Charm School Read Online Free Page B

loudspeaker on the wall behind, she heard Mrs Opalene’s voice, clear as a bell.
    ‘So I certainly hope I don’t have to remind anyone here—’
    Bonny slid up the next switch. Mrs Opalene’s voice turned deep and resonant. Almost booming.
    ‘—that they should never,
ever
miss the chance of putting slices of fresh cucumber—’
    Bonny slid the switch down again and pushed up the one on the other side. The voice went high and tinny.
    ‘—on their eyelids. It isn’t just refreshing—’
    So that was the bass and the treble sorted out. Bonny switched Mrs Opalene’s voice back to normal.
    ‘—it also makes the
world
of difference.’
    For heaven’s sake! thought Bonny. There it was again, that silly claim, ‘It makes the world of difference’. What was the matter with them all? Did they have maggots for brains? When did you ever bump into someone on the street, and think, Oh, look at those eyes! She must have been lying under cucumber slices? Distracted as she was by all the switches she was pushing up and down, still Bonny couldn’t help muttering sarcastically, ‘Oh, yes! Spit in my eye and then tell me it’s raining!’
    They heard it in there, she could tell. Everyone’s face swivelled to stare at her through the huge glass window.
    ‘Sorry!’ called Bonny, switching off the blinking light labelled SOUND OUT .
    She left SOUND IN still blinking.
    So, for all the embarrassment, at least that was one more of Maura’s little tricks under her belt. She turned to the buttons beside her. The first ones she pressed lit up the stage in dazzling circles.
    ‘Spotlights!’
    She tried more. This time, the whole front apron of the stage was bathed in a silver glow.
    ‘Floodlights,’ muttered Bonny.
    She pressed a few more buttons and watched as huge, spotty red and green explosions bounced off the drapes on each side of the stage. On the backcloth behind, a waterfall appeared from nowhere, rippling down to a pool of foaming water.
    ‘Special effects!’
    She looked down. Inside the boxes at her feet were discs of every colour. And stencils, too. Some were cut into shapes she recognized, like windows or trees, and others were just cut into the strangest patterns. She picked out two and stared at them, trying to imagine what they would look like cast up on the back of the stage, lit up and enormous.
    ‘Oh, yes! This one’s a snowstorm! And this one is clouds.’
    She was just peering through the next one – creepy forest branches? – when she was startled by a whisper from a loudspeaker overhead.
    ‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ The voice was aghast. ‘I ate it! I just ate it!’
    Bonny spun round to look through the glass. Beside one of the microphones she must have left switched on, there were two latecomers she hadn’t noticed. They’d stopped to stare at one another in the middle of changing their shoes.

    ‘Oh, Cooki! You didn’t!’
    ‘I did, Lulu! One minute it was in my hand, and the next it was gone. I must have eaten it. I
must
.’
    Poor thing! thought Bonny, remembering all too clearly how she’d felt when Herbie Stott slid a dead ant into the icing on her fairy cake and didn’t tell her till she’d finished it. And when she’d gone to take the second bite of that apple Granny gave her, and saw the maggot hole – one swallow too late.
    Lulu was looking horrified. ‘You never ate the whole thing. Not
the whole thing
.’
    ‘I must have, without noticing.’
    ‘Cooki, how
could
you? They’re
enormous
. How could you not even notice you were gobbling a whole biscuit?’
    ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ Cooki was almost in tears.
    Bonny peered through the glass at this strange pair. A biscuit? How could you possibly get so upset about eating a biscuit? And if you went round acting as if scoffing one miserable biscuit was just about as terrible as eating your own granny, then how could you stand to have a name like Cooki? It would drive you mad.
    She could flick on the SOUND OUT switch, and