lady voice and his French accent all at once.
“Yes, of course you are. We’ll see you tomorrow, Mac.”
“OK girls, au revoir!” said Mac, before he made his way down the street, joyfully swinging his bag of confectionary as he went.
“Oh no!” said Dennis.
“Oh yes!” said Lisa.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Come on, at least think about it. What if you could fool everyone at school? It would be such a laugh, and it would be our little secret.”
“Well, I suppose it would be the most amazing thing,” said Dennis, a smile broadening across his face. “If the teachers, my friends, my brother, if everyone believed I was a girl…”
“Well…?”
“OK, but I’m gonna need some different shoes!”
But little did Dennis know, as he tottered home in his uncomfortable shoes, that he was about to take a tumble…
“I’m still worried about these shoes,” said Dennis.
“They’re fine. You can’t even tell they’re extra wides.”
It was Monday morning, and Lisa and Dennis stood outside the school gates. Dennis was dressed as Denise again, in the orange dress he loved so much. Maybe it was the sequins, or maybe it was his nerves, but he was sweating.
“I can’t do it…” said Dennis.
“It’ll be fine,” assured Lisa in hushed tones, as pupils and teachers made their way in to school. “You won’t have to say much. No one here can speak French. They can barely speak English.”
Dennis was too tense to laugh at Lisa’s joke. “Fooling Raj and Mac was one thing, but the whole school? I mean, someone’s bound to recognise me…”
“They won’t. You look so different. No one in a million years is going to think you’re Dennis.”
“Not so loud!”
“Sorry. Look, trust me, no one’s going to have a clue as to who you are. But you know, we could just go home instead…”
Dennis thought for a moment. “No. That would be the boring thing to do.”
Lisa simply smiled. Dennis smiled back and sashayed into the playground. Lisa had to quicken her pace.
“Calm down,” said Lisa. “You’re a French exchange student, not a supermodel.”
“Sorry–I mean, desolée.”
Some of the kids stopped and stared. The boys always stared at Lisa anyway because she was so wildly attractive. And the girls liked to check out what she was wearing, even the jealous ones who invented reasons not to like her. But now she was with this new girl not wearing school uniform, there was even more reason to look. Dennis could sense all those eyes on him, and loved it. He spotted Darvesh waiting for him outside the classroom as he always did. Sometimes they would have a quick kick-about before the bell rung. Darvesh scrutinised Dennis for a moment, then looked away. Wow, thought Dennis. Even my best friend doesn’t recognise me.
Lisa’s classroom was on the top floor of the main school building. Although John was in the same year as Lisa, he wasn’t in the same class. And kids two years older than Dennis didn’t know him, just as he didn’t know them, so Dennis had never met most of the people in Lisa’s class. In a school of nearly a thousand pupils, it was very easy to feel anonymous.
Unless, of course, you were unutterably gorgeous like Lisa, or had once put your willy in a test-tube in the middle of a chemistry lesson, like Rory Malone.
By the time they reached the classroom, the bell had already rung. They entered just as Lisa’s form teacher Miss Bresslaw was calling the register. Miss Bresslaw was a well-liked P.E. teacher, even though she had quite bad breath. It was school legend that her breath had once broken a window in the staff room, but only the new kids tended to believe it.
“Steve Connor.”
“Here.”
“Mac Cribbins.”
“Here.”
“Louise Dale.”
“Yep.”
“Lorna Douglas.”
“Here.”
“And Lisa James… you are late.”
“Sorry, Miss.”
“Who is this with you?” asked the teacher.
“It’s my French exchange student, Miss. Denise.”
“I wasn’t told anything about this,” said Miss Bresslaw.
“Oh, were you not? Sorry. I did clear it with Hawtrey.”
“Mr Hawtrey, Lisa,” chided Miss Bresslaw.
“Sorry, Mr Hawtrey, the headmaster bloke. I cleared it with him.”
Miss Bresslaw rose from her chair, and approached the new arrival. As she scrutinised Dennis, she breathed over him slightly. Mmm, that does smell bad, thought Dennis. A sort of mixture of cigarettes, coffee and poo. He held his breath. He could feel himself sweating profusely now. He feared his make-up was going to melt and start collecting in a puddle on the floor. There was silence for a moment. Lisa smiled. Miss Bresslaw smiled back, finally.
“Well, that’s fine then,” she said. “Denise, please take a seat. Welcome to the school.”
“Merci beaucoup,” said Dennis. He and Lisa sat down together. Miss Bresslaw continued to read out the register.
Lisa reached for Dennis’s hand under the desk. She squeezed it softly to say, Don’t worry. Dennis held onto her hand and squeezed it back, just because it felt nice.
As they made their way down the corridor to Lisa’s history class, Mac huffed and puffed his way to catch up with them. “Hi, girls.”
“Oh hi, Mac,” said Lisa. “How’s the diet coming along?”
“Slowly,” said Mac, as he unwrapped a Twix.
“Bonjour, Denise,” Mac offered nervously.
“Bonjour again, Mac,” replied Dennis.
“Ummm… I was just, you’ll probably say no, but if you weren’t doing anything after school with Lisa,
