Now, Maybe, Probably

by Dillie Dorian

  I stood awkwardly in the hall with Chantalle’s sick seeping into the slight flares of my jeans, wishing I’d just gone upstairs with the rest. So what if I’d be ready before everyone else? So would Devon. And now, here was Devon. And Charlie and Andy. Very soon everyone would start crowding back down the stairs, right into Chantalle’s sick.

  “Hold it!” I said, as authoritatively as Rindi had managed despite her being at least as shy as me. “Stay upstairs; there’s sick on the floor.”

  “Wreyy!” shouted Andy. “Who?”

  “Smeg off, ugly,” managed Keisha, who didn’t look too great herself.

  “Language!” he snickered, though it really wasn’t.

  Rachel exploded. “Devon, what the **** are you wearing?!” (That definitely was.) “Is that… candy necklaces? That is sooooo ****ing disgusting!”

  Devon smiled smugly. Rachel had used her chosen name. It was then that I realised why she was so optimistic about the pool – she’d come up with this specifically to embarrass haughty Rachel on her special day, and it was working.

  The auntie reappeared with stuff for the carpet. “Well, that is really… original,” she offered Dev.

  “Why thank you,” said Devon, giving a twirl.

  Danielle led Chantalle into the living room to sit down. They wouldn’t be swimming. Chantalle would surely drown if she tried, seeing as she could barely make it from room to room in those stupid sloppy heels. They were probably her mum’s, too.

  “I’ve got my cozzie on,” I explained to the auntie, who seemed to want me to take off my pukey shoes and move along. I quickly got out of my jeans and top before too many people could appear to watch.

  Rachel and Keisha gave each other looks. I couldn’t tell what that meant, but I wondered if they were sober enough to swim either.

  “Rachel,” said the auntie. “Are all of these people expecting to swim?”

  “Shh!” hissed Rachel.

  It wasn’t long before I realised what she was shushing about – out in the garden, the pool turned out to be covered to keep the leaves out, because it was empty. Along the great stretch behind some bushes I caught a hint of azure.

  “This way to the pool!” announced the auntie to her confused audience of sixteen guests. (Jordy was missing.) Except one person in particular who looked no more astonished than Rachel – Chantalle and Dani had hidden away, but Keisha had her usual beguiling smile on. It never meant anything good. She was in on something, and I didn’t know what, but she was clued up to the eyeballs.

  Behind the bush was a paddling pool. Big, blue, and decorated with mermaids and octopuses on the sides. It was the Fern’s Room of paddling pools, larger than life at an admittedly reasonable ten feet. Bigger than any I’d seen before, you still couldn’t comfortably fit more than four people in it. (Not that it was looking to be the main problem, considering I was so cold that my innards felt frosty, and we’d only been in the garden for two minutes.)

  The patio erupted with foul comments, all in front of the well-meaning aunt who didn’t seem to mind because she obviously thought it was a terrible idea. Rachel and Keisha laughed because they’d pranked us all good, Andy and Charlie laughed because it was proving to be a hilarious free day out, me and Devon laughed because we’d never had our hopes up, and finally, every other person in the garden laughed because all of this was ridiculous.

  It was right at that moment when Rachel’s uncle burst out of the garage in a silly hat and smart suit. “I HAVE POLISHED MY MINI!” he announced. “Who are the lucky girls?”

  The shivering and the laughing reached such a stage that I slightly felt like I was dying. I turned around, longing for my clothes, even if there was a slight ming of puke around them. Rachel was crying. Properly crying, and Keisha had an arm around her. I scuttled indoors with them in shock.

  What I could gather from Rachel’s wobblings was that the joke had been a desperate joke, thought up after she found out that the proper pool would never be ready for the party. She’d thought none of the cooler people would want to come if there wasn’t a pool after all, and at least if they showed up they would know that her auntie and uncle really did have a pool of their own – it was just that none of us were getting a go in it.

  It was all so sad and pathetic, and I do mean in both senses. It was such a stupid thing to worry about, from mine and Rindi and Fern’s standpoint. Two of us never had so much as a square metre to ourselves, and the one who did have didn’t live in a full sized house and at the very least had never had a horse of her own. We didn’t cry on our birthdays because there wasn’t a swimming pool involved. But even though the sensible side of my brain was squealing alarm bells about selfish, rich, entitled girls and their stupid parties, the kind and considerate softie molecules insisted that something about all this was adorable.

  “Oh, Rach,” said Rindi. “You’re a daftie. None of us care about a swimming pool.”

  “Pools are stupid,” said Keisha. “You should’ve seen Asta’s tart face when she realised the pool at her party was outside on the roof. She’s terrified of heights and it was ice out there at night. She went on off a mental one while we were all like, getting on with it ’cause you don’t actually swim at a pool party.”

  “You don’t wanna be like Asta,” I pointed out. “Redo your makeup and go for that ride.”

  “You’re all so nice,” sobbed Rachel, looking up at us with her red rimmed chocolatey eyes and grey-smeared face. “I don’t want to take Chelse and Georgia anymore.”

  And that was how Rachel’s uncle managed to squeeze Rachel and me and Keisha and Rindi and Fern into his black taxi-looking Mini Cooper. It was illegal and stupid and he was lucky he wasn’t really a taxi driver but a half-retired professional landscaper as we learned on the cramped journey round the block. Rachel was fine in the front, but me and Rindi had to sit with Fern and Keisha half on our laps, because Keisha thought they weighed less than us which is charming and probably at least not true in Rindi’s case. If I’m honest, I was praying for it to be over the entire time, but I didn’t say that to Rachel. None of us did.

  When we got back to the garage, the real pool had been opened up and Andy and the finally present Jordy were skating in it with Rachel’s old board and rollerblades like something out of one of those Playstation games. A couple of other boys including Charlie had braved the arctic paddling pool and were currently chucking water everywhere, to the distress of the couple of girls who were still outside. Dani and Chantalle, feeling a bit better, had waited for our return.

  “I’m sorry I threw up in your house,” shivered Chantalle. “Can you please tell your auntie I’m sorry, I want to go home now.”

  This, the uncle overheard, and offered to drive them both back right away. That left Keish, who’d come with them, to find someone else to leave with when the party was over. She stubbornly eyed Rindi, and her face scrunched uncomfortably. I could tell that she didn’t want to apologise. It’s just Keisha – like Chantalle, sometimes it’s not that she doesn’t want to be friends, but she never likes to say sorry.

  “I’m not sorry I called you a racist,” she said, finally. “That was just a joke, so like, get over it. Sucks that you got detention, though. Me and Chan are in for skiving when we go back.”

  “I’m not sorry I called you shit,” giggled Rindi. “You really are, really shit.”

  They both laughed and got pally again, and that conveniently left Fern to bus it back with me, and Devon… well, she could have the boys in the band.

  #19 Gravy Zebras

  On the bus back, I learned that Fern had had a word with her dad when she got home from Rindi’s, and been given a clothing allowance that they spent together on Saturday. I wasn’t annoyed about not being invited, because I’d had the astonishing revelation that they both might actually be much nicer than me and deserving of a best-friendship together. In fact, I was dead chuffed, because as a result of Chantalle being sick on Devon’s shoes, I’d finally got my red imitation Co
nverse back from Rachel.

  The day after the party was Marwell. As frustrating as fambly day trips have always been, a jaunt to the zoo always wins out with me over the alternative of it not being half term and still being Monday.

  Andy’s dad used his day off so that we would have more than one car, which reminded me of the times long ago when we’d had a special day out at the farm as four year olds, me and Charlie and you and Andy, and repeated the trip for Zak and Ryan, and then Kitty and Lioum. This time felt even more crowded, because we’d all got bigger since.

  Andy’s dad took Andy and Charlie and Zak and Ryan in his car like old times, and Harry took Mum and me and Kitty and Dev, who seemed to have moved in. After hours of trying to coax Aimee into coming along, Harry had finally given up only to find Ben tailing our car with Aimee in his passenger seat. I know Harry could’ve exploded at the thought of his angelic daughter at the mercy of a seventeen year old waiter as we went up the motorway, but he simmered quietly in his smart-casual way, and eventually my nerves over a Dad-style meltdown disappeared.

  At the zoo, it looked like every man and his darling child had got the same idea as us. The first day of half-term proper was probably the most idiotic time you could choose to visit a county attraction.

  Aimee and Ben skulked off on their “date” before Harry could get a word with either of them, and Mum entrusted me and Dev with Kitty and similarly vanished with him for some alone-time, probably to obsess over which days out we’d be doing with the baby eventually. For once, I had Devon to myself. All four boys were haring around cracking niffy animal jokes rather than giving us the time of day.

  Kitty made us read out every animal on the map, and then decided we should look at the snow leopards first. They weren’t exactly on the way in, so I said we should just tour the whole park and see if we could find them eventually.

  “Why is it a gravy zebra?” she asked, confizzled.

  “They’re Grevy’s zebras,” explained Dev. “They must belong to Grevy.”

  “But it’s a Marwell’s zebra,” insisted Kitty.

  “Grevy must be the zookeeper,” I offered, towing her along. Selfish as it was, after all the recent friend drama I just had no patience to look at animals my little sister would rather argue over than aww at.

  It was no use. She was like this all around the zoo, which took us a couple of hours to see most of, and then got tired and started begging to go on the road train when me and Devon wanted to stop for lunch. I heaved a sigh of relief when the place was so swamped even in February that the road train was cancelled, but then Kitty vividly remembered there being a rail train and said we had to do that instead, which sucked because we had to pay.

  My stomach grumbled, and Kitty complained about a crying baby half of the way round. It took us back past things we’d just wasted all our energy hunting for by foot, and then when we got to the café we didn’t have enough for lunch. I was just about to look for Mum and ask for a few quid more, when Harry waved at us from a table by the window.

  Harry paid for lunch, and Kitty enthused about all the animals even though she hadn’t given me a single clue that she’d been having a good time so far. I muttered to Devon about that, and she just said, “Gosh, Harley, you really don’t know how to have fun, do you?”

  Fun isn’t a really long walk in the cold to look at animals who are mostly also cold because they belong in Africa, chaperoning an expensive seven year old the whole time. Fun would be what the boys were having with their youthful enthusiasm, or Aimee with her lovely love life and probable further V-Day gifts. She’d already had a giant Me To You Bear holding a heart, Hello Kitty helium balloon, Moomin hot water bottle cover and box of chocolates on the actual day, and been taken for dinner while I had to cook the tea and feel unwanted by my cousin and let down by the friends I thought were nice people. Yes, I was jealous.

  I just growled in response to Devon, and got into a hearty conversation with Andy’s dad at the adjacent table about how good the carrot cake was, and where else good carrot cake can be had in his expert opinion. Before long, Andy and the guys came bounding into the café. Andy was shouting and giggling. “SOMALI WILD ASS!! It’s actually called a SOMALI WILD ASS!!”

  “Have you… been laughing about that all the way from the edge of the park?” I asked, incredulously. Maybe I’d lost my sense of humour, but shouting “Somali” and “wild ass” as if it was humorous just sounded a little racist after the week I’d had.

  Andy beamed. “The laughter fuelled my way. I’m starving, Dad, what can I have?”

  “Have the carrot cake, Andy, it’s delicious,” said Dr Godfrey. Something about dealing with sick people obviously makes anything that isn’t diseased look and smell all the better to eat – the man could put every meal he’s had this year on a sliding scale of awesome to hospital jelly.

  Charlie sidled up to Devon. “When you’re finished, shall we hit the gift shop?”

  Most boys would mean by that, that they had decided on a budget and wanted to treat the girl. In Charlie’s case, I was certain that he just wanted someone to flirtingly throw glitter jetballs at. Andy took Devon’s place with his cake, which was next to me. “Zak got us thrown out of the bat house for being too loud,” he said, conversationally.

  “Oh did he now?” said Harry, humourlessly. “Sandie, that boy doesn’t know how to behave. I will be having words.”

  “He knows you’ll be having words – that’s probably why he’s not with us,” I groaned. “Where has he got to?”

  Secretly, I was thinking that as bad as that was, it was pretty lame of Andy to drop him in it with our stepdad. Sure, disturbing zoo animals is not cool, but Harry’s attitude to Zak recently had been possibly even less reasonable.

  “Let’s look for him after I’ve had my cake,” suggested Andy.

  It was almost just like old times – me and Andy getting along practically like extra cousins. Andy and Charlie as best friends with no Jordys interfering with their stupid stunning bodies. Zak and Ryan getting themselves in trouble and having to jog as far from the grownups as they could get – they were probably hiding out in a flipping tree, formulating a plan to run away forever, which they would never actually go through with. The only thing missing was you, and instead I had the poor substitute of the girl who thought sweetie necklaces were clothes.

  Whether or not Zak and Ry had hidden creatively, they were back before Andy finished his cake, begging for food of their own. Harry was cross, to the point of deciding to punish Zak with mild starvation until he could get home and eat something totally boring, but Andy’s dad bought them both some cake because he was so sure everyone needed to try it. They ran out of cake after that.

  Andy, Kit and I wandered companionably down to the gift shop, back past the penguins. Aimee and Ben could be seen viewing them admiringly, huddled together in their thick coats. I almost felt mean for getting jealous, given that they looked so sweet together (personality ignored), and that I’d given up on love after Jordy and had plans to become a spinster.

  Inside the gift shop there was no toy fight. Charlie had set his heart on a gigantic cuddly orang-utan, and he held it in his arms practising his pout for Mum and Harry’s arrival. I somehow suspected that with Harry in his mood with Zak, nothing would be bought for anyone except maybe Kitty.

  I turned out to be totally correct. It wasn’t long before Mum and Harry and Hugh appeared in the gift shop with Zak and Ry, claiming that it was time to go and if we hadn’t brought any pocket money, tough. Well, it was Harry saying all that. Zak and Ryan weren’t fussed anyway, but Zak had his Bart Simpson look of indignation on because he was in trouble for being a nuisance.

  Kitty appeared with an armful of small toys and a stuffed lemur balancing precariously on top, but Harry told her to put all but one thing back. She disappeared and returned with only the lemur, blatantly the most expensive of the pile, whether she knew it or not. “Thissss please!” she asked, cheerfully, and I could tell that he would
not say no, considering what a perfect kid she’d been last week as far as he knew.

  “THIS please!” Charlie mimicked, presenting the orang-utan with pleasure. “I want him for my wife!”

  I knew that he was just being a joker, putting the conflicting words “him” and “wife” into a sentence to state that the orang-utan would be his.

  Harry heard it the other way. “If you want it for Kay, you can save up your pocket money and pay me back. Since you’ve been good today.”

  I knew the last bit was pointed at Zak, who, of course, hadn’t.

  Charlie looked awkward. He wanted the orang-utan for himself, forever, to take up half his bed and nearly suffocate him in the night.

  “OK, I’ll buy you the orang-utan!” snickered Devon.

  I looked at Andy as if to say I thought she was nuts. It was probably the second most expensive toy in the entire place, and Charlie didn’t need it, and would probably forget about it next week – and heck, if he didn’t, who else cared?

  “Do you need an orang-utan as well?” asked Andy.

  Oh, so that was how it was. Just like any other person who could afford to live in our street and wasn’t us, Andy and Devon just had that much disposable pocket money each month.

  “Nope, I think there’s just the one,” I said, in a slightly mocking voice. Mocking the situation, I mean.

  “Well, a bat, then? Or a …capybara? I dunno, what are you into?”

  I had to think. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have a me animal like a lot of people did, like Fern was a gazelle, or Keisha was a cat. (In my head, anyway.) I didn’t really suit any of them, because I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t lean or muscular enough for most animals. Not that short or tall either. Not too clever and not too dumb. People didn’t turn girls like me into caricatures, because they had nothing to work with.

  “I’m serious, Harley,” said Andy, pained. “I want to buy you something.”

  Why?

  I couldn’t ask why – that would look ungrateful, rude, speculative, nosy, all those words – but I really, really wanted to know. Recently I’d been seeking knowledge about everyone like a… there wasn’t a paparazzi spy animal at all. I had to know everything and be able to write everything and be honestly honest about it all, just for you.