Gaby Book 16 - Sweet Sixteen

The rest of the week – well it was ‘just’ normal, that is to say it was uneventful, no disasters, no excitement, nothing out of the ordinary at all. I suppose that in itself is a bit weird – well for me, I seem to bounce from one thing to another, never a dull moment for Mr and Mrs Bond’s youngest child!

“Er Mrs T, I’ve got that ‘stuff’ we talked about?” I mentioned when I arrived at Thesing’s Friday morning.
“Oh good, let’s have a look then,” my employer enthused.

I pulled out the sheet of paper and handed it to her. Its nothing brilliant but really just stuff I pulled together from experience, so there’s a hikers special of hot chocolate and a slice of cake, a cyclist special of coffee and strudel and a ‘lunch’ special of soup and sandwich. The customers save a euro over the individual prices, bit like buying the ‘menu ’ in Maccy D’s. I also suggested a loyalty scheme, you know the thing, you have a card that gets stamped so after maybe five visits you get a free coffee or something.

Therese read it through, nodding as she took in each point, “the loyalty card will take a bit of organising but we can start the rest tomorrow, I’ll talk to Tomas about putting the boards out.”
“’Kay,” I allowed, a tiny frison of excitement buoying me.
“You’re coffee’s going cold,” Steff observed.
“What was that about?” Bridg queried.
“Just some stuff for the bakery,” I allowed.
“Fingers in many pies our Gab,” Pia stated.
“I prefer to eat them.”
“Huh?” Nena queried.
“Pies? Better to eat than poke digits in, hmm a nice meat and potato.”

We don’t really have much in the pie line here in Germany, not like back in blighty, meat pies, vegetable pies, fruit pies – if you can eat it you’ll get it in pastry and then there’s pasties.

“She’s off again,” Steff observed.
“Dreaming of Max no doubt,” Con added.
Hmm, Max pie…
“Was not!” I bristled.
“You had that ‘Max’ look on your face,” Brid noted.
“So if it wasn’t Max who was it?” Steff asked.
“No one, I was just thinking about pies.”
“You are just weird Gaby Bond,” Pia stated.
“Time girls!” Mrs T called over.

Joy, another day at Silverberg Gymnasium beckons.

It was of course no different to any other Friday and its similarity to the rest of the school week couldn’t be dismissed either. Sure the make up of our classes varies but you know what its like at school, the day split into chunks, highlights being morning break, lunch and the end of the day. Kids the world over know this, its not often you have classes that you actually look forward to and today isn’t amongst them.

“So which train are we getting?” I asked as I took a bite of rubbery pizza.
“It opens at ten,” Pia mentioned.
“Where is it?” Con queried.
“We get off at Löhr, its some school towards the river,” Steff told us.
I mentally calculated the journey, an hour by train and say fifteen minutes walk, we’ll have to get the eight fifteen to be there for ten otherwise we’ll miss half an hour.
“The eight fifteen?” I offered.
“Really?” Bridg complained.
“Oh come on,” Nena chivvied, “we can get a coffee in that place outside the Löhr Centre, you can change there, you don’t want to travel in that outfit do you?”
‘That’ outfit being the Princess Leia slave girl thing – exposes more than it covers!
“Erm.”
“You were going to!” Pia gushed.
“Maybe,” Brid allowed.
Even I wouldn’t’ve done that.
“That’s settled then,” Steff announced.
I bet Mand complains when I tell her later.

When I got home I headed straight up to my room, I need to check my email. While the box whirred and beeped into life I dressed for Garde, just normal dance stuff of course, not the silly uniforms although we do wear our boots. I logged into my emails and there it was, the email I was waiting for, I clicked on the link and settled myself to read it.

Hi Gaby
We are arriving on Friday night and set off home on Tuesday morning. We are staying at some place called Bruhl , is that far from you? We are in Koln Saturday, the theme park Sunday and Bonn on Monday. I’ve okayed things with Mr Wood.
Looking forward to seeing you
Fran

Brill! I’ll talk to Hannah to see how we do it.

“Mum?”
“Yes love?”
“Could we have a meat and tatty pie sometime?”
“Don’t see why not, what’s brought this on?”
“Not had one for ages.”
“You could do it for dinner tomorrow, there’s some braising steak in the freezer.”
Huh, me cooking again.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Oh I got the dye, you want to do it tonight?”
“Er maybe.”

To be honest I’m not even sure I want to do it now. I suppose it is only temporary, I’ll be back to my golden locks in a week or so, decisions, decisions. I am sort of intrigued though, what will I look like with dark hair, I can’t really imagine it, all the women in my family are blonde. Of course Jules had hers black but somehow that just seemed normal – maybe brown hair will look normal for me?

“You listening?”
“Er sorry, what?”
“I asked whether you want pizza later.”
Hmm, you can’t really call that manky slice of rubber at lunch pizza can you?
“Yes please!”
“You can pick it up on the way back, usual?”
Oh yeah, double pepperoni!

“I might be a few minutes late coming out,” I told Dad when he dropped me and P off at the Tanzklub.
“Don’t be too long, remember we’re collecting the pizzas on the way back.”
Double pepperoni!
“Be as quick as I can.”

Garde is good for body discipline, a lot of what we do on Fridays is stretching and control. That means a lot of time doing stuff slowly to train our muscles, stuff that most dancers would recognise just slower. Ballet its not but I enjoy doing it on a Friday, getting trussed and painted up for a show or competition – well, whilst I have done it, I don’t get the buzz.

“Well done girls,” Hannah told us.
“Good session Gabs,” Margot mentioned, exposing rather a lot of Margot as she pulled her leotard open to cool down.
“Er yeah,” I agreed trying to drag my eyes from her chest. “Han, can we talk?”
“Office?”
“I’ll just get dressed.”

“I can certainly get the bus,” Hannah agreed, “uniform and poms?”
“Yep, give them the full show.”
“We’ll pitch it as a dry run for the competition.”
“Cool, I’ll let Fran know and get the exact address. I need to run, we’ve got pizza to collect.”
“See you Monday.”
“Tschuss!”

“Mmmm, that smells good,” Pia noted when I got back in the car with the pizza order.
“Oh yeah,” I agreed. I sorted through the pile of boxes before pulling one free and passing back to her, “one Hawaii for moddom.”
I’m not the only one who enjoys the delights of the pizzeria.
“Bring it on!” Pia stated as she lifted the lid of her box to sniff at the contents.

It’s no distance from Mayschoß to the Sebenschuh Stube in Rech and no more to complete our journey. It was no surprise to find Jules and Boris in residence when we got there; there was another Hawaii for Jules and a Mexican Hot for Boris in the stack of boxes. Looks like it’s going to be a busy house this weekend.

“We doing your hair?” Mum suggested as we cleared up after the pizza feast.
“Erm, guess so,” I allowed although I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
We finished up and I followed Mum up to her ensuite – it’s bigger than mine, which is hardly more than the shower cubicle! I’m sure that a lot of you have done this stuff; I’m not one though so I was quite happy that Mum was in charge of the technical stuff. Mum started the process, I closed my eyes, there’s no turning back.

“Its very dark,” I mentioned forty minutes later.
“Its still wet, it’ll be lighter when its dry,” Mum told me.
I looked at the person in the mirror, I barely recognised her. So okay, it’s my face, my eyes but the hair made me look really quite different, not the me I’m accustomed to.

“Whoa Gabs,” Mand exclaimed when I joined her for breakfast next morning.
“Yeah I know,” I allowed.
“Its not as bad as my bleach job I guess.”
“It washes out,” I mentioned, I’ll be back to normal in a week.”
“You hope,” she scoffed.
“Mum got it, she said it should be gone in like six washes.”
“You might want to stay dark,” she observed.
“Maybe.”
“Fed up of being the dumb blonde sis?” Jules opined joining us.
“Its for the Con tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t you get a wig?”
Why indeed?
“Er they cost money?”
“So does hair dye,” she pointed out.
“Not as much and Mum bought it anyhow.”
“Come on Gab,” Mand encouraged, “we’ve got seventy kilometres to do before lunch.”

I rolled my eyes, yeah out in the cold again. I picked up my glasses and followed Manda down into the coolness of the garage.
“So where we going today?” Manda queried.
Good question, where are we going today?

Maddy Bell 07.06.16