by Hayley Long
‘Day OK?’ she asked.
‘Not bad,’ I said.
‘Gareth’s mum all right?’ she asked.
‘Seemed OK,’ I said.
‘Learn anything interesting?’ she asked.
‘Nah,’ I said.
And then she flapped her hands about in front of her and said really loudly,
‘I can’t keep it from you any longer. I’ve got you a chinchilla. Come and have a look at him.’
And I said,
‘Oh my God! That’s totally amazing! I love chinchillas so much. I can’t believe you’ve actually seriously gone and got me one. Where is he?’
And then we both went rushing off to the kitchen to check out my chinchilla. I was so excited that I almost puked.
My chinchilla was sitting on the kitchen table inside a massive cage which had several different levels and a little tray at the bottom filled with fine sand. He was perched up on the highest level and appeared to be asleep. I leaned forward to get a better view of him. He looked a bit odd. I leaned forward even closer and examined him again.
My mum said, ‘Do you like him?’
I looked at the little animal which was fast asleep in front of me. Like the chinchillas in Happy Pets, he was round and furry with a pointy nose and chicken feet but that was where any similarity ended. I’d never seen any living thing quite like this one ever before. My chinchilla was round but not very fat with enormously long whiskers and grubby white fur. He was just like a scruffy fluffy snowball. I put my hand in the cage and gently prodded him. He lifted his head to look at me and then shifted about a bit before curling up into a sleepy ball again. He seemed to be a bit doddery on his feet, if I’m honest.
I said, ‘What’s the matter with him?’
My mum went a bit red and said, ‘Well . . . nothing. He’s just old.’
‘Why did you get me such an ancient one?’ I said.
My mum went even redder and said, ‘Well, they’re not cheap, you know, Lottie. I looked in the pet shop and a young chinchilla was ninety pounds. That’s a lot more than a rabbit costs.’
I continued to watch my ancient chinchilla. I could see his body move up and down as he was breathing.
‘And also, did you know that a chinchilla can live for over twenty years?’ added my mum. ‘That means that if I’d bought you a baby, you might still have been looking after him well into your late thirties. That’s a serious commitment. I thought maybe we should see how we get on with this old sweetie first.’
My ancient chinchilla blinked open an eye and then gave a sleepy yawn before nodding off again.
‘I’d planned to call him Hendrix,’ I said. ‘After Jimi Hendrix. But I’m not sure that the name Hendrix really suits this particular chinchilla.’
‘Well, actually, he’s already got a name,’ said my mum. ‘He’s called Winnie. I got him out of the local paper. His owner couldn’t look after him any more.’
I put my hand back inside the cage and ran a finger across Winnie’s head. His fur was the softest thing I’ve ever felt. It’s exactly the same texture as crushed velvet. Winnie wiggled his ears and made a funny little chirping sound.
‘Do you like him?’ said my mum again. She sounded a bit worried. I don’t know why though.
‘I LOVE HIM,’ I said with a big smile. ‘He is totally totally lush.’
And then I gave my mum a big hug and shortly after that, Gareth rang me up to see how I’d got on at his mum’s salon, and later today, he’s coming around to tea and bringing a film called The Official History of Welsh Rugby with him. So I’m having Sunday afternoon with a hunk of chunk and a chinchilla.
What more could a girl possibly want?
OsCar wiLDe sPOke to Me
I am in a state of
total and utter
trauma.
So terrible is my condition that I’ve had to take a day off school. My mum thinks I’ve got a migraine but actually the truth is far more serious. An unfortunate chain of events has forced me to undertake a terrible journey of self-discovery and that terrible journey has made me arrive at a very shocking and concerning conclusion.
I want to do it with Gareth Stingecombe.
I want to do it so badly that I’m in danger of becoming desperate. It’s a very difficult thing to accept about myself. To make matters even worse, the one person I would normally turn to for guidance and advice at such a moment of personal crisis is Goose and, unfortunately, she is unavailable for comment because I shouted at her and told her to go and get a new best friend. Sometimes, I am colossally stupid. Friends like Goose McKenzie are hard to find. You can’t just go and order one out of a catalogue.
I’ve got Jimi Hendrix to thank for ultimately showing me the alarming truth. I always knew that there was a hidden depth to Jimi’s music but now I know that it has the power to unlock parts of my brain that I never even knew existed. But I also have Oscar Wilde to thank. And Winnie the chinchilla too. On Sunday, I moved Winnie’s cage into my bedroom because I thought he seemed a bit lonely in the kitchen and I have since discovered that Winnie is not the quiet little creature that he at first appeared to be. All day, while I’m at school, he sleeps in a little wooden box inside his massive cage, and all night, while I’m in bed, he bounces about like a ping-pong ball and keeps me awake.
Without this interruption to my nightly sleep patterns, I might never have realized quite how desperately I want to have intimate physical contact with Gareth Stingecombe’s body.
It’s Friday now and Winnie has been living in my bedroom for five days. I haven’t had a decent kip in all that time. The first night the bouncing happened was Sunday and I just put it down to a bit of overexcitement. Gareth had been over at my house showing me his rugby DVD and then we’d gone upstairs to my bedroom partly so that I could show him Winnie but mostly so that I could have a bit of privacy with Gareth away from the undercover police surveillance of my mum. When he’d seen Winnie, Gareth had poked him with his finger and said, ‘I’m not being funny but he doesn’t do much, does he?’
‘Shut up,’ I’d said. ‘You’ll hurt his feelings. He’s a very elderly chinchilla and at this time of his life he just wants to take it easy and relax. He doesn’t want some great big hunk of chunk like you prodding him about and being all critical.’
‘Sorry,’ Gareth said. And then he leaned over so that his face was level with Winnie’s face and said, ‘Sorry, Winnie.’
Winnie made a chirping noise and shut his eyes.
Gareth straightened up and said, ‘I’ve got some amazing new bruises that I picked up on the field of play, Lottie. I’ve got this massive big blue one on my thigh and all the rugby boys reckon that it looks exactly like Marge Simpson. Do you want to see it?’
Now normally I would have no interest in looking at bruises but the location of this particular one made it more fascinating than most. I nodded gormlessly.
Gareth said, ‘Your mum won’t come bursting in here, will she?’
Still totally devoid of any gorms, I shook my head. My mouth had suddenly gone all dry and I wasn’t sure if I could speak.
Gareth put his finger on his lips to tell me to keep quiet and then undid the belt of his jeans. I sat down on my bed and tried to look normal. It was really hard though because my face muscles were freaking out.
Gareth looked anxiously at the door and then lowered his jeans so that they were just above his knees.
‘Yuck!’ I said, really loudly. ‘You’re wearing Britney Spears boxer shorts!’
And then I blushed really furiously because it suddenly occurred to me that I happened to be wearing my lucky Justin Timberlake knickers.17
Gareth blushed really furiously too and looked down at his pants. Then he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Oh, these aren’t mine. I accidentally tipped a can of cola into my undies drawer and all my boxers had to be washed. I nicked these ones off my dad.’ Then he pointed at a big blue blob on his thigh and said, ‘There it is! It’s really enormous, isn’t it
?’
I gulped and said, ‘Wow! It really is. It’s huge!’
And it was. It took my breath away just looking at it.
And what’s more, it did sort of look like Marge Simpson.
Gareth pulled his jeans up with a proud smile and then sat down on the bed next to me. ‘Coach Jenkins reckons I’ve got a good chance of making it as a regular in the Wales youth team.’ His eyes were locked on mine.
‘That’s amazing, Gaz,’ I replied. My eyes were locked on his.
‘Coach Jenkins reckons I’ve got the makings of a great scrum-half,’ said Gareth. His face was moving ever so slowly towards my face.
‘I’m sure you have,’ I murmured back. I was suddenly breathing like somebody who was in the middle of a cross-country race.
Gareth put his hands on my waist and whispered, ‘Coach Jenkins reckons—’
‘Oh, Gaz, will you shut up about Coach Jenkins?’ I said. And Gareth nodded his head furiously and fell forwards and then our lips met in an explosion of passion and lust and Gareth pushed me back on to my bed and clambered a bit on top of me and covered me with urgent little fiery kisses and my hands were on his waist and then on his belt and I could feel that his jeans were still undone and –
THUD
Gareth sat up sharply. ‘What was that noise?’
THUD
‘What noise?’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
THUD
‘That noise,’ said Gareth, and I sat up then because I couldn’t realistically pretend to ignore it any more.
THUD
‘It’s Winnie,’ said Gareth. He’s woken up!’
I smoothed down my top because it had got all creased up in the scrum and then I turned to look at Winnie and he was doing this:
‘He might be old,’ said Gareth, ‘but he’s bouncy.’
I bit my thumbnail and said, ‘Yeah, but can we just go back to where we were a minute ago?’
Gareth laughed and pulled a face. ‘Don’t seem right really, Lottie. Not in front of an elderly chinchilla.’ And then he punched me playfully on the arm and said, ‘Let’s go and play Super Mario Karts with your mum. I still haven’t got over the fact that she beat me the other day. Honestly, it’s doing my head in. The rugby boys would kill themselves laughing if they ever found out.’
And that was where my journey of frustration started.
After Gareth had gone home, I went straight back up to my bedroom. For a while, I just paced around unsure of what to do with myself and then, finally, I climbed into bed with all my clothes still on. It was only a little after seven and way too early to be in bed, dressed or not. Probably my little brother, Caradoc, doesn’t even go to bed that early and he’s only five! Mind you, I wouldn’t know when his bedtime is because he lives in Wrexham and that’s miles away. Downstairs, I could hear my mum crashing about and laughing as she did her step aerobics in front of the telly. Just recently, we’ve been doing this together because Blake reckons it’s good for us. This time, though, there was no way that I was going to prance about like a pillock in front of my mum. I didn’t even want to be anywhere near her. To be honest, I was worried that she’d take one look at me and be able to see right inside my filthy head and know what I was thinking.
I’m not going into detail about what I was thinking about because it makes me too flustered.
I’ll leave it as a complete mystery.
So instead of prancing about like a pillock with my mum, I lay in my bed, fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling for a while. Winnie was bouncing around in his cage and making a right old racket. ‘Thanks, Winnie,’ I whispered crossly. ‘Things were starting to get really interesting in my bedroom for a moment there. And then you had to wake up and ruin it all.’
Winnie winked at me and made his sweet little chirping noise. I felt a bit bad then. After all, it wasn’t really Winnie’s fault that I was feeling weird. And it’s totally wrong to get annoyed with an animal. Everyone knows that.
‘Sorry, Winnie,’ I said. ‘But I’m a bit wound up.’
Winnie chirped again and then leaped up to the top of his cage. He seemed quite happy with his new set-up. I watched him jump about for a while and then, because I was still being tormented by dodgy mental images, I picked up that Oscar Wilde book and stared at the cover for a bit. This worked a treat. Within minutes, all dodgy mental images had left my head and I was feeling so bored that I put my light out and went to sleep. Even though it wasn’t even eight o’clock.
But the next night, Winnie started bouncing again. And while he bounced, I couldn’t sleep. And as I couldn’t sleep, I started thinking. And the only single thing I could think about was that very same dodgy mental picture – which may, or may not, have involved a pair of Britney Spears boxer shorts – and this got me feeling agitated all over again.
So I picked up Oscar Wilde’s book again and this time I actually opened it and started reading and I read until my eyes were aching and I could hardly find the energy to switch off my reading lamp. And then I went through the exact same process the next night. And the next. And the next. And now it’s Friday and I’m on page one hundred and sixty-eight already and I haven’t actually got all that much more left to read! And it’s really not a bad book because it’s about this man who stays young and beautiful while his portrait gets more old and ugly with each terrible and atrocious thing that he does. But while I was lying in bed and reading all this, the thing that really fascinated me was not so much this story but something that Oscar Wilde had written way back near the beginning. No matter how much further I read on, I just kept returning each night to this page and re-reading the words I’d found there.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself.
And I wasn’t one hundred per cent certain what it all meant but I couldn’t get it out of my brain. It felt as if Oscar was speaking directly to me right from the page and he was advising me to do something. And I had the distinct impression that what he was advising me to do was something that I probably totally shouldn’t.
aND theN I sPOke tO GOOse
This week hasn’t been one of my best. I’m feeling as edgy as an eggshell. If you must know, I’ve currently got more edge than Australia and according to my geography teacher that’s got more than 16,000 miles of edge. So I’m seriously very edgy. I suppose it’s hardly surprising. I’ve been on the receiving end of some extreme mental torment.
Even the most rock solid person in the whole of Rock-Solid-Land would be feeling a bit wobbly if they were in my position.
Yesterday, when I went downstairs for my breakfast, my mum was in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. When she saw me, she put down her paper and said, ‘Is Goose calling round for you this morning?’
‘No,’ I said.
My mum took a sip of her coffee and looked at me all thoughtfully as if I’d just said something incredibly complicated. I tipped a load of Choco Pops into a bowl and waited for her to speak again. I knew she’d have more to say. She had her police interrogation face on.
‘I haven’t seen Goose for a while. Is everything OK?’
‘Yep,’ I said and sploshed milk over my cereal. My shoulders had gone all tense. I knew she still hadn’t finished.
My mum frowned. Then, after a massive pause, she said, ‘I haven’t heard you mention Goose since you had that private telephone conversation with her. You didn’t give her a hard time, did you?’
‘NO,’ I said.
My mum frowned again and had another sip of her coffee. ‘But you’re not walking to school with her these days?’
‘Nope,’ I said.
‘But everything’s OK between you?’
I shrugged and then shovelled a deliberately large spoonful of cereal into my mouth so that I was unable to speak without spitting Choco Pops at her.
My mum said, ‘Ruthie phoned me last night
to say she’s coming home for the weekend and she’s bringing a friend, Michelle, with her. I thought it might be fun if we invite Goose over on Saturday evening and have a Mamma Mia! night. I could make some popcorn and the five of us could have a girly night in. What do you reckon?’
I stopped munching my Choco Pops and looked at her in horror. It was, without a doubt, one of the most tragic ideas I’d ever heard in my entire life. I love my sister Ruthie very much18 but I don’t want to sing rotten old Abba songs in front of her. I don’t want to sing Abba songs in front of anyone. And I don’t want a girly night in with my mum. And Goose wouldn’t come anyway because I shouted at her down the phone. I couldn’t be bothered to explain all of this to my mum though, so instead, I forced down my Choco Pops and said, ‘I can’t. I’ve already made a prior engagement with Gareth.’
My mum frowned. ‘Can’t you change your plans for this one night? Just while Ruthie is home? I’m sure Gareth’ll understand.’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘He’s taking me to see Shark Mutilation 3 at the cinema. He’s already bought the tickets.’
He wasn’t and he hadn’t. I’d just made it up.
My mum frowned again and said, ‘That’s a shame. I really fancied some time with the girls. Maybe Goose could come over and have some Sunday lunch with us instead?’
‘Nope,’ I said, ‘Gareth’s mum has invited me to their house for Sunday lunch.’
She hadn’t. I’d just made that up as well.
My mum narrowed her eyes and looked at me in the kind of way that only someone who is a Detective Sergeant in the police force can do. Sort of like this:
Before I continue, I should just clarify something. My mum doesn’t have a moustache. She actually has a very smooth face. All the women in our family have always had very smooth faces. None of us have ever had a ms-tache. My mum doesn’t smoke a pipe either. Or wear a Sherlock Holmes hat. In fact, this picture is much more representative of her manner than her actual physical appearance.