Oops, I Lost My Best(est) Friends

by Karen McCombie

  I picked up a stick ad threw it, hoping that would keep Kenneth happy for a bit. As I did that, I kept my eyes firmly glued to Dylan. He was right beside the boys now … he was lifting his hand to say hi … what would happen nex—

  Diddly-iddly -ooo!!

  Good grief, a text message. I rummaged in my pocket and checked out my phone.

  Wot u up 2? Soph xx

  With Dylan, I speedily texted back.

  Can't talk – spk l8r.

  Indiex

  I'd just typed that quick kiss in when a damp grey nose started sniffing at my phone, just in case it turned out to be some new-fangled type of bone or something.

  “You're back quick!” I said to Dylan, while scratching George on the head. “What happened?”

  “I said hi, like you told me to.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then Rez said hi back, and the other two nodded.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I didn't know what to say 'cause you hadn't told me anything else, so I just turned round and came back.”

  Good grief. Had that barber shaved a bit of brain out of Dylan's head yesterday? He might be a bit of a genius, but he could also be such a doughball.

  As for the Very Important Project, it looked like I needed to set Dylan a lot more homework…

  It was quarter to three on Wednesday afternoon, and it was raining cats and dogs.

  Which is a very stupid expression, 'cause I've never seen a raindrop that reminded me much of a cat or a dog. A baby slug, maybe. (“It's raining baby slugs! Yeah, that was definitely better!)

  “Er … did I already give you a tray with juice and biscuits on it?” Mum asked, standing in the doorway of the living room with a gerbil on her shoulder and a tin of cat food in one hand.

  “No, Mrs Kidd,” said Fee very politely.

  Soph and Fee were very used to Mum being a bit ditzy. Other mums' heads are full of thoughts like “I'll have to get off work early to take my kid to the dentist” and “better get something from the supermarket for tea”, but my mum's head is just full of fur and feathers and gerbil bedding.

  “Wonder where I put it down then…?” she muttered wandering off down the hall. It was officially a day off for her (and a day off for Caitlin minding me) but then Mum never really has a day off when there are fostered animals at home to feed and fuss over.

  “So, do you fancy it, then, Indie?” Soph suddenly asked me.

  “Fancy what?” I said, checking the clock on the mantelpiece again.

  It was nearly ten to three. Dylan had exactly twelve minutes to get back to me with the homework I'd set him. When it had started raining this morning and we realized we couldn't go to the park again, I suggested he sat down and wrote down five things he could've said to Matt, Zane and Rez after he'd said hi to them yesterday.

  So, I'd given Dylan till three o'clock to do it, but knowing what a swotty smart kid he was, I thought he'd write back in ten minutes. But I was still waiting, which meant he was finding it hard. Harder than maths and science and all that hard stuff put together.

  “Do you fancy going to the skating rink with us tomorrow afternoon?” said Soph, sort of almost scowling at me.

  Maybe she was almost sort of scowling at me because she'd said that already (it sounded familiar…).

  “Um, no I can't. I said I'd see Dylan. If it's nice, we're going to go to the park again, so he can practise saying new things to the lads from his class. But I don't know why he wants to be their friend so much 'cause they never talk to him or anything so they can't be very nice or—”

  At the sound of the phone (and Kenneth mee-howling, and the clatter of the kitchen bin as Dibbles ran to hide from the noise) I didn't get my sentence finished.

  “Got to get this!” I said, hurtling towards the phone.

  “I only got to three.”

  That was Dylan. Of course. And of course you always know when it's Dylan because he never bothers with “hello” and

  “how're you?” like normal people.

  “OK, so what's the three?” I asked, settling myself sideways on a sliver of the chair nearest the phone, since Smudge was taking up most of the rest of the space.

  “Well, number one is—”

  “Oh, hold on a sec, Dylan!” I interrupted as I felt someone tapping at my arm.

  It was Fee waving at me and mouthing “see you later”. Soph was already at the living-room door. She wasn't waving and she wasn't mouthing “bye” or whatever.

  How weird that they were leaving so soon. They'd only turned up out of the blue twenty minutes ago, and they hadn't even had their juice and biscuits yet.

  “Bye then!”

  “Who are you saying bye to?” Dylan asked.

  “Soph and Fee,” I answered, as gently squidged Smudge over a bit and heard the front door go clunk. “So what's number one on your list, then?”

  “My number one is—“

  “Oh, hold on a sec, Dylan!” I interrupted again.

  Mum had just walked in the living room with the tray (at last). The gerbil wasn't in sight, but there was a BIG tinof-cat-food shape in the pocket of her green, baggy trousers. I really hoped she hadn't accidentally put the gerbil in her other pocket…

  “Where've Soph and Fee gone?” she asked, looking surprised.

  “They just left,” I told her.

  “Already?” said Mum with a frown.

  And when she frowned like that, something went ping in my chest again, just like it had a couple of days ago.

  Oh no, was I suffering from some terrible condition? (“I'm sorry, Mrs Kidd … your daughter's got a serious attack of the pings!”)

  I'd better be all right – I only had four days of the Very Important Project left, and I couldn't go dying of pings before I found Dylan a proper friend!

  Here were Dylan's Top Three Things To Say After ‘Hi’:

  “I can't believe it took you all day yesterday to come up with this!” I told Dylan, as I looked at the neatly printed (but very empty) A4 sheet in my hand.

  We were in the park again. Hiding behind a bush to be exact. It was quite a big bush, 'cause it had to hide me, Dylan, George, Kenneth and Dibbles. We were watching Matt and Zane and Rez playing football again. It was a little bit uncomfortable 'cause after all the rain yesterday, the chunk of park we were standing on was kind of muddy, and some of the mud had found a hole in my trainer to seep through.

  “What's wrong with my ‘Things To Say’ list?” Dylan asked, but you could tell by his face he knew they were rubbish.

  “Dylan, you can't just say ‘Hi’ to someone, and then they say ‘Hi’ and you blurt out ‘This dog is called George’ or whatever.” “Can't you?”

  “No! At the beginning of a conversation, you have to say stuff like ‘What're you up to?’ And then they'd say ‘Playing football. What're you up to?’ And then you could say you're walking your friend's dog. Matt and that lot might say he's cool, and you could say ‘Yes he is, and his name's George’. See?”

  Dylan blinked hard at me.

  “All that takes a long time. Why can't I just tell them his name's George straight away?”

  “'Cause it's too weird!” I blurted out, suddenly realizing that the way my supersmart step-brother thought and spoke was maybe what was really putting people off being friends with him, more than the I MUM socks.

  And maybe saying it was weird was too harsh (even if it was true). Maybe I could put it another way.

  “Look, Dylan, you're good at studying stuff, aren't you?” I said, as I felt one foot get more and more squelchy.

  “I guess so,” answered Dylan, peering off now at the lads playing their game.

  “Well, why don't you study the way people talk to each other?” I suggested. “You could watch and listen to people, and—”

  “They're packing up! They're going!” Dylan interrupted me suddenly, pointing at Matt and Zane and Rez.

  But I didn't mind being interrupted too much, 'cause it g
ave me an idea…

  “Come on,” I said hurriedly, clipping on the leads of the dogs.

  “Come on what?” asked Dylan, looking a little bit alarmed.

  “We're going to follow those boys and see what they do and where they're going. It might give you ideas about what to speak to them about when you see them next time!”

  A smile beamed onto Dylan's face, and off we went, squelching (in secret) after Matt, Zane and Rez…

  Dibbles didn't like the high street very much.

  It wasn't the traffic noise and the bustle that freaked him out, it was sound of the bleep-bleep-bleep! green man at all the pedestrian crossings. As soon as he heard a bleep-bleep-bleep!, he closed his eyes and tried to bury his head in the back of my knees, which made it kind of hard to walk.

  Anyway, we'd walked all the way to the high street following Matt, Zane and Rez. It had been hard to make sure they didn't see us – the five of us had to run into lots of doorways or pretend to be very interested in shop windows (I didn't like it when we had to pretend to be interested in the butcher's shop, but the dogs sniffed like crazy).

  So far we had watched the lads laugh and chat as they wandered into a CD shop,

  a shop that sold trainers and a newsagent. We hadn't been close enough to hear what they were saying though. But that was all about to change…

  “Have you got any money on you?” I asked Dylan, as Matt, Zane and Rez wandered into a packed burger place and joined the queue.

  “Not much,” he said, pulling a few pence out of his jeans pocket.

  I didn't have much either, but Dylan quickly figured out we had enough to buy the smallest bag of chips.

  “Right, get in the queue and listen to them!” I ordered Dylan, jerking forward as a green man crossing bleep-bleep-bleep-ed somewhere nearby and Dibbles battered into the back of my knees. “And if they notice you, say Hi … and then something like, ‘Can you see how much the chips cost?’”

  “But I can see how much the chips cost! It says so on the plastic sign above the counter!”

  “Dylan, stop being so logical,” I sighed. “I'm trying to find a way for you to get talking to those boys!”

  “Ah… OK.”

  As Dylan finally went in and joined the queue, I hunkered down beside the dogs, scratching all three heads in turn, and wishing I had an extra hand so no one felt left out. And all the time, I kept peeking in at Dylan to see how he was getting on.

  He was listening to the boys, I could tell (I just wished he wouldn't keep looking from one to the other as they chatted and making it so obvious, that was all).

  And then something brilliant happened… One of the boys (I didn't know which was which) turned to Dylan and

  said “Hi”. Although I was looking at the back of his head, I was pretty sure Dylan said “Hi” back. Now all I could do was keep my fingers (and toes) crossed and hope he wouldn't blurt out something weird-sounding.

  Well, he must have said something normal-sounding, 'cause next thing, all three boys were talking and grinning with him.

  It had worked! I'd made Dylan a bit more friend-friendly! Except oops, they all turned round and looked towards the big glass window, and I didn't want Dylan's maybe new friends to see me and blow his cool.

  I was still bent down on my haunches talking to the dogs, but that wasn't enough to hide me, so I did a quick sideways waddle, like a cross between a duck and a frog, till I was away from the window and safely out of sight.

  George, Kenneth and Dibbles thought this was an excellent game and started licking and swirling around me till I was in a knot of dog drool and leads.

  “Indie?” said a voice beside me all of a sudden. “Why were you doing that frogthing just now?”

  I looked up and saw Dylan, holding a small bag of chips. So he had seen me waddling out of view – I hoped the other lads hadn't. That would be so embarrassing.

  “Er, I was just playing around with the dogs, that's all. So? How did you get on?” I asked, straightening myself to a standing position and helping myself to a chip. “You were properly chatting to them!”

  “Yeah!” Dylan nodded, looking very chuffed with himself. “And I didn't say anything dumb, I don't think!”

  “So, what were you talking about?”

  “They want to know which one!” Dylan said brightly.

  Ah, good old Dylan and his weird way of talking.

  “They want to know which one what?”

  I laughed. “Which one of them you fancy!” Uh-oh.

  A chip that was on its way to my mouth ended up stuck in mid-air. “WHAT !” I yelped.

  “They saw us following them today and they've seen us hanging around in the park watching them all this week,” Dylan babbled on, so happy to have had a conversation with his heroes that he didn't seem to notice me squirming.

  “They have ? ” I yelped again, feeling the blood in my veins turn cold as ice-lollies.

  “Yeah, and they thought I was trying to talk to them to tell them you had a crush on one of them!”

  Y'know, round our town, there are plaques on the wall telling you if famous people lived there or important

  things happened there once upon a long ago time.

  Well, I think there should be a plaque on the wall outside Benny's Burgers saying:

  Embarrassed by the Embarrassing Thing

  Will we go 2 park today?

  It was Friday morning, and even though I thought I'd die of shame yesterday afternoon outside the burger place, I was still alive. (And still very, very, very embarrassed.)

  And after all that embarrassment, I wasn't in the mood for the Very Important Project today, which is why I texted Dylan straight back and said

  Can't. See u Sunday @ Dad's

  But if I wasn't in the mood for the Very Important Project, what was I in the mood for?

  I put on the TV, but there were just programmes with people talking about how to paint a wall and how to hammer a nail and it was way too boring to take my mind off the Embarrassing Thing.

  I tried to go and talk to Caitlin, but she was too busy practising the didgeridoo to talk to me about how embarrassing yesterday was. (Anyway, I think I'd be too embarrassed to tell her about the Embarrassing Thing.)

  I tried to go and stroke the baby gerbils, but the mum gerbil hissed at me in a very scary way for something so small so I didn't bother.

  I wished Mum wasn't working today so I could talk to her about it. (Actually, that would be too embarrassing too.)

  Then I realized that there was someone – OK, two someones – that I could talk to, who'd understand exactly how I was feeling and say lots of nice things to make me feel better.

  Diddly-iddly -ooo!!

  Great! A message! Was that Soph or Fee texting, thinking of me at the exact second I was thinking of them?

  Nope, it was just a photo message from Dylan.

  Actually it was a photo message of Dylan.

  With his mouth turned down, all exaggerated, like a sad clown's, he was holding a piece of paper in front of him that said,

  It would've been quite cute, if I wasn't still annoyed with him for talking to those boys in his class about me yesterday. I didn't find out what he'd said to them when they asked which one of them I fancied because I was too embarrassed. I'd just checked that he'd got his bus pass, shoved him on the first bus that went near my dad's place and then ran home. (Which the dogs LOVED, since dogs don't understand about embarrassment and didn't know that's why I was running.)

  I flipped away from Dylan's photo message without saving it and pressed the speed dial for Fee's, but it was switched off.

  So I speed-dialled Soph's mobile, and got through straight away.

  Er, sort of…

  “Hello?” said a voice that sounded an awful lot like Soph's.

  “Soph? It's me, Indie!”

  Then this bizarre-o thing happened – the phone went all muffly, but I could almost hear girls talking in the background.

  Er, what was going o
n?

  And then the person who sounded like Soph started speaking again, only it didn't sound so much like Soph now.

  (This was getting seriously confusing.)

  The person was speaking in this French accent and was saying, “Pardon” (the way French people say it), “but you 'ave ze wrong number. Au revoir.”

  Before the French person clicked off, I could swear I heard someone somewhere giggling. And as there was no one in my house giggling, then it had to be coming from the other end of the phone.

  That weird pinging thing was back, pitterpattering all over my chest and down into my tummy too.

  Y'know, Fee once showed me and Sophie a big word in the dictionary that always made her giggle. It was ‘discombobulated’, which means muddled up. And right now I felt very, very discombobulated.

  I'd speed-dialled Soph for sure, so how could I have got a wrong number?

  And if I hadn't got a wrong number, then – HELP! – what on earth was going on?

  Could someone explain … please?!

  Bye-bye gerbils (and friends)

  It was Saturday morning and it was Soph s turn to have us all round at her place to watch TV. But she hadn't called last night to say it was definitely on, and she hadn't called this morning either.

  And I was still so discom-wotsit after that freaky French phone call yesterday that I hadn't wanted to call her.

  So when Mum asked if I wanted to come take a drive with her in the big, rattly Rescue Centre Van that smelt a bit of straw and disinfectant, I'd said yes please thank you very much. 'Specially since my only other choice was to stay home and listen to Caitlin practising on her didgeridoo again, while the dogs joined in with a howl-along.