How To Get What You Want by Peony Pinker

by Jenny Alexander

  ‘Now we’ve all got what we want,’ said Primrose, ‘except Peony. It’s a shame.’ She did a much better job of pretending to care than Dad had done with Daphne.

  ‘What did Peony want?’ asked Bianca.

  Mum and Dad looked uncomfortable. Primrose said, lowering her voice to a theatrical whisper, ‘She wanted a dog, but that isn’t going to happen so we’d better not talk about it.’

  I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction but I couldn’t help looking gloomy. It wasn’t about the dog – I had always known that was a waste of time, wish-wise. It was because the chance of my real wish coming true had just been sliced in half.

  There was no way Dad would help me get rid of Bianca now he thought she was the answer to his prayers. The only chance I had left was Mum.

  Chapter 10

  Poor Lollie and Becky’s brainwave

  Becky was waiting for me on the pavement outside her house in the morning sunshine, bouncing a tennis ball. When I got close enough, she threw it to me, and we played catch all the way to the end of the close.

  As we were going through the gate into the field, she asked me how my week had been. I told her it had been weird.

  She put the ball in the pocket of her shorts.

  ‘I’m all ears!’ she goes.

  By the time we got to the stile on the far side of the field I had told her everything – about Ed hating Dad’s first try at the problem page and Mr Kaminski telling us how to get what we want and us all writing it down. About my two wishes, the one they thought I wanted and the secret one hidden in the pencil tin.

  I told her about Mum getting what she wanted almost straight away, as if by magic, and Primrose thinking she had too, though there was no way I was ever going to call her Annabel even if Mum and Dad had decided to go along with it.

  I told her about Dad thinking he had got his wish, so long as it turned out Ed liked the answers Bianca had come up with.

  ‘I see what you mean about weird,’ said Becky.

  We clambered over the stile and nearly bumped into Matt, who was striding down the lane.

  ‘Hello, you two!’ he goes. ‘You’re in for a nice surprise today.’

  ‘What kind of surprise?’

  ‘Well, let’s just say that if you want a lolly you won’t have to come all the way down to the caff to get one!’

  He didn’t stop, but carried straight on down the hill, chuckling to himself. We ran the rest of the way to the kennels and as we reached the yard we heard a familiar bark.

  ‘Lollie!’ goes Becky. ‘What’s she still doing here?’

  Lollie had her front paws up against the gate of her pen and her tail was wagging so hard she kept nearly falling over. We went inside and made a big fuss of her. Mrs Teverson must’ve heard the commotion because she soon came over.

  She told us Lollie’s owner had never turned up. She had been trying to get hold of him all week but he seemed to have left a false address.

  ‘People do that sometimes,’ she said. ‘I suppose they think if they can’t cope with their dogs any more it’s better to leave them at a kennels than dump them in a ditch. At least that way they’ll get looked after.’

  Becky and I grinned at each other.

  ‘Only it doesn’t work like that,’ Mrs Teverson went on. ‘We kennel-owners can’t take in every waif and stray that gets left behind or we’d be over-run.’

  ‘So what’s going to happen to Lollie?’ asked Becky.

  ‘We’ll keep her for a few weeks and then if noone comes to claim her we’ll try to re-home her. If we can’t re-home her we’ll try the shelter, but if the shelter hasn’t got room…’ She shrugged.

  We all knew what the end of that sentence would be. ‘If the shelter hasn’t got room we’ll have to take her to the vet’s.’

  ‘Anyway, you two can play with her as usual today after you’ve done the other dogs, all right?’

  Mrs Teverson went back to cleaning out the segregated pens and left us alone with Lollie. She had stopped jumping around and was sitting close to the gate, looking up at us. We weren’t grinning any more.

  ‘Poor Lollie,’ I said.

  She sat still and let us stroke her.

  ‘Poor Lollie,’ agreed Becky.

  Lollie put her head on one side as if to say, what are you talking about? She put her head on the other side, and then rolled right over onto her back. She didn’t seem at all upset about being abandoned. ‘Come on,’ she seemed to say, wriggling around. ‘Tickle my tummy!’

  We cleaned out the pens and walked the other dogs, and when we had finished we took Lollie for a walk together. There wasn’t anyone else in the three meadows so we let her off the lead and threw the tennis ball for her. She kept losing it in the long grass.

  ‘You know,’ said Becky, ‘I might have an idea.’

  Becky said that Lollie was an adorable dog and therefore anyone who saw her would a hundred per cent definitely fall in love with her. She was also a soft, daft, friendly and quite little dog. No-one could possibly be scared of her, not even a person who had been bitten on the bum by a dog at the age of nine.

  ‘If we could get your dad to come up here and meet Lollie…’

  I stopped her right there.

  ‘My dad would rather jump off a cliff than set foot in a kennels.’

  ‘Well yes, normally,’ said Becky. ‘But what if he thought you needed him?’

  Becky’s plan was simple. Next Saturday, when we knew Mum would be at work, she would phone Dad and tell him I had fallen over and hurt my ankle. It wasn’t life-threatening or anything, she would say, but I was very upset and couldn’t put any weight on my foot, so could he please come up right away and collect me?

  ‘Then you can go and hide in the barn, and I’ll wait for your dad out the front with Lollie. When your dad arrives, I’ll say you’re just finding a bandage or something, and get him talking about Lollie while we’re waiting. I’ll tell him what a lovely and completely non-dangerous dog she is, and about her being abandoned, and what’s going to happen to her if no-one offers to take her in.’

  I must have not looked very convinced because then Becky said, ‘Oh, come on, Peony. He’d have to have a heart of stone to resist such a sweet dog with such a sad story!’

  Lollie came bounding back with the ball. I threw it again for her. She went haring after it, ran too far and then bounced around in the long grass, trying to find it.

  ‘He hasn’t got a heart of stone,’ I said. ‘But he has got legs of jelly whenever he’s anywhere near a dog.’

  Becky ignored my objection and went on with her plan.

  ‘I’ll say, “Hold onto this while I go and find Peony for you.” Then I’ll put the lead in his hand and leave them to it.’

  ‘He’ll freak,’ I said. ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Yeah, but surely it’s worth a try?’ goes Becky.

  Lollie gave up looking for the ball and came back without it, so Becky and me had to go searching for it ourselves.

  ‘When you think about it,’ Becky said, ‘everyone else in your family seems to be getting what they want, so why shouldn’t it work for you?’

  I pointed out that I never had really believed I could have a dog – it was the other wish I had been focusing on.

  ‘Well, maybe that’s already sorting itself out but you haven’t realised it yet,’ said Becky. ‘I mean, with your mum working just the other side of the garden fence, Primrose and Bianca won’t have to hang around after school so-called looking after you, will they? Plus if they do hang around, they won’t be able to blast your eardrums with bad singing and all that.’

  She was right, I hadn’t thought about this. I wasn’t exactly getting rid of Bianca but I was almost certainly going to be seeing a lot less of her. There was no denying that was a step in the right direction.

  Becky found the ball.

  ‘If one wish works,’ she said, ‘why not two?’

  So when I got home I found the piece of paper I had written I w
ant a dog on and just to be exact I added, Actually, I want Lollie. Then I folded it a few times and put it in my pencil tin along with I want to get rid of Bianca and have the old Primrose back.

  Chapter 11

  Two-faced tricksters and sugar sandwiches

  The day Mum started work on Mr Kaminski’s garden felt like the first day of the rest of my life. It wasn’t perfect, but it was much better. I seriously thought a bit of Mum’s wish-magic must have spread in my direction.

  Mum popped over the fence to say hello when she heard us arriving home from school, and that meant Primrose and Bianca couldn’t say mean things to me or push me around. Bianca still pulled faces when Mum’s back was turned, and she puffed out her cheeks and mouthed the word ‘hippo’ when I took a biscuit, but when Mum was looking they acted as if the three of us were all the best of friends.

  I only had to put up with ten minutes of two-faced weaseliness before Primrose and Bianca went off to the beach. Mum disappeared back over the fence and I went upstairs to watch TV. Like I said, it wasn’t perfect, but it was much better.

  The second day was the same. Mum came over for a chat as soon as we got home. When she was looking, Bianca and Primrose were as sweet to me as the goo on a syrup pudding but as soon as her back was turned they were horrible. Then the two of them went to the beach, Mum climbed back over the fence and I had the place to myself.

  The third day started the same – Mum, two-faced tricksters, empty house – but I’d only had the place to myself for about half an hour when Bianca and Primrose came back. It was too windy at the beach, they said. They fancied an afternoon at home. They plumped down on the settee on either side of me. I tightened my grip on the remote. They weren’t going to switch channels in the middle of my programme, not if I could help it.

  ‘Go away,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not very friendly,’ said Bianca.

  ‘Seriously, go away.’

  ‘But we like the Dog Whisperer. We want to watch it too.’

  I glared at her.

  ‘It’s a free country,’ she said.

  I would have got up and left the room only I really wanted to see what was going to happen to the boxer with behavioural problems – if they couldn’t get him to stop going for other dogs, he would have to be put down.

  I should have left because I couldn’t watch anyway, they kept talking so much. They said stupid mean things like ‘That dog should be put down anyway for being so ugly,’ and ‘We’ve got enough fat slobbery creatures in the world already, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, you know who.’

  I tried not to say anything. I remembered what Dad said, that if you ignore something for long enough it goes away. But I could feel my skin prickling and my body tensing up. Bianca stared at me.

  ‘You’re going red,’ she said. ‘I thought Peonies were supposed to be blue.’

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket. ‘This is an interesting natural phenomenon. We should record it for posterity!’

  She started to video me. She shoved her phone right up to my face. I tried to push it away.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ I cried.

  ‘It speaks!’ said Bianca. She turned the phone towards her own face and said in a David Attenborough whisper, ‘The unusual red Peony can talk, although you will notice it has a very high, whiny voice.’

  She turned it back on me. ‘Say something else,’ she said.

  ‘Go away!’ I yelled. I tried to grab the phone off her.

  ‘Oooh – this is good!’ cried Bianca. ‘We can put it on YouTube!’

  Primrose picked up the remote and started flicking the channels but Bianca went on pushing her phone in my face. I made a lunge for it. She snatched it out of the way and I fell flat on the floor. She laughed and kept filming, and then it was like this red mist came over me and I went for her.

  She was bigger than me but I was madder, and I grabbed her wrist and prised her fingers open and finally I got the phone off her. She backed away suddenly, holding her arm as if I had really hurt her. But she wasn’t looking at her arm and she wasn’t looking at me… she was looking towards the door.

  ‘Peony! What on earth do you think you’re doing? Give Bianca back her phone this minute!’

  I stood there blinking like a rabbit in the headlights while Mum marched across the room, took the phone off me and gave it back to Bianca.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t think what’s got into Peony. Are you all right, Bianca?’

  Mum turned back to me. ‘I could hear you yelling from Mr Kaminski’s garden. Honestly, Peony, can’t I leave you for five minutes…?’

  It was so unfair! I stormed upstairs to my bedroom and slammed the door. My heart was pounding. I wanted to scream, I wanted to hit something. I made my hand into a tight fist and bit the side of my finger really hard. It hurt like mad, but the pain made me calm down.

  When I had stopped shaking I flopped down on the bed and lay there staring at the wall. Forty breeds of dog stared back at me. I scanned along the rows, saying their names in my head.

  ‘One, Bassett Hound. Two, German Shepherd. Three, Cairn Terrier…’

  It was what I always did when Primrose and Bianca wound me up. I read about it in this book. You can do it with anything; it doesn’t have to be dogs. The book said it would work with whatever you happen to have on your wall, such as pop stars or surfers or strikers.

  I got to the end and started again, and by the time I had gone round twice the dogs had pushed Primrose and Bianca towards the back of my mind. I was in the dog zone, which is the best place in the world to be.

  There was a soft rat-a-tat on the door. It was Mum.

  ‘OK to come in?’

  I thought she had come to tell me off again but she had brought me a sandwich and a glass of milk which she put down on my desk. Had she realised that she’d got it wrong? Had she guessed what made me grab Bianca’s phone? Was she going to help me now?

  ‘I’ve put a sprinkling of brown sugar in your sandwich,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll feel better when you’ve had a bite to eat.’

  I suddenly remembered when Primrose was in Year 6, Mum started feeding her sugar sandwiches whenever she got in a temper. She was a firm believer in sugar sandwiches as Nature’s remedy for what she called ‘the pre-teen ups and downs.’

  Mum sat carefully on the end of my bed as if she was afraid it might suddenly open and swallow her up. When it didn’t, she made herself comfortable.

  ‘That really wasn’t like you, Peony,’ she said, ‘brawling with Bianca and grabbing her phone. But don’t worry; nobody’s cross.’

  Actually, somebody is cross, I thought, feeling my hackles rising again.

  ‘It’s just your age,’ said Mum. ‘It’s an up and down time. One minute, you can be happy as honeysuckle on a hot wall and the next minute you’re as sad as a soggy cactus.’

  So that was that. It was no good knowing exactly the right words to say – ‘Bianca is being horrible and Primrose isn’t sticking up for me’ – if nobody was prepared to listen. There was no point trying to tell Dad because he needed Bianca for his Daphne letters, and now there was no point telling Mum either because she was convinced that the whole problem was me.

  Chapter 12

  The East Lane Emporium and desperate measures

  With Mum and Dad out of the picture, I lay on my bed and tried to think of another plan. That’s what Mr Kaminski said you had to do. It had to be an exact plan to get rid of Bianca and have the old Primrose back.

  I remembered what Bianca said about Frustrated Fan, that he should give his girlfriend chocs and wine when the tennis was on so she would associate watching tennis with lovely things. Well, why shouldn’t that work the other way round? If I could make horrible things happen to Bianca every time she came to our house then surely that would put her off coming.

  The obvious way to put someone off coming to your house would be to get into arguments with them, but Bianca actually liked it when I got annoyed; she
thought it was funny. So I had to be more cunning and think of horrible things that seemed to have nothing at all to do with me.

  I knew just where I could get some horrible things. Matt Teverson’s youngest brother Justin spent all his pocket money in the East Lane Emporium on plastic dog poos and stick-on bogeys and he said they had much worse things in there that his mum wouldn’t let him buy, such as skunk spray you could squirt on someone and it didn’t wash off for a week.

  I didn’t know if Justin had made that up about the skunk spray – you could never tell with the Teversons – but it seemed like a good idea to check out the East Lane Emporium, so the next day I took a detour down there after school. I was allowed to do that now, so long as I let Mum know, which was better than when Primrose was supposed to be looking after me and we had to go straight home after school.

  East Lane isn’t really a shopping street and the Emporium looks like an ordinary house squashed in between lots of other ordinary houses. I nearly didn’t go in, but then I remembered how much I hated Bianca and that got me right up the front steps and in through the door.

  The whole shop was like some mad person’s front room, crammed with jokes and tricks, costumes and masks. The man behind the counter had a bald head and a strip of beard like a thin dribble down his chin. He had tattoos all the way up his arms and a nail stuck through one ear lobe. I was really glad he ignored me and went on reading his magazine.

  Most of the practical jokes were the kind of stuff that Justin loved, rubber slugs to put in someone’s salad or bandages covered in fake blood. But some of them weren’t really funny; they were more like mean tricks such as chewing gum that made your teeth go green.

  I bought a packet of super-strong fart sweets and some itching powder. Those should make life uncomfortable for Bianca all right, and no-one need ever know what had caused her tummy upset or infuriating itch, let alone that I had anything to do with it.

  There were lots more things to try as well, and everything in the East Lane Emporium was cheap – so with the money I earned working at the kennels I could keep this up for as long as it took. A brand new bad experience for Bianca at our house every day until she got the message and stopped coming.