This sport activity, for instance, wasn’t raising any money for anything. It definitely served as punishment for lacking the art prowess or patience to doodle Santas and reindeer in January, or not having the estimated typical teenage curiosity about Mrs “Beetroot” Beeton’s booblets. I could still remember the day in Year 7 when everyone who had PE in the same slot as me piled into this exact Sports Hall for an informative talk about leprosy. They’d handed out sponsor sheets then, too, though I couldn’t remember what for or if we even took part.
Soon enough, the participants were dismissed. I had to step back into the foyer, and eventually right into the crush hall because so many people were battling their way out of the two sets of double doors simultaneously.
Kay and Charlie obviously hadn’t been a part of it, and were nowhere to be seen. I ended up walking home with Fern after Rindi and Keisha split off at the gate to walk back into their neighbourhood. It was not nearly as bad as the other areas surrounding our school – a neat little suburb of town that followed all the way back down near to ours if I was feeling like taking the long route. (I wasn’t.)
“I slept round Rindi’s at the weekend,” said Fern, to strike up conversation after they’d gone. “It’s really nice there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “The décor’s brilliant.” (It was. All wine red walls and old brown sofas and bird cages although they’d been between pets for years.)
“The house is so cute,” she added. “With that pretty tree draping across the little side path, and the bay window and the oval window on the second floor. It’s almost as nice as yours.”
Aww! Fern thought our house looked nice. Well, I supposed it did from the outside, but since she’d been indoors more than once she had no excuse. Maybe she actually liked it.
“Thanks.” I found myself blushing stupidly. “It’s not a patch on your designer flat, though.”
Fern bit her lip nervously for a second. “I don’t… really like it. Our flat, I mean. It’s all white and warm and I think it was making things worse when I was ill.”
I privately thought that she should thank her lucky stars for central heating, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “I like it. I’d swap with you in a wink.”
Fern, unlike Kay, didn’t take that literally and rush home to pack her bags. I, unlike Kay, didn’t mean it solely because of her dad Ken’s uncanny resemblance to Kurt Cobain.
“I just wish I lived in a house,” Fern went on. “It’s rubbish having to go upstairs every time you get home – especially if you have a backache or something.”
I didn’t say what I wanted to say about how you couldn’t get any space to relax in our house without hopping two flights of stairs to my attic bedroom, which could be especially dire with period pains. I missed my chance to say anything, because Fern had come back from her social sick leave unusually talkative.
“I’d even live in Keisha’s house with the beige everything, if it meant getting away from the stupid flat. Do you know that we can hear people coming back past from the clubs nearly every night of the week?”
“Seriously,” I said. “You’re not missing out on much. Me and Rindi only live in houses because our families need all that space, and as for Keisha, her mum thinks they live in a showhome. The time someone spilled nail polish on the living room coffee table? Her mum went nuts after we left, and Keish was grounded for a fortnight. She didn’t even do it!”
I didn’t blame Fern for looking a bit crushed when her dreams of a parent who wanted a house collapsed into a clumsy mess of more empty cages and impeccable carpets. “Oh. Well, my dad’s not quite like that. I s’pose it’s better to be able to get along with your family than where you live.”
She still sounded sad. Maybe it was less to do with the two storeys of interior design paradise and more to do with being all alone with just one parent who (as far as I was aware) didn’t natter about clothes and boys and makeup. I at least sometimes managed a good chitchat with Mum or Aimee if I could tolerate the evening soaps.
“You could stay round ours tonight,” I suggested, remembering to feel put out that Rindi and her folks had leapt into the role of Awkward Family With Actual House behind my back.
It didn’t look like things with Kay were working out (though for Charlie they were going splendidly), and after all it had been that bossy girl who jumped in and distracted me from New Friend #1 last term.
Yes, I would get to know Fern properly. She was probably joint with Rindi as the least annoying of my mates anyway (well, after you), and had carefully selected me a thoughtful Christmas card (even if her dad had needed to slot it in our letterbox in case she never felt any better before the holidays), which everyone knows indicates a more friendly friend than any kind of gift.
#20 Ghost Walks & Ugh
The sleepover with Fern turned out to be a success. I walked with her to get her night stuff, and then we got a DVD from the very limited selection at our local non-Blockbuster rental, which unfortunately was going bust.
It was 13 Going On 30, which we bought for £2 in Mr Hargrave’s chip cheap closing down sale. I was still a little overwhelmed by the fact that Harry and Aimee had brought with them a fully working telly and two-in-one DVD/video player, though we didn’t have a lot of discs to spin in it yet.
We’d just slipped upstairs so Fern could put her bag away, when two self-indulgent people and a Harry crashed back into the house. He was early home from work!
“Who’s home?” shouted Kay.
“Me!” I heard Kitty reply, enthusiastically.
“Me!” called Zak from across the attic hallway.
I kept quiet and just looked at Fern. She looked back at me. I knew she wasn’t going to say anything if I wasn’t. We could hear Kay launch into a (probably glitter-embellished) story of some sort downstairs, and curiosity got the better of me. The two of us ventured out of my room and down to the second landing, loitering at the top of the stairs to find out what laughable Charity Day exploit she’d managed and surely wanted to boast about.
“-so Justin said a swear, and he pushed Charlie down the stairs! Mr Toone saw, but he didn’t know who did it, and nobody else would say, so Justin got away with it, and we went to First Aid, and the nurse said he’d have to have it looked at, so she had to phone Harry, and he came back from work to take us to the odd hour clinic.”
Ah. So Harry hadn’t been having the ideal afternoon after all. I still didn’t know what exactly Charlie’s casualty had been, but apparently they hadn’t had to go to the proper A&E. (If they had, they’d still be waiting at best – it was the other side of the motorway.)
Speaking of Harry, he ambled smart-casually up the stairs in his suit and gave us a knowing look as he passed our squatting spot behind the banisters.
“It really, really hurts!” moaned Charlie, playing to his audience of one little sister.
“Let’s get you a painkiller and a drink with a special straw,” cooed Kay, as if she owned the place. “You sit there on the beanbag, my dear.”
So it wasn’t anything to do with his legs. If it had been, he’d surely need to prop them on there instead.
“Want some crisps?” I asked Fern, looking for an opportunity to ambush Kay in the kitchen with my surprisingly sociable social life (and find out what happened to Charlie without looking too much like I cared what happened to Charlie).
“Yes please,” said Fern, once again timidly now that we were in my house with my big, loud family.
We stood up and crept down into the kitchen.
“Oh!” exclaimed Kay, who I’d caught in the act of digging through our biscuit barrel when she thought no one was looking. “I thought Charlie might like a biscuit with his… apple juice. You scared the life out of me!”
“We need those biscuits for eating,” I said, mock-redundantly, hoping she still thought we were as poor as we’d looked before Crimby. Kay had definitely been annoying enough recently to merit a tiny shock.
“OK,
I’m sorry,” she said, worriedly. “You won’t believe what happened to Charlie! Justin pushed him and he fell down the stairs and knocked his hand. The odd hour nurse said it’s not broken or fractured or whatever, but his fingers are hurting!”
Fern slipped up, probably mostly unaware of the game I was playing. “Poor Charlie,” she said.
“Oh the poor mite,” I said, sarcastically. “Kay, if they said nothing’s broken he’s playing you like he always does with Mum.”
For a moment I regretted letting on about that. She totally deserved a whiny patient to run around after, what with the way she’d brushed me off after all this time to be with him.
“Well that’s even better,” Kay enthused, irritatingly. “If he’s not really hurt, that’s great! Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could be a nurse without everyone gushing blood on your cute scrubs?”
“There is a thing like that,” I pointed out. “It’s called mental nursing. Usually, anyway.”
“What a fab idea!” She beamed, shoving the apple juice back in the fridge and hurrying back to Charlie.
Fern and I chose our crisps and a can of Fanta each, and hurried back upstairs. (I chose cheese ‘n’ onion, and she wanted plain.)
“God, she’s so annoying!” I groaned, once we had the bedroom door shut behind us.
“She’s alright,” said Fern, even though all she’d ever seen of Kay suggested that she was at least as scoffy as Keisha, pretentious as Chantalle, and bitterly sporty as Rachel.
“Not when you know her like I do,” I pointed out, popping open my crisps with frustration and only getting most of them all over the carpet. “Most days she’s round here getting into everything and messing around with Charlie and eating our snacks.”
Fern glanced anxiously at her crisps. “I had a best friend like that back in Rutherglen. We met at nursery and she was round mine nearly all of every week ’til we moved.”
“Aww,” I said, trying not to feel sick at the idea of a live-in Kaylean. “Do you miss her?”
“Would it be mean if I said not at all?”
We both giggled, and started picking up the crisps.
“I mean, it’s kinda nice having friends round here who are more… normal,” she explained. “Like you and Rindi. Izzy was always trying to make me join in with weird stuff like ghost walks and …ugh.”
“Tell me about it,” I enthused. (Meaning “don’t – it’s my turn to complain again!”) What could I say next? Ooh!
“Kay’s into making her own clothes, and it’s not even like she’s a talent – the seams are usually messed up, and no one ever wants to say anything.”?
“She kind of latched onto me, too. Even went and got kicked out of her first school so she could come to ours with me.”?
“She’s trying to take over my life! First she cut my hair into layers exactly like hers, and now she’s stealing my own twin brother.”?
I accidentally ended up saying all three in a big garbled mess that probably made me sound as obsessed by hate as Kay was with love for Kurt.
“That’s, um, not a lot of things to be taking over your life…” mumbled Fern, immediately going pink because she’d disagreed with me out loud. “I mean, I guess… there’s more…”
I thought really hard. Not really! There’s no more to add that won’t put me across like an irrational bitch! Help!
“Well, not really, exactly…” I faltered. “It’s just that she’s been spending a lot of time with Charlie, and me and him don’t really talk much these days, and when Chantalle got girlfriendy with him it was all awkward because no one wants me, and now I don’t have Kay to talk to either it’s just a bit weird because they’ve kind of stolen each other from me, and I think my cousin’s ignoring me!”
It took me a moment to realise I was blubbing. Tears started dripping onto my crisp packet.
Fern put her arm round me. “That’s… pretty horrible. But your cousin’s probably not ignoring you. Is that the one who moved away?”
“Yes, Shelley. She was my best …friend.”
“Can’t you email?” asked Fern. “It’s not as expensive as calling, and she doesn’t have to be home when you write it. I mean, there’s always the school computers if yours is no good. I still talk to Izzy.”
Then it dawned on me! I could email. I could email right the very second Fern went home in the morning, or I could email in the afternoon, or I could email the next day – and you’d still get it the next time you went on the computer either way.
Fern was a genius of the moving-a-long-way-away variety, and deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for her work solving the really problematic problem that had been bothering me underneath everything all along!
#21 Charlie’s Righteous Scam
“I have a problem,” Charlie announced, as he spilt the super-heavy, industrial-sized plastic bottle of milk all over the kitchen counter.
“What’s that?” I asked, fetching some kitchen roll. As usual it wasn’t worth trying to guess – it might have been his ex-girlfriend’s recovery status, or his budding crush on Kay, or even just the obvious: that he had a bad wrist and wasn’t dextrous enough to fix his own breakfast one-handedly.
“I had my legs waxed and got pushed down the stairs and broke my wrist,” he paused for emphasis, or sympathy, or something, “but I forgot to get anyone to sponsor me, and I didn’t get to do an activity because of Justin, so I haven’t done my bit.”
Aww, I thought. Trust my soppy twin to get all het up about not being able to help out the leukaemia charity (even if he did annoyingly insist that his wrist was broken all weekend, garnering sympathy from literally everyone except Aimee).
“Martyr,” I said.
“Well, what can I do?”
“You could- you could go to school tomorrow…”
“I’m going to school anyway.”
“I mean, you could have people sponsor you to learn to write with your other hand?” I embellished. “It doesn’t have to be Charity Day to help a charity.”
“I’m left-handed anyway,” he said, sullenly, having another pop at picking the milk up. It was such a huge keg that you’d need two hands to grab it – but that’s how much milk our family gets through in a day, what with several lots of cereal and tea and warm milk and hot chocolate.
I confiscated the milk and poured some into his bowl before he did any further damage. Harry would only come in and moan at us about wastefulness, as if we hadn’t received an ample education in that around the age we were still sharing bathwater. “But they don’t know that! You can swindle them into giving money to charity by pretending to learn how to write with your left hand so it’s really easy for you to do. You’ve suffered enough…”
“Hey, that’s a really great idea,” he admitted. “One of those moments I love having you as my twin. And thanks for my breakfast! And-”
“OK, calm down,” I sighed. Having Charlie wimping around me like his usual self was getting annoying already. Weirdly, as soon as I’d zapped off that (admittedly vague and borderline nonsensical) email to you, I’d started being nice to him again, and he’d started being nice back.
So I hadn’t got a reply yet? There was plenty of time. I’d sent it after Fern left on Saturday (I’ll even leave out the sleepovery details in case you really are jealous already), but maybe you’d been busy with friends all day and not had time to check. Maybe you were busy with friends a lot, which I have to admit would be a good thing, because talking to Fern made me realise it can’t have been any easier on you, having to move right the way across the globe.
It would be fair to say I started this Sunday in an excellent mood!
#22 Oh. Right.
“Harley!” Rindi grinned, ambushing me as usual along from the roundabout that turned off into two bad council areas and her and Keisha’s neighbourhood with the aww-worthy houses and thousands of takeaways. “I’ve got to show you this!”
“Is it the paper?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, it is!”
“It’s not something I’ve written – it’s something about that girl Malice. In the real paper. They know who the driver was! He was underage and drunk.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Just thought you might wanna tell Charlie that.”
“I don’t think he’d better hear that from us; he’ll probably try to avenge her by spiking the guy’s tires with Lego pieces, or something…”
“He’s going to the juve.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And now for something I’ve written – it’s just the sports roundups, but I wrote it, and it’s getting put in!” She shone, and thrust a piece of paper at me:
FOOTBALL: Constantly High beat Mabey Academy 5-4 in Thursday evening’s KS3 match.
GIRLS’ NETBALL: We failed miserably to beat the girls from St Squarey’s.
(Prying Aussies should note that it’s none of their business what school I go to. Shelley will know what I mean!)
“Oh. Right.”
Why was I saying that so much today? It was almost as weird as Charlie’s “Yes – no – I don’t know” thing.
“Of course, that’s just the headlines,” Rindi explained. “I have to finish the articles for tomorrow morning’s deadline.”
I kept it clamped, for fear of “Oh. Right.”-ing her again. Rindi talked some more about the school paper, and things she’d read in the real paper, and I updated her on the situation at home and explained about Charlie’s righteous scam, and all of a sudden I felt a whole lot better and pallier than I had on the way home on Friday, thinking she’d stolen Fern on purpose. It turned out they probably had a lot more in common with each other than I did, but that wasn’t going to be a problem.
We ran into Fern and Chantalle at the bus stop, not exactly being matey but making polite conversation nonetheless. (As it turned out, Fern had had some practise dealing with bolshy drama queens before.)
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