“I have a girlfriend too!” Charlie whined.
Mr Wordsworth rolled his eyes at me. “I thought you guys were an item. Do you still say ‘item’?”
“Five items, coming to the total value of one million and four pounds,” said Andy, smugly.
“How did you get that?” sighed Mr W, looking very much like he wanted to go home and lie down.
“I’m worthless, Rachel’s got four pounds in the head, and those two are just particularly soft bits of chud on the conveyor belt.”
“So where do the million squiddles come into this?”
Andy put his arm around me, and did the eye-smiling thing you don’t see so often. “My million smackeroon baby. Wouldn’t trade her for a new keyboardist. Wouldn’t smack her, either!”
“I see…” said Wordy, eyeing the remainder of his charges and visibly deciding against switching conversational groups.
“‘Smackeroon’ – quid. ‘Smack-her-oon’ sounds like something a Scottish pervert would say,” Andy went on, needlessly.
A horn honked behind us, and we all turned, hopefully. It was a mini, but not Rachel’s uncle’s. It was bright orange and inside sat a young woman with glossy purple hair tied back so that you could see that it was shaved underneath, and what seemed to be a thousand facial piercings.
“Is that your girlfriend, Sir?” tittered Asta.
“You can do better!” shouted Courtney, loudly enough for the lady in the car to hear.
“He doesn’t want to know what your idea of better is!” giggled Dani, with newfound self-confidence.
“I’d best not keep her waiting,” said Mr Wordsworth, who had chosen to rise above the comments. “See you all next week!”
With that, he trotted off towards the car, got in and kissed the purple-haired lady on the cheek. I couldn’t help thinking they’d make beautiful children. Me and Andy? Not so much.
Only a minute or so later, Andy’s dad pulled up. “My turn to do the rounds, I’m afraid,” he chuckled out of the window.
Andy and Charlie glanced at each other and dashed for the front seat. Andy won, saving me from having to look relationship-y around his dad, which was probably the plan. I sat in the back beside Devon who was also beside Charlie.
“You can’t still think she likes him,” she whispered my way as we pulled away from the layby. “She hasn’t seen him for almost a year, and he doesn’t want her anyway! I know I don’t know her, but-”
“Just stop it,” said Charlie, for me, obviously in total agreement about my suspicions. “You don’t know her, and that’s the point.”
#14 Comedy & Tragedy & Lisdexia
Harry met us at the front door, no sooner had I got my key in the lock. Andy and Devon had taken off home, to avoid any embarrassment. (And probably because they really wanted to go home.) I couldn’t tell if it was just the way that you can smell your own house when you’ve been away, or if maybe something had happened.
“We’ve had some sad news that’s left Aimee a bit bonkers,” he explained, taking my bags and leaving Charlie to struggle.
Oh God.
A lump rose in my throat. She’d lost the baby? I didn’t want that to happen. Well, that was a pretty lame sentence, but it was what I thought in that pretty lame moment, until he elaborated.
“We’ve had to have Fisty put down. That lump on her leg…”
Charlie burst into tears. He makes a pretty crap goth, hating death of any kind, even on The Sims, and probably near to number one on his list of nightmare subjects is cancer. “That’s not fair! She didn’t need to die; she was only four! Dogs can live so long!”
“Charlie, she couldn’t walk at the end.”
“But she didn’t deserve cancer! Why does it exist?!”
“There’s good news as well,” floundered Harry, uselessly. Even Aimee’s mood swings had been poor preparation for Charlie and his instability. “Come through to the living room.”
We did, and there was Kitty, curled up on the sofa. Not with a doglet or moglet or toy of mine that she’d abducted, but in the arms of the one and only Zak Hartley, who was actually reading a book out loud.
“Oh, Zak, you’re home!” I gasped, rushing over to perch on the arm of the sofa and give him a big hug. Not counting the part where I didn’t drown, it was honestly the most exhilarating thing that had happened all week.
If I’m honest, Zak looked relieved. I’d vaguely caught the last line he’d stumbled through, and it was as much of a shambles as the House-tonne astronaut project.
Charlie mirrored me, smiling sadly with the still-gushing thoughts of Fisty (and the matching still-gushing tears). We must’ve looked like bad mimes of Tragedy and Comedy, and so much less subtle than those twins out of The Shining. It was just so good to see him in our home; not over the road pretending that everything was normal. So Aimee was nowhere to be seen? I’d deal with that later.
Zak shrugged us off. “It got quiet at Ryan’s is all. After Andy went away, we weren’t talking. If I have to have a brother, it might as well be Charlie, ’cause otherwise I don’t have a best mate.”
As an explanation/apology, for an eleven-year-old, it was close enough.
P.S. It’s not that I’m not grateful that Andy fancies me – beggars can’t be choosers! – but I still don’t think I’m ready for a boyfriend. Especially not the boyfriend you wanted, even if, finally, I can kind of see why.
T.T.F.N. Harley & Co – (“Co” being “big cuddly mess of brothers and sister and 1/3 less dogs”).
The next book in the recommended reading order is: Laddered Tightropes
Connect With Me Online:
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https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk
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https://twitter.com/DillieDorian
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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!
Ging Gang Goo Page 7