Pup Idol

by Anna Wilson

  Frank, of course, was not looking as if he even knew what a First Impression was, unless he thought it meant ‘Look as smelly and gross as you can so that no one will want to stand anywhere near you.’

  This woman, whom I had realized by now must be Mrs Beatrice Woodshed, was talking to some of the other dog owners in a growly low voice that sounded like a man’s. Actually, the closer I inspected her, the more I started to wonder if she was in fact a man. Perhaps she was one of those men you get in pantomimes who always play the Dames by squeezing into dresses and smearing on lipstick and calling themselves Old Mother Marjory (or in this case, ‘Beatrice’). Or I supposed it was just about FEASIBLE that she could have been a very ugly woman in true real life. In any case, she was called Mrs Woodshed, not Old Mother Woodshed, and she didn’t say anything pantomimical like ‘Oh, no it isn’t’ or ‘He’s behind you’, and she was wearing a normal-ish skirt rather than a pantomime one. (Actually it was a bit like a tartan sack. It was also as wide as it was long and sat very high up on her body, sort of just under her – how can I put this? – well, her Bosom really. Which was what you might describe as Ample. But not in a good way.) And she had a kind of smear of red lipstick that was running out of the line of her lips in a fashion. She also had alarming blue stuff on her eyelids. But she also had a small black moustache. And very hairy eyebrows. My knees were knocking already, and the class hadn’t even started yet.

  Blimey, I thought, if Honey didn’t like beards, she sure wasn’t going to like the sight of Mrs Bag Lady Woodshed. She was double-plus-mega scary with an extra layer of scariness; even Monica Sitstill would have quivered in her pointy leather boots at the sight of that Ample Bosom, I was sure.

  However, Honey did not seem at all Fazed by Mrs Woodshed or her Bosom, or indeed any of the other dogs or dog owners, most of whom were staring straight at me and my pink pooch in a most off-putting and rude fashion.

  I forced myself not to look at them and also made a super-mega effort to drag my INCREDULOUS gaze away from Mrs Woodshed’s Bosom, because she was now talking to all of us.

  ‘Everyone!’ she growled, above the noise of people chatting and dogs barking.

  The dogs pricked up their ears and strained even harder on their leashes. Honey seemed to be the most excited of all the dogs in the room, which I feared did not bode well for the rest of the class.

  As it happened, my fearings about bodings proved to be correct.

  Mrs Woodshed carried on. ‘Today is the first class, so we are going to concentrate on the first and most important lesson that you need to teach your dog. And that is how to SIT on command—’

  Well, how easy peasy is that? I smirked to myself.

  Then Honey made a lunge for Meatball’s bottom.

  ‘Excuse me! Will the owner of the PINK dog please exercise a little more control?’ Mrs Woodshed roared as Honey crashed into her wide tartan skirt, dragging me after her.

  ‘I thought that’s what you were here to teach,’ I muttered angrily as I went skidding across the slippery floor of the hall.

  ‘Summer!’ Now Frank was having a go at me. As if he couldn’t see that I was somewhat busy trying to get my dog away from his dog.

  ‘Summer!’ He was shouting at me now, but I was rather tied up with Honey in what Molly would call a LITERAL manner – in other words, I really was tied up in true life in Honey’s lead, with my feet sliding everywhere.

  ‘That’s strange,’ I thought. ‘Why is the floor so slippery? Honestly, I could break my—’

  ‘PINK DOG OWNER!’ Mrs Woodshed was yelling at me and her face was redder than mine ever goes. ‘Will you just LOOK at what your puppy has done!’

  I realized that the room had gone quiet. No one was talking, not even Frank. Even the other dogs were no longer barking. I looked down at Honey who seemed to be the centre of attention. And no wonder.

  She had done a pee on the floor some way behind us, and I had managed to drag her through it, so now there was a line of pee stretching the whole length of the sports hall.

  I was quite possibly even more embarrassed than the day I was acting as a mermaid in the Christmas play in Year One and my tail fell down and took my knickers with it.

  So I stood there in the middle of the hall, being shouted at, with Frank Gritter laughing his head off, my pink puppy jumping up and wagging her tail and being all cheery and licky-faced and bouncy, my feet covered in pee, and all I could think was:

  ‘I wish Molly was here.’

  8

  How to Open Your Mouth and Put Your Foot in It

  Of course, however much I wanted to, I couldn’t talk to Molly about the completely disastrous tragedy that was the obedience class. I was desperate, in fact, to keep it all a secret, as I knew she would be very hurt and upset if she found out that I had gone without her, and even worse than that – that I had gone with Frank Gritter. Also, I had actually told her a Bare-Faced Lie of the kind my sister April would have been proud of, because I had actually said that I had not yet enrolled.

  But she found out anyway.

  We were lining up to go swimming and I was standing in a pair with Molly as usual, because she’s my Best Friend and there is no one else in the whole world, or indeed the universe, that I would rather line up in a pair with, even when she’s being bossy.

  We were talking about our Celebrity Club and how we had loads to sort out, when along came Mister Stink-i-verse, A.K.A. (which Molly says means ‘otherwise known as’ but then shouldn’t it be O.K.A?) Frank Gritter.

  ‘So, did you tell your mum about Honey peeing everywhere last night?’ he guffawed, right across the queue of everyone lining up for swimming. He was doing a lot of guffawing in my direction lately, and I was not sure I approved.

  I turned my back on him and pretended that I had not heard a word. But I could tell that my face had gone bright red in the most clashing-with-my-hair kind of way.

  ‘What did Honey do?’ Molly asked, her mouth hanging open in a very disbelieving manner. ‘And, er, why does Mr Putrefying Sock Odour know about it and not me?’ she added, doing the narrow-eyed thing that always flusters me.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said calmly, playing for time.

  ‘You heard me,’ said Molly impatiently.

  ‘Oh, right, Honey. Yeah. She, er . . . Oh, I can’t say! It’s just so gross,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Summer!’ Molly snapped, making me jump. She looked pretty fierce, and I got all confused and didn’t watch what I was saying next as carefully as I should have done.

  ‘She peed all over the floor, and I went and dragged her through it without realizing and then everybody in the whole class laughed at me,’ I said very quickly and then groaned.

  ‘Everybody?’ Molly said slowly. She looked like one of those scary policemen on telly when they are burglars and other criminal types. Honestly, that girl has got a bright future ahead of her as a detective, I swear it. She says she wants to be a journalist and work on one of those celebrity magazines, but personally I think her talents of DEDUCTION and DETECTION would be wasted.

  ‘Er, yeah, everybody – as in, you know, Mum and April—’ I began, realizing in a worried manner that I had really and truly given too much away and was in danger of getting stuck in troubled waters up to my neck and then probably drowning.

  ‘Hang on just a minute, Summer Holly Love,’ said Molly. Now she was sounding like Mum again. ‘How come your mum and April were with you as well as “the whole class”? Did you have a party last night without me, or – oh no . . .’ Molly stopped in mid-tracks and a look of horrified shock froze her face into a mask.

  I took a deep breath and waited for the explosion . . .

  ‘You went to the obedience class last night – without me!’ she hissed.

  . . . Bang.

  At that moment our teacher told us off for talking and we had to go and get changed for swimming.

  Molly did not speak to me for the whole of that entire lesson. At first I thought that it wasn’t that stran
ge, as you can hardly chat to your friend when you are having to do front crawl with your face in the water. I spent the lesson thinking maybe Molly would be concentrating so hard on not drowning that she would forget about our conversation. After all, front crawl is a particularly tricky stroke to do and actually, come to think of it, has nothing whatsoever to do with crawling. I mean, you don’t crawl along the bottom of the pool on your hands and knees like a baby. In fact you look more like a charging after its victim in a stormy sea.

  I was thinking about this afterwards when I suddenly realized that I was the only one left in the changing room. Molly had not waited for me. It is actually quite normal for me to be the last one left getting changed, as I am quite a slow dresser. (‘The slowest dresser in the West’, April calls me – as if she can talk! She takes about five hours just to blow-dry her precious hair.) But normally Molly hangs around and tells me to hurry up or helps me to sort out my hair, which seems to have even more of an AVERSION to being brushed after spending half an hour scrunched up inside a swimming hat.

  I ran out of the changing rooms to find my shoes and see where Molly had got to. But she was already lining up to go back to class and was in a pair with – oh no! Rosie Chubb!

  Rosie Chubb is the most annoyingest of the girls in our year. She talks all the time in a most yawnsome manner, mostly about her ballet class, which Molly says she has the MISFORTUNE to do with her. (Molly is faberoony at ballet, but doesn’t go on and on about it like Rosie, who is actually not that TALENTED.) And she has a laugh like a hyena who’s just swallowed a squeaky children’s toy – in other words, screechy and bonkers. She doesn’t have any real friends, but she has this Knack of spotting when someone has had a Falling Out with their real friend, and then she just goes in like a worm and makes a bad situation even more worse by taking sides.

  I have told Mum all about this, but she is not at all Sympathetic in the way that mums should be about this kind of problem. She just says, ‘Poor Rosie. I expect she feels left out all the time. She’s only trying to get attention – why don’t you ask her round to play with you and Molly some time?’

  Honestly, I sometimes wonder if Mum was ever a girl with a best friend.

  Anyway, I decided that I would be bold and brave and walk straight up to them and pretend that I hadn’t noticed Rosie was trying to steal my friend. I even felt a little bit confident that Molly would not actually be listening to Rosie because she is usually quite rude about her.

  ‘Thanks for waiting, Molly,’ I said in an ironical manner.

  Molly and Rosie stopped chattering and just stared at each other as if I wasn’t there at all.

  ‘Oh, Molly – did you just hear something?’ said Rosie in her squeaky voice.

  ‘No, Rosie,’ said Molly, doing an impression of an over-the-top actor looking around and being surprised. ‘I didn’t hear a thing. Now, what were we just saying about the pas de deux?’

  ‘Molly—’ I tried again, even though I knew my face had once again gone that awful hot deep-red colour I hate so much.

  ‘Oh yes, the PAS DE DEUX . . .’ Rosie started talking loudly over the top of me. ‘We’re doing it next ballet class, remember? You can be my partner, Molly.’

  I was in a good mind to shove Rosie Chubb rather hardly in the back, but I caught our swimming teacher looking in our direction and decided I should be DIGNIFIED and walk away. I started walking to the back of the line and put all my effort into not letting any tears spill out over the edges of my eyes. I stared very straight and in a fixed way at the ground and fiddled around with my swimming bag a lot so that anyone who was watching me would think I was just busy and not upset at all.

  I was staring at the ground so much that I didn’t notice who I had been paired up with to walk back to school until a voice said:

  ‘Hey, Summer! Looks like it’s your lucky day!’

  Frank Gritter. Complete with slightly damp smelly socks.

  My lucky day indeed.

  9

  How to Put a Brave Face on Things

  The rest of that week was the loneliest and hardest of all my school days ever. Molly and I had never had a Falling Out like this before in the whole history of our long and bestest friendship.

  Every day Molly was crammed up next to Rosie on a different table from our usual one, and they were giggling and whispering together non-stop. A couple of times I tried to catch Molly’s eye, but she just looked away and started whispering again. I knew they were talking about me. To distract myself from this CALAMITY, I learned to keep my head down and drew doodly pictures of Honey on the cover of my notebook.

  Honey was no longer a pink pooch, thank the high heavens, as the sauce had at last come off after a few more hose-related washing events. I tried to cheer myself up by thinking about how funny it was when I chased her with the hose and I even tried doodling a picture of that on the cover of my notebook too.

  None of this stopped me from feeling sad though, and more than once drops of tears fell out of the edges of my eyelids and on to the doodly pictures. It made the ink run and was very annoying.

  Friday was a particularly bad day, as normally Fridays were my and Molly’s best day of the week. We called them ‘Mad Fridays’ because we were always in a fabulous mood, giggling together and planning stuff for the weekend. But that Friday she didn’t talk to me or look at me all day. It was more like ‘Sad Friday’.

  I dripped tears on to the pavement all the way home that afternoon, because I realized I was going to be having a very lonely weekend. When I got home I ran straight to Honey and buried my soggy face in her lovely clean fur. That made me feel much better.

  If Molly was going to pretend that I was not her best friend any more, then that was fine. Honey was my best friend really these days. We were One Girl and Her Dog. A Team to be Reckoned With.

  I let Honey out into the garden and she ran in crazy circles around the tree while I got myself a cool drink and a snack. Then I gave Honey a little dog treat to show her how much I loved her and said, ‘You’re the best dog in the world, Honey Love!’

  She did some more crazy circles after this, while I read the note that Mum had left on the kitchen table. (Not really, Mum, but thanks for asking . . .) Babysit? Babysit? Did she even know how old I was? Honestly, I sometimes wondered if she had even looked at me recently.

  I popped the lasagne in the oven to heat it up and went to see what was on telly later, as I had no Intention whatsoever of sitting round the table with April and Nick on a Friday night, pretending to be happy to share their company. Not to mention the lasagne.

  As I flicked sadly and MOROSELY through the list of telly programmes in the newspaper I noticed something so fantastic that I almost forgot how glum I was feeling.

  There was a new dog-lover type programme on that very night! It was called Pup Idol and this is what the paper said about it:

  I almost stopped breathing. This was the most inspirationalist bit of telly programming I had ever heard of. It certainly was enough to stop me thinking, for a little while at least, about Molly and Frank Gritter and obedience classes and all the other things that had ruined my life recently.

  Even though it was Friday night and I had the whole weekend to do it, I decided to do my English homework to Get It Out of the Way. It was on Astounding and Amazing Alliteration and was quite exceptionally easy. Then I got my tea ready quickly so I could eat it in front of the faberoony new programme.

  Eventually I was serving up my lasagne, ready to settle down with my wonderful dog, when I heard one of the sounds that is guaranteed to make my brain fizz up with annoyance: my sister’s tinkly laugh, used only for the benefit of Mr Nick Harris. Sure enough, I then heard the sound of Mr Nick Harris’s chuckle, which I am sure he uses only for the benefit of Miss April Lydia Love.

  I decided to dash into the sitting room and pounce on the sofa to grab the best telly-watching spot before they got there and started snogging again.

  ‘Watch out!’ shouted April as
Honey and I hurtled harum-scarum-like past them, me clutching my supper and Honey sticking to me like the Girl’s Best Friend that she is.

  ‘Hello, Summer,’ said Nick. ‘How’s Honey? No more incidents involving nasty smells, I hope?’

  ‘No, she’s fine, thanks,’ I replied. I avoided eye contact as I didn’t want to give up my place on the sofa and risk missing a single second of the new show. Nor did I wish to witness another Session of Slurpy Snogging (I wonder what Mr Elgin would think of that fine example of alliteration?), which would frankly have put me off my lasagne.