How To Be 15

14

It was the second to last day of term, and I honestly had no idea why they bothered making us come in for these last 2 days. Nobody was making us do any work, and we were all basically just talking about our plans for the 6 weeks holiday, and how much the prospect of being in year 11 was making us all want to kill ourselves. 

My favourite part about these last two days was that there was still drama happening between cliques. It was currently the last part of our lunch hour, and Jackie was filling us in on some key events.

"Yeah, well I was talking to Paula, and according to her, Kayla was chatting shit about how much she wanted to drop Kate. And Paula heard from some of her little year 9 bum-buddies that Kayla benched Kate in front of her little posse." Jackie explained to me and Shannon, a girl from the rounders team who we sometimes hung out with. 

"Benched her?" Hannah asked, perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised.

"Yeah." Jackie confirmed, sipping at her bottle of water.

"Jackie, when are you going to learn that Paula is full of shit."Shan shook her head, laughing.

"No, it's true!" Jackie insisted.

"Jack, do you remember that time when Paula told us that her Mum caught a baby when it fell off a mountain?" I asked, agreeing with Hannah. Paula was a nice enough person, but she did like to twist stories.

"Or the time when her Brother apparently knocked out Muhammad Ali, that boxer, so he could carry him out of a burning house fire?"

"I-" Jackie went to defend her.

"Jack." I said in a soft voice.

"Yeah, alright." She replied, dejected. She knew deep down that we were right.

Our attention was drawn by Helen-the-almost-Nun, who was running towards the three of us on our place on a wall in the school's courtyard. To see Helen running outside of a sporting situation was weird to see.

In her hand she held the team sheet for tonight's rounders game.

"You three are playing tonight, right? Please tell me you are." She looked worried.

To be fair, I was worried as to why she was managing the team sheet. Normally it would be Andrea, our bowler, who would organise the team. As annoying as she was, she was organised. Helen, on the other hand, was not. 

The three of us nodded.

"Why?" Shannon asked.

"Andrea can't play tonight, and neither can Vicky." She panicked.

"What the hell? Why can't Andie play, we need her, she's our only decent bowler?!" I asked, concerned for the team. The rest of us really couldn't bowl to save our lives.

"She's dislocated her ankle or something." Helen shook her head.

"She pulled a muscle. She's overreacting." Jackie shook her head.

"I know. I couldn't convince her, you know how she is, she's pertinacious."

"What fresh hell does that even mean?" Jackie frowned. For saying she was so good at English, she knew the meaning of few words. 

"That doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact that our bowler and our backup bowler aren't playing tonight, so we're effectively screwed." Shannon said.

"Yeah, why isn't Vicky playing either?" Jackie enquired.

"She has a detention with English, something about her going mental at Mr Fett."

"Oh, God, yeah. That was so funny." I laughed at the memory.

He had been ridiculing her work in front of the whole class because she had tried to use a load of fancy words in her work, but she'd used them in the wrong context, so it didn't really make any sense.