Over the Moon Read Online Free

said Mum, “was leaving school at sixteen with no qualifications. It severely limits your choices. They say it’s never too late, but take it from me … the longer you leave it, the harder it becomes. So please, Scarlett, I know you love your dad, I know you’re his pride and joy, but
don’t let him talk you out of it
! OK?”
    I said OK, feeling a bit shaken – Mum had never spoken to me like this before, I’d had no idea how she felt – but I wailed at Hattie later that week that I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Hattie, in her sensibleway, said it was because I was out of practice. She said, “You’ve lost the habit. Don’t worry! It’ll come back.” Glumly I said, “If I ever had it in the first place.”

    “Well, you did,” said Hattie, “cos I remember once you beat me in a spelling test and I was jealous for simply days.”
    I said, “Really?” It cheered me up for about a second, but then I lapsed once again into gloom. I told Hattie that it must have been a fluke. “Either that or I cheated.”
    “You didn’t cheat! You didn’t need to. Miss Marx once said you were one of her best pupils.”
    I said, “Miss Marx was in Year 2!”

    “Year 3, actually,” said Hattie.
    “Well, anyway.” I was feeling particularly down that day. I had just had a piece of homework returned with
Unsatisfactory!
scrawled at the bottom of it in rude red ink. I didn’t mind getting bad marks when I hadn’t bothered to work, but I had spent hours on that essay. Itwas very dispiriting; I had always thought I was in control of my life. I wasn’t used to being inadequate.
    “I don’t know why I’m bothering,” I said. “I obviously haven’t got enough brain cells.”
    “That,” said Hattie, “is one of the most insulting things you have ever said to me.”
    “What???” I blinked. “What are you talking about? I’m not insulting you!”
    “Yes, you are! You’re saying that I have chosen to be best friends with a moron. Well, thank you very much! Do you think it’s
likely,”
said Hattie, “that you and me would still be hanging out with each other if that were the case? People without brains,” said Hattie (she is prone to making these kind of sweeping statements) “are just totally dead
boring
.”
    I told her that that was a horrible thing to say. “People can’t help whether they have brains or not.”
    “They can help whether they
use
them or not.”
    I said, “Huh!”
    “Don’t you go huh to me,” said Hattie. “I know you, Scarlett Maguire! You think just because you’re pretty you can swan through life without bothering, but this time you can’t! Not if you really really really want to go to Founder’s Day!”
    It is terrible, how well Hattie knows me. And thethings she dares to say! She only gets away with it because we have been friends for so long. She is always right, of course; that is what makes her so absolutely maddening!
    Bumped into Mrs O’Donnell on the way home from school today. She asked me how I was getting on. It seems she’d heard from Mum that I was desperate to be selected for Founder’s Day. I wish Mum wouldn’t go round telling people! It will be just sooo humiliating when it doesn’t happen.
    I told Mrs O’Donnell that I wasn’t holding out much hope, and she said how you never know your luck and to keep at it. ‘Work hard! That’s the ticket.”
    What does she mean, that’s the ticket? What ticket? Ticket to founder’s Day? I don’t think so. I said this to Mrs O’Donnell. I said, “I really don’t stand an earthly … who wants to go, anyway? It’s only a status thing.” At which Mrs O’Donnell got excited and screeched out, really loud, in that embarrassing way that she has, telling me that I’d got it all wrong, it was a lovely, lovely event!
    It turns out that she was there, about a hundred years aqo. Mrs O’Donnell, at the founder’s Day Dinner! Un-be-lieveable! She’s said I can go round and look at her photos if I want,