Hunky Dory

The Microdot gave me this questionnaire. She said she was doing tests, and I had to fill it in. So I filled it in, and she screamed at me.

“This is just stupid!”

Actually, I thought it was quite funny, but the Microdot has no sense of humour. She screeched, “I suppose you think you’re being clever?”

I guess I might have smirked a bit. Not exactly meaning to; more like a sort of nervous tic. It does my head in when she screeches. Trouble is, once she starts she can’t seem to stop. She just rages on and on. She screeched at me that it wasn’t clever, it was stupid.

“There isn’t any such programme as Secrets of a Sewage Farm, and if it was it would be disgusting!”

I said, “Pardon me, that is just your interpretation.”

“What about maggot pie? Are you trying to tell me that’s not disgusting? And what’s this stupid Flamingo thing? I’ve never heard of a band called that. You just made it up!”

I said, “How do you know? You don’t know the name of every band there’s ever been.”

Witheringly she said that nobody would call a band anything that stupid. “It’s just about the stupidest name I ever heard!”

I told her that that was the fifth time she’d used the word stupid. I said, “You ought to get a bit more vocabulary.”

She screeched, “Yes, and you ought to get a life! You know what this shows, don’t you?” She snatched up the questionnaire and waved it at me. “It shows that you’re repressed.”

I said, “Yeah?” I don’t think she even knows what the word means.

She said, “Yeah! It shows you’re too scared to reveal your true self…you have to hide behind being stupid.”

“That makes the sixth time,” I said.

“Sixth time what?”

“Sixth time you’ve used that word.”

“That’s cos it’s the only one that describes you!”

All because I treated her silly little questionnaire as a joke. I bet even if I’d taken it seriously she’d still have said it showed there was something weird about me. She’s always saying I’m weird. She told me the other day I was like a human hermit crab.

“Skulking in your shell!”

If I’m like a hermit crab, she’s like a hornet, all angry and buzzing. Zzz, zzz, zzz! You’re stupid, you’re weird!

I’m not like a hermit crab; I don’t skulk. She just can’t bear it when other people don’t share her interests. Shopping, and shrieking, and giggling. I reckon she ought to learn to be a bit more tolerant.

Now she’s threatening to give me more of her idiotic tests. She gets them out of girly mags. Ten Ways to Tell if a Boy’s Interested in You. (Like any boy ever would be, the way she carries on.) Check your Popularity. Check your Street Cred. It’s all rubbish! She’d better not try any of them on me. She tried one on Dad the other day. Something about hair. What your Latest Hair Style reveals about You. Dad practically hasn’t got any hair. Will said, “What it reveals is that Dad is going bald.” She didn’t have a go at him. She didn’t accuse him of being stupid. It’s just me she’s got it in for. Her and her tests!

If she gives me that one about Check your Popularity I shall refuse to answer it. I don’t see why, just because she’s my sister, she should be allowed to humiliate me.

Friday

Aaron came back to school today; he said he’d been off with earache. I told him what had happened with Amy Wilkerson, parking herself next to me and breathing over me. He drew in his breath and said, “I’d keep an eye on her, if I were you. Gobbles boys up for breakfast, that one. Obviously fancies you. It’s what they do, they come and breathe over you, and touch you…did she touch you?”

I said, “She kept nudging me with her knee.”

“See, this is what I mean,” said Aaron. “She fancies you! She’s got her sights set on you…donk!” He shot out the first two fingers of both hands, straight into my face. “It’s like smoke signals, you gotta be aware of the signs. You gotta know how to respond.”

I said, “I don’t want to respond!”

“No, but if you did.”

“I don’t!”

“Can’t say I blame you,” said Aaron. He sucked in his cheeks. “Amy Wilkerson! Have to be careful with that one.”

I wish now that I hadn’t mentioned it to him. Aaron is one of those people, he always claims to know everything about everything. But you can’t actually rely on him. Like the time he told me that a prendergast was someone that molested children, and for ages I believed him and wouldn’t go into the newspaper shop cos of the lady in there being called Mrs Prendergast, until in the end Mum wanted to know what the problem was, so I told her, and she laughed and laughed and explained that Prendergast was just a perfectly ordinary surname like Smith or Jones and nothing whatsoever to do with molesting children. Aaron had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. As usual. It was very embarrassing.

I refuse to let him embarrass me again! When it comes to girls, I’m not convinced he knows what he’s talking about. I don’t believe that Amy Wilkerson fancies me. Why should she? I’ve hardly ever spoken to her. I reckon she was just, like, doing it for a joke. I bet what it was, her friend Sharleen had dared her. I bet that’s what it was! Like the Microdot getting all her friends to hang about at the gates and giggle. Just to upset me.

On the other hand, who told Janine Edwards to keep beaming? There can’t be two of them that fancy me! I don’t want to be fancied; I just want to be left alone!

I’m really glad it’s Friday; I am beginning to feel persecuted.

Wee Scots is coming tomorrow. That should be liven things up.

Saturday

Wee Scots arrived this morning, bright red as usual with the usquebaugh. Mum went to fetch her from the bus station. As they came through the front door Dad said, “Watch out, here she is, Hell’s Granny!” Wee Scots bashed him with her handbag and cried, “Och, awa’ wi’ ye!” They have a really good relationship.

After lunch, while me and the Microdot were doing the washing up, which is one of the tedious tasks we have to perform in order to get any pocket money, the Microdot said she’d got a secret to tell me. She said, “You know my friend Linzi?”

I didn’t, but I didn’t bother to say so; I just grunted. The Microdot has so many friends I can’t keep up with them. Last year for her birthday she invited twenty people. Boys, as well as girls. She claimed they were “all my friends”. I can’t understand why she’s so popular; she is very bed-tempered.

“My friend Linzi?” She snatched a plate out of my hand before I’d even had time to put it on the draining board. She always treats washing up like it’s some kind of competition. “The one with the plaits?”

When she said that, I had this faint uneasy feeling come over me. I’d noticed a girl with plaits in the middle of the gigglers. She’d been giggling along with the rest, but more in a sort of embarrassed way. Grudgingly I said, “What about her?”

“She’s got a crush on you.”

“What?” I was so alarmed I let a glass go slipping through my fingers on to the kitchen floor.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said the Microdot. “You’ve gone and broken it.” Like I needed her to tell me? “That was Granny’s favourite usquebaugh glass.” I said, “It’s not an usquebaugh glass. She uses tumblers for usquebaugh. This is a water glass.”

“It’s still broken.”

“I can see that, thank you very much!”

“Yes, well, anyway. Like I was saying…about Linzi. She’s got this massive crush on you.”

I said, “What d’you mean, crush?”

“Crush! Like she wants to crrrrrrush you!”