Rebecca Rocks (6 page)

Also, all my friends would still be in school. It’d be pretty boring being at home without them. Right, back to the
periodic
table I go.

I tried to write some poems this evening when I was taking a break from my hideous studies, but I don’t think it’s really working. I used to think that my misery over Paperboy moving to Canada fuelled my creative powers, and it seems that I was right! Not that I don’t have lots of problems, of course, but they don’t seem to be the sort of problems that inspire poetry. I mean, what sort of poem could I write about exams and annoying teachers? Maybe I should try a haiku. They are the easiest sort of poems to write because they are only seventeen syllables long and they don’t have to rhyme.

Hmmm, that wasn’t that bad, actually, if I say so myself. But still. I just don’t feel the old, I dunno, fire. I know I said it was quite relaxing having no boy problems to think about, and it is, but sometimes I can’t help wishing something
exciting
would, you know, just happen. If only to give me
something
to write about.

Maybe I could write some poems about being a bit bored. But they might be a bit boring.

Studying. AGAIN. I feel like I can’t remember a life when I didn’t have to sit in my room staring at books full of stuff I can’t remember. I can’t wait until I spend an entire day just lazing around doing nothing. Cass has escaped her books for a few hours and has gone into town to meet Liz, but that’s only because her parents have gone to a christening and taken her little brother so they can’t check up on her. But I am stuck here, trying to avoid looking up at the window because that horrible little Mulligan is back there taunting me. Why hasn’t she got anything better to do than sit in her room and annoy
her innocent neighbours? I mean, why hasn’t she got friends?

Oh my God, she does have friends! Or at least one friend, who is in her room right now making faces and dancing at me! And now they’ve turned around and are shaking their bums at me! One annoying child mocking me was bad enough, but two of them is just too much. Surely this is against the law? Maybe I could go to the police.

Mum says children dancing around in their own rooms isn’t against the law. I think it should be, though.

‘Just ignore her!’ said Mum. ‘She’s only little.’

Easy for her to say, her study is the other side of the house. I bet if she had to look at some annoying little brats waggling their bums at her when she was trying to write about Lily Fitzsimons, she’d think differently about all this.

Exams start tomorrow. I am totally panicky. I don’t think I have done enough work. I know my parents forced to me to study every night over the last few weeks, but when I look back now I seem to have spent quite a lot of that time writing in my diary. Oh dear.

I have reached a stage where I am basing my studying on what day each exam is on. For example, maths is tomorrow, but history is on Thursday, so I need to concentrate on maths tonight (obviously) and then I will have three more evenings to get various bits of history done. But of course I can’t spend all those nights on history because I have other exams too. Like Irish, and German, which are both on Wednesday. Oh God.

Right, I’m going back to work now to try and remember some geometry … stuff. I can’t even remember the words for bits of maths now. Oh dear. I have a feeling I won’t be writing in this diary much until it’s all over.

I hate exams. I am halfway through exam week, and I have forgotten everything I ever knew. Cass feels the same way, but Alice keeps telling us that we know more than we think.

‘You did manage to answer all the questions, didn’t you?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know if I answered them very well.’

‘But you actually could answer them,’ she said. ‘I mean, there was nothing you absolutely couldn’t say anything about?’

She is right. But I still don’t feel very confident. I am going to go and read some stuff about Martin Luther and hope that some of it sticks in my mind.

I’m free! I’m free! I’m on my holidays! I can’t believe it. I can do anything I like! Anything at all! We had the last tests
yesterday
(English, not too bad), and then a bunch of us – me, Cass, Alice, Ellie and Emma – all went into town and got delicious burgers and chips. I think we might have drunk too much
coke because we were all a bit hyper. And Alice ate too many onion rings and felt quite sick. But she recovered eventually. She is off with Richard today, and Cass is meeting Liz, who is going off to the Gaeltacht on Monday morning. But we are having a band practice tomorrow, and afterwards Cass is
calling
over to my house to stay the night, because we can do that sort of thing on a Sunday night during the holidays. (Alice can’t come because she has to be up early on Monday to go on one of her family’s regular visits to some random relations.) So, in the meantime, I have a whole day of freedom to myself.

I can’t actually think of anything to do.

I think I will just go and sit in the garden and read for a bit. The one good thing about the summer is that, even if you are a bit bored, you can be bored in the sun. Which is nice.

I am still bored. I’m just not in the mood for lying in the sun and reading. It is very unfair. For ages I’ve been dreaming about being able to just lie around and read, and now I can do it, I don’t actually feel like it. I said this to Mum, and she said that life was often like that, and, if I was really bored, I could help her clean out under the stairs.

I should have known better than to say I was bored to Mum. Parents never understand that if you’re bored, doing
something
horrible like going through ancient boxes of old wellies will just make you even more bored. I think I will sneak out and go for a walk around the block and listen to my iPod. At least some fresh air and exercise will do me good.

Still bored. I give up. I might as well help Mum sort out boxes of wellies. How has my life come to this?

The wellies that still fit members of the family (one pair each) have been matched up neatly under the stairs. The rest are in a bin bag ready to be thrown away. That is today’s greatest achievement, which says something about how boring my life is at the moment. I actually feel a bit bad about just chucking the wellies away − after all, I have spent two years hearing Miss Kelly go on about the importance of looking after the
environment
and not adding to giant landfill dumps. But I don’t think a charity shop would want our manky old wellies with holes in them. And Mum said she didn’t think there is anywhere that recycles wellies. There probably should be, though.

Band practice today! Luckily my mum and dad were going to some garden centre out in Malahide and said they’d drop me and Cass off at Alice’s on the way there. It was great to be able to practise without having to worry about exams or school stuff. (I still have the nagging worry about Patricia Alexandra
Harrington in Mum’s book, but it’s easier to forget about that now I know I don’t have to see Mrs Harrington on Monday. So I just won’t think about it for a while. I have a feeling that this is not actually a very sensible attitude to life’s problems, but it’ll do for now.)

Anyway, the practice went pretty well. It might be our last practice before the rock school starts, so we wanted to make sure that we’re well prepared. I mean, I know we’re going there to learn the ways of rock, but we don’t want everyone else, including our mentor (whoever he or she is), to think we’re totally hopeless.

Oops, the doorbell just rang, so I think Cass has arrived − she had to go home and get her overnight stuff because she forgot to bring it to Alice’s house. I just hope my parents manage to refrain from singing anything from
Oliver!
while she is here.