Planet Janet

by Dyan Sheldon

  SUNDAY 1 APRIL

  David, Disha, Marcus, Nick, Siranee and I all turned up at Flynn’s at eight o’clock last night, as requested. Flynn opened the door, and then he sort of stood there, half smiling at us as if he thought he was on Candid Camera or something. The boys were hungry as per usual, so they sort of barged in and the rest of us followed. Flynn said something about checking the dough and dragged me into the kitchen with him. I’ve never seen him so angry. Not even the time he got thrown into the biology pond in his white suit. He wanted to know if this was some sort of April Fool’s joke or something. I said, “Um, duh, you invited us over for pizza, remember? I even wrote it down!” Flynn said he was under the impression that he only invited me over for pizza. I said, “Really?” He said really. He said now we were going to have to order more pizzas and I could pay for them, which was pretty unreasonable if you ask me. Flynn said he thought it was more unreasonable to invite five people to dinner at someone else’s house without bothering to tell him. I told him to look on the funny side. I mean, considering the fact that out of the lot of us Flynn and I are the only two who speak English as our first language, it’s pretty ironic that we can’t seem to communicate. Flynn said I’m the one who can’t communicate.

  MONDAY 2 APRIL

  I’m still pretty irked by what happened with Elvin on Saturday. I know it’s all Justin’s fault, but I can’t help thinking that Elvin could have shown a little more interest in ME. Disha thinks I may be misinterpreting things. She says maybe by ignoring me he was showing how interested he really is. Disha thinks Elvin feels so comfortable with me that he doesn’t think he has to make any special effort and just acts normal. Like we’ve been seeing each other for eons. But what about Passion and Romance? That’s what I want to know. I mean, I know lunch for three isn’t the same as a candlelit dinner, but he could at least’ve talked to me a bit!!! Because I was so HURT and DISAPPOINTED I decided to ask Marcus if he wanted to go to that gallery after school one day this week. Marcus said the exhibition was over. He said it like it was my fault.

  TUESDAY 3 APRIL

  Will I ever find peace from the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune? (It’s beginning to look like the answer to that question is NO!!!) Between school, Elvin, Flynn, Marcus, my family and trying to keep my sanity and sense of humour despite all of them, I found it v difficult to get to sleep last night. It was raining pretty hard, so even the wind chimes weren’t as soothing as usual. I never count sheep (I don’t know about anyone else, but I can never get the sheep to jump over the fence), but eventually I was so desperate that I started going through my multiplication tables. I reckoned that should do it, since it’s usually only with SUPERHUMAN effort that I manage to stay awake in maths. I was soaring through the fives when I heard someone outside. At first I thought it was a cat (though not Mr Kipling, of course, since I’ve been très careful about keeping him IN since all that trauma). Then it made another noise, and I knew that if it was a cat, it wasn’t your average sort of cat; it was more like a PUMA. I was at the window in a flash! There was just enough light from the other flats for me to make out a dark sinister figure crouched like a v large puma on the garden wall. All those lectures from the MC about what to do in an emergency finally paid off. I quickly squeezed through my door, raced into the kitchen and dialled 999. Then I went to wake up Justin. (He’s always had more of a sense of adventure than the parents, and he acts without thinking.) Justin wasn’t asleep; he was working on some project for college at his desk. He grabbed his camera and ran to the kitchen. I grabbed his heaviest tripod and followed. The rest, as they say, is history. Justin was just stepping out of the garden door with a tea tray over his head when I got to the kitchen. He shouted something threatening like “Don’t move!” and then he started snapping. I reckon it was the first flash that caused the intruder to fall off the wall. I ran into the garden brandishing the tripod and warning him that the police were on their way. Justin yelled at me to be careful of his tripod, and the dark sinister figure roared, “For ****’s sake, Janet, are you trying to kill me?” It was Mr Burl. My wind chimes were driving him BONKERS and he’d hauled himself up on the wall to try and cut them down. He stabbed himself in the calf with his pocket knife when he fell off the wall.

  WEDNESDAY 4 APRIL

  Everybody at school was v impressed by the way I tackled Mr Burl last night. And also they thought it was the funniest story they’d ever heard. Not so at home, though. Sigmund was APPALLED by the behaviour of both of his children. He said no wonder Justin’s always being injured in the line of duty. I no longer even try to make any sense out of what these people say, but I did mutter oh right, my brother the law enforcer. Sigmund said he meant taking pictures. Like that black eye. Somebody decked him for taking his photo. GET THIS!!! Apparently the Abominable Brother is sort of famous for taking photos of street people (although they don’t always appreciate it). He’s even had his work in some gallery. (You really would think SOMEONE would tell me, wouldn’t you?!!) All this time I thought Justin was just really clumsy. And as for me, Sigmund couldn’t decide if I was just incredibly stupid or if I’m criminally insane as well. The Mad Cow thinks I should offer to walk Mr Burl’s dog for a week to show him how sorry I am. The police, on the other hand, said I did the right thing and that Mr Burl had no business skulking around in the dark like that, and I’m with them. The only one who’s shown any pride in my quick thinking and resourcefulness is Nan. She said it was what she would’ve done. She said next time to wake her up too.

  THURSDAY 5 APRIL

  The stress just doesn’t end! I was just selecting my supper (vegetarian stir fry dinner or pasta with salmon) when Disha rang in a PANIC! Elvin turned up, looking for Calum, but Calum was out and Elvin decided that rather than wait around with Mr and Mrs Paski, he’d walk her to our yoga class. I said what yoga class, and she said the one I told him we go to together. What a memory! It’s lucky Elvin fixed the bloody bike, that’s all I can say. I told Disha to walk SLOWLY and I raced to the yoga centre. I’d already put my mat at the back when they arrived. I acted well surprised to see them. And then, as if I wasn’t under enough stress already, Elvin decided to stay for the class to see if it was as great as we said. We started out with some breathing (easy), and chanting (dumb but easy), and then even though it was almost night we Greeted the Sun (not too hard and vaguely familiar). All was well until we had to stand on one leg and stretch out our other limbs. Well, we’re not flamingos, are we? I lost my balance and Greeted the Floor. Mary, the instructor, said she didn’t think my lip was cut as badly as the amount of blood gushing from it would make you believe. You’d think I’d deserve a quiet night after that, but God wasn’t through with me yet. I had an encounter with the law on the way home. A motorcycle cop pulled me over for not having lights on my bike! Willow’s right, they should use taxpayers’ money to hunt down criminals.

  FRIDAY 6 APRIL

  Ms Staples wanted to know if I’d finished that story I was working on, since she was hoping to read it over the Easter break. I said not yet. I said I was trying to do some v complex things with plot and style, which were holding me up a bit. I said I was aiming to finish it over Easter, when I had more free time. She said she can’t wait.

  Came straight home to pack for my secret weekend across the road. Nan, Justin and Mr Kipling were all sitting on the sofa. Neither Geek Boy nor Mr Kipling usually has any expressions except asleep and awake, but today they both actually looked WORRIED. In the kitchen the MC and Sigmund were re-enacting the war in Kosovo. I asked what was happening. Justin said Sigmund had just informed the MC that he had a conference to go to this weekend and had only come home to get his kit and the MC went BALLISTIC. Nan said that even though Sigmund’s her son she wouldn’t blame my mother if she beat him to death with his electronic organizer. (Spoken like a true Christian, right?!!) I said that personally I couldn’t see what she was all wound up about since he was never home anyway. Justin found another expression – contempt – a
nd said he reckoned that was the whole point. Even babysitting the twins has got to be less stressful than dealing with this lot!!!

  SUNDAY 8 APRIL

  I think it was that Scottish poet, Robert Burns, who said that no matter how well a mouse or a man plans things they don’t always turn out the way they were meant to. He speaks for me. I planned the weekend carefully and pretty flawlessly. I told the Mad Cow that Disha’s parents had invited me to their cottage for the weekend (no phone!). She didn’t put up any objection. After Sigmund skulked off on Friday and the smoke cleared, I kissed her and Nan goodbye, and walked out of the front door with my satchel over my shoulder. The twins and I spent Friday night alone. It wasn’t too bad, because Mrs Kennedy left a lorryload of food for us and the twins were watching videos in their room anyway, so I spent most of the night on the phone. Disha (heavily disguised just in case she bumped into my mother on the street) came over on Saturday morning. It was just as well Disha was there, because the twins are definitely more active in daylight. They wanted to go outside (which, of course, was OUT OF THE QUESTION), so we had to work v hard to keep them occupied. We were both EXHAUSTED by lunchtime. And then the doorbell rang. Disha looked at me and I looked at her. I told her not to answer it, in case it was my mother (you never can tell, right?). The doorbell rang again. DEMANDINGLY. Paying no attention to anyone else, as per usual, the twins ran out of the flat to answer it. Just in case it was the Mad Cow, I tried to work out a plausible excuse for being at Mrs Kennedy’s and not in Wales as I raced after them. The good news was that it wasn’t my mother. By the time I got down the stairs, the twins had opened the front door to a pair of policemen. It’s amazing how policemen always look like policemen, even when they’re not in uniform, isn’t it? All I could think of was now what have I done? Shane was shrieking that his mum wasn’t home. The policeman wanted to know if his dad was in. They weren’t after me! I nearly collapsed with relief. “He’s in jail,” I said from the stairs. The policeman said, “Not any more, he’s not.” Can you believe it? Mr Kennedy’s escaped! Once I’d made it clear that neither Mr nor Mrs Kennedy was home, more policemen materialized. They couldn’t believe I didn’t know where Mrs Kennedy was, so I explained that I hadn’t expected a raid, had I? But I did have a phone number. The Mad Cow was so SURPRISED when I arrived home with Disha, the twins and approximately half the police force of north London that she didn’t make a big deal that Disha and I weren’t in the countryside. After the police left, the MC said she thought she should call Mrs Kennedy too, so she’d know the boys were all right and all. So I gave her the list of emergency numbers Mrs Kennedy’d left. She stared at it for a few seconds, and then she went over to the memo board and stared at the number Sigmund had left for a few seconds, and then she said maybe I should ring; she was going to take a bath. She was in there for ages. Disha thinks I should REALLY consider a career in literature, no matter what Ms Staples thinks of my plots, because you couldn’t make this stuff up.

  Acting TOTALLY out of character (and much to my amazement), the MC said she wasn’t going to boil me in oil or anything like that for lying to her about going to Mrs Kennedy’s. She said that in future she’d appreciate it if I made some vague attempt to tell her the truth, but all in all she thought that compared to some people I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. And also I’d coped pretty well with the cops and all, and at least I was trying to earn money to buy a phone and wasn’t nicking cars or doing drugs or worse (whatever she thinks WORSE could be!!!).

  MONDAY 9 APRIL

  LISTEN TO THIS!!! The police think Mr Kennedy escaped because he found out Mrs Kennedy is fooling around with another man!!! Is that DRAMA or what? It’s like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie, except so far dozens of people haven’t been brutally murdered. Just in case, though, the cops have Mrs Kennedy and the twins in hiding till they get Mr Kennedy back. Sigmund got home well late last night, after everything had pretty much simmered down. He was v upset to hear what had happened, though he didn’t hear it from the MC since she’s even angrier with him now than she was on Friday and not only refuses to speak to him but has moved back into her bedroom with Nan!!! Sigmund wanted to know if the police had considered the possibility of Mr Kennedy coming after HIM, since he’s been trying to help Mrs Kennedy sort out her life. The Mad Cow happened to be within earshot and said the only words she’d spoken to him since he got home, which were that it had occurred to her, and she only hoped that Mr Kennedy was a really good shot. The menopause is giving her a v black sense of humour.

  Since it’s the Easter holidays and all, and since he seems to have forgotten that we never really finished our bike ride, and since I’m ABSOLUTELY desperate for something to do, I rang Elvin and suggested that we pick up where we left off. He said he’d love to. He’d REALLY REALLY love to. But he hurt his hand doing wing fu or chung ku or whatever it is he does so he’s incapacitated at the moment. He’ll ring me as soon as the swelling goes down. At last I have something to smile about.

  TUESDAY 10 APRIL

  Not only is the tension between Sigmund and the MC GINORMOUS, but Sigmund’s acting even more peculiar than usual. For months we’ve hardly seen him because he’s always working, but now he’s cancelled EVERYTHING and refuses to leave the house. I asked the MC what she thought was wrong with him and she said (AND I QUOTE!!!), “He’s a total jerk, that’s what’s wrong with him.” I WAS SHOCKED. Really. It’s one thing me slagging him off – after all, being critical of your parents is part of the teenage experience, isn’t it? But Jocelyn’s married to him. Also, she’s my mother. I don’t think it can be healthy for a child to have one parent telling her what a total waste of space and air her other parent is. It feels like it breaks some really major rule. People on the same team are meant to be loyal to one another, aren’t they?

  Most of my mates have gone away for the Easter holidays (including Disha, whose parents were lent a cottage in France for a few days and decided to go at the last minute). So since I’m well BORED (there is no phone in the French cottage and D was forced to leave her mobe at home) and feeling very STRESSED by the war between the Bandrys, I decided to forgive Flynn for the pizza incident (time really is the great healer, isn’t it?) and asked him if he wanted to spend the day with me. He wanted to know who else I’d invited along, and I said no one. We went bowling up Finsbury Park. I told Flynn all about Mrs Kennedy and the police and everything. He could hardly stop laughing.

  WEDNESDAY 11 APRIL

  Rang up Sara Dancer to see if she wanted to hang out, but I never got a chance. SIT DOWN AND GRASP THIS!!! Sara Dancer thinks she’s PREGNANT!!! Her period’s DAYS late. I said don’t be ridiculous, you can’t get pregnant from just ONE time; and Sara wanted to know what I was doing during sex education – having one of my out of body experiences? I said but THE FIRST TIME? That really does seem a bit harsh. Sara said it’s not like learning to skate or something like that; you don’t need a few tries before your body gets the hang of it. I asked her what she’s going to do and she said get a pregnancy test, so, since I had nothing better to do anyway, I went with her to buy it. She insisted on going somewhere where it would be IMPOSSIBLE for us to bump into anyone who knows either of her parents, which largely left us with the options of Mayfair and Stoke Newington. Mayfair’s easier to get to. I am très happy that I’m not the one who needs a pregnancy test, but I have to say that the whole experience made me feel v grown up – like a heroine in some depressing realistic novel. We got a bit lost coming back and ended up caught in all the tourists wandering round in confusion outside the V&A with their cameras and their guidebooks. Sara and I were discussing the fact that we haven’t been in the V&A since primary school when I suddenly noticed a familiar face in the middle of a clutch of Japanese tourists who were having their picture taken on the steps of the museum! “Good God,” I cried, “there’s my brother.” Sara wanted to know who his dishy friend was. I said what dishy friend and she said the one taking everybody’s picture. CLAMP YOUR
MOUTH OVER YOUR DENTURES!!! It was Elvin! He was holding the camera with TWO HANDS!!! Which suggests that either he’s made a MIRACULOUS RECOVERY or he was LYING TO ME!!! I told Sara I didn’t know who he was. I was MUCH TOO STUNNED to speak!!!