Read Online Brave New Girl by Catherine Johnson - Free Book Online

the same space as me for more than a few seconds and if I so much as try to talk to her she looks away, moves away.”
    â€œYou should have got your dad to do it.”
    â€œI wish! He’s too much of a soft touch. That’s his whole problem.” I thought of Nene. “I was going to text her but that seemed a bit harsh. So I wrote her a note. I stuck it in her locker this morning. I expect she’s read it by now.”
    I could still feel the Year Elevens staring as Keith opened the door to the costume cupboard, which was under the main stairs and next to the stage. It was bigger than an actual cupboard but not much, and it stank of old sweat and stale make-up. On either side were metal clothes-rails thick with floor-length dresses, cloaks and funny trousers, and on the floor were black bin-liners, marked with labels written in fat marker on sticky tape. One read TOGAS, another, OLIVER.
    Me and Keith each took a rail, and started to look through it. Sometimes a heavy waft of stale sweat and old deodorant seemed to puff out of the clothes as if they were alive. “This is rank,” I said, passing a mothy old velvet doublet and moving on past a Victorian crinoline, made out of what looked like net curtains. “You have to admit it does stink like someone’s old armpits in here.”
    Keith breathed huffily. “We need to find something for Miranda.”
    â€œBut you said earlier you wanted your Miranda to look ordinary,” I said. I pulled out a Medieval dress complete with pointy hat and veil. “Like this, maybe?”
    Keith rolled his eyes. “No! More ordinary, well, notcompletely ordinary, out of the ordinary. You’ve got to stand out. You’re not going to be saying anything so you’ve got to look different, exceptional....”
    â€œYeah, and not like some Turkish-English giant girl who likes her cake.”
    â€œYou are so not fat!” Keith snapped. “Girls!” He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “It’s because you are tall that you can wear anything,” he said.
    â€œWho are you all of a sudden? Gok Wan?”
    â€œSeren!”
    â€œSorry.” Christina had used that one on him so often it had got very stale.
    â€œThere’s nothing here!” Keith leant against the wall and crossed his arms.
    â€œWe’ll find something,” I said.
    â€œMiranda is supposed to be this girl who is trapped...” Keith sighed.
    I opened a bag that said BUGSY MALONE. There was a twenties flapper dress which was cream-coloured and fringy. Shazna had worn something like it for the Christmas show, and I remembered being dead jealous. I looked at the flapper dress. Shazna’s had been much prettier, more delicate. I closed the BUGSY MALONE bag and rummaged through the other black bin-liners: LEOTARDS, PANTOMIMEHORSE. Suddenly, there it was. GROVE END’S GOT TALENT. That was it, last Christmas. I pulled the bag open and looked inside. There was the mermaid’s tail some girl in Year Nine had worn, a cat mask and a Superman outfit. I dug down deeper, touched something silky near the bottom and pulled.
    There was the dress. I looked at it for a long minute, remembering the rehearsals we’d had all through November, me, Christina and Shazna. I thought it would be just me and Christina at first, but ever since the start of the autumn term things had been different. It hadn’t been me and Chris any more, she hadn’t been Chris any more. She had become Christina and it was always three of us, Shazna was always there.
    Shazna hated Keith, she said he was a total weirdo just because he was a boy who talked to girls. I should have realised then just how bad things were. I still thought we could all be mates.
    I even smiled, thinking about the time I suggested Shazna take the lead in the dance routine we’d worked out, watching her and Christina, and gradually realising, as December rolled round, that they