My weeks are pretty boring. There’s school mostly. I quite enjoy school. The other kids, mainly the stupid boys who spend all day fooling around and sticking pencils up their noses instead of working, call me and my best friend Tammy teachers’ pets and goody two shoeses, but we just ignore them. There are worse things to be than someone the teachers like and trust. Maybe if the boy with an eraser sticking out of his ear actually read the books put in front of him instead of sticking erasers into his ears, then he wouldn’t constantly be sent to the headmaster for disrupting the class.
Things haven’t been the same since the summer. Even though I still have Tammy, I feel like I don’t fit in anymore, especially when I see the other kids’ mums and dads waiting for them at the gate, happy and smiling. Not that I want anyone picking me up at school. I am more than old enough to walk to and from school by myself, thank you.
In the mornings, I take Pippa to her infant’s class, which is just across the yard from my junior class. In the evenings, I leave Pippa with her after school childcare club. Mum pays them to look after Pippa until she gets home from work because I’m not old enough to be responsible for Pippa in the house by myself. The school is only a five-minute walk from our house, but I love walking it, especially in the winter when it’s starting to get dark and it’s a bit scary to be by yourself and sometimes you think you can hear footsteps behind you even though you probably can’t.
Mum cooks dinner when she gets home, and then I do my homework while Mum washes the plates and gets Pippa bathed and dressed in her pyjamas. Then Pippa is allowed to come downstairs and watch TV for half an hour before bed. It’s my responsibility to get Pippa into bed and read her a bedtime story. It used to be Dad’s job, but since he’s not here at bed times anymore (lets face it, he’s not here at any times anymore) I’ve taken over the duty. Where The Wild Things Are gets a bit boring, especially when Pippa wants it read to her four nights in a row, but I like doing it. I like having chores. It makes me feel like a responsible adult. In the evenings, I have to put Pippa to bed, and I have to dry the dinner plates after Mum has washed them. Then in the mornings before school I take Harry for his morning walk, take the dustbins and recycling bins out to the pavement every Wednesday morning for pick ups, and take Pippa to school.
I like the weekends best. Saturdays are my favourite days, as Tammy and I usually do something together. I get my pocket money every Saturday morning, and then either my mum or Tammy’s mum will take us out to do something. Sometimes it’s a walk around the shops to spend our pocket money or we’ll go to the cinema. Saturdays are always a lot of fun. We used to go places with my mum and dad, but since the summer, Dad has started working on Saturdays so we don’t see him unless we call in the shopping centre where he works.
Tammy is a really good best friend. She’s taller than me with long blonde hair that gets tangled in everything, like her coats and her school bag and she always get it stuck in her armpits during PE lessons. My hair is brown and shorter than Tammy’s but still long, but somehow I manage to not get it tangled up like Tammy does. We like doing the same things together, like singing, dancing, shopping, and watching movies. She doesn’t laugh at me for my crush on Justin from Wizards of Waverly Place because she likes him too, but not as much as she likes Tom from McFly and half of the contestants on The X Factor. Things are strange since the divorce though. It’s hard to go to Tammy’s house and see her parents as happy and together as they’ve always been, when mine are just the opposite. Tammy makes every effort to cheer me up. One time in the summer, just after Dad left, she came to my house for a sleepover, and she snuck in a whole bag full of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and boxes of Cadbury’s Fingers. We had to eat the ice cream quickly before it melted as we couldn’t let my mum see us putting it in the freezer. We felt totally sick afterwards but it was really fun and for that night, Tammy made me forget that my family was no longer like everyone else’s family.
Sundays are Dad Days. They’re the only day he has off work now, so every Sunday he picks me and Pippa up. He never comes in, just sits outside in his car and honks the horn until we come out, while Mum glares at him from the front window. He’ll take us somewhere, usually somewhere quite boring like for a walk in the country or to a farmers market. It’s never as much fun as walking around shops but I like to spend time with Dad. Pippa usually falls asleep in the backseat on the way home, so I get to sit in the front and Dad talks to me like an adult and tells me about his work and how many robberies he’s stopped this week and the kind of tricks people try to get free stuff at the mall. Dad is a security guard for the shopping mall in Chelferry. It’s actually a pretty big mall considering the size of the village it’s in, but they built it for tourists mainly and people come from all over and love to shop there. I like it too. Dad’s office is like the best way of people watching ever.