Now, Maybe, Probably Read online

  I went out onto the landing on my way for a glass of water, and peered in the open door of the boys’ room. Zak was snoozing with a thumb in his mouth (bless), and Charlie was sprawled out with his covers rucked up and hair in tiny, diddy plaits.

  I spotted a curious sheet of paper that must’ve been supposed to be under Charlie’s pillow as he slept. Instead, it was crumpled next to his face and sure to give him a papercut since we shared the Unfortunate gene. I tiptoed across the room and retrieved the sheet, meaning to smooth it out and place it on the chest of drawers where he couldn’t miss it.

  Ho, ho.

  The curious paper was a sheet of lyrics, wobbling outside the lines. I could tell he’d been enthused to jot it all down, because his handwriting wasn’t usually so terrible. I squinted to read in the dark.

  …and the posse kept coming with guns and with knives/the street urchin children all ran for their lives/the torture of being taken over by tribes/consumed by the anguish of curse words and jibes/my sense of control is infested with… shit. Nothing ever rhymes.

  It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I’d expected. None of the words really made sense, but as far as I could tell he had the style down pat, because barely anything he quoted or warbled from his favourite emo bands meant anything to me.

  I felt kind of bad for perving on his private lyrical witterings, so I went to place the paper on the dresser. Charlie moaned in his sleep. At first I was scared that I really was perving on something I shouldn’t, like maybe a special dream, but was relieved that find that he was having some sort of nightmare. “No! No!” he yelped, the words muffled under the covers that were over his lips.

  I put the lyrics down and backed away. That was when I knew I wasn’t a bad person: I wasn’t a bad person, ’cause I wasn’t filming him and sending it to my friends…

  #5 Seaweed Boy

  On Saturday afternoon I passed an excited Twinnie on the stairs. He was clutching a black and gold striped Hex Records bag, so I thought nothing of his eagerness to spin yet another hard-saved-for emoey CD in the player.

  I was heading into town myself, to find an appropriate birthday card for Rachel. Since she’d gone to all the effort of having an actual party, it had to be just right – something that showed how grateful I was to be invited. But casually! It wasn’t supposed to be obvious.

  Being a teenager is so hard…

  I ended up knocking for Devon, even though she hadn’t been in the best mood with Rachel since the party argument. Being seen alone on the high street by Keisha, Chantalle or any of Asta’s cronies would be the social death of me!

  She turned out to be glad to join me – dressed in a long, drapy hippie skirt with tassels, and some sort of lacy top under her super-fluffy brown synthetic-feather jacket. I was in my typical outfit of anklebashing studded flower jeans and red and white fake Converse trainers, this time teamed with my old green T-shirt with the camouflage star, and my two-year-old black winter coat that barely covered my kidneys because of the awkward fit.

  We stalked down towards town, jawing it about friends and rivals and dream outfits and dream boyfriends. The first two were pretty self-explanatory, but the others, not so much. For an ideal outfit, Devon jumped right in and painted a picture in my mind of a beautiful flowing angel dress and solid gold diamond-studded halo, complete with working downy-soft wings. I said I thought it made her sound like she wanted to be dead, and she nearly started on about Kurt Cobain all over again. I needed to begin describing quickly before she got the chance, although I hadn’t really made my mind up.

  “Anything from New Look,” I established. “It would have to fit properly, unlike most of my stuff. I just want jeans that are long enough and a T-shirt and jacket that actually come down over my belly.

  “New Look isn’t designer enough,” she sniggered. “You can have anything you want! Oh, God, who do I sound like?”

  “Chantalle,” I giggled.

  We both had fits of laughter, and then she came up with the Dream Boy question.

  “My dream boy…” I mused. “Well, that’s easy! He’d be tall and thin but muscular, slightly tanned, with a trendy spiky haircut and a gorgeous smile.”

  “Jordy!” she shrieked. “That’s so obvious! No, really, if you could have anyone?”

  “Jordy.”

  “Oh. Well I’d want someone shy and sweet who can play the guitar. Preferably long, lush brown hair – messy, like – and freckles, or dimples, or just something adorable!”

  “Kurt?” I asked, hopefully. There was nothing lush about Charlie’s hair – though “messy” was a good descriptor.

  “Yeah… Kurt,” she said, absently.

  By this point we were into town and nearly at the first card shop. It was pretty nippy still, so I hoped it would be the only card shop we needed.

  Immediately on the Female Birthday rack (what an imaginative name), I spotted a “Bodacious Belle”, and snickered at the phrase. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, so I opened the card, which had one of those special plastic wrappings that allow shoppers to look inside without marking the surface with their fingers.

  “Plucky and bold, the Birthday Queen,” I read aloud. “You take every day to the extreme!”

  “That sounds exactly like Rachel,” tittered Devon.

  “Yeah, but who writes these things?” I smirked. “I could do a better job. Charlie could do a better job. I even think Hendrix could! Our dog, I mean. Of course the real guy would’ve managed a better card!”

  Devon’s face lit up at the mention of Charlie. “Is it alright if I come back with you? I said I’d see him today.”

  Knowing how chilly it was outside, I didn’t even care if she had ulterior motives for hanging out with me. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t suffered a spot of that, myself. All I wanted was to be back at home in the warm, with a big mug of marshmallowed hot chocolate and a book! “That’s fine, just hurry up and get a card,” I reminded her.

  “This’ll do,” she said haphazardly, already turned on to the next activity on her agenda. “Sporty Chick.” She checked inside the card. “Wishing a happy birthday to a Sporty Chick!”

  “Absolutely,” I agreed, and we rushed for the till before any other customers got in first and made us wait for our respective hot chocolate and (eww!) “hot” crush.

  * * *

  “Come on,” Devon coaxed. “You can’t keep that towel on forever!”

  “Oh, I can! I can keep it on ’til it dreads into my hair. Anything’s better than this grassy dogmuck colour!”

  “Grassy?” I couldn’t help smirking a little.

  “Yeah… he went to dye it bright green, but of course that didn’t work out because it’s naturally so dark.”

  Charlie sulked as Devon explained. He’d been shut inside the bathroom and she’d made everyone leave her alone downstairs so she could talk him down through the ample conversational space that was the hole in the bathroom floor (once again without tarpaulin) while he whinged and had a paddy ever since we’d arrived home fifteen minutes ago.

  “It was meant to be Fluorescent like it says on the tub!” he mourned. “Just like Otter’s. He didn’t say anything about bleaching it first, and now I’ve wasted all my pocket money!”

  Ah. Andy’s big cousin with the shocking green dreadlocks. If he’d looked anything like Andy when he started out (which I do recall he did, at least in the hair department), he was a strawberry blonde and wouldn’t have needed to prep his head.

  “Let me see,” I begged, the evil twin in me absolutely desperate to see (a slightly darker approximation of) how awful my own hair would look dyed green. “Oh, go on!”

  He went to shake his head- “No wa-” but the towel fell off and down onto the floor. (Devon swiped it swiftly.)

  His hair wasn’t bright fluorescent green, but it was definitely not dark brown. Still damp, it looked a murky compromise between black and green (“bleen”? “grack”?), like seaweed. In fact, in its long, dangling, tousled state,
it looked very much like seaweed indeed.

  “It’s not that bad,” I lied. “Almost cool…”

  “Almost cool?” Devon beamed. “It’s immensely cool and I want mine just like it!”

  “You don’t,” Charlie whimpered. “No girl will ever like me now! For who could ever love a Seaweed Boy?”

  Devon continued trying to coax him out. “Let’s go out and get you dyed back…”

  “I can’t leave the house!” he squinnied. “I’d just die!”

  “Well, I’ll go out and get the dye – you stay here. In fact, deal is, if I go straight out and get you some coverup, you make me a nice cuppa tea when I get back. Yes?”

  He bit his lip. “OK, but not blonde, and definitely not green. Actually, I’d like it black, please…”

  “Black?” I laughed. “Trust me; you do not need to become any more of a goth.”

  “Since when has having dark hair made anyone a goth?” He scowled. “I’m a ‘me’.”

  I could hear Zak yell through the bathroom door. “You can be a Mii when I get my Nintendo Wii! Just let me in!”

  “No…”

  “Why?”

  “I had a slight accident with a bottle of hairdye…”

  “Well, d’you want me to have a ‘slight accident’ on your pile of ugly grunge magazines?”

  Charlie creaked open the bathroom door and I watched Zak step into the bathroom. “I see what you mean. Not a good look for you. Not that there ever has been one,” he snarked.

  “Charlie?” Devon asked, as he emerged on our side of reality at the bottom of the stairs. “D’you want to join our sleepover?”

  “Devon!” I gasped. “I never said we were having a sleepover. And why would I want him invading my space? He can go elsewhere and be green! In fact, he can be green with Andy – I’ll even invite him over for you!”

  “No!” Charlie winced. “Not Andy! He’d never let me forget it. I’m going to bed.”

  “Oh Charlie, don’t,” Devon sighed, in a sickening way. “Come with us, please…?”

  And so I had to sit through a terrible joint playlist of favourite songs on Devon’s computer, while she cooed over, er, everything, and offered to straighten his hair for him.

  It was even worse dry, straight and green than it had been damp, straggly and green – I mean, straightened seaweed?

  #6 Smashing Sunday

  I’d got bored and gone home from the sleepover. It wasn’t like it took any more effort than ducking through the caved-in drywall of the one deep built-in wardrobe we now both shared.

  We didn’t see Charlie until Sunday lunchtime, when Devon had finally popped out for black hair dye and helped him stain her bathroom sink with it instead of ours, and he came bearing “good” news.

  The band had got a gig for the third of March. Already! As far as I was aware, Charlie hadn’t even got a guitar or microphone of his own, or even a musical bone in his body – although the lyrical front looked more promising than I’d dared hope.

  After lunch was another Kitty catastrophe. I’d nipped upstairs to the loo before doing the dishes, and when I returned, oh what I returned to! Several smashed plates all over the kitchen tiles, and the little sister boohooing away to herself in shock.

  So I had to get her to step around the broken china and into the living room and put the telly on, only to find that someone had left the volume turned right up from a DVD (who’d have thought a DVD player would have such a low volume setting of its own?) so it blasted horrendously until I could find the remote, and woke Mum and Harry up from their nap.

  They, of course, were drawn to the kitchen like disaster-seeking missiles – or rather, because the kitchen leads out into the living room through a big arched doorframe with no door.

  Even though it would’ve been much easier on everyone if I explained what happened, poor Kit looked so traumatised that I volunteered my own clumsiness as the explanation and felt my mum and step’s fiery wrath for what I’d “done”, but then it was all over and me and Kitty had a cuddle and stopped thinking about the broken plates.

  #7 Fountains Of Jordan

  “My party’s goin’a be AMAZING!” said Rachel excitedly, springing towards us in the canteen at first break on Wednesday.

  I hadn’t killed her on Monday morning for texting me on Friday night – in fact, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her since last week. Of course she had her other friends from J-band to brag to about the party, and I’d started to wonder how many people she would actually invite. (Prying Aussies should note that each year group in our school is split up into three timetable troops – J-band, P-band and S-band. I don’t know why they chose those letters, but it was probably because A sounds more important than C.)

  “So… how many people are coming?” asked Rindi, saying what I was thinking.

  “Well there’s you guys – that’s… four. Eight other girls and seven boys so far,” Rachel told us.

  Were Chantalle, Keisha and Dani any of those eight other girls? Would Jordy, another member of J-band, be one of the seven boys?

  “What’re you guys going to wear?” I asked, instead.

  “I didn’t get to the best part!” squealed Rach. “My auntie says they’ll have the pool cleaned by then! It’s heated, so it’ll still be fine this time of year.”

  I didn’t bank on it. I’m no good at scuba diving, or swimming with my head underwater, so I projected that I’d be spending a lot of time standing up in the shallow end trying not to freeze to death. Maybe I should bring a too-short jumper and a raincoat in that case – a sort-of poor girl’s wetsuit.

  “Amazing,” said Rindi, as if the prospect of an ice-cold upper half didn’t completely nullify the treat of a private swimming pool.

  “Yeah,” agreed Fern, looking all set to go off on a ramble about how great it must be to live in a house with a pool. “You’re so lucky, Rachel.”

  “I have the best bikini idea for this summer!” Dev practically interrupted. “Guess I’ll have to rush it for next week instead.”

  “And what is that?” asked Rachel, disapprovingly.

  “Ah,” said Devon, tapping her nose. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out…”

  Oh great, I thought. She was probably going to put two Tom and Jerry dentist stickers over her nipples, or fabric-dye bright smiley faces onto a white bra.

  “Anyway!” snapped Rachel, super-antsy about Devon stealing her thunder with a mysterious swimwear design. “I wasn’t done! We’re goin’a have a huge buffet and a disco in the lounge, and I’m ’avin’ two friends to ride around town in my uncle’s luxury car and one more outta you guys. Fight!”

  I didn’t know which of her J-band friends were so important that they got picks over us for a ride in her uncle’s car, but I didn’t like her attitude about it. She was getting practically Asta about the whole thing, openly pitting us against each other for perks.

  I decided not to get involved. If by some miracle she picked me after what happened to the cargo pants I borrowed, that would be great and all, but I wasn’t about to get my hopes up.

  “Thanks, Rach, but I don’t really care about a fancy car,” said Devon, smugly. Clearly she knew she’d be very last on the list of people Rachel would want to include in the special trip, but made sure to snub it anyway.

  Rindi and Fern looked awkwardly at me, as I hadn’t actually said anything about not wanting the extra seat, ’cause I didn’t want to sound ungrateful either. “I get car sick?” I said, weakly, even though that hadn’t been strictly true for a few months thanks to Harry and his smart-casual driving everywhere.

  “Well, I think it should be Fern because she’s so sweet and nice,” said Rindi, sickeningly, as if Rachel seemed to care which of our group was the kindest.

  Fern blushed. “Pick Rindi; she’s talented and so modest.”

  “I don’t want modest or nice,” snorted Rachel. “I want the person who’s the most fun. God, you guys! I try to stick up for you against Keish and Chan
talle, and then you’re all boring!”

  “Pick one of the other super-fun girls you’ve invited then,” sniped Devon. “What kind of car is it anyway that it’s such a special opportunity?”

  “Black cab,” said Rachel, resentfully. “It was really expensive!”

  Really expensive and looks a lot like a taxi…

  Devon burst out laughing. Her mouth opened to say something disdainful, but she kept quiet, probably in case Rachel decided to uninvite her too.

  Rachel went on some more about how classic her uncle’s car was, and how attractive the DJ they were hiring was, and how many smoke machines they’d hired, as if she’d singlehandedly picked and paid for every single one of those things, but my eyes wandered across the packed canteen.

  Jordy was at the other end of the balcony, messing around with two of his mates that weren’t Charlie and Andy. Maybe they were growing apart now that they weren’t in the same classes. Maybe he’d seen enough of them at rehearsals and preferred to pleb about with his J-band friends at school, now.

  I feasted my eyes on his perfect lips for a while, trying to imagine what he might be saying to the pair of lads. “Did you see the football?” “Don’t you think Angelina Jolie’s hot?” “You know that idiot twin sister of Charlie’s? She tried chatting me up on MSN the other day. She’s like a three – how can she think of going out with a ten like me?!”

  My face grew hot. It probably was the third one. He totally looked like he was in the middle of a hilarious story, too, and if the way pretty girls carried on was any indication of boys, it would be about that one particularly loserish loser who thought she had a shot with him…

  “Harley!” snapped Rachel. She waved a hand in front of my eyes. “I said chocolate fountain! How can you not be listening?!”

  “I was listening,” I lied. “I’ve always wanted a chocolate fountain. It’s so cool that you’re getting one.”

  “I’m not getting one,” she moaned. “It was too short notice to hire, and Argos is sold out. I knew you weren’t listening! It’s Jordy again innit? If you’re gonna be like that over him at the party, maybe you shouldn’t come.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t, I thought, privately. Whinging on about a chocolate fountain as if it was the end of the world – as if she wasn’t having a massive old birthday party for her fourteenth, all paid for by her aunt and uncle. It would be more than I’d ever get for my sweet sixteen, and it wasn’t like I expected to either. If she was going to carry on like this at the party, then maybe I really wouldn’t…