Brave New Girl Read online

  BRAVE

  NEW

  GIRL

  JANETTA OTTER-BARRY BOOKS

  Brave New Girl copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited 2011

  Text copyright © Catherine Johnson 2011

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 and in the USA in 2012 by

  Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 4 Torriano Mews,

  Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RZ

  www.franceslincoln.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron house, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-84780-254-5

  eBook ISBN 978-1-78101-050-1

  Set in Palatino

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY in September 2011

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  This book is for Sophie Outram who remade

  classic films on Super 8 when she was 13.

  Also thanks to Gonçagul of Mossbourne Academy,

  and finally The Arts Council England.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The Second Day of Spring

  2. Good News

  3. In the Paradise International Food and Wine Supermarket

  4. Casting

  5. The Kutest Kiddie

  6. Lights! Camera! Action!

  7. Once More, With Feeling

  8. In the Stone Cave

  9. Happy Family

  10. Freaky Friday

  11. A Long Ride Home

  12. Arthur’s Wings

  13. Summer Term

  1

  THE SECOND DAY OF SPRING

  I could see Sasha on the other side of the dinner hall where the Year Elevens sat. She was looking at Luke Beckford with love-puppy eyes. If she hadn’t been my big sister I’d probably have pointed it out to Keith and we’d have laughed.

  Instead I sighed, and took out my cheese-and-tomato roll. I hated seeing her like this. Love had reduced Sasha to a wibbling mess. Her mate Fay wasn’t helping, and Luke Beckford, the guy she was swooning on, definitely didn’t see it. I reckoned Luke Beckford probably thought lovesick was another word for normal as far as girls go. The way the Year Tens and Elevens stared at him, you’d have thought he’d be tripping over their tongues in the corridors.

  If Sasha wasn’t careful she’d end up with no GCSEs and just an NVQ in heartbreak. I sighed again. Sasha had been hoping she’d be going to the Leavers’ Prom with Luke. I knew this because we shared a bedroom and she hadn’t stopped going on about it since the posters had gone up in January. It was March now. She had no chance, the way she was going. Couldn’t she see she had to do something?

  I sighed again. Keith didn’t notice because he was telling me about the film he’d seen at last week’s after-school film club at the local cinema.

  “It was art, totally, Seren. A work of art.” He shook his head. “I thought that French film they had on the week before was really good. But this one....”

  I said nothing because I had fallen asleep halfway through. I really am no good with films which involve loads of reading. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good book, but when the amount of words coming up on the bottom of the screen doesn’t match up with the amount of words coming out of people’s mouths, it makes you think that whoever wrote the titles was leaving out all the best bits.

  Keith went on. “It was called The House of Flying Daggers. You should have been there, Seren. It was fantastic. Stunning. Beautiful.” Keith sometimes talked the way he did the reviews for the school newsletter. “All those colours! When you see a film like that, up on the big screen, in a proper cinema, there is nothing like it!”

  “I couldn’t make film club cos I had to go and pick up Denny. His school choir was having some major rehearsals. Anyway, that Flying Thingies, wasn’t it one of those fighting films?” I did my best ninja slice with sound effect and almost hit Miss Tunks, the drama teacher, as she passed with her tray.

  “Seren Campbell Ali!” she said loudly, and half the dining room turned to look.

  I felt my face going hot and pink. “I’m sorry, Miss, I never meant…” I stood up to try and help, and tripped over the table leg and nearly fell over her.

  People laughed. I went redder.

  Miss Tunks was angrier now. “You are so… so gauche! Keith, can you not keep an eye on your friend, please, before she does some serious damage?”

  “Sorry, Miss,” I mumbled. I swear that woman gave me the evil eye as she passed.

  “She hates me,” I said when Miss Tunks had gone. “I know she does, after last year’s play and then the Christmas show! I thought Drama was supposed to be fun, now it’s just torture! And what the hell does gauche mean?”

  Keith shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe clumsy or something. And you have got to admit it, you do trip over stuff. Sometimes.”

  “Keith! Do not remind me!” I said. I didn’t want to think about last year. “I’m a different person now, OK? Completely.” I took a deep breath. “I am so not that girl!” I shivered, remembering.

  Keith shook his head. “Miss Tunks so doesn’t hate you.”

  “She so does! She always puts me with Sanjay and he’s rubbish. Anyway, can we forget that just happened?”

  “Suits me.” Keith shrugged. He took a spring roll out of his lunchbox. “I was talking about those films, yeah? Well…” He coughed. “I was thinking, you know, I might want to make films like that.”

  “What, Crouching Keith, Hidden Teacher?”

  “No. Not exactly,” Keith said flatly.

  “Well, I wouldn’t like to be there when you tell your mum you won’t be East London’s top accountant because you’re off to Hollywood.”

  “I’d get my Uncle Ed to talk her round. And she’ll soon change her mind when I’m walking down some red carpet or winning an Oscar.”

  “I don’t know. Your mum has wanted you to be an accountant forever.”

  Keith took a piece of paper from his back pocket. “I was thinking, Seren. Miss Tunks gave me this.” He laid the paper out on the table. It said: East End Film Festival. Young Eye Film Competition. “If you win you get shown on the big screens at the Olympic stadiums, while people are sitting down or something.”

  “Miss Tunks said you should enter? She must like you.”

  “She’s all right, really. I thought I could make a film for this competition, and you,” he pointed his spring roll at me, “could give me a hand. You in, Seren? It could be a laugh. And even if I get on the shortlist, which, OK, is a long shot, they show the films at your local cinema. My film, up on the big screen at the Rio!”

  “With your name on and everything?” I said.

  “With our names on it. It’s not just my film.”

  I must admit I liked the idea of that. “But haven’t you got to win first?” I said.

  “Yeah, I know that…” Keith was off talking about lighting and angles. I started watching Sasha again, but Keith nudged me back to attention. “This Saturday, we could do some recces, talk about stuff.”

  “Recces?” I made a face.

  “Recces. It means looking around. It’s what film people say. It means checking out locations.”

  I sighed. “I suppose I won’t have anything else to do.”

  “It’ll be a laugh. And you could look at the
script. Once I’ve written it, that is. I mean, it doesn’t need a whole long script, it’s only five minutes long.”

  “So you don’t want me to write it for you?”

  “No, but I’d like your help. It’s only short. But, yeah, you’re great with ideas – you know you are.”

  I was blushing now.

  “So. I’ll come over to yours,” said Keith firmly. “I’ll tell Mum I’m at Youth Orchestra.”

  “Oh yeah? You’ll miss Youth Orchestra? I bet you chicken out.”

  Keith had Chinese Saturday School in the morning followed by Youth Orchestra all afternoon. Keith’s mum was always telling Keith, and anyone else who’d listen, that he was going to Business School.

  “She won’t be happy,” I said. “And your mum…” I’d seen Keith’s mum furious. She was a tiny woman who looked sweet and cuddly, but when she was angry….

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, so this is on the down-low, OK? Whatever you do, don’t mention it to your mum either. I know they talk.”

  I thought that since my mum was halfway through the new Jenny Darling romance, there wasn’t a chance that she’d notice much of anything.

  On the other side of the hall, Luke Beckford smiled and tossed his long fringe out of his light-brown eyes. Actually, that was exactly the way Jenny Darling would have written it and there, in front of me, it was happening for real. From the look on her face I reckoned Sasha’s heart had triple-selkoed (I had been watching that Celebrities on Ice thing) into her throat, and I knew I would have to do something.

  “Were you listening, Seren?” Keith said, elbowing me. “About the film and that? Seren?”

  “‘Course.” I smiled even though I could see that Luke Beckford was leaving the dinner hall with Keely Marchant, and Sasha looked as if she’d just discovered she had FAIL stamped across her forehead in foot-high letters.

  “‘Course I’ll help, Keith,” I said. “And you can do something for me….”

  I worked out the plan in the last lesson, which was IT. I also looked up the word ‘gauche’, which meant socially awkward and not clumsy. Miss Tunks got it so wrong.

  Our IT teacher, Mr Choudry, always got caught up with Sanjay and Ed, who never did any work, so I could have a good think about how to get Luke and Sasha together. I explained the plan twice to Keith.

  He wasn’t convinced. “It’s rubbish, Seren, no way is it ever going to work,” he hissed at me. “What are you going to do? Apart from blackmailing Luke Beckford into asking Sasha out, I don’t see how you can make something like that happen. It’s not like you can force someone to fancy someone else, is it?”

  “Not blackmail, Keith! And not forcing! It is possible. My mum reads about it all the time in her books. You just have to get the boy to see exactly what he’s missing. Luke’s problem is he only sees Sash in school. If he knew her better….”

  “I thought you said she has loads of irritating habits, like doing those really smelly burps when she’s eaten cheese-and-onion crisps, and farting in bed?”

  “If I’d wanted negative I would have asked Christina!”

  “And she would never have answered, even if you gave her cash.”

  I flicked a look over at where Christina was sitting with Ruby and Shazna. Where we used to sit before Christmas. Before the show. I felt my skin prickling, and had to take a deep breath. There was no question – I was socially awkward. Miss Tunks was right.

  Keith made a face. “Seren, I’m sorry, OK? I shouldn’t have said that. You know me, foot in mouth.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Go on, Seren, I’m listening. So, your sister, Sasha, and Luke Beckford…” I could see he was trying to sound more interested.

  I looked at him. It was better having one true friend, I thought, than three crap ones. Keith might be a boy, but he was nothing like Ed, who had the start of a beard already, or Sanjay, who towered over all the teachers. Keith was stick thin, shorter than most of the Year Sevens and knew more about films than anyone.

  “Seren?”

  I’d known him since I was six, when I met him swinging his legs against the counter in the Paradise International Food and Wine Supermarket on our estate. Our mums got chatting and then we got chatting.

  “I’m sorry.” Keith drew a little smiley on the corner of my IT notebook. “It’ll work,” he said. “We’ll make it work, OK?”

  Me and Keith walked home by the canal. My little brothers, Denny and Arthur, were at after-school club and Mum had texted to say she’d pick them up after her shift driving the bus, cos Denny had some good news. I thought it must be very good news to have tempted her away from Jenny Darling’s latest bestseller.

  It was the second really sunny day this year and the blossom was out, and there was a family of fluffy ducklings swimming over the water towards the Olympic Park. Me and Keith watched as the mummy duck led her babies under the chain-link fence, and across the brand-new grass towards the huge, dazzling stadium that looked so new and shiny it could’ve landed from outer space.

  “It looks unreal,” I said.

  “I can’t imagine all the people,” Keith said, staring. “My mum says we’re going to clear out the spare room and rent it for a packet. It’s going to be amazing, don’t you think? All those people, from all over the world!”

  “Never mind the Olympics! It’s Luke Beckford we’ve got to sort out. He’s got to understand that Sasha is the one for him. He goes to your shop, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. Sundays after football on the Astroturf. He buys those energy drinks.”

  “Well then – we get them both in at the same time. I’ll make sure Sasha’s wearing something nice – not too much lip gloss – and she’ll talk to him and he’ll realise how pretty and everything she is….” I shut my eyes and imagined the scene. It would be like the back cover of one of Mum’s romances.

  It would be the first time Luke would see Sasha, like, really see her. I’d be talking to her over in the cereal aisle, and she would be cool and funny like she could be when she wasn’t tongue-tied under the weight of her crush, or when her so-called best mate wasn’t giggling for England. Luke would hear her from over by the big chiller and come round the corner, and time would sort of slow down.

  I opened my eyes. “It’s possible. I mean, if they can build all this from nothing, then getting Sasha and Luke together has got to be a breeze.”

  “Seren, your sister…”

  “Yes? What are you saying, Keith? Are you saying she’s not good enough for Luke Beckford or something?”

  “No, Seren, of course I’m not. It’s just, well... getting people hooked up like that, it doesn’t work in real life, does it?” He looked at me seriously. “I mean, it’s just a meeting in a supermarket, it’s not a date, not like going to the cinema or out for a meal. I just think you shouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  “I’ll make it work. Didn’t I fix it last term when my little brothers wanted to go Trick and Treating and needed outfits?”

  “Yeah, but people’s feelings are a load more complicated than black bin-liners…”

  “I know that! Well then, didn’t I sort it out when you thought you wanted to go to Summer Uni and do Media last year, and your mum wanted you to do extra Maths?”

  “I know! But that’s different too! Seren, you never listen.”

  “But Keith, I can do this too, I can make things happen, good things! I know it!”

  2

  GOOD NEWS

  “Denny’s choir’s been picked for the Opening Ceremony!” Arthur, my youngest brother, ran out of the house and into my arms. He was squealing high and loud, and his five-year-old face was pink with excitement.

  “Have you been at the Cherry Coke again, Arthur?” I said. I hoped not. If he had he’d be up all night bouncing off the walls and no amount of Frog and Toad at Home would get him off to sleep.

  I had hardly walked through the door when Mum hugged me so hard I thought I was going to faint.
“He’s right, Seren! Our Den! Singing at the Olympics, with all the world watching!”

  Denny was cramming his mouth with Iceland sausage-rolls – his favourite.

  “Denny’ll be famous!” Arthur said, and grinned at me.

  “Isn’t it fantastic?” Mum said again. She swooped on Denny and kissed the top of his head. Denny pulled away. “You’re a star, Den!”

  “It’s not just me, Mum, it’s the Year Six choir. Miss Khan said we were wonderful, and that man off the telly who did the auditions said we was wonderful too.”

  “So no one noticed you singing flat, then?” I said, helping myself to a sausage roll before they all disappeared into the black hole that is my biggest little brother’s mouth.

  “Mum!” Denny said, his voice gone from proud to whiny in seconds.

  “Will you stop teasing him, Seren?”

  “Oh, Den, you know I’m pleased really,” I said, and he smiled again.

  “All the Olympic boroughs could put forward one primary and one secondary school choir,” Denny said, spraying sausage roll as he spoke.

  “And it’s Denny Denny Denny from Gains–borough!” Arthur was jumping up and down, Mum joined in and then we were all dancing round the kitchen, holding hands, while Denny sang his tune at top volume – London World in One City. We were still at it when Sasha and her mate Fay came in.

  “Oh My God!” Sasha said. Fay had her hand in front of her mouth, but you could see she was practically choking, trying not to laugh. Fay was sort of all right, but it didn’t help that Christina was her younger sister. I imagined she’d be double-quick to tell her all about how nuts that Seren was as soon as she got home.

  Arthur ran towards her, his hands sticky with sausage roll, and she only just managed to swerve to avoid a pink’n’yellow, flaky-pastry cuddle. “Fay-ee!” he squeaked.

  But they’d both gone upstairs in seconds. Mum shouted up about Denny, and Sasha shouted something back that sounded like ‘great’, then slammed the bedroom door.