Double Dates & Single Raisins

by Dillie Dorian

  “Charlie, go away.” I scowled. “Or I will tell all my friends what your favourite telly programme is. You’re on your own on this one…”

  What’s the worst Jordy could do to him?

  He looked terrified. “But Harley! You don’t understand! Jordy’s going to tell the whole school I didn’t know what-”

  “Bless,” said Chan, though she couldn’t have had any idea what he was about to say. “Charlie. Dance. Now!”

  I stood there stunned, as Charlie and Chantalle, grunger and chav, got into their best step-step-twirl. It lasted through “Dancing Queen” and “We’re Going To Ibiza”, almost to the end of “Another One Bites The Dust”, before they both cracked up laughing, all awkwardness forgotten.

  It was far from over for me, though. Prying Aussies should note that us Hartley kids have a few little rules. “Always stick up for each other (in the lamest way possible)”, “always finish what’s started (unless it’s emptying the washing or something)”, and “don’t give up (unless a group ‘giving up’ is set to commence)” are a few that came to mind at that moment, and they were the few that made me do what I did next.

  I was going to stick up for Charlie, but I was also going to have a laugh at his expense. I was going to finish what was started with Jordy, without bringing the entire school into it. And I was never going to give up on getting the guy!

  “J-Jordy?” I stammered, standing before him and noting every glint of cheap lighting flashing onto his gelled hair – and the every-muscle-of-his-face frown.

  “Yeah?” He raised one eyebrow a fraction, looking away from Andy.

  “The thing with Charlie, and how you wanted to humiliate him and get me and Andy together? Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to settle this with you personally: I will not go out with Andy, and you will not tell people whatever you were going to tell them. If you want to laugh at him, I will give you something to laugh to yourself about, and you can tell me what yours was, but if you dare try to make a fool out of him after this… you don’t wanna know what I’m going to do.”

  All of this I said with my best flirtatious face on, so that rather than incredulous with pity at my sad little speech, or annoyed that I’d even tried to reason with him, he seemed surprised. Surprised and a little plied by my offer. “You’re on my side, aren’t you?”

  I couldn’t work out what that meant…

  “You want to know embarrassing things about your brother – we’ve both got that interest.”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me your thing.”

  I wibbled at the authority in his voice, and took a deep breath, powerless to resist his look of intrigue, and the smoothness of the (now slowdancy) music even over the crackly sound system. “Charlie’s a big fan of The Tweenies. Big, big fan. It’s the reason for our doorbell. I guarantee he’ll go red at the very mention of it. Now yours?”

  Except, actually, none of that happened. I’d dazed off in the middle of the dancefloor, and was staring at Jordy while I argued with him in my head. Quite possibly, the stress of impending family changes building unconsciously had made me lose my mind…

  #17 The Grand Finale (Of My Life As I Know It)

  Mum greeted me as I came in the door on Saturday morning, lugging my sleepover stuff home. “You might want to get moving some of Kit’s things up to your room; she’s already made a start, and Harry’s going to help with her furniture later.”

  “Why?” I asked, groggily. It was the most I could do to hurry home at such a time – at nearly eleven, everyone else was still dozing, fighting for the shower or arranging a lift. Through the power of living thirty seconds away by foot, I should’ve been the last one whose parents were irritated!

  Mum sighed. “Harry and Aimee’ll be moving in this time next week!” I couldn’t tell if it was a sigh at me for, I don’t know, being a real live teenager, or at the thought of the man she’d been about to mention.

  “Aim-?” I started to ask, two milliseconds before the corresponding lever in my head clicked.

  “America; that’s what she likes to be called,” Mum explained, although I didn’t need it. “She’s lovely. I think you’ll really get along.”

  I scrunched my brows, taking myself upstairs without another word. Excuse me for being a tad grouchy! I’d been awake for all of half an hour, and already my mother, who’d been absent for the best part of a week, leaving Zak dangerously close to being in charge at times, had demands on me no sooner had I got one foot in the hallway.

  On the first landing, I could see my sister struggling her net sack of Beanie Babies up the steps to the attic I share with two brilliant brothers who were of course just about to emerge and help us like the gentlemen they are (not).

  It was around six in the evening by the time we’d removed / replaced everything. After we’d got all her stuff upstairs, Kitty informed me that Mum had told her to make “keep”, “store” and “toss” piles. This irked me muchly, since about six of every eight items ended up not living in our bedroom after all that. My bed had been shunted against one wall, with the secretly holey wardrobe at its foot, and Kitty’s against the opposite, with just my desk inbetween her and the space where Aimee’s bed would go. Harsh as it looked, it was my room first, and if I wanted to sleep as far away from company as humanly possible, everyone else would just have to live with it. Maybe I could even get a curtain to run up the middle, so no one would moan about my booklight.

  Suddenly, it seemed terribly, horribly soon that I’d be spending my time sandwiched between a person who looks up to me and a person who would most likely look down on me. Terribly, horribly soon that Mum would have a baby; that you and your disappearance would cease to be front-page news in the Hartley household; that queues for the bathroom would drive us to install a shower alongside the dank old garden loo.

  On the upside, it seemed that Harry could fix that up in a matter of seconds. He must’ve barely been sleeping of recent, because more evenings than not he could be found mending things around the house – and I wasn’t about to complain, if it meant that Mum was home and (shock, horror) actually doing some housework herself for once in a while.

  There were shelves where there were never shelves before, I could once again open the window in my room that had annoyed me all summer, and my bed no longer creaked whenever I sat down on it.

  But nothing looked the same. They had moved my noticeboard to above the head of my bed, my fluffy rug to the doorway (so now it feels alien to step out of bed), my bookshelf away from the far wall, and my big white chair to the box room, all before I got home and without permission.

  Between them, Mum and Harry had scrambled around my room, and scrambled around my history. And for that, I had real trouble speaking to Harry…

  * * *

  “…so you really didn’t get it? No joke?”

  “Yeah, serious,” you confirmed, sounding distant over the telephone, as if you were somewhere much, much further away than Australia. Like, maybe Mars…

  We’d been on the phone for forty minutes, and I was running through everything that should’ve been in that first letter. I’d sweet-talked Keisha into letting me use her mobile, as the hideously expensive contract her dad pays for includes international minutes. It was actually unnaturally sweet of her, considering I don’t have a dad of my own handy and (usually) don’t think I need one.

  “Harley! You’re in la-la land again, aren’t you? I knew you weren’t listening! Is my boyfriend not important to you? Harley-?”

  Oops. I probably had been silent a while. Up until that very last checking point where I asked about the lost letter, I’d genuinely believed you were having me on. After that point, I’d bubbled with the unfairness of it all. Out of every letter sent from the UK to Australia that week, mine, the ridiculously long one all scrawled on notepad paper, had to be the one that went guttingly missing!

  “What?!” I gasped, coming back to reality. Joking aside, I was starting to wonder if there wasn’t
something seriously wrong with my head after all. Weeks and weeks of worrying, and more and more disturbing phasing out during events that should’ve been hard to ignore. First the disco daydream, and now this, during the phonecall I’d waited so patiently for.

  “What boyfriend?” was what I’d meant. We’d always been equals. Once people got past your sandy blonde curls, brown eyes, etc, we were the same. Give or take a couple of boobs, nothing in this world set us apart. When it came to being soul sisters, I’d always figured we were all there – but now you’d got a boyfriend…? Would I have got a boyfriend by now if I was in Australia?

  Oops. I was getting lost in my inner thoughts again. “My boyfriend; the one I’ve spent ten minutes describing to you! Y’know, Cory!”

  Uh-oh; typical surfer boy alert!

  “I was; I was…” I lied. “I meant the ‘what?’ to Keisha. She’s still there. How’s about I tell you all about my boyfriend, then? Er… what d’you wanna know?”

  I’ll bet Keisha’s ears pricked up at that, but she kept schtum. You see, I want you to know that what I said next just sorta made more sense at the time than trying to explain these weird blanks I kept getting from the stress at home. I figured it’d be safer to find out what you’d want to hear about, instead of struggling to find a spontaneous lie for every subject under the sun (and missing out vital details, like, er, his name).

  But you didn’t go for the name.

  “His hair? What’s it like?”

  “Uh, blonde…” I sighed, thinking of Jordy and his gorgeous highlights.

  “Eyes?”

  I panicked. If it made it too Jordyish, the lie would be obvious. “Green…”

  “Um. Do I know him?”

  “He’s one of Charlie’s mates from his class,” I said, hastily. That could be anybody – or nobody, knowing his reputation.

  “Ah, I give up. Tell me his name!”

  I winced. I stared through the living room from my spot on the kitchen counter. Charlie was in there chatting to some of his few (nuts) friends (i.e. Andy, Jordy, and um… that’s it).

  “Er… Andy!” I gabbled, before realising what I’d just said. “Andy…” I repeated, glancing around frantically for a last name – Andy Mug? Andy Staircase? Andy Trainers? Andy Football? Andy Dogbasket?! Andy Dirtydishes, Andy Fridge, Andy Hellmanns?! Tick-tock, tick-tock… “Andy… Man.”

  “Andy, Andy?” you spluttered, shocked, just as I had inside when I saw him that day at the café. I practically heard your eyes widen. “I knew it. I knew you were just waiting until I’d gone. I feel so stupid!! How could you let me LOOK so stupid?! I always thought he liked YOU!!”

  And the phone fuzzed and cut out.

  How dreadful. It hurt how much I wished we’d never given him that stupid nickname five years and a century ago.

  This was bad.

  This was terrible.

  I’d lost contact with you, right at this vital moment when you thought I was in love with Andy. I didn’t care if it was the long-distance thing, or a problem with Keisha’s contract, or even good, old fashioned you hanging up. I just wanted to explain, right away!

  “You can ring her back if you want,” Keisha offered, from her position leant too far back on a kitchen chair, legs on the table, licking an ice lolly teasingly in the direction of the boys.

  I glanced down at the screen. “Battery’s gone,” I muttered sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  And it was just as well, because in that instant when I’d realised it really wasn’t you hanging up in anger, I’d decided I was not in the mood for the embarrassment of explaining scrupulously that I’d been lying about dating Andy or anyone. It would be so much easier if you just read this letter, and got to feel sorry for my stress at the appropriate time, ’cause the one, most horrible reason I wouldn’t dream of it, was because he was the guy you loved…

  #18 Return Of The Jet-Balls

  Picture for me days back in Primary school. It’s September and you’ve all just returned from a vacation around the world (or Wales / Cornwall / the Lake District), or a staycation in your back garden (lower-budget camping for under-tens, packaged with the added bonus of popping indoors for 21st Century facilities and properly cooked meals), and you’ve got the jet-balls.

  The kind of nervous you feel when you’re about to find out whether three-quarter-length school trousers are still “in”, or whether Year 5 is too old for the skipping ropes – when you’re about to meet your new teacher for the first proper time. That’s pretty much how I feel right now. But I’m not tanned from a journey round the world, or grubby from a night in the garden; I’m pretty well scarred from thirteen years of turbulent family circumstances, and it’s finally sunk in that I’m about to meet my new sister – a permanent fixture.

  There’s giggling radiating from the wardrobe – the sort from someone who’s trying to hide, but can’t help laughing, ’cause (in my case) they’re remembering their Spanish teacher getting the whole class to repeat “Tengo diarrea” after him, or (in Kitty’s case, probably) thinking of Matty stuffing bean-sauce covered chips up his nostrils.

  Soon, I will have to muster the courage to envelope and post this, call Kitty out from her hiding place (which does not lead to Narnia, as me and you and Charlie discovered disappointedly, all those years ago – but rather a woody-feeling, mothball-smelling dead end), and attempt some semblance of a Halloween costume for her for Tuesday*.

  P.S. *And a mask for myself, because come Wednesday we are visiting America for the first and only time before she moves in, and I want to hide just thinking about it…

  P.P.S. If there’s anything I haven’t explained properly, drop a quick call! Or, y’know, write back, depending on urgency. Though I can stress right here and now that Kay is NOT my new best friend, and Andy is NOT my boyfriend!

  T.T.F.N. Harley & Co – (“Co” being slang for “two dogs, one neighbour’s cat, squishy feelings and a mini-me searching for Mr Tumnus”).

  The next book in the recommended reading order is: A Bended Family

  Connect With Me Online:

  Website:

  https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk

  Personal Blog:

  https://muzzyheadedme.tumblr.com

  Facebook:

  https://facebook.com/dilliedorianofficial

  About The Author:

  Dillie Dorian is an English author of child and YA realistic fiction. She is notable for offering all fourteen titles in her debut series, A Bended Family, for free online.

  Dillie has been “writing” since a very young age, and her mother probably still hoards innumerable sellotape-bound “sequels” to everything from Animal Ark to The Worst Witch.

  Her first serious project began in September 2006, with “Oops! Did I Forget I Don’t Know You?”, which sparked countless official sequels of its own within months. Working on this series between the ages of thirteen and fourteen taught her everything she knows about writing, and she hasn’t stopped expanding on the Hartleys’ lives since!