The Misadventures of Tallulah Casey 3-Book Collection: Withering Tights, A Midsummer Tights Dream and A Taming of the Tights. Louise Rennison
I may have a stuffed one in a drawer.”
Never mind the bats, I have had my first kiss. From a boy.
I escaped from the bat chamber into my squirrel room where I lay down on my bed next to my squirrel slippers and gave them a little hug. It was a full moon and I heard an owl hooting. Probably Connie, hanging about waiting for the birth of her owl twins. Eating rodents to keep her mind off motherhood.
I feel somehow changed.
Not like a werewolf. Fur isn’t growing on the back of my hands. Although it might be growing under my armpits, at last.
I am no longer a child. My corkers are emerging, and I’ve had my first kiss.
I’ve had my first taste of bat – I mean romance.
As a mark of my new being, I put the squirrel slippers on the floor.
I will no longer have cuddly-toy type things near me.
The Tree Sisters in Loveland
Vaisey was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came down next morning.
She was nodding her hair-hat and pretending to be interested in what the twins had made at playschool. Dobbins said it was a vase. But to me it was a washing-up liquid bottle cut in half, with what looked like snot all over it.
As I was eating my toast, Vaisey kept raising her eyebrows at me. She said, “We should go, Lullah, we…need to get limbered up. ”
Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows.
She said, “You know, the performance lunchtime thingymajig.”
I said, “The performance lunchtime thingymajig?”
She said, “Yes.”
I said, “Hmm…OK.”
Dibdobs said, “Oooo, that sounds interesting, what is it about?”
I said, “Yeah. Good point. What is it about, Vaisey?”
Vaisey looked like she had swallowed a whole shoe. Just then Harold came into the kitchen with a fishing net and wearing thigh-length boots.
“Morning, campers! And what a glorious morning it is. I’m going to take the boys fishing. Come on, Sam and Max, welligogs on and tricycles out!!!”
And he rootled around in the hall cupboard and brought out two wooden tricycles. The boys started making chuffing noises.
Dibdobs smiled, “Oooh, you boys think it’s like Thomas the Tank Engine, but it’s not a train, is it boys? What is it?”
Sam said, “Sjuuuge.”
Dibdobs was determined that although her boys might look like idiots, they were not going to be calling tricycles trains.
“Yes, it’s a huge…tricycle, isn’t it?”
They just went on huffing and tooting.
Then Harold popped back in to say, “Come on, boys, split splot! Look, Daddy’s got his tricycle ready to go as well.”
We looked beyond him into the garden and there it was. His tricycle.
After they had all gone Dibdobs said, “Sorry, girls, you were telling me about your performance, how exciting! What did you say it was about?”
I looked at Vaisey she looked at me and I blurted, “It’s a…bicycle ballet.”
A bicycle ballet?
Actually it sounded quite good.
Dibdobs said, “A bicycle ballet? Gosh, that sounds good. How does it work? What happens?”
I said, “Well…it’s a ballet…done on bicycles. Come on, Vaisey, we must go and er…polish our saddles and so on.”
Vaisey said as soon as we got out of the door, “So, so, what happened???”
I looked thoughtful.
I was thoughtful.
The trouble is I didn’t know what I thought.
What had happened?
I said, “You go first.”
Vaisey’s hair had gone completely mad. She had not strapped it down under a hat or tied it half to death with a laccy band and it was taking full advantage. Bobbing around. Sticking up on end. She looked like an electrified floor mop.
We ambled up round the village green and towards the bridge to go to Dother Hall.
She said, “Well, in the cinema, we sat down, didn’t we? And it was all dark, and I daren’t look to see what anyone else was doing.”
I said, “I know my eyes nearly fell out trying to look out of the corners. I think that Phil put his arm around Jo.”
Vaisey said, “I think he did.”
I said, “I mean, I thought it was his arm, but then I thought it might have been the leg of someone in the row behind, sort of sticking up.”
Vaisey said, “There wasn’t anyone in the row behind. The only people were about three rows back and you would have had to have eight foot legs to reach—”
Then her gaze sort of drifted to my legs.
I said, “Go on.”
“Well, about halfway through, Jack shifted his legs a bit and one of them brushed against my knee. I looked round at him and he smiled at me.”
Wow. I said, “ Yabbadabadooooo…here we go. Then what happened?”
She said, “That was it.”
“OK, well go from the bit when I left.”
Vaisey shook her hair-hat about.
“Well, we all chatted for a bit and then Phil said he would walk Jo home.”
I said, “Oh yes, I see. Walking her home. Leaving you all alone with Jack the smiler.”
I winked at her.
But she didn’t see me, because she had walked in some sheep poo. So I said, “And? When they went, you did a bit more smiling, and then—”
“We talked about stuff.”
“You talked about stuff and then—”
Vaisey looked at me. “He showed me his new plectrum. But said he really wanted to be a drummer.”
“And then he lunged—”
“No, then he said goodnight, thanks, see you later.”
Vaisey said, “Do you think that’s bad? Do you think it means he doesn’t really like me? Except in a musical sense?”
She looked a bit upset and her hair had gone flat. “Anyway, I like him. What happened to you?”
I told her about the kiss thingy.
She looked at me like I was the cat’s pyjamas and said, “You have kissed a boy. In person.”
I said, “Yeppity doo dah.”
Vaisey said, “And what was it like?”
I said, “Well, um, it was a bit like being attacked by a jelly, and then having a little bat trapped in your mouth.”
Vaisey said, “Was it nice? Did you like it? Did he like it?”
And I said, “Well, he shook my hand at the end.”