Free The Bed and Breakfast Star by Jacqueline Wilson

fun . . . for a girl,’ said Funny-Face.
    ‘You can be quite perceptive . . . for a boy,’ I said, and I waved to him and walked off with Naomi.
    ‘Is he your boyfriend then?’ she said.
    ‘Look, I’m the one that’s meant to make the jokes,’ I said. ‘Him!’

    ‘He fancies you all the same,’ said Naomi. ‘You and him will be slinking off to room one hundred and ten soon.’
    ‘Naomi!’ I nudged her and she nudged me back and we both fell about giggling.
    The Manager and the bunny lady can’t let Room 110 because the damp’s got so bad all the wallpaper’s peeled off and the Health Inspector’s been round. But someone nicked a spare key and some of the big kids pair off, boy and girl, and sneak into the empty room together. They don’t seem to mind the damp.
    But catch me going anywhere with Funny-Face. Least of all Room 110.
    Naomi and I had a laugh about it, like I said, but as I got nearer and nearer the school there suddenly didn’t seem anything to laugh at.
    ‘Cheer up, Elsa. It’s OK, really it is. Look, tell me a school joke.’
    I swallowed. My mouth had suddenly gone dry. For once I didn’t really feel in a jokey mood. Still, a comedienne has to be funny no matter what she feels like.
    ‘OK, so there’s this geography teacher, right, and he’s asking all the kids where all these mountains are, and he says to the little thick one, “Where are the Andes?” and the little thick one blinks a bit and then pipes up, “At the end of my armies.”’
    My own andies were cold and clenched tight. I felt like the little thick one all right.

I was right to feel edgy. I didn’t like this new school at all.
    I didn’t get to sit next to Naomi in her class. I was put in the special class, which was a bit humiliating for a start. They said it was just for a little while, to see how things worked out. Hmm. Fine if they did work out. But what if they didn’t? Where do you go if you’re too thick even for the special class? Do they march you right back to the Infants?

    I didn’t like my teacher in this strange class I got stuck in. I wanted a young man teacher like Jamie. Mrs Fisher was old and probably a woman (though she had a moustache above her upper lip).

    She also had a hard voice that could rip right through you, though when I first got shoved in her class she stretched her thin lips in a smile and said in ever such sugary, sweetie tones that she was pleased to meet me, and oh what a pretty name Elsa is, and here was my notebook and have this nice sharp pencil, dearie, and why don’t you sit at the front where I can see you and write me a little story about yourself.
    She was trying to kid on she was really interested in me, but she couldn’t fool me. When she took us all out in the playground to have P.E., she got talking to one of the other teachers. The other teacher saw me barging around doing batty things with a bean bag and asked Mrs Fisher who I was. Mrs Fisher didn’t even tell her my name. She just said: ‘Oh, that’s just one of the bed-and-breakfast children.’
    I’m not even a she. I’m a That. Some sort of boring blob who doesn’t have a name, who doesn’t even have a sex.
    Elsa the Blob. Hey, I quite like that idea. I could be a great big giant monster Blob and squelch around obliterating people. Mack is still first on my list but Mrs Fisher comes a close second.

    I wrote her a little story about myself all right. I wrote that my real name is Elsarina and I’m a child star – actress, singer and comedienne – and I’ve been in lots of adverts on the telly and done panto and heaps of musicals, and I was actually currently starring in a travelling repertory performance of Annie – me playing Annie, of course. And I wrote that my mum and the rest of my family are all in showbiz too, part of the company, and that’s why we’re currently living in a hotel, because we travel around putting on our shows.
    I tried to make it sound dead convincing. But when