Angry Coral Week Read online

  “I meant seriously.”

  “I really don’t know. If I knew what kids’ names I liked, I would’ve asked Mum to use them, just to be safe…”

  #4 Follow The Little White Lie…

  “Humph,” I groaned, accidentally dislodging a teetering pile of Desperate Housewives / The O.C. / whatever DVDs with my crutch. I felt myself flinch and the horrible sensation of a dead arm as the unclothed funny-bone-area of my elbow made harsh contact with Danielle’s living room wall.

  I surreptitiously leant over from the sofa to pile the stack back into place, hoping she hadn’t noticed. Well, it would’ve been some mean feat to have done, when she was over in the kitchen, fumbling for some Jammy Dodgers, and companionably arguing with her mother.

  Prying Aussies should note that she and her Estate Agent mother are probably as close as mothers and daughters get, but that doesn’t excuse the one, slightly out-of-the-ordinary factor that makes Dani that little bit wary of letting her mum into any sleepover/tea party/DVD-watching/other mate-type occasion environment: Miss Dimon’s tendency towards slight… er… nosiness where us girls are concerned…

  “Oh, Harley!” she beamed, noticing the recipient of the packet of Jammy Dodgers. “Haven’t seen you in a while! Now, how did you manage that? Oh, it’ll be so good for us three girls to have a little catch-up!”

  The “that” she’d been on about had been accompanied by an eyeball-motion towards my leg, and if I was right, the emphasis on most of her words had not been imagined…

  “Chan and that’ll be here in a minute, Mum!” said Danielle, in an attempt to ward her off.

  “Well! One more won’t matter! Break out the nachos and slip that DVD in!”

  “But Mum-”

  “‘But Mum’ what?” Miss Dimon sighed. “I’m not old, Dani, I’m thirty! You saw that big old wine and cheesecake scoff me and the girls from work had on Saturday!”

  Dani exploded. It still caught me off guard when my usually self-conscious and mumbly mate went off on one about her mother’s annoying interventions.

  “Look, Mum, when ‘the girls from college’ become ‘the girls from work’, that is when you quit: a) referring to them as ‘girls’, and b) inviting them round to discuss your failing relationships, when your teenage daughter is simultaneously trying to maintain a social life!”

  As you can tell from the thirty/fourteen thing going on, Danielle’s mum (Chantalle’s dad’s sister) was pretty young when she had her. I privately think that this loss of some of the best years of her life to pooey nappies and baby barf might have something to do with her lack of a long-term partner and her general, intolerable teenageness…

  “So, Harley, have you got a boyfriend, yet?” Miss Dimon continued, ignoring her daughter-cum-on/off-best-friend in the same manner as Keisha or Chantalle might just to make a point.

  “No,” I replied, wistfully, wishing I didn’t have to be caught up in this, but at least momentarily immobilised by the fact that it wouldn’t exactly be a stealth mission to the door of the flat, with this annoyingly vital pair of sticks. “But I’m sure Keisha will have some exploits to describe…”

  The last bit had been a classic “pass the responsibility to someone who won’t notice” trick, in that Keisha tends to volunteer information on her relationships to anyone who asks. Oh, that and the terrible fact that Dani’s mother is capable of standing there yakking pointlessly ’til “the girls from work” become “the girls from Bingo”. We’re on about a woman who still goes clubbing on more than just the odd ancient friend’s hen night…

  The doorbell went, and Dani and I breathed comfortably for the first time as Miss Dimon and her Lacoste perfume disappeared to let whoever in.

  Fern appeared before us, a vision in violet leggings and a pink Pikachu T-shirt (since her boyfriend Aarón professed to be obsessed). “Hi, guys…”

  “Omigod, it’s been ages since I last saw you, Fern! Have you gone up a bra-size or something? You. Look. Amazing!” Dani’s mum burst out, instead of the usual, mumsy, “welcome into our house, remember to take your shoes off, and do sit down – I’ll be through with tea and biccies in a mo” you’d expect from a mate’s mum.

  Fern blushed and mumbled, “I don’t think so…”

  “Well, you should learn to love yourself… hmm, says me!” Dani’s mum giggled. “I rarely step off the scales!”

  I internally rolled my eyes, wishing she’d just finish tarting herself up and go out on the town, painting it pink. (Or whatever colour her perfume was when concentrated.)

  She wasn’t done: “Hang on, Fern – I was meaning to ask: did you get your period yet?”

  Fern’s face looked strangely reminiscent of that handsome postbox sticking out of the wall of my front garden – i.e. an unattractive shade of red (but sans the peely-bits). “Um… no… well… uh… just… no, I guess…”

  And all of a sudden she was rescued from that embarrassing question by the arrival of Keisha and Chantalle, who Dani’s mum rushed off to welcome/intimidate.

  “H-how did your Mum know I h-hadn’t…?” Fern asked Dani, with a confused look.

  “Er, y’know she has this… uh… habit of asking me everything I didn’t care to know about my friends? Well, that was last week’s subject. It started off fairly plain, y’see, like who’s gone the furthest with a boy, but I thought I’d shut her up by saying, ‘for God’s sake, Mum, we’re not really old enough to be ready for that!’ and that you hadn’t even started, just to prove a point…”

  “Oh…” Fern was slowly chameleonising herself back to the fleshlike colour of the drape on the back of the sofa, sounding as if she had already decided to let it drop.

  Keisha and Chantalle appeared, and Dani’s mum reappeared, looking like she was armed with a thousand “drink/drug/kiss/sex??” questions for them, but her mobile rang, and she disappeared, leaving us all to ourselves for a few minutes, before returning after a while with newly let in (fresh blood?) Rachel and Rindi:

  “Y’know, I had the brilliant idea that we could all play truth or dare!”

  We all cringed at the prospect of “what was the cruellest thing you ever considered doing to an annoying friend or family member?” and Danielle attempting to keep a straight face while describing the naked-bungee-jumping-over-a-cactus-field package holiday she’d booked her (s)mother, or how she’d traded the flat in for a haunted house over an ancient Indian burial ground, on her mum’s own Estate Agency website, alongside having made long-term plans to move in with her cousin…

  “Um, actually, Mum, I invited them all here to do some last-minute revision…” Danielle improvised.

  “Oh, I’ll help you!”

  “Well… there’s no need to do that, because-”

  “Nonsense! It’s about time I brushed up on my French!”

  “We take Spanish -except Rachel- and there isn’t a SAT in Modern Foreign Language; tomorrow’s test is Science, by the way,” Dani tried to explain. “Face it; you don’t know what being our age is all about…”

  “Dani, how many times do I have to tell you I’m not old?! I’m sure most of you guys have parents older than me, huh?”

  Yeah, my mum and stepdad are forty-three-going-on-faulty, not thirty-going-on-thirteen…

  “It doesn’t matter, Mum,” Danielle sighed, having given in to her obviously abnormal/insane mother. “Stay if you must, fail my homework for me, we’ll just-”

  And Oh… My… God, I’d never been so pleased to hear the tinkle of my phone going off in my pocket. “Hello?”

  “S’me, Devon – where are you?”

  I glanced around the room, in a kind-of “shh” way. “I’m not anywhere much, Devon…”

  I’d enunciated the last word, so that the rest of the company would know I hadn’t let her know we’d gathered.

  She sounded a little bemused. “You’re not at home; I was just helping Charlie with his revision, and he said you’d gone to Dan-”

  “Don’t listen to my idiot of a
brother – I’m not at Danielle’s, I’m… I’m… shopping… with Aimee!”

  “You’re shopping at eight in the evening with your stepsister who is currently lying in bed at home with a headache? Omigod, why didn’t you tell me? I’d be so eager to come along, too; I love pretend games of far-fetch and follow-the-little-white-lie!”

  “Devon, it’s not like-”

  “You could’ve just mentioned that you were seeing the girls! I wouldn’t’ve come anyway, because I think convincing Charlie he’s got a brain in there somewhere is far more fulfilling –in a community service kind of way– than reruns of Smallville or whatever…”

  Beep.

  Uncharitable as it sounds, I couldn’t care about Devon. As she’d made perfectly clear, she had more time for Charlie than she had for me – which part of that (in a normal life) meant that I was banned from seeing other people?

  “Me first!” hooted Keisha at the click of the bathroom door. “You know Sean? Well I found out why they call him Sean the Bean!”

  Other than their utter failure to pronounce his name? I wondered.

  Dani’s eyes widened in anticipation. She’d definitely got the gossip gene – it was just that she was nowhere near as annoying about it.

  “Go on…” said Rindi.

  “My mum went away to a training thing, and he came back to mine, and we were kissing and stuff. Well he got his hand and-”

  Even Keisha stopped short and lowered her tone at the sound of the loo flushing. She leant and whispered to Chantalle, who whispered to Rindi, who whispered to Fern, who went crimson again and whispered to Dani, who giggled and whispered to Rachel, who whispered to me, “He rubbed her out.”

  I was pretty sure the whispers hadn’t got to the point of Chinese. If she wasn’t careful, he’d tear through her paper with his jumbo eraser!

  I studied my friends’ faces. Going back round the vague circle, Rachel sat with a steely expression that said she wouldn’t want anyone to think she was fazed. Dani still had her hands cupped over her mouth as if to prevent further chuckles leaking out. Fern had accepted her promotion from postbox to London bus, Rindi looked nervous, and Chantalle was nibbling her no-longer glossy lip. Keisha was beaming. It was alright for her. Considering it all, I envied her confidence but at the same time, because I’m not confident, I couldn’t help feeling sort of glad I wasn’t the pencilcase type.

  “What?” scoffed Keisha. “It was good. Who’s next?”

  “Um…” squeaked Fern. “Aarón sent me a Lord of the Rings poster.”

  “Boring!” was the reply. “Anyone got anything juicy?”

  Oh, I’m sure if Devon had been invited we’d at least have an ice-breaker. Instead, we sat in jittery silence, all daring each other to open her mouth next. I decided to bite.

  “I could tell you the full story of how I hurt my ankle,” I offered, although I didn’t really want to elaborate on my period furbrain or weird heroic Harry-carry to the car.

  “Meh…” said Chan. “I met this guy, Tom.”

  “Oooooooh,” went Keish and Dani.

  “He’s starting college in September.”

  “Oooooooooooooooh!”

  Egged on by the oohing, Chantalle continued. “He’s got floppy brown hair and these chocolate eyes where you just melt with them. I swear he’s nearly six foot.”

  “You know what they say about a six-footer,” said Keisha, though I didn’t.

  That they need six football boots? I thought desperately to myself, definitely wishing for Dev.

  “I hope!” Chan enthused in return. “He must be really experienced.”

  “It grows with experience,” Keisha snickered.

  What?! That couldn’t be true. Else movie stars would be packing eighty inches and you’d see them dragging it along the ground. She had to be joking.

  Chan did look a little put off.

  “Are you gonna do it?” asked Dani, still through her hand.

  “I might,” she replied, stiffly. “If he’s good enough for me.”

  She was having a laugh, right? Just last month she and Keisha had turned fourteen, and with a snap of the fingers they’d transformed into the sort of people who would be walking this week into future-warping GCSEs – not SAT exams! That they were even wasting valuable revision time considering sex was sort of beyond me…

  #5 Donuts, Peanuts & Hard, Hard Tests

  Here it was: Tuesday, the 8th of May.

  We were all stood outside the big Sports Hall, looking up our names on the charts on the wall. (They were written especially for us shambolic Hartley children, who hadn’t retained a single scrap of our letters home – although it had been due to Eminem nibbling and then weeing on the papers and them being chucked out.)

  “Harley Hartley…” I mumbled to myself, as if I was likely to forget my name during the stressful process of seeking it on the large noticeboard, past the heads of a tonne of other disorganised people.

  “You’re there,” said Charlie, playing with his hair. “Behind me; I’m a C Hartley and you’re an M Hartley.”

  “We’re the only Hartleys, you doofus,” I pointed out, shaking with the realisation that I’d forgotten to look for my birth name. “And I know you’re first in the alphabet.”

  The chattered, blathered, wittered whatnot of Year 9’s nervous conversation was getting to me. Usually, me and my friends were as chattery, blathery and wittery as the rest of them, but today, me and Charlie specifically were not wired for it.

  The cooling-fan in my brain started to whir, and I was praying that I wouldn’t faint from the heat and the noise and the bustle of students; it was like the entire, gossipy collection of elderly Tuesday-shoppers from the town market had congregated for an eyelash-batting, ear-battering, head-spinning circle-pit. Charlie didn’t look much better, and I hoped for his sake that he wasn’t going to get a nosebleed. (He’d managed to have four since spring started.)

  Thu-thud!

  The double doors to the Sports Hall simultaneously burst open, and a teacher/adjudicator-type whom I’d never seen before ushered us through.

  We took our clear pencilcases out of our bags (well OK, mine and Charlie’s were actually little sandwich bags, since neither of us had a clear pencilcase), which we left in the corridor outside the next set of doors, inside which was the actual hall (it’s accessible at both sides, with A-to-M entering on the left), which we paused outside.

  “Wish me luck,” Devon said to Charlie.

  “Luck.” He smiled back.

  “Luck from me, too,” I said.

  “I haven’t forgiven you,” she told me, but still put my bag down safely for me, since I couldn’t easily bend over with crutches. “But oh well. Luck to you two…”

  “Which side’s G?” Andy asked, appearing beside us.

  “This side,” shrugged Charlie, nonchalantly as he could be with nervously vibrating arms.

  Devon hugged both of us, leaving Andy bemused.

  “And in we go!” I squeaked, following the throngs through Door A-to-M.

  Me and Charlie were luckily at the front of our column (which wasn’t actually H), so I sat down behind him and waited for the rest of the Year to settle down.

  “Does anyone still have a mobile phone on them?” asked a permed woman in a cardigan, from the front. She held out a box marked “phones”.

  Nope, me and my friends hadn’t been that dumb – we’d left them at home, instead of running the risk of: a) confiscation, or b) leaving them unattended in our bags outside.

  Nonetheless, several people (make that loads of people) tripped up to the front with their various Nokias and Sagems and Motorolas, taking the opportunity to make it patent who had the coolest mobile. I wondered how many of them might “accidentally” leave with the wrong phone at the end of the test…

  “…or mp3 players?” she continued, in a slightly stricter than strict voice, producing a second box, marked… um… guess what?

  Charlie turned around and gave me an odd
look, before getting up with a rebellious scrape of the chair, and plopping his cheaply bought “Gateway to Sevenfold” into the box.

  Another someone we didn’t recognise appeared at the board at the front, and instructed us on where to put such things as a name (I hadn’t forgotten mine, by the way; how could I possibly?), and waited for the clock to tick over to a precise minute and jotted the start-time down on the whiteboard: “You have one hour for Science Paper One, you may begin…”

  Flick, flick, flick… I sensibly eyed up all the questions, mentally figuring out how long they’d approximately take to do, and then began with the first (deliberately but not deceivingly easy) one…

  * * *

  “Guhhh… what did you think of that?” I addressed my mates.

  “Challenging, I think is the word,” said Devon.

  “And why?” Keisha snorted.

  “Because it was difficult in places.”

  “In places!” Charlie groaned. “It was hard all over!”

  “Why’s he here, anyway?” Keisha moaned.

  “Because… well…” he mumbled, uneasily. He clearly felt intimidated by the gang of girls surrounding him. “I…”

  “You…?” I prompted.

  “Fancy one of us?” Chantalle sniggered.

  “Have a confession to make?” Danielle guessed.

  “Are my father?” Rachel joked.

  “No!” he squealed. “I… I… was… carrying Harley’s bag for her, and… and somehow ended up with you guys…”

  “He did,” Devon backed him up.

  “Oh, well – how’s your band coming along?” Rindi asked, politely feigning interest.

  “F-fine…” he replied, bemused. “Andy and Jordy went to play football; chill out before the afternoon’s repeat torture. I didn’t really fancy footie, so I thought I’d-”

  “Aww…” Devon smiled, hand-feeding him a bunch of her crisps. “A little babe, isn’t he…”

  “A little babe is what Mum’s gonna be holding in a couple of days,” he said, ickily innocently.

  “Oh! Oh! Yeah!” Danielle bubbled. “Can I see the latest scan?!”

  I opened my mouth to ask Devon to get it out of my bag (she was now holding it, instead of Charlie), but she was already digging:

  “I can’t find it!”

  “In the pocket… no, not that one, the other one! The other one…” I blurted, seeing her open the one I keep my pads in, and desperately wanting my brother not to see – for some reason.