Pick 'n' Mix

by Jean Ure

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said Mum.

  “But, M—”

  “You’re both sleeping in Angel’s room! That’s it, it’s all sorted.”

  “B—”

  “Frankie!”

  I was doomed.

  Chapter Two

  “So then Mum said how would we feel if she came to live with us for a bit, and I said I wouldn’t mind, except if it meant sharing a bedroom with Angel, cos you know what she’s like.”

  Jemma said, “Yuck, yes!”

  Skye nodded, wisely. “Wouldn’t work.”

  “Well, this is it,” I said. “I mean, imagine.”

  It was Monday afternoon and we were walking back from school. Skye and Jem are my best mates. I’d been bursting all day to tell them about what had happened to my carpet and the terrible trouble I was going to be in, but what with one thing and another this was the first chance I’d had.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I got this bright idea? I said if Angel moved into my room, me and her could share Angel’s room—”

  “You and this girl?”

  “Emilia. Yes! But—”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Oh –” I waved a hand. “She’s all right.” Emilia wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was this fearsome thing that was hanging over me. The hole in my carpet… “I don’t actually know her very well. The thing is—”

  “Suppose you don’t get on?” said Jem.

  “We’ll get on! It’s only for a few weeks.” I’m not like Angel, I don’t get all fussed and bothered about stuff. Angel is always on about her ‘stuff’ and how no one’s got to touch it. “The thing is—”

  “Could seem like for ever,” said Skye.

  “Well, it won’t, cos it’s not! The awfulthing is she’s coming tomorrow and tonight we’re going to swap bedrooms and Mum’s going to discover there’s a hole in my carpet!”

  The words wailed out of me. There was a silence. Then Skye, very solemnly, said, “A hole.”

  “In my carpet!”

  They looked at each other. “You mean it’s, like, threadbare?” said Jem. “No! I cut it.”

  “You what?” said Skye.

  “I cut it!”

  “Cut your carpet?”

  Honestly! It is so annoying when people keep repeating everything you say.

  “Yes,” I snapped. “I cut my carpet!”

  “But why?”

  “Cos I wanted Gran’s cabinet to fit in the corner and the ceiling wasn’t high enough!”

  “So you cut the carpet.”

  Really, for someone who is supposed to have this immense great brain, always getting A pluses and coming top of everything, Skye can be incredibly slow on the uptake. How many more times did I have to tell her? Yes, I cut the carpet!

  “It would have been all right,” I said, “if it hadn’t gone and frayed round the edges. Nobody would have noticed. It was Rags that messed things up. He tugged at it. He’s made a bald patch!”

  “Dunno what to say,” said Skye.

  Jem sniggered. “Bet her mum’ll find something!”

  She thought that was funny? One of my best friends thought it was funny that Mum was going to be mad at me? I glared at her.

  “Well, sorry,” said Jem, “but really! You do the stupidest things.”

  I resented that. “It wasn’t stupid,” I said, “it was the logical solution. If you can’t make the ceiling higher, you make the floor lower. I was just being practical! You can’t have a corner cabinet not standing in a corner.”

  “Of course you can’t,” said Skye, soothingly. “You did what anyone would have done… you cut a hole in your carpet!”

  She and Jem both fell about.

  “It was only small,” I pleaded.

  “Only small!” shrieked Jem, clutching herself round the middle.

  “Now it’s this size –” Skye held her arms out in a circle. They collapsed on each other, helpless with foolish giggles.

  Crossly, I said, “How was I to know it would start unravelling?”

  “Unravelling!” squeaked Jem.

  Screech. Hoot. These were supposed to be my friends.

  Skye wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “Maybe you could say it was Rags that made the hole.”

  “And get a poor little innocent dog into trouble? I couldn’t do that! In any case,” I said, “you can tell it’s been cut.” Not meaning to boast, I added that I had made a proper pattern. “I cut right round the edge of it with Dad’s knife. The one he uses for carpets. It’s really sharp! I was ever so careful, cos I didn’t want to cut myself. I just wanted my cabinet to go in a corner!”

  “And now it’s in one,” said Skye, soothingly.

  “Yes, but there’s a great bald patch!” I explained how for the moment I’d hidden the bald patch beneath a pile of clothes. “But Angel’s like this real tidiness freak? She’ll want it all cleared up. I tried suggesting me and Emilia share my room, I even offered to sleep downstairs, like on the sofa or something, so’s Emilia could have the room to herself, cos she probably wouldn’t mind a few clothes lying about the floor, but M—”

  “How old is this girl?” said Jem.

  I looked at her, annoyed. I felt like saying, “Pardon me, but I was in the middle of speaking.” It is really bad manners to interrupt a person.

  “Emilia,” said Jem. “How old is she?”

  “She’s thirteen, but—”

  “Thirteen? You mean she’s Year 9?” Skye pulled a face. We were only Year 7 and most Year 9s, at our school at any rate, treated us like snot.

  “I dunno what year she’s in. She has learning difficulties so she’s more like an eight year old? She goes to St Giles.” St Giles is the special school just a bit further down the road from where we go. “I expect probably she’ll need a bit of looking after.”

  Skye said, “What kind of looking after?”

  “Well – you know! Just making sure she’s OK. I promised Mum we’d be responsible for her.”

  “Us?” Skye was starting to sound a bit alarmed.

  “She’s ever so sweet,” I said. “She won’t be any trouble.”

  “You reckon?”

  “It’ll just be, like, seeing her to school and picking her up again, checking she doesn’t get lost. That kind of thing. Actually,” I said, “I’m quite looking forward to it.” Well, I had been.

  Just at the moment all I could think of was what Mum was going to say.

  Jem put her arm through mine. “I don’t mind helping look after her,” she said.

  I beamed at her, gratefully; at least I had the support of one of my friends. Skye was gnawing at her lip, her forehead all crinkled. She is such a pessimist! If I listened to what she had to say I would never go anywhere or do anything. I suppose it is what comes of having this massive great brain, like a computer. Instead of just looking straight ahead, she whizzes frantically about, all up and down the side roads, in and out of blind alleys, searching for things that could go wrong. A bit too complicated for my liking. I think I am quite a straightforward type, though Mum would probably say I tend to act without thinking, which is what she said when I accidentally set fire to Dad’s garden shed and almost certainly what she was going to say when I tried to explain why I’d cut a hole in my carpet…

  I gulped as we reached Sunnybrook Gardens, which is where the three of us go our different ways.

  “Wish me luck,” I said.

  “What for?” said Jem. “Oh! Yes. Your carpet.” She giggled. “Hope your mum doesn’t get too mad!”

  “Blame it on Rags,” urged Skye.

  Maybe I could. After all, it was sort of his fault. If he hadn’t chewed the fronds I could have snipped them off and nobody would ever have known. I could tell Mum that I’d cut the hole after he’d done his chewing. I could say I’d been trying to tidy things up and the knife had slipped, so then I’d thought I might as well make the hole triangle-shaped and put the cabinet on t
op of it. Yes! That would work.

  I crashed through the front door, all prepared with my story (in case Mum had already made the dreaded discovery and was waiting for me like a great hovering cloud at the top of the stairs). But then Rags came bounding down the hall, full of his usual doggy ecstasy at seeing me again, and I knew that I just couldn’t do it.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered. “I won’t blame you!”

  While me and Rags were having a hug-in, the door of the front room opened and Mum looked out.

  “Oh, Frankie, there you are. I’ll be with you in a minute, I’m just seeing one of my ladies. You and Angel go and make a start on your bedrooms. Tell Angel she doesn’t have to move every last item… concentrate on clothes.”

  I said, “OK.” Trying to make like it was no big deal and that my heart wasn’t already starting to sink like a lead balloon.

  Angel was in the kitchen, texting someone. She is always texting. I said, “Mum wants us to get on with moving things.”

  Angel pulled a face.

  “She says not every last item. Just clothes, mainly.”

  Angel said, “If you think I’m leaving all my stuff for you to get your grubby hands on—”

  There was a pause, while she went on texting.

  I said, “What if I do?”

  Irritably, she said, “Do what?”

  “Think what you just said.”

  “Then you’d better think again!” Angel snapped her phone shut and went flouncing ahead of me, up the hall. “Let’s get this over with. And you can clear up all your mess,” she added.

  I said, “What mess?”

  “The mess in your room.”

  “How do you know there’s any mess in my room?”

  “Cos there always is. Just because I have to exist in a cupboard for the next few weeks doesn’t mean I have to live in a tip.”

  I sniffed as I went up the extra little flight of stairs to my room. The clothes were still on the floor, where I’d left them. I was about to pick them up when I had another of my bright ideas. It just struck me suddenly, as these things do. I think I must have a very active sort of brain.

  I left the clothes where they were, seized an armful of stuff from the wardrobe and went plunging down to Angel’s room, crossing paths with Angel on the way back up.

  “Mess,” she said, as she came back down. “What are you doing with that rug?”

  “I thought you ought to take it with you. Cos, you know, I might spill stuff on it or something.”

  “Good thinking,” said Angel.

  I galloped back up, kicked the clothes out of the way, and carefully laid the rug on top of the bald patch. It looked a bit odd, cos of sticking out at an angle, but at least it covered things up. It would have been perfectly all right if Angel hadn’t gone and interfered. She came in with another load of clothes, took one look at the rug and said, “It’s supposed to go here, by the side of the bed.”

  “That’s boring,” I said. “That’s where everybody has them.”

  “Yes, for a reason,” said Angel. “It’s where they go.”

  “Not if you’re being creative.”

  She isn’t creative; that is the problem. I don’t think she has very much in the way of imagination. Before I could stop her she’d snatched up the rug, revealing the bald patch in all its horror. I cringed. I’d been secretly hoping that by some miracle it might have shrunk a bit during the day, but if anything it seemed to have grown even worse.

  Angel shrieked, “Oh my God!”

  That was the moment when Mum appeared in the doorway.

  “Now what?” she said. There was a distinct note of tetchiness in her voice – and that was before she’d seen the bald patch. It didn’t bode well. “Don’t tell me you two are at it already?”

  Angel said nothing; just pointed, with quivering finger. Mum walked to the end of the bed. She looked. There was a rather nasty moment of silence.

  “All right,” said Mum. She took a long, deep breath, like she was counting to ten. “So how did it happen?”

  “It wasn’t Rags’ fault!” I said. “He found some loose ends and he tugged on them!”

  Mum’s eyes followed the trail from the edge of the bed to the base of the cabinet.

  “These loose ends?” More fronds had sprouted overnight; a whole forest of them, short and bristly. “Frankie,” said Mum, “what have you been doing?”

  I tried my best to explain. All about the cabinet and the lack of corners. How I hadn’t actually set out to cut a hole.

  “You mean, it just happened? All by itself?” Mum shook her head. She didn’t sound cross; just kind of… defeated. “Words fail me,” she said.

  It’s a pity they can’t fail Angel occasionally. I have never known anyone go on like she does.

  “Well, that’s it,” she said. “I’m not living in this tip! You can just get your stinky clothes out of my room and bring them back up here. Look at it! Look at the state of it! How could I invite any of my friends round? They’d think we were too poor to have decent carpets!”

  “We are,” said Mum. “That’s what I find so depressing. I don’t know what your dad’s going to say, my girl, but you’d better brace yourself. He’s not going to be best pleased.”

  “She’s a vandal!” shrilled Angel. She swept a load of clothes out of the wardrobe and marched across to the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” said Mum.

  “Going back to my own room!”

  “You’ll do no such thing. You come back here! You agreed to swap.”

  “That was before she hacked the carpet to bits. Why should I be expected to live in squalor?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, stop being so melodramatic,” said Mum. “You’re only going to be in here for a few weeks, it won’t kill you.”

  I knew what Angel’s game was. She hadn’t really wanted to swap rooms in the first place; she was just using the carpet as an excuse. Mum obviously knew it too, cos she told her sharply to pull herself together.

  “Put those clothes back and go and get the rest of them. And you, Frankie, start clearing your drawers. Let’s at least get the job done before your dad arrives home. You’d better be prepared. It may well be,” said Mum, “that he’ll decide to stop your pocket money for the next few months until we’ve saved enough to replace the carpet.”

  “Dunno why you’d bother,” said Angel. “Might just as well put down a load of straw.”

  “I wouldn’t mind straw,” I said.

  “No, you’d probably be happier in it… then you could wallow, like a pig.”

  Angel went banging off down the stairs. I shouted after her: “I like pigs!”

  “I wouldn’t get too cocky if I were you,” said Mum. “That’s Dad’s van I just heard pulling in. Do you want me to break the news, or would you prefer to tell him yourself?”

  “Rather you did it,” I mumbled.

  “That’s probably a wise choice,” said Mum.

  Chapter Three

  Sometimes my dad can be so lovely! He wasn’t anywhere near as cross as I’d thought he’d be. I reckon Mum was a bit put out. She’s always complaining that she’s the one that has to keep telling us off, and that just now and again it ought to be Dad’s turn. This was definitely his turn. But when I rather desperately explained about the lack of corners, and my bedroom ceiling not being high enough, he laughed. He actually laughed. Mum gave him such a look.

  “Well,” said Dad, “now I’ve heard everything!”

  “Hacking her carpet to bits,” grumbled Mum.

  “Not good,” agreed Dad. “Definitely not good. But I have to admit, there’s a certain muddleheaded logic to it.”

  I don’t know why he said that. Muddleheaded. What was muddled about it?

  I told him that I’d been using my imagination. “Like you always say we should. Don’t just give up, look for a solution. That’s what you’re always telling us.”

  “True,” said Dad.

  Mu
m made an impatient huffing noise. “So what do we do about the carpet?”

  “She’ll have to live with it.”

  “Like that will be any hardship.” Mum said it rather bitterly. “She already exists in a tip, as it is.”

  “Well, that’s her problem. I guess we should just think ourselves lucky she didn’t go for the other option.”

  “What’s the other option?” I said.

  “Cutting a hole in the ceiling?”

  “Oh!” I was entranced. “I never thought of that.”

  “Precisely! Let us be thankful for small mercies.”

  “I can’t say I’m exactly brimming over with gratitude,” snapped Mum. “One perfectly good carpet ruined, and Angel in a sulk, which is all we need.”

  Dad said, “What’s she in a sulk about?”

  “Having to live in a pig sty for the next four weeks. And who could blame her?”

  Mum left the room, obviously in somewhat of a huff.

  “There, now,” said Dad. “You’ve really upset her. You’d better go and apologise.”

  I said, “I have apologised!”

  “Well, do it again. And make sure you mean it! The only reason I’m being as lenient as I am – which is far more than you deserve – is that I’m proud of you for offering to help out with Emilia.”

  I glowed. I love it when Dad is proud of me! It doesn’t happen that often.

  “It’ll be like work experience,” I said.

  “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. I just hope you’re not taking on more than you can handle.”

  I said, “Da-a-ad!” Why did everyone doubt me? First Mum, then Skye, now Dad. “I know what I’m doing!”

  “Yes, and I’m sure you mean well,” said Dad. “But from what I can gather, Emilia is quite a handful.”

  “Dad, she’s sweet! And we couldn’t let her go to strangers.”

  Dad ruffled my hair. “This is why I’m letting you off lightly. But please don’t go cutting any more carpets!”

  Jem and Skye were waiting for me as usual next morning, on the corner of Sunnybrook Gardens.

  “So what happened?” cried Jem. “Was your mum furious?”

  “You’d better believe it,” I said.