A Bended Family Read online

  Please don’t suggest email; we only just got broadband and so far I am strongly “anti”. I won’t write too much in case your English is as hopeless as my Spanish.

  TTFN (that means “tata for now” in Tiggerese like off Winnie The Pooh).

  I showed this to Kay later, and she hit me for saying the Mars thing. That was pretty dumb, since all the Spanish kids’ll know about that as soon as Alfonso passes around his letter. She had to take it back anyway once I’d proof-skimmed hers:

  Hi! My name’s Devon! That’s also a very scenic place in the south of Willy Wobbledagger Land. I live with my gran who’s not my gran, and my brother who’s not my brother (Ben), next door to a bunch of the best, coolest psychos – the Hartleys. I’m into fashion, art, drama, dance and hairdressing at the moment, and would very much lurve to cut your hair for you, if you have any. My favourite colour is pink – no, lilac – wait, silver. Or fuchsia. Or mageanta. I love the word,

  “ma-gen-ta”.

  Why do I bother with a favourite colour? My bedroom’s pink, lilac, silver, red, gold, green and any other colour you can think of.

  Devon Magenta X x X

  Good grief. Devon Magenta?? She’d even managed to spell this word she apparently loved wrong the first time, but somehow nailed “fuchsia” which even I struggle with.

  We laughed together for a good hour, picking holes in how unfunny and desperate we’d sounded (i.e. desperately unfunny) – until we came back down and realised that it was time to organise photos.

  Kay whipped out her best shot – her, standing on a bridge somewhere in… Devon, maybe? She had shoulder-length, brown layered hair not unlike my own, which was kind of blown back at the fringe by most likely the wind. (Unless someone was standing by with a modelling-grade fan, that is.) I realised that I had never actually seen the part of her hair that lived under the headscarf before.

  “Now for you!” She pounced.

  “Nooo…!” I moaned.

  “Yes. The homework said that you have to send a photo.”

  “Well, let’s cut one out of a magazine.”

  “We can’t. Your Gerard is Spanish, not stupid! He’ll be able to tell magazine paper whatever language it has on it.”

  I sighed. “Maybe I could… send a photo of you instead?”

  “Oh come on, Harley. Exactly how much prettier do you think I am anyway?”

  What a horrible way to ask for a compliment. I shrugged. “Quite a bit actually.”

  “But surely Gerardo and Alfonso are good mates? If they’re anything like us they’ll probably show the pictures around and we’ll be rumbled.”

  “But, if you lose all the makeup and funky hair-thingies and wear one of my T-shirts then you’ll look like a less frumpy, clumpy version of me,” I scrabbled, desperately.

  “I’ve got pierced ears and you haven’t. And I’m tanner. And I have brown eyes,” she pointed out.

  “You’ve got a septic nose piercing too.” I shrugged. “How is he going to notice at all? It’s not like we’ll ever meet up. And even if we did, I could always wear fake tan and coloured contacts and … magnetic piercings.”

  “So you’d be orange and cross-eyed and overally look like a badly-accessorised Sim.” She smirked.

  “Kay, please.”

  “Devon Magenta!”

  “Devon…”

  “No!” said Kay, firmly, hands reaching protectively for her skull.

  OK, that was weird. Had she sensed my suspicion about the bandana? Had I maybe been staring without meaning to? For all I knew she just suffered from relentlessly greasy roots, and secretly sniggered at me for not taking a leaf out of her paisley book. I suddenly felt unwelcome, and scuttled back to mine.

  * * *

  Rifling desperately through my holdall of memories, I found about a million photos of myself, but they were all too old. Our family had used to be big on photos – “capture every moment”, Mum always insisted. Even out of the admittedly young examples, all that I had were duffs. All the decent, well-focussed, non-blurry, non-fuzzy ones which depict “every moment” of Hartley life over the last thirteen years or so in abhorrent detail are crammed into albums somewhere.

  Mum’s photo albums should be labelled “explosive”, or “some scenes may be unsuitable for normal children”, or even “do not open if you suffer from a nervous disposition”. I’m in a right mind to tear “Parental Advisory” stickers off the boys’ CD collection to label the photo albums instead, for want of public safety.

  Note for Prying Aussies: They contain everything from a dodgy shot of me and Shelley and Charlie in the bath together, or a dog-eared snap of Zak spelling his name with holey sponge letters while sitting on the toilet (Z-A-K was how he spelt it, and that’s how it’s stayed) – to properly sentimental moments like me and Shells playing on a swing in the park, or all of us piling onto Mum and Dad’s bed in the morning with her full of mumsy love and him still full of beer when Kitty was about one and a half.

  I truly doubt if Mum’s even looked at those albums for a good two years at least. Not since she chucked Dad. I would volunteer to go through and separate all the pictures of him, but I half feel like she’d slap me for bringing it up.

  I needed a photo, and quickly. I hadn’t a clue where Mum kept the albums, and undoubtedly she’d never let me borrow anything to send away. Besides, all of the pics were more than two years old, and although I don’t exactly resemble a young Kylie Minogue now, I’m fairly sure that I was none better-looking in Year 6.

  In the end, I was so sick of rummaging through piles of (gladly) buried memories that I just unpinned the precious photobooth shot of us three musketeers about six months (and half a century) ago, and cut around myself with scissors. It felt like ripping us apart, even though we were still hugging in the rest of the little boxes. Needs must when half an hour of your life is on the line for a no-homework detention.

  I rewrote Gerardo’s letter, leaving out the crossed-out real-name bit and the Winnie The Pooh reference, just in case it sounded silly or iffy or babyish, rather than sarky and kind of cool. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to tell when Gerardo was being sarcastic, even with Rachel’s help, so it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to get my sense of humour either. I tossed in the cut-out me, and sealed the envelope before I had second thoughts about the spotty photo, the contents of the letter, or indeed ever resurfacing from my memory-strewn room.

  #11 Kay & Everyone, Sitting In A Tree…

  Anything but break, my brain buzzed as we poured out of the Science block thirty at a time.

  It wasn’t because I’d just had the biggest shock of my life. (Well, since the Big Shock about Aimee nearly being preggers but actually just being a cow, and the Big Shock about Mum and Harry, and the Big Shock about you and Australia, anyway.) Neither was it because I’d just mindlessly gone along with a plan that could only end in tears. (Not mine.) But it was because the one individual I never hoped to find joining me in Science (I mean after Michael Jackson, or some other such person I wouldn’t know whether to love or loathe) had just become annoyingly obvious. Now I would never get my precious twenty minutes of relaxation.

  We’d been having a ridiculous conversation. By “ridiculous” I mean the kind of news that you do not need to hear on a Tuesday morning with the whole week ahead of you.

  Chantalle had begun the conversation with her “I really wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but I really reckon you should know…” line that is usually suffixed by a stressed “…the sale at New Look is over!” or “…that film we wanted to see finished last week!”

  Problem was, this time it ended with “…especially you, Harley!”

  I just thought, Oh God, not another hypothetical pregnancy freakout please! But what I said (or sighed) more closely resembled, “Spill…”

  “Well…” Chan winced. “I kinda have a crush on your … um … brother…” She paused to twirl her meticulously ironed red hair around her finger. My mind wandered already to the tho
ught that she was risking making it curly again. “And I was wondering … if you could maybe ask him out for me…?”

  “Erm … whaaat?” I squeaked, brain so jellied from the whole list of abbreviated chemical names in front of me that I thought first of Zak, probably playing his PSP under the table at Primary as we spoke.

  “Charlie,” she added, blushingly.

  I could’ve sworn I heard somebody mumble “What?” but I couldn’t be sure or even sure-ish, as I was too busy choking on the Skittles I’d stashed in my pencilcase and had been surreptitiously slipping into my mouth as the lesson progressed, even though it is Number One Crime to eat in the school Sci-labs.

  “You fancy my brother … and you want me to ask him out for you?”

  It was beyond belief. Chantalle, Queen Bee Wannabe, joint most gorgeous in our friend group, had a crush on Charlie? Charlie who was best described as bony, hairy and awkward, lived in the same T-shirt all week, and seemed to think hiding behind his mouse brown hair made him invisible. Back in maybe Year 6 I’d thought it possible, but now?

  “Yes!” she hissed, with genuine embarrassment. “Not so loud though!”

  I couldn’t see why not – we were all sat around in a sort of lazy circle, slouched over the waxy, graffiti’d, old wooden desks in a manner that the equally lethargic cover teacher could do nothing about. We’d had this flurry of teacherly absences since half term, what with Mr Palmer’s broken foot (school ski holiday) and Mr Smithson’s paternity leave, along with other things.

  Danielle spluttered. “It didn’t sound so ridiculous when she told me a few weeks ago…”

  “Yeah, Chan.” Kay grinned. “What do you know about the whole emo thing anyway?”

  “Not a jot,” she sniffed, before turning to face me full-on. Chan’s evil eye is enough to make anyone sweat. “That’s why I was going to ask you who his favourite bands are.”

  “Uh…” I faltered. Sure, I knew; he never shut up about some of them, but that never-shutting-up was enough to let me know that no amount of skimreading Kerrang! in the newsagent or hanging around Hex Records would be able to make her into a Grunge / Metal / Emo / Dying Cat expert as quickly as she was hoping. “Well, Avenged Sevenfold is the main one. Bullet For My Valentine, Aiden, My Chemical Romance, 30 Seconds To Mars, Trivium, New Found Glory, Queen, Placebo, Lostprophets-”

  “Stop!” snapped Chantalle, shaking her head confusedly. “Did you just speak Alien or something? I figured, like, Green Day, Red Hot Chillis or Nirvana…”

  I rolled my eyes. “Way too obvious. But y’know what, Green Day would probably be a good start. Don’t throw yourself in at the deep end. Right now, even My Chemical Romance would shock you into a hearse.”

  Speaking of My Chem, I thought I could hear a faint murmur of the start of one of their songs coming from behind. But when we came in, that desk had been empty.

  It could’ve been chronic latecomers Scott, Joe and Marco – they always seem to be singing something to distract us. Football chants with people’s mums’ names swapped in, usually. I was about to yell “For froth’s sake, shut up!” when I realised that I recognised the annoying, manchildian voice mumbling the infamous “Welcome To The Black Parade”.

  “Charlie, would you please cut it out?” I grumbled, swizzling my head round to evileye him. To the best of my ability, I’d put it out of mind that he and Andy had been transferred into our teaching band a week ago. It wasn’t so hard, most of the time – when there was no poking or singing, that is.

  “Why…?” he asked, cocking his head to one side as if he thought it was endearing. (It wasn’t. Not to me anyway.)

  “’Cause we’re trying to have a conversation, and it doesn’t need a funeral march in the background. It’s dire enough having to talk about this already.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Never mind. Just shh.”

  “Who’s going to make him?” asked Andy, who was sat beside Charlie.

  “Me.”

  “And what army?”

  “Oh, only this one…” I waved an arm nonchalantly at my group of friends which outnumbered them pretty well at four to two.

  “Yeah, and can any of them be bothered to help?” Andy seemed to blush with excitement at being able to argue with someone instead of study the periodic table.

  I glanced at the girls, who should have been ready to back me up. Instead, they were busy sighing over some kind of heartthrob sauntering out of a class across the way.

  “Hel­-lo?” I prompted. “You guys?”

  “Family argument; deal with it,” said Chantalle, with a shrug. Erm, who was just nagging me for the deets on Charlie’s latest fandoms? She’d known Andy not much less time than we had, too, so it was rich coming from her. It was unlike Chan not to be begging for a bitchfest, so that guy outside had to be pretty fit. Something about Charlie’s presence, or Keisha’s non-presence, or both, was affecting her behaviour big time. “Your snotty brother, right.”

  The look on Charlie’s face was one of hurt and confusion. Well, it was about to get hurtier and more confuzzled…

  I gave him a reassuring smile. “While you’re there – since you’ve finished with Malice now, I mean – would you like to go on a date with Chantalle?”

  Honestly, judging by his behaviour at home the last few days, I was expecting a response along the lines of “I will never be finished with Malice”, or “Love is for the stupid”. What he came out with next surprised even me, his oldest acquaintance.

  “Would I ever?!” he gasped. It was like his eyes popped out of their sockets. Like a thought bubble zapped up and said “Rebound Girlfriend!!” in his x-dotted “i” handwriting. “I mean… yeah. I’ll check my busy, busy schedule and see if I’m free. Just, y’know, for one date.”

  Ha. Turning on the Zak-patented charm didn’t suit him at all.

  “Tallie…” I smirked. “Charlie says it’s a yes!”

  What do you know? Maybe there is hope for the hopeless – i.e. boys who know only half the lyrics to songs they insist on singing and find out they have to make it “carry on” about a zillion times more than Gerard Way thought were required. Chan and Charlie were most welcome to each other.

  But past Charlie and Andy, I realised with a jolt who the boy my friends had been gawping at was. Jordy. Jordy disappearing into the distance with his Adidas ruckie.

  Meltdown…

  * * *

  “I’m starting to fancy everyone recently…” Kay mumbled.

  “Example?” I huffed, so sick of relationship speculation that I’d practically got the nots for Jordan Johnson.

  “Oh… Jordy.”

  “Everyone likes Jordy.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not one person at a time like it’s supposed to be. Your brother too.”

  “Whaaat? I can’t have all my mates going goggle-eyed over Charlie!” I grumped. “He’s not all that.” (What caught on my tongue was: “I don’t think he’d bathe at all if he didn’t still wet his bed.”)

  “Yeah, Charlie, but Zak as well. I mean, I know he’s ten, but you know when you notice that someone’s attractive?”

  “Huhhh?” I managed. Yes, I was aware that lots of people thought Zak attractive. Auntie Sharon called him her little Casanova because of all the girls his own age he pulled. It wasn’t something you said, though! I could tell that Chan got her looks from her mother, but I sure as heck didn’t fancy her or her mum.

  “Not, like, a lot. It’s just, everybody’s so appealing to me at the moment.”

  I found myself edging my way off the bed where we’d been sat together, and collapsing onto her pink beanbag. I’m no homophobe, but there’s such thing as a wrong frame of mind for dealing with a new and zany friend’s sudden bicuriosity.

  “Not you!” she giggled. “The male everybody.”

  “Hendrix is male,” I mused, choking down the awful idea of having to admit to fancying your best friend’s sexually frustrated dog. “And some of the cats, and a few of the guinea p
igs, but it’s hard to tell with them.”

  “People, Harley!”

  “Oh… I thought I might have somebody to confide in there,” I joked. “It’s this pet rock I’ve had for several years now, y’see, and um, I’m worried that I might have feelings for him.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Oh, yeah!” added Ben from the doorway. “And I’m slightly concerned that I might be on the turn – it’s this male hamster I used to have, and he’s been dead for about five years…”

  “Shut up!”

  “Ben!” I cried, totally into the swing. “You’d better stop leaving those socks on your floor – I’m beginning to fancy them!”

  That was when a smallish-largish lummox of a dog burst out from behind Ben, who grinned. (Maybe he was looking at his rebound boyfriend, meant to make that dead hammy jealous.) “Meet Bilbo.”

  The Border Collie bounded up onto the bed, licking Kay maniacally. Ben’s grin widened.

  “Hey, geddoffomeee, Bilbo!” protested Kay.

  With a whistle and a bound, Bill and Ben were off out for a lovely romp around the park, and the ludicrous conversation continued:

  “On second thoughts, who needs them? Boys, I mean… they’re great to look at, but when you live with them like we do, they seem a tad… y’know, tiresome.”

  “Tell me about it!” agreed Kay. “I think the only solution would be to fancy someone dead.”

  “Charlie’ll be dead if he doesn’t treat Chan right,” I joked. “Then again, much as I hate him right now, she’ll be a goner if she hurts him like Malice did.”

  “No, I meant someone famous and dead,” she stressed. “No cheating; no mess; no lies; no worrying about whether they like you back.”

  “But you’d never know!” I laughed. “And exactly how much chance would you have of getting to be Elvis Presley’s number one fan, when you never saw him alive?”

  “Did I mention Elvis?”

  “Did you mean The Beatles?”

  “They’re not all dead yet,” she pointed out, in no way acknowledging that four boyfriends would be bliss.

  “Kurt Cobain? You could have Fern’s dad – he looks sort-of the same…”

  “He’s alive and about forty!”

  “Kurt?”

  “Fern’s dad.”

  “You could have Hendrix…”