Free Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire by Sue Limb

school this morning because of my tummy upset?’
    ‘Yes, sure, of course, darling,’ said Mum, turning back to Mr Nishizawa. Or, as he was apparently now known, ‘Nori’. ‘Shall we break for lunch?’
    Lunch? thought Jess. What on earth is she talking about?
    ‘Shall we break for lunch?’ repeated Mr Nishizawa hesitantly. Oh, it wasn’t a conversation. It was a ‘conversation’. Things were so confusing these days.
    Jess went back indoors and comforted herself with loud music. At a certain stage she was aware of Mum and Mr Nishizawa leaving for their night out. It seemed Mum was the one having all the fun these days.
    After listening to her most depressing songs for two hours, Jess felt life was so futile she might as well do her homework for once. After wrestling for ten minutes with such unpleasant concepts as saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats and – worst of all, apparently – hydrogenated fats, she began to feel extremely fat even by her standards. She spent an hour trying on Mum’s old hippy clothing, while Granny, refreshed by her nap, gossiped away on the phone to her new friend, Iris.
    Jess was only too aware that, with Granny on the phone, Fred couldn’t ring, and she checked her mobile every twenty minutes to see if he’d texted her. Eventually she just gave up on everything and lay in the bath, shaving her legs again and again until they shone like boiled eggs.
    But while Jess may have felt she was enduring one of the most miserable evenings of her life, compared to what was going to happen tomorrow, it was the calm before the storm.

Chapter 11
     
     
     
    Jess arrived at school next day determined to treat Fred with sunny indifference – if indeed she ever found herself in his company. But as she and Flora were on their way to registration, she suddenly realised that her mum had forgotten to write the letter explaining her absence.
    ‘Oh no!’ she gasped. ‘I’ll have to forge it! Quick! Let’s do it in the loos!’ They dived into the girls’ toilets.
    ‘But we’ll be late!’ said Flora, looking pale and panicky.
    ‘It won’t take me a min!’ said Jess, sitting on the floor by the washbasins and grabbing her rough book and a pen. She ripped a page out of the rough book and put her address at the top of the page, in her mum’s rather scatty italic handwriting.
    ‘What about an envelope?’ asked Flora, hanging about nervously by the door. The bell had already gone for registration and Flora hated being even half a minute late.
    ‘Never mind – I’ll tell her my mum’s so disorganised we’ve run out of envelopes,’ said Jess. ‘It isn’t even a lie. I hate Thorn so much I’m tempted to invent some kind of totally obscene ailment. Like, “ Sorry Jess was absent from school yesterday morning but her bum fell off . ” ’
    Flora cracked up. Jess felt encouraged. She always felt kind of safe if she was making people laugh.
    ‘Or like, you know, “ Her intestinal wind was so bad it blew the windows out and we had to call the fire brigade . ” ’
    Flora laughed again, even more loudly, although Jess knew that the second joke wasn’t quite so funny as the first. But Flora was getting a bit hysterical, because she was so nervous about being late. In this state she would laugh at anything.
    ‘Or, “ I apologise for my daughter Jess’s lateness yesterday, but she gave birth at 6 a.m. to a handsome turbot . ” ’
    Flora dissolved into peals of laughter, leaning against the doorpost and gasping. Jess finished off her note – which incidentally was really just a line or two about the tummy upset.
    ‘Luckily I’ve been forging my mum’s signature for years,’ she said. ‘I’m just waiting for my opportunity to nick her credit card!’ She looked up with a grin, and then her blood ran cold. Miss Thorn was standing behind Flora with her arms folded, watching them with complete contempt, and Jess had the feeling she’d been there for ages. And Flora hadn’t even