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Authors: Cathy Hopkins

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Zodiac Girls: Brat Princess (9 page)

BOOK: Zodiac Girls: Brat Princess
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“That means you too, missy.”

“Since when did I take orders from you?”

“Since I was told that you were this month’s Zodiac
Girl and I saw your chart...”

I sighed. “Oh here we go again. I told you, I don’t
want to be a Zodiac Girl. I can assure it’s not the
honour you think it is. Least not so far… Are the
others Zodiac Girls and boys too?”

“Nope. Just you.”

“So why me?”

“It’s in your stars. You got one month here. Make the
most of it. Now MOVE your sorry butt. We’re going
to hose you all down in the bathroom. With ice-COLD
water. That will show you.”

“Not me. No way.” I decided to show him what I
could do if I had a tantrum. I could cause trouble. He’d
soon see it would be in his best interests not to get on
the wrong side of me. The others might be pussycats,
but not this girl. Not
Zodiac
Girl. Ooooh no. Not me.
I roared as loud as I could. Like a lion.

“ReeeeOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAR!!!”

Mr O popped his head around the door when I did
that and nodded as if he approved of what he heard.
“That’s my little Leo. Yes. Yes. Let it all out. Roar like
a lion, Leonora. All out. Yes. Good. Fine.” And then he
disappeared.

I pushed the porridge pan over; I kicked the
table; I poured water out of all the cups. I hurled a
chair at the wall. Roaring all the time. “I DON’T
WANT TO BE HERE. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME
STAY. I WON’T EAT YOUR PORRIDGE. AND
I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME. AND I
DON’T WANT TO BE ZODIAAAAAAAAAAAC
GIRL.”

At one point I glanced over at him to see how upset
Mario looked. He wasn’t
even
watching! He was
looking out the window as if there was something
more
interesting
going on out there! I. Could. Not.
Believe. It. So I picked up the nearest bowl and threw
it at him, being careful that it went over his shoulder
and hit the wall (I didn’t want to get him too angry),
but close enough to make him look. He did duck, but
he didn’t seem worried.

I threw a few more bowls at the walls and being
plastic they bounced off, not that Mario cared. He was
looking out the window again. And then he got a
newspaper out from somewhere in his wet suit, sat
down, crossed his legs and began reading it like he was
sitting outside a café in the south of blooming France!
I looked around to see what else I could trash from the
mess in front of me, but I seemed to have thrown just
about everything I could.

“Finished?” asked Mario after a while.

I surveyed the destruction in front of me and felt
smug.
Good job,
I thought.
That will show him not to mess
with me
. “Yeah. I think I might have done. Now. Let that
be a lesson to you.”

Mario pointed at a cupboard in the corner of the
room. “To me? Oh no. I don’t think so. Dr Cronus
definitely said that the lesson was yours this morning.
So. Mops in there. Buckets are in there, too. Washing-up
liquid, cleaning fluids are at the back of the kitchen
under the sinks. Now you clear up this mess and, when
the place is ship-shape, you can move on.”

My stomach suddenly growled a really loud growl,
reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

“But… I… I haven’t even had any breakfast.”

“And who’s to blame for that, do you think? Who
made this mess? It’s in your horoscope that you have to
learn that actions have consequences, so you aren’t
going to get anything to eat until you’ve cleared up what
you’ve done in here. You get me?”

“Isn’t there anything NICE in my horoscope?”

“Depends on how you play it. What you make of
what life gives you.”

“Pff. Where’s Mr O? He’s supposed to be my guardian.
I’m sure he wouldn’t like it if you didn’t feed me.” I
pouted. It was worth a try. I used to be able to wind
Daddy round my little finger when I pouted, although
that was a long time ago.

“Mr O has left the premises for the time being. He
isn’t too happy with the way you’ve rejected him, I can
tell you that much, so don’t be expecting any help from
him too soon, not unless you change your attitude, that
is. You get me?”

I went to kick a wall.

“Uh-uh… I think you get me all right,” he said, and
walked over to the door where he produced a key.
“Now what you probably need is some chill time, so I’m
going to give you that. Think things over while you’re
in here. You like it or not, you’re going to stay here at
this lodge until we say you can go, and either you play
along and make life sweet, or you be difficult and you
make life hard. Your choice. Always will be.”

“Bully.”

“I’m no bully. And I’m not the one who had the
tantrum here. Now there’s water in the tap there if
you get thirsty and,” he got up and had a look in the
bottom of the pan, “ there’s just a scraping of
porridge left, too. In the meantime, the sooner you
clear up, the sooner you get out of here.”

My answer was to pick up another bowl and throw
it at him as he left the room. Once again it missed and
hit the door as it closed behind him, leaving me alone
in a porridge-covered room.

There was only one thing for it and I took a deep
breath and let rip. “Er… WAGHHHHHHHHHH.”
I yelled. “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgh.”

I waited. Someone was
bound
to come when they
heard that. It was awesome, even by my standards.
Someone
always
came running when I really let rip.
But no. Not even the sound of a footstep creeping to
the door to listen to what I was up to as had
happened so often when I’d had a tantrum at my old
schools.

I picked up a chair and hurled it against the door.
It kebonged back into the room as, like the bowls,
even the furniture was made of plastic. I made a good
commotion, though.
That ought to bring them running,
I thought.

Nothing.

I tried wailing again. I really did feel mad. But once
again – nothing. It was as if they’d forgotten about me.
Or lost interest.

Outside, it was starting to get lighter. I ran to the
window and looked out. We were in the middle of
nowhere. In front was a landscape of hills and fields,
shrubs and trees.

It was my first day. I’d been up barely two hours and
it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. How on earth was I
going to survive for a whole month here?

 

Chapter Nine
Routine

I soon got into the routine.
Not
that they had won. I had
no choice, not if I was going to survive, and I
am
a
survivor. It was play along and be their little Zodiac
Girl or starve. Play along or freeze. Play along or be
even more miserable than I was on my first night and
I thought at the time that
that
took the prize. But I was
wrong. Things got worse and my time in hell was like
this:

5.30 a.m.
Wake-up call. Get up. Yeah. Five-thirty
in the morning!!!!! I used to think that there was only
one five-thirty in the day and that was in the
afternoon. Now I knew different. Every morning there
was a little note from Mr O explaining various aspects
of my birth chart and how they were going to appear
that day. In other words, outlining what nasty surprises
I had in store – there certainly weren’t any perks to
being a Zodiac Girl, that was for sure.

5.30 – 6 a.m.
Wash. For the first time in my life,
I have to share soap and toothpaste. It was
so
disgusting. The soap smells of antiseptic. Yerk. I was
sooooo
missing my Goddess products. The most
mortifying thing, though, was the first time I washed my
hair. There was no conditioner and then Mario
wouldn’t let me get my straightening iron from my
suitcase, which was still locked away.

“Let it dry naturally,” he said, so revealing just how
cruel a torturer he was.

I felt like my world had come to an end. Curly hair.
I’d rather die. In the end I had no option but to let it
dry on its own but I shoved it back into a plait before
anyone could see how horrible it looked. Then I wore
my uniform baseball cap to cover it up further. And
mean Selene wouldn’t give me any solution for my
blue contacts so I had to go
au naturel
. Brown eyes. And
my nails. I can’t even look at the sorry sight they have
become after a week of no manicures. There was no end
to my shame.

6 – 7 a.m.
Breakfast – if you could call it that but
I had to eat
some
thing. Each night I dreamt of freshly
baked croissants and home-made raspberry jam,
blueberry muffins, cheese toasties and Danish pastries
with hot chocolate. Sadly, dreams don’t satisfy your
hunger, so I had to eat what there was. Of all the
things in this boot camp, having to eat horse food is the
second worst (curly hair is the first).

7 – 8 a.m.
Hike around the grounds. Truly. Some
days it was raining, one day it even snowed, but that
didn’t stop old Sergeant Macho Mario making us
march like we were his personal army. And not just
march. He made all of us carry heavy backpacks.
Every day. In all kind of weathers. The CHEEK of it.
It was completely and utterly and totally the most
miserable activity I had ever done in my entire life. But
there was no getting out of it. Not if I wanted to live.
Or eat. Or sleep with a pillow.

One day, I pretended to play along with the
“planets here as people” idea and I asked Mario how
many planets there were in astrology and how many
were here in physical form. “Ten,” he replied. I did my
maths. I’d met only five of them. I surmised that the
other five might be nicer. Mario said that they could be
if you got them on the right day, but they weren’t
predominant in my chart this month. He has a sneaky
answer for everything. I sooo hate him.

8 – 10 a.m.
Chores. Yeah. Me, Leonora Hedley-Dent had to do chores. Cleaning. Peeling potatoes.
Polishing furniture. And actually it was something to do
and made the long days go quicker.

10 – 12 noon.
Lessons with Dr Croniebum. I don’t
really know what he was droning on about most days
as I tuned him out. More about the ten planets, but I
wasn’t interested since Mario had told me the other five
(Venus, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Jupiter) weren’t
going to appear like superheroes to make things better.
Dr Cronus could make me sit there, but I didn’t have
to take it in. All that stuff that Mr O had been on about
on the first night, about me being a Zodiac Girl, as far
as I was concerned, it was a one-way ticket to
Loserville.

12 – 1 p.m.
Lunch. Lunch! Hah. Usually soup and
a bit of bread. If you were lucky and hadn’t had the
“privilege” taken away.

1 – 4 p.m.
Gardening. Back out in all the elements.
Raking leaves. Digging over flower beds. My hands
got blisters on them from the spades and did anyone
care? Not a bit.

4 – 6 p.m.
Counselling with Miss Bongo from
Bongoland herself, Selene Luna in the dining room. She
had a variety of methods which entailed dancing
about like trees and pretending to be the sea. I asked
her what the point of that was and she said it was to
get in touch with the free spirit, the nature child that
lives within us all. I told her and her nature child to take
a running jump off the nearest cliff, which made Jake
laugh a lot. He seems to think I am very funny – like
a natural comedian. Pff. Just shows what he knows. I
was being
deadly
serious.

Another task she got us to do was to walk about the
room with a partner while one of you closes their eyes
and the other guides. She said it was to encourage
working as a team – something that I needed to learn
having seen in my birth chart that I was as a double Leo
who wanted my own way.
Birth chart, smurf chart
, I
thought as I steered Mark into a wall – he got a
nosebleed.

Well, serves him right. The silence thing he does
annoys me. Lynn had filled me in on his story. She was
good for all the goss. His dad had lost his job a couple
of years ago and his family were poor, so he got into
shoplifting so that his family could eat and his younger
sister could have presents on birthdays and at
Christmas.
Like, boo hoo, not my problem
, I thought.

They were a bunch of losers. All their problems
stemmed from being broke, including Marilyn’s. Her
story was no biggie either. Her dad had left. It was an
ugly divorce and her mum and Marilyn had to move
out of their posh house and live in a smaller place.
Worst thing for her, according to Lynn, was not being
able to wear her designer gear any more as they
couldn’t afford it.
Now that I can relate to,
I thought as
Lynn filled me in on the rest of the story about how
Marilyn had become “difficult” and started acting the
tough girl at school. Hah! I could show her difficult at
school! I
knew
that murder hadn’t even come into it! She
was just a classic case of the divorce doldrums and I’d
seen a hundred of those.
Saddo,
I thought. At my old
school, you were the odd one out if your parents were
still
together
. In Lynn’s case, her dad had died and her
mum remarried. She didn’t like her stepdad so she
rebelled, and, like me had been expelled from her last
school.

“Sometimes I wish I’d done it differently,” she
confessed one night after we’d collapsed into bed. “I’m
not totally stupid and I can see that, in the end, the
person who’s suffered most is me. Changing schools
meant leaving mates and now I ain’t got any.
Sometimes I feel lonely. In fact being in ’ere is the
closest I’ve got to ’aving mates in ages.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I’ve lost a lot of
friends along the way, too. My best mate is my little dog
now. Coco.”

Lynn smiled. “I’ve always wanted a pet. My mum
always promised I could ’ave one if I behaved. Trouble
was, I never did.”

BOOK: Zodiac Girls: Brat Princess
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