Chapter Six
"So, what else does Drop Dead Fred say?" asks Mik, mixing a yellowish liquid into water and stirring it in a jug. "What are his opinions on politics?" Natalie looks at Fred, who looks blankly back at her, arms folded, standing up against the door frame on the other side of the kitchen.
"Come on Fred, what's your opinion on politics?" asks Natalie.
"Why, I, erm, I. What's politics?" asks Fred.
"The running of the country, government, the President," prompts Natalie.
"Oh pooey, who wants to talk about the President?" says Fred, yawning.
"Fred doesn't have an opinion on politics," Natalie replies in answer to Mik's question. "In fact, his exact answer was, oh pooey, who wants to talk about the President."
"I don't," says Fred, as he walks over to the fridge and disappears inside.
"Oh," says Mik. "Have you got the bottle?" Natalie opens the lid of the perfume bottle she's holding and Mik pours the liquid, of a watery consistency, into it. Natalie caps it with the spray top.
"I think we're ready."
"Natalie, can I have a bit of that new perfume?" asks Mik, loudly across the classroom. Natalie rummages round in her bag.
"Sure," she says and passes the bottle to Mik, who pretends to spray a little onto her neck. Natalie gets up to take the bottle back, walking behind Karen's chair as she does so, quietly spraying a little onto the back of her top, and then sitting back down innocently.
An hour or so later, and Karen was wearing a baggy, unflattering white school top, her new chiffon one in a plastic bag in her locker. The offending top, now had a rather large yellow bleached patch on the back.
Karen sits with her friends in the cafeteria, heads together.
"I won't let her get away with it," Karen says. "There's one thing she'll do anything for, the one thing I'll take away."
"What's that?" all her friends ask, almost in unison.
"Her boyfriend."
