Rebecca's Rules Read Online Free PDF Page A

posts updates on Facebook so I can’t even find out what he’s doing. I almost wish he’d just mail me and tell me he never wants to hear from me again; it would be better than just waiting all the time. Except I don’t really wish that. I really just wish he’d come home and go out with me again.
    But I haven’t mentioned any of this to Cass and Alice, or the fact that now he has gone forever Fridays are nothing more than a torment. Smyth’s the newsagent got a new paperboy who is not attractive at all and whenever he rings I am reminded of my tragic state. Every time I go out to give him his money it is like a dagger in my heart. A dagger made of fivers and the
Irish Times.
No, that doesn’t sound quite right. But anyway, it makes me all sad and reminds me of the days when I got all excited every time the door bell rang on a Friday. It seems like a million years ago now.
    Oh well, at least Vanessa’s party is tomorrow. I can’t believe I’m kind of looking forward to it. It shows what a sorry state my life is in when the only thing I have to look forward to is a crazy person’s ridiculous birthday party.
SATURDAY
    Well, I was right about the party distracting me from my Paperboy-related misery. It was so completely ridiculous that it has blocked all other thoughts from my head. I think I’d better write about it straight away because if I don’t I’ll start thinking I imagined the whole thing. I really don’t know why we went now. Even my own family couldn’t believe I was going. When I was getting ready, my mum came in.
    ‘Okay, forgive me if I’ve missed something here,’ she said. ‘But don’t you hate Vanessa or whatever her name is?’
    ‘Well,’ I said, putting on my best strappy shoes. ‘Sort of. A bit.’
    ‘So why exactly are you going to her party then?’ said Mum. ‘And don’t say because it’ll be terrible and you want to see how bad it is, because that’s not really a good thing.’
    ‘But it will! It’ll be funny,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’ll be so ridiculous, and she’s so awful …’
    ‘So essentially, Rebecca, you’re going to the party of a girl you don’t like just to laugh at it?’ said Mum. ‘That isn’t very nice.’ She sounded a bit like Alice, which was quite worrying.
    ‘Mum, it’s Vanessa!’ I said. ‘She doesn’t like any of useither, and she invited us anyway! She just wants people to cheer for her.’
    ‘Hmmm,’ said Mum in a disapproving sort of way. So much for her trying to cheer me up. She doesn’t seem bothered about my traumas now. My dad’s even worse, though. He’s forgotten all about them. The other day he asked me, totally cheerfully, if I’d heard from ‘that nice kid who used to collect the paper money’ recently. He hadn’t even noticed my anguish! My parents are as bad as each other. Sometimes I think they just don’t care about me at all.
    In the end Mum gave me a lift down to the school gates this afternoon, where we’d been told to wait for the bus that was taking us to Vanessa’s ‘Big Birthday Bash’. She wanted to get out of the car and wait until the bus turned up, but luckily I managed to persuade her not to. I have seen my mother try to be cool and chat with a gang of girls my age, and it is hideously embarrassing.
    So anyway, she drove off THANK GOD and there we all were standing at the side of the road. As Alice said, as we shivered in our party frocks, ‘I’m not really sure how this happened.’
    I looked around at the rest of our class, all of whom lookedequally bemused. ‘Neither am I,’ I said.
    ‘I think Vanessa’s hypnotised us all,’ said Cass gloomily. ‘I have no idea why I’m here.’
    All our reasons for going didn’t seem very important when we were standing there with bare legs in the freezing cold.
    ‘I think this might be a bit of a disaster,’ said Alice. And as it turned out, it kind of was, especially for poor old Alice, as you will see.
    But, actually, the bus journey itself was