The Misadventures of Tallulah Casey 3-Book Collection: Withering Tights, A Midsummer Tights Dream and A Taming of the Tights. Louise Rennison
from it. He says he did.
I’ll just open it randomly.
Oh, here’s some stuff about boy things. James Bond and Honeychile. Ooh, that’s funny, isn’t it? Being a bit like Honey.
It was unbearably hot in the hotel bedroom in Jamaica. Outside, the geckos and parakeets were settling down noisily for the night.
I’ll just have to try and imagine the noise of the parakeets above the baa-ing and grunting outside my window.
Honeychile got up from the bed and took off all her clothes. She went and stood next to the window.
Crumbs.
Bond went across to her and took a breast in each hand. But still she looked away from him out of the window.
“Not now,” she said in a low voice.
Is that what you’re supposed to do?
I went to the open window. And when I looked down I saw a boy and girl, um, snogging. The girl had her back to me and her arms wrapped round the boy’s neck. I couldn’t see his face. I wondered if it was like in the James Bond book and he was holding one of her breasts in each hand?
If he was, she would turn her head away in a minute and say, “Not now”. I couldn’t see because of the angle…And that’s when she snuggled into his shoulder and he looked up at my window.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
I was like a rabbit in a headlight.
Maybe I can pretend I’m just drawing the curtains.
There aren’t any curtains.
Perhaps I could pretend to be cleaning the windows.
I haven’t got a duster.
I could use the sleeve of my jim-jams.
Good. Good idea.
Creative.
Improvise cleaning a window.
He was still looking at me.
As I started cleaning the window with my sleeve.
Then he winked at me.
How disgusting.
To be snogging one girl and winking at another.
What sort of person did that?
He is like a wild animal.
A winking, snogging, wild animal.
Then the girl said, “Oy Cain, what are you looking at?”
I shut the window quickly.
Cain. Why is he always underneath my window?
We first learn to fill our tights
I woke up early the next day. I’d been dreaming that I had a bra made out of soap. It slipped off when I did my special audition dance and everyone laughed.
I am going to tie my hair up and wear a hat. Cain won’t recognise me again out of my jim-jams, will he?
Oh Lord, he has seen me in my jim-jams. Watching him snog.
I went down to breakfast and the Dobbins were all as cheerful as people who hadn’t been caught in their jim-jams in the middle of the night. Pretending to clean windows. But really watching people snog.
The twins were ready for an action-packed day of being really odd. Dibdobs said in her beamy way, “Morning, Tallulah! Say morning, boys. To Tallulah.”
They looked at me.
Sam said, “Oo been seeping?”
Dibdobs laughed, “Yes, clever boy, Tallulah has been sleeping and now she’s awake and going to school. Hurrah!!!”
But I don’t think Sam meant had I been sleeping. I think he meant had I been seeping. Because then he said, “I been seeping a lot.”
Dobbs said, “Yes, clever boy, you’ve been sleeping too. Like Tallulah. You’ve been sleeping in your beddy-byes and now you are up and dressed!”
Max said, “No! Lady!!! He not seeped in his beddy-byes, he seeped in his pants!”
I had to go.
I met Vaisey by the post office. She had her hair in a plait so it didn’t stick out.
She said, “Ruby plaited it for me, do you think it looks alright?”
I said, “Yes, it looks nice.”
I think she is wearing a bra, she seems more sticky-outy somehow. I didn’t ask her, but I might sneak a look later on.
I do like her, she’s so friendly. And she seems all excited and happy.
She said, “Did you do your assignment? What words did you come up with?”
Before I could tell her she went on. “At first I was thinking about what people said about me, you know…nice. Bit young. Mad red hair, sticky-out bottom. But somehow, nice, young, red hair, big bum didn’t make me feel good. And then I thought the words that sum me up are Black Beauty.”
I said, “Um, that’s a horse.”
As we walked through the woods she said, “Black Beauty was my all-time top favourite book when I was little.”
I said, “Yes, but you didn’t want to BE a horse, did you? You wanted to HAVE a horse.”
Vaisey said, “No, I wanted to be the horse. I was Black Beauty.”
“You were Black Beauty?”
“Yes, you know, free and galloping and so on. With black hair like yours. Not red hair. Sometimes just trotting along. Or cantering in high spirits. Look, I can even do dressage.”
As we went up the lane to Dother Hall she started lifting one leg really high, and leaving it there for a second, and then hopping on to the other one and lifting that really high. And then criss-crossing her legs to the side.
She said, “I used to ride as Black Beauty to school.”
She trotted the rest of the way to college. Occasionally when she veered off towards Woolfe Academy, I shouted, “Black Beauty, steady!”
I told her that when I went to school, I rode an imaginary Harley Davidson motorbike.
As we reached the gates Vaisey reined herself in and said, “What words did you think of to describe you?”
And I said, “Um, it’s a surprise.”
And I wasn’t fibbing because I haven’t thought of anything.
When we arrived at the entrance hall other girls, older than us, were dashing in saying stuff like, “Hello, darling, I saw the BEST Beckett the other day. I wept it was soooo good,” and “Hi hi, one and all. God, nobody can lend me any panstick, can they? I completely forgot mine this morning after London.”
They must be the permanent students. I wonder if I will ever be like them.
Gudrun was there to greet us.
“Guten tag, fräulein!!! Wunderbar!!”
And