Being Grown Up Is Cool (Not!)

by Karen McCombie

  “Caitlin?” I shouted, as I hurried in through our front door and away from Mum’s bad mood.

  “Woof!” woofed George.

  howled Kenneth, doing his excellent impression of a cat.

  “Arf!” arfed Dibbles, his tail on the hall carpet.

  The was coming from Caitlin’s room. Walking along the hallway in a tangle of dogs, I called out her name again.

  Nothing. She was playing her didgeridoo too loud to hear me.

  What Caitlin was playing sounded very sad. But then everything on the didgeridoo sounds sad. Even Happy Birthday sounds pretty gloomy.

  I got to her door and tapped on it. The stopped.

  “Come in!” snuffled a voice.

  It sounded as if Caitlin had a cold.

  Or maybe not.

  As soon as I stepped into her room I saw that Caitlin had been crying – so much that her black eyeliner had slithered right the way down her cheeks. (The clutter of rumpled, soggy tissues chucked on the carpet was a bit of a giveaway too.)

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh, Indie – I’m in so much trouble!” sniffled Caitlin, as she perched on her bed with her didgeridoo clamped between her knees.

  “You’re in trouble?” I said, as Dibbles nudged me in the back of the knees and pushed his way into the room too. “How come?”

  It was horrible seeing Caitlin looking so unhappy, but it kind of made me feel better, knowing that cool grownups can get into trouble too.

  “My new job,” said Caitlin. “I got a warning today and was sent home early. Scarlett’s mum says I HAVE to do better or I’ll get fired…”

  “What did you do wrong?” I asked, moving a mountain of magazines off her bed so I could sit down next to her. (Dibbles immediately sat on them and his tail happily.)

  “Nothing!”

  Nothing? I said, thinking that there HAD to be something.

  “Well, Scarlett’s mum said that babies shouldn’t be eating burnt food.”

  “How did she know the food you gave Scarlett was burnt?” I asked, thinking of the singed sausages and charred beans that Caitlin sometimes made us both for lunch.

  “Er … all her pots were burnt.”

  I suddenly remembered Mum once laughing and saying that Caitlin was a bit of a magician – she could turn the inside of pots from silver to black in one lunchtime.

  Still, Caitlin couldn’t be threatened with the sack over a couple of pots that needed scrubbing, could she?

  “Was that it? Was that all?” I asked her in surprise.

  “No … she didn’t really like the mobile I made and hung up above Scarlett’s cot,” Caitlin explained, as she rubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand.

  (It smudged the eyeliner even more, so she looked like a picture I d once seen at school of a Victorian chimney sweep.)

  “Why not?”

  “It was of bats. She said it bats. She said it would give Scarlett nightmares. But bats are cute, aren’t they, Indie?”

  “Well, yes … ish,” I shrugged. “So you barbecued Scarlett’s lunch and made her a mobile her mum didn’t like. Is that all you did?”

  “Yes. Apart from playing dressing-up with Scarlett.”

  “WHAT did you dress her up as?”

  “I only got as far as painting her nails deep purple, same as mine, see?” said Caitlin, wiggling her fingers at me. “That’s when Scarlett’s mum came in and flipped out.”

  Yikes. I didn’t want to say so in front of Caitlin, but I could sort of see why Scarlett’s mum might be a teeny bit worried…

  “The thing is, Indie, if I get fired again, I can’t pay your mum rent!” Caitlin added.

  “Oh,” I muttered.

  That didn’t sound good. Mum didn’t earn bucketloads as Assistant Manager of the rescue centre and really needed Caitlin’s rent money.

  “I don’t know what to do!” Caitlin squeaked, and started crying all over again.

  The crying seemed to freak Dibbles out – his tail stopped and he squished down on his fat tummy and crawled under the bed.

  The crying sort of freaked me out too, specially since Caitlin was crying with her head on my shoulder.

  I froze.

  What was I supposed to do?

  I hadn’t ever had an adult do this to me. Adults don’t tend to cry and want a cuddle from kids; it’s always the other way round.

  And then I realized what I needed to do.

  “There, there,” I said in a comforting voice, putting my arm around Caitlin and giving her a squeeze. “Everything will be OK.”

  I had no idea how things would be OK. But one thing was for sure; taking care of Caitlin suddenly made me feel very grown-up.

  Cool…

  My not-very-grown-up eyebrow disaster happened on Sunday.

  It was now five-past-getting-out-of-school time on Wednesday.

  So I reckoned that the missing part of my eyebrow must have started to grow back.

  I lifted up my fringe and checked out my reflection in the newsagent’s window.

  Urgh … nothing yet.

  I was staring and urghing to myself when two someones ran shouting along the pavement towards me.

  “Indie!” shouted one someone, who was Soph.

  “We’ve just had a great idea!” shouted the other someone, who was Fee.

  I’d only said bye to them two minutes ago – we weren’t going the same way home ’cause I was going to catch the bus to Dad’s. (I was having tea there – Mum was working late. Again.)

  “What’s that, then?” I said, brushing my fringe back in place fast.

  “Look – a new doughnut place has opened in the shopping centre!” Fee panted breathlessly, waving a leaflet she must’ve just been handed.

  “Yeah!” nodded Soph. “They’ve got loads of flavours, like chocolate glazed with choc chips— ”

  “AND chocolate glazed with chocolate sprinkles !”

  “AND marshmallow flavour with vanilla frosting!”

  “AND popcorn flavour with toffee frosting !”

  “AND peanut butter custard flavour!”

  As Soph and Fee jabbered on, I felt kind of sick. I don’t know whether it was the thought of all those tastes mixed together, or the fact that my friends had so nearly caught me with my missing eyebrow on show.

  “So anyway,” said Fee, “why don’t we go tomorrow after school and blow all our pocket money on tons of doughnuts!”

  For a second, I thought that could be fun, in a silly way.

  And then I pictured us all sitting in the shopping centre trying to cram as many doughnuts in our mouths as possible and decided it was just plain silly.

  And not a very grown-up thing to do.

  “Nah,” I said with a shrug. “Don’t really fancy it.”

  “Please yourself!” said Soph, looking as surprised as if I’d turned down the chance to win a zillion pounds. “But since you’re going to your dad’s, can you ask Dylan if he wants to come?”

  “Yeah, OK,” I nodded at Soph and Fee as I started backing away.

  (It was starting to get windy. The last thing I needed was for my fringe to flap up right now – not when I’d got away with my half-an-eyebrow secret so far…)

  “Hey, Indie!” Fee called after me. “What were you staring at in the newsagent’s window just now?”

  “Um … only some magazine that looked … nice,” I muttered quickly, saying the first thing that popped into my head. “Got to go or I’ll be late!”

  Y’know, I’d been looking forward to sitting on the bus on the way to Dad’s house, just daydreaming and maybe thinking of brilliant new things to add to my list.

  Instead, I found myself slouching down in my seat, realizing that Soph and Fee probably didn’t believe I was interested in stuff in the shop window at all.

  And that’s probably because the display in the window was for magazine…

  Urgh.

  Everything to do with Soph and Fee had been a bit tricky today.r />
  FIRST, they’d been dying to know where I was yesterday afternoon, ’cause of my mum phoning them and everything. When I told them I’d been at the park with Dylan, they’d acted a bit hurt that I hadn’t invited them too. But hey, I could hardly tell them that I was begging Dylan to keep my half-an-eyebrow secret from them, could I? So I just pretended to be suddenly really interested in doing the maths our teacher Miss Levy had set us. (And that must have seemed VERY weird indeed, since I like maths as much as I like Chinese burns…)

  THEN they’d kept asking why I was turning away from them when we were talking. And I could hardly say it was ’cause I was scared they’d get a peek at my hidden half-an-eyebrow … so I fibbed and said I’d slept funny and had a crick in my neck.

  And THEN there’d been the business at the shop, when I’d fibbed (again) about the magazine, when all the time I’—

  Oh! There was Caitlin.

  My bus was crawling along in High Street traffic, and I got a good long look at her, kneeling down and smiling in a kind of panicky way at a crying baby (Scarlett, I guessed) in a pushchair.

  Y’know, when babies start crying, I think they sometimes for-^‘ —v get how to stop. And it looked like baby Scarlett was living up to her name, wailing like crazy and turning tomato red.

  I saw Caitlin try to give her a dummy, but baby Scarlett just pushed it away and kept right on wailing.

  I saw Caitlin making a floppy-eared toy bunny dance in front of baby Scarlett, but she went right on getting more scarlet.

  I saw Caitlin pull a funny (sort of scary) face, where she stretched her mouth out and dragged her eyes down, but baby Scarlett just wailed louder.

  I saw Caitlin start to look desperate, then all of a sudden rummage in her bag, as if she’d had a great idea.

  The bus was speeding up, but I still got a glimpse of Caitlin putting a pair of headphones on Scarlett and pressing a button on her CD player. For a second, Scarlett stopped crying, but I think that was pure shock. ’Cause the next second, she was wailing and crying worse than ever.

  Oh dear.

  I know music can soothe grumpy babies, but that tends to be there-there, rock-a-bye-baby, humpty-dumpty sort of music.

  Something told me that the very loud rock music that Caitlin kept on her CD player wasn’t exactly the sort of lullaby that Scarlett’s mum would approve of.

  Wonder how long it’ll be, I thought, till Caitlin gets the sack and becomes my babysitter again…?

  I’d just told Dylan all about everything happening with Caitlin.

  The two of us were sitting on the sofa in Dad and Fiona’s (and Dylan’s) living room, while Fiona (a very good cook) made something amazing for tea, and Dad (getting in Fiona’s way, I bet) tried to help.

  And Dylan … well, Dylan was nodding hard at what I was saying. And as he was very smart, in his own weird way, I was pretty sure that he was about to tell me that Caitlin was – sadly – bound to get the sack very soon.

  “That sounds great!” Dylan grinned.

  “What – you think Caitlin maybe losing her job would be great?!” I asked, completely confused.

  “No, what you were saying before that – about the new doughnut shop! Sounds cool!”

  Ah, Dylan … he might be hyper-clever when it came to school stuff, but he was still a little kid deep down.

  “Never mind doughnuts … what happened yesterday when you got home?” I asked him, glancing over at the living room door to make sure it was still safe to gossip. “Did Dad and Fiona go mad at you? Are they going to be mad at me ?”

  The last bit was worrying me; after all, it was number 5 on my

  list that had got Dylan into trouble in the first place.

  “Nothing much … kind of … and NO,” said Dylan, answering all my questions in order (I think). “And I didn’t tell them I was with you, or about your list or anything.”

  “Um, thanks!” That was pretty nice of Dylan, not to land me in it, I mean. “Are they still mad at you, though?”

  Nah, said Dylan, pulling his neon yo-yo out of his pocket and whirling it around. “Mum said that if I was sorry, and promised not to do it again, then she’d make me banoffi pie for tea.”

  We went quiet for a second, probably both thinking how nice banoffi pie was.

  “D’you want to hear the newest thing I’ve added to my list?” I finally asked, leaning forward to get my notepad out of my bag. (I’d thought of it on the way from the bus stop to Dad’s place.)

  “No, it’s OK,” said Dylan, wincing a bit as his yo-yo cracked him on the shin. “I decided I don’t want to be a grown-up any more. It’s seems like a LOT of hassle. And nobody makes you banoffi pies when you’re a grown-up…”

  Huh, so much for Dylan being on my (grown-up) side, I grumbled to myself.

  “So, Indie, how’s your mum doing?” said Dad, suddenly ambling into the living room and plonking himself down on the sofa beside us.

  “She sounded a bit preoccupied when she phoned last night and asked me to have you over.”

  Preoccupied … that’s basically a grown-up word for “not listening”. And it was the right word to use – when it came to not listening, Mum was doing plenty of that lately, especially when it came to me.

  Still, Dad was pretty easy-going for a grown-up. Maybe he’d listen…

  “She’s gone WEIRD, Dad,” I started to explain.

  “WEIRD? Weird, how?” he asked me, leaning over and picking the TV remote off the table.

  “Well, like last night. I was trying to talk to her about … things, and she just went ‘mmm’ and carried on with all this work stuff.”

  I didn’t want to tell Dad everything. There was no need for him to know that I’d worried Mum, or that I’d worried Mrs O’Neill, or that I’d been late home ’cause I was hanging out with Dylan. But last night I’d been trying to apologize to Mum about all that, and she’d made me feel like – oops! – I was invisible.

  “Mmmm…” Dad nodded.

  Great.

  Dad was glued to the news, where the presenter was announcing that some big politician bloke had chucked his job or been abducted by aliens or something.

  Maybe it was VERY IMPORTANT NEWS and every grown-up around the country was glued to it too.

  But all I knew was that I’d been right to write down on my list.

  ’Cause they certainly don’t listen to you when you’re ten and still a kid and invisible…

  When Dad dropped me home, I walked into the kitchen and found Mum stroking a tree frog.

  She was doing it very delicately, as tree frogs are so small there’s not much of them to stroke.

  Her gaze might have been loving (to the tree frog, not me), but I spotted she had dark circles of tiredness under her eyes. Did that have something to do with the fact that I’d seen her light on last night, when I’d tiptoed to the bathroom for a wee? Had she still been working on all that secret work of hers in the early hours of whenever it was?

  “Are you cleaning out the vivarium? Can I help?” I asked, wriggling out of my jacket.

  I wasn’t offering to help clean frog poo just to suck up to Mum – I always help out with animals in our house, whether they’re our own pooches/pusscat/fish, or whatever foster pets Mum’s brought home.

  “No – it’s probably quicker if I do it myself,” Mum muttered, hardly looking up at me.

  Sigh…

  What are parents like? One minute they’re nagging you to help around the house more, then the next, they’re making you feel like you’re too much of a baby to do anything properly.

  Y’know, that was another reason why if you want to,

  You know something else?

  Back at my dad’s, I’d made a joke to myself about that politician on the news being abducted by aliens.

  But I was really starting to wonder if my nice, ditzy, cute mum had been whisked away in a spaceship and replaced by a grumpy alien from the planet Bedoinggg, who just happened to look a bit like her…

  �
��Indie, can you do me a favour?” she said suddenly, finally glancing my way.

  “Course!” I nodded.

  “I have a killer headache – can you go and ask Caitlin to give the didgeridoo a rest?”

  With a shrug to say yes, I zoomed off to Caitlin’s room, where the usual

  was rumbling away.

  I wanted to see Caitlin anyway, and find out how she’d got on at work today, after spying what I’d spied from the bus.

  “Er, hello? Can I come in?” I asked, after doing some knock-knock-knocking on her bedroom door.

  The stopped with a sudden squelchy burp sound, and a shaky voice said, “Uh-huh!”

  Uh-oh. I had the funniest feeling that Caitlin had got sacked.

  Again.

  “I got sacked!

  Again!!”

  she sniffled, as I slunk inside her room.

  Caitlin’s bed was covered in tissues and empty chocolate wrappers. Her feet were covered with Dibbles’ head. He’s a dog of little brain, but he must have sniffed some sadness and come to keep Caitlin company.

  Either that, or her shoes were just very comfy for a little snooze.

  “But why!” I came out with, even though I kind of guessed why.

  “I dunno!” sniffed Caitlin, wiping her nose and smudging her purple lipstick at the same time. “I took my didgeridoo along today, and played Scarlett some nursery rhymes when we got back from town!”

  “And?”

  “And Scarlett’s mum walked in right as Scarlett started crying during Twinkle Twinkle …”

  To a baby, the rumbling vibration of the didgeridoo probably made Twinkle Twinkle sound like there was an earthquake happening in the room. Specially after the loud rock music she’d had to listen to in her buggy earlier.