by Ali Cronin
I made a face at her back and went into the kitchen to grab a snack. Monday wasn’t one of Mum’s shop’s late-opening nights, but Mum still wouldn’t be home till six, when we’d have pizza for tea. Monday-night ritual. On my way up to my room I stuck my head into the living room, where my little sister Frankie was watching TV. Most twelve-year-olds would be watching crappy American teeny sitcoms on the Disney Channel or something, but she was sat in the lotus position in front of Mum’s yoga DVD.
‘All right, Franks?’
She held up a finger to tell me to wait, then placed the tips of her middle finger and thumb together and brought them in front of her, just like the skinny bird in the leotard was doing on the screen, breathed in deeply and chanted a long, slow, ‘Ommmmm.’ Then she paused the screen and spun round to face me, her hand-me-down school shirt and navy pleated skirt about as un-yogary as you could get.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Good sesh?’
‘Yeah, brilliant. Apart from all the farting.’ She gave me an unwavering gaze – the only sort she does, my crazy sister – and I laughed.
‘Mum says it happens all the time in her yoga class,’ she said reproachfully.
‘Sure it does, Frankie-pank,’ I said. ‘Good day?’
She turned back to the screen. ‘It was OK. Miss Baines said I had an unusual talent for mimicry.’
‘Who were you mimicking?’
She pulled her legs back into the lotus position. ‘Miss Baines.’
Of course. I turned to go, then stopped and said, ‘Do you know why Sasha’s here? It can’t just be for Mum’s Internet shopping.’
Frankie sucked her teeth impatiently. ‘Dunno. Maybe she’s had a row with Toby.’ She clicked the DVD off pause.
Interesting, although I doubted it was true. Toby and Sasha were disgusting together, all little kisses and ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’. I left Frankie to her ‘omming’ and went up to my room to change.
Ah, my room. Sasha gave it to me when she left home to go to uni. It was the best present she’d ever given me, by about a million miles. I’d spent a whole half term transforming it. I’d stripped off her Laura Ashley wallpaper and painted the whole room purple, except the dark-wood floorboards which I left as they were. Then I’d covered my bed with a couple of metres of this mental 1960s geometric-print fabric I’d found in Oxfam. I’d bought some slatted wooden blinds from Ikea and put those up in place of Sasha’s gross floral curtains, and finally put my giant Kurt Cobain poster on the wall. There was nothing I could do about the disgusting fake-wood wardrobe – I couldn’t afford a new one – so I’d moved it beside the door where at least you couldn’t see it when you first came in. Who knew I was so creative? It was just how I’d imagined it, and I loved it. It was my space. I’d even put a bolt on the door, right up at the top so you wouldn’t know it was there, although Mum had noticed almost straight away, with her mental mum-radar. I’d promised I’d never lock it at night, no sirree, so she let me keep it. Obviously I had locked it, but she’d never realized.
As always, the first thing I did when I got to my room was turn on my CD player, then close the blinds and turn on my bedside light. (I never used the ceiling light. I preferred to keep some things in the shadows. Deep, non?) Next, my school clothes were off and leggings and a mahoosive jumper were on. Relief. I’d just flopped on to my bed for a bout of staring into space when Sasha knocked on my door and poked her head round.
‘Computer’s free, Ashy,’ she cooed. For the record, I hate being called Ashy.
I jumped up from my bed and followed her out of the door. ‘You off, then?’ I asked. She shook her head, her blonde ponytail bobbing perkily.
‘I brought a chicken casserole for supper. Thought Mum deserved a break, you know? Something tells me she doesn’t get an awful lot of help when I’m not around.’
I stuck my tongue out at her back. ‘Yes, well. Sorry to spoil your fun, but Monday’s pizza night. And it’s tea, not supper.’
She shrugged. ‘Tea, supper. Same difference. And it won’t kill you to eat a home-cooked meal on a Monday.’
‘My point is,’ I said, through gritted teeth, ‘Mum doesn’t need a break because making a two-minute phone call to order pizza is not exactly hard work.’
‘Whatever,’ sang Sasha, running lightly downstairs, her perfectly manicured nails skimming the banister. I bared my teeth at her as she went into the kitchen to do her good-daughter deed for the day, then I speedily veered off into the back room. I pressed a key to bring the screen to life and quickly logged on to Facebook, where my stomach did a little lurch cos Dylan had accepted my friend request. Whoop! I bashed out a quick message. Well, I say ‘bashed’. I spent ten minutes agonizing over the perfect wordage to make it seem like I’d just bashed it out. I ended up with:
Hey. Good to meet you the other night. Xmas party details: it’s on Sat 3rd Dec at the football hut on Bishops Lane – I think Cubs meet there too, if that was ever your thing. Dib dib dib. Ashley.
Oh, be still my splitting sides. But it’d do. I squeezed my eyes shut and clicked send before I could change my mind. A glance at Dylan’s profile told me there wasn’t much to see. No status updates or timeline posts to speak of. I wasn’t into revealing all on Facebook. Nice to know he had similar standards. I clicked on Info anyway, just to check, like, and almost laughed out loud when I saw his top music, films and TV programmes were pretty much a mirror for mine. You’ve got to respect a straight guy for having the guts to tell the world that one of his favourite movies is The Wizard of Oz (and I knew he was straight, before you go thinking otherwise, cos Donna had asked Marv), and I didn’t know anyone else who dug Question Time like I did (it’s totally Jeremy Kyle with brains).
Still smiling to myself, I opened another browser window and checked my emails. The editor of the newspaper had replied as well. Get me, all Ms Popular. She told me her assistant had contacted the old lady, who’d be happy for me to get in touch. Result. Well, no time like the present, carpe diem and all that. I picked up my phone and keyed in the lady’s phone number.
‘Good afternoon. Bridget Harper speaking.’ She had literally the poshest voice I’d ever heard. She could have given the Queen a run for her money in the cut-glass stakes.
I cleared my throat. ‘Oh hi, my name’s Ashley. I think the editor of –’
But she interrupted me. ‘Oh yes, hello there. You wanted to interview me about the war for a school project?’
Whoa, no flies on her. She must have been about ninety, but from her voice you’d think she was thirty years younger.
‘Yes, if that’s OK.’
‘Of course. It’ll make a nice change. Daytime television is not exactly uplifting.’
Hilarious. I arranged to go to her house (‘I assume you’re not an axe murderer, dear?’) after school in a couple of days, and then quickly ended the call because – ping! – I had a reply from Dylan.
Hmm. Was he keen or just efficient? I opened the message with my heart doing little skipettes.
I’ll be there! Dylan x
And there, mes amis, is the definition of short and sweet. Beaming like an idiot and with jumping beans getting jiggy in my stomach, I texted Donna:
Guess who just messaged
me on fb??
True to form, she called back within approximately 2.8 seconds.
‘Told you he liked you.’
I shut down the computer and jogged back up the stairs to my room. I flopped on to my bed, but was too fidgety. I got up and started pacing instead. ‘Don’t get excited. He just said he was coming to the party … Maybe he fancies you.’
She snorted. ‘Get off. You know he doesn’t.’
‘Well, I’m not counting any chickens, babes, but I’ll give it a go.’
‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘So what did his message say, exactly?’ And we spent the next twenty minutes until Mum got home from work and called me for tea analysing those four words and an x till they were pretty much imprinted on my very soul.
It was all good.
FOR FICTION TO MAKE YOU GASP OUT LOUD, STAY UP LATE AND MISS YOUR STOP,
GET INTO RAZORBILL.
For the very best in teen fiction, look for the Razorbill.
www.penguin.co.uk
Get inside your favourite book
spinebreakers.co.uk
spinebreaker (n)
story-surfer, word-lover, day-dreamer,
reader/ writer/ artist/ thinker
What actually happened before Will interrupted in Chapter 4 …
Joe had shut the door and pulled me down on to his narrow bed, the sheets and single white blanket all mussed up as he must have left them that morning.
‘Don’t you ever make the bed?’ I asked, kicking at the sheets to make myself comfortable.
He grinned at me. ‘Nope!’
I was in the process of formulating a hilarious retort when he shut me up by kissing me. So I tried again. And he kissed me again. I gave up. Kissing was more fun than witty repartee. I could feel the stubble rash forming on my face as our mouths smooshed against each other. He was delicious. His tongue moved lazily against mine, his fingers entwined in my hair, his leg thrown over my leg. The smell of him! It was like a drug. Not that I’d know.
He pushed against me, his erection hard against my leg. Without opening his eyes or stopping, he gently moved my hand downwards. Not knowing what to do, I sort of rubbed over his shorts. He moaned, so I carried on. He smoothed his hand over my stomach and up my top, then inside my bikini top. His hand felt warm on my breast as he gently squeezed.
I imagined telling Ashley and Donna about this. Thinking about their reaction gave me a kind of confidence by proxy. I slipped my hand under the waistband of Joe’s shorts. He made a groaning noise in his throat as I felt his willy (the headlines: it was weirdly hot and felt hard and soft at the same time). He put his hand over mine and showed me what to do, his breathing turning fast and shallow.
And then the door opened. I gasped and yanked my hand out of his shorts, my heart going mental. I couldn’t look. I buried my face in Joe’s neck and waited for whoever it was to go away.
‘Oops, sorry.’ Will’s voice.
‘Don’t worry, mate,’ said Joe. ‘Nothing to see here.’ His chest shook as he laughed.
I heard the door click shut, but still I couldn’t look up.
That time I wore my swimming costume under my school uniform to save time then jumped into the pool with my Hello Kitty knickers still on? No longer the most embarrassing moment of my life.
Click here to return to the main story.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19