis from now on,’ Niffy explained, stripping off her muddy and sweat-soaked games clothes and bundling them into her laundry bag.

‘OK,’ Amy began, ‘the plan is we get showered and changed, then we take you out to see the many sights of Edinburgh.’

‘We’re allowed to go out?’ Gina asked; she’d somehow thought they’d have to stay in the boarding house all weekend.

‘Of course!’ Amy laughed. ‘We’re allowed out at the weekend, by day and by night,’ she added.

‘Under carefully controlled conditions,’ Niffy reminded her.

‘Which we bend a little.’

‘What about Min?’ Gina wondered. ‘Where is she?’

‘In training,’ said Amy. ‘Look out of the window.’

The dorm’s high third-floor window gave an eagle’s-eye view of the school playing fields. The pitches were empty now, but on the athletics track there was a lone figure still in sports kit.

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Min was pacing out distances and marking them with what looked like two water bottles.

‘She’s hoping to win the under-sixteens eight hundred metres on Sports Day,’ Amy explained. ‘She came third last year, so there’s a good chance. But anyway, c’mon, scrub up, we’re going shopping!’

‘I can come with you?’ Gina wanted to check, because going shopping with someone . . . it was kind of personal. Did Amy really want to invite her?

‘Yeah. We’ll show you round, newbie,’ Amy replied.

‘It’ll be fun.’

‘OK, here’s the deal.’ Gina turned to them with a determined look on her face. ‘You have got to stop calling me that!’

‘Six hundred and fifty quid for a handbag!’ There was no mistaking the outrage in Niffy voice. ‘A
handbag
!’

She put the offending item back on the shelf. ‘I’m sorry, Amy, but even you can’t afford that.’

‘Well’ – Amy tossed her blonde hair, knowing perfectly well they were within earshot of the sniffy sales assistant – ‘if I wanted to use up my entire term’s allowance on one fabulous investment piece, I could.’

‘Get lost,’ Niffy told her. ‘Six hundred quid? You could buy a horse for that.’

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‘Yes, I’m sorry, but we’re in Harvey Nichols,’ Amy snapped, ‘not Pony World.’

Niffy snorted in a very horse-like fashion.

‘Come on,’ Amy instructed. ‘Let’s go and buy some make-up.’

Ever since they had got off the bus . . . OK,
that
had taken Gina by surprise.

‘We’re going by bus?!’ she’d asked the others. ‘Is that OK? I mean . . . will we be safe?’

Back home, when Gina went anywhere, she was taken by car, which usually meant there was a parent on hand wherever she went. Buses were for crack addicts, muggers and beggars, or so she’d been given to understand.

The idea of three girls just jumping onto a bus and travelling into town was . . . terrifying.

But Niffy and Amy looked at her in astonishment.

‘Safe?’ Niffy laughed. ‘Unless you think toddlers or little old ladies in hats are dangerous, then yes, it is safe!’

But as soon as she’d stepped off the bus and in through the shiny revolving glass doors of Edinburgh’s chicest department store, Gina had felt just ever so slightly at home.

Unlike the boarding house, with its screaming 89

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alarm and weird food and communal bathrooms, unlike school, with the bitching and the hockey and the uptight teachers, Harvey Nichols was a place Gina immediately understood.

This glossy consumer paradise was all about clothes and shoes and shopping. Here, just like at home, she could linger over the expensive shampoos and luxury lipsticks, and then treat herself to an overpriced latte.

Here, she got it. For the first time since she’d arrived in this strange Scottish city, she felt herself relax.

Considering they came from opposite sides of the globe, Amy and Gina were dressed in remarkably similar fashion. They were wearing their latest shopping outfits: tight jeans, flat pumps, complicated jackets and bags (Diesel and Mulberry for Amy, Nordstrom and Coach for Gina). Amy had wound a thick pink and silver scarf around her neck and applied too much blue eye shadow. Gina had overdone the bronzing powder and had picked a buttercup-yellow top, which would have worked in sunny California but was too strident for the cool grey of Edinburgh.

Niffy was the one who looked out of place in this shopping Mecca. She was wearing scuffed riding boots, oversized jeans and a big beige mac. Although it 90

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was Saturday and there was every chance of bumping into the male of the species round every corner, Niffy’s only concession to make-up had been the application of Vaseline to several nasty lip cracks.

While Amy and Gina bonded over Aveda blushers (‘This one’s nice – not too pink, not too red’; ‘Mmm

. . . yummy’), Niffy continued with her diatribe: ‘This bottle of shampoo costs twenty-eight pounds – they’re having a laugh!’

‘Could you just shut up?’ Amy hissed, her patience finally snapping. ‘You’re a flaming bumpkin! You sound like my gran. And you know what? You could probably do with some of that! Look at your rat’s nest!’

Amy took Niffy by the shoulders and turned her to face one of the store’s mirrors, so she could examine her curly mop, bundled up into a scrunchie.

‘Jason could be here – he could be in this shop, we could bump right into him and I’ll be with you, mop-head! Flapping about in your mac, looking like a scarecrow!’

‘Oh, this is all about Jason, is it?’ Niffy replied, but her eyes hadn’t left her reflection and it was hard to miss the hurt expression on her face.

‘Don’t, Amy,’ Gina broke in. ‘Niffy looks fine.’

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