Faking Sweet by J.C. Burke Page B

scrub the last bench. For a while the only sound was the bristles rubbing along the steel surface.
    â€˜I’m kind of glad we got a detention together,’ Jess said.
    I stopped and looked over at her. Was this the moment it was all going to spill? Now I wasn’t sure I was in the right state for it.
    Jess walked to the back of the lab. I kept scrubbing.
    â€˜Well, you know how we have that English assignment,’ Jess started. ‘The character profile we have to write?’
    â€˜The one based on Don John?’
    â€˜That’s him,’ she said, pointing at me. ‘You’ve probably noticed I’m not very good at Shakespeare.’
    â€˜Who is?’ I muttered.
    â€˜You are.’ She sounded surprised. ‘You get it and you’re also really good at reading out the parts.’
    By now I was almost scrubbing the steel off the benches. But stopping would risk eye contact, and that was too dangerous. Why was she being so nice to me?
    â€˜I know we got two choices for the assignment, but a profile on Elizabethan women …’ She made a big show of yawning. ‘Dull as. I quite like writing stuff; as long as I don’t have to read it out loud. You’ve probably noticed I’m not very good at that either.’
    Would she get to the point? My arm was beginning to ache and I was suddenly feeling overloaded with information.
    â€˜Well, I was wondering, Holly, if it’s not too much trouble that is, would you be able to help me, just a bit, with the Don John profile?’
    â€˜Um.’ I couldn’t exactly say, ‘Excuse me, I just need to confer with Calypso on that matter.’ And I was hardly up to trusting my own judgement. The Sarah Finch thing had me floored. And now, why was Jess being so pleasant? Perhaps the cleaning fumes had got to her too, ’cause I couldn’t think straight.
    â€˜What do they say Don John is again?’ Jess giggled. ‘You see I can’t even remember that, and it’s the whole point of the assignment. Isn’t it?’
    â€˜â€œA plain-dealing villain”,’ I said as I threw the brush in the bucket. ‘That’s what he’s called in the play.’ I went to the window. Fresh air. That’d help.
    â€˜And that’s what we’re meant to be writing our profile on – a plain-dealing villain?’ asked Jess.
    I nodded.
    â€˜Are you okay, Holly?’ Jess asked. ‘You’ve gone kind of pale. It’s the cleaning stuff, isn’t it? It stinks. You sit down. I’ll scrub the benches and you talk to me about Don John. That’s fair.’
    â€˜Thanks.’ I really didn’t want to be grateful but I couldn’t help it. I stood by the window and took in slow, deep breaths while I watched the last of the students wander out the gates.
    â€˜Have you started the assignment?’ I asked.
    â€˜Not yet,’ Jess answered, ‘’cause I didn’t really understand what we were meant to do.’
    Discussing the Don John thing during detention was surely not breaking any rules. In fact, if anything it stopped us from having friendly chat, which was probably more against the rules.
    â€˜The key lines Mrs Gideon wants us to look at are when Don John describes himself as not a flattering honest man but a plain-dealing villain,’ I told her. ‘See, Don John hates Don Pedro, his brother. Actually I think Don John hates pretty much everyone. But the one he wants to get is Don Pedro.’
    â€˜Why? What did Don Pedro do?’
    â€˜Nothing, really, except that he’s powerful and popular, I s’pose.’
    â€˜You’re good at this, Holly. You even remember the lines.’
    Yeah, well, when you don’t have a social life there’s enough time to memorise the entire works of Shakespeare. Of course I didn’t say that.
    â€˜It’s just kind of obvious,’ I said instead.
    â€˜But Mrs Gideon doesn’t