The Parent Problem (15 page)

And so on and so on.

I start by trying to tell her that things are not as they seem. This doesn’t make any difference so I give up trying to explain. It is hopeless by text, in any case. Aubrey only sends back more and more angry emoticons in reply, including the red-faced devil cat ones and black clouds and bolts of thunder and lightning.

In the end she gives up on words altogether, so I ask her back round on Sunday, saying that we need to talk. She doesn’t text back for ages and in the end I get one word: ‘Busy’. And that is the last I hear from her until Monday at school.

I woke up this morning feeling sick to the pit of my stomach. It was the first day that the bus was running again because the roadworks in town have finished. I am on the bus now, keeping my head down and writing in my journal, not daring to look up. I managed to sprint to the bus stop and get on without seeing Finn, but what will I do if he has got on behind me and decides to tell everyone about the Loo Incident? What if Aubrey does? She really hates me now, I know she does. Those texts made it pretty clear.

How am I going to survive life at school without Aubrey? I don’t know what to do without her. It is all very well when I am choosing to be alone, sitting in the library at lunch and break, but now that she doesn’t want to speak to me at all, I feel like I will be on my own forever.

I have switched my phone off. There is no point in having it on: Aubrey was the only one who ever texted me and I don’t want to be checking it all the time just to see that I (a) have more nasty messages from her, or (b) have no messages at all.

I don’t know which is worse. We’re at school already, so I’m going to have to stop writing.

I walk into the locker area, still hiding behind my fringe, and open my locker door fast so that I can hide behind that as well.

Someone comes up behind me and taps me on the shoulder as I am getting out the books I need for my first class. I turn round and come face to face with Aubrey, smiling at me. For a microsecond I think everything’s going to be OK and I open my mouth to say something. Then the VTs appear on either side of her, like two pieces of rank burnt toast, popping out of a toaster.

‘Hi, Skye,’ says Livvy, flicking her long ponytail over her shoulder. Then she makes a big show of pulling a face and flapping her hand under her nose. ‘Eeuw!’ she cries. ‘Anyone else smell that?’

‘Urgh, yes!’ says Izzy. ‘It’s like – there’s a whiff of public loos or something.’

I turn back to hide in my locker.

‘So, Skye. Been swimming in any more toilets recently?’ Izzy says.

‘Yeah. Called any knights in shining armour to rescue you?’ I hear Aubrey add. Her tone of voice is almost identical to the twins’.

The VTs laugh, no doubt approving of Aubrey’s oh-so-witty comment.

I feel my face flare and will my brain to come up with something clever and witty in reply, but all I can think is: Aubrey’s not wearing her friendship bracelet.

I turn to look back at her and check both her wrists just to make sure. No, she has definitely taken it off.

‘Your
face
!’ crows Livvy. ‘I don’t know about Skye
Green
– you look more like Skye
Red
today.’

‘Ha ha!’ sneers Izzy. ‘You know what they say about “red sky in the morning”? “That’s a warning.” Better stay out of her way before she explodes!’

I plead with Aubrey with my eyes to leave this evil pair and come back to me. There was a time not so long ago when a glance like this would have had Aubrey rushing to my side: she would have known exactly what I was thinking without me having to say a word. Like I say, we have always been able to read each other like a book.

Sadly, it turns out that today Aubrey is reading me completely wrong: instead of the Best Friends Make Up and Everyone Lives Happily Ever After story that I have in mind, she sticks her chin in the air, links arms with the VTs and says:

‘I don’t know what’s happened to you these days, Skye. I think you need to get a life and grow up.’

This is what happens when you take off a friendship bracelet you have been wearing for nearly three years. You lose the power to read your best friend’s mind.

I try one last attempt to get her to understand what happened at the weekend. ‘Aubrey, it was not my fault about Finn. He came round to see Harris—’

‘Oh, of course. Fit Finn Parker came round to play with your little squirt of a brother.’ Aubrey snorts. ‘I bet he did.’

I gasp. She has never said anything so mean about Harris before.

‘You know what you’ve done, don’t you?’ says Livvy.

I say nothing. I have a feeling they are going to tell me the answer to this question, and I am not disappointed.

‘You broke The Friendship Code, Skye Green,’ says Izzy.

‘Yeah,’ says Aubrey, holding up her wrist to show me what I have already noticed. ‘You broke the code, and I have broken the bracelet.’

And our friendship, I think.

I can’t make myself say it aloud, though. I beg my brain to think of
something
to say. Nothing happens. I feel numb. I turn my back on their laughter, praying that the bell will go and that I can leave it until the last minute to slink into class. I don’t know where I am going to sit. I know one thing for certain, though: it won’t be next to Aubrey, where I have sat ever since my first day at school.

The days of Aubrey and Skye are well and truly over.

Things got worse as the day went on. I should have seen it coming: turns out ‘someone’ managed to film the Bathroom Incident. It will have been Finn, of course. That must have been what he was doing with his phone while he was laughing at me. He probably even sent it to Aubrey straight away which is why she was checking her phone too. Or maybe it was the other way around and she sent it to him? Anyway, who cares which one of them did it? The VTs have already made sure it was posted in time for everyone to see it by lunchtime.

Everywhere I went people jumped out at me or crept up behind me and made flushing noises or shouted ‘Boo!’ and then said, ‘Oh,
sorry
– didn’t mean to make you wet yourself!’ One clever person even went so far as to fill my locker with loo rolls so that when I opened the door at the end of the day, the whole lot fell on top of me. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was caught on camera as well.

The only way I am going to survive at school from now on is by using the library as my safe haven. Mrs Ball keeps an eagle eye on anyone who goes in there. She has a zero tolerance policy on bullying. She has a superb tactic for keeping people in line: she eyeballs anyone misbehaving and talks them into signing up for The Summer Reading Challenge. Not a punishment for someone like me, of course, but the people who used to come into the library looking for trouble now know it is not going to work out in their favour, so they are staying away.

As I walked to the bus stop at the end of the day I heard Aubrey loudly talking to the VTs about going into town after school ‘because The Hogs are going to McDonalds after their practice’.

Good luck to her. The VTs will only drop her the minute someone more exciting comes along.

I tell myself that, but I am not sure I believe it, and anyway, even if they do, will she ever want to come back from the Dark Side to be my BFF again?

As the days have gone by, life at home has become almost as bad as life at school.

The cherry of catastrophe has landed on top of the icing of disaster on my cake of doom.

Here is why: Mum bounced in after work one evening to announce that she was ‘going to take some extra dance classes’ because she thought she really had a chance in the competition but that she ‘needed more practice’.

When I groaned, Mum asked, ‘Why is that such a problem, Skye?’ in a very annoyed tone.

Harris said he thought it was ‘COOL’ and had a go at me for being a ‘grumpy old meanie’.

He would be a grumpy old meanie too if he had no friends and he was old enough to realize his mum is the most mortifying parent on the planet.

But then, Harris seems immune to embarrassment. In fact, he goes out of his way to out-perform Mum in that area of life.

For example, he has taken to carrying his old security blanket (fondly known as Bop-Bop for reasons lost in the mists of time) and waving it around like a cape while stamping in a circle around Pongo and shouting ‘Olé’. He says he is determined to help Mum ‘improve’ her idiotic Latin-style dance. I have tried kindly pointing out to him that he will get teased mercilessly if he ever lets on about any of this to his mates at school. He just sticks his tongue out and tells me to mind my own business.

I have also said (a bit less kindly) that his act would be known as The Pongo instead of The Tango. It doesn’t have any effect. He has been practising every night after school, with Finn encouraging him every time he comes round to babysit.

It is yet another dance-class night and Finn is due to come round any second. Mum has changed her outfit at least three times in the past ten minutes and is now asking my little brother’s advice on what to wear. As if it matters. She goes to this class twice a week and presumably sees the same people who also dress like insane parrots. I doubt they notice from one session to the next what she is wearing.

‘What do you think, little bean?’ Mum is asking Harris. ‘Gold and black, or red and black?’

‘I think
both
are gorgeous,’ says Harris, his eyes wide. He runs his fingers over the black feather boa Mum has flung around her neck. ‘Can I have this after you’ve finished with it? Pongo would love it.’

Mum gives him an indulgent smile and tickles his face with the feather boa. ‘No you can’t!’ she says. ‘Pongo would most probably try to eat it – imagine the mess!’

‘Awwwwwwooo,’ Harris groans, his whole body collapsing with disappointment.

‘What about you, Skye?’ Mums asks me, holding her skirt out. ‘Do you think the black-and-gold is too much? Because I could change the gold for red?’

She looks so anxious. I know I should say something nice, just as Harris has, but I can’t think of
anything
nice to say to someone who looks like an ostrich who’s been dragged through a rubbish tip backwards.

‘Oh noooo,’ I say. ‘Gold is not too much. I am sure all the other dancers will look as though someone has wrapped them up and left them under the Christmas tree.’

‘Skye,’ Mum says, letting her hands fall to her sides. ‘I don’t know why you are so moody these days. You’re always on Harris’s case about his dancing as well. Are you jealous? Is that it? Maybe
you
should join a class—?’

‘MUM!’ I say. ‘I do
not
want to learn how to dance. Two loonies in the family is quite enough – three if you count the dog. I can’t bear the thought of us all dancing in a line in the town hall as if we are some kind of lame family entry for
Britain’s Got Talent
.’

Mum laughs. ‘Skye, you are so dramatic!’

I snort. ‘Yeah, and you are not dramatic
at all
,’ I mutter, nodding at her outfit. ‘Why do I have to put up with Finn coming round to our house
twice
a week?’ I add.

TWICE A WEEK.

Tuesdays AND Thursdays.

Kill. Me. Now.

‘I mean,’ I go on, ‘why don’t we all just move in together?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Mum snaps.

‘Why not?’ I say, flinging my hands in the air. ‘We might as well. Finn practically lives here already anyway, and you are always chattering away to Rob as if he’s your new best friend.’

‘There’s no need to be ridiculous,’ Mum says. Her face is pink. Of course she’s cross I am being moody, but I can’t help it.

Then it strikes me: both Harris and Mum really have got new best friends. I am the only one who has
lost
a best friend. And the rest of my family doesn’t seem to have noticed.

Mum gives a funny strangled cough and then says, ‘I do think you are being silly, Skye. It is only a few hours a week. Is it really so much to ask?’ Then she turns her back on me and goes into the kitchen to make a lot of noise with the washing-up.

I guess that means the matter is closed.

Why am I surprised?

No one is interested in anything I have to say any more.