Today was PROPER WEIRD.
On Mondays Mario always gets obsessed with bleaching the teacups. Don’t flaming ask me why. He seems to think it’s well important that the clientele always get a proper sparkling white teacup, when obviously BACK IN THE REAL WORLD it totally isn’t. Half the geezers who come in Mr. Yolk for Set Breakfast C wouldn’t give a monkey’s if you served them tea in one of my Nan’s old fluffy slippers with a corn bandage that fell off in the toe. They ain’t fussy. But I don’t argue with Mr. Yolk as to be honest it’s quite nice having a bit of time out back faffing about with my yellow rubber gloves on, listening to KISS 100.
So anyway, it’s 10AM and I’m at the sink up to my elbows in Clorox when Mario comes in and he goes, “Hey Shirelle, your little friend is here to see you.” So I’m like, “Which one?” And he goes “One with all pink mouth and surprise face,” so I know right away he means Carrie ’cos Mario has never understood what’s going on with Carrie’s eyebrows, which she plucks into proper thin arches these days.
Carrie has been really experimenting with her look ever since she got this book for Christmas called Butterz to Babe in Thirty Days! by this girl called Tabitha Tennant from Dagenham who got kicked out of Big Brother for cheating but now runs a beauty academy in Covent Garden in London. Tabitha is Carrie’s heroine. Tabitha is the woman who started off the “cupid-bow” lips trend this summer where you paint your lipstick on in hot pink in dramatic arches like a doll. Carrie does that a lot at the moment.
So I take off my gloves and come through and right enough there’s Carrie all made up, cupid-bow lips, two tone eye shadow, wearing a stripy off-the-shoulder top with a pink bra strap showing and jeans and big hoops looking like she’s off to a club in Romford to see DJ Platinum. She looks at me and pulls a proper annoyed face and goes, “Shizza, are you mental or something?”
And I’m like, “What?” and she’s like, “You were supposed to be taking this morning off! I been calling your phone since 8AM? Why you not showing me no love?”
So I go, “I’ve been frying eggs, you clown, I’m at work.”
Carrie laughs and says, “I know you’re at work, but you’re supposed to be picking up your GCSE results!” and suddenly I remember and I feel all sick and proper anxious again just like when I finished the English exam and looked back through all that crap I’d scribbled about the dolphins.
“Oh God, yeah,” I said to her. “I’ve been blocking it out mentally.” Carrie just shook her head and sighed.
“Oh come on, Shiz,” she said quite impatiently. “I wanna know what we got.”
“But I’m busy,” I mumbled, “I’m bleaching cups.”
“Mmm… yeah, whatever,” said Carrie. “Leave it to me.”
Then Carrie wandered over to Mario who was sitting in the corner studying the racing section of the Sun with a pen in his mouth.
“Mr. Yolk?” Carrie said, making her voice even softer and tilting her head to the side. “Mario?”
“What you want, sweetheart?” he said.
“Mario? Is it OK if I borrow Shizza for a while? She has a doctor’s appointment that she’s clean forgotten about. I said I’d go with her… for moral support…” Carrie was doing a loud whisper now, “Shiraz is a bit EMBARRASSED to ask you, y’know? It’s one of those downstairs things.”
Carrie pointed in the region of her thong.
“Downstairs?” said Mario, then his face proper crumpled, “Oh… Go! You women and your bits. It never end. I have enough of you. You got an hour. Then Shirelle she come back and do lunch busy time. Go!”
I grabbed my pink hoodie and pulled it on over my apron and we skipped out of the door.
“I can’t bloody believe that always works,” I said to Carrie.
“I know, why do men always fall for that?” Carrie laughed. “That Mr. Cleaver who did gym at Mayflower actually thought I was on the blob four times a month.” We both laughed well loud then ’cos just the thought of it was bare jokes.
Me and Carrie got the bus down to Mayflower Academy, listening to the new Dizzee Rascal on her Nokia and eating Whoppers which to be honest felt like stones in my gob ’cos I was feeling proper nervous. When we got to school we had to go to the brand new assembly hall which had just been re-opened after the fire at Christmas. We got in the line for our results. Everywhere you looked there was all my old year with cells clamped to their ears, holding brown envelopes. Sean Burton was there dancing about waving his envelope in the air making a squeaky sound which didn’t actually mean he’d passed or nothing ’cos he’s proper flamboyant at the best of times. Kezia Marshall was sitting on a seat with her envelope resting on her bump looking at her result slip looking proper sad.
“’Ere, Shiraz, did you see Luther on your way here?” she shouted, and I shrugged and said no.
Coming in the door behind us were Chantalle Strong and Uma Brunton-Fletcher, stinking of ciggies, and in the corner was Nabila Chaalan being filmed by her dad opening her results and looking well pleased. By this point I was feeling seriously like I was going to have runnybum right there in my knickers.
“I’m Shiraz Bailey Wood,” I said to Dora, the headmaster’s secretary—as if she didn’t flaming know—I saw more of Dora than I did of any of the teachers during Year Nine. She winked and got me my envelope. I stuck it under my arm and wandered off by myself outside to this little bench by the teachers’ parking lot.
I could hardly breathe by this point. This is what it said:
CANDIDATE STATEMENT OF PROVISIONAL RESULTS
GENERAL CERTIFICATE OF SECONDARY EDUCATION
CENTER NUMBER: 64276
CENTER NAME: mayflower academy
CANDIDATE NUMBER: 2987
CANDIDATE NAME: wood, shiraz bailey
UNIQUE CANDIDATE IDENTIFIER: 6427568798768Q
| TYPE | SUBJECT | RESULT |
| GCSE | English Lang. | A+ |
| GCSE | English Lit. | A+ |
| GCSE | Mathematics | C |
| GCSE | Religious Stu. | A |
| GCSE | History | A |
| GCSE | French | B |
| GCSE | Geography | B |
| GCSE | Applied Sci. | E |
| GCSE | Art | D |
I stared at the paper for ages. I could NOT bloody believe it.
I got two A pluses!! And another two As! And some Bs and Cs! I got results like a proper bloody boffin would get! My heart was jumping about in my chest and I kept reading the name part again and again to double-check it weren’t a mistake but it WEREN’T A MISTAKE! There was my name on the top and there ain’t any other Shiraz Bailey Woods in the world ever! Go and stick my name in Google if you want proof! I’d passed a load of GCSEs! I PASSED ENGLISH AND MATH AND HISTORY AND RELIGION! I felt proper dizzy and sick and like I really needed the loo again. Then I stood up and sat down and stood up again and then I felt all floaty. I got my cell phone out to call my mum or someone. Then I put it back in my pocket again.
Just then a black 4×4 Jeep pulled into the parking lot with the windows down, playing some proper old skool R&B from the ’90s. There was a dark-skinned lady wearing trendy thick-rimmed glasses in the driver’s seat. Ms. Bracket! She got out and slammed the car door, spotted me, and gave me a wave.
“Well, good morning, Miss Wood,” she said. “I was hoping I might see you!”
“All right, Ms. Bracket!” I said, but my voice was all crackly now like I was going to cry or something which was well shameful but I couldn’t stop it.
“So, go on, then?” she said, nodding at the exam slip.
“I passed them!” I said. “I got two bloody A-pluses too! S’cuse my language, sorry! Look! I got loads of them…”
She took the sheet and looked at it and her face all lit up.
“My word, Shiraz Bailey Wood!” she said. “This is WONDERFUL news. Totally. You absolutely deserve this! Well done!”
“Thanks very much!” I said and I was proper beginning to cry now, like a right loon. Ms. Bracket put her hand on my shoulder.
“Now, Shiraz, in my capacity as the new Head of English,” she said, “I’m really hoping you’ll be joining us in the brand-new Mayflower Sixth Form. I’m looking forward to teaching you. Actually, hang on a minute. Take one of these. They’re just back from the printer.”
Ms. Bracket reached inside her briefcase and pulled out a booklet that was titled “Mayflower Sixth Form—A Center of Excellence.”
Just then Mr. Bamblebury, our headmaster, appeared looking all depressed and told Ms. Bracket he needed to talk to her about schedules.
I shoved my results in my hoodie pocket and walked slowly back to Mr. Yolk’s where Mario had run out of both beef and chicken pot pies and the customers were staging some sort of revolt.
I got the rest of the teacups well white with no stains or anything. It took a lot of scrubbing though. As I say, it was a proper weird day.