Hang on, I take that back – you can always tell what time it is on an alarm clock, unless, of course, in true Devon style, it is downside-up…
When I’d righted my eyes to be able to read it, I was aware that it was actually half-past one in the afternoon (as opposed to twenty-to-twelve, as the misleadingly similar-lengthed hands had told me), and I kinda needed a wee.
Better on my crutches these days, I went out into the hallway and thought I’d look in on Charlie. But he wasn’t even still asleep; he must’ve gone downstairs for something like breakfast.
It wasn’t like him not to sleep in on a Saturday! Usually, half-past one was his rising time, and you’d think he was tired.
After I’d nipped to the bathroom (OK, I didn’t nip; I slugged my way in and out), I made my careful way downstairs, and saw my two oldest younger brothers battling it out mindlessly on Ben’s Xbox. (Oh well, it was only racing, I guess.)
I poured myself some orange juice, and unlatched the back door to let the doglets out. I wondered if Harry was back yet. I went round to the front to check for his car.
Sure enough, before my bleary eyes, my stepdad was helping my mum out of her seat, along with our teeny brother, and waving at me.
I went to meet them, bracing myself to give the news. “Look, I’m sorry about the house, but I can exp-”
“Hey, no worries,” said Harry cheerfully.
Mum smiled, too. “Thank you, Harley, for all of last night. And Charlie, too, if he’s about…?”
“Oh, especially Charlie,” said Harry, noticing him indoors, slinking his way to the fridge. “He’s a hero!”
Uh-huh – overlooking a sane person here, the brains behind the whole of last night’s operation, directing jibber-jabbery brother in all his actions.
“Aimee and Ben explained about the house,” Harry went on to say. “So don’t worry yourselves about that. A friend of mine has gone away for a couple of months, and said I can do whatever I like to his home, so I guess invading it with my family comes under those guidelines.”
“But it’s a total mess!” I groaned. “There’s no amount of repair work that’ll get us moved back in there this year!”
“Maybe that’s for the best…” said Harry, quite worryingly mysteriously.
Uh, no! No, no, NO way was my family moving away from here! Not with the sort of chaos that would stew up – I knew all too well from left-behind experience…
But of course I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, with a smile: “Any ideas for a name, yet?”
“Some,” said Mum, gazing down at the baby, and then up at Harry, with the same look she was prone to giving all of us.
“But that’s the thing,” said Harry. “We wanted you guys to be a part of it. So I thought you’d all better get cracking, thinking of good ones!”
It turned out that shortly after our vanishing home, Harry had admitted that he knew it was going to be a boy, and decided that all his choices for a name would have to be null and void, leaving Mum unfairly in the choosing position.
So we all (as in me, Charlie, Zak, Kitty, Harry, Mum and the baby) sat down in Devon’s kindly rented-out living-room (minus Aimee, who’d soon be naming her own child), discussing how to go about it. Mum didn’t want to be the only one getting a look in, and was in fact daunted by the thought, so Zak suggested putting all our ideas into a hat, and picking the one that came out.
“Risky…” Mum had wavered, before looking as if she’d truly, tiredly given in. “But that’s how we do it in this family…”
Then between them they decided that because they were still cross with Zak, they’d allow him one chance; Kitty would have two, because she’d done nothing wrong; I was getting three, because I really had been helpful; and Charlie was bestowed five opportunities, for being so (uselessly) useful.
Honestly, we’re talking about a Professional Sane Person (me), a music fanatic (Charlie), a footie fanatic (Zak), and the girl who christened our rabbit Pie and then Stu (Kit).
And all the choices were to go into Harry’s trilby – a present from his father, but never worn once.
“How about… David?” Zak put in. “Or Steven? Or Wayne?”
Although Beckham, Gerrard and Rooney would all be eccentric enough for our pile…
“No football names, Zak. But if you must, David, Steven or Wayne can qualify as your one and only choice…” Mum sighed, looking worriedly at [insert name here] Robinson, as if none of those fitted too well…
* * *
Lying in Devon’s bed that night, with a little sister type elbow in one rib and a best mate one in the other, I started to guess at what my twin brother, possessor of the five naming choices, would come up with. He might go with Gerrard, but spelt like Gerard Way. I didn’t bank on it though, given Gerardo. Anyway, Gerard Robinson? Nah.
Wait a second: who were his current and long-term favourite band?
Avenged Sevenfold.
And who did he hero-worship like the Gods of riffage themselves?
Zacky Vengeance and Synyster Gates.
We sure as hell weren’t having another Zacky, and I was positive that whatever Synyster’s real first name was, it wouldn’t be spectacular.
A horrible, niggly thought edged into my mind, making me leap crutchily out of bed and across the hallway to shake him awake:
“Charlie? Charlie! Whatever you do, please don’t call the baby Synyster!”
I mean, “Aww, look at cute little Synyster Robinson”? How could anyone (except maybe Devon) coo that over a baby’s pram? It was positively Addams.
#15 One Donut & A Trilby Hat
“About last night…” Charlie said, as he slurped the milk out of his cereal bowl. (A nice one of the matching, Eileen-bought set – not like the cracked collection at home that looked like peeling plaster or something.)
“What about it?” I asked, looking away from his messy eating habits.
“Well… what on earth made you think I’d do that? Call our brother Synyster, I mean?”
“The fact that you seriously would?” I snarked.
“I wouldn’t do that! Who d’you think I am? Not to say that it isn’t the coolest name on the planet…” (here we go again) “…just that, well, it’d be like naming him… Slash or something! You gotta wear names like those the way a grown man would; not the way a baby would!”
“Has everyone put their contributions in?” asked Harry, the proud holder of one chocolate-covered donut (his breakfast) and a black trilby-hat.
“Not quite…” mumbled Charlie, shielding the page he was scrawling on, leant against a thick tome.
“Me neither,” I said, partly because I hadn’t written any ideas down yet, and partly through craning to catch what he was jotting.
“Hey! No peeking!” Charlie whined, grabbing it away from me.
I took a sheet from Harry (did I mention he was actually clutching the donut, trilby, and a wad of printer paper at precariously close quarters to each other?), and glared at it.
There weren’t even any lines to stare at ’til I got out of focus.
I felt Charlie get up and plop his satanic little ideas into the hat. I dreaded what Zak may or may not have made 1/11th of the likelihood into. I had to remember to breathe at what (possibly Devon-influenced) sort of names Kitty would’ve chosen.
Oh God, I’d just joined the Stupid Stupid Stupid Club – off the top of my head (or the recent gossip magazine laid open beside me on the counter), I’d just flecked my pen across the paper in the shape of:
Orlando
Corbin
Elijah
This child was doomed.
I ripped around the names, as Ben and Aimee stumbled into the room to watch the proceedings.
But before I could change my mind and get a new bit of paper, Harry, without reading it (so there was no chance he’d see and try to reason with me), took the bits of paper and stuffed them into the trilby: “OK, that’d be all of them. Now I’m going to get Devon to pull out one of
these at random. Anyone with an objection to this, speak now or forever hold your peace!”
Me! Me! Me! I thought, desperately. I object!
But I didn’t say it.
Harry shook the hat, and held it out to Devon.
It appeared to happen in slow-mo: Devon reached s-l-o-w-l-y into the hat, r-u-m-m-a-g-e-d a-r-o-u-n-d inside, and then w-i-t-h-d-r-e-w one little scrap of paper and handed it to Harry, who’d kept his eyes shut for some reason.
Mum’s eyes were on it, though.
So were everyone else’s.
Including and especially, those pale, pale blue eyes that belonged to-
“Lemuel!” Harry read out.
Everyone stood stunned for a second.
Then our minds clicked (well, the older of ours did), and we all stared at Charlie (with, of course, the youngest two -Kitty and, um, Lemuel- copying us hopefully).
Even the dogs were looking expectantly.
Charlie shrugged.
Then every single gaze moved, again very, very s-l-o-w-l-y and g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y, to be looking at Mum.
“Well… what a handsome choice!” she managed, finally.
“It’s from the Hebrew name book. I was thinking he could be Lemmy for short,” provided Charlie, who had had an agenda after all.
Not Dimebag, then?
Oh, how glad I was…!
P.S. It’s funny how when you’re sat in some other man’s little girl’s bedroom, with High School Musical EVERYTHING, it’s a whole lot easier to make sense of the whole family fandango. Harry’s got men working overtime to get the house back to normal before his friend’s equally large family (including eight-year-old daughter Claire and her pink Nintendo DS) make it back home from holiday.
P.P.S. Miss you loads.
P.P.P.S. No, I’m going to have to tell you. Some of Charlie’s other thoughts had been Cain, Gabriel, Chaim (Gene Simmons’ real name, as he’d learned from Family Guy), Saul (Slash’s name), Lazarus (like the Placebo song), Phineas (from Phineas and Ferb) and Zion. Judging by the letter-repetition rule, that meant he’d put in Gabriel, Lazarus, Lemuel, Phineas and… mystery.
T.T.F.N. Harley & Co - (“Co” aka “disturbing poster of Zac Efron with soppy gaze that spooks me in the dark, and Charlie begging me to swap rooms with him on account of the son’s taste in gory wrestling posters”).
The next book in the recommended reading order is: An Amicabubble Breakup
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https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk
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About The Author:
Dillie Dorian is an English author of child and YA realistic 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!
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