School Spirit Page 3

  ‘I wasn’t talking about you,’ she said. ‘I was talking about Snappy! We got her a new tank and she doesn’t seem to like it. We might have to get her a different one.’

  I have to admit I felt pretty silly.

  But I didn’t mind, not one little bit. For once I was actually glad I had made a mistake!

  There wasn’t much lunchtime left when I’d finished talking to Mrs Clarke. I had to hurry. There was something else I needed to do before the bell rang.

  I ran as fast as I could to where my friends were practising. They stopped when they saw me coming and looked at me without smiling – like they weren’t even my friends anymore.

  Dani started to walk away when she saw me, but I grabbed her arm. I had to say this right now.

  ‘Dani, I’m really sorry about what happened this morning,’ I said.

  I said it loudly so the others could hear me too. ‘It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Ever. And I know you might never forgive me. But I promise never to do anything like that again and I really hope we can be friends again.’

  Annabelle had her arms crossed. ‘What you said to Dani was really mean,’ she said.

  ‘And it wasn’t even true,’ added Nicole. ‘She’s not the teacher’s pet.’

  ‘I know she’s not,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why I said it.’

  ‘You should do something to show how sorry you are,’ said Sarah.

  She was right. I wanted to show Dani that I knew what a dumbo I’d been. But what could I do to show her?

  And then I had an idea.

  Not the greatest idea, but an idea all the same. I lay on the ground and waggled my arms and legs in the air. My friends stared at me, wondering what I was doing. Then Nicole started laughing.

  ‘She’s doing a dead ant!’ she said.

  ‘You’re getting grass and stuff in your hair,’ said Annabelle, giggling.

  But I didn’t care.

  I kept on doing the dead ant.

  At first Dani wouldn’t even look at me. She pretended there was something really interesting happening on the oval. But after a while she couldn’t help taking a peek. And I saw her start to smile, even though she tried to hide it.

  ‘You don’t look anything like a dead ant,’ she said. ‘You look more like a puppy that wants its tummy scratched.’

  I knew then that Dani had started to forgive me. I was so glad! It was horrible to think that I’d almost lost my best friend.

  I decided right there that I would never let anything like that happen again.

  On the day of the school assembly Dani and I made sure we had a seat in the front row. After all the announcements were over, Mr Stavros got up on stage with his guitar and his class stood behind him. In front of them all were our friends!

  When the music started, the whole class started to sing. Annabelle, Sarah and Nicole started dancing.

  It was strange to see them dancing some of the steps I had made up. I thought I’d feel jealous that it wasn’t me up there, but I didn’t feel jealous at all. Instead, I was proud. They weren’t bad steps!

  ‘They’re such good dancers,’ I whispered to Dani.

  She nodded. ‘They are good, but we’re good, too. Maybe Mrs Clarke will let us do our own dance at assembly one week,’ she said.

  Once I would’ve thought that there was no way Mrs Clarke would let us do that. But I knew her better now.

  I nodded. ‘Let’s ask her,’ I said.

  Our friends only made a couple of small mistakes. Annabelle nearly tripped over at the start and Sarah spun to the left instead of to the right. But she did a good job of covering it up and I think only we noticed.

  When they finished, everyone in the audience went crazy! Kids were jumping around and cheering. I even saw some of them trying to copy the moves themselves.

  It was really funny.

  Then it was my turn to read out my story. Watching the dance, I had forgotten all about it and had stopped feeling nervous. But once I stood up on stage, in front of all those faces, I started to feel nervous again.

  Then I told myself it was just like diving. I looked at the page and imagined I was standing on the edge of a pool, getting ready to plunge into the water. And when I started reading, my voice didn’t wobble at all.

  Everyone was very quiet while I read my story. I couldn’t tell if they liked it or not until I finished and everyone clapped.

  They clapped a lot, especially Mrs Clarke! Someone in the front row was cheering and whistling really loudly.

  It was Dani.

  And sitting beside her were Annabelle, Nicole and Sarah, cheering just as loudly, too.

  It had been a bit of a rough start, but I knew it was going to be a good year now.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Are you game?’

  Holly giggled and scratched behind her dog Leo’s ears. ‘I don’t know. I will if you will.’

  ‘Yes!’ Lily cheered. ‘Then you are, because I definitely am!’

  Holly laughed again. She hadn’t seen her best friend this excited in ages!

  ‘What are you two on about?’

  Holly and Lily both jumped, and Leo gave a little bark of surprise. Holly looked up and saw her big sister standing in the doorway, smirking.

  ‘Faith!’ Holly said crossly. ‘Were you spying on us?’

  ‘No, you dope. You’re making so much noise, I came in to ask you to be quiet.’

  ‘Hi, Faith,’ Lily said, smiling charmingly. ‘I’m sorry we’ve been so rowdy.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Holly to her friend. ‘You don’t have to –’

  ‘That’s OK, Lily,’ Faith interrupted, smiling back at Lily. ‘It’s just I have a lot of homework to get through, especially because I am, you know, in –’

  ‘In year six,’ Holly finished for her. ‘Yeah, don’t worry. We all know.’

  ‘You’re so rude, Holly,’ said Faith. ‘You should try to be more like Lily sometime.’ She arched her eyebrows meaningfully at them, and then swished away back to her bedroom.

  Holly watched her go. ‘What. A. Pain.’

  ‘No way,’ said Lily. ‘She’s so cool. I’d swap her for my big sister any day.’

  Holly threw her pillow at Lily’s head. ‘Cool? She wishes! And anyway, you’re supposed to be my best friend, remember?’

  Lily laughed and threw the pillow back. ‘Only if you promise you’re going to do it.’

  ‘I already said I would.’

  ‘Promise,’ Lily insisted, crossing her heart to show Holly exactly how to do it.

  ‘Yes, OK. I promise,’ said Holly.

  ‘Then say it properly.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Holly, sighing and smiling at the same time. ‘I, Holly Grundon, promise to run for class captain.’

  ‘Awesome!’ cheered Lily. ‘This is going to ROCK!’

  She jumped up on Holly’s bed and did a little dance, which made Leo bark and run in excited circles. Holly laughed and clapped to make him bark again.

  The next second, though, Faith banged on the wall between their bedrooms.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ whispered Lily, landing heavily on the bed. She quickly pulled a pillow onto her lap and smoothed back her hair, trying to look as innocent as possible, just in case Faith came in again.

  Holly giggled. ‘Sorry, Faith!’

  ‘This is awesome, though,’ said Lily, trying to speak more quietly. ‘Seriously, it’s going to be the best fun!’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Holly. ‘But you’re the one who’ll get nominated. I’m just keeping you company, OK?’

  Lily shrugged. ‘Sure, OK. But if I do get voted captain, you can be my
unofficial vice-captain, all right?’

  ‘All right. That’d be cool,’ said Holly.

  It was all settled.

  For the rest of the evening, before Lily’s mum came to pick her up, the girls worked on their posters.

  Mr Mack had turned the voting into a class project on leadership, and they had spent a whole lesson talking about the difference between being a good leader and being popular. Even if you didn’t want to run for captain, you still had to make up a poster and think about what a good captain would do for the school.

  Holly got out Mr Mack’s sheet of instructions.

  Instructions for your poster:

  1. Use one sheet of ordinary printer paper.

  2. Only write about you – don’t say anything about your opponents.

  3. Tell us what changes you would make to improve life at school.

  4. Tell us why we should vote for you!

  It was hard to fit all of that on one piece of paper, but Holly thought she and Lily had done a great job.

  First they’d got dressed up in Holly’s mum’s nice work jacket, and taken photos of each other looking all serious and grown-up.

  Then Holly had printed the photos out on the computer and Lily had written VOTE! above them in glitter glue. It looked amazing.

  Holly didn’t know how Lily managed it, but she always did headings and stuff just perfectly.

  The hard bit was next – coming up with reasons the other kids in class should vote for them.

  ‘What are we supposed to say?’ Holly wondered. ‘Like, if you put, Vote for me because I’m really nice, that sounds like you’ve got a big head, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah …’ said Lily, thinking. ‘Well, what if you said, Vote for me, I’m only quite nice?’

  Holly snorted. ‘Thanks, you’re a big help. All right, we’ll skip to the next one. What would we do as class captains?’

  ‘Easy! Ban the boys from playing footy near the handball courts. They’re always wrecking our games when they kick the ball too far.’

  ‘Ooh, yes!’ Holly wrote it down. ‘Can we do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lily admitted. ‘But we can try. What else?’

  ‘Umm … get the canteen to sell frozen watermelon? They do that at my friend’s school, and she says it’s yum.’

  Slowly they came up with a list of things they could put on their posters.

  ‘We can’t have the same reasons, though,’ said Holly. ‘We should split this list so that both our posters are original.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Lily agreed. ‘Why don’t we each take the ideas we thought up ourselves?’

  ‘Right! You know, we’re such a good team. Wouldn’t it be great if we could captain together?’

  ‘Totally,’ Lily said with a grin, and they did their special hand slap.

  The next day, Holly arrived at school with her poster carefully protected in one of her mum’s plastic folders from work.

  When class began, Mr Mack explained how the voting was going to work.

  ‘As you know,’ he said, ‘everyone in class is going to get up and present their poster. You have to listen closely to all the presentations, and think about who has the best ideas about improving life at school. Remember, this isn’t a popularity contest,’ Mr Mack continued. ‘You shouldn’t vote for someone just because you like them. We want our class captains for this term to be people we can trust to do a good job.’

  Holly and Lily grinned at each other. This was getting exciting!

  ‘After all the presentations,’ Mr Mack went on, ‘I’ll call for nominations. That’s just a fancy word for names. We want to nominate four boys and four girls. If you’re named, you can either accept or reject the nomination. You don’t have to run unless you want to, OK?’

  Holly nodded. I wonder if I have a chance of being nominated? She suddenly realised she actually wanted to do this.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Mr Mack. ‘After nominations, you’ll each vote for one boy and one girl by secret ballot. I’ll count the votes at recess, and then when you come back to class, we’ll meet our new captains. OK? Let’s start with the table nearest the door. Who’s our first candidate?’

  Holly squirmed in her seat. This is going to be pretty competitive. I bet everyone will want to be nominated.

  But then she saw Olivia staring down at her desk and shaking her head, as though even the idea of presenting her poster was too nerve-wracking.

  Poor Olivia, Holly smiled to herself. She just hates standing up in front of people.

  Unlike Ching Ching, who was already pinning her poster on the board. She grinned confidently at the class, read out her ideas and then threw handfuls of lollies into the air, calling out, ‘Vote for me!’

  She got a big round of applause.

  After Ching Ching came Isabelle, who was very serious and promised to make sure all kids on rubbish duty were given gloves to wear before touching litter.

  Then there was Oscar, who said, ‘A vote for me is a vote for longer lunchtimes!’

  Everyone cheered, but Mr Mack shook his head. ‘I’m not sure the class captain has quite that much power, Oscar, but good speech. Now, this table here.’

  Holly and Lily looked at each other.

  ‘You go,’ whispered Lily.

  ‘You sure?’ Holly whispered back. ‘OK, here goes …’ She stood up and suddenly felt nervous. Are my ideas as good as everyone else’s? she wondered.

  Holly hadn’t really worried about this when she and Lily were mucking around the night before.

  When she got to the noticeboard, though, she thought her poster looked pretty fantastic. Lily’s glitter heading sparkled confidently.

  She took a deep breath and turned to face the class. ‘I would like to be class captain because …’

  She paused. Her mind was a complete blank. What should she say next? She turned and checked her poster again, trying not to panic.

  She took another deep breath, and then read out her points. ‘I would work hard to do the job well. I’m used to helping out at my mum’s vet clinic, and I know how the gross jobs are just as important as the fun ones. I would also ask the canteen to sell frozen watermelon cubes in the summer, and I would organise a charity day to raise money to plant more trees in the school grounds. Thank you.’

  She smiled and everyone clapped, and then she did a little curtsey like they did in dance class, which made everyone laugh. Then she hurried back to her desk, hiding behind her fringe a bit, but beaming.

  ‘You were great!’ Lily grinned at her.

  ‘It was actually really fun!’ Holly whispered back, feeling a bit surprised. ‘Your turn now, Lils. Good luck!’

  She showed Lily she’d crossed the fingers on both hands for her, and then watched as her best friend walked up to make her speech.

  Holly was still tingling from everyone applauding her speech as she watched Lily pin her poster to the noticeboard.

  Lily will be amazing, Holly thought proudly. This is her thing, after all, and she’s much more confident than I am.

  But Lily didn’t look so sure. Standing in front of the class, she blushed awkwardly.

  ‘Umm …’ Lily started. ‘Er …’

  ‘Why don’t you read from your poster?’ Mr Mack said kindly. ‘Take your time.’

  Lily blushed again, and then began to read. Except she didn’t read exactly what she had written on her poster. And she didn’t sound at all like the excited, clever girl she really was.

  ‘Vote for me,’ she said, her voice very stiff, ‘because I will be a friendly class captain that anyone can, ah, talk to.’

  Eek! thought Holly, wincing in sympathy. Come on, Lils. Remember how great you were practising in front of the mirror!

  ‘Two,’ Lily mumbled, ‘I will get a bigger tank for the class fish.’

  Behind her, Holly heard someone mutter, ‘What was that? Did you hear what she said?’

  Speak up, Lily! Holly urged her silently. Explain your idea! You came up wit
h a great plan. Make everyone understand.

  But Lily was already moving onto the next point, as though she wanted her speech to be over as quickly as possible.

  ‘Three, I will ban football –’

  Just then, something caught in Lily’s throat and she started coughing.

  The boys thought she meant she wanted to completely ban football, and so of course they went wild.

  ‘What?’ shrieked Joe. ‘Why would you ban football?’

  ‘Hey!’ called Oscar. ‘No way!’

  Lily, still coughing, just stood there. Her eyes were watering, and Holly could see she had completely lost her nerve.

  Back in Holly’s room, Lily had been funny and cheeky, and so cool that everyone would have voted for her.

  In front of the class, though, Holly had to admit that her best friend hadn’t been great.

  Holly stared at her, trying to force Lily to look at her so she would see at least one friendly face. Read it all out, Holly ordered her silently. Explain how you only want to ban footy near the handball courts!

  But Lily was walking away from the board and back to her desk, head down.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Mack, smiling. ‘Lily is a controversial candidate! Who’s next?’

  Lily slumped into the chair next to Holly. ‘That was terrible.’

  Holly didn’t know what to say because, well, it had been pretty bad. And that didn’t seem like a helpful thing to say.

  ‘I just froze,’ Lily whispered. ‘I don’t even know why! I thought I’d be fine, and then I saw my poster saying “Vote for Lily”, and I suddenly thought, This is crazy! No-one’s going to vote for me. And I’m right, aren’t I? No-one will even nominate me after that speech.’

  Holly squeezed her friend’s hand. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll nominate you. Promise.’

  When all the posters were up on the board, Mr Mack clapped his hands. ‘Well done, guys! You’ve all come up with some great ideas. Now we’re going to nominate our eight candidates. Let’s do the girls first.’