Hunky Dory. Jean Ure

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       Three

       Sunday

      She said to draw a house and garden. I drew a house and garden. She looked at it and said, “That’s supposed to be a house?” I said yes. I have never claimed to be any good at drawing.

      She told me that I’d done it the wrong way round. She said, “Look at it! It’s back to front.”

      Sometimes she is just totally illogical. How can a house be back to front? I explained that it was simply seen from the rear. She said, “So who draws a house seen from the rear? Honestly! It’s so anti-social. It’s like turning your back on people.”

      I said, “That is just your opinion.”

      “It isn’t an opinion,” she said. “It’s psychology.”

      Huh! I bet she doesn’t even know how to spell the word. She says she’s going to give me one test a week until she’s built up a profile. “Then we shall see!”

      I told her she wouldn’t see anything if I refused to do them, but she said that was where I was wrong. “If you refuse to do them it’ll simply show you’re scared.”

      I said, “Scared of what?”

      She said, “Of having your true self revealed! So whether you do them or whether you don’t, we shall still see.”

      I think this is a form of bullying. I told her so, and she said, “How can I bully you? I’m only ten years old.”

      “Which is far too young,” I said, “to know the first thing about psychology.”

      “I’m learning,” she said. “Ten isn’t too young to start learning. Or to fall in love! Poor Linzi is heartsick. She’s suffering. I’m really worried, cos she’s my best friend—one of my best friends—and I’m just so frightened for her. If you keep on rejecting her like this—”

      I resented that. I said, “I’m not rejecting her!”

      “Excuse me,” said the Microdot, “you walked straight past her the other day. You didn’t even look at her!”

      “Cos I didn’t even see her!”

      “That’s even worse! Not even seeing her. Like she’s invisible! If I told her that,” said the Microdot, “I dread to think what she might do. She might do something really awful. And if she did, you’d be the one that was responsible for it!”

      This is definitely getting beyond a joke; it’s putting me under a lot of stress. I don’t know how much more of it I can take!

       Monday

      This morning at breakfast, in sickly sweet tones that practically oozed a trail of treacle right across the table, the Microdot announced that she was becoming “ever so worried about Dory”. I knew at once that she was up to no good. I glared at her, but she just smirked and wrenched the marmalade away from me. Turning to Mum, still all sweet and sickly, she said, “You don’t think he needs his eyes tested, do you?”

      Mum, of course, latched on to it immediately. She is such a sucker! She said, “What makes you ask?”

      “Well, it’s the way he keeps missing things,” said the Microdot.

      “What things?”

      “People,” said the Microdot.

      “Och, he jist has his head in the clouds,” said Wee Scots. “He’s a bit of a dreamer, aren’t ye, laddie?”

      “You’d think he’d notice girls,” said the Microdot.

      Wee Scots gave one of her throaty chuckles. (Mum says it’s all the usquebaugh.) “I bet the girls notice him all right! I’d have noticed him when I was a wee lass.”

      “Dunno why you’d bother,” said the Microdot.

      If Dad had been there, he might have come to my rescue. Will was sitting opposite and I tried to catch his eye so that we could pull faces at each other, but he just went on cramming his mouth with cornflakes and refused to look at me. I think he should have done: after all, he is my brother. We ought to stick together!

      Did some digging after tea. Aaron and the Herb came round and I gave them the house and garden test. The Herb said, “Ooh, do we get marked out of ten?” I said I would tell her after she’d done it.

      Aaron got a bit stroppy and said he thought we weren’t supposed to have time for anything except digging. “Way you were carrying on the other day, all bossy and got to be professional.”

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