I don’t like to waste food, but there was no way I could force down any more of those dolphins, so I smiled again and said, “They won’t mind if you eat them. You eat chicken drumsticks and nuggets and turkey shapes and ham, and those are made of real animals.”
“But the turkey shapes aren’t turkey-shaped, and I don’t eat the ham that’s cut into piggies, and chickens don’t actually have nuggets – I know that now. Like with the fish fingers, it’s a metamaphor.”
I’d never thought of fish fingers and chicken nuggets as a metaphor before. I wondered if that would’ve helped in my SATs, but decided not to dwell on the idea of my previously-thought-to-be-mentally-challenged sister potentially besting me at my top subject. Besides, I didn’t think it was strictly a metaphor, but Kitty had to have some grasp of the meaning or she wouldn’t have said it.
“I suppose so,” I said. “So what’re you gonna do with all the animals?”
“Well I’m not going to make a farm.”
“Why not?”
“Dolphins don’t live on farms; they live in the sea. Prawns live in the sea too, so I would do an aquarian but chocolate mice don’t live in the sea. Crocodiles live in Australia, but I think they live in rivers in the wild.”
“So are you going to eat them up or offer some to Zak and Charlie?”
“I think for tonight I will line them up on my bedside table and read them a story. Will you play teachers with me now?”
“Alright, but I’ve got to talk to Harry first. You get Zak or someone to help you get the blackboard out.”
“OK,” she said, cheerfully, skipping out of the kitchen which had been entirely vacated during our conversation. “You better promise!”
“I promise…” I sighed, mooching out of the room after her in search of my stepdad. It’s not like Kitty’s selection of pretend games is usually that straightforward. Years ago she was through with the plastic kiddie cooker (not for cooking kiddies as the name implies) and the silky ballet shoes (not real silk, and actually from a charity shop) and the shopping basket and fairy outfit and nurses’n’doctors set. Now she doesn’t fantasise about being a ballet star or a famous chef or a Devon (hence the fairy stuff) – her latest passion is teaching. And knowing the types I go to school with, that is a very crap aspiration indeed…
“Harry!” I said, suddenly, possibly making it sound a little too urgent as he came in from the front drive with the other briefcase of stuff he only carries when there’s lots of paperwork to do.
“Yes?” he called back.
“Me and Charlie kinda have a problem,” I explained, holding up the two Work Shadowing forms that’d been pinned to the fridge for well over a month.
“When is it?”
“Next week.”
“Well, there’s an easy answer – one of you can come to work with me. Aimee did.”
“Uh-huh. And the other one?” I said, as undesperately as I could muster. Shadowing a car salesman wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun three days off.
“Well, with your mother out of work, I really don’t know. It’s a bit short notice to set off after any companies now.”
If only I could Work Shadow the little teacher who was up in our bedroom, meticulously copying her homework questions onto the blackboard with a chunk of pink chalk…
* * *
“Charlie, you’ll either be working in car sales, or you’ll be stuck,” I informed him, when we met on the landing. I almost hoped he’d pick the car sales, because it sounded so terribly b-o-r-i-n-g.
“Car sales? Have you seen what Harry does for a job? I think I’d rather spend my week selling a religion!”
“Ouch,” I muttered, kind of on behalf of any imagined person who might be offended.
“Otter, right, and this is true – his mum was a Jehoavh’s Witness before she got married,” piped Charlie. He sounded so proud to ever so slightly vicariously know one. I realised that might’ve been what I sounded like when I told him off for joking.
“Er, wow,” I mumbled when I realised he’d practically held his breath for a response. “So… you don’t want to work with Harry?”
“I definitely don’t want to work with Harry.”
“Harleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” I heard Kitty yell. “Hurry up! Maisie’s getting bullied, Bobo’s wet his self and Tallulah’s ran away!”
I couldn’t say I blamed poor Tallulah Bunny in the least. Something told me that my sister’s imagination had eloped with her, and I needed to be ready with a vaccination against the crazy before I donned my mortarboard and ventured into my bedroom…
#4 Not-So Sunny Sunday
“Wake up! Wake up! Get up! Get out! Fire! Fire! FIIIIIIIIIIRE!”
I dragged my pillow further over my head; Kitty’s little pretend game had evolved into a boarding school last night, and all the fambly toys (well, mine, Charlie’s and yours, anyway) had gone to bed in her dormitory (sorry, single bed) only to be woken up by Kitty who had organised a midnight feast in the middle of the carpet. The teddies had sucked Aimee’s lipglosses like lollies while I’d had to choreograph sheet-changing and try not to wake the pregnant beast.
I was tired, and no amount of make-believe Primary school fire drills were going to drag me out of my nest on this not-so-sunny Sunday.
Without having to leave my cocoon, I’d noted the dreary weather and decided that “getting up” / “getting out” was entirely out of the question, and that I could only be glad that the school hadn’t chosen this month for our Team Building camping trip. (Me and Charlie were both behind on payment for that, too.)
Somewhere, I could hear Lemmy wailing and Mum fussing him, and Aimee MSN-ing someone on the landing computer. I could hear my brothers having a huge argument (usually Avenged v.s. Dizzee Rascal, but probably HSM v.s. Kill Bill), and I could hear Harry’s phonecall to someone from work becoming frantic jargon. And then there was Kitty’s fire drill.
I remembered the first time at her school, she’d thought it was something like a drill with flames coming out of it, when it was actually a nice fireman coming in to talk about not playing with matches. Mind you, Charlie hadn’t been much better when we heard about Meningitis C in Year 3 and had to have the immunisations. (He’d thought it was a sea somewhere that gave you a rash and stuff.)
Yes, there’s nothing I enjoy more than lying back in the mornings and privately reminiscing days of way-more-innocence. (Not that I wanted to remember the time some kid in our Year R class picked up a dead blackbird. I’d wanted to give it a proper funeral and sing “All Things Bright and Doodah”, and was very disappointed when Mrs Mould kindly rebounded my request and instructed us all to go and collect leaves.)
“Don’t go back for your things, Lulah! You’ll be burnt to a crisp! Yes, Bobo, I know you like crisps, but you can’t have your packed lunch right now! Look, Maisie – there’s a butterfly! Stay very still and-”
“Kit! That’s a mozzie!” I gasped, suddenly aware of what was swooping around at about kiddie-head-height.
“But it’s a big butterfly if you’re the same tallness as Maisie and Bobo and Lulah…”
“Don’t touch it,” I groaned, pulling myself out of bed and switching off the light that she’d put on to be the sun, since there wasn’t really one today.
The mosquito shot out of vision and into the hall.
Well, we were safe.
“Ew! A bug!” Aimee yelped, jumping up from the computer in the corridor and rushing off to get Harry.
Kitty looked bemused. “It’s only a bug.”
“It bites,” I said, informatively, flumping back down on my bed.
Moments later, the yelling started:
Charlie: “Don’t let it sting me!”
Zak: “You’re such a big wuss!”
Charlie: “We could get malaria!”
Zak: “I wish you would!”
Charlie: “Shut up!”
Zak: “Wotevarr!”
SPLAT!
I didn’t hear the splat, but I hea
rd Zak’s hands clap together and Charlie stop whimpering, so I was sure it’d been squashed. I didn’t think killing it was called for, but Zak’s straight to the point about these things.
Harry: “Zak, go and wash your hands.”
Zak: “Yeah, sure.”
Mum: “What was all that?”
Lemmy: “Waah!”
Harry: “A mozzie.”
Mum: “Is it gone?”
Harry: “Yes, Zak killed it.”
Mum: “There was no need for that.”
Kitty (right in my ear): “Harley, will you help me do Photo Day?”
So five minutes of wee, tea and toast break later, I was back in our room with a camera and a trio of toddler sized plastic chairs that were too big for the teddies.
“Really we should have rows, with the littlest ones at the front and the middlish ones in the middle and the biggies standing on chairs at the back, but there’s only three of them.”
I didn’t know if she meant there were only three teddies or only three chairs. “You’ve got a sack of Beanie Babies in that hammock by your bed.”
“They’re all the same size, and they’re all cats. This is bear and bunny school,” she explained with a roll of the eyes, like it was amazingly simple, staringly obvious and something everyone should be able to work out.
“Y’know, Kit,” I said. “I’ve thought of a new game. It’s called Work Shadowing, and it means you have to follow me around all day, being ultra quiet and well-behaved, doing everything anyone tells you to do – within reason – and not getting paid.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
A very good question.
#5 Fern Ella Firth: Otherwise Engaged
“So, what’s everybody doing for Work Shadowing then?” Mr Wordsworth asked our class, with a smile. It was now Tuesday, and I’d failed pathetically at keeping to the task at hand, what with my friends being more interested in the pictures of Lemmy on my phone than my self-inflicted loose end.
“Hairdressing!”
“Waitressing!”
“Cups of soup!”
“Really?” He frowned, confused. It was slightly cute, in a youngish teachery way.
“Yes. I’ll be working with homeless people,” Norma provided. “I already volunteer. You make lots of new friends, and find out that they’re not so different to you and I. Some of them used to have really good jobs – soldiers for example. The one woman spent so many years working for charity for free that she lost her house.”
Irony, Norma…
“I’m sure that’s really interesting work,” said Mr W, when he could get a word in edgeways.
“I’m working underneath a doctor,” Andy volunteered. “And I think it’s going to drive me mad…”
Devon beamed, inspired. “I’m working in counselling, and I can help you with that.”
“Hold up!” Mr Wordsworth cried. “I’m seeing a chain form! I’ll write all the jobs up on the board, and before long we’ll have a linked list!”
Somehow, by the end of the lesson, we’d got through directing dance classes (Courtney), working in a hiking shop (James), and a job clearing tables at Maccy D’s (Justin). Still, me and my twin had no idea what we were going to do with ourselves. Neither of us wanted the car sales, but was it maybe a little too late to be picky?
At the end of the lesson, Mr Wordsworth went over to Charlie as we were packing our stuff away. He said, “Are you alright, Charlie? You looked really worried all lesson. Is this about the test results? You’re bound to be fine – you’ve put on a whole level since you came into my class.”
I breathed in suddenly – my chest felt like it was filled up with his confidence. Mr Wordsworth’s confidence, I mean. It bordered on arrogance, but it was somehow attractive.
“Not that. It’s just that me and Harley don’t even have placements yet,” said Charlie, eyeing the chain on the board warily. (It had linked right back to the beginning without us.) “We don’t know what to do.”
“Well, there must be loads of stuff you can do for Work Shadowing. When I was your age they didn’t have a taster three days in Year 9, and I got thrown into a warehouse, lifting boxes. Put my back out. Still, I got out of doing the rest of the fortnight, even if it did hurt too much to move.”
Charlie nodded in appreciation.
“Harley,” said Mr Wordsworth, beckoning me over. “I’ll help you guys get placements, OK? What job do you want when you leave school?”
“I’d like to be a writer,” I said, feeling mildly embarrassed about it for some reason. Did it sound majorly geeky? Did I sound too eager to work?
“Ah. Then there’s quite a lot of stuff you could do. Charlie?”
“I just wanna do what I do already in my band – play music and sing.”
“Why don’t you go and work in the record shop downtown?”
“They’re bound to have someone already.”
“I’d suggest you go there right after school and find out. It’s a great place to work – there’s really no need to be rammed into a workplace you’re not remotely interested in. And as for you, Harley – how would you like to be an English teacher for three days? I can guarantee you it’s one of the best jobs in the world if you have good grammar like you and I – not that I really talk like it, but you can’t win ’em all…”
And that was decided. After all my practise of forced-upon being-a-teacher/being-with-a-teacher at home, I was about to throw caution to my three-percent-crush and put it all into practise as Mr Wordsworth’s assistant, commencing Wednesday morning, prompt. “I’ll do it!”
* * *
“Devon, we’ve got placements!” I announced, excitedly, joining her in the canteen, where she’d gone ahead to subject our friends to a showing of her new handmade belt.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Charlie’s going to Hex Records, and I’m working under Mr Wordsworth!”
“Ugh! Don’t say it like that!” Keisha grimaced.
“Shut up, Keisha,” said Rachel. “Mr Wordsworth is only the lushest teacher evarr! You’re so lucky, Harley!”
“He’s just… ew!” Keish continued, wrinkling up her nose like she’d just smelt one of Lemmy’s nappies. “Like all old and-”
“Twenty-five on Saturday,” Rachel and I said, both at once.
“Face it, Keisha,” Rachel added. “You’re just jealous!”
Fern was stood quietly at the back of our discussion, timidly nibbling her Snack a Jacks and looking a bit upset.
“What’s up, Fern?” I asked, unzipping my bag and pulling out the apple Kitty had presented me with during our early morning session of Pretendy School.
“Oh, nothing. Just Aarón. I was IM-ing him last night.”
“And…” Chantalle prompted.
“And he says he wants me to go and see him this summer.”
“Cool,” I said encouragingly, going to bite into the apple but stopping myself to ask, “Are you gonna go?”
“Mmm… if my dad doesn’t mind. After all, we are engaged.”
Devon, Rindi, Dani and I awwwed, while the rest of the group yicked in the background. Fern whipped out her school diary to show us all a postcard tucked inside. “He sent me that one on Easter I showed you, and this is the latest…”
We all leaned in and read, “Fernie, sweet maiden…” among other archaic-but-cuteish nothing-muches, signed at the bottom. On the picture side of the card was a photo of them under the then-blossoming tree over by (at the time vacated) Grunger Island, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes.
“Aww! You know how cute you two are together?” sighed Devon. “I never heard from Alfie, but you all know we broke up on agreeable terms so I guess that’s OK.”
“So…” said Keisha, slyly. “Who’ve you got your eye on right now?”
“Do we need to be eyeball-ly attached to a guy or two all our lives?” Devon laughed. “Whatever happened to feminist values?”
“Well!” cackled Keish. “Y’know D
avid?”
Did I know David? I’d thought her boyfriend was called Sean.
“Not really… I thought it was Sean,” I admitted.
“Beanie!” sniggered Dani.
“Oh, keep up! It was Sean, but he was rude. Then there was Carl. David’s a Boy Scout, but he’s really hot, so I don’t care.”
“Really, Keish? A Boy Scout?!” spluttered Chan, who really couldn’t talk because she’d been at Brownies and Guides right along with me. “That’s so sad!”
“So how’s Tom?” Keisha replied, snidely.
Chantalle clamped her gob shut and got the look of someone who had been punched very hard in the gut. She forced a nervous giggle, but still looked hurt. Not that Keisha or anyone else for that matter had reason to take it that way.
“Yeah, what about Tom?” asked Rindi. “It’s not fair to keep it all to yourself!”
It had been a month, and I had not betrayed her. Every time someone brought Tom up, I’d done my best to change the subject until it was far past conspicuous and I started being grilled too. I hadn’t let anything slip. And because they didn’t know, everyone was still gagging to hear about him.
“Well, we haven’t done anything if that’s what you mean,” managed Chan.
“Of course that’s what we mean!” said Dani. “Oh come on, Chan!”
“We don’t believe you!” teased Keisha. “Chan’s not a vir-gin! Chan’s not a vir-gin!”
“She’s popped her cher-ry!” tittered Devon, relishing the chance to get her own back for months of horrible comments.
“And she might be preg-nant!” added Dani.
“I am so a virgin!” Chantalle shrieked, far too loudly to hope that the groups around us in the canteen hadn’t heard. “What do you know anyway? If I had sex, I wouldn’t be able to swim anymore.”
That didn’t sound right. Though thinking about it, my mum had never really come in the pool with us when we were little. Neither had Auntie Sharon. Did that mean all the female swimming instructors had taken an oath of chastity? What about PE teachers? That explained everything.
No one argued with Chan, so maybe she was correct.
#6 My Generation
We’d been counting on a free lesson for PSHE – maybe a paragraph about the point of Work Shadowing or the risks of smoking. Boy were we wrong…
“Right! I’ll be taking this class today!” announced the lively Mr Wordsworth as he strode into the classroom fifteen minutes late. “Sexual Education.”