The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [72]
“What did you end up writing?”
I had no idea what I’d ended up writing. I’d typed it, but I’d barely read it. It had something to do with the concept of a diary kept for both public and private reading and how that affected the tone of the narrative. So I lied.
“I compared it to modern accounts of major events,” I said. “Like Hurricane Katrina. He was writing about the Great Fire of London, which was where he lived. I wrote about how you talk about things that affect you personally.”
That was actually a genius idea. I only ever have genius ideas after the fact. I should have just written the damn paper.
“You and Boo have been getting along a lot better this week,” she said, doing a chest check. Her dress was really tight. This was a whole new Jazza coming out—almost literally. Normally, I would have started joking about this, but I smelled trouble. Those words meant, “You haven’t told me anything about Boo this week, and now I am convinced you like her better than me.”
“I’ve accepted her,” I said as breezily as I could. “She’s our pet.”
Jazza gave me a slight sideways look as she pulled the dress up a little higher over her girlish assets. It was wrong to refer to Boo as a pet. That was normally the kind of thing Jazza would censure, but she said nothing.
“It could be worse,” I said.
“Of course,” Jazza said, going over to her bureau. “I’m not saying, you know, that I . . . but . . . I’ve . . .”
Boo returned, dressed in a shiny tracksuit with a lopsided ponytail. I was pretty sure those were just some of her actual clothes, and not something she had gotten as a costume.
“Watch this, yeah?” she said, immediately going into a handstand and walking a few steps. Then she tumbled over and crashed into Jazza’s desk, almost knocking over her photos. “Haven’t done that since I was fourteen.”
Jazza looked at me through the mirror as she attached her false eyelashes.
There was a look on her face that suggested a rapidly dwindling patience level.
We had decided to stick together for at least a half hour, so that everyone could comprehend our group costume. We would share custody of Posh the Bone. The prefects had done a really good job transforming the refectory into a Halloween-ish party venue. Eating in here every day, I had forgotten that it was an old church. These decorations really brought that out—the candles in the stained-glass windows, the fake cobwebs strung everywhere, the low lighting. Charlotte, dressed in a very shortskirted policewoman’s outfit, was leading the dancing brigade, jumping around at the front of the room, her long red hair flapping up and down like a matador’s cape. She was head girl, and she would show us how to party if she had to.
I wasn’t really sure why Charlotte had decided to come to the party as a stripper. I found myself at a loss for words as she complimented us on our costumes.
“You’re a . . .” I tried to find the right thing to say. “Really . . . hot cop?”
“I’m Amy Pond,” she said. “From Doctor Who. This is her kissogram outfit.”
It was a good moment to catch sight of Jerome. He was wearing normal clothes with loads of scribbled-on pieces of paper stuck all over them, and his hair sticking up, a coffee mug in his hand.
“Tell me what you want, what you really, really want,” he said.
We had been planning for someone to ask us that.
“Braiiinnnnssss,” we said in unison.
“It’s both sad and incredibly impressive that you were all ready with that one.”
“What are you?” I asked.
“I’m the Ghost of the Night Before Exams.”
“And how long did it take you to come up with that?” Jazza asked.
“I’m a busy man,” he replied.
We formed a group on the side of the dance floor—me, Jazza, Jerome, and occasionally Andrew, Paul and Gaenor. Boo, we quickly discovered, was very serious about her dancing. She was right up front, by the DJ stand, doing complicated moves and the occasional surprise handstand.
The room was hot—we were all sopping wet in no time. The stained-glass windows had a veneer of steam. And unlike American