Pumpkin Pie (3 page)

It is because I take after Dad. He is also messy. We are both slobs!

Make a mental note to change my ways. Do not wish to be a slob for the rest of my life. Begin by going over to the sink and pawing at spaghetti marks with dish cloth. Have to push past Pip to get there. Pip is down on his hands and knees, packing his school bag. He is a compulsive packer. He puts things in and takes them out and puts them back in a different order. Everything has to
be just right.

Query: at the age often, what does he have to pack??? When I was ten I just went off with my fluffy froggy pencil case and my lunch box and my teddy bear mascot. Pip lugs a whole library around with him.

“Don’t tread on my things!” he yells, as I cram past him on my way back from the sink.

Pip is wearing
his
school uniform of white shirt and grey trousers. He looks like any other small boy. Perhaps a bit more intense and serious, being such a boffin, though I am not sure he is quite the genius that Mum makes him out to be. Although I don’t know! He could be. My brother the genius…

What with Pip being so brainy, and Petal being so gorgeous, I sometimes wonder what it leaves for me. Maybe I shall have to cultivate a nice nature – like Dad. Dad never snaps or snarls. He never loses his temper. He’s never mean. He’s over at the stove right now, all bundled up in his blue woolly dressing gown, fixing a breakfast which only two of us will eat. ie, him and me!

From the way he’s stirring it, I would guess that he’s doing porridge. Dad’s a great one for porridge. He makes it very rich and creamy and serves it up with milk and sugar. Yum yum! I love Dad’s porridge. Mum won’t eat it because she’s in too much of a hurry. She’ll just have black coffee. Petal won’t eat it because she can’t be bothered. She’ll probably have a glass of milk and a banana. Pip, needless to say, won’t touch it. He says it’s all grey and slimy and reminds him of snot. Dad still tries to tempt him. I don’t know why he bothers; Pip’s a lost cause. Foodwise, that is. All he ever wants is two slices of toast,
lightly browned
with the crusts cut off (he won’t eat crusts) and smeared with marge. Butter makes him sick; and marmalade, of course, being orange, is a shade of red and therefore taboo.

Dad and I finish off the porridge between us, sharing the cream from the top of the milk. We’re still eating when Mum yells at Pip that it’s time to go. She drops him off at school every morning; me and Petal have to take the bus. We don’t really mind. It gives Petal the opportunity to show off her legs before Mrs Jacklin gets hold of her, and it gives me the chance to finish off my maths homework. Even, if I’m lucky, to pick someone’s brains. Esther McGuffin, for instance, who gets on two stops before us and truly
is
a genius. She is very good-natured and never minds if I copy. The way I see it, it is not proper cheating as I always make sure to copy some of it wrong and have never ever got more than a C+. (On the days I don’t copy I mostly get a D.)

At the school gates I meet up with Saffy. We’re in Year 7. Bottom of the pile. Petal flashes past us, showing all of her legs, and most of her bum, in a crowd of Year 9s. Year 9s are incredibly arrogant! I can see why Auntie Megan doesn’t care for them.

On a typical school day, I would say that nothing very much occurs. Of interest, that is. It just jogs on, in the same old way. One time, I remember, a girl in our class, Annie Goldstone, went and fainted in morning assembly and had to be carried out. That caused some excitement. Oh, and another time a boy called Nathan Corrie, also in our class, fell through the roof of the science lab right on top of Mr Gifford, one of our science teachers. Then there was Sophie Sutton, and her nosebleed. She bled buckets! All over her desk, all over the floor. But these sort of events are very few and far between. They don’t happen every day, or even, alas, every week. Mostly it is just the daily slog. The best you can hope for is Nathan Corrie being told to leave the room. But that is no big deal!

In spite of all this, me and Saffy do quite like school. We are neither of us specially brilliant at anything, and we are not the type of people to be chosen first for games teams or voted form captain or asked to join the Inner Circle, but we bumble along quite happily in our own way.

The Inner Circle is a gang of four girls, led by Dani Morris, who consider themselves to be the crème de la crème (as Auntie Megan would say). They are the ones who get invited to all the parties. The ones who decide what is in and what is out. Like for instance when they came to school wearing ribbed tights and all the rest of us had to start wearing ribbed tights, ‘cos otherwise we would have been just too uncool for words, until suddenly, without any warning, they went back to ordinary ones again and threw us into confusion.

I personally wouldn’t want to be a member of the Inner Circle with the eyes of all the world upon me. I would be too self-conscious!

“We will just be
us,”
says Saffy.

Really, what else can you be? It is no use thinking you can turn yourself into someone completely different. I know, because I have tried it. Lots of times! These are just some of the things I have attempted to be:

Bright and breezy, exuding confidence from every pore. “Hey! Wow! Way to go!”

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

Loud and laddish. Smutty jokes and long snorty cackles at anything even faintly suggestive.

Total disaster.
I boil up like a beetroot even just thinking of it.

Creepy crawly. In other words, humble.

Even worse.
I just
oozed
humility. All I can say is
YUCK.

Eager beaver sports freak. Madly playing football in the playground every break. Dragging myself to school at half-past seven to practise netball in the freezing cold.

Bore bore BORE!
I quickly gave up on that one. It wouldn’t have worked anyway.

None of them worked. None of these things that I have tried. When I thought I was being bright and breezy, I just came across as obnoxious so that people kept saying things like, “Who do you think you are, all of a sudden?” They don’t say that to Dani Morris, and she is just about as obnoxious as can be. But she can get away with it, and I can’t!

This is the point that I am making. Like when I went through my oozy phase. All I did was just smile at Kevin Williams and he instantly stretched his lips into this hideous grimace and made his eyes go crossed. Why did he do it??? He wouldn’t have done it to Petal! If Petal had smiled at him, he would most likely have gone to jelly. But Kevin Williams is a friend of Nathan Corrie, so I should have known better. Nathan Corrie behaves like something that has just crawled out of the primeval slime.

However. To return to this typical day that I am talking about. Here are me and Saffy, sat together in our little cosy corner at the back of the class, and there at the front is Ms Glazer, our maths teacher. She’s collecting up our maths homework from yesterday and handing back the stuff we did last week. She’s given me a D+. Not bad! I mean, considering I did it all on my own. At least it’s better than D-, but Ms Glazer doesn’t seem to see it that way. At the bottom, in fierce red ink, she’s written:
Jenny, I really would like there to be some improvement during the course of this term.
D+ is an improvement! What’s she going on about? I happen to have this mental block, where figures just don’t mean anything to me. Sometimes I seriously think that an essential part of my brain is missing. I have tried putting this point of view to Ms Glazer, but all she says in reply is, “Nonsense! There is nothing whatsoever wrong with your brain. Application is what is lacking.”

Dad is the only one who ever sympathises with me. Mum, in her ruthless high-flying way, agrees with Ms Glazer.

“Anyone can do anything if they just set their mind to it.”

That is RUBBISH. Can a one-legged man run a mile in a minute? I think not! (I wish I had thought to say this to Mum. I’d like to know how she would have wriggled out of
that.)

To make up for my D+ in maths, I get an A in biology. It’s for my drawing of the rabbit’s reproductive system. I am rather proud of my rabbit’s reproductive system. I have filled in all the organs in different colours – bright reds and greens and purples – so that it looks like one of those modern paintings that make people like Dad go, “Call that art?” I try showing it to Saffy but she takes one look and shrieks, “That’s disgusting! Take it away!” She says it makes her feel sick. She says anything to do with reproduction makes her feel sick. She is a very sensitive sort of person.

All through the lesson I keep shooting little glances at my brilliant artwork. It occurs to me that the rabbit’s reproductive system, in colour, would make a fascinating and appropriate design for certain types of garment. Those smock things, for instance, that people wear when they are pregnant. It would be a fashion statement!

I get quite excited by this and wonder if perhaps I should go to art school and become a famous clothes designer. Why not? I can do it! Already I have visions of being interviewed on television.

“Jenny Jo Penny, the fashion designer…”

I would put in the Jo, being my middle name, as I think Jenny Penny is just too naff for words. There would be the Jenny Jo Penny collection and all the big Hollywood stars would come to me for their outfits. I would be a designer label! And I wouldn’t ever use fur or animal skin. I would be known for not using it.

“Jenny Jo Penny, the animal-friendly fashion designer…”

Hurrah! I’ve found something to aim at.

But wait! The last lesson of the day is art, with Mr Pickering. We are doing still life, and Mr Pickering has tastefully arranged a few bits of fruit for us to draw. In my new artistic mode I decide that just copying is not very imaginative. I mean if you just want to copy you might as well use a camera. A true artist will
interpret.
So what I do, I ever so slightly alter the shape of things and then splosh on the brightest colours I can find. Blue, orange, purple, like I did with the rabbit stuff. These will be my trademark!

I’m sitting there, waiting for Mr Pickering to come and comment, and feeling distinctly pleased with myself, when Saffy leans over to have a look. She gives this loud squawk and shrieks, “Ugh! It looks like—”