Fizzypop. Jean Ure

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СКАЧАТЬ and wandered up the hall in search of Mum. She was in the front room, preparing stuff for Mrs Simmonds.

      I said, “Mum?”

      “What? Why haven’t you left for school? Frankie, please don’t let that dog in here! I’ve asked you before… not when I have someone coming.”

      “OK.” I squashed Rags back out and closed the door.

      “And don’t eat over Mrs Simmonds’s clothes!”

      “I’m not.” I moved away. “Mum, about Angel’s shirt… I didn’t know it would shrivel! I was only trying to help.”

      Mum sighed. “Yes, I’m sure you were.”

      “You have so much work to do!”

      “I do,” said Mum, “don’t I? And you’re just making even more for me, standing there dropping toast crumbs on the floor.”

      “Sorry,” I said, “sorry! I’ll get the vacuum cleaner.”

      “No! For God’s sake! I mean… it’s all right,” said Mum. “I’ll see to it. You just get yourself off to school.”

      “All right.” I crammed in my last bit of toast. “Abow a garn sh—”

      “I beg your pardon?” said Mum.

      I swallowed. “About the garden shed… you don’t think a burglar got in there, do you?”

      “Not really,” said Mum. “No.”

      “It could have been a burglar! He could have knocked the candle over. He could have done it deliberately.”

      “Oh, Frankie,” said Mum, “just go to school!”

      “I was only asking,” I said.

      Burglars did that sort of thing. Seemed far more likely to me than a big fat candle falling over all by itself.

      “Frankie, will you please—”

      “Yes, yes, I’m going!” I said.

      I reached the front door at exactly the same moment as Angel.

      “I hope you don’t think you’re going to walk with me,” she said.

      I used to have to walk with her when I was in primary school; either with her or with Tom. Angel used to complain that Tom was always wriggling out of it.

      “Just because he’s a boy!”

      She doesn’t like being seen with me in public, she says I’m an embarrassment and that I cramp her style, whatever that is. I can’t say I particularly like being seen with her; not when she’s always flying into rages. It’s like being out with a crazy person. I tossed my head and told her that she didn’t need to worry.

      “I’m meeting my friends.”

      “Friends?” Angel snorted. “I’m surprised you’ve got any! Wait till you start shrivelling their favourite shirts.”

      We sidestepped elaborately as we went through the door. I took a pace backwards.

      “Age before beauty,” I said. I thought that was pretty good. I’d been dying to use it ever since reading it in a book.

      Angel stuck her face close to mine.

      “You are a hideous child,” she said. “I find you unspeakably loathsome.”

      She is totally mad. I feel sorry for her.

      Chapter Two

      Angel went stalking off, wobbling slightly in her designer shoes. Sling backs, with long pointy toes and tiny little spike heels. She has to take them off once she reaches school and put on her ordinary flat black ones, same as the rest of us. Clodhoppers, she calls them. I don’t personally mind clodhoppers. The way I see it, if a herd of maddened elephants suddenly came roaring down the street you would at least be able to make a run for it. Angel wouldn’t; she would be crushed underfoot. It’s pathetic, really. Risking life and limb just to impress boys. Cos that’s all it is. It’s all about boys. She does have good legs, though.

      I watched her receding into the distance. I suppose in her way she has style. I could see that as a stolid ten-year old, dumping along at her side, I probably had cramped it for her. I am not really what you would call a fashion accessory.

      I humped my bag over my shoulder and stomped on. I know that I stomp cos Miss Henderson, our PE teacher, has told me so. She said, “My goodness, Frankie! You’re a bit of a stomper.” It is just the way I am built. Mum says I am “four square and solid”. Angel, on the other hand, cos of only eating low-fat yoghurt, is all frail and wispy. She’d be an easy target for elephants. I reckon a flock of sparrows could crush her.

      Skye was waiting for me on the corner of Barlow Road. We meet up there every morning; me, and Skye, and Jem. Skye Samuels and Jemma McClusky are my two best mates. We were all at primary school together, and we all live near each other.

      I said, “Hi.”

      Skye said, “Your sister’s just gone marching past with her nose in the air. I said hello but she, like, totally ignored me?”

      “She’s in one of her rages,” I said. “Just cos I shrivelled her shirt.”

      “You shrivelled her shirt?”

      “Only a little bit! You wouldn’t hardly notice. But you know what she’s like.”

      “I know what you’re like,” said Skye.

      What was that supposed to mean? I decided to pretend she hadn’t said it.

      “It was kind of surreal,” I said. “She just totally lost it. Got all frothed up and went into this furious megasulk, yelling and carrying on, saying it was her favourite shirt and I’d gone and ruined it.”

      “People are so unreasonable,” said Skye.

      Well, I do think they are, and especially my sister. Angel. Her name is actually Angeli, but everyone calls her Angel, which if you ask me is a big laugh considering she is anything but. For one thing she is totally vain, always gazing at herself in the mirror and thinking how beautiful she is. For another, there’s this humungous temper that she has. Mum says she will grow out of it, it is just a teenage thing, but I personally reckon she should be sent to anger management classes.

      “No sane person,” I said, “would get all worked up over a tiny bit of shrivel. It was only on the edge.” I hoicked up the edge of my shirt to demonstrate. “There. Just there! It’s not normal.”

      “Seems to me,” said Skye, “shrivelling the edge of someone’s shirt isn’t exactly what you’d call normal.”

      “I didn’t do it on purpose! I was ironing,” I said. “I was trying to help. The thing just went and shrivelled before I could stop it.”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ