Live and Fabulous! by Grace Dent Page A

screaming fuss every time there’s a slushy-kissy scene, as if they’ve never seen anything so rude before. Me, I’m just finding it all a bit painful to watch.
    â€œYou’re a right misery this week,” whispers Liam Gelding kindly as I shuffle in my chair. “I’m glad I’ve got six weeks away from you. Quite frankly, you make me want to hang myself.”
    At some level, this is Liam Gelding asking me how I’m feeling.
    â€œThanks. The feeling’s mutual, rat boy,” I whisper back, propping my long face up on the desk and sighing.
    â€œOh, flipping cheer up, Ronnie,” Liam says. “Look, I’m smiling and I have to sit beside Claudette and she smells of wee.”
    That makes me giggle a bit.
    â€œI do not smell of wee! You disgusting boy!” squeals Claudette, punching Liam’s arm. Liam must go home each night black and blue, Claude gives him so many dead arms. “And at least I do bathe! Not just in cheap rancid body splash like you do! Yuk! And anyway, leave Veronica alone. She’s not feeling herself at the moment.”
    I nod pathetically in agreement.
    â€œWhy?” asks Liam. Liam’s second ear piercing looks a bit infected to me. It’s oozing pus.
    â€œShe’s got ... er, personal problems,” whispers Claude.
    â€œPersonal private problems, poo-face,” I say, aware that the next two rows are earwigging furiously. “So keep your schneck out and turn the volume down on your big pie-plate-shaped head.”
    Picking on Liam is making me feel a lot better.
    â€œOh, right,” says Liam, furrowing his brow, a mischievous smile growing across his face. “So, this got anything to do with Jimi Steele dumping you last Friday?” he says loudly.
    â€œHuh! What?! He has not,” I gasp. “I’ve dumped him! Well, I’ve not dumped him but ... well, it’s ... gnngnnnnn! Nothing to do with you! Look, why don’t you bog off and grow the rest of that mustache you’ve been threatening to since the spring?”
    I can’t believe I’ve just played straight into Liam’s hands.
    â€œHoo-hoo! Gossip! I got the gossip!” he shouts. “Heard the latest Jimi/Ronnie news, everyone? I know the full details!”
    â€œShut. Up. Now,” says Claude firmly. “Or. Else.”
    Liam does immediately.
    Of course Liam has hit the nail on the head. Jimi Steele has officially done my head right in.
    I just don’t think I can do this “snub him for a month” thing. Jeez, I only managed to blank him for twenty-four hours when he forgot my fifteenth birthday and went with the lads to see Combat Zombie Explosion II instead. I caved in like a bad soufflé when he brought me those flowers and took me to Paramount Pizza.
    Seeing him at lunchtime hasn’t helped my plight at all. My head’s totally mixed up. It wasn’t Jimi’s first attempt to speak face-to-face to me, either, so it’s not like I can say he doesn’t care about the whole thing.
    Last Tuesday, he appeared at the Fantastic Voyage on the off chance I’d be in. Sadly, I was over at Fleur’s house, plotting our route to Astlebury as well as dissuading her from strangling her big sister Daphne, who’s just home from a year in Nepal. Tempers were fairly frazzled at the Swan house, but that was cool, as it quite distracted me from my own angst. It’s a difficult time for Fleur, not being the number one center of attention in the Swan household. I mean, Daphne Swan is a totally cool person, I want to be just like her when I’m twenty, but jeez, does she like talking about her traveling adventures!? I only popped down to the kitchen for a glass of water and had to sit through a forty-five-minute yarn about her “awesome experiences” at the Nepalese Festival of Panchak Yamar (which she says making a weird clicking noise with her tongue and spitting all over you, just