Free Over the Moon by Jean Ure

miss out on the beauty bit.”
    I shouted, “I’m not going anywhere like this!”
    Dad said he could understand how I felt. He told Mum that she would have been just the same when she was my age and Mum had to admit that he was probably right.
    “I was pretty vain in those days, wasn’t I?”
    “You had a lot to be vain about,” said Dad. “It’s almost worse for a pretty girl to lose her looks than a plain one. Not that she has lost her looks,” he added hastily, before I could set off screaming again. “It’s nowhere near as bad as it was.”
    “But will you please,
please
tell Hattie I’ve got the flu?” I begged. I didn’t want people knowing the state I was in. I especially didn’t want Matt knowing. Lying in bed with a high temperature might be thought at least a little bit romantic, but having eyes embedded in elephant skin was just gross.

    By six o’clock, when Hattie rang back to see how I was, the elephant skin had virtually disappeared. Even I had to peer at myself in the magnifying side of Dad’s shaving mirror to see the last lingering traces of it, which meant I’d stopped worrying about how I was ever going to be able to go out again without dark glasses and instead was full of bitter frustration at having missed the fundraiser.
    “It’s so annoying,” I said. “I want to hear all about it! Was Matt there?”
    Hattie said yes, he was. “I told him you’d got the flu. You’re obviously feeling loads better. Are you sure it’s the flu? Lots of people say they’ve got flu when really all they’ve got is a cold. Colds are quite different! Flu can be serious. If you’d actually got the flu you’d still be feeling ghastly.”
    I said, “I am still feeling ghastly and if you don’t stop wittering and get on with things I’ll start feeling even more ghastly!”

    “Oh. All right,” said Hattie. “What do you want to know?”
    “Who won the beauty contest?”
    Hattie said, “Give you three guesses!”
    I didn’t need three guesses. Glumly I said, ‘Tanya?”
    Without me, who else was there? In spite of what I’d said to Dad, about Tanya probably winning, I’d secretly believed that it would be me. It wasn’t vanity! Well, maybe it was vanity that I’d so desperately
wanted
it to be me and maybe it was vanity that I was now so jealous of Tanya, but I didn’t see how it could be vanity to know that I was pretty. Dad had been telling me that I was almost ever since I could remember.
    “Did you vote for her?” I said.
    “I didn’t vote for anyone,” said Hattie. “I decided in the end it was a bit demeaning … like Best in Show for dogs.” She added that she thought that was demeaning, as well, but I wasn’t particularly interested just then in Hattie and her dotty opinions. I sometimes think that she and Mum would make a good pair. It’s odd, because Hattie’s mum is quite normal.
    “I wonder who Matt voted for?” I said.
    “Haven’t the faintest idea,” said Hattie. “Why not ask him when he rings you?”
    Eagerly I said, “Is he going to?”
    “So he says. Said he’d give you a call tomorrow to see how you were.”

    Well! That cheered me up hugely. By the time I went to bed I was feeling almost happy again, especially as my eyes were practically back to normal. I cleaned my face even
more
carefully than I had the previous night and went to bed to dream of Matt and what he might be going to suggest that we do. Cos obviously he wasn’t ringing just to have a chat; boys never ring just to have chats. He was ringing to ask me out. I was sure of it!
    And then I woke next morning and my eyes were swollen worse than ever.
    It was the beginning of the nightmare. As I look back, it all seems to merge into one block of horror. These are just a few of the things that I remember.
    Lying in bed, on Sunday afternoon, with the curtains closed and witch hazel pads over my eyes. There’s a knock at the door, and Mum comes in.
    “Scarlett?” she says. “Your flash