The It Girl in Rome (Volume 3) - Softcover

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Katy Birchall is the author of The It Girl series. She also works at Country Life magazine as their Deputy Features Editor. Katy won the 24/7 Theatre Festival Award in 2011 for Most Promising New Comedy Writer with her very serious play about a ninja monkey at a dinner party. Her pet Labradors are the loves of her life, she is mildly obsessed with Jane Austen, and one day she hopes to wake up as an elf in The Lord of the Rings. She grew up in Essex and currently lives in Brixton.

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The It Girl in Rome

1.

“YOU CAN’T KEEP ME TRAPPED up here forever!”

Jess folded her arms, looking very pleased with herself. “Sure I can.”

“Let me down at once!”

“Let me think about that.” She acted thoughtful for a moment, stroking her chin, and then shrugged. “No.”

I huffed as my best friend looked up at me, a victorious grin on her face.

“You know, Anna,” Jess began, “it’s not difficult. You tell me exactly what happened yesterday and I will put back the ladder so you can get down from the attic. Everyone is a winner.”

“I don’t see how I’m a winner in this situation,” I argued, shining my headlamp around me just in case there happened to be a spare ladder handily up here somewhere. “I’m going to tell Dad to never open the front door for you again. I hope you have thought through the consequences of your actions.”

“I have considered them deeply.” She smiled, bending down to get her camera out of her bag. “I’m pretty sure this is worth it.” She pointed the lens up and I heard a sharp click as I peered down angrily at her.

“Well, that is definitely a keeper.” She laughed, examining the image. “You look so angry! Also, you are very pale. Wow, like a ghost peeking out from the darkness of the spooky attic. Good thing we’re going on a school trip where you’ll see a bit of sun. You could really use some vitamin D.”

“You know, you are being extremely insulting.”

“I guess the headlamp isn’t helping,” she continued, completely ignoring me. “With that on you look like a mole. A ghostly mole.”

“Seriously. Very rude.”

“Actually, maybe more like a ghostly guinea pig. I can’t tell. Let me go ask your dad what he thinks. You wait there.”

“WHY ARE WE FRIENDS?”

As Jess walked off to consult Dad on which rodent I resembled, I kicked myself for listening to him this morning when he insisted that my big suitcase must be stored away in the attic, and then for thinking it would be a good idea to go and get the stupid suitcase myself instead of asking him to get it for me.

Of course, I couldn’t have guessed that while I was rummaging around in said attic, headlamp attached, that my unfunny best friend would come over and steal the ladder, using it as a weapon to gain information because I had refused to tell her some minor details about a date.

Well, I wasn’t going to let her win, I decided as I heard Jess’s footsteps returning to the landing. I would have to find another way of getting down. There wasn’t much in the attic that could help me in this predicament, but I’d have to be resourceful and think outside the box.

“Your dad reckons you look more like a ghostly guinea pig than a mole, but I’m still undecided. How’s it going up there?” Jess called as I tried not to sneeze from all the dust I was disturbing in the search for materials to aid my escape.

“What is going on?” I heard my dad ask, attempting to join in on the fun.

“I’m refusing to let Anna down from the attic until she tells me all about her date with Connor yesterday,” Jess explained.

“Right,” Dad replied as though that was totally a rational thing to do. “You haven’t read about it in the papers or online? I can show you if you like. It’s just awful.”

“THANKS, DAD!” I yelled.

“I don’t trust reporters to give the whole story,” Jess informed him. “But I can’t imagine it was as bad as they made it out to be.”

“Oh,” Dad said gravely. “It was.”

I groaned. “You’re not helping, Dad. Shouldn’t you be working on your book?”

“I was actually doing some baking.”

“Classic procrastination. And you always have a go at me when I have homework and I . . . Aha!” I cried victoriously, coming across some old curtains that Dad had never thrown away.

I shuffled eagerly back to the gaping hole in the floor with my new find and began to lower the curtains down. “I am just like those dudes in The Great Escape!”

“Anna”—Dad coughed—“did you just compare yourself getting out of an attic to British soldiers escaping from a German prisoner-of-war camp?”

“I will simply tie this material to something up here and climb down it,” I announced proudly to my audience, ignoring Dad. “And, Jess, you thought you were clever! You thought you could defeat me! HA!”

Jess reached out and yanked the curtain hard so that it flew out of my hands and landed in a heap on the floor next to their feet.

“Oi!”

“I quite liked these curtains, but your mother forced me to take them down,” Dad piped up, nudging them with his toe. “They might come in handy. Thanks for the reminder that they exist, Anna-pops!”

“No offense, Mr. Huntley, but they look like Dog vomited the sixties on them.” Jess patted him sympathetically on the arm. “Your taste is terrible.”

“Fine!” I switched off my headlamp in defeat. “I’ll tell you about the date and you can put the ladder back.” I wrinkled my nose. “I think I might be losing air supply.”

“I’ll leave you girls to it,” Dad chuckled, walking back down the stairs. “I look forward to Danny’s arrival when I might hear some sense in this house.”

“Come on, then.” Jess reached for the ladder teasingly. “Fill me in.”

“I was dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.”

“Which makes total sense for a first date with the boy you’ve liked forever.”

“Right.”

“I was joking. What were you thinking going on a date with Connor dressed as a TURTLE?”

“Because it was the London Comic Con!” I protested as she shook her head. “I went as Michelangelo. He’s the best one. You know, the one who likes all the pizza and says stuff like ‘cowabunga!’?”

Jess looked at me blankly.

“Really? Nothing?” I sighed and carried on. “So there I was dressed as a turtle and Connor was dressed as a Jedi and at first when I saw him I was kind of disappointed because I wanted us to match and I’m pretty sure that when I said we should go as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles he agreed that was a really good idea, but he must have changed his mind at the last minute or maybe the shop had run out of green face paint or something. And then I wished that he had told me he’d made a last-minute decision to go as a Jedi because I could have gone as Princess Leia, although her outfit choices are questionable and I don’t think I could have pulled off the hair. I guess I could have gone as R2-D2, though, which would have been quite cute, so he should have told me about changing his mind, don’t you think?”

“Oh, totally.”

I squinted at Jess, trying to work out whether she was being sarcastic or not. “Anyway, the long and the short of it is that when we got to Comic...