LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Chemistry class . . . Anna . . . Anna set . . . hair . . . Josie Graham on fire!’ Mrs Ginnwell finally spluttered.

      Mrs Ginnwell is neither authoritative nor intimidating. She kind of reminds me of a parrot. But not a cool one that would chill with a pirate. An overzealous one that swoops around your head, squawking and whacking you unexpectedly in the face with its wings.

      ‘Is Josie all right?’ Miss Duke asked in alarm.

      Mrs Ginnwell nodded, her curled strawberry blonde hair frizzing around her sweaty forehead. ‘Fine. Although her hair is quite singed and covered in foam.’

      ‘I see,’ Miss Duke replied and I swear I saw her smirk for a second. If she did it was gone in an instant when she caught my eye. ‘And no one else was hurt in this incident?’

      ‘No.’ Mrs Ginwell shook her head.

      ‘Well in that case, Anna, you can have a seat and, Jenny, why don’t you pop into the teachers’ lounge and ask someone to cover your lesson for a bit while you get a cup of tea.’

      Mrs Ginnwell nodded and slowly released her grip on me. She gave me a very pointed look, as if when let loose I would pull out a flamethrower from my locker and burn the school to the ground. Which is a completely ridiculous thought for her to entertain because last term I did an excellent essay on penguins. No one who puts that much effort and emotional maturity into a Year 10 essay about penguins would be spending their free time plotting to destroy their school.

      I sat down slowly into the leather chair opposite Miss Duke, who was settling into her chair behind the desk. The heavy wooden door closed loudly as Mrs Ginnwell escaped, still glaring at me, and there was a moment of silence as Miss Duke straightened the forms she had been filling in before we interrupted her afternoon.

      ‘So, why don’t you explain to me exactly what happened?’

      I took a deep breath and told her how we had been in our Chemistry lesson and Josie and I had been partnered together, which, by the way, neither of us were too happy about. I didn’t tell Miss Duke that part though.

      I assumed she would know that it had been an unhappy arrangement. Josie is one of the most popular girls in our year. She’s best friends with Queen Bee, Sophie Parker, and they’re always hanging out with the popular boys in our year like Brendan Dakers and James Tyndale. Josie spends her weekends partying and comes to school wearing a full face of make-up and her hair sprayed perfectly into place.

      I spend my weekends reading comics, watching CSI with my dad and complaining about my life to my yellow Labrador, called Dog, who is the only creature on this planet who listens to me. And I can only get him to listen if I’m holding a bit of bacon.

      So I skipped out the part of the story where Josie looked miserably at Brendan, who she was clearly hoping to be partnered with, and then came to sit next to me with a big sigh and no greeting. She didn’t even look at me when I went, ‘Howdy, partner,’ in a courageous attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

      I really don’t know why that was the greeting I went with.

      She couldn’t be bothered to do the experiment so I just got on with it. Now, technically, Mrs Ginnwell had not explained the Bunsen burner part of the experiment yet as everyone was putting on their lab coats and goggles. But some people were taking their time and Josie, leaning on her hand, kept glancing at Brendan, laughing at whatever he was saying to her and flicking her hair dramatically.

      I guess this is where it kind of becomes my fault. I should have waited until we were told to start up the Bunsen burners but I went ahead and turned ours on.

      There are a few very important things to remember here:

      1. I did not realise it was on the highest flame setting.

      2. I did not realise that, just as I turned it on, Josie would flick her hairspray-laden locks in the direction that she did.

      3. I did not realise that her hair was quite so flammable.

      4. I did not realise that she would run around screaming rather than stay still so that throwing water at her became increasingly difficult and my aim isn’t that good anyway so I actually ended up just soaking myself.

      5. I did not expect Mrs Ginnwell to use so much foam that Josie resembled a poodle.

      6. It should also be remembered that I have never been in any real trouble at school before this incident.

      7. Apart from that time when I was six and Ben Metton ate my Hula Hoops so I locked him in the stationary cupboard.

      8. The whole fire incident is in fact very upsetting for me too as I didn’t mean to do it, I feel awful and now no one will want to stay friends with me, just like at my last school.

      At this point I started crying.

      Miss Duke, who had been staring at me in shock, passed me a tissue. ‘Well, it sounds to me like it was an accident –’ she began.

      ‘Of course it was an accident!’ I wailed, interrupting her. ‘I would never do that on purpose!’

      There was a knock on the door and I turned in my seat to see the school nurse slowly pop her head round. Miss Duke beckoned her in and she came forwards happily. ‘I wanted to let you know, Miss Duke, and you, Anna, that Josie is perfectly fine. Her hair is singed at the end and she’ll have to have a haircut but apart from that she is right as rain.’

      ‘She must hate me,’ I said glumly, staring at the damp, crumpled tissue in my hand.

      ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. She’ll get over it,’ the nurse said jovially. ‘Her hair was so long and straggly anyway, a cut will probably improve things.’

      ‘Er, thank you, Tricia,’ Miss Duke said pointedly. The nurse gave a cheerful shrug and left.

      ‘There you go, that’s something,’ Miss Duke announced. ‘It was clearly an accident but one that could have had nasty consequences. We’ve been lucky, Anna.’

      I nodded gravely.

      ‘I hope that from now on you won’t begin any kind of experiment without instruction.’

      ‘I’m never going to do another experiment again.’

      ‘I hope you will. Chemistry is a fascinating subject and I imagine you’ve learnt an important lesson with regards to safety.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘Right, well, while we’ve established this wasn’t intentional, I’m going to have to give you detention lasting the remainder of this term so that you can reflect on the importance of caution. It starts tomorrow. And since it is the end of the day in about ten minutes, you can return to your classroom, gather your things and go home.’

      ‘I’d rather not go back, to be honest.’

      ‘You don’t need anything?’

      ‘It’s just my pencil case and books. People have probably thrown them in the dump by now.’

      ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ Miss Duke gave a thin smile. ‘They all know it was an accident and no harm done. By tomorrow they’ll have forgotten the whole thing.’

      It’s worrying how clueless adults are sometimes.

      When my dad gets concerned his eyebrows become very distracting.

      I mean, he was really concerned about the situation. He made me sit down and everything. Dad and I rarely have conversations where we sit each other down. We both become very awkward.

      The only other times that he’s had to ‘sit me down to talk’ about something was when I signed him up to a dating website because I didn’t like his girlfriend at the time and he got all these

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