Rebecca's Rules Read Online Free PDF

quite fun. The entire class was there (even sneery Karen Rodgers, who has been a bit subdued since her sidekick/minion Alison told her to shut up at the Battle of the Bands last year) so it was a bit like being on a school tour (though not an impressive one like Paperboy’s ski lodge adventure). And Vanessa (or rather, the people from the telly programme – there’s no way Vanessa went to any trouble herself) had decorated the bus with balloons and a big banner that said ‘Vanessa’s Big Birthday Bash!’
    Soon everyone, even Karen, was singing along to Jessie’s iPod, which we’d plugged into the bus’s sound system. Some of the music was kind of cheesy but it didn’t matter. We were all just messing around. It was actually like a mini-party – most of us had brought drinks (no booze, of course, though asCass said later, if anything could make us turn to drink, it’d be Vanessa) and bags of crisps and stuff. Emma produced a giant bag of Percy Pigs and I ate so many I started to feel a bit funny.
    Jessie is going to audition for the school musical and she did some very funny actions to all the songs. Ellie joined in, although she doesn’t want to perform in the musical; she wants to work on the costumes. She is quite dramatic herself, though. Perhaps this is because her mother is very melodramatic as well as hippy-ish (let us never forget that Ellie’s real name is Galadriel after the elf queen from the
Lord of the Rings
), so Ellie has spent her entire life living with someone who is always sweeping out of rooms in flowing cloaks and things. Seriously. Her mum has a cloak. I’ve seen it. It’s made out of velvet and has stars embroidered all over it.
    So anyway, it was all good fun. And I had managed to swipe Rachel’s lipstick (she will KILL me if she discovers I’ve taken it, especially as she hasn’t figured out yet that I’ve discovered where she hides her make-up bag. She keeps putting it in different places so I can’t get at it. She is a very suspicious person). Alice put on the lipstick when we were on a smooth bit of road (she didn’t dare try it until we got on the motorway in case the bus zoomed around a corner and she got lipstick allover her face) and it looked lovely. It is a magical colour that suits everyone. I gave a few more people a go as well, just to be nice. I’m sure Rachel wouldn’t mind. It was all lots of fun, anyway.
    ‘You know, maybe we can just stay and have our own party on this bus,’ said Cass. ‘I bet we’d have a better time.’
    She was probably right. But after a while, we were out in the countryside, and the bus turned into a giant set of gates and drove up a very long drive to an absolutely ginormous house. Well, a castle really – it turns out it was called Ashford Towers and it’s mostly used for very posh weddings.
    The bus pulled up at the very impressive entrance and we all got out and stared at the castle wondering what on earth we’d got ourselves into. Then a tall, skinny, very stressed-looking woman in a tight black dress and a phone headset thing came out of the gigantic front door along with another camera crew. They all looked miserable. I was just thinking that the stressed woman seemed strangely familiar when Alice said, ‘Wasn’t she the TV woman who was with Vanessa at the Battle of the Bands?’ And she was. She looked a bit older though, which isn’t really surprising when you remember that she’s been spending a lot of time with Vanessa recently. That would ageanyone by about fifty years.
    ‘Oh, you’re all here,’ she said. ‘Great. I was beginning to get a bit worried.’ We all started moving towards the door but she said, ‘Wait!’ and we all froze. ‘You can’t go in yet. Vanessa will be arriving soon and we want everyone outside when she gets here. Stay there and I’ll get the others.’
    ‘Others?’ said Ellie. ‘I didn’t think Vanessa actually had any friends, apart from Caroline, of course.’
    ‘Maybe she’s