Birdy Read Online Free Page B

abysmal rating?’ She didn’t seem annoyed, just genuinely concerned.
    ‘No, it means …’
    I hesitated, not sure how to explain it any more explicitly than I already had. I was having a hard time making an assessment of Bert. I wasn’t sure what she’d be more offended by – the truth of what Jac meant or if I left her thinking she’d got a low score for some reason. The last thing I wanted to do was upset or embarrass the girl when she’d only been at school five minutes. I was annoyed with Jac Dubois. Why did he have to be such an idiot?
    ‘It just means he’d like to … kiss you,’ I said eventually. ‘He’d like to give you
one
kiss.’ That would do – not quite as pervy as the truth but at least she’d know she hadn’t done anything wrong.
    ‘Oh!’ Bert said, blinking. ‘Oh, OK.’ She frowned again but she didn’t say anything else on the subject.
    I hoped I’d done the right thing.

5
    Bert seemed to find the whole notion of moving from one classroom to another each time we changed lessons a bit baffling. Every time the teacher dismissed us and people began noisily packing up their bags and scraping their chairs back, Bert looked around, her mouth open, as if to say, ‘What, not again, surely?’
    When I asked how she was finding that aspect of things – it was true that battling through the crowds every hour was a bit of a pain and perhaps her last school had been smaller, less hectic – she put her head on one side and said, ‘Well, it’s just that it seems ever so inefficient, doesn’t it? To keep spending all this time charging about the place, standing up and sitting down, packing and unpacking. I suppose I’d rather thought the teachers would come to us.’
    ‘Was that how it was in your old school?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh no,’ she said, seemingly surprised by the question. ‘I’ve never been to school before.’
    So that was a bit of a bombshell.
    Annoyingly, Bert delivered it just as we were sitting down to begin a maths test so I couldn’t question her until lunchtime when, as per Mr Hurst’s instructions, I’d planned to help her get to grips with the canteen.
    I thought I’d better let Bert eat before I started grilling her on her previous educational experience so we collected our trays and joined the back of the queue.
    Bert kept standing on tiptoes, trying to peer over people’s heads to see what was on offer. I had a bad feeling that she was going to be disappointed when she saw the greasy junk she had to choose from. I shouldn’t have worried though. When we got to the front of the queue, Bert surveyed the steaming vats and trays, her eyes shining.
    ‘Chips!’ she said. ‘Oh how I love chips! And pizza! Oh my, sausage
rolls
! You know, normally I only get to eat this sort of food on special occasions. Is it always this brilliant?’
    ‘Uh, yeah. I guess.’
    Bert piled her plate very high indeed. A whole dish of chips. A slice of pizza, two sausage rolls, a cheese burger and a flapjack. You don’t like to say anything, do you, about how much someone eats, especially not when you’ve only known them a few hours, so I just waited patiently while she made her selections. When she was done, she headed to a spare table in the corner, walking straight past the till.
    ‘Uh, Alberta?’ I called after her. ‘You have to … you know. Pay.’
    ‘Oh!’ Bert looked down at her tray and then over to the till. ‘Oh!’ she said again. ‘I’d rather thought it was … free. You know, like the exercise books and paper and whatnot. I thought it was a sort of … all-inclusive deal, as it were.’
    ‘Uh … no,’ I said. ‘It’s not.’
    I started to panic that Bert wasn’t going to have any money on her and that she’d have to put everything back. She’d be so embarrassed, with people in the queue complaining and tutting. Oh God, I thought, all I’d had to do was explain how the canteen worked and I’d already made a mess of it. And now Bert was going to feel