The Parent Problem (4 page)

‘Is that him out there?’ Aubrey nods to the window.

I peer out over her shoulder. The boy is still there, looking up at us.

Flip . . .

‘Sit down!’ I say, dropping to the floor. I grab Aubrey by the hand and pull her away from the window.

‘Ow!’ she says, tumbling down on to me. Just before she falls I notice she gives a little wave. ‘What did you do that for? You can’t wave at him like that!’ I say.

‘Why not? I was only saying hello,’ says Aubrey.

‘I don’t even know him – YOU don’t even know him. It’s too weird,’ I say.

Aubrey’s eyes are shining. ‘No it’s not – have you seen what a babe he is?’

‘A WHAT?’ I say.

‘A
babe
!’ says Aubrey. ‘As in “hashtag gorgeous”,’ she giggles and crosses the first two fingers of each hand over each other.

‘Hashtag?’ I say. ‘Seriously?’

‘YEAH! “Hashtag
totally hot
”,’ Aubrey squeals. ‘Look at him! He has the most A-MAZING hair. And those eyes . . . And he looks really cool – his clothes, I mean.’ She is literally babbling now.

I don’t know what to say. Has my best friend gone as insane as my mum? What is happening to the world as I used to know it?

‘So tell me about him,’ Aubrey says. She nudges me. ‘Stop gawping like a goldfish – you said Harris had been spying on him. What did he find out?’

As if summoned by telepathy, Harris bursts through the door, shoots into my room and launches himself at my bed. ‘He plays the drums!’ Harris shouts, getting up and bouncing on my bed, which causes the mattress to bow dangerously close to the ground.

‘Hey! Were you listening at the door?’ I say.

‘Of course,’ says Harris. ‘How else would I know that you were talking about our new neighbours?’

‘GET OUT!’ I shout.

But Aubrey steps in front of me, eyes shining. ‘The drums?’ she says. ‘Cool! Tell me more, Super Spy Harris.’

Harris giggles. ‘I am a cool super spy, aren’t I?’

‘NO!’ I say. ‘Do not say another word. And stop wrecking my bed. And GET OUT! Did I not just say that?’

Mum appears in the doorway. Still in her shocking ballroom outfit.

‘What’s going on?’ she asks, hands on hips and trying to look stern. She takes one look at Harris leaping in the air playing imaginary drums, however, and her mouth twitches into a smile. ‘Harris . . .’ she says, in her hopelessly unimpressive ‘telling-off’ tone of voice which she reserves especially for him. ‘Stop bouncing, sausage.’

‘Maybe he’s in a band.’ Aubrey is still talking about Boy Next Door. ‘I wonder if he’ll come to our school? How old is he, do you think?’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Mum asks.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, squaring up to Mum. ‘Will you please leave and take that –’ I point to my bouncy brother – ‘THING with you?’

Mum sighs. ‘Harris,’ she says again. ‘I get the feeling we are not welcome. Come and help me sort out something for tea – I have to leave for the dancing class at 6.30, so we need to eat early.’

‘You are not really going tonight?’ I ask.

‘Aubrey,’ says Mum. ‘Don’t you think ballroom dancing would be fun?’

‘MUM!’ I say, before Aubrey can think of a suitable answer. ‘Please, just GO!’

Mum shoots me a despairing glance and then grabs Harris by the waist and flings him over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift. ‘Come on, “Thing Two”,’ she says to a squealing Harris. ‘ “Let’s leave “Thing One” to be grumpy. There’s just enough time for a bath before tea.’

Harris protests and kicks his legs, but he is loving every minute of being carried like this.

My insane family leave the room and at last we have peace again.

Aubrey says, ‘I wonder if Boy Next Door will join The Electric Warthogs. That would be awesome!’

‘The
who
?’ I ask.

Aubrey looks as me as though I have just crawled out of a swamp. ‘No, not The Who – they are an ancient group of wrinkly old men that my dad likes. Boy, are they lame.’ Aubrey gives a dramatic puff and shakes her head to emphasize this point. ‘The Electric Warthogs are
way
better.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You
know
,’ says Aubrey. ‘The band that some of the Year 9s are in. They need a drummer.’ She picks up my pencil case from my desk and croons into it. ‘
I’m just not that into you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Babeeeeee
.’

‘What was
that
?’ I say.

Aubrey makes an exasperated noise. ‘It’s one of their songs. Flip, Skye, where have you been since September? They were playing at the school Christmas disco. Oh . . .’ She stops herself, her hand flying to her mouth.

A rush of heat fills my head. ‘I thought we decided not to go – in fact, I thought you were ill at the end of last term?’ I say.

Aubrey’s cheeks have gone pink. ‘Yeah. I was. But I sneaked out and went along. Just for half an hour. It was lame. You didn’t miss anything.’

I don’t know what to say.

She went to the disco without me. But we never go to school discos. Aubrey says they are for losers. So . . . what does this mean?

‘Hey,’ Aubrey says, her voice false and bright. ‘What about if I stay to help you babysit Harris while your mum goes to ballroom dancing? I know you hate that woman Milly What’s-’er-face coming round and eating all the custard creams.’ Her laugh is shrill and fake too. ‘Maybe your mum would let you stay home alone without a babysitter if I was there too? I could call Mum now and ask her if it’s OK? I’m sure she won’t mind: I am thirteen now after all.’

Yeah, and don’t I know it.

I shake my head. ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘I’m going to tell Mum we don’t need Milly any more. After all, I am nearly thirteen too,’ I add. There have to be some perks to getting older.

Aubrey’s smile fades and her shoulders drop: she looks like an inflatable toy that has had a pin stuck in it. ‘Whatever,’ she says. She starts to gather her things. ‘I had better get going anyway – school tomorrow!’

I walk her down to the hall. Normally I would offer to walk her home, and more often than not, the minute we got to her house, she would offer to walk me back to mine again so that we could carry on nattering. We have been doing this since forever. Our record for walking each other home on one night was twenty-six times.

Not tonight, though. I don’t want to risk bumping into Boy Next Door. I open the front door and swiftly check the road for signs of him hanging around. Looks like he’s gone.

Goodness knows what Aubrey would actually say to him if she met him – especially now that she has decided he
has
to join our school band. Fingers crossed he won’t even be coming to the same school as us.

‘So. See you tomorrow then,’ I say. ‘New term. Boring.’

‘Yeah,’ says Aubrey. ‘Boring as the most boring bore in Boringtown.’ She laughs and flicks her hair back over her shoulders. As she does so, I see her glance at next door.

It is pretty obvious that Aubrey thinks this term is going to be the exact opposite of boring. Especially if Boy Next Door has anything to do with it.

I felt sick with worry once Aubrey had gone. A million and one questions began whizzing around my head, like this:

Why did she lie about going to the school disco? Does Aubrey not want to be my friend any more? Is this why Mum said I should make new friends? Does she know something I don’t? Is it something to do with Aubrey turning thirteen and becoming a teenager? Do people dump their life-long friends at this stage in their lives? Is it necessary to completely reinvent yourself?

I mean, I’m not exactly one hundred per cent happy with the way I am, but I am not dead keen on the idea of having to reinvent myself either. What would I reinvent myself as? Although, the way I am feeling right now, I wouldn’t mind being able to shapeshift into, say, a cat. Looking at Gollum curled up on my bed, I can safely say I would rather be her than me.

The questions are still swirling even now. It’s like I have a tornado in my mind. I am actually feeling quite dizzy. I think I might lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. I’m sure that’s what writers do when they need to sort out problems or search for inspiration . . .

Oh great, now Gollum is lying on my stomach. She is purring loudly, which normally makes me feel happy and safe, but I feel the exact opposite right now. Plus, it is difficult to hold a pen and write straight when you have a cat lying on top of you.

Back to the brain-tornado . . .

Why should turning thirteen change anything? About Aubrey, I mean. It is not changing anything about me, that’s for sure. I am nearly thirteen (well, OK, four months to go) and I don’t feel any different from how I have always felt. I still love building dens in my room and reading under a duvet by torchlight and pretending I am one of my favourite characters in a book and watching cartoons and . . . basically doing all the things I have always loved doing.

All the things that Aubrey used to love doing with me.

Aubrey and I used to be able to spend a whole day in each other’s company talking about stories we’d read and making up new ones. We went through a
Paddington
phase together when we were eight, a
Harry Potter
phase when we were ten and a
Twilight
phase last year. We did endless quizzes along the lines of ‘Which Harry Potter character are you?’ (I always came out as Hermione, obviously), and we even used to go on some of those FanFic sites and upload our own invented chapters for
Twilight
. (Actually, when I say ‘used to’, I
might
be still doing it . . .)

We used to pretend that we were Half-bloods and that was why no one understood us. They were all Muggles and had no idea of our special powers. We had secret Harry Potter nicknames for pretty much everyone in our school and spent our break-times plotting what spells we would cast on people we didn’t like: hence the Voldemort Twins, Izzy and Livvy.

Aubrey doesn’t like doing this any more. She says it is bad enough living in a household full of
Lord of the Rings
nut-heads.

In fact, just the other day she was moaning, ‘Books are so last century! Who needs stories when you have YouTube?’

I realize now that I am on my own and, thinking back over the past few months, that Aubrey has not wanted to do the same things as me for a while. Instead she has started reading magazines and blogs and watching vlogs and doing personality quizzes – all stuff linked to celebrity and beauty and fashion and, well, stuff I’m just not that interested in, to be honest. To be fair to Aubrey, she has
tried
to get me excited about the same things as her. She says ‘it’s really important to know what’s hot and what’s not’. But I just don’t get it.

Talking of what’s most definitely NOT, Mum has chosen this moment of precious peace and quiet to barge in on my thoughts, calling, ‘TEA-TIIIIME!’

I will never write a whole novel at this rate. I bet Jacqueline Wilson never has problems like this to deal with.

Mum bursts into the room. I sit up and take in the scene of horror that stands before me.

‘Oh my actual life,’ I mutter.

‘Ta-DAA!’ Mum says, spreading her arms wide and turning round so that I can have the full benefit of the disaster area that is her outfit. She is wearing the silver-sequinned top that is too tight for her and which shows far too much of her cleavage.

Harris appears from somewhere behind the swathes of material that make up the satin skirt.

‘Isn’t it GORGEOUS?’ he breathes.

‘Do you like the top, at least?’ Mum asks me.

I am lost for words. Luckily Harris isn’t.

‘I
love
that top,’ Harris gushes. ‘Can I borrow it for dressing up?’

Give me strength.

‘I’m glad
you
like it, little bean,’ says Mum. ‘This is not going into the dressing-up box yet, though.’ She holds out the purple skirt, which seems even swishier than when she first showed it to us, and does another tottery twirl on her shiny high-heeled shoes.

Harris gasps and rushes to take Mum by the hand. She holds his arm up high and lets him pirouette under her, then they both crease up into a fit of red-faced giggles.

‘What is
wrong
with you two?’ I say.

Harris glares and sticks his tongue out. ‘You’re just jealous because Mum looks beautiful,’ he says. ‘Unlike
you
.’

‘Oh yeah, I am soooo jealous of Mum looking like she’s about to go to a fancy-dress party,’ I say.

Mum beams. ‘How funny – I actually did find this top in a fancy-dress shop!’ She looks so ridiculously happy that I feel a little bit sorry for her. Surely she doesn’t
enjoy
looking through second-hand clothes rails and fancy-dress shops? If we had more money, she would shop in nice places with beautiful things and then maybe she would look like a normal mum. Even Aubrey’s mum doesn’t go out in public in her
Lord of the Rings
stuff. She saves it for conventions. Also, her outfits are obviously a costume, so people know she is really dressing up as a character. But Mum is always getting this wrong. She thinks it is funny to parade around in weird clothes and that I should ‘get a sense of humour’.

‘Mum, please at least put a cardigan on before Milly comes round?’ I plead.