Hunky Dory

by Jean Ure

  I resented that. I said, “I’m not rejecting her!”

  “Excuse me,” said the Microdot, “you walked straight past her the other day. You didn’t even look at her!”

  “Cos I didn’t even see her!”

  “That’s even worse! Not even seeing her. Like she’s invisible! If I told her that,” said the Microdot, “I dread to think what she might do. She might do something really awful. And if she did, you’d be the one that was responsible for it!”

  This is definitely getting beyond a joke; it’s putting me under a lot of stress. I don’t know how much more of it I can take!

  Monday

  This morning at breakfast, in sickly sweet tones that practically oozed a trail of treacle right across the table, the Microdot announced that she was becoming “ever so worried about Dory”. I knew at once that she was up to no good. I glared at her, but she just smirked and wrenched the marmalade away from me. Turning to Mum, still all sweet and sickly, she said, “You don’t think he needs his eyes tested, do you?”

  Mum, of course, latched on to it immediately. She is such a sucker! She said, “What makes you ask?”

  “Well, it’s the way he keeps missing things,” said the Microdot.

  “What things?”

  “People,” said the Microdot.

  “Och, he jist has his head in the clouds,” said Wee Scots. “He’s a bit of a dreamer, aren’t ye, laddie?”

  “You’d think he’d notice girls,” said the Microdot.

  Wee Scots gave one of her throaty chuckles. (Mum says it’s all the usquebaugh.) “I bet the girls notice him all right! I’d have noticed him when I was a wee lass.”

  “Dunno why you’d bother,” said the Microdot.

  If Dad had been there, he might have come to my rescue. Will was sitting opposite and I tried to catch his eye so that we could pull faces at each other, but he just went on cramming his mouth with cornflakes and refused to look at me. I think he should have done: after all, he is my brother. We ought to stick together!

  Did some digging after tea. Aaron and the Herb came round and I gave them the house and garden test. The Herb said, “Ooh, do we get marked out of ten?” I said I would tell her after she’d done it.

  Aaron got a bit stroppy and said he thought we weren’t supposed to have time for anything except digging. “Way you were carrying on the other day, all bossy and got to be professional.”

  I had to soothe him. I said, “These are important psychological tests.”

  To be honest I think they are rubbish, but it is very undermining when a person of ten years old keeps telling you that you are weird and peculiar and anti-social. I really needed some kind of reassurance. I’m feeling a lot happier now; now that I’ve seen what Aaron and the Herb came up with. If I’m weird, they’re even weirder. I mean, how’s this for whacky: the Herb drew a house with a face. She said, “I wanted to make it seem friendly.” Personally I thought it looked a bit like Humpty Dumpty, but Aaron said it was more like something in a graveyard. He said, “That’s morbid, that is.”

  He could talk! All he’d drawn was a mound, with antennae and aerials all over it. Not a door or a window to be seen. When I asked him what it was, he said it was an underground bunker for hiding in. The Herb said, “Underground bunker’s not a house.”

  “Would be,” said Aaron, “if you had to live in it.”

  “Why would you have to live in it?”

  “Well, like if there was an attack, or something.”

  The Herb looked at me and slowly shook her head.

  “Means I’ve got an instinct for self-preservation,” said Aaron.

  The Herb said, “Yeah? What about me?”

  “You just want to be cosy and make nests.”

  The Herb froze. I saw this glint come into her eye. “Are you saying I’m girly?”

  “Nah!” Aaron backed off, double quick. The Herb can be quite dangerous when anyone accuses her of being girly. “Nah, that’s not what I’m saying!”

  “So what are you saying? Exactly?”

  “I’m just saying you’re, like…friendly.”

  “So what was all this about nests?”

  Aaron’s nostrils flared. I could almost see the beads of sweat break out on his brow. As team leader, I knew I had to step in.

  “Let’s just forget about it,” I said, “and get back to work.”

  “Yes.” The Herb gave Aaron one last simmering glare. “Let’s be professional.”

  Aaron turned and began digging, frenziedly. I was about to yell at him to slow down when he suddenly cried out in excitement, “Great gobbets of mud!”

  I thought for one wild moment he might have uncovered something interesting, but all it was was an old rusty tin. I told him to do a label for it and put it with the other stuff. He said, “Can I write who found it?”

  I said that he could as I believe it is important to encourage people. He was obviously very proud of digging up his tin, especially as the Herb hasn’t dug up anything at all so far. He worked really well for the rest of the evening, without any of his usual grumbling. I was quite pleased with him.

  All the trees now have little ropes of mothballs hung round them. It kills me!

  Wednesday

  This morning, as I’m packing my bag for school, I hear Wee Scots’ voice calling urgently to Mum: “Sara, Sara, there’s a dog on the table!” I meet Mum on the landing. I say, “There’s a dog on the table.” Mum says, “I heard.” As we go down the stairs together, Wee Scots runs frantically along the hall.

  “Sara, Sara, come quick! There’s two dogs on the table!”

  By the time we reach the kitchen, they’re all on there, walking about amongst the cereal bowls. Polly’s got a piece of toast in her mouth, Roly’s wrestling with a cereal packet. One of them’s knocked a milk carton on the floor, but it’s OK, it hasn’t burst. Jack’s about to

  close his mouth over the butter so I zip in, smartish, and wrench it from him. Mum yells at them to get off, and they all scatter.

  Wee Scots goes, “Dogs on the table!” like she can’t believe it. Mum remains unflustered, probably because she’s used to dogs on the table. They haven’t always done it, and I cannot now remember when they started.

  When Jack came, probably. He wasn’t with us last time Wee Scots paid us a visit. But it’s definitely not normal, five Jack Russells on the breakfast table, no matter what Mum seems to think.

  Suddenly, in that moment, I have a blinding revelation: it is the women in this family who are weird! Not the men. The women. What with Mum thinking it’s OK for dogs to be on the table, and Wee Scots hanging mothballs round the trees, and the Microdot—

  I turn to look at the Microdot. She’s dumped a shiny pink plastic case on the table and is lovingly poring over the contents. They are all pink. Nothing but pink! It’s what she’s spent her pocket money on. Little fiddly bits to put in her hair. Little dangly bits. Little glittery bits. Clips, combs. Bangles, bracelets. Everything PINK.

  She catches me watching her and says, “What’s your problem?”

  I tell her that I haven’t got a problem. “It’s just come to me… I’m not the one that’s weird, it’s you. I mean, look at all that junk!”

  She says angrily that it’s not junk. “It’s stuff I need!”

  “It’s pink.”

  “So what?”

  I say that pink’s girly. You wouldn’t catch the Herb wearing pink! Not that I say that bit to her. The Microdot instantly goes into shrieking mode. She wants to know what’s wrong with being girly.

  “I am a girl, in case you hadn’t noticed! Least, I thought I was. Maybe I’m not, and no one’s told me. Maybe I’m a stupid boy. D’you think I’m a boy?”

  I say no, I’m sure she’s not a boy. “Boys wouldn’t waste their money on that sort of crap!”

  She shrieks, “It’s not crap, you sexist pig!”

  By now, all the dogs are barking excitedly and running to and fro across the kitchen floor. Wee Scots c
ries out that we’re doing her head in. Mum bawls at us to shut up.

  “Just stop it, the pair of you! Dory, leave your sister alone. Anna, stop screeching!”

  The Microdot screeches that she’s not screeching. She then picks up a pink thing and hurls it at me.

  “Sexist pig!”

  She is definitely not normal.

  Thursday

  Tried to do a bit of digging after school today with Aaron and the Herb, but Aaron was in a silly sort of mood and just wanted to mess about and tell stupid jokes like, “What do you call a man with a shovel?” To which the answer, apparently, is Doug. Which I didn’t get and the Herb had to explain.

  “D-U-G. Dug.”

  That’s supposed to be funny???

  “What do you call a man without a shovel? Douglas!”

  “Dug-less,” said the Herb. “Geddit?”

  I said, “What’s to get?” “It’s a play on words,” said the Herb. “Listen, I’ve got one, I’ve got one! What do you call a girl with slates on her head?” “I don’t know,” said Aaron. “What do you call a girl with slates on her head?”

  “Ruth!”

  “OK, what do you call a man under a pile of leaves?”

  “I don’t know, tell me!”

  “Russell.”

  They went on like that the whole time. I’m not surprised at Aaron, cos he’s got the brain of a flea, it hops about all over the place, but I was disappointed in the Herb. I thought she knew better. She is becoming very frivolous just lately.

  And I have just worked out that one about the girl with slates on her head. Roof. I still don’t think it’s funny.

  Friday

  I have been ambushed! I was talking to Aaron, on our way out of school—actually I was telling him about the Argentinosaurus, which is the largest dinosaur known to man—when we heard this strange, high-pitched squeaking like a colony of bats. Aaron immediately stopped and said, “Wossatt?” I told him not worry about it. I already had bad feelings.

  “Wot is it?”

  It was coming from behind some big shrubby things which cluster by the gate.

  “There’s a load of girls,” said Aaron.

  I said yeah, it was where they hung out, and gave him a shove. I was about to explain to him how the Argentinosaurus was the height of a four-storey building and the length of two school buses, which are the sort of facts I should think anyone would be glad to know, when suddenly, from out of nowhere, jet-propelled, a body came hurtling towards us and threw itself on the ground in front of me.

  I am glad to report that I didn’t hesitate: I simply stepped right over it.

  “Twelve metres,” I said. “Twelve metres. You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty damn tall! And twenty-three metres long. That’d stretch from here to about…I dunno! As far as the traffic lights, maybe?”

  Aaron said, “Yeah…maybe.”

  “Maybe even further. Maybe right down’s far as the High Street.” I jerked at his arm. “What d’you reckon?”

  He said, “Yeah. I dunno. Maybe. What d’you think she did that for?”

  I said, “Who knows? Just felt like it, I s’ppose.”

  I managed to drag him away, but it was a nasty moment.

  What cheek! What utter nerve! The Microdot has just had a go at me. She says I’m heartless and unfeeling.

  “Poor Linzi faints at your feet and you just leave her lying there!”

  I said, “She didn’t faint, she chucked herself down on purpose.”

  “She fainted! She has a crush on you. This is the sort of thing that happens when people have crushes on people. You’d think you’d be grateful. I’ve never heard of anything so cruel…just walking on and leaving her! She could have had a heart attack. She could have died.”

  I said, “Yeah, and so could I. I could have tripped over and broken my neck. And don’t tell me you didn’t put her up to it cos I know perfectly well that you did!”

  The Microdot tossed her head. “So what?”

  “So it was totally irresponsible. Stupid thing to do!”

  She flushed, angrily. “As a matter of fact it was a test, if you want to know. And you failed it! There’s obviously something wrong with you. You obviously have a hate thing for girls.”

  I don’t have a hate thing for girls. I know that they are necessary, and if they were all like the Herb we would get on fine. The Herb doesn’t beam and gush and make a nuisance of herself. She doesn’t persecute me!

  I am feeling quite bothered. I think I shall have to make a list.

  List of all my Dinosaur Books:

  On the Trail of the Dinosaur

  The Age of the Dinosaur

  Talking about Dinosaurs

  Back to the Dinosaurs

  Facts about Dinosaurs

  The Big Book of Dinosaurs

  The Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs.

  I also have six books on fossils, four on prehistoric mammals and two on being a CSI.

  I did all this from memory! I am feeling a bit calmer, now.

  Saturday

  Wonders will never cease! This morning, while we were cleaning out the cats’ litter trays, which is our special Saturday task, the Microdot said she wanted to talk to me. I almost told her not to bother, as I thought she was going to start shrieking again, but for once she was quite restrained.

  She said, “I want to ask you something…You don’t really hate poor Linzi, do you? cos she loves you most terribly! She doesn’t think you’re geeky. She thinks you’re really hot! Lots of people do, you’d be surprised. I was surprised, cos after all, I know you. They just go by how you look. It’s wrong to judge people by their looks! I’ve told her this. I’ve told her, it’s what’s inside that counts, but she is just, like, totally gone.” The Microdot clasped one hand to her chest and swayed dramatically with a scoop full of cat litter. Used cat litter. She said, “Know what she said?”

  I said, “No. What?” I was busy keeping an eye on the cat litter. I didn’t fancy great wet dollops of it landing all over me. “What did she say?”

  The Microdot gurgled, happily. “She said you remind her of that man in The Mummy film…that one where they go down into the tombs and all horrible things come alive and jump out of their coffins and start chasing them? And then there’s that bit where people’s flesh all hangs off them and th—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I saw it! What man are you talking about?” I was quite interested to know, as I thought it was a pretty good movie. Not that the ancient Egyptians are what you’d call old. But at least it showed people doing some serious excavating. “What’s his name?”

  She screwed up her nose, trying to remember. “Brenda?”

  “Brendan. Brendan Fraser.” Hah! He was the hero. “She thinks I’m like him?”

  “Well, sort of. I mean, he was more into action. I can’t exactly see you being into action. But she has this, like, daydream, where she’s down in the tombs and you rescue her?”

  I said, “Rescue her from what?”

  “Those beetle things? Like in the film? Ones that burrow under your skin and go zizzing round your body and eat up your brain…she thinks it’d be really neat!”

  “What, to have beetles eating her brain?”

  “No, you idiot! You rescuing her.”

  I said, “Oh. Yeah. OK.”

  “I mean, you would rescue her,” she said, “wouldn’t you?”

  I said, “Absolutely!” Fortunately I don’t think any brain-eating beetles actually exist in this country, so I reckon I’m probably safe.

  “You wouldn’t just walk past and leave her? Like you did when she fainted?”

  I was about to say—again—that she hadn’t fainted, she’d hurled herself on the ground, when I caught a glint in the Microdot’s eye and thought better of it.

  “Brenda Fraser wouldn’t walk past and leave her. She thinks you’re better looking than Brenda Fraser. Which wouldn’t actually be hard,” said the Microdot, “considering he’s, like, really ancient. On the o
ther h—”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Where exactly is this leading?”

  “Not leading anywhere,” said the Microdot. “Just thought you’d like to know. Most boys’d be flattered, being told they were better looking than some big hunk movie star.”

  “I am,” I said. “I’m very flattered.”

  “Really?” The Microdot beamed up at me. Boy, was she in a good mood! “I’ll tell Linzi. She’ll be ever so pleased!”

  “Yeah? Well, good! It’s been nice talking,” I said.

  She said, “It has, hasn’t it?”

  I don’t know what to make of it all. It’s not often I get to have a civilised conversation with the Microdot. I’m still not sure what the point of it was, but it seems to have made her happy.

  I wonder if Egyptian mummies are considered less geeky than dinosaurs?

  Four

  Sunday

  This is the latest test she gave me. She says it’s the paint splotch test.

  “It’s simple! All you have to do is just look at it and say what you think it means.”

  I was tempted to say, “Means Mum’s been at the paint again.”

  Dad says Mum shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a paint pot. She goes mad! She paints everything in sight, including the dogs. The dogs go pretty mad, too. They tread in the stuff, and sit in the stuff, and rub up against it while it’s still wet. Then we have paw prints, and bottom prints, and furry skirting boards, and Mum’s like, “Oh, God, get them out of here, get them out of here!” Any normal person would make sure they were shut away before they began, but not Mum. I really don’t think the women in this house are normal.

  Anyway, I didn’t say what I was tempted to say cos I knew the Microdot would only start yelling. She was already working up to it. Jigging about and huffing.