It's a Girl Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

authority to dish out detentions, thus making her cry and mess up the Dewey decimal system.
    4. Somebody has been stealing bread buns from the dinner hall and eating them around the back of the sports hall. Crumbs have been detected.
    (Note: Interpol were not called for any of these aforementioned heinous crimes.)
    â€œMaybe it’s a mistake?” whispers Fleur. “I’ll text him again.”
    Claude and I both grimace, but let Fleur embark on her own self-destruction.
    â€œOh, and finally,” McGraw mutters, “due to various reasons, there will be, ahem, no Blackwell School Summer Garden Party this June.” (Cough.) “And, well, that’s it for today. File out quietly, everybody,” he says quickly, hooking a silver fountain pen back into the lapel of his bottle-green tweed jacket.
    Nobody moves.
    A growing mumble rattles around the assembly hall. “That sucks!” one Year 10 lad says, accidentally on-purposely dead loud.
    â€œEr . . . excuse me, Mr. McGraw,” shouts Ainsley Hammond, a pale Year 11 gothic type. “Like, why are we not having a fete?” he asks.
    â€œYeah!!” choruses a few dozen voices.
    â€œWhy? Why not, Mr. McGraw?” people mutter.
    â€œNow then, that is a very good question, Ainsley,” says Mr.
    McGraw, turning his gray face toward Mrs. Guinevere, “and one that perhaps the deputy head would like to explain, as I have an urgent meeting to attend . . .”
    Guinevere shoots McGraw back an expression which seems to say, “You’re on your own here, mate, and I will hammer you to death with my own open-toe sandal if you get me involved.”
    â€œVery well, children, I’ll say a few words . . . ,” he concedes.
    McGraw gazes out at the sulky crew. What on Earth can he say? Everybody knows that our headmaster loathes the annual Blackwell School Garden Party from the bottom of his sensible brogues. Making light-hearted banter with the pond-life parents? Mmm, what fun! Fending off flying buckets of water and custard pies hurled in the name of charity? Yes, please! Judging the “Guess the Weight of the Fruit Loaf/Yucca Plant/Obese Toddler” competition? Swapping glib pleasantries with the Blackwell School “Old Boys,” a dismal shower of ex-pupils, all now making more money than McGraw, all of whom now have kids who attend Blackwell; which is disconcerting enough, but not as scary as the Blackwell Old Boys’ inability to STOP HAUNTING THEIR HEADMASTER FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER LEAVING Blackwell!
    McGraw doesn’t merely dislike the school garden party; he has to be poked and prodded by Edith, our fire-breathing school secretary, every single day of January, February, March and April before penciling a date into the school diary.
    According to school folklore, this simply was not the way Samuel McGraw had envisioned his life panning out. All these headmastery shenanigans, it had all been a huge, hideous mistake.
    â€œI should have been a poet-in-residence or an astronaut,” McGraw has been overheard lamenting to Mrs. Guinevere as they trudged to their cars together after another long day. “Yet a few wrong turns on life’s highway and my destiny became discussing the weight, to the nearest milligram, of Mrs. Parkin’s fruited slice . . . oh, and dodging buckets of water. I have great hopes for the next life. It has to be better than this.”
    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the Blackwell School inmates are such a shower of bed-wetting weirdos that we treat Garden Party Day like one of the highlights of our lives, comparable, say, to VIP passes to Euro Disney or a night at the MTV Music Awards or something dead fabulous like that. However, the Blackwell School Garden Party was a pretty good laugh and we all wanted it to happen, and for better reasons than an addiction to raffle tickets and homemade lemonade.
    First of all, the garden party usually takes place