Charlie and the Cheese and Onion Crisps and Charlie and the Cat Flap

by Hilary McKay

  4

  Bm9 x Chaz

  Afew minutes later Charlie arrived home and bounced up the stairs to the room he shared with his brother. There was a big sulky lumpy bump on the top bunk that belonged to Max.

  ‘There you are!’ said Charlie in a pleased happy voice. ‘I looked for you everywhere downstairs. Did you see me with Gemma?’

  The bump on the bed lashed out with a sudden foot.

  ‘I’m going to make her a card to say Happy New House because she’s just moved to a new house. So is it OK if I borrow your new felt pens because I don’t know where you hid them?’

  The bump growled.

  ‘And some of your card if you don’t mind and could you fold it in half because I can never do it neat enough?’

  The bump gave a big sigh.

  ‘And then I’ll go away.’

  The bump on the bed rolled on to the floor and turned into Max. Max pulled his sleeping bag out of the bottom of the wardrobe and reached his new felt pens down from the top. He took a sheet of cardboard from his school art folder. He folded the card very neatly in half.

  ‘That’s perfect,’ said Charlie.

  Max opened up the top of the sleeping bag and slid the felt pens and card inside. After that he picked up Charlie and scrunched him into a ball and dropped him into the sleeping bag too. He shook it so that all the junk settled at the bottom and he twisted the top closed. Then he heaved the whole bundle on to his shoulder, carried it out of the room and dropped it down the stairs.

  Charlie tumbled and rolled down the stairs, across the hall, out of the open front door and into the garden where his mother and Gemma were talking over the gate.

  ‘… Saving up for a karaoke machine,’ he heard Gemma say he slowed down. ‘I love little kids! Goodness!’

  ‘Hullo Gemma!’ said Charlie, crawling out of the sleeping bag.

  ‘What happened to you?’ asked Gemma, and at the same time Charlie’s mother demanded, ‘Now what have you done to Max?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie, glaring scarily at his mother and smiling even more scarily at Gemma, and marched off to make his card. On the front he wrote Happy New House over a very bright picture that used every one of Max’s new felt pens. Inside he added the other thing he wanted to say. Under a large red glowing heart with sharp black arrows shooting through it he wrote:

  B m9

  X

  Chaz

  It looked so good that he took it round to Henry’s house for Henry to admire.

  ‘How’s she going to know what it means?’ asked Henry. ‘Chaz? What’s Chaz?’

  ‘Chaz is just a cool way of saying Charlie,’ explained Charlie.

  ‘And what’s be-M-nine?’

  ‘Be mine,’ said Charlie. ‘Be mine, it says.’

  ‘Then X marks the spot?’

  ‘NO! That’s a … oh, never mind!’

  ‘I only asked,’ said Henry primly, ‘because if it’s not X marks the spot it looks a bit like it could be a kiss so you might want to change it. How are you going to give it to her?’

  ‘I thought you could.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Because,’ said Charlie, ‘you’re my best friend.’

  That was true, Henry was Charlie’s best friend.

  ‘She’s in the park right now, with someone’s kid. She loves little kids. I heard her telling my mum.’

  ‘Oh all right,’ agreed Henry and he stomped away with the card to find Gemma.

  She was see-sawing a borrowed toddler and looking very bored indeed.

  Henry, who quite liked babies offered, ‘D’you want me to go on that see-saw with him? I could give him dead good bumps.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Push him on the swings?’ suggested Henry, and passed him a packet of bubblegum sweets so he could help himself. The toddler stuffed a fistful into his mouth and overflowed with pink drool.

  ‘You musn’t give them stuff!’ protested Gemma, as she grabbed him and hung him over the bin.

  ‘Sorry. I came to bring you this.’

  ‘What?’ asked Gemma, plucking off the toddler’s hat, mopping his face with the pompom and plonking it back on again.

  ‘Oh, a card. Thank you! Is it from you?’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘You have to work it out.’

  ‘Who gave it to you to give to me?’ she asked cunningly.

  ‘Ah ha!’ said Henry, now at the top of the climbing frame. ‘Look! No hands!’

  The toddler looked in admiration and began climbing frantically towards him.

  ‘Just let go!’ said Henry encouragingly. ‘That’s right! Now the other one … or are your legs too short?’

  The toddler tumbled into Gemma’s arms and knocked her off her wheels.

  The roars were tremendous.

  ‘Legs too short,’ diagnosed Henry suddenly losing interest, and went home.

  Charlie, watching the whole thing through the landing window, had sighed with satisfaction when he saw Gemma open her card.

  ‘Now she knows,’ he said.

  5

  The Only Thing Max Couldn’t Do

  Max was behaving very oddly.

  He was moaning about his trainers.

  And trying on all his T-shirts.

  He even cut slits in his new jeans and carefully frayed the edges.

  ‘Mum will kill you,’ said Charlie, watching.

  Also he spent a lot of time just staring at himself in the mirror.

  ‘What do I look like from the back?’ he asked Charlie once.

  ‘You look the same as you do from the front,’ said Charlie. ‘Only without a face.’

  A day or two later Charlie came in from the garden and heard music playing upstairs. When he crept up to investigate, there was Max.

  At first Charlie thought he was doing exercises to music.

  And then he thought he was trying to wriggle out of his shirt to music.

  Or to reach an itch to music.

  And then he realized that what Max was doing was trying to dance.

  That was very odd, because Max did not approve of dancing. He always made excuses, saying things like, ‘I have leg ache/ I have homework/ My bedroom needs tidying/ I am watching this programme/ Reading this book/ Very busy with this cat …’

  Or sometimes, simply, ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead …’

  Not a bit like Charlie, who together with Henry had been livening up dance floors since he was three years old. Charlie and Henry loved discos. They would dance with anyone, sing along to any song, and consume anything left lying on the refreshment table.

  While Charlie was watching Max his favourite song in all the world came on the radio and he could not resist joining in.

  ‘HEY! (Hey!) You! (You!) Get Off of My Cloud!’ sang Charlie, doing big stomps, and playing air guitar with his eyes shut and leaning backwards which he knew, because Henry had told him, looked cooler than the coolest of cool.

  ‘Don’t hang around ’cos two’s a crowd!’

  Suddenly the music was switched off, and Max was asking, ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie, opening his eyes.

  ‘Did you see anyone and copy? Did someone actually show you? Is that the sort of stuff you and Henry do when you go to discos?’

  For a few moments Charlie’s head whirled. Always in the past it had been Charlie asking Max a million questions about something that seemed to everyone else to be as easy as breathing.

  ‘I only asked,’ said Max, ‘because I may have to go to a disco and I think when I am there I may have to … may have to … may have to …’

  ‘Dance?’

  ‘Yes, and you seem to be able to! Anyway, you don’t go red and you don’t keep stopping …’

  Was this really Max? wondered Charlie. The Max who had taught him to blow bubble gum bubbles, ride a bike, slide the fireman’s pole in the park and make squeakers out of blades of grass. Was he joking?

  I
t was Max, and he wasn’t joking.

  Charlie felt suddenly very old and wise and successful. He felt like the grown up big brother, with Max for the useless little one.

  For the next half an hour he tried very patiently to teach Max how to dance.

  It was very, very hard.

  ‘You have to move your arms and legs,’ said Charlie. ‘Pretend you are playing the drums! Or a guitar like me! Sing the words! Make them up if you don’t know them! Try not looking at your feet for a bit!’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Charlie, encouragingly (although nothing had improved and it seemed, incredibly, that the only thing Max couldn’t do was the only thing he, Charlie, could), ‘they’ll play slow dances at the end. They are much easier. You just rush to the prettiest girl in the room (you may have to push a few people out of the way), and say “I’m dancing this with you” and grab her and don’t let go …’ Then Max, who was not scared of ghosts, or heights, or any ride at the fair, Max who would fetch a ball from anyone’s garden, jump into any depth of water and had once actually spoken in French to a French person, Max the bravest of the brave, looked utterly terrified.

  ‘Grab them?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What if they won’t come?’

  ‘Pull harder.’

  ‘I mean, what if they say “No!” ’

  ‘They never say no,’ said Charlie, ‘they are grateful, Max!’

  6

  Max’s Big Night Out

  ‘Guess what my brother Max is doing tonight!’ said Charlie on Friday night as he and Henry walked home together.

  ‘Bashing you up again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Trying out for the England team?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Not the fourteen Weetabix challenge?’

  ‘No, he’s still stuck on twelve. After that he chokes.’

  ‘Give up then.’

  ‘Going to that disco.’

  Henry snorted in disbelief.

  ‘He is too! He’s going back from school with his friend Greg and they’re getting changed and going together. I helped him choose what to wear.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘Yes. AND I taught him how to dance like we do.’

  ‘What, all our pretend guitar playing and everything?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Can he do it?’

  ‘No.’

  Henry smirked.

  ‘But it doesn’t matter because I’ve told him all about slow dances and all that. And how to get a girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Yes well, he wouldn’t tell me that.’

  ‘Gemma.’

  ‘Not Gemma,’ said Charlie. ‘He doesn’t even like Gemma! He doesn’t even think she’s pretty! He told me.’

  ‘She is though,’ said Henry.

  ‘Gemma,’ said Charlie sternly, ‘is mine!’

  They had reached Henry’s gate. Charlie opened it for Henry like he was twenty-one and Henry was six. This made Henry very mad and he said, ‘I can open my own gate thank you, and as a matter of fact I saw Gemma before you did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I may ask her to go out with me,’ said Henry, deliberately being as aggravating as possible. ‘If Max doesn’t want her and you’re too scared!’

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  ‘Ask her then! I dare you!’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I want to.’

  ‘Ha! You won’t! Double dare!’

  Charlie marched off down the street, pushed open the door of his house and vanished inside. The telephone rang.

  ‘Double dare with knobs on!’

  Charlie slammed the phone down and went to fume in his bedroom. After a while his mum came and found him.

  ‘We have a problem,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do with you this evening, with your dad working late and Max out and me with my yoga class? I suppose I will have to take you with me.’

  She groaned.

  Charlie groaned too because he did not fit in very well with his mother’s yoga class.

  ‘Last time you said never again,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yes, well I often say never again and end up doing it,’ said Charlie’s mother, ‘and by the way Henry has just telephoned with a very strange message. He said to tell you Yellow Knobs.’

  Charlie growled, grabbed a handful of lime-flavoured hair gel, rubbed his hair into lime-flavoured tentacles and dashed out of the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ shouted his mother.

  ‘To see a girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Gemma.’

  ‘That’s a very good idea,’ said Charlie’s mother, but Charlie had already disappeared.

  ‘Yellow Knobs to you,’ he said to Henry, some time later. ‘Please don’t offer me any cheese and onion crisps or anything ponky like that because I have a Big Night in with Gemma. She is coming over for pizza and then we are watching a DVD!’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Henry jealously, ‘Oh, it’s not fair, having pizza without me! I never have pizza without you. I bet it’s pepperoni as well! What DVD are you watching?’

  ‘I’m not telling you because you’d be upset.’

  ‘I may have fallen in love with Gemma too!’ shouted Henry. ‘I did see her before you did!’

  ‘But,’ said Charlie, shaking his lime-flavoured tentacles very annoyingly, ‘did she see you? Anyway, it’s your fault! You dared me!’

  ‘OK,’ said Henry. ‘Now I’ll dare you something else then! I dare you to ask her to marry you!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Double dare! With …’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Charlie. ‘No problem!’

  7

  Charlie's Big Night In

  Oh, thought Charlie, later that evening, Gemma is lovely!

  She and his mother had met at the front gate; Gemma had come in as his mother went out. She had glided right up to him, kicked off her wheelies, and given him a delicious, bubblegum-scented hug. While he tried out her wheelies she had sat on the doorstep and painted her toenails blue. They ate the pizza on the doorstep too. Sharing a pizza with Gemma, Charlie found, was a very different experience to sharing with Henry or Max. There were no cross words about which was the biggest slice or who had the most pepperoni.

  ‘I don’t really like pepperoni,’ said Gemma, and flicked hers into the bushes. She didn’t eat her crusts either, and she daintily picked off all the mushroom too. After her second slice she left the rest to Charlie. He finished it while she hummed dreamily and told him all about the karaoke machine she planned to buy.

  After the pizza Gemma ate three low fat yoghurts because she was on a diet and Charlie didn’t, because he wasn’t, and then they settled on the sofa together to watch the DVD.

  ‘In real life,’ said Gemma, nodding at the swashbuckling captain of the pirate ship, ‘he looks a lot like you!’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Definitely. With the right make-up you’d look just like him. I’ll show you if you like.’

  ‘When? Now? I’ve got a pirate hat!’

  ‘Come on then!’ said Gemma.

  It took a while, and a lot of Charlie’s mum’s make-up, but it was worth it.

  ‘See!’ said Gemma when they were back on the sofa again with the DVD running, and the lights turned low. ‘Told you so! Exactly like him, except for the hair.’

  ‘I’ll grow my hair,’ said Charlie huskily, ‘Gemma?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘When I’m sixteen how old will you be?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Do you want to marry me then?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Wait till I tell Henry!’ said Charlie.

  ‘That was the easiest ever!’

  ‘Easiest what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie, putting an arm round her.

  ‘Dead cute,’ said Gemma.

  Then everything was ruined.

/>   Bash! went the front door and it was Max.

  Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! went Max down the hall, crashed into the living room and flicked on the lights. Charlie, comfortably slumped against Gemma and looking exactly like a pirate hero except for his hair, blinked in surprise.

  ‘Hiya!’ said Gemma in a very little voice.

  ‘OH!’ exclaimed Max. ‘YOU! YOU’RE HERE! I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN! I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN! GOODBYE!’

  ‘He’s a bit weird,’ said Charlie, and he tried to snuggle back down again but the magic was gone.

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Gemma, looking at her watch. ‘Two hours … two and a half … call it three … I’ll just write a little note …’

  ‘You’re not really going?’ pleaded Charlie.

  But she was. She was pulling on her wheelie trainers and pushing a little pink note in his hand. She rushed out of the house so fast she bumped into his mum coming in. She called, ‘Bye Charlie darling!’ and vanished.

  The evening was over and it was Max’s fault and Charlie marched upstairs to tell him so.

  Max was face down on his bed and he was fuming.

  ‘… .learning that horrible dancing …’ Charlie heard, ‘… putting that gunk on my hair and being scared all day! And it cost two pounds! Two pounds to be tortured! And it was her idea! It was all her idea! Hanging around and hanging around and waiting and waiting! She said she’d be there! She promised! And in the end I had to go up to her two stupid friends and they thought I was asking them to dance and I had to explain that I wasn’t and then do you know what they said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘THEY SAID SHE’D GOT A LAST MINUTE BABYSITTING JOB!’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘AND IT WAS YOU!’

  ‘Me?’ said Charlie, ‘Me? Are you mad? ’Course it wasn’t me! I’ve been with Gemma the whole time …’