Now, Maybe, Probably

by Dillie Dorian

  “ZAK STEPPED ON MY CD!!”

  “KITTY MADE US LATE THIS MORNING!!”

  “WHERE’S MY MARY POPPINS UNBERELALA?!”

  Fab. I’d forgotten an important part of the act, and now it was after dinner and the shops were shut, but the floodgates were open as far as our family was concerned.

  Mum sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. Couldn’t she cope? I’d been hoping she’d take back some of the responsibilities around here once the baby was born, but here she was crying because everyone was screaming.

  What if something had happened to the baby?

  “Mum…?” I asked, nervously. “Is the baby OK?”

  “Yeah, yeah, definitely,” mumbled Mum. “I’ve just got a bit of a headache.”

  “Then go to bed,” I suggested, hoping I sounded nice and not snippy about having just walked back practically from school on a full stomach.

  “As if anyone could sleep through this,” she withered. “Please get them to shut up.”

  “Where’s Harry?”

  “Oh, he’s gone to a thing. Back at midday tomorrow. Please get them to shut up.”

  I looked up at the other four who were still whinging and bickering – Aimee with streaks in her orange foundation from crying for some reason, Charlie with a rough approximation of KISS makeup on his face, Zak looking like he needed to go to bed right away, and Kitty all pink and cranky the same, still whimpering about her unberelala after I’d turned my evil eyes on the others to shut them up.

  “Have any of you got an actual problem?” I said, assertively, so sick and tired of friend trouble that family trouble wasn’t getting any soft sympathy.

  “Not for you to know!” snapped Aimee. She stormed out of the kitchen aggressively.

  “…no…” snivelled Charlie. He hovered and eyed me like a guilty dog, probably half because of the evidence on his face and half because he wished it would be that simple to make me forgive him.

  “Bog off, then.” I said it with a smile, I promise.

  Charlie squeezed past me and I turned to the Primary schoolers.

  “She made us late,” said Zak, so drowsily that it was like half his brain cared intensely while the other half didn’t know why he was still standing there. It was eight in the evening.

  “I was on the toilet,” said Kitty, slowly and deliberately in that little-kid way that gets her off the hook nearly every time.

  “That doesn’t matter, Kit,” I reassured her. “If you jump into bed now, I can still do you a story. Zak, why are you so tired?”

  He yawned without covering his mouth. “Football.”

  “No, really.”

  “Reading at school, it makes me tired.”

  I glanced at Mum, who for all I could tell had fallen asleep at the table. I pointed. “Really?”

  “I been on the Wii,” he said, sheepishly. “All night last night.”

  “Bog off also,” I said as chirpily as the first time. There would be no need to actually remove the console from the boys’ room, because I knew Zak well enough to be almost sure he wasn’t stupid enough to do it again. He’d probably kept Charlie up as well, and Charlie and Zak weren’t shy of telling each other where to go.

  Zak left the room, and I rooted in the cupboard for a snack to squirrel upstairs with and read for a bit after Kitty’s story. We still didn’t have any more crisps, but there was a KitKat.

  “Well done,” said Mum, making me jump out of my skin. “You deserve it.”

  The sudden compliment irritated me, if I’m honestly honest. I’d been doing a lot of this stuff ever since she “went back to work” when Dad left. That was over two years ago, at the start of Year 7. Mostly she scoured newspapers and went to job interviews and hung around the Co Op until they promised to tell her the next vacancy, which they actually never had bothered to do until last term, so I wonder how many other people they’d promised first. She did have a couple of cleaning jobs, the last of which she’d quit in the summer saying that the chemicals made her sneeze and itch. None of us have proper allergies, so either Dad’s genes were really strong, the cleaning products were really strong, or it was a load of rubbish.

  “Thanks,” I said, politely.

  Once I got upstairs, Kitty was zonked out in bed already, so no need for a story. Aimee was curled up, pillow over head, the covers moving rhythmically because she was crying. I did feel bad, I promise, but I knew better than to say anything.

  It was KitKat and book for me, followed by some lovely sleep, so I could be up bright and early in the morning to seek out an umbrella from somewhere under the piles of junk that seemed to accumulate everywhere that wasn’t the master bedroom or Harry’s study.

  #17 Hoodies & Goodies

  Kitty’s performance had been a success. I’d actually woken up late and been bounced out of bed just the same as the morning of my own talent show last term – but I deserved it for being a horribly useless sister.

  Down in the conservatoire every umbrella was inside out. Well, all three of them. Most of us didn’t bother with umbrellas because they were too much hassle – Zak and Charlie wore hoods and Kitty was too young, and Aimee too self-consciously stupid to really manage one. I found myself rushing to the pound shop the second it opened (fortunately seven thirty in the morning) and picking up the first one I could find. At least it was actually a pound.

  Kitty wasn’t pleased, because it was a knock-off High School Musical one, but at least it just had red and the logo. No one would be able to tell, because most of her performance was going to be with a closed brolly (or Harry’s late father’s walking stick as an absolute last resort, if I hadn’t made it back with one).

  I was late for school, and school was rubbish as usual. I narrowly avoided detention for just how late I was, because the teacher openly couldn’t be bothered to actually file the slip. None of that mattered, because it was finally half term! Rachel bobbed back into view momentarily just to remind us what time we had to be at her party, then disappeared off with other friends. Jordy stayed neatly out of the way, which saved me any embarrassment. Charlie also made himself scarce, and I didn’t see hide nor hair of Keish and Chantalle to the point that I suspected they’d bunked off.

  Asta was hilarious in English, dipping and weaving all over the room to boast about just how brilliant her Saturday Valentine’s party was going to be. She tripped over in her stupid short skirt, and while probably no one saw her knickers, I only think that because all the boys had a different version of events to shout out, Andy very much included.

  Typically crap as it was, the whole day just wafted by until I was safely in the front door at ten past three, away from the horrors of anyone I truly didn’t want to see for a whole week and two days.

  Zak and Kitty were back already – they’d had an early close.

  “I GOT A BADGE!! I GOT A BADGE!!” hollered Kit, throwing herself my way no sooner had I got in.

  “Oh, a badge?” I said, in that mock-interested way you do with little kids. I was interested, just more in how events had panned out than the badge itself.

  “Everyone got a badge,” said Zak, unnecessarily.

  “So how was the performance?” I asked him, pointedly, so he’d have a chance to redeem himself.

  “Didn’t see it,” he muttered.

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t let the Juniors watch the Infant talent show,” he yawned. Oh, God, was he still tired?

  “It’s true,” said Kitty. “But I got a badge and I was second best in the whole Int!fants!”

  “Who was first?” I asked, casually. I wasn’t trying to rub it in – I genuinely relished the thought of having something snide and sisterly to say about whoever came first, just to make her feel better, of course.

  “A girl who can put her legs behind her head, she already told me,” snorted Zak.

  Ugh. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why she was chosen, but on the other hand I really did want to know because whichever teacher it
came down to was probably in need of a sacking and a personal mention on the Old Nasties Register.

  “And who chose her?!” I demanded.

  “The audience,” supplied Kitty.

  “The teachers never get a vote,” said Zak. “Don’t you remember? It’d be favouritism.”

  I didn’t remember. Back when I was in Primary, the kids whose efforts no one liked still got really insincere words of praise from every member of staff in the room, even when it didn’t count towards winning a prize.

  “Oh, right,” I said, relieved, and hugged Kitty who was still wearing her raincoat indoors. “Well done, Kit!”

  #18 The Scary Bikini & The 10ft Pool

  Whether or not I wanted it, Sunday had arrived.

  I wouldn’t be appearing in anything particularly elegant – just my standard black school swimsuit – but hopefully I’d be able to ignore Jordy thoroughly enough to have some fun with my friends.

  Devon and I were supposed to go to Rachel’s via a bus leaving from the pub opposite the end of our road, but it was taking ages to come and I’d almost got slightly glad that Charlie and Andy had moped along to the stop to keep us company.

  “Who wants to get a preview of my yummy bikini?” said Devon, flirtatiously. Oh, please. Now that they were both in a band, nothing could put her off them.

  “ME!” squeaked both boys in their still unsettled puberty voices.

  “Heeeere you go,” she teased, inching her thick woolly granny jumper and halter top up and up and up until we could see her whole belly above her floaty hippie skirt, and finally the bikini.

  Her “best” bikini idea “for the summer”… well, it might’ve been her best, but it was far from the best. It was basically white string that contrasted starkly against her natural tan – white string that wouldn’t have covered nearly enough of her if it hadn’t been embellished thickly with pastel coloured sweetie necklace beads. I could see that streaking right off her on a sweltering summer’s day, and worse! Dissolving entirely in the pool.

  “Grr, grr,” said Charlie, mock sexily. “Can I have a sweetie?”

  I had an exaggerated coughing fit to remind him of my presence. Even if my supposed current nearest best friend was showing him a frightening amount of her boobs at a bus stop, I didn’t care to see his horn face.

  “So, have you got matching bottoms?” chuckled Andy. “Lucky old Chuck!”

  “Yick, yack, yuck!” I had to point out. “Please keep it to yourselves.”

  “Just because you’re keeping yourself all to yourself,” teased Andy. So Charlie had told him what swimsuit I would be wearing! Not in any creepy way, seeing as he knew I only owned the one.

  Devon smiled, knowingly. I dearly hoped she didn’t have matching bottoms. Aside from being the most unclean combination of supposed “goodies” under the sun, I didn’t want to be around when said bottoms inevitably disappeared into nothing while she swam. I barely wanted to go to the party at all.

  “Are you sure we can’t come?” wheedled Charlie.

  “We’re sure,” I promised. “It’s not my party to invite people to, so definite no.”

  “Oh, but Jordy said it wouldn’t be a problem!” He shot me a wise look. “And don’t you want someone to be there to keep you two apart?”

  “’Cause they’d be all over each other without you,” snorted Dev, insensitively.

  “But Jordy wants us to come,” he went on. “Pleasey please please!”

  That ended with us permitting the boys to board our bus with us. It would be their hard luck and waste of money if they found that they weren’t let in.

  It turned out that they were. Rachel came to the door looking slightly tipsy and totally unlike she could turn anyone away, in a short blue jersey dress with white stripes up the side like you get on tracksuits.

  “Hi!” she grinned. It was an ugly, forced grin. Despite her industry standard neat horsey teeth and expensively razored fringe spritzed down like muddy grass, she didn’t look like a rich teenager at all. I felt I was in the company of a grinny American housewife with a dead body in the basement. “Come on through to the paaaarty room!”

  The party room. What I could remember being called the downstairs reception room of her house was decked out with balloons and streamers and “Happy Birthday Rachel!!” custom banners. A big, long buffet table was pushed up against the very back wall, and at the very front was the supercool DJ with his acne and spiky hair that looked like it had been stuck up with a swoop of the hand through its own gross grease. Inbetween was about fifteen people’s worth of moving space.

  The set hadn’t started, and us four were within the first six to arrive. Two J-band girls I couldn’t have named were hovering by the door expectantly, as if every other chamber of the house would be opened up into further birthday wonders.

  As time went on, it wasn’t. Eventually Fern and Rindi appeared together – Fern with a rush copy of the updo from the other night, wearing a little strappy pink dress and kitten heels; Rindi in denim wedges, cutoffs and a hand-me-down tummy top that didn’t show much tummy, hair stick straight and the absolute spit of her big sister Naddy.

  Chantalle, Keisha and Dani showed up the latest of late – well after anyone else had got there – their little shoulder bags clinking and bulging. They didn’t look fashionable or cute or like they’d dressed for a fourteen year old’s birthday disco. Dani had come in knockoff Uggs and a denim dungaree dress with tights, Chantalle wore a black dress that must’ve been her mum’s because it was taken in with safety pins, and Keisha wore her typical knicker-length skirt and a matching off-shoulder top that nearly reached the bottom of it. They belonged in a club, except maybe Dani, who belonged in the shopping centre with oodles of bags hanging off her arms.

  Rachel gasped when she heard the clinking. “Oi!” she yelled across the reception room. “Give us some!”

  The three of them fell about giggling at Rachel’s eagerness as she raced over the dancefloor. I followed, curiously. I was pretty certain they were drinking, and interested to know where and how they intended to hide that. Across the kitchen and through the conservatory, the back door clicked. I paused, looking out over the garden. There were more balloons, speakers and benches, and I could see the tarpaulin over the swimming pool. So they hadn’t got it cleaned in time after all!

  “Dev,” I said, having rushed back. “Guess what? No pool. Rachel was just bragging as usual.”

  “There’s actually no pool?”

  “Well, there’s a pool, but it’s covered.”

  “Duh, to keep the heat in!” tittered Devon.

  I wasn’t convinced, but I also wasn’t bothered. It felt below zero outside, though it probably wasn’t. Not pool weather at all. I was happy to stick to the party room in my comfy jeans and the flowy blue floral top and brown boots Devon had lent me.

  “No pool!” shouted someone who overheard.

  “There’s NO POOL?” gasped one girl.

  “Rubbish, she does have a pool,” said a J-band girl. “I’ve been in it!”

  “There’d better be a pool!” I heard Andy exclaim from across the room, even though he wasn’t invited and shared his dad’s gym guest passes with his big cousin.

  Great. I’d accidentally started a rumour. I was now no better than Keisha just for trying to share one thing with one person quietly over the boom of some huge and nearby speakers.

  “Have you run out of refreshments, Rachel?” her aunt called from the hallway. “Rachel?!”

  A few of us looked at her in silence.

  “Where’s Rachel?” asked the auntie.

  We all gave our best “dunno” faces. Mine had been copied from Hendy’s look when he last wolfed a whole plate of human Sunday lunch off the counter without permission, so on second thoughts it probably seemed suspicious.

  “She went to the loo,” said Rindi, surprisingly. Sure, we were all doing our bit to stick up for Rach and keep things neutral, but Rindi was always a proper friend to everyone. I
would’ve hugged her, if I actually cared whether Rachel got caught underage tippling – it wasn’t that I wanted her to get in trouble at her birthday party, but I definitely wasn’t bothered either way, because I wasn’t the one doing it.

  “Oh,” said the auntie. I could see a soap omnibus flickering in the room across the hall she’d been hiding out in. She disappeared back inside.

  It felt like ages before Rachel and the girls reappeared. They all smelled strongly of booze. Though I didn’t know what sort, it didn’t seem like it was beer.

  “Pool time!!” announced Rachel, bouncily. “Everyone ready? Girls get changed in my room – boys get changed in the upstairs bathroom!”

  There was a stampede up the wooden staircase, even though half the guests wouldn’t have known where the bathroom or bedrooms were located. I vaguely overheard Rindi showing people to the right places as I stood bemused in the downstairs hallway. I wasn’t going to confront Rachel, but I didn’t exactly feel like tussling to be first into the freezing cold garden either.

  “Harley, what?” snapped Rach.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled. Keisha and Chantalle were giving me the boggies. “I’ve already got my cozzie on, I’m happy to go last.”

  “God, you’re so weird,” said Chantalle. “Is this because you’re a lesbo and don’t shave your minnie?”

  Um, if it was, I probably wouldn’t have planned on getting re-dressed in front of anyone afterwards. Did anyone shave their minnie? That sounded difficult and painful.

  “So you’ve seen Harley’s minnie now?” giggled Keisha. “Rude!”

  Everyone fell about laughing at that. Oh, why hadn’t I thought of that line? Chantalle was red and fierce. “I didn’t mean! Ew. Ew, ew, ew. No! Uuuugh.”

  The “Uuuugh” was immediately succeeded by a retch and a barf all over my feet. Devon’s shoes! I didn’t think it was possible to be that homophobic, so obviously she was completely smashed.

  “Mingin’,” said Dani, faintly.

  “ChanTALLE!!” shrieked Rachel.

  “What happened?” called the auntie, before she’d even got the door of the snug back open.

  “Chantalle’s been sick!” wailed Rachel. “She can’t be sick on my birthday, that’s disgusting, and it’s all gone wrong!”

  “Now, now, Rachel,” said the auntie. “It’s not your birthday birthday. This is just a friend birthday. Isn’t it all about your friends? Poor Chantalle, was it that nasty dip?”