How to Get the Friends You Want by Peony Pinker - PDFDrive.com by Jenny Alexander

Author:Jenny Alexander [Alexander, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2011-06-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Jess in a Stress and the Other Garden Angel

I bumped into Jess on the way into school and told her straight away. I wanted to give her as much time as possible to find someone else.

She didn’t say anything. She stopped walking and sort of stared at me.

‘You don’t mind do you?’ I said. ‘I mean, Sasha was in a panic. It’s hard to get a new Chairperson at the last minute, and I already know the introduction speech because I’ve heard Abina do it lots of times.’

She went on staring.

‘You can easily get someone else to do the vote of thanks,’ I said. ‘It’s only a few words.’

Jess blinked, turned her back on me and walked away. What was her problem? It was just the vote of thanks. It was nothing. Anyone could do it.

Maybe she had something else on her mind and it was just bad timing.

I caught up with Toby on the way into class.

‘I can’t do the vote of thanks now because Sasha needs a new Chair,’ I said.

‘I’ve told Jess, but she was really off with me.’

I explained about how it would be much harder to find a new Chair at the last minute than a new vote-of-thanks-person.

‘There isn’t even any need to practise the vote of thanks,’ I said. ‘You could drag someone out from the audience to do it.’

‘But Jess isn’t happy?’ said Toby.

I held the classroom door open for him. ‘I don’t want to let you down but what am I supposed to do? Sasha’s in a fix and she needs me more than you do.’

Toby said he would talk to Jess. He swivelled himself round on his crutches and dropped into his seat.

At break time I looked at the list outside the library to see who was already in a Young Voices team. Loads of people weren’t, but by the time you crossed off all the ones who poked fun at Toby or thought Jess was a freak, that only left five.

The best of the rest was the new girl, April Grey. She was a bit shy, as in no-one had ever heard her say anything, but she was bound to speak up on the day.

It would be good for her. It would bring her out of her shell and help her to make new friends.

She wasn’t keen at first. She whispered something about not liking standing up in front of people and never having done any public speaking before. I said in that case, giving a vote of thanks was the perfect place to begin! It was literally just a question of saying, ‘Thank you, Jess – that was a lovely speech.’

You would have thought Jess would be grateful to me for finding a new vote-of-thanks-person but oh, no. She gave me the silent treatment again when I told her, as if I had done something wrong in trying to help.

‘If you’ll excuse us,’ she said, ‘we’ve got a presentation to practise.’

Toby went after her, swinging off down the corridor on his crutches.

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