by Candy Harper
‘If you want me to keep quiet, you should probably leave those there,’ I said, grabbing a purple one as she whisked them away.
But Granny didn’t care about me going hungry. She put the Quality Street on the highest shelf and said, ‘I went to a lovely party at Max’s house.’ As if I was interested. ‘He gave me this!’ She opened a drawer in her dresser and pulled out a mobile phone. It was still in its box.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ I asked.
‘I thought I’d wait for your father,’ she said, jerking her head towards Dad who had already fallen into a half-coma in front of the TV. ‘I don’t want to give myself an electric shock.’
I snorted. ‘Why do you think Dad knows anything about mobile phones?’
‘Well, he had a walkie-talkie that time he worked in the warehouse, didn’t he?’
‘It’s not the same thing, Granny.’
‘It’s similar.’
‘Not really.’
‘Perhaps I’ll ask the man in the hardware shop then.’
Dad looked up from the TV. ‘Ask Faith,’ he said. ‘Her phone spends so much time in her hand, sometimes I think she’ll grow skin round it.’
‘But she’s a child!’ Granny said. ‘She shouldn’t be operating machinery. What about the radiation waves?’
My whole family decided to ignore this remark. I don’t know why Mum worries about whether we’re close enough. We’re clearly of one mind when it comes to Granny’s lunacy.
I took the phone out of the box and tried to get Granny started.
By teatime, we’d only got as far as texting.
‘But why isn’t there a button for every letter?’ Granny moaned.
‘There are on some phones,’ I explained in an extremely patient way, ‘but the buttons are titchy and it would annoy you.’ A lot of things annoy Granny.
‘Why can’t they be big then?’ she asked. ‘Like a computer.’
‘You wouldn’t want to carry that around in your handbag, would you?’
‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll take it out,’ Granny said. ‘I don’t want to lose it. I think I’ll just keep it in its box.’
I banged my head against the coffee table. ‘It’s a mobile,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to take it out. That’s the point.’
Granny shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I could walk and talk at the same time,’ she said, as she walked towards me.
I rolled my eyes. ‘I know that multitasking is a bit tricky for your generation.’
Granny stuck her tongue out. ‘I can do these things at the same time,’ and she jammed a New Berry Fruit in her mouth with one hand and smacked me round the head with the other.
By the time we got home, I was shattered. Educating old people is tiring. I won’t be giving any more of the elderly lessons in modern living. Their brains are not compatible with the technology.
SATURDAY 31ST DECEMBER
I stayed in bed for as long as possible this morning. Dad came barging in at midday and asked me why I was still under the duvet.
I said, ‘I’m conserving energy for tonight.’
‘You’ve spent so much time in that bed this holiday that you ought to have saved enough energy to run a marathon and power a fridge on wheels to keep your Lucozade in.’
‘Marathon runners don’t drink Lucozade,’ I said.
‘That’s not really the point I’m making.’
‘Isn’t it? Have you thought about some kind of flash cards? I think they’d help with letting us poor normal people understand what’s going on in your crazy head.’
I haven’t got any more time to write down the rest of Dad’s random dribblings. I’m going round to Megs’s house with Ang and Lily so we can all get ready for Ryan’s party together, and I’ve got to pack up my stuff. I might have to borrow Mum’s wheelie suitcase for my make-up.
JANUARY
SUNDAY 1ST JANUARY
I love New Year. I can’t help thinking that I’d enjoy it more if we lived in a mansion and the butler set off fireworks at midnight, but last night was pretty amazing.
Let me start from the beginning. Me, Lily and Ang got to Megs’s house early. Before we started getting ready, we had a steadying Coke and a fortifying piece of Christmas cake or three. There was a lot of squealing and dancing, and Lily, who is nearly as strong as she is crazy, attempted to do the lift from Dirty Dancing on a hiccuping Megs, but after a while I noticed that Angharad didn’t seem to be entering into the spirit of things.
I said, ‘What’s the matter, Ang? You’re a bit quiet. We’ve normally had at least a couple of half-syllables from you by now.’
‘That’s it,’ Ang said. ‘I’m too quiet, aren’t I? That’s why boys aren’t interested in me.’
‘You’re not that quiet. There was only that one time that I had to check your vital signs to make sure you were still alive.’
Then I saw that Ang was not in a jokey mood. ‘Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Elliot from choir seemed pretty keen on you. After all, not everyone likes girls as shouty as Megs and Lily.’
Megs made some choking noises and seemed to be pointing at me. Lily threw an empty Coke can at my head. I can’t think why.
‘It’s not just the chatting,’ Ang said. Her little face was all creased up. ‘Why would Elliot look at me when I hang around with you lot? Lily has got, you know . . .’ She waved her hands about in front of her chest.
‘Got what?’ I asked. ‘Bad taste in jumpers?’
Ang shook her head.
‘An inability to do her buttons up? What?’
‘You know,’ Ang said, turning scarlet.
‘I think she’s talking about her womanly figure,’ Megs said.
‘Do you mean my boobs, Ang?’ Lily asked. ‘Is that it? Boobs? Are you saying that I’ve got big boobs?’
‘Stop saying that! Stop saying . . . that word.’
This was a pretty harsh attack coming from Ang, so we all stopped saying anything at all for a moment.
Ang took a big breath. ‘Megs is pretty and Faith is a red-headed vixen and Lily’s . . . developed and she’s gorgeous.’
We all took a good look at Lily’s lovely figure and beautiful face.
Lily picked a bit of foil out of her teeth.
I said, ‘You think I’m a red-headed vixen?’
‘Yes,’ Ang said. ‘And I’m just . . .’
‘When you say vixen . . .’
‘Faith!’ Megs jabbed me in the middle. ‘We’re talking about Angharad. Ang, you’re adorable.’
‘That’s another way of saying I’m short, isn’t it?’
‘No, it means you’re pretty,’ Lily said.
I nodded. ‘And you may be on the petite side, but that’s not a bad thing. Lots of people would be jealous of your daintiness.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And my mum says that we should all be proud of our bodies and what makes us individual and special.’ I was rehashing the speech that Mum gives me whenever I complain about the weird elbows she’s passed on to me, but Angharad gave a small smile, so it seemed to be working.
I followed it up in the car on the way to the party by saying, ‘Remember that you’re a lovely person as well as pretty and my granny would kill to have your tiny bottom, so embrace your petite-y-ness and seize the moment with Elliot, yeah?’
‘Embrace and seize.’ She nodded. ‘Got it.’
But once I’d selflessly raised Ang’s confidence I started to feel a bit nervous myself. What if Finn didn’t turn up? The last text I had from him said, See you there. But I didn’t even ask him what time because I didn’t want to sound like my dad.
When we got inside, I felt a bit better. The whole house was covered in Christmas decorations and the place was packed. There were loads of Radcliffe boys I recognised from choir, plus a lot of Year Tens and Elevens from our school, including Becky and Zoe who sit behind me and Megs in Maths. There were also a handful of girls from St Mildred’s. I reckon that the entrance requ
irements for that school are that you’ve got the face of an angel and the heart of a demon. The first person we saw when we pushed our way into the kitchen was Cherry.
‘Oh no. Tell me it’s not her,’ Megs hissed under her breath. She still hasn’t got over her beloved Cameron almost attending the Christmas Fayre Cherry organised. Megs really knows how to hold a grudge.
‘It’s not Cherry,’ I said. Because you know me, I like to oblige my friends whenever I can. ‘It’s a giant-sized Barbie. People are always confusing the two.’
‘She’d better not try to get her plastic hands on Cam.’
On the kitchen table there was an impressive array of party food. I started to wonder whether Ryan’s parents had noticed that I’d borrowed a couple of slices of bread and a bit of squeezy cheese last time their son had a party. Actually, that was a pretty special sandwich. I managed to squirt squeezy cheese on Finn and that was how we had our first proper chat. I wonder if Finn thinks of me when he walks past the cheese section in the supermarket.
‘Wow,’ Lily said, slipping Hula Hoops on to her fingers like rings.
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘It’s a pretty good spread I’ve got them to put on for you.’
‘It’s amazing how you think everything starts with you,’ Megs said.
‘I don’t think everything starts with me,’ I said, giving her a poke in the ribs, ‘just all the good stuff.’
Angharad obviously agreed with me because she distracted Megs by saying, ‘Look, they’ve got cheese and pineapple.’
I do like food that comes on a cocktail stick. I was particularly impressed that Ryan’s mum had gone the whole hedgehog and covered an orange in foil and stuck the cheese and pineapple sticks in that.
No one was really tucking into the food so I thought I’d do the host a favour and get things started. I had some crisps, some grapes, a few cheese and pineapples and then finished up with a handful of mint Matchmakers for their breath-freshening effect.
After that, we went to mingle in the sitting room and then Cam arrived and Megs dragged me over to him. It’s so annoying the way that people who have boyfriends are always saying hello to them when they see them. Ethan was with Cam so, while the happy couple were getting all greetingy, we were left staring at each other. It’s hard to know what to say to someone who you think you might have agreed to a date with and then got your best friend to tell their best friend to tell them that you’re going to the party with someone else. So I went with: ‘Have you seen the cheese hedgehog?’
Which I think is a polite remark suited to any social occasion.
Fortunately, it turns out that Ethan also has happy memories of cheese and pineapple.
He said, ‘At a party, when I was little, I stuck all the cocktail sticks from my cheese and pineapple into the jelly and th—’
I missed what he said next because a pair of arms the size of pythons went round me and someone bounced me up and down vigorously.
‘Faith!’
It was Westy, Ethan’s friend and my favourite bear-shaped boy.
‘Do you like my new trainers?’ he asked, waving his size elevens in my face. ‘I reckon I look sporty.’
‘They look great, Westy.’
He seemed pleased that I liked them and grinned really hard at me for quite a long time. I wondered if I was supposed to say something else, but Ethan clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘I was just telling Faith about Ben Dobbs’s fifth birthday party. Remember when I spiked the jelly with cocktail sticks?’
‘Yeah, I still tried to eat it, didn’t I?’
I could well believe it; I’ve seen Westy knock back a family-size packet of super spiky crisps like a glass of water.
We all chatted for a bit until someone insisted Westy went outside to have his photo taken with the inflatable snowman in the garden. To be fair, the resemblance was pretty strong.
I asked Ethan how his Christmas was.
He ran a hand through his shiny black curls. ‘Oh, you know how it goes: Aunt drinks too much, Aunt decides she needs a holiday, Aunt books a flight to Hawaii using your mum’s credit card, Mother pulls Aunt’s hair out. Same old, same old.’
I laughed. ‘At least when my granny is on the sherry she restricts her embarrassing behaviour to the confines of musical theatre.’
‘My aunt normally goes in for looking at photos of herself as a child and crying about where it all went wrong. This was a new departure. I think she’s moving in the right direction.’
‘So who gets to go to Hawaii?’
‘Clearly, I was the obvious choice.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Unfortunately, my mum loves money more than her only child so, instead of rewarding me for spending Christmas in the company of shouting adults by giving me a little holiday, she managed to get a refund.’
‘Madness,’ I said.
‘This is why I enjoy talking to you, Faith. I like the way you think.’ He smiled and I felt a warm bubble expand in my tummy. He leant closer to me and said in a confidential voice, ‘Of course, that’s mostly because the way you think is the way I think. If you had plastic surgery to look like me, I’d probably have to marry you.’
My tummy bubble popped and sent off fireworks and swirls of confetti. Whoa. I was supposed to be on a date with Finn (even though I was starting to wonder where the monkey he’d got to). I’m not sure that Ethan should have been setting off a street party in my middle section just because he was joking about marrying me. I pulled myself together. I’d actually been chatting to Ethan for quite a while now and Finn still hadn’t arrived. I told Ethan I needed to talk to Lily and went off to look for Finn.
By now, the house was crammed with people. I saw Lily playing Twister with some boys, but I didn’t even get a glimpse of Angharad. By the time I’d done a tour of the whole house, the only interesting thing I’d found was my arch-enemy Vicky Blundell (AKA Icky) standing in a laundry basket while snogging a boy with long hair. I’ve got no idea why. I mean, I don’t know why she was standing in the basket, not why she was snogging the boy. (Although, to be honest, he was pretty greasy, so that was a questionable call too.) I’ll just say I wouldn’t let Icky rummage around in either my mouth or my dirty washing. Anyway, I didn’t find Finn or any of the boys I used to see him sitting with at choir. I was starting to think I’d been stood up.
I went back downstairs to find Ethan talking and smiling with some ridiculously pretty Year Eleven girl. They both turned round when I walked into the crowded kitchen and I didn’t want to look like I was desperate for Ethan’s attention, so I pretended I’d just come in for a snack. I grabbed the nearest thing on the table, which happened to be someone’s leftover paper plate with four cocktail sticks, half a poppy-seed cracker and a pickled onion on it.
‘There it is!’ I said out loud and then I attempted to slink off before anyone noticed that I seemed to be the only person at the party not talking to an attractive member of the opposite sex.
The thing about pickled onions is that they’re not really designed to sit still on a plate, especially if the plate is moving. As I walked towards the door, the onion started to roll. I tried to stop it falling off by tipping the plate back towards me, but unfortunately my hand caught on the back of a chair and I ended up flicking the plate pretty hard. The onion flew across the room – catching everyone’s attention – and landed in the curly hair of a very unimpressed-looking boy.
I probably should have left the party straight away, but for some reason I thought I could make things better by retrieving the onion. I nipped over to the boy, who was staring at me in disgust, and reached out a hand towards his head. ‘I’ll just . . .’ At this point I realised that, other than the music coming from the sitting room, the kitchen was completely silent. ‘. . . Get this and . . .’ It was a bit of a struggle because his hair was really thick and the onion was pretty slippery, but finally I had it.
The boy said, ‘Thanks.’ But what he obviously meant by that was, ‘Get away from me, evil
-onion-girl, and don’t go dragging me into your inability to look cool at parties.’ Which I thought was a bit rich from a boy who was wearing a bright yellow shirt, but I had other matters on my hands. More specifically, I had a pickled onion on my hands. I didn’t really know what to do with it so I popped it back on my plate. Leaving me exactly where I started. Glancing up, I saw Cherry and a black-haired friend sniggering at me. They weren’t the only ones. That’s what happens if you draw attention to yourself in such an oniony way.
Finally, I scuttled out of the kitchen door, this time with the sides of my paper plate curled up to stop any further runaway-snack disasters. I can only hope everyone was so mesmerised by what an idiot I am that they didn’t whip out their phones and take pictures.
Out in the relative quiet of the hallway I realised that I was actually starving hungry. I wasn’t going back in the kitchen so I was forced to eat the half-a-cracker. Which still left me with the plate and the onion. Before anyone else walked by and saw me with my stinky little vegetable friend, I pushed the plate through the banisters and left it on a stair next to an abandoned paper cup.
I was about to hunt out Ang and Lily when there was some banging on the front door. Since the snogging couple standing next to it didn’t seem to hear, I brushed the crumbs off my top and opened it. It was Finn and his friend Josh.
Finn said, ‘Faith!’ and he sounded so pleased to see me that I forgot about how long I’d been waiting for him to arrive.
Josh disappeared into the throng. Leaving me face to face with Finn. He was wearing black jeans and a black top. It made his hair look incredibly blond. He gave me a smile like the sun coming up and said, ‘I totally forgot about tonight.’
Well. That’s not a good sign, is it? If he really liked me, surely he should have been counting down the minutes like I was. But then he did say, ‘I mean, I didn’t forget the party and that, but I forgot that tonight was tonight and my mum was like, aren’t you going out for New Year?’
So he didn’t forget the party ‘and that’. What is ‘and that’? Am I ‘and that’? It doesn’t sound very flattering. I didn’t really know how to respond so I just smiled, and then I remembered the cracker and panicked that my teeth were full of tiny black poppy seeds. I tried to smile without showing my teeth which must have looked a bit creepy because Finn said, ‘You OK?’