Sitting Down Star Jumps Read online

Sitting Down Star Jumps

  “Charlie! What do you hate?”

  “Blood. I really, really do!”

  “Charlie Blood Hartley. Brilliant!”

  “Noooo…” he said, sickly.

  “Yes!” she gushed, excitably. “Don’t worry, you get a new one every day. Middle names for everyone!”

  And that, that was when I concluded that Kay was utterly insane…

  Sitting Down Star Jumps

  Dillie Dorian

  Copyright 2007-2013 Dillie Dorian

  Oops! Did I Forget I Don’t Know You?

  Double Dates (& Single Raisins)

  A Bended Family

  While Shepherds Washed My Socks

  And many more…

  https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk

  Contents:

  #0 Preambling Note To Shells

  #1 Trying To Persuade Myself That My Life Is Not (That) Crap

  #2 Moles In A Pod

  #3 What We Didn’t (Want To) Know

  #4 Charlie Drowns In The Nile

  #5 Christian God Free

  #6 I Think This Is A Bit More Than “I Guess”

  #7 Corzette

  #8 Twinkly Ringtones & Further Growling

  #9 The New, Improved(?), Not-So-Malicious Malice

  #10 Personal, Social & Health Excruciation

  #11 Sixes Of Four

  #12 The Kurt Shirt

  #13 Butter Wouldn’t Melt

  #14 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!

  #15 Backspace The Beanbags

  #16 Italy Suspicious

  #17 All In The Name Of…

  #18 Once More Into The Paddock

  #19 The Mysterious Empty Cage Feeling

  #20 Ghost Walks & Ugh

  #21 Charlie’s Righteous Scam

  #22 Oh. Right.

  #23 Sitting Down Star Jumps

  #0 Preambling Note To Shells

  Dear Shelley + Assorted Prying Aussies

  Do you know how they make Blackpool Rock? (In case anyone was wondering, that’s those fat, straight candy-cane sweets they sell in gift shops. I don’t know if it’s a thing in Australia.)

  Remember how we always used to have them when we were little, and for ages and ages I wondered how they put the writing on? Mum couldn’t tell me. She even chopped the end off one so we could see if the letters went all the way through, and it looked like they did, but we still didn’t know how. After that, I had her cut a souvenir bit off every stick I got, and now I have a small box of sticky, pog-like, out-of-date sugar in my room. Charlie, Zak and Kitty tried to copy and do the same with theirs, but a little lick would evolved into a full-on suck and before they knew it there was no turning back.

  I just looked it up on the internet, and it’s really complicated! The letters are actually these super-long 3D poles that have to be somehow wrapped into the white part so they go right the way through. I know if I’d invented it, I would’ve used a stamper on the ends and been done with it – but then again I’m lazy.

  Anyway, I just thought I’d start with a random cool fact before ploughing in with the horrors of this month. I don’t think it exactly count as a fact, given that I can barely get my head around how it works to explain it, but I can’t hear my own thoughts over the sound of what is not exactly technically a band. Try stringing two sane sentences together amidst the squeals of a badly backcombed squirrel with identity issues clashing with a downtuned bass guitar trying to mumble its middle-aged way through a punk riff you don’t even recognise.

  I’m taking this opportunity to write, chaotic of a brainspace as it is, because Kay is supposed to be round for a session of Maths homework but is instead across the hall in the boys’ room being nosey.

  I’ve made a resolution to be a nicer, better person, which means sticking people when they’re around, and enjoying when they’re not. It’s easier to keep friends that way. And if that sounds like silly girly self-referential doormat rubbishness, it’s because you haven’t been subjected to the Strutter, the Copycat, the Timorous, the Soap Addict, the Adventurous, the Poet and Kay this Resolution Season.

  So, speaking of New Year / New You fluffiness, I shall grab a Beatles CD and ironic sunhat and make a studious diarist effort to recount the details of this jittery South English January to you!

  Lost as ever with you MIA. (That’s “missing in action”, according to the boys.)

  Harley

  #1 Trying To Persuade Myself That My Life Is Not (That) Crap

  Sitting on the floor of my shared bedroom, I was trying to write out my New Year’s resolutions. I always do ten, but without your help and prompting I’d got stuck after number six:

  1) Be a nicer, better person.

  2) Carry on writing down all the good stuff.

  Obviously, some of the bad stuff’s important too, but mostly good stuff if I can help it! Then I’ll be able to look back on it and remind myself that my existence isn’t so excruciating after all – I’ll give you a clue; I could’ve done with some happy memory fuel this fortnight.

  But all of this stuff, if you keep the letters to remember it by, should come in handy when we’re trying to explain to our teenage daughters that although mates and dates and brothers and spots and periods (probably) still exist, at least they can get to school by jetpack, eat as much as they like without getting fat, and have mums who don’t get too narked if they “borrow” the hovercar to go off to a music festival one seventeen-year-old summer. (Of course, in 2037 when I’m my mum’s age, Glasto will surely take place indoors.)

  3) Find at least one positive physical trait, and (gently) make it known to people. Unless it’s my earlobes, heels, or anything else unflauntable.

  4) Tidy my room regularly. I don’t want to, but sitting here right now I just dread trying to concentrate on my next piece of homework in a tip like this, knowing how hard it is to even jot private resolutions.

  5) Oh, and actually do my homework.

  6) Try to do stuff I enjoy, whether I’m good at it or not, and try to discover something new. I’ll probably need help finding it though, as OAP rugby with Eileen, skateboarding with Zak and his delinquent chums, and Infant-school Bratz Club with Kitty don’t seem too appealing. (Oh how I miss our Beanie Baby club!)

  7) Um…

  What? Er… cheer myself up by watching Annie with Kit for the seven hundredth time?

  Remember to eat my five a day?

  7) Learn how to use my new mobile properly! (I.e. not use full punctuation and proper grammar in text messages – I mean, texts; I must use technical language!)

  8) Allure Jordy. Oh, now why didn’t that occur to me first?

  9) Exercise more. Like with the homework and tidying, I don’t want to… but I do want Jordy, and judging by all the footie he’s probably not into muffin tops.

  10) ???

  Beg people for clothes? Scour charity shops in a Kaylike manner? Customise my old clothes? Wait in vain hope for the day I really win a shopping spree from a magazine competition, instead of a fluff tonne of spammy post?

  Make my own fashion statement, and try to, erm, have an individual style. Maybe enlist Kay’s help. Wait, no – she already wants to turn me into her; that’d be like giving her permission.

  10) Avoid becoming Kay. Done!

  * * *

  I called Australia that afternoon. No answer. I know I don’t know the time difference, but now it’s been easily long enough for you to have replied.

  After the failed phonecall, I set to work trying to find a positive trait. Started at the bottom. Not my bum-type bottom (I was already not optimistic about that); I mean my feet-type bottom. My feet are startlingly nice now that at least there’s no purpling of the big toes thanks to Kay’s fluffy sock gift. They’re smallis
h (my toes), and I think they’re pretty cute, but barring swimming lessons and magazine sandal models I don’t have a concept of “normal” feet. For all I know everyone else might have super-gorgeous feet and I am living in the dark! That thought made me give up on feet and try to rate my body out of ten, with ten being the highest. So I hadn’t like it much when it was up to the piglets in our class to rate me – according to my magazines, doing it myself would be an empowering experience.

  * Feet: non-applicable.

  * Lower legs: 7 (shaved), 3 (not).

  * Upper legs: less nice – an all-round 4.

  * The dreaded bum: 7, not actually as huge as anticipated.

  * Tummy: well... 6, I suppose. It is sort-of jelloid in a tubby, Winnie The Pooh way. I don’t suppose I’m fat, or at least no one’s ever called me out on it. (Zak and Charlie started banging on the bathroom door at that point, recognising the sound of the scales and calling “You’re anorexic! I knew it!” and “You’re breaking it!” Since those things can’t both be true at once, I decided that my weight must be average and gave my tummy that 6.)

  * Arms: 6 as well. Bit hairy.

  I was just looking for the tape measure to find out how big my chest really is (or rather, isn’t), but realised that the brothers already had some clue how I was feeling and decided that it was a stupid risk to take only to be disappointed by the lack of numbers there. I gave up after that – just need to face the fact that I have no good features…

  #2 Moles In A Pod

  We all met up in Kay’s sparkly bedroom to prepare for the New Year’s party. The reason we’d picked Kay’s was because it was Ben’s party, and only up the road, which is about as far as most of our parents wanted us walking on traditional British Drink ‘n’ Drive night.

  “You do have good points, y’know,” Kay reassured me.

  “No, I don’t think I do…”

  “Yeah you do! I’ll even tell you which if you let me do you hair while I do.”

  “Style, yes. Cut, no. Deal?” I teased. Kay had used us as her human magic-hair Barbies a couple of months ago, and although it turned out OK I wasn’t sure about second-time lucky…

  “Sure. Your good point is…”

  “C’mon Kay. I haven’t got my mum’s curves, or my dad’s, um… I can’t think what his good traits were.”

  “I love your hair,” said Danielle. “It’s much thicker than mine, and you can get it past your shoulders…”

  “Mine’s the worst,” said Fern, bravely. “All thin and it gets greasy within hours, so I keep thinking no one believes I wash it.”

  “I like your eyes,” added Rach. “I always wanted blue!”

  “And I wish I had your freckles,” said Rindi.

  “Oh, shut your faces,” tutted Keisha, maybe because the attention wasn’t on her, and maybe because people that hate how their own race looks get on her nerves. “I hate coming out with that hippie stuff, but if you can’t love yourself nobody else is gonna! Show ’em that there’s something to love! How do you think I get boys?”

  I pictured then how I turn into your standard Caucasian postbox each summer, and wished above all that I could love my irritable spotty skin the way it is.

  Rindi went on: “You’re right, Keish. Looking Indian ain’t my problem – it’s looking like my sister.” She grimaced. “Listen to those teachers – ‘Are you related to Nadine? Course you are!’”

  “Any relation of Nadine?” mimicked Keisha. “Course you are, you’re brown! Shut up Nazz, them teachers don’t know a spraytan from a mixed race!”

  “That wasn’t my point,” sighed Rindi. “They start on with what a great student she was, all the As and Bs in her GCSEs and A Levels and how she got into a Russell Group uni. Silly cow doesn’t even try!”

  “But Nadine’s a different person and you know it,” I said. “That’s the important bit. I mean, bloody hell, me and Charlie used to look like peas in a pod until we were what? Year 5! Kit’s the spit of us in Year 2. Teachers are gonna think what they want, but try to remember that half of them don’t know their own subject and they definitely don’t know you.”

  “That’s the spirit!” grinned Keisha, as Kay finished arranging the tips of my hair to stick out of a plaited bun, and spritzed some spray about.

  “You’ve gotta have a hippie day with me tomorrow, babe,” said Kay. “It’ll be all wavy and gorgeous when you take it ou-”

  “We’re gonna be late!” Ben called up the stairs. I’m not gonna lie; he was meant to walk us up the road that night and everything. With Eileen’s unnerving emotional neglect comes strict distrust.

  “But! But… but…!” Kay wavered, darting around the room for last minute accessories and grabbing a pair of wedges from the veritable heap of shoes.

  “Now!” yelled Ben.

  I checked my appearance over in the full-length mirror attached to the wardrobe and covered with random spangly stickers, glitter-glue doodles and feathers: OKish brown hair, indistinguishable collection of freckles and spots, scrunched up face from scrutinising my run-of-the-mill appearance, and the outfit! The Harley Davidson vest top I’d worn to Mum and Harry’s wedding, favourite anklebashing studded flower jeans which I’ve had since I was nine, Converse trainers that I’d finally got back from Rach, shaven armpits (always good), and eyeliner (on my eyes, as opposed to lips like Kitty does it), and dare-I-say-cute fluffy bun a la Kay. Actually not bad for an evening out…

  #3 What We Didn’t (Want To) Know

  The café was packed when we arrived.

  Thanks to Ben’s joint hosting and “babysitting” duty (the latter of which he absconded no sooner had we got in the door, in favour of the former) there was little sign of him from there in. He’d bobbed past twice in the last hour with Aimee wrapped around him giggling away, but was mostly lost to us in the sea of sixth formers, Year 10s and Year 11s.

  Keisha and Chantalle had milled off twenty minutes ago, dragging Rach and Dani with them, leaving me, Fern, Rindi and Kay to feel small and Key Stage 3 amongst the dancing and nattering youth. We felt completely out of place, all glittery and spotty, watching jealously as people who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a nightclub weaved and bumped effortlessly as if they’d tripped a magic switch when they turned fifteen.

  An hour and a half of this later, three people we did recognise gangled towards us, about as blissed as boys could be (unsurprisingly, looking at the high count of boobacious girls in short skirts and tight jeans they’d had to push past to find us four).

  “Charlie, why are you here?” Kay sighed.

  “Mum an’ Harry’ve gone to a party.”

  “What the fridge, Charlie?!” I said, shocked, the bassy music of the past hours having shoved from my brain the true facts of my siblings’ whereabouts. “Where are Kitty and Zak?!”

  “Kit’s sleeping over at Emily’s, remember? Her house is a no-party zone.”

  “Her house is a no-fun zone,” I sniggered, having my first laugh of the evening as I tried to picture Emily’s portly mum doing any weaving or bumping. “And Zak? Don’t leave him home alone – Mum and Harry have wine in, and he’s an idiot…”

  Andy rolled his eyes. “At mine, duh – Ry’s got this really cool game for Christmas, like Gears Of-”

  “I don’t care,” I yawned. “If they find out you were here, we didn’t know, OK?”

  Charlie wasn’t listening as he mumbled his “Yeah whatever…” ’cause somebody else had caught his eye…

  * * *

  The crowd got steadily rowdier until about ten-to-eleven when one of the older guys got a text about a more boisterous party at the house of someone I didn’t know, and the college lads (and their corresponding interchangeable girlfriends) rushed off to that.

  Kay’s voice strained above the music, “Not much going on, is there?!”

  “Well, this sorta party’s no fun if you’re sober!” laughed Rachel, who I had a suspicion wasn’t, though I wasn’t about to complain seeing as at least she had
rejoined us when the A Level PE crowd left.

  “But Ben’s not drunk!” said Kay, defensively.

  “How would you know?” I grumbled. “Where, even, is he?”

  “Couldn’t care less; just saying! Ben’s really responsible and all that.”

  “Perhaps we should check on Charlie...” I said, distractedly. “If he’s got a hangover tomorrow, he’ll be in big trouble. He whines enough over being flicked on the arm and he’ll never stay quiet about a headache. And besides, Malice is here, and-”

  “You worry too much!” cackled Chantalle, also present again with the straps of her tank top and bra hanging limply around her upper arms. “Hangover would be character-building; he’s like really, really gay!”

  “You didn’t see Zak last summer,” I growled. “Our dad was an alcoholic so shut up. I’m going to check on him now!”

  The image of my drunk and wibbly ten-year-old brother hung in my mind as I squeezed my way through the crowd of jostly party people, too squicky with worry to even pause at the buffet table. If they weren’t going to understand my assumptions about how Charlie would get if he was drunk, I was still determined to be a good sister! That, and I’d been dying for an excuse to escape my flirty friends and their drunkly honest, honestly drunk conversation.

  By the time I’d tracked him down, I found Charlie to be fine. As in OK. Not drunk. It was Jordy of course who was fine-fine. I never did find out quite why or when the boys made up and became besties again, but the important part was that they had.

  “Why’d you come looking for me? I thought you ‘didn’t know I was here’?” Charlie asked, miffed.

  “Oh, well, I…” I couldn’t really say that I was worried about him being drunk, or that I didn’t understand my slightly slutty friends tonight. Not in front of Jordy. He’d think I was totally sad and a misfit! “I, um… was just wondering if… if you… knew what day it is tomorrow…” I floundered.

  “How’s that affect me?” shrugged Charlie with a sip of energy drink.

  “Trying to remind Charlie he’s due on tomorrow?” joked Andy. He crumpled his own can against his army-print thigh and stood awkwardly when he realised there wasn’t a bin handy.

  “Shuuuup…” whined Charlie, face threatening the crumples itself.

  “N’awwh mate,” slurred Jordy, slipping an arm round him. I got a surge of butterflies at the (imagined) idea that he might do that to me one day. Maybe if I was about to cry too! I thought, before realising I wasn’t Chantalle and a drama queen.