Flying Tips for Flightless Birds Read online

  Ten minutes later they’re still giggling at each other and it’s like I’ve ceased to exist. “I’m cold,” I say pointedly, standing up.

  No response.

  “And hungry. I’m going to the vending machine. Coming, Birdie?”

  She doesn’t look up. “I’ll see you in there,” she says. “Get me a yogurt.” She’s demonstrating in slo-mo with her own pen and Hector’s trying to follow. After a moment I walk away, their giggling following me across the yard.

  “I guess you haven’t heard, but making friends is generally considered a good thing,” Birdie says at lunchtime. “You should google it.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “He might want to join the circus school. Wasn’t that the point of the blog and everything? We need people. Which involves talking to people.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m just super impressed that when you decide to pick a new best friend, you manage to find the only person in school destined to be less popular than us. Did you see him? And having him at Franconis’ is a terrible idea. I don’t think our insurance will cover a guy who walks with both feet turned in and can’t open a door without injuring himself.” It’s true, I’ve seen him trip over his own shoelaces and whack himself in the face with the chemistry lab door already and we’re only halfway through the day. “I don’t think he’d fit in. Unless we used him as a juggling club.”

  “Finchley Sullivan, you are being mean,” Birdie says. “I like him, he’s nice.”

  “He’s just another Gingham. Or he will be, give him five minutes. As soon as he makes some normal friends, he’ll start ignoring us like everyone else.”

  “I don’t think he is a Gingham, Finch. Bet you my glow-in-the-dark beanbags.”

  I stick my hand out to shake. “You’re on.”

  After lunch I’m standing outside physics with half the class, waiting for Birdie, who’s probably in the loos with a can of hairspray (she has an obsession with beehives at the minute), when I notice Hector looking hopefully at me as he comes up the corridor. I stare firmly out of the window.

  Birdie thinks I’m being harsh about Hector but I have my reasons. The most (possibly only) useful thing I’ve ever learned at high school is never to leap into random friendships. People always turn out to be jerks or morons or just generally disappointing, so you might as well save yourself the hassle. Anyway, I already have a lab partner, if she ever gets here, and I don’t need a new one, especially one who’s likely to electrocute me.

  Hector stands at the window to my right, reading a book and glancing at me every few seconds. A clatter of heels announces Kitty, the Bond Girls and a few of the lads approaching from my left, sniffing the air like they’ve caught a whiff of fresh meat. But for a change, they’re not looking at me.

  “You’re new,” Kitty says. Kitty doesn’t ask questions, she decrees things. Everyone in the corridor turns to look at Hector, who quickly stuffs the paperback in his blazer pocket.

  “Yep,” he says brightly, but I can hear the nerves in his voice. “Brand new. Just out of the shrink-wrap this morning!”

  No one laughs, until Kitty says, “Guess that’s why he’s so short,” and then everyone laughs.

  The whole group starts firing questions at him like one of those tennis machines that serves balls at you as if it wants to take your head off. Hector does his best to answer, but they’re so quick he can’t even keep track of who’s speaking.

  “Why’d you move here?”

  “My dad got moved here for his job.”

  “What job?”

  “He’s the new minister in Little Murragh.”

  “So, are you like a religious nut or something?”

  “Not really.”

  “Is your hair bleached?”

  “No.”

  “Are you an albino?”

  “No, I’m just pale.”

  “You look anaemic. You should eat more meat. Do you eat meat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you wearing a blazer? You don’t have to wear the uniform, you know.”

  “I know, but it’s my first week. My dad thought—”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “I just got here.”

  “Do you play football?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you support Northern Ireland?”

  “Um … yeah.”

  I wonder if Hector knows this is the most important conversation he will ever have at Murragh High. They’re deciding what box to put him in. Everyone has a box; Kitty likes things neat and tidy. Hector is about to be packed, stacked and labelled, and the box system is a one-way process.

  I have zero credit with these guys so there’s nothing I can do for him, but I wince every time he opens his mouth.

  “Why were you talking to Miss Allen in the corridor?” Kitty finally says, cutting off everyone else’s questions.

  Hector shrugs. “I was in an advanced class at my last school. She was giving me some extra work to do.”

  “What, are you like a brainiac or something?” she says.

  “No, I’m just good at maths.”

  “How thick are your glasses?” Sinead, one of Kitty’s Bond Girls, says. “Can I try them on?”

  “Um … sure.” He hands the glasses to Sinead, who puts them on and stands, hands on hips, like a scary librarian. Hector laughs along uneasily. But she doesn’t give them back, she hands them to Marie, who passes them to Adi. They go around the whole group while the interrogation resumes and Hector squints after them.

  “What are you reading?” Marie says.

  “It’s about J.R.R. Tolkien.”

  “Are you one of those sci-fi losers?” Adi looks like he just smelled something unpleasant.

  “Tolkien isn’t sci-fi, it’s fantasy. But I do like sci-fi,” Hector says.

  “Do you have Star Trek costumes?” Kitty smirks.

  “No, although… No.”

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Sinead says, finally handing back the glasses.

  “No, it’s just me.”

  “What do you think of Murragh?” she adds.

  “It’s … small?”

  “And the school?”

  He hesitates. There is no right answer to this question, even he must know that.

  “It seems OK.”

  “Just OK?” Kitty says. “I suppose your last school was fricking Hogwarts?”

  “I mean, it seems great.”

  “Wrong, it’s a dump. But you love school, don’t you?”

  He sighs like he knows he might as well give up. “Not really.” But he decides to go for broke and, looking Kitty in the eye, he says, “It depends on the people.”

  Kitty smiles slowly, like a cat who’s just spotted live prey. Miss Deshpande comes jogging up the corridor then, arms full of files and hair escaping from her bun. “Sorry I’m late, everyone. Go on in, go on in. What are you all standing out here for?”

  As the class shuffles through the door, Hector calls after them with as much sarcasm as he dares, “My name’s Hector, by the way.”

  Kitty turns back, one eyebrow eloquently raised, and says, “We’ll see.”

  Sure enough, somewhere between us sitting down to learn how to wire a plug and running for the door forty minutes later, there’s been some sort of committee meeting to decide Hector’s name, rank and status in the Murragh High food chain, and by the end of class they’ve rechristened him Hector the Holy Ghost. And of course Birdie, dashing in ten seconds after Miss Deshpande, invited him to sit with us.

  “Leave him alone, Kitty,” she says, when the Bond Girls start crossing themselves every time he walks past.

  “Mind your own, Birdbrain,” Kitty sneers.

  Birdie leans over our mess of wires and says, “Ignore them, Hector.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” he says.

  “And you will be again, just stick around five minutes,” Kitty says, knocking Hector’s plug onto the floor with her elbow as she passes by our des
k.

  “She seems nice,” he says with a grin.

  “Did she give you the eyebrow?” Birdie whispers.

  “Yeah!”

  “Then congratulations, you are officially one of us!”

  He looks pleased. Can’t be that smart then.

  How to make a spectacle of yourself

  Posted by Birdie

  You’re in a ginormous scarlet-and-yellow canvas tent. There’s jangling music playing at a billion decibels, the lights are dim, the four-hundred-strong crowd are still cheering for the last act – a guy who juggles cactus plants while wearing a mankini and balancing on a tightrope – and there are clowns running through the audience chucking buckets of confetti. Half the kids are throwing up candyfloss and the other half are screaming because they’re afraid of clowns.

  How do you get their attention?

  Well, you have to want it. Think about the last time you did something massively embarrassing in public. Skirt tucked into your knickers? Called your head teacher “Mum”? If your reaction was, “Oh my God, hide!” then maybe the circus isn’t for you.

  My latest malfunction involved a little-known position called the Inverted Mermaid.

  Literally.

  We were on a geography field trip at the beach, clambering over rocks on the shoreline searching for creatures in rock pools. A bunch of us had gone quite far out, where there were still big rocks to walk across but the water around them was deeper.

  Our instructions for the day clearly stated that we were to wear “trousers” and “appropriate footwear”. I couldn’t resist the pair of purple flared cords I’d just got on eBay, teamed with a flowery shirt and a purple suede bag with fringing, and my hair held in a high ponytail by a pink hairband – perfect for a day on the beach, if you ask me.

  “And the shoes?” said Mr Brown, who did ask me, peering over the tops of his glasses while everyone else piled onto the bus that morning.

  I frowned at my feet. “I did consider the black ones,” I admitted, “but it’s so summery. You think pink was a mistake?”

  “I was referring to the three-inch heels. The instructions clearly said ‘appropriate footwear’.”

  “Exactly! That’s why I went for platform wedges.”

  Mr Brown seemed confused.

  “Well, what would you wear with purple flares, Sir?”

  His eyes closed briefly. “Just get on the bus, Bridget. You can go barefoot.”

  OK, it’s not easy walking on sand in three-inch wedges, but if Mr Brown thought I, Birdie Franconi, trapeze artist extraordinaire, would have a problem balancing on a few rocks above some limp waves, he’d obviously never watched my YouTube channel.

  When the rocks got further apart, I leaped from one to the next with all my Nike-clad classmates. Right behind me was Finch, who’d escaped Mr Brown’s attentions by wearing leather brogues and pink socks with his skinny jeans.

  Unfortunately he was a little too close behind me.

  Just as I was about to jump off one big rock and onto the next, I spotted a huge starfish in a rock pool at my feet. I halted, pre-leap, and Finch didn’t.

  Flying Trapeze Rules Number One, Two and Three: Communication is everything.

  Finch slammed into my back and instead of springing, gazelle-like, over the little stretch of water between me and the next rock, I flailed, lemming-like, right into it.

  A lesser artist might have panicked. But I’m a professional. I sank for a few moments and then started to rise, exactly like falling into a safety net and gently bouncing back up again, and the whole time all I was thinking about was my next move.

  I surfaced, spouting salty water and half-blinded by mascara, to a dozen faces peering down at me (no one had leaped in to save me, I noted), and the sound of Mr Brown racing across the rocks screaming, “Pull her out, for God’s sake!”

  I looked up at Finch, who looked down at me, and, as if on cue, the two of us flung our arms in the air and yelled, “Ta-dah!”

  But even if your natural disposition is not being the world’s biggest attention-seeking show-off, there are ways to get noticed:

  1. Be nice to the spotlight guy.

  2. Add two million sequins to your costume.

  3. Wear eye make-up so thick, your lashes start to inhibit your aerodynamics.

  4. Turn the music up loud and, if at all possible, set something on fire.

  5. Always pronounce your name as if there’s an exclamation mark at the end (and in an American accent).

  6. Find a partner who’s as bonkers as you are (probably no one else will want to know you after the field trip gets cut short because you’re in danger of hypothermia).

  < < Previous Post

  “You were pretty unpopular on the bus,” I remind Birdie, reading the blog post over breakfast.

  “I smelled of seaweed. You can’t take that personally; even you didn’t want to sit with me.” Birdie grins and steals a piece of toast from my plate, then we juggle butter knives while we talk. “Anyway, we’re used to being unpopular,” she adds.

  “True.”

  She throws two forks into the mix and says, “Doesn’t that ever annoy you?”

  “Doesn’t what annoy me?” I’m not really listening; I’m wondering if we could get Jay to join in and make a comedy juggling routine with chef outfits for the show.

  “All that Freaky Franconis stuff,” she says. “The fact that no one likes us.”

  “Rubbish!” I scoff. “We are adored by legions of internet fans.”

  “We’ve had one page view.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “I mean real people,” she says.

  “Real people?” I collect the cutlery as she throws it, set it on the table and nick my cold toast back. “You mean the Drones? The Normals? The Ginghams?” I give her a meaningful look. “You can start hanging out with them if you want, but do me a favour and wear a name tag so I can tell which one you are.”

  She shrugs and goes to make more toast, and I go upstairs to get dressed. Since we’re publicly recommending being gawped at, I decide to go for flip-flops and my Indian shawl with the hood. That always gets a reaction.

  If Birdie and I have thick skins, it’s because we’ve earned them.

  One of the reasons I’m not about to pledge undying friendship to Hector is that I already loathe everyone at my school. And, OK, Hector hasn’t done anything too loathsome yet, but pre-emptive loathing just saves time.

  My classmates are probably no worse than your average high-school clones, but I don’t hate them for being completely average. I have much more specific reasons.

  The specific stuff all happened a while back, but in high school, time is meaningless. The same faces, day in, day out, year in, year out, the same cliques and feuds dragging on and on; the only difference between a playground punch-up in Year Eight and one in Year Eleven is that everyone’s a bit taller and has better hair. So the fact that this particular nuclear explosion in my life happened three years ago doesn’t matter at all, because the fallout just keeps coming. Making me the social equivalent of radioactive waste.

  Back when Birdie and I started high school, we were quite shy. We’d come from a primary school that had thirty-seven pupils. In total. Our high school is in the town of Murragh, which is next to our village, Little Murragh. It’s not a big town, and it’s so close we can walk there, but kids from other small towns come to it as well, so we went from thirty-seven to three hundred schoolmates just like that, and we weren’t used to it. We’d always spent most of our time juggling with Jay and Wren in the garden, or practising on the trapeze, or doing tiny shows for the parents of the circus school kids. Other than that, we’d kept our heads down. And I guess we’d have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for James Keane.

  James Keane: football captain, class rep, most popular guy in our year, voted Hottest Male in the Girls’ Annual Elections last term, and my best friend for a whole three months when we were eleven.

  With Birdie around I�
�d never felt the need for a proper best friend (it’s hard to be lonely when you were assigned a human shadow at birth) but I liked James right away. He chose a seat next to me in our first class and just started talking. As a shy person, I found that pretty impressive. He turned out to be impressive in lots of ways. He was six and a half inches taller than me, he was smarter than me, he made everyone in class laugh twice before the period was over, he already had a girlfriend (Kitty Bond – Hottest Female award three years running now), and he had such a good singing voice (which probably broke when he was like five) that they gave him the lead in the school musical, Oklahoma. By the time we got to chemistry that afternoon, I was following him around like a lapdog.

  The weird thing was he liked me too. Everyone wanted to be his mate, but he sat with me at lunch, came to my house after school, kicked the ball to me during PE, and then didn’t laugh when I kicked it in the wrong direction. Since the only thing I could do that he couldn’t was juggle, I went a bit crazy trying to impress him. I broke so many eggs over myself that every time I took a hot shower there was a smell of omelette.

  “You need to calm down, bro,” Birdie said. “You spend all day sitting on his desk chucking the contents of his pockets about. You look like a trained monkey.”

  I reckoned she was just jealous. She’d never had a real best friend either, and I was spending a lot of time with James instead of her.

  Sometime just before Christmas I noticed he hadn’t replied to a text message I’d sent. Or an email. And when I called, it went to voicemail. He never said anything, but he wasn’t coming round to my house as often, and sometimes I’d spot him in town at the weekend with the guys from the football team. Rehearsals for the leads in Oklahoma were practically every day so I put it down to that, but then he started eating lunch at another table and sitting with someone else in the library. It was as if I were contagious. Every time I tried to broach the subject, he’d brush it off while backing away from me down the corridor.

  I got sick of it. And Birdie got sick of me moaning about it. “Just forget it, Finch; he’s a jerk, that’s all.”

  But he wasn’t a jerk, I knew that. So I must have done something wrong and I couldn’t let it go until I found out what.