Rebecca's Rules Read Online Free PDF Page B

paid people to pretend,’ said Cass.
    And when a bunch of girls and boys came out of the house and paraded down the steps, I thought Cass might be right. The girls were all orange and wearing loads of make-up and had perfectly straight glossy hair and tiny little party dresses and really high heels. And the boys were all orange too, although their hair was gelled.
    ‘Who on earth are they?’ said Alice.
    ‘Right,’ said the woman in the black dress whose name, I remembered, was Sarah. ‘Okay, Vanessa’s class from St Dominic’s, can you line up on either side of the drive? And the kids from … is it the music class?’
    ‘Music, dance, and theatre,’ said one girl, tossing her shiny, shiny hair.
    We all looked at each other in surprise. How did we not know Vanessa went to a music class? And dance and theatre too, of course. Surely if she was in a class like that she’d have been boasting about it constantly.
    ‘Yes,’ said Sarah. ‘Okay, you lot come up the front, near the steps. Yes, that’s perfect. Hang on a sec …’ She paused and then spoke into the headset. ‘Yeah, they’re all ready.’ She turned back to us. ‘Right, everyone, Vanessa is on her way.’
    The camera crew bustled around, getting into their places. Then, in the distance, we heard a rumbling sound. Someone shouted ‘Action’. And this giant pink tank came rumbling up the drive, with someone with absolutely huge hair peering out the top. It was Vanessa. As the tank got nearer, she stuck more of herself out of the hole and started waving regally at us. She was wearing a sparkly gold and pink dress with a ginormous frilly flower at the neck.
    ‘Oh. My. God,’ said Cass.
    We all stood and stared in silence as the tank came up to the steps, where the shiny orange people were jumping around and cheering. Then, over the cheering, we heard a familiar shriek.
    ‘No, no, NOOO!’
    It was Vanessa. ‘They didn’t cheer!’ she screeched. ‘They’re all meant to be cheering and they didn’t! Just the ones at the steps were cheering!’
    ‘Okay, okay,’ said Sarah in a soothing sort of voice, like she was talking to a maniac who had to be kept calm in case she went on a killing spree. Which I suppose she was. ‘We’ll do it again. Okay, everyone from St Dominic’s, this time I want you to all cheer and jump up and down when Vanessa comes down. Okay?’
    We all just stared at her. A few people mumbled, ‘Okay …’
    ‘Right,’ said Sarah. ‘Let’s get the tank back to the bottom of the drive and reshoot.’
    The tank rumbled off. Cass, Alice and I stared at each other.
    ‘I’m not cheering for that goon,’ said Cass.
    ‘What do you think will happen if we don’t?’ I asked. ‘Maybe Vanessa will turn the tank on us. I wouldn’t put it past her.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ said Alice, bravely. ‘One of my great-grand-dads was shot for standing up to the Nazis! If he can do that, we can stand up to Vanessa.’
    ‘Well, when you put it like that …’ I said.
    ‘Alice,’ said Cass, ‘I don’t think you can really comparestanding up to Vanessa to standing up to Hitler.’
    ‘I know,’ said Alice. ‘That’s my point. If he was brave enough to stand up to fascism, we can do this little thing. Who’s with me?’
    It was very inspiring, to be honest. I crossed my arms and clamped my mouth shut so it would be very obvious that I wasn’t cheering.
    ‘But maybe,’ said Ellie, who was next to us, ‘if we don’t cheer they’ll keep making us do it again and again until we give in. And I’m freezing. To be perfectly honest, I will do anything to get indoors.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Cass.
    Ellie was right, it was very cold. The tank was coming back up the drive again, and as it approached Jessie and Ellie and Emma started going ‘Whoo hoo!’ in a sort of sarcastic way. Alice kept her mouth shut and folded her arms. Cass and I decided to compromise and clapped very, very slowly. I hope Alice’s great-granddad wasn’t