“Oh, I see…” She smiled, not noticing what I was on about. (She’s such a woman-of-the-world that she doesn’t even acknowledge the presence of such objects.) “I’ve got it!”
“Right, you can totally see it’s a baby, now…” Keisha sniped. “Before, it was like a peanut, and then a donut, and…”
“OK, OK, don’t take the mickey out of our baby br- uh… sibling…” I said for Charlie’s benefit. Alright, I’d accidentally told my friends long ago about Harry’s inadvertent telling of me, but he didn’t know.
(In fact, it had been a case of: “Why do you look so smug, Harley?” “I don’t.” “Yes, you do. You know, don’t you?” “No, I don’t, Charlie!” “Yes, you do! Tell me!” “I don’t know!” “Tell me, Harley!” “No!”.)
“Anyway,” said Charlie. “I’d be worried if it didn’t look that much like a baby by now!”
“Yeah,” said Rachel. “Because my auntie’s friend had a baby who was born too early and she didn’t look anything as normal as yours does already – but she’s OK, she’s three now, and cute as an exceptionally small button…”
“Can I see?” asked Fern, timidly. She’d been a bit wary of looking at the really early ones, but upon reassurance that this looked exactly the same as any newborn baby, must’ve decided it was worth a coo.
I passed it to her. “Here…”
“And you still don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, yet?” asked Keisha, trying to ruin it for Charlie. “Lemme see it a little better – my radar can spot a boy at ninety paces; it’s just a bit off, what with this only being a fuzzy ultrasound piccy…”
“Well, you can’t actually tell, because its leg’s in the way!” Charlie objected. “Thank God for that, too; I wouldn’t want a bunch of girls perving on my baby brother or sister before they even get born!”
“Oh, calm down, Charlie; it’s cooing, not perving!” Chantalle scowled.
I glanced at the empty space in my bag’s phone pocket, where I didn’t have my mobile in case anything happened. No, not to me; I meant if anything happened to Mum…
I bit my lip, and looked at Charlie.
He looked back. “Wha-at?”
“N-nothing… just… w-well, I’m gonna go and use the phone in the office – I… I… just have to check M-Mum’s OK…” I stammered, picking up my crutches (I’d been leant against the counter) and going to wobble off to Student Reception, before realising. “Um… has anyone got ten pence? For the phone, I mean…”
Devon fished the money out of her disorganised TARDIS handbag, not caring that she had to pile more stuff onto the counter to get to it than you’d think fitted into there, including the rest of her lunch, her proper Clear Plastic Pencilcase, her tampons, several scrunchies and a butterfly clip, a calligraphy set, instructions for making jelly from custard, and a sketch of Kurt Cobain. “Here you go, Harley…”
“Won’t be a second,” I promised.
“Can I come?” Charlie mumbled, picking my other crutch up and handing it to me. (It’d fallen over and clattered to the floor when I stopped to ask for money.)
“You want to speak to Mum, too?” I asked him.
He nodded.
On the way to Reception, I tried to break the tension with teasing. “Come on out with it; what did you really think of that test, my little Young Offender.”
He gasped at the phrase: “Oops…”
“Huh?” I stopped dead in my tracks. (Whatever sort of tracks a hoppy person on two sticks makes.) “What d’you mean?”
“I left my mp3 in the Hall!” he wavered. “My Gateway to Sevenfold!!”
(See, told you he calls it that; I actually think the computer recognises it by such a name.)
“Surely you know all the songs off by heart by now!” I consoled him, thinking of the leaving-with-wrong-devices kids, and how it would be better for his morale not to go back and look.
“That’s not the point,” he grumbled, scuffing his black trainers against the ground. (They’re a special label, lovingly dubbed “not quite suitable for school” by various members of the Constantly High law enforcement team.)
Aww, cheering up my twin brother was something I rarely had to do in everyday, “some sort of teenage-angsty thing has gone badly wrong” situations, and it was almost like back when we were ten or eleven and having a twin was like having a Best Boy Buddy.
“Don’t worry about it,” I smiled, hoping that by the time I’d handed the money to the office-lady, dialled Harry’s mobile number, had a brief conversation, and hung up, it would still be in place. The smile, I mean.
He opened the English block door for me, then rapped on the window of the office on my behalf.
“Ye-es?” cooed the receptionist. (She’s very nice, and just transferred from a Primary school nearby - bad mistake.)
“Is it alright to borrow the phone?” I asked, holding up Devon’s 10p.
“Of course, dearies, come in through here, please,” she beamed, pulling the office door open and guiding us in. “It is local, I presume?”
I nodded. “Just parents.”
“OK. And what’s the number?”
Now why had my mind just gone blank?
I was glad I’d brought my brother. “D’you know it, Charlie?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “It’s on my mobile, which is, um, at home…”
Darn. We were both in the same, stupidly-taking-advantage-of-technology boat…
“Is your information up-to-date?” she asked.
“Sorry?”
“On the school records?”
“Oh. Um. Yeah…”
“And this is…?”
“Our stepdad’s mobile – Harry Robinson… we’re Harley and Charlie Hartley.”
She tapped it into the computer and located the number, and we waited, trembly inside, as the phone did its dialling-tone thingy.
Suddenly: “Hello?”
“It’s me and Charlie,” I said, recognising Harry’s voice right away.
“Oh? What’s up, guys?”
“Just checking if Mum’s OK – y’know, ’cause we don’t have our phones if you had an emergency…”
“Your mother is fine, guys,” I could practically hear him smile. “D’you want to talk to her? We’re sat at home with tea and biscuits as we speak…”
“It’s almost the end of break,” I dithered. “But yeah, please…”
Then Mum’s voice took over: “That you, Harley?”
“Mmm…”
“Sweet that you guys worried about me… well, I’m perfectly OK. So’s the baby – it’s kicking right now, in fact. Does Charlie want to speak to me?”
“You wanna talk to Mum?” I mouthed.
“Yeah…”
I passed the phone over to him, and he started up: “Are you really OK, Mum? …Honest? …Are you sure? …I was really worried about you…” and I knew I’d be standing (or rather hovering on my sticks) for a good, long, soppy while…
#6 Robots & VO5
“Oh, my Twinnies,” Mum sighed, hugging us both when we got home. “I’m really touched that you guys rang home…”
“Well, we didn’t have our phones, and we wouldn’t know if you rang us with a problem…”
“I know, Harley.” She smiled. “I don’t care what the teachers think they can say – you will take your phones into the exams, and-”
“They take them away from us, though,” Charlie pointed out. “And if they find one later, they confiscate it and rip up your paper!”
(He’d gone to the front at the end of the afternoon test, and his mp3 was still there in the box – we guessed the Constantly High iPod-owners Club didn’t think it was worthy of stealing.)
“Well!” said Mum. “In that case, if there’s a problem, Harry will ring the school and they’ll come and get you…”
“In a test?”
“Yes. I’ll make sure they do. I bet that Science wasn’t as hard as you thought!” Mum teased (in a mumsy way). “I bet you were wo
rrying like that for nothing…”
“Mum, it was brutal,” he groaned.
“It was OK,” I supplied, wanting to run upstairs and cram for tomorrow’s three Maths papers.
“I ha-ven’t for-got-ten last niiiiiight!” Zak hissed, slyly, wiggling his fingers theatrically in a trancy manner, no sooner had he let himself into the house. Sadly for him, he just looked like my goon of a kid brother, who I then grabbed into a hug to even out the embarrassment scales. (Hugging an eleven-year-old is tough enough, without the extra, added trial of being on crutches at the time.)
“Harley, get off of me!” he yelped, hitting me over the head with his red bookbag. (Mmm-hmm, there’ll remain one thing that prevents him from looking hip and grown up.)
“No!” I objected, getting a faceful of squirming, spiky hair, along with the feeling I’d be choking up VO5 gel for the next forty-eight hours.
He eventually wriggled free, but not without giving me and Charlie a totally boggy look, and muttering something about us all being mad. (Um, isn’t talking to yourself pretty detached from sane, too…?)
“Hang on, Zak!” Mum called after him, all of a sudden. “Where’s Kitty?”
“Went to Emily’s.” He shrugged, uselessly, making for the exit route. “Emily or someone, I dunno…”
“Oh, that’s useful,” Mum sighed, letting him go, and wobbling past me and Charlie. “Ah, well, I did have to discuss Emily coming on holiday with us with her mum tonight, anyway…”
“You OK to revise tonight?” I asked my twin.
“As OK as I’m likely to be…” he groaned, biting his lip.
“Isn’t Devon helping you?”
“Not tonight. Would you… um… do it?”
“I suppose. I’ll warn you that I’m as useless at Maths as you are, though.” I grimaced, dragging him upstairs.
“Well, you can read faster than I can – that’s the massive turn-off with these revision guides…”
When we got up to the attic, though (myself with quite a lot of help from Charlie, although I was getting better on the old sticks), Aimee was lying on her bed, crying, with Ben sitting beside, comforting her.
“Aims, what’s going on?” I asked. “Y’know Mum won’t like you having Ben in our room…”
“Considering she’s already pregnant and we had the door open,” Ben chuckled, before stroking Aimee’s hair out of her face.
She sniffed. “I can’t do this. I just get scared thinking of it!”
“What’s actually the problem?” I asked again, adamant that I’d get an answer.
“Having the baby,” she sobbed. “Every day your mum gets closer to having hers, and every second of watching her get bigger and weaker and wobblier just makes me hate myself for ever, ever thinking I wanted to do the same thing!”
“You lose the baby-weight,” I pointed out. “And I bet it’ll disappear double-fast because you’re only young. Don’t worry about it…”
“It’s not the weight,” she sighed. “I’m on about having the baby. No amount of classes and heart-to-hearts could make that sound like fun. It’s like the most painful thing that anyone could put themselves through, and I’m not ready for that!”
“It’s months away,” Ben put in. “You’ll feel better about it when Sandra has hers, and then you’ll think it’s totally worth it!”
Hearing someone call my mother “Sandra” had alienated this whole conversation. To me and my siblings, she was “Mum”, and to Aimee and Harry she was “Sandie”. Never Sandra; never.
I looked at Charlie - maybe the oddly proper use of our mum’s name had got to him, too.
He was totally white, and I suddenly realised that babies, and having babies, and the nine months of hell attached to that must seem quite unfathomable to a boy. And a boy he was.
“Charlie,” I prompted, nudging him. “Just stop thinking…”
“Ugh…” he mumbled.
“C’mon,” I said, towing him out of the room and across the hall to his own. “Let’s do some revision!”
Charlie and Zak’s room isn’t so bad as boys’ bedrooms go. Sure, there’s the piles of steaming socks and boxer shorts, but that’s only because Mum can’t bend down to tidy up after them anymore. There are loads of posters, but they don’t get any more offensive than Alice Cooper with a snake around his neck and 50 Cent covered in chains, or whatever. Usually they’re good enough to make their beds in the morning, and there aren’t normally too many plates or half-empty mugs under them.
The only actual unpleasant thing in the room was Zak, who was at present playing a very noisy computer game (well, PlayStation game, but y’know) through the mega-mega-mega-sized speakers they’ve got to share, making the whole room sound like an air-raid shelter (even though the game was actually football, not fighting).
Now, I wouldn’t usually go so far as to describe either of my bruvs as unpleasant – only that we really needed a little peace and quiet to revise, so if the option was sobbing and conversations that freaked Charlie out v. games that made your head feel like you’re underwater in a noisy swimming-pool, then we were going to have to ask Zak to turn it down.
“Zak,” I groaned. “Is there any chance you could put the volume down on that?”
“Nah, this is called fun.”
“Well, haven’t you got a set of headphones?”
“I might do; I might not,” he said, mysteriously, just to wind us up.
I decided the only thing left was to appeal to his worse nature: “Couldn’t you have your fun quietly, then – how about watching me and Charlie suffer over Maths revision…?”
“Nope,” he said, bluntly, and we got the picture that short of forcing our heavily pregnant mum to drag herself up into the attic to tell him to turn it down, or pulling Harry out of his study to do much the similar when he’d resorted to working from home for the week, there was little hope of getting peace in the room. (Plus, the grown-ups would then be made aware of the emotional chaos going on in my bedroom…)
“In that case, would you object to the Bitesize website?” I groaned to my twin, who still looked mildly stunned by gross thoughts of contractions and placentas and other stuff a man in his own right had the option never to witness. (An option called contraception -or maybe celibacy- admittedly.)
“Whatever…” he mumbled, rubbing his face with boredom. “I just want to not sit down in those tests tomorrow and not know anything…”
(Alright, his slightly shaky use of negations had thrown me off for a second, but I got the gist of it – he felt much the same as me.)
I fumbled about with the computer for a bit, uselessly trying to remember how to get the internet up, and typed in the address on the back of the revision book.
And it was all in vain, anyway, because once I’d persuaded Charlie to trail downstairs with the long internet lead (and then find the phone socket), he ended up yelling back, “We can’t do that; Harry’s on the internet!!”
That was something, anyway. We’d got used to broadband and the internet in so little time, and now we were struggling to accustom ourselves to narrowband, because for some reason, it had stopped working a few days ago, and Harry had just about sorted the landline.
“Sorry, Charlie,” I groaned, “I think it’d be better if you went next door to Devon and got her to help you, in her nice, quiet, currently Ben-free house…”
“She went out for a hot chocolate with her gran,” he grumbled. “And then they’re going to the cinema.”
“Well… go and do something useful,” I floundered, actually sick of my brother’s company already, as I slipped into my room.
Dink! went my phone, plugged into the socket above my bedside table.
“Yeah, it’s been doing that a while,” Ben informed me, now having got America into a slightly more placid state. (Excuse the pun.)
I made my way over to my mobile, wishing I didn’t still look so wary of it as a flamingo (the sticks) watching a bomb.
Four new text messag
es:
Keisha (boy-entranced bulk-messaging as usual): “Seein Sean 2nyt - tellya all abt it 2moz!!”
Devon (considerately reminding us): “Dnt 4get I’m not in 2nite”.
Fern (being sensitive and friendly): “How’s ur mum? Has the baby come yet?”
Rindi (alarmingly): “Saw ur sis dn the park wit a m8. R all her m8z that bratty coz I wouldnt let natly tlk lyk that!”
I text Rindi back first: “Not Emily then? My mum thnks she’s with Emily. N wot u mean by bratty?!”
Dink! “No DEFO not emly. Dark hair n trakis. Dnt wori there wit a lady.”
So what if she’d used the wrong “there”? Rindi was being ever so helpful…
“Hangon caught the name – Jane or Jade or something! Hope that helps, goin home nw.”
“Thx Rind.”
All the text-slang was already screwing my head up – I was sooooo glad it wasn’t English 2moz – sorry, tomorrow. I guess my mind’s just not connected with the leads labelled “abbreviate” and “translate”.
I wobbled downstairs with care, and found Mum making a cup of tea in the kitchen. I smiled, pleased to help take a load off her mind: “I know who Kitty’s with; some girl called Jane or Jade.”
“Oh. Jade. Yes, I know where she lives; I’ll have to send Harry over there after tea – and before you volunteer, it’s perfectly OK; I can make dinner these days, it’s not your responsibility.”
It was then that I realised that maybe what me and my brothers particularly needed was a forget-the-past switch added to our internal circuitboards. (It would get us out of accidentally retaining the teatime rota, anyhow.) There were lots of appealing advantages to being a robot, these days…
#7 Another Test, Another Text
Somewhere between trovelling through two Mental Mathses, the first one-hour Maths paper, and the afternoon set, I whipped my phone out. Yes, it had been with me; yes, it had been on Silent; and no, I categorically hadn’t used it in a test. I hurriedly text Harry: “All ok still?” and then followed my friends off for a gap of freedom, before we were all to be dragged in for some more numeracy torture.
“How’s your mum?” Fern asked me, in her soft, shy way. “I sent you a text yesterday…”
“Yeah, how is your mum?” mimicked Keisha.
“She’s fine, thanks,” I said.
“When’s the new due-date?” asked Danielle, in tone that was a little more convincingly nice.