Darcy Burdock

by Laura Dockrill

  Marnie points and waves enthusiastically. She has on expensive designer sunglasses that I wouldn’t mind sitting on if given the chance. CRACK. GOODBYE, showy-offy glasses. Eugh. We are not on holiday in Portugal, you know. It’s not even that sunny.

  Hector speeds ahead on his scooter. Mum will end up carrying that and him on the way home, no doubt. If I was Mum I would just take that scooter and hurl it over the back of the house so he couldn’t bring it anywhere, but Mum says if he doesn’t bring it, it will take him ages to get anywhere. So we all have to suffer. It’s a domino effect because I’ll then have to carry the entire bag of heavy wet towels home. L-O-N-G S-I-G-H.

  Poppy is already running after Hector, choosing her ice lolly before she’s even reached the van. Cherry. Strawberry. Bubble Gum. Lemonade. Orange. I would be running ahead too but Mum’s making me carry all this stuff. I am panicking, quite badly, about my lolly flavour. I really don’t feel that comfortable leaving the responsibility with these beanbag heads to choose me a good flavour.

  ‘The whole gang together!’ Marnie screeches and embraces us, bringing us in for a clunky awkward group huddle. Her shaved armpit is in my face and up close looks like a wrinkly dog’s bum. Her elbow clanks into my side – ouch – and her purple lipstick leaves a huge sticky smear on my jaw. I know I have to be polite and let the pee-pee wee-wee piddling pool wash it off instead of wiping it off with my fist or Mum will do that look like I’m being rude. I’m sorry. It is NOT rude to wipe somebody’s yucky mouth juice off your face.

  After dumping our stuff down on the ‘spot’ that Marnie has saved for us (a shady, overcrowded, bird-poo-splattered slab of concrete draped in Marnie’s posh towels) we get changed. Annoying Poppy remembered to wear her bikini underneath her sundress but I forgot. Obviously. And she didn’t remind me either.

  Livid.

  Hector and Poppy don’t think twice and strip off, then dart into the shallow pool, leaving me all behind as well and everything. Mum goes off to get ice creams with Marnie, even though that means, if my maths serves me right, that technically Donald is getting to be having TWO ice creams because I sawed him having that one earlier! The evidence was all leaking down his chest. I am not STUPID, you know, like all these other immature saddo baby tots, and I can spot a crook a mile off, trust me. Sneakiness behaviour never gets past me!

  All these other kids are just running all round the whole place like they never been outdoors before; screaming and squawking as if this cruddy paddling pool is a great place to hang. Well, they aren’t fooling me.

  Poppy beckons me to the water. I have to get into my costume. They don’t even have changing rooms in this barren land so it feels like one hundred and a thousand eyes are all staring.

  Firstly I wrap one of the towels over my head and body and crouch over, scampering off my shorts. My plan is to quickly wriggle out of them, pop the right leg into the bottom of my swimming costume while dragging the left leg out of the shorts, all in a swift, smooth, sweeping movement like a stunt person. I’ll keep my top on, niftily take my arms out of the sleeves, meaning I can haul the top of the cossie and get my arms in the straps underneath the shirt. Finally my grand reveal of my mermaid costume will be on full delightful display.

  But instead, once I take a leg out of my shorts, hopping up to put the other leg into the costume, the idiot towel slips off me and I lunge forward to reach it, but then I step on a hairy beary solitary thorny acorn that’s wearing its stupid spiky conker jacket – OUCH! – I jump up, which flings my other leg out of my shorts, springing my costume into the air and into a pile of uneaten sandwiches from somebody else’s picnic, and before I know it my bare bum is on view for everybody to see.

  As pale as a shelled boiled egg.

  ‘Whoa, careful, Darcy, your full moon is blocking out the sun!’ Donald chortles as he arises from the water, lying flat on his belly like some hideous moose beast. His laughter alerts numerous other kids (yes, even ones I never metted) to also laugh and point, making me feel like an absolute display cabinet of awfulness. How dare they laugh though? They don’t even know me. I go red and, sound-tracked to the sniggers of strangers, I grab the towel, wrap it round me like a long skirt and, inching in pigeon steps like a real mermaid, just not as excellent, reach for my costume, trying to pretend none of this happened. Eyes to the floor, I begin to wriggle the tight costume up my body. It’s too small and digging in. I look like I’ve just eaten fourteen cheeseburgers.

  I hate it here.

  I step into the lukewarm water. I know that the heating is generated by the vast amounts of hot infant urine dissolved in the water. Wretched. All eyes are watching my toes fiddle in the water, they are wondering why it’s taking me so long to get in.

  ‘Darcy! Come on!’ Poppy wails.

  ‘I might actually go and help Mum and Marnie with the lollies,’ I say, to try and get out of getting in.

  ‘No worries, I’ll do it!’ Donald, the jammy toad, leaps up.

  ‘It’s OK, you relax there,’ I reassure him. But oh no, up he gets, and it’s like watching a blubbery flubbery walrus flop out of the sea. Great. That was meant to be MY ESCAPE. And now I’m soaking. Grrrrrrrr! If I wanted a tidal wave to smash me over the head I’d go find one.

  I’m wet now. In I go.

  There is a snotty child with yellow hair filling up an empty crisp packet with water. Great. Wee and cheese and onion. Weese and onion. Hideous. My worserest flavour. I wade in further towards Poppy and Hector. Past the loose rafts made of scraggy, lost plasters, bogey tissues and pigeon feathers. The smears of snot and chewed Ribena straws.

  ‘I’M A SARK!’ another boy bellows in my face.

  No you are not, I think. I like to play shark. And it’s not SARK. It’s sHark. Idiot.

  The middle of the pool is the only decent bit in the whole place. Because it’s the deepest bit. But even when you’re sitting in the water it only goes up to your tummy button. So boring and babyish. Hector and Poppy are already off chasing each other with makeshift water guns made out of water bottles. Great. I plonk myself there like a hippo and wait for my fabulous lolly to be hand delivered. I wait. Roll my eyes. Try and warm up. Close my eyes and pretend I am in Hawaii. Accidentally let out a fat wee. Another kid looks at me like, ‘Ugh, are you weeing?’ and I’m like, ‘Mind your own business, you little weirdo, and put a top on.’

  Mum’s back with the lollies and I completely forget to be waited on because I am a greedy gargantuan moose that’s DESPO for my lolly. WAIT FOR ME! We all rush back to the side. Hang on, why does Donald look so pleased with himself . . .? Hmm . . . rush, rush, wobble, trip . . .

  And then I stub my toe on the step bit to get out. It’s all scratchy and cement concrety with bits of pebble and stone. STIIIIIIINNNG. Ooof. Ooof. Hop. Hop. Yawwwwww. Cawwwwwwww. Bawwwwwww. Tears in my eyes. Fizzle. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Hold it together. Hold it together. I bite my lip. Squeeze my eyes shut. The pain. Zap. Zop. Zing. Throb. PANNNG. THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN IN HAWAII.

  I hobble over to Mum, absolutely freezing, my jaw shaking. This is a nightmare. Hector’s lips are already blue. Chitter chatter. This isn’t a fun day. This is torture. Freezing cold torture. I hate this; forced to spring about in a shallow tepid ditch with loads of unhygienic germified strangers and their yellow wee and jam hands and snot strings and bum juice.

  Marnie is very impressed with herself as she unpeels the lolly wrappers with her spiky, purple, painted claws and hands the traffic-light colours out. We could do it ourselves but Marnie enjoys to baby us like that.

  ‘Lemonade for you, Hector. Strawberry for you, Poppy. Cherry brandy for Mollie and me.’ She winks at Mum. ‘We need all the brandy we can get!’ she snorts.

  Mum doesn’t even think it’s that funny a joke, I can tell, but laughs back anyway.

  ‘There’s a lime for you, Darcy.’

  Green? They got me GREEN?

  ‘Green? You got me GREEN?’ My face wrinkles up in disgust. It’s not that I’m being ungratefu
l, but WHY would you get me green? Green is one flavour up from basically poo.

  Green?

  ‘I thought you liked green?’ Mum suggests, licking her delicious cherry brandy icicle.

  ‘Since WHEN have I liked green?’

  ‘Well, you didn’t mind finishing off all those green sweets in the car.’

  ‘That’s different. They were the only ones left – when the green are the only ones available, of course you have green, but you don’t choose green.’ I feel dumb, but tears begin to froth in my eyes. It might be from the toe stub. ‘Oh, right, I get it, so you lot are just gonna sit there sucking the living daylights out of your red scrummy lollies and I get green.’

  ‘You can have mine?’ Poppy suggests, which is kind but her saliva poison is already all over hers.

  ‘Thanks, Poppy, it’s OK. I’ll have green.’

  Mum shakes her head. ‘You owe Marnie a thank you, Darcy,’ she says sternly. I look at her like my eyeballs have popped out of my head. OWE? OWE her a thank you?

  ‘Thank you, Marnie,’ I say all softy, watching all the smug rat heads around me enjoying their lovely lollipops.

  ‘You’re welcome, Darcy, it was Donald that told me you wanted lime.’

  Donald said that? That I wanted lime?

  ‘Why, what’s Donald got then?’

  ‘I think he went for a Nobbly Bobbly.’

  Seething.

  And before I can even blaze him with my anger, he is off, running towards the arctic puddle, jelly moobies juddering and spilling muffin tops quivering. And it dawns on me that I know I will have to be hanging out nonstop with DONALD this summer. And that I better get used to this wretched boy because he clearly isn’t going ANYWHERE!!!! And I already can’t stand the SIGHT of him. HUMPH!

  Slog. Slog. Slog.

  Mum and Marnie have boring conversations. I sit next to them for a bit of eavesdropping in case anything funny about Donald arises. Wrapped in a towel, holding my throbbing pink toe, sticky slithers of green lolly juice down my hands looking like alien dribble, and mainly being all depressed, I flop down on the hard concrete and blow an old crumb towards an ant. The ant is so close he could almost pick up the crumb but he doesn’t. He can’t turn round and say I didn’t try to help him.

  ‘Mum. Mum. Mum,’ I moan and weep. ‘Can we please go home now?’

  ‘You were the one that wanted to come out! You were the one that wanted to go swimming.’

  ‘You can’t swim here unless you are a rat or a Barbie. I’m bored out of my Brazil nuts.’

  ‘Darcy, how can you be bored? There is so much to do. Look, it’s a lovely day, the sun is shining-ish, you’ve got a paddling pool and friends to play with! Bored!? Unbelievable.’

  Friends? I wouldn’t count Donald or my own siblings as my friends.

  ‘I don’t want to get in the stupid poop-id pool,’ I grumble.

  ‘Don’t, then,’ she snaps.

  ‘Where’s that best friend of yours? What’s his name – Billy?’ Marnie chips in.

  ‘His name is Will.’

  ‘Will, yes, why don’t you get him to come down and keep you company?’

  ‘He’s in Spain on holiday,’ I grumble, feeling so annoyed at him that he’s on holiday and I am here doing THIS life.

  ‘Yes, Will and his older sister Annie go away every summer, don’t they, D?’ Mum tells Marnie while stroking my raggy hair. ‘He has family there.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice for him! Lucky for some!’ Marnie cackles, rubbing her legs down with some ghastly, gluey-wuey cream.

  ‘So what am I meant to do then?’ I humph restlessly. ‘I don’t have activities with me.’

  ‘No homework you can do?’ Marnie suggests. What on earth? She’s just as bad as school!

  ‘Well, actually, she does have one bit of homework she could be getting on with,’ Mum says.

  ‘Ooooh, go on, what is it? I love a bit of homework.’

  ‘Mum?’ I ask, to make it very clear that I’m talking to Mum and not Marnie, so butt out.

  ‘She has to set herself a challenge, something to achieve over the school holidays. I suggested tidying her room,’ Mum answers, even though it’s my business not hers.

  ‘That’s not homework!’ Marnie slaps her prickly legs. ‘Donald gets so much homework, but that’s probably because he’s a child genius and the school want to push him as much as possible.’

  Sure. Whatever.

  ‘Why don’t you get a job?’ Marnie adds. ‘That would make a great challenge.’

  ‘A JOB?’ Has she LOST the plot. A job? Who does she think I am? A 500-year-old? A JOB?

  ‘Yes, you could try and get yourself a job over the holidays, bit of responsibility never hurt anybody – it would keep you busy, you could learn a new skill and earn yourself some cash too.’ She looks at my multi-coloured painted toenails. ‘I mean, a creative girl like you – you never know where you’re going to end up, do you? A job would be great for you.’

  MUM! STOP THIS WOMAN AND HER WICKED WAYS!

  ‘I think she’s too young for a job, Marnie.’

  ‘Yes, Marnie,’ I add.

  ‘I had a job when I was your age. I worked as a waitress in my uncle’s coffee shop.’

  ‘Darcy’s too clumsy to be a waitress.’

  ‘I am not!’ And then I immediately remember the many times I’ve walked into mirrors because I thought they were doors.

  ‘What about babysitting?’

  ‘BABYSITTING?’ I gawp.

  ‘That could be a good idea. You love kids.’ Mum smiles.

  ‘Yes, but not to be a babysitter,’ I argue. ‘I’m basically a small baby myself.’ I shrink.

  ‘I don’t know, I think you would make a fantastic babysitter.’ Mum rubs some lip balm on her lips.

  ‘No, Mum. That’s a rubbish job. Cleaning up some baby’s poo and wee and sick and tears all day. No thanks.’

  ‘All right. We were only trying to help.’

  ‘Wish I had my writing book here.’ I rest my head on the fleshy bit of my arm.

  ‘I have some paper,’ Marnie says all kindly, but she does have those sunglasses on so I can’t be sure if she’s not just being a villainous wicked witch. ‘Pass me my handbag and let’s have a look.’

  ‘There we go,’ says Mum. ‘That’s great. Thank you, Marnie.’

  Why can’t Marnie just get off her bum and get her handbag herself ?

  I sling Marnie’s posh handbag over to her and she begins to fiddle through it. She pulls out a leather-bound diary, tearing some pages out for me, and then she hands me a pen.

  ‘There we go. What do you say, Darcy?’ Mum patro-sizes me down with that voice that swoops high and low like a roller coaster.

  ‘Thank you, Marnie,’ I say, which I was going to obviously say anyway.

  ‘Ah, it’s nothing, knock yourself out.’ She smiles and then continues talking to Mum about some woman at her yoga class who she hates.

  Why don’t YOU knock YOURSELF out?

  I nudge over the towel a bit and think about what to write about. I can’t get comfy. All the loops of the towel bit are ramming into my pointy elbows and Poppy and Hector keep calling me over to play. But I’m being too stubborn because that pool brings nothing but bad luck and also I hate this swimming costume. It’s like Mum forgot I grew or something. I write a couple of words and then scribble them out. Suddenly a toddler in a nappy comes padding over to me. She is soaking wet from the water and has only a few teeth that are spread out like a monster munch crisp.

  ‘What?’ I ask her big brown eyes and curly black hair. ‘What do you want?’ And then she digs her finger up her nose, eyes still fixed on mine. It’s hard to concentrate when there is a little baby in a nappy aggressively picking her nose in front of you.

  ‘OK,’ I say back, and lean down to the paper again. I don’t like it that you can see the dates on the pages. Mon 24th, Tue 25th, Wed 26th . . . It’s distracting. I like a big clean empty page to write on – waaaaahhhhhhhhhh
. . . I feel something on my back. ‘What is it? What is it?’ I ask the baby but she says nothing. Her stubby digit pointing at my back, gargling something jibberish. It all becomes clear.

  ‘That’s one of your bogeys, isn’t it?’ I gag and retch. ‘That you just wiped on my back.’

  ‘Ah-hah,’ says the baby. Nodding, as though she’s proud. Like I should be grateful for the generosity. ‘Hujiwama.’ She smiles, pointing at the thing again.

  ‘Hujiwama?’

  ‘Hah.’ The baby grins.

  ‘Gross.’ I cringe. ‘I don’t care what you call it, it’s disgusting!’ I feel so sick about this grey little baby bogey, the lukewarm sluggy goblin that was once lurking in the trenches of rotten disgustingness nostril hole now infesting my back.

  BLEUGH. BLEUGH. I roll over like a dog rolling in fox wee at the park, but I probably look more like a pig in mud. GET IT OFF ME, ATTACK, ATTACK. I shudder violently.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ Mum says, all unsupportive.

  ‘That hideous baby just wiped a bogey on my back. I would be the worstest babysitter in the whole entire world because I hate babies and they hate me. Just in case you still think that would be a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Do you know what would be lovely,’ she says in this stern, straight voice, ‘would be if you could just come outdoors and not be dramatic for once.’

  ‘Hah!’ annoying Marnie Pincher chips in. ‘Now there’s a challenge for your school project.’

  Oh, shut up, you. It’s not a project. Like it’s something I’m dedicating my existence to. Go away.

  ‘Yes!’ Mum laughs. ‘That’s a great challenge for you, D! But she’ll never be able to do it,’ she mocks. ‘Darcy loves a bit of drama.’

  ‘Yes I will!’ I scowl, folding my arms and crossing my brows. ‘I can definitely do that, easy peasy lemon squeezy. I bet I can go a LIFETIME without making any drama AT ALL.’