Copyright © 2012 by Sally Grindley
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61608-732-6
Printed in the United States of America
With thanks to Terri Passenger,
Chartered Educational Psychologist,
for her guidance
Chapter One
There’s a hurricane smashing through our house. There’s a hurricane smashing, trashing, bashing through our house. CRASH! BANG! WALLOP! The doors are slamming, chairs are falling, cushions flying, feet running; voices shouting, “STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!”
I’m hiding in my bedroom. I’ve barricaded my door. I’m not scared, but I don’t want to be caught up in it, and I don’t want the hurricane turning my room upside down, inside out.
A hurricane can cause total devastation. It can flatten everything in its path. Can you even begin to imagine that? Now try to imagine living with one. I bet you can’t.
There’s a hammering on my door now. “Go away!” I yell. “Leave me alone.” The hammering is harder, louder. I put my hands over my ears to muffle it. I see the door shifting. I run and lean against it. “You’re not coming in!” I yell. “Go and take a running jump. Go and take a running jump off a cliff.”
I hear laughter then, and a torrent of words. I don’t want to hear them. I press my fingers into my ears to block them out. A heavy kick shudders the door, followed by another.
And then it goes silent. So silent. Pin-drop silent. Is it over? I wait. Not a sound. I wait a few minutes longer, then pull the chair away from the door. I’m about to take hold of the handle, when the door crashes open—WALLOP onto my fist—and a deafening BOO! makes my heart boomerang across my chest. A grinning face shoves itself into mine and shouts, “GOTCHA!” before it yahoos and giddy-ups all the way down the stairs.
“Why don’t you grow up?” I bellow after it. “Why can’t you be normal?” I growl under my breath, nursing my bruised fist.
I hide my book under the bed. There’s no point in trying to read now, and I don’t want the pages scribbled on. I make my way downstairs into the living room. There are cushions all over the floor. The coffee table is upside down. Mom’s favorite photograph of me and my brother is in the fireplace. The glass is broken into hundreds of pieces. Mom is sitting on the sofa and I can see that she has been crying. Wills is cuddled up next to her, but I know she doesn’t want him there. Not after what he’s done, even if he can’t help it.
“Mom’s mad at you, Chris,” he says smugly. “Chris cross Chris cross.”
I look at my mother, who shakes her head dully.
“No, she’s not,” I say.
“She is, she is, she is,” insists my brother. “Mad as mad can be, Chris, because you made all this mess and spilled popcorn all over the kitchen floor and it’s all sticky wicky.”
I don’t bother to argue. “Shall I make you a cup of tea, Mom?” I ask.
“That would be nice, thank you,” she sighs.
“It’s the least he can do, isn’t it, Mom?” says Wills.
My mother doesn’t reply. Wills stares at her, right in the eyes, waiting for an answer, then he pulls her arm around him and says, “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to do it.” He begins to cry, and so does she, and I feel like joining in.
Chapter Two
My brother has ADD. Mom says it stands for Attention Deficit Disorder. I say it stands for Acts Dumb and Dumber, which isn’t very clever but it tells it like it is, and you try coming up with something better. Wills is thirteen, eighteen months older than me, but sometimes he acts like he’s six years younger. Sometimes he acts like he’s only two. Less even! Imagine throwing your food across the room when you’re thirteen. You just wouldn’t, would you? Not unless you were so, so, so mad with someone that you threw it at them because you couldn’t help yourself, but even then you probably wouldn’t because you’d be too worried that you’d get punished. Wills doesn’t care about getting punished. He’s been punished so many times, but it doesn’t make any difference at all. Mom says it’s like water off a duck’s back, because most of the time he doesn’t seem to notice it, and if he does, he just shakes it off. I don’t think he actually likes getting into trouble, but he can’t always stop himself, so he ignores the consequences.
The worst thing is that Wills looks older than he is. He’s nearly six feet tall, and big too. Not like the rest of us. Mom’s five feet nothing and as thin as a goalpost, Dad’s only five feet eight and shaped like a bowling pin, and I’m only just taller than Mom. Wills has a moustache already, though he hates if anyone mentions it. Mom says it shows up because he’s got dark hair. Dad used to have dark hair too, before it stopped growing, which Dad says was because Wills sent it into shock. My hair’s fair like Mom’s, and curly too, which is a pain because Wills teases me and calls me Curly Girly. Anyway, when Wills misbehaves, which is often, people tsk even more because they think he’s a sixteen-year-old behaving like a two-year-old, rather than a thirteen-year-old behaving like a two-year-old, which is bad enough. It doesn’t worry Wills though. He just grins and tsks back. Once, in a supermarket, he picked up a huge, and I mean HUGE, jar of pickled onions and held it up to Mom because he wanted her to buy it. When she said no, he dropped it. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but it smashed to smithereens and pickled onions shot across the floor. I wanted to die of embarrassment, and Mom stood there in horror. Wills thought it was hilarious. He started kicking the onions under the shelves and shouting, “Goal!” even though Mom told him to stop. Then he grabbed one and shouted, “Catch!” to me. I missed and it hit an old woman—SPLAT!—in the chest. Everyone tsked and said it was disgraceful behavior for a boy of Wills’s age and that Mom should learn to control her children. Wills just thought it was my fault because I was such a lousy catch. He always blames me.
We can’t go to that supermarket anymore. Even though Mom apologized, they told her that she and her unruly children weren’t welcome, and Mom won’t go there again anyway because she says she has her pride. Now we have to go to a supermarket five miles away, and I know Mom isn’t very happy about it but she doesn’t complain.
Sometimes it makes Mom angry when people say she should learn to control her children. “What do they know about what I have to deal with?” she says. It makes me angry too, because it’s not me causing the trouble and I hate being lumped together with Wills, and also because I know what Mom has to deal with. If other people knew what she had to deal with, they’d think she was amazing. I think she’s amazing. So does Dad, because he couldn’t deal with it.
“I take my hat off to your mom,” he says. “She deserves a medal for putting up with what she puts up with and coping like she does.”
I reckon I deserve a medal too, for putting up with what I put up with. I’m the one Wills picks on. I’m the one whose homework he scribbles on. I’m the one whose things he takes without asking. I�
��m the one whose bedroom he turns upside down when he’s lost something of his own. I’m the one who’s made to look a fool at school, in the street, in the stores.
“This is my baby brother,” he’ll say. “Isn’t he cute? And he’s such a goody-goody.” He’ll tickle me under the chin, then thump me hard on the arm, or stamp on my foot, and run off laughing with his horrible friends. Or he’ll grab my backpack and take my work out. “Look at this,” he’ll say to his horrible friends. “Ten out of ten for spelling. He’s so clever, my baby brother.”
I hate Wills when he’s like that. Hate him, hate him, HATE HIM. Wish he’d never been born. Wish I didn’t have to live with him. You’d feel the same, I bet you.
But sometimes, especially when he’s not with his so-called friends, Wills gets all sorry, really sorry, and puts his arm around me and says, “Sorry, bro, I didn’t mean to,” and stuffs a bag of marshmallows into my hand, or a pack of chewing gum.
“Are you sure they’re not poisoned?” I’ll say, or, “You haven’t licked them, have you?”
He’ll look all hurt then. He’s good at looking hurt, and he makes me feel bad because I know sometimes he is hurt. He’s trying his best to make things up and I’m being all suspicious because it’s too easy for him to say sorry and I don’t want it to be easy because the sorry is never enough—and neither are the marshmallows or chewing gum.
Wills is good at looking innocent too, even when he’s as guilty as a dog that’s eaten its master’s dinner. He opens his eyes wide, looks around him, and says, “Who me? Course not.” Once he followed me into a store and dropped a firecracker on the floor. He stood there looking so innocent that everyone thought it was me because I blushed bright red, and it was me they asked to leave.
I wish that didn’t happen, the blushing thing. It’s always happening to me. I only have to see a policeman and I blush as if I’ve done something wrong. When Wills picks on me at school I always blush, and that gives his friends something else to laugh at. They call me Tomato Head and Little Miss Ruby. I can feel the blush coming on and I try to make myself think cool, calm thoughts, but it’s not easy to stop a blush once it’s started. The worst time is when someone in class farts. I always blush then, even if it’s not me, and I have to bend right over my work with my head down so that no one can see my face, in case they think I did it. My friend Jack sits next to me and sometimes he farts on purpose, just so that he can watch me blush.
Thank goodness Wills isn’t in my class. He shouldn’t even be in the same school as me. He should have gone to high school by now, but he’s so far behind with his work that he’s got to repeat a year. It’s not that he’s stupid, because he’s not. When they made him take tests because of his behavior, to see if there was anything wrong with him, they said that he was very bright but had the concentration of a gnat (that’s how Dad put it). The concentration of a gnat and ants in his pants—that’s how I put it—because most of the time Wills can’t sit still for five minutes. Not even two minutes! No wonder he’s so far behind with his work. Mom and Dad and the teachers and the people who did the tests have tried all sorts of sneaky ways to get him to concentrate, but it never lasts long because they get tired of making all the effort, especially when they’re tired anyway.
So just when I was breathing a sigh of relief that he would be gone from school at last, Mom told me that for his own good they were keeping him back. Great. What about my own good?! At least if he wasn’t there I would have been able to spend part of my week in a Wills-free zone.
The only time Wills is quiet, the only time he really concentrates—which just goes to show that he can if he wants—is when he’s working on his fossils. He’s so quiet then that you wouldn’t know he was in the house. He’s got the most amazing collection: hundreds of them, and gemstones as well. He spends hours cleaning, labeling, cataloging, and arranging them. If you ask him a question, he can tell you everything about each one of them: how old they are, where they were found, where he got them, what they’re worth. Sometimes I wish I had a collection like his, but I wouldn’t have the patience to spend all that time organizing it. Wills gave me one of his ammonites and a piece of amethyst, but it didn’t make me feel like starting a collection myself, and I don’t think he’d want me to anyway.
If I were to start a collection, it would have to be something completely different. I’ve got a mouse, and I once thought it would be cool to have lots of mice, but Dad said NO WAY JOSE, which is what he always says instead of just saying no. I think he had visions of the mice multiplying daily until there were hundreds of them running all over the house, nesting in our armchairs and breaking into our breakfast cereal. THE GREAT MOUSE INVASION! I call my mouse Muffin, because he escaped once (I think Wills helped him) and ate half a chocolate muffin that was supposed to be for Dad’s snack. Dad wasn’t very happy, but Mom said it would do his waistline a world of good. I keep Muffin in a cage in my bedroom. I don’t know why, but I find it comforting to hear him scuffling around while I go to sleep.
I’ve thought about collecting stamps or coins, but I haven’t done anything about it, so I suppose I’m not really interested enough. Jack makes and collects model airplanes. There’s no way I can make any models with Wills around, not without putting a million bolts on my bedroom door.
My favorite thing is reading, and I’ve got loads of books, but that’s not the same as collecting fossils. What’s good about reading is that if I get right inside a story, right inside, I completely forget where I am in real life. It’s like I’m beamed up out of my room into a different world, where no one can reach me and nothing can touch me, not even Wills. The strange thing is that I think it’s the same for Wills with his fossils. When he’s wrapped up in his fossils, he doesn’t even hear when Mom says it’s snack time, and he doesn’t even realize when he’s missing his favorite program on the television. Dad says Wills goes off to another planet (sometimes he says Wills comes from another planet!), and that’s what happens to me when I read.
My favorite place for reading is the library. It’s only fifteen minutes’ walk from home, and I go there whenever there’s a hurricane, unless I think Mom needs me. Sometimes I just go there anyway if I’ve run out of books, or I just want to be on my own, or I’ve got homework to do and won’t be able to with Wills around. Wills doesn’t know I go there. I don’t want him to know either. Not likely! Jack says going to the library is a bit of an old-people thing to do, but I bet he’d go there too if it was the only way to get some peace. He says only old people and nerds go to the library, and he says I’m not a nerd because I don’t come out the best in anything, so I must be an old person. I punch him when he says that. He doesn’t punch me back because he says that you mustn’t punch old people, so I punch him again then, but not hard. He knows why I go there and says he doesn’t blame me, though he says you wouldn’t catch him in a library for all the burgers in McDonald’s. He’s crazy! I would live in a library if I could have all the burgers in McDonald’s. I love them, but Mom says they’re bad for us, especially for Wills, and will only let us have them if she’s feeling really, really lazy and doesn’t want to cook, and that doesn’t happen very often. Hardly ever. She insists it’s because Dad eats too many burgers that he’s turned into a bowling pin. Dad says it’s from sitting at a desk for fifteen years.
It’s only small, our library, and there are hardly ever more than two people in it apart from me. When you walk in, you have to go left for the children’s books and right for the adult books. In the middle, behind the librarian’s desk, is a computer where you can go on the Internet if you want, and behind that is a shelf of talking books. (I’ve never heard them say a word.)
The first time I went into the library was when I wanted to get away from Wills and his horrible friends. They were following me down the road and yelling things at me, so I ran around the corner and straight through the library doors. I squatted behind a bookshelf until I heard them going past. When I stood up again, this girl, well,
woman really, said, “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
I felt myself turn bright red and I wanted to make a dash for it, but she had this sort of big smiley face, and instead I blurted out, “Have you got any good adventure stories?”
“It must be your lucky day,” she said. “I put one of our most popular ones back on the shelf this morning. I’ll find it for you before someone else takes it out.”
She led me across to the children’s section.
“I haven’t seen you in here before, have I?” she asked. I shook my head and felt guilty because my English teacher was always telling us we should go to the library, but nobody did.
“My name’s Penny,” she said. “I’m the librarian here.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to tell her my name, so I just nodded my head and wondered if being a librarian meant that you got to read all the books in the library, and how long that would take.
“Were those boys who went past annoying you?” she said then.
She spoke really kindly, a bit snobby but friendly, and she was quite young. I felt like telling her that one of them was my brother and that he spent his life annoying me, but I just said that they were annoying me a bit and that I could handle it. She looked at me a bit like teachers do sometimes when they think you might be telling lies, but she just turned to the books and pulled one from a shelf.
“Here you are,” she said. “It’s had rave reviews, and everyone who has borrowed it says it’s great. I haven’t read it myself, though, so don’t shoot me if you hate it.”
So they didn’t read all the books, I thought. Then she showed me what I had to do if I wanted to take the book home for a few days, and I thought it was amazing that you could do that, because most of the people I knew would never bring it back.
Anyway, now I go to the library a lot; and Penny’s like a friend and I can talk to her about things. I’ve told her about Wills. She says he must be a nightmare to live with. I feel a bit guilty when she says that because he’s my brother, but at least she understands about the peace and quiet, and she doesn’t push me to tell her things that I don’t want to tell her.
Hurricane Wills Page 1
