Over the Moon by Jean Ure Page B

for the tsunami victims. We spoke to one or two of our special friends at school and they all agreed that it was a good idea. Most of our mums and dads had made donations, but we wanted to do something by ourselves, to show that we cared. It was just a question of what. Hattie said we should call the whole of our class together after school to talk about it,so we got permission to use the small hall and almost everyone came along. Even the boys! I say that as usually they would turn their nose up at anything organised by girls, plus they do have this tendency to mess around all the time and make stupid jokes. Fortunately Hattie was there to keep them in order. They are quite in awe of Hattie!

    I don’t know whose suggestion it was that we should have a beauty contest. It certainly wasn’t mine! And I don’t think it was Tanya’s, either. But we had a show of hands and practically every hand in the room went up.Someone then said that we should have a “beefcake” contest for the boys, so they could strip off and show their muscles, but the only boy to put his hand up and support that one was Weedy Gonzalez – who doesn’t even have any muscles! I thought that was quite brave of him, actually. He’s not so bad, old Weed. The rest are such spoilsports!
    One of them, Anthony Meyers, said that instead of a beefcake contest we should have a Tom Bowler. Well, that is what I thought he said. I only discovered later that in fact it is a
tombola.
Just a sort of lucky dip, really. You have all these tickets with numbers on them and people pay to pick them out. If they get a number with, like, 0 on the end, that means they’ve won a prize. Some of us were a bit alarmed at the thought of prizes, cos where were we going to get them from? But Ant said as it was for charity any old thing would do, just so long as it wasn’t too tatty, or had bits missing, so we all agreed to go home and find stuff that we didn’t want any more. I said, “And we can ask our mums and dads, as well.”
    Patty Stevens said that she would get her mum to bake a cake, so that we could have a “Guess the Weight of the Cake” competition, and Anita Serrano, whose dad runs a restaurant, said that she would ask her dad if we could use his downstairs banqueting hall for free, one Saturday afternoon. It was all quite exciting!
    I told Mum and Dad about it when I got back from school. Mum said she thought it was an excellent idea. “Except for the beauty contest. Whose suggestion was that?”
    “Not mine,” I said.
    “Are you sure?” said Mum.
    I was indignant. “Someone
else
suggested it. Then we voted on it. What’s wrong with a beauty contest, anyway?”
    “Nothing,” said Dad. “Just a bit of harmless fun.”
    He chuckled. “And of course we all know who’ll win!”
    “It won’t be me,” I said, quickly. “It’ll be Tanya.”
    ‘Tanya? That one that came to your party last year? Nah!” Dad shook his head. “She’s a milksop beside you.”
    “Frank, do you have to?” said Mum. “Your daughter is quite vain enough as it is.”
    I felt my cheeks fire up. Hattie had said I was vain! I said, “You don’t have to get all bent out of shape over it. I already told you, it wasn’t my idea.”
    “No, but I bet you went along with it!”
    “So what? So did everyone else! And if you can win prizes for – I don’t know! Writing essays, or something, I don’t see why you can’t win prizes for the way you look.”
    “Exactly,” said Dad. “Where’s the difference?”
    “The difference,” said Mum, “is that one is an achievement, the other is just an accident of birth. Beauty is only skin deep, you know! It’s what’s inside that counts. Who’s going to judge this
beauty
contest, anyway?”
    I said, “All the people that come. They’ll all get to vote.”
    “And how is it supposed to make money?”
    I hadn’t quite thought that one out. I said, “I dunno … I guess people will pay to come in.”
    “You’d better