by Nette Hilton
NETTE HILTON is an established author of children’s literature and has won several awards for her books, which range from early childhood stories to novels for older readers. Her work includes the forever popular Proper Little Lady and The Web, both of which have won awards and have been translated into many languages.
Nette’s work, although predominantly for children of all ages, includes three adult thrillers. She writes from the NSW north coast where she shares her life with dogs, an ageing cat and other feathered beasts. She continues to fuel her imagination by working part-time at a primary school. This career, which has spanned 34 years, places her at the coalface of changing ideas and understandings of what it is to be a child in the new millennium. She doesn’t confess to being a guru on child development but it certainly helps in putting together a very readable and fun book.
Her work beyond teaching and writing includes regular workshops and author talks at many writing venues, including literature festivals that occur around the country.
Other books by Nette Hilton
Woolly Jumpers
Grave Catastrophe
The Smallest Bilby and The Midnight Star
The Web
Little Platypus
To Georgia and Chelsea.
Stars of The Show!?
— N.H.
For young Emma, an emerging talent.
— C.S.
CONTENTS
Author bio
Other books by Nette Hilton
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Imprint Page
It’s not fair.
I’ve put up with Serena Sweetmay all my life. I’ve put up with her in preschool when everyone used to say how lovely she was. And how polite.
I’ve put up with her in Year 1 when she got picked to present the flowers to the lady who came from the Council. Serena got to hand them over in front of the whole town and everyone clapped and cheered and said how lovely she looked in her little blue dress.
It was enough to make you sick.
I’ve put up with her in Year 2 when she was chosen to dance in the front line of the concert in a lollipop dress with big bobbly buttons on the front. Everyone clapped and cheered and the rest of us in our brown chocolate lolly wrappers didn’t even get noticed. We were supposed to be the funny ones.
I’ve put up with her in Year 3 when she wore her golden curls tugged up in a ponytail that tumbled down her back and showed off the dimples in her soft, pink cheeks. She smiled a lot in Year 3 because Mr Phillips told her she was the only girl he’d ever taught with dimples in her cheeks. I reckoned he should have filled them with blu-tak. She never smiled at us unless she wanted something, like a visit to our granny’s if our granny lived in a good place with a swimming pool or something.
And now, I have to put up with her coming to my place on Saturday afternoon.
‘How come?’
‘Don’t be like that, Aimee,’ Mum said while she zipped around trying to get our lunches into their lunchboxes and shoes on Roly’s feet at the same time. Roly’s only two and goes to daycare while Mum’s at work. I don’t think it’s very hygienic pushing sandwiches with one hand and Roly’s foot with the other. ‘Here, finish doing your lunches while I fix Roly.’
I packed the boxes and put a couple of extra rollups in mine for recess. ‘One of those will be quite enough, Aimee.’
I reckon my mum’s got eyes in the back of her head.
I took one out. ‘How come Serena’s coming on Saturday?’
‘Because she is.’ She said. ‘I know she can be a bit tricky but it’s not for long. Heavens, you’ve been in the same classes forever. Surely one more afternoon isn’t going to make too much difference.’
I wished I could send her somewhere else.
For most of the year in Year Four Serena has been sent off to deliver messages or take visitors to the office. Sometimes I think Miss Everest is glad to get rid of her—she sends her on so many errands.
Serena doesn’t think so. ‘She’ll always choose me,’ she said when Javin reckoned it was time for him to have a turn. He never gets chosen because he never comes back. ‘I always remember to knock and say “excuse me” and smile, and I always get the message right. It makes Miss Everest look good.’
I thought Miss Everest looked good anyway, except for the days when she’s bawling out Javin, but she doesn’t do it for very long. And her cheeks look nice when they’re all red.
‘My mother’s a teacher,’ Serena said when I told her Miss Everest was all right. ‘And so I know the way teachers think.’
‘She drives me nuts,’ I told Mum, who’d dumped Roly on the floor and was tearing around trying to find her keys. ‘N.U.T.S.’
I made a couple of loopy circles around my ears and lolled my tongue out one side of my mouth.
Roly shrieked. I crossed my eyes and made drooling noises.
Roly shrieked a little louder.
‘Come on, you two,’ Mum said, skidding us out the door and into the car. Dad walked around the side of the house to help her bundle us in. He left the car that he was getting ready to sell standing with its bonnet open like a patient waiting for the dentist to start drilling.
‘Have a good day, you lot.’ He grinned when I told him about the car being in a dentist’s chair. ‘That car will have its teeth fixed in time for Christmas,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll have enough money for something super special!’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ Mum said, but she was laughing. She checked her hair in the rear-vision mirror and then checked that her lipstick was okay. She blew Dad a kiss and smoothed her supermarket uniform over the seat away from Roly’s feet. ‘Thank goodness it’s Friday.’ She sighed as we bumped out of our driveway and onto the road. ‘Just one more day and we’re home for the whole weekend.’
It definitely wasn’t fair.
Mum works most weekends and this one, when she was going to be home for the two whole days, I was going to have to share part of it with Serena stupid Sweetmay.
‘I don’t want her to come over,’ I said before I could stop myself.
Mum glanced at me in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Don’t start again, Aimee. Surely you can get along for one afternoon. Her mother asked me specially.’
‘Why can’t she go to Angela or Katie’s house?’ I grumbled. ‘She’s always with them at school.’
‘Because her dad’s calling in with some work for Dad and her mum has to go up to Brisbane. It was easier for Serena to come with him to our house. Now, give it a rest.’
I didn’t want to give it a rest. I wanted to howl and complain all the way to town. Mum checked me in the rear-vision again and I could see it would be best if I didn’t. Her eyes are green but they’re especially green and witchy when she’s starting to get fed up.
I clamped my arms across my chest and scowled out at the world instead.
Serena Sweetmay is a pain.
P.A.I.N.
‘Oh, come on,’ Mum said, as she tipped me out of the car at the school gate. ‘It’s just one teensy-tiny afternoon … and we’ll all go and get a hamburger for dinner to help you get over it.’
We hardly ever have hamburgers. Ever.
The pain eased enough for me to tickle Roly goodbye and blow Mum a kiss. It was only for a couple of hours, after all.
Surely
I could handle that.
‘Well, now. Let me look at you.’ Miss Everest is always really pleased to see us. It’s like she hasn’t seen us in ever so long and she’s really happy we all happened to be here at the same time. ‘How’s the best singing class in the whole school today?’
A little ripple of excitement drifted right down our line. We grinned at each other.
‘Did we get it?’
‘Did they choose us?’
‘Did they? Did they? Tell us, Miss Everest. Pleeease.’
Miss Everest just grinned back at us.
‘Not until you’re all sitting neat and quiet on the mat inside,’ she said.
We all scrambled up the steps and tried to shove our bags into their right places. Most of us tried, anyway. Javin never bothers. He just leaves his where it lands and we all climb over it or across it.
‘Pick it up, Javin,’ Miss Everest said.
We all waited while Javin acted as if he didn’t know how his bag could possibly be in the middle of the floor all squashed, before he decided to collect it. He complained for a while about having nowhere to put it, but Miss Everest is good at ignoring him, sometimes, and had already started to tell us the exciting news.
‘We won,’ she said. ‘We’re the class that’s going to do the school Christmas play this year. We’re it!’
We all hooted and howled and Javin did a little hoo-hoo-hoo dance that made him look like he was stirring an enormous pot of heavy stew. George and Edward rolled into a big heap in the middle of the floor and would have kicked their legs in the air except that Miss Everest had already stood up and they could see it wasn’t going to be their best idea yet.
‘Don’t forget to thank Mr Henderson when you see him in the playground. If he hadn’t helped us with the songs and all the words we mightn’t have been so good.’
I think Miss Everest is keen on Mr Henderson. She’s always a bit breathy when she says his name, as if she’s suddenly filled up with a giant thrill. She stands close to him as well. And he’s always dropping in with his guitar to see how the best class in the school is going.
And then he stands in the corner and talks to the best class’s teacher.
‘How come his class didn’t get it then?’ Edward called out. He thinks he’s pretty smart.
‘Too young,’ Miss Everest said. ‘It has to be a primary class, not one of the kindy classes.’
‘Bit weird him having a kindy class if you ask me,’ Edward said. ‘Blokes are better with the big kids.’
‘Some blokes are better with big kids, Edward, and we didn’t ask you.’
Miss Everest waited until we had all settled down again. It always takes a while, because Javin likes to sit in about six different places before Miss Everest makes him come and sit by her. By that time Edward and George had moved as well, but we jammed up tight so they couldn’t keep moving. We wanted to hear about the Christmas play.
‘We’re all going to have a part in it. And we’re all going to dress up. And we’re all going to sing all the songs and … best of all …’
We held our breath.
Miss Everest waited until we were almost exploding from holding our breaths.
‘What?’ Jasmin cried when she couldn’t stand it any longer.
‘There’s going to be a special visitor in the audience. A friend of Mr Henderson’s who makes commercials …’
‘Real commercials?’
‘Like on tele?’
‘Commercials can be on the radio as well …’
‘And in the paper …’
Miss Everest held up her hand. ‘Television commercials,’ she said.
I could imagine it straightaway.
I could imagine me being a television commercial star. I’d be just like Susie Donovan from the Pixels, who wears lovely swirling giant skirts and true high heels and lipstick and her hair is so curled it bounces like golden springs all around her shoulders. She’s a pop star now and often has her photo in Girlfriend. I saw a film about her making her newest singing video and she was dancing with a boy who was tall and had long, strong arms and spun her around close to him and then whooshed his arms around her middle.
My hair is straight and gets a bit straggly when it grows longer than my shoulders. Mum says it would look better if we got it trimmed, but I’m growing it really, really long and there’s no way we’re cutting any of it off until it reaches down to the middle of my back.
My legs are a bit skinny too. Skinnier that Susie Dovovan’s anyway, but I could always wear long floaty dresses that covered them so it’d be fine. Swirling giant skirts would be okay as well, as long as they came down past my knees. High heels were going to help no end.
I dressed myself in my dreams and danced my way across the stage with the cameras rolling to the tall boy with spiky blonde hair who was waiting for me.
‘Aimee?’
I heard a few sniggers around me. Jasmin gave me poke with her elbow. Javin pinged a bit of paper at me. I hoped he hadn’t spat on it to make it go further.
‘Wake up.’ Miss Everest was handing me my maths sheets. ‘Time for our tables test.’
I dreamed back to my seat. All around me I could hear kids whispering about our Christmas play and the special visitor and how they’d be able to pick him out.
‘Bet he’ll wear dark glasses,’ I heard George say to Jimmy.
Jimmy looked a bit worried. He’s not too sure about things the first time he hears them.
‘It’s at night time,’ Jimmy said. ‘He won’t be able to see.’
George buried his head in his maths test so he wouldn’t have to get into explaining it all to Jimmy.
I leaned over to turn his page to the one we had to do. Jimmy always starts in the wrong place.
I could hear Serena whispering. She leaned closer to Angela and Katie but her voice was loud enough to be sure our table could hear too.
‘It’s just the way teachers talk,’ she was saying. ‘They think it’ll make us perform better if they tell us there’ll be someone special watching us. I know,’ she added when she was sure we were all listening in, ‘because my mother’s a teacher.’
She might have been right. I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I wanted to be the star of the show. Just once I wanted to be the one that everyone noticed.
And clapped. And cheered.
But what chance would I have?
Who was ever, ever going to do that while Serena Sweetmay was on the same stage?
I put on my long aqua velvet skirt and my puffy-sleeved white blouse and sat on the verandah in the sun. I put on my white summer sandals because they were the only shoes that I had with a little bit of a heel. My feet had grown since last summer but not too much. My toes only poked over the end a bit, but the straps were tight and my littlest toe kept popping itself free like a jack-in-the-box who’d been boxed for too long.
‘You’ll trip over in those shoes,’ Mum said, while she bundled Roly into his car seat to take him to do the grocery shopping. I wasn’t sorry I wasn’t heading off with her. Doing anything in a shopping centre with Roly was a bit dodgy, especially if it involved food.
‘No, I won’t,’ I said.
Dad hurried along the verandah behind me. He’s got a little office at the end that he built for himself. He keeps his art work in there and all his designs for his surfboards. He’s a great artist, but it doesn’t make a lot of money so he has to keep fixing up cars until he’s more famous.
‘I’ll get the stroller,’ he called out.
The floorboards dipped and swayed with each footstep and I felt like I was floating. I wished he’d keep walking up and down forever.
I leaned back and watched the shine of the sun on the deep plush of my old velvet skirt. Bits of velvet have worn off in some places, but down the legs it almost shimmered in the light. I lifted my feet in their white sandals and pointed my toes.
I let my head arch back like they do in the commercials on tele when they�
�re trying to sell chocolates. I imagined my hair drifting down onto the floorboards and fanning out in a shell shape under my shoulders.
‘You’ll get a cramp,’ Dad said as he thumped by again.
The floorboards rocked me and I leaned further back and draped my arm above my shell-shaped hair. I heard Mum’s car leave and the rustle of Dad’s surf designs as he set them up on the easels ready for Serena’s dad.
I dreamed of the boy with spiky hair who was going to catch me as I soared through the air and into his arms. I thought it might look better if I was skating, so I rebuilt the dream and this time I had on long white skating boots and I was drifting across the ice.
I raised my arms and gave myself a little push so I was sitting up, leaning out with my arms forming a circle in front of me. I gazed down into it as if it were filled with downy, yellow chicks all cheeping and looking back up at me.
I twirled one small step with them out onto the grass. Not one chick fell, but they looked a bit surprised to be twirling around on ice and their heads all looped a bit to one side and they began to climb on top of each other before I could stop them, so I had to pause for a moment and change the chicks into a soft spaniel puppy.
I rocked it back and forth.
I pointed my toes when I rocked.
‘What are you doing?’
The puppy landed with a splat on the ice and I almost bent over to right it, but I stopped myself and pretended to be brushing away some creases that had formed in my blouse.
‘Hi, Serena,’ I said.
‘Hello, Serena.’ Dad stepped off the verandah and onto the lawn beside me. ‘You’re looking pretty grown-up.’
She was.
She had on a pair of tight jeans that sat down low on her hips and had a checked cuff that snugged around her calves. She must have more hip than me, because my jeans still fall down if I don’t have them higher up with some elastic in the back. Her shoes were proper leather clogs with a thick sole that made her look really tall. And her hair was tied in a ponytail that sat on the back of her neck and hung, long and golden and curly, right down to the middle of her back.
