A Bended Family Read online

  “What’s happened to you then?” I asked, playing the caring, slightly older sister. My thoughts last night had really got to me, to the point that my twin brother’s happiness was almost more important than whether a Spanish boy thought I was pretty.

  He glared at me. “Just saw Mal. She’s got a gig tonight. I said maybe I could be a songwriter for her band. Said, ‘I won’t play – I swear’. She said ‘You can’t play – I swear’. So I’m plotting to get back with her. She’s so-”

  “She doesn’t like you,” I pointed out, trying to drive in the truth like a proverbial sun-topped letter-opener, as subtlety has always been a clear underdose where he’s concerned.

  “We went out before,” he reasoned. “She must think I’m cute.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She thought you were the next Jimi Hendrix.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not having one of Ceri’s little friends join them and get all the fame. Ceri herself is bad enough.”

  “Ceri’s her little sister. You won’t get anywhere if you’re jealous of your crush’s sister!”

  “You can talk!” he crowed. “You’ve never even been out with anyone!”

  “There was that day with Stephen King,” I defended, thinking of a kid I’d once met on a school trip to the Historic Dockyard who had bought me a Solero. We should’ve exchanged addresses and become penpals.

  “He was eight years old and had a namesake. You were ten and you didn’t even kiss him.” He spoke as if he thought “having a namesake” was some kind of contagious disease.

  “Yeah, but I’m a girl. Girls know all this sort of stuff. We pool our experiences so we don’t need to have them all.”

  He shrugged. “According to Zaccy I’m a girl. And I never hear you and your friends talking about actual experiences with actual boys.”

  We hadn’t let him hear the half of it. Chantalle and Keisha’s conquests would have given him nightmares. “Great idea,” I decided. “Pretend to be a girl, for just five minutes.”

  “Can I borrow a T-shirt?”

  “No. I said pretend; not cross dress.”

  He still reached for Kitty’s mini-dice hairbands which were lying suspiciously on his bedside table, hopefully left over from the talent show, and fixed his hair into two very rushed little pigtails.

  “My name’s Charlotte. Charlotte pudding to you!” Charlie fluttered his enviously long eyelashes at the wardrobe as he spoke.

  “What are you-?”

  He blushed, obviously feeling silly after all. “That’s me pretending to be a girl. I don’t want you to talk to me like I’m a girl anyway. I have that stupid City Life Poem homework to get on with.”

  Charlie probably wasn’t used to having to write poetry for homework. Prying Aussies should note that he hadn’t been in any of my classes since Year 6, and he hadn’t had my luck. His last Maths teacher used to slap a book on the desk and not care if they peeked at the answers in the back.

  “It’s not stupid,” I said. “I bet if it was meant to be about troops of emo zombies staggering off into the sunset you wouldn’t find it so boring.”

  He pouted, knowing I was taking the mickey out of him. “What’ve you written?”

  I tripped back to my room and pulled out my English book. I was mildly proud of my work, even though I’d only got four lines into it so far:

  Between the people, the young child weaves

  Mother follows, barefoot in leaves

  Amber streetlights, a welcoming glow

  Things these homeless do not know.

  “That’s so depressing,” he moaned. “I’ll just go and copy from a CD case.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “I can. How many teachers so far’ve been Aiden fans?”

  “You never know…” I warned, thinking of Mr Wordsworth and the odd gothic pendant I’d spotted slip out from his shirt. (Not because I was looking at his chest or anything.) “I’ll help you.”

  “Not about homeless people though,” he said, sullenly. “Seriously, I’ll only feel sorry for them and end up making up a happy ending with unicorns.”

  I giggled. “OK. Not a sad homeless city poem – how about a happy Christmas one?”

  “Can’t be bothered to think about Christmas yet.”

  “Well Easter’s too far off. A poem about fireworks in the night’s sky? That’s topical.”

  “Meh. It’d be a poem about the dogs getting scared and crying the house down.”

  “Halloween?” I smirked, tugging out the mini dice hairbands and gesturing to his magazine-tearout MCR poster.

  “I guess.”

  “OK,” I improvised. “So there’s a park at night, and some teenagers have just come out of the cinema because they were seeing the latest Saw movie-”

  “DON’T MENTION SAW!!” he protested, ripping out the middle page of my book without asking and diving into his schoolbag for a pen. He sat down cross-legged on the carpet and started to scrawl away. “In fact, I have it – you can leave now.”

  Charming.

  “Show me when you’re done!” I called over my shoulder as I headed for my own room.

  “I am done.”

  “Already?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can I see?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s for Malice.”

  “It’s for Mr Wordsworth.”

  “But this is my new song; she can have it right now!”

  “She’ll be leaving for the gig.”

  “She can have it tomorrow then. I’ll just tuck it in with my Geography stuff so I don’t forget.”

  He wouldn’t forget. Knowing him, he’d be lying awake thinking of Malice all night, and somehow remember the poem and forget his Geography book.

  #16 Goodybe, Dog-Slobbered Dreams

  A bitched yell just came from the hallway. “What’s in Layla’s mouth?!” On the upside, there’s finally silence in the living room, now that I’m done writing this. There’s been the constant hum of the TV (Aimee chattering a running commentary as if I’m not busy), Charlie moaning about how he’s “caught” The Ginger from Chantalle, and Zak lounging around as loudly as possible (he insists that the sound effects on his DS make the game). Upstairs in our room there’s always Kitty narrating her school preoccupations through the Punch And Judy And Bratz medium. (She made me write what she was saying instead of what Kay said about four times.) “A stupid sodding letter! Harley!”

  Better go and see what’s up. I must have dropped my letter from Gerardo in haste to show off that brilliant poem three days ago (which turned out less-than-stellar for the other three stanzas). Until I had to write that last bit, I’d totally forgotten he even replied! Playing hard to get might just be an accident where I’m concerned.

  A happy ending, perhaps. Aside from the fact that if Layla’s found that, she’s probably eaten that pointy letter-opener and needs seeing to ASAP – my dreams of finding out if a Spanish lad thinks I might look marginally OK may have just been dashed in a chewy, drooly mess.

  P.S. Probably never try to plan a wedding in a timescale you can measure in weeks. It’ll most likely turn out that someone (in this case Harry) had it covered all along.

  P.P.S. Definitely make sure you have some idea what job you want to get, because that PSHE lesson is coming soon to a school near you…

  T.T.F.N. Harley & Co – (“Co” stands for “a niggling Aimee and something sharp sticking in the back of my head”. Maybe it’s the spiky hair-bobble that Kay brought round earlier – good grief.)

  The next book in the recommended reading order is: While Shepherds Washed My Socks

  Connect With Me Online:

  Website:

  https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk

  Personal Blog:

  https://muzzyheadedme.tumblr.com

  Facebook:

  https://facebook.com/dilliedorianofficial

  About The Author:

  Dillie Dorian is an English author of child and YA realist
ic 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!