Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O'Porter Read Free Book Online

laughed at.
    ‘No, just drunk. We’ve all been there,’ Renée says, as if it was nothing.
    We start to walk into the corridor. I don’t really know what to say. This is all so bizarre. Renée Sargent was in my house? She dressed me for bed?
    ‘I’m sorry I got off with Samuel. I hope I didn’t upset you or anything,’ I say, feeling guilty about that.
    ‘Don’t be silly. Samuel gets off with everyone. I really don’t care.’
    I look at her. Her face is so cheeky. She’s smiling like the sides of her mouth are being pulled by pieces of string. I find it absolutely impossible not to smile too. Then Sally’s voice comes booming down the corridor.
    ‘Flo, hurry up. We need to get down to the pavilion for hockey training early to tell Miss Trunks you’re swapping partners.’
    Back to reality.
Renée
    I’m currently doing everything I can to be kicked off the hockey team. Today’s tactic is by simply not going to training. For months now I have been deliberately rubbish but all that seems to do is get me yelled at by Miss Trunks, who is by far the moodiest person I have ever met in my entire life, and from someone who lives with Pop THAT is saying something. She’s fat, ugly, and she hates girls. Well, she hates girls who don’t creep up and who are not Olympic-standard hockey players. Do they even play hockey in the Olympics?
    Why would I want to run a around a field in the freezing cold wearing a tiny skirt and a massive pair of hideous regulation green knickers? I hate having to wear regulation green knickers, but if Miss Trunks sees we’re not wearing them then she screams so loud her face goes red, and we get an order mark. I don’t want to get order marks for things like not wearing massive pants. I need to save up my order marks for stuff that actually matters, like skiving lessons, being caught smoking, flicking fountain pen ink at people, and playing really funny tricks on Sally Du Putron when she isn’t looking.
    So today, instead of hockey training, just on the other side of the wall to the hockey field, I am sitting in a circle in an old stone Victorian bath holding hands with Margaret Cooper, Nancy Plum, Bethan Collins and Charlotte Pike. We are having a séance. I nearly asked Flo Parrot to join us, but just as I went up to her Sally ran over waving a hockey stick, and I honestly thought she was going to hit me with it. I can’t see why Flo is best friends with Sally. She seems so nice, and Sally is a real tit.
    ‘All we have to do is close our eyes, hold hands and imagine a dead person,’ says Nancy, our class hippy. ‘My mum told me the spirits just appear.’
    ‘I’m a bit scared,’ says Bethan in her littlest voice. ‘What if they want to kill us?’
    Everyone loves Bethan because she is small and has a voice like a five-year-old. She’s best friends with Charlotte Pike, who is massive, but not in a fat way. She’s ‘big boned’, or so she tells us all the time. She’s quite manly, with a deep, loud voice, but she’s got long black hair and big boobs.
    ‘Don’t be scared, Bethan,’ she says. ‘It’s daylight and we are outside. If any spirits are scary then I will just sit on them and you can run away.’
    We all laugh.
    ‘Right, who we gonna call?’ asks Nancy. We all yell ‘Ghostbusters’ in unison, then apologise to each other for being so obvious. The nice thing about these girls is that no one is remotely cool. Bad jokes happen with no piss-taking and no one cares about boys or clothes. It’s very different from being with Carla and Gem. Lovely as they are, all they talk about is their boyfriends, their new clothes, the parties they go to. It all gets a bit boring. I like being girly to a point but it can all get a bit high-pitched and frilly with Carla and Gem. With this little crowd I am the cool one. I like that.
    ‘I don’t know anyone who is dead,’ says Bethan.
    ‘What about Marilyn Monroe?’ suggests Charlotte.
    ‘Do you honestly think Marilyn