She picked up the phone and telephoned her sister.
‘Cora speaking,’ Cora cooed before she knew it was her sister.
‘It’s me,’ Dora grunted. ‘We have to invite Postman Dave over, together, at the same time, so there’s no funny business and we can’t ruin it for each other with nasty tricks. It’s the only way we can be sure which one he likes the best.’
‘Fine.’
‘Great.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Wonderful.’
And they both hung up the phone.
As Cora’s house was first on Postman Dave’s route they decided to hold the date there, at number 19. Both sisters would have a job to do. Cora was to prepare the sandwiches and Dora was to prepare the entertainment. They had ordered more stuffing to arrive sharp the next morning.
Here they were, in Cora’s living room, full of stuffed gerbils, pigs and weird ornaments. They sat drinking tea, not speaking, just communicating by the occasional arched eyebrow or body twitch, their knobbly knees rattling, their round bellies quivering with anticipation, until the door knocked.
‘I’ll get it!’ they sang together, but began elbowing each other out of the way, stepping on each other’s faces, forcing and squeezing their way to the front door – a ridiculous scramble of grey clothes and fish breath.
‘Coming!’ Cora chirped, trying to sound breezy before kicking her sister in the shin.
Dora winced and then gritted her teeth. ‘Just a moment!’ she tinkled and clawed Cora’s face, causing her to silently scream.
Until they opened the door, together, and met the blank gaze of Postman Dave.
‘I have a delivery here for . . .’ And then he looked up, stunned. How could so much beauty be in one house at one time? They were either twin sisters or this was a dream that he never wanted to end. They invited him in for tea and he, of course, agreed and stepped inside. Work would have to wait.
‘Tea, Mr Dave?’ Cora asked, wiggling her bum and reaching for the teapot.
‘Please,’ Dave said. He was nervous and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead; he had never seen so many stuffed gerbils.
‘I stuff them myself,’ Cora said, smiling proudly.
‘I do too,’ Dora quickly added.
‘Right . . .’ Dave dropped a cube of sugar into his cup.
‘Sandwich?’ Cora passed Dave the plate of tinned fish sandwiches. ‘There’s tuna, salmon, sardine and anchovies. Help yourself, there’s plenty more where that came from.’ Cora smirked as Dave loaded his plate and then she gave the evil eye to her sister, carefully swinging the plate her way; Dora took a handful of sandwiches.
‘Thank you.’ Dave bit into his sandwich. ‘Yum . . .’ he forced out through a mouth of oil and bones. Cora began eating hers too and tried to eat all perfect but couldn’t help it because she loved tinned fish sandwiches too much and rammed the whole thing down in one go like a sea serpent.
Dora lifted hers to her mouth, sniffing for poison (you never know) and began to eat hers too; the only noise was the chewing from the three of them. Once lunch was done the twins cleared the plates away in the kitchen whilst Dave sat, twiddling his thumbs in silence.
‘How was lunch?’ Cora asked her sister in a whisper, almost genuinely concerned to get things right.
‘Fine.’ Dora shrugged and then became a bit softer. ‘Good, it was nice, I enjoyed it,’ she whispered back.
‘That’s good to know for your future budgeting: using cat food is much cheaper than tinned salmon. Your sarnies were all made from cat food, MEEEEEEOW!’ Cora cackled before scuttling out to grab some alone time with Dave, leaving Dora rinsing her tongue out under the tap and retching; what a devil sister!
Dora had to get her own back. Entertainment was down to her and she had to seem as charming as she could, cat-food breath or not. They were going to watch a film. Perfect for some serious handholding!
‘It’s supposed to be hilarious!’ Dora showed off.
‘I love comedies,’ said Postman Dave.
‘Me too.’ Cora wriggled up next to Dave on the couch.
‘It says here you will go blind with laughter!’ Dora was reading out the blurb on the back of the case. ‘Let’s hope not, eh?’ she joked, and both her and Cora put their glasses on.
The film began and at every scene the sisters were laughing, close to hysterical; they had reached a new tier of over-excitement. Every time Dora laughed, Cora had to laugh harder, to show Dave she had a better sense of humour. Dave was sandwiched in the middle like a sausage inside their bums of white bread and was gently snorting.
‘I’m just going to spend a penny,’ Cora said as she nipped for a wee (because that’s what older people say when they need to wee).
Whilst Cora was gone, Dora very sneakily and quietly took her glasses and, without Dave noticing, wiped them in the lip gloss she had been wearing, smearing the front of the lenses in thick gluey grime, making them near impossible to see through and everything a blur. She then placed the glasses back on the couch and carried on finding everything side-splittingly hilarious.
Cora waltzed back in. ‘Miss me?’ she pouted, then put her glasses back on. She couldn’t see a thing. She tried to concentrate, wiggle her pupils; did she have something inside her eye? Her sister Dora was in hysterics even more now, but not from the film.
‘You OK, Cora?’ Dora managed to ask.
‘Yep,’ Cora lied.
‘Sure, Cora?’ Dora probed.
‘Well, there is something . . . I can’t see . . .’ Cora freaked, ‘anything, just swirling colour.’
‘Oh dear!’ Dora said, pretend-worriedly. ‘It does say the film is so funny you’ll go blind with laughter and you have been doing quite a lot of laughing, haven’t you? You should be more careful next time!’
‘Oh my goodness, you’re right, I am blind, I am as blind as a bat!’ Cora started to panic, she was screaming and yelling and hyperventilating and her sister then panicked too – she hated Cora but she didn’t want her to die. Dora reached over and grabbed the glasses off her sister’s face. ‘You’re fine, see? It was just lip gloss!’ she shouted.
‘You let me think I was blind!’ Cora wailed.
‘You let me eat cat food!’ Dora cried.
‘You sent fart tablets to my house!’ Cora bellowed.
‘You swapped the numbers on my front door round!’ Dora screamed and then REALLY screamed again, ‘Oh no! Cora! Cora . . . we’ve killed Dave, we’ve squished him, look . . .’
And a flattened lilo of a man in a post office uniform slid down off the sofa, leaving the Craggle Twins staring at him through horrified tears.
I get to the last word and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s done and I’m happy with it.
‘Don’t know what Olly was on about, your grammar is fine,’ Maggie says, patting me on the back.
‘Thanks,’ I reply.
‘Even if it isn’t perfect, it doesn’t matter: the story is what people will be interested in, not spelling mistakes.’
I go to press ‘save’ but suddenly the worserest thing in the whole of the universe happens. The lights go out in the computer room and then the darkness is followed by a slow grinding sound as all the computers flash off to dark screens.
‘NO!’
‘What’s happened?’ I shout, panic rising.
‘Power cut, I think . . .’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means our work could be lost.’
‘No. It can’t be!’
We rush around trying to find Mr Enderson, the computer geeky man. We are panicking and tear aggressively into his office like on TV when the police smash into criminals’ houses. He is eating pasta bows out of a little plastic Tupperware box and he has taken his shoes off too, showcasing his Mr Men socks.
‘The power has gone away!’ I shout in his face rather rudely, to which he jumps like I’ve shot a volt of current through his arm, which I straight away feel bad about.
‘Oh, not a
gain.’ Mr Enderson follows us into the thundery darkness of the computer room and starts poking around some cables and switches . . . I realize that I am holding my breath. I won’t have time to rewrite my story . . . I won’t be able to be in the magazine . . .
Suddenly the light flickers on and the computers are restarting and I breathe out so much air of relief that my head goes all dizzy.
‘Phew, well at least they are back on now,’ Mr Enderson says – I can tell he so badly wants to get back to eating them bow ties again, and he deserves to now he has saved my work and my entire career as a journalist. ‘From now on, back up all your work onto a hard drive, it will mean that if it happens again you’ve got everything safe.’
Maggie and I hug and laugh – but then I see the clock. Lunch time is nearly over. I gasp in horror, the football match! Will! I said I would be there and I wasn’t! I forgot!
‘Sorry, Maggie, I’ve got to . . .’ I run out of the computer room and fly down the staircase like I’m in a film trying to find a bomb in a special building or something.
‘No running!’ shouts Mr Enderson down the stairs behind me and then I think I also hear him groan, ‘Nobody ever listens to me.’ I’ve only been at this school a few days and can tell that’s true, and so I don’t listen either.
I plunge open the big heavy wooden doors and leg it across the tarmac, my shoelaces are undone and the air is freezing, my heart is beating. Guilt filling my throat like sick. I see the boys walking away from the football pitch, and Will’s team look defeated but I can’t see Will. I try and look for him through the miserable sweaty tomato faces. No sign of him. And then I see Olly Supperidge, hands on hips, looking horribly smug and proud of himself. He is doing all these showy-off stretches.
‘You missed me giving these wimps a good thrashing,’ he smirks. I hate the way he speaks and the way he overuses the ‘th’ in everything – you can almost see his tongue desperately preparing to spray it not say it.
‘I didn’t come to see you, Olly.’
‘Which one is your boyfriend then?’
‘I don’t have or want a stupid boyfriend,’ I bark back. ‘I came to see my best friend.’
‘Sorry, Darcy, NO girls play football, not on my watch anyway.’ He sniffs. I want to kill him right this second. Kick a football into his head, but to honest, I don’t think I can kick a ball and don’t want to prove his point accurate. How dare he assume that I could only be friends with girls?
‘My best friend IS NOT a girl and also GIRLS CAN play football,’ I argue.
‘Wrong, and wrong again.’ Ollie squirts a bright blue drink into his mouth and lets a few sweat beads dribble down his head like he enjoys it. ‘I’ve never in my life seen a girl who is good at football, only once have I seen a girl play decent football and she was the PE teacher from another school and is practically a man anyway so it doesn’t count.’
I can’t believe how ridiculously small-brained this giant goose boy can be.
‘I came to find my best friend, who, yes, happens to be a boy.’
‘Boys aren’t best friends with girls unless they want to make babies with them, even you must know that.’
‘SHUT UP!’ I roar, much loader than expected, but I can’t help but think about Clementine and Will getting all closey closey these days. Maybe Olly Supperidge is right, perhaps we can’t be friends? Perhaps Will does want to make GROSS VILE SICKY babies with Clementine!
‘Whoa, calm down, kid!’ he laughs, smacking a towel into his face. ‘Which one is your (boy) friend?’ He coughs the word (boy) into his towel. I am ready to dissect his belly and drag his guts out onto the pitch for the pigeons to peck on. My face is red and my blood is pulsing.
‘I came to see Will. My best friend,’ I say each and every word loud and clear.
Olly giggles. ‘What, you mean that ginger idiot? He was rubbish. He thought he was SO good last week after that lunch-time hat trick but ha! I injured him in the first ten minutes. Got a yellow card for it, but it was worth it. He was so terrible, it was painful to watch him.’
I am scowling, breathing in and out and in and out and in and out like an engine. I am cross at myself for all my forgetful, neglectful behaviour and yeah, I’ve messed up, but nobody has annoyed me as much as this. Not all the Clementines or Donald Pinchers or Jamie Haddocks from my old school all mashed together in one. But instead, unexpectedly, tears come.
‘You hurt him?’
‘He’s big enough to take care of himself. Don’t be so ridiculous. He had that American girl with him anyway.’ I nearly go blind with sadness. I feel like chopping my eyeballs out so I don’t have to see this life any more. HOW? WHY? HOW? WHY? Is all that is going through my head. What am I going to do? I turn away and I run, run into the school building as fast as I can. Away from Olly. Quick. Quick. Quick.
‘You need to man up, Burdock!’ Olly shouts over my head.
Oh, shush the hell up, I am thinking, he does not belong to a boarding school in ancient times where everybody refers to each other by their surnames. Burdock? Really. But that man up bit has stuck with me like the taste of blood in my mouth. Man up? I’ll show that Olly how I can ‘man up’, I’ll show him for winding up the world like an oversized jewellery box where the ballerina inside is actually just a wretched decaying zombie. You wait and see.
I pick my pace up and run away from his ratty ghastly face and try to find Will. If he’s injured he will be feeling very sorry for himself and no doubt Clementine will be there, dabbing some flannel on his head as though he’s Sleeping Beauty and she’s the prince. Yeah, that’s right, girls can take on the role of the prince too. Sort of. Ish. They can be heroes or whatever. But not Clementine, she is too horrid to be a hero, but oh, SHUT UP, HEAD. I head for the nurse’s office, I see his muddy football boots outside the door so I know he is in there. I gently knock on the door.
The nurse bobs her head round the door.
‘Hello, Miss Nurse, is Will in there?’
‘Afraid so, he has a nasty graze on his face and a few bumps and bruises, but he is OK. Silly boys and their silly football, eh? They will never learn.’
‘Can I come in and see him please?’ I ask, tears blubbing and bubbling in my eyes. I really didn’t feel this same way when we went to visit Cyril in hospital. Not one bit.
‘You shouldn’t really; it’s back to lessons now. Let William rest.’
‘Please. I am his oldest friend, please let me see him?’ I beg her; the words topple out of my mouth like shaken-up lemonade.
‘Wait here; let me see if he would like a visitor. What’s your name?’
‘Darcy, thanks. I mean, my name isn’t Darcy Thanks, it’s just Darcy . . . not the just bit either, just plain old Darcy.’ My brain is all twisted and knotted up.
She smiles all ungenerously and disappears into her little room and shuts the door on me. She better not think I’m his lover or anything or else I’ll be seriously livid. I just hate all that girlfriend stupid boyfriend business. I wait in the hallway; I look at Will’s muddy boots, the blackened laces. This is a terrible year of a life. The nurse pops her head round the doorway again.
‘I’m afraid William doesn’t want to see anybody right now if that’s OK, Darcy? He took quite a bashing today. Maybe give him a ring tonight and see how he is then? His sister Annie is coming to collect him. You should go along to your next lesson now.’
I don’t believe her – why on earth would Will not want me, his very best friend in the United World of Everything, to see him? I don’t understand.
‘Please, can I not just . . . I am sure if I could just see him for one single second I’m sure it would—’
‘Darcy, you don’t want to get in trouble now, do you? Go on now, lesson time. I’ll tell William you sent him your well wishes.’
The nurse smiles shortly again and closes the door. Well wishes? Well wishes? He is my friend. And she called him William. It’s not William, it’s Will. I don’t like this stupid nurse and her silly outf
it, she doesn’t even work in a real-life doctor’s with actual blood.
I want to cry for ever.
I hate Olly Supperidge too.
So much.
Koala spies me in the hallway at the end of lunchtime rush. She has purple and pink hair mascara on, which is my thing. Who does she think she is?
‘Hey, Darcy.’ She spits all over my face but recognizes it this time and wipes her mouth. I can tell by her awkward face and voice that this isn’t good news.
‘About your story, I’ve just read it, in the . . . erm . . . computer room with erm Maggie and erm, not to be like rude, but there are some bits in there that I think, I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but we’re quite . . . I don’t think it’s right for the magazine—’
I don’t even let her finish because the tears are boiling up because I worked hard on that story and I just run up the stairs to history where we are learning about King Henry the Eighth, who is the best king, obviously, but am I enjoying myself? No, not one bit. I am wanting to be with Will to make sure he’s all right and that we’re still friends. This has been the absolutely worst few weeks of my whole life; it’s too much for one person. I HATE OLLY. I HATE MY STORY, IT’S WEIRD AND STUPID. I HATE THE MAGAZINE. I HATE BIGGERER SCHOOL. I am so upset. I don’t even know what is happening for the rest of the day as I follow my classmates down the corridors, I am bumping into other kids’ shoulders but not feeling a thing, I almost think I could trap my finger in a door right now and I wouldn’t notice. I open my day planner and write:
I had a butterfly in my heart once upon a time but now all I have is a coughing charcoaled skeleton of a moth.
So dramatical. And then I scribble it out until it just looks like an inky river of blue. Finally, when the bell screams to remind us the day has finished, I pack my books in my bag and that’s when I see the slice of pizza wrapped up in the foil, squashed at the very bottom, the pizza that I forgot to eat. I open it up and take it out. The topping has stuck to the top of the foil and the base is all white and soggy and flat. It’s a bit stingy on the pepperoni too, Will obviously sneaked a few meaty circles for himself before he wrapped up my slice. I sink my teeth into it and chew and chew and chew. It is like swallowing a car-cleaning sponge, I think, and does not make me feel any better. I trudge to the nurse’s room to see if Will is still there but the room is empty.
Darcy Burdock, Book 2 Page 7