Puppy Party

by Anna Wilson

  The result was that something pooey and brown was being flicked all around the place and Titch’s beautiful golden coat was getting well and truly trashed. Molly had not noticed, as she was too busy looking at me in a sorrowful way and talking in a PATRONIZING and annoying tone.

  ‘Well,’ I said as carelessly as I could manage, ‘It’s very lovely of you to be Concerned About my Welfare, Molly, but I have to go now as I have rather a lot more homework to do this evening. I will see you tomorrow. Come on, Honey.’

  When I got home, Mum was sitting at the kitchen table with her head propped up by her hands as if it would fall off unless she held it there. Her face was looking what can only be described as Glum and her cup of tea had gone cold and the surface of it had that kind of yucksome grimbleshanks on it which happens when the milk has gone all floaty.

  ‘Hi, Mum!’ I said, trying to sound cheery. My voice did a funny echoey sound around the walls. Oh my goodness dearie me, the house sounded as empty as I felt.

  ‘What?’ said Mum. ‘Oh hello, darling. It’s you.’

  Yes, it is me. You do have another daughter who still lives at home and who is called Summer, and that is actually me.

  ‘How was your day?’ Mum asked. But it didn’t sound as though she was particularly interested. I could have said, ‘Great, thanks, Mum. The teacher made us eat slugs for lunch and run ten miles in the pouring rain in PE,’ and she would not have taken any notice. She had not even noticed that Honey had trodden muddy paw prints all over the clean kitchen floor tiles.

  I decided to concentrate on sounding extremely chirpy in the hope it would wake Mum up a bit.

  ‘Oh, my day was super-duper -- marvellous!’ I said. My voice ended in a funny squeak, which made Mum peer at me strangely. I carried on babbling, ‘Yes, I had a lovely, lovely day at school and then I took Honey to the park just now with Molly and Titch, and the pooches ran around and were happy and Molly and I had a jolly good Chin-Wag.’

  I paused. And then, totally unexplainably and completely out of nowhere, my bottom lip started to wobble and I plonked myself down in the chair opposite Mum and my shoulders sagged and my head fell on to my chest and my eyes went hot.

  ‘Oh, darling!’ Mum cried, suddenly all DISTRAUGHT. ‘What on earth is the matter? You haven’t had another falling out with Molly, have you? It’s not that Rosie Chubb again, is it? I—’

  ‘NO!’ I shouted. Why do mums always do this? They ask you a question and then they go and try and answer the question themselves before you have had a chance to draw one single breath and speak out loud yourself.

  Mum stopped in mid-speech and looked rather a little bit horrified. But at least she did not start talking again.

  I sighed very deeply and then said, ‘I am feeling sad. But if I tell you why, I think you might just laugh at me.’

  Mum frowned and shook her head ever so slightly. Then she said in a very softly spoken voice, ‘No, Summer. I don’t think I will.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. Then I paused for dramatical effect (and also to check that Mum really was not going to laugh). ‘I didn’t think this would happen, in fact, I was sure I would feel totally utterly the opposite way about it, but as it has turned out . . . I miss April!’ My voice did the squeaky thing again, and I started sobbing like a loop-the-loop loony. Honey whined and left the room.

  Mum pushed her chair back gently and came round to my side of the table and put her arms around me and gave me the sort of calming cuddle that only mums know how to give.

  Then she kissed the top of my head and said quietly, ‘I know, I know,’ and waited until my blubbing had settled down a bit. Then she let go of me and drew up a chair next to me and held my hands.

  I sniffed and hiccuped and said, ‘It’s completely weird. I was absolutely desperate for April to go and get married and let me have her room and not be here to boss me around all the time, but now that I have finally got what I wanted, nothing feels right.’

  Mum nodded. She looked a bit blurry through all the tears that were still spilling over the edge of my eyelids.

  ‘And I thought it would be so cool to have the sofa to myself and to be able to watch all the telly programmes I wanted to instead of having to creep around the place while April and Nick snogged on the sofa.’ I shuddered a slightly tiny bit when I said that. Even on their wedding day, which is a day when as everyone knows, the couple are allowed to snog in public, it is not something I wanted to have to witness. ‘But actually I think I would prefer April to be here snogging Nick,’ I continued, ‘or even having a tantrum about me using her hairbrush or something, because at least then she would STILL BE HERE.’

  I stopped to take a breath and try to stop all the hiccupy sobbing. ‘It is funny, isn’t it?’ murmured Mum. ‘The house just feels too quiet.’ Then she went quiet herself and stared into the distance in a PENSIVE manner.

  I was about to go and switch on the telly and try and convince myself that sitting on the sofa on my own was as good as I had hoped it would be, when Mum suddenly said, ‘I know – let’s have a party!’

  Now, I can assure you that I like a party as much as anyone in the entire universe likes a party (which is a lot, unless you are the sort of person in the entire universe who does not, in which case you are frankly a bit odd in my opinion), but even I did think that this was strange timing.

  ‘That is a freaky announcement to make when we are both feeling so Glum and Down in the Dumps,’ I said.

  Mum beamed and jumped up and gave me a hug and said, ‘I know!’ in a bit of a loony high-pitched tone of speaking. And then she said, ‘But we could have a party for April!’

  Then I felt all as well, and I squeezed Mum hard and said, ‘Yay!’

  Mum pulled me back to the kitchen table and made me sit down and then she started talking in a mega-hyper way. ‘It’s her birthday in, what, two weeks?’ she wibbled, counting the days on her fingers. (Why is it OK for grown-ups to do this, but when children do they are told off for cheating and not using their times tables and Mental Maths?) ‘And it’s quite a special one as it’s the first birthday she is going to have as a married woman, and I don’t think she and Nick have got enough room in their flat to have a party, so we can just have it here! And we can do it as a SURPRISE!’

  I did actually squeal rather loudly when she said this last bit, as I was finding all her excitement quite a bit infectious and I do love a SURPRISE myself.

  ‘Yippeeee!’ I said. I leaped out of my chair and did a bit of a victory dance around the table, punching my fist in the air and chanting, ‘We’re going to have a PAR-TEE! It’s going to be a SUR-PRISE!’

  Mum laughed and Honey came crashing back and joined in all the hoo-ha with a good session of barking and tail wagging.

  um suggested that we get on with doing some planning right that instant.

  ‘We should start with a guest list,’ she said, getting up and around in the drawer which is supposed to have useful things like pens and paper in, but which actually has things like old rolls of finished Sellotape, broken hair grips and weird crumb stuff of a dubious and questionable nature (which could be pencil shavings or could be something much worse, so it’s best not to Go There).

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well I suppose we should invite Nick and some of Nick’s friends from the vet’s and – oh no! She might actually want to have Mr Stingy and Mr Gross from the lawyery place where she works! And there will be those annoying friends of hers from college and—’

  ‘Summer! Summer!’ Mum was waving her hands in front of my face to get my attention in the sort of way people do when someone is Away With the Fairies, in other words On Another Planet, in other other words, not concentrating on what is actually going on in the real live world.

  ‘Ye-es?’ I said, stopping my Ranting and Raving for a moment.

  ‘I think that the whole point of a surprise party is that April is not the one organizing it,’ Mum said carefully, looking at me in a Meaningful way with her eyebrows lowered and her eyes g
linting. She waited for her words to sink in.

  ‘Aha!’ I said, pointing my finger in the air like a scientist who has just discovered the cure for all illness and evil in the world. ‘You mean, we can invite whoever we want? Oh well, in that case I’m going to ask Molly and Frank and—’

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ Mum cried, laughing and trying to look serious at the same moment. ‘I didn’t mean that: I meant that April will not be in charge, as it’s going to be a surprise. But that doesn’t mean you can go ahead and invite only your friends: it’s still April’s birthday, don’t forget!’

  I felt all the fizzle go away for the second time that morning and slumped back into my chair. Much as I missed April, I did not think that I wanted to have a houseful of her boring grown-up friends around the place, balancing a paper plate and a glass and nibbling on one crisp at a time and saying things like, ‘I absolutely think this country is going to the dogs,’ and other stupid phrases. (People actually do say that, you know, and I have never understood it, as the dogs are very obviously not in control of this country whatsoever. If they were, then it would be them taking us out for walks and throwing sticks for us to fetch and we would be forced to eat smelly dog food out of tins while they ate roast beef and sausages.)

  I did a big ‘humpfing’ sound to show my complete disapproval of the whole idea and sank down into my chair as far as I could in a very impressively type of attitude.

  ‘Summer,’ said Mum, ‘if you will just give me one second to explain the idea I’ve had?’

  ‘Humpf,’ I said again.

  Mum sighed loudly and said, ‘What about if you and Molly were allowed to do absolutely all the organizing and choose all the food, the decorations and everything with no help from me? And you can ask another of your friends along too, if you want?’

  Now this was what is called An Offer You Cannot Refuse.

  ‘Yeeeehah!’ I yelled, leaping up out of my chair for the second time during this conversation and dancing an even madder and dance than the one I had danced before. ‘Hooray and yippi-di-do-dah!’ I added For Good Measure.

  I had to get on the phone at once and immediately to Molly, of course. There is nothing she likes better than a party. And if it is a surprise party then that is, as she would say, ‘So Much The Better’ (which I have always thought is a bit of a weirdo and slightly Shakespearical way of speaking, but Molly thinks it is more sophisticateder than just speaking the Plain Queen’s English).

  ‘Molleeeeee!’ I said, when she answered the phone, which is the way I always say her name when I have something exciting-making to say to her. It’s kind of our special code, to prepare her for what might come next, in other words an announcement of a highly fanterabulous nature.

  ‘I’m sorry, who is this?’ said Molly, in an I’m-being-a-snotty-grown-up tone of talking.

  ‘Er, it’s me!’ I said.

  ‘And who is “me”?’ she went on in the same huffy way.

  And then I remembered that I had kind of run off when we had been in the park and I realized Molly was Making A Point of being annoyed with me, so I said, ‘Molls, I am sorry I was grumpy, but I have got some ultra-mega-tastical news to tell you, so please can you forgive me and just listen a minute?’

  ‘O - k a a a a y,’ Molly said, dragging the word out as if it was a vastly heavy object of an immovable nature. I decided to ignore this and Ploughed On Regardless (which does not mean that I decided to do a spot of farming, but that I carried on talking).

  ‘Mum has said I can organize a surprise party for April in two weeks’ time on her birthday which is April 13th and I can ask you to help me and actually come to the party too and I can have another friend as well if I want, which I think I do want as then it would not be just a boring grown-ups’ party where they talk about the weather and the government and tell us how tall we are all getting, and—’

  ‘Whooppppeeeee!’ shouted Molly, which was good as it gave me a chance to actually breathe and stop myself from going purple in the face and possibly faint. It also gave me a chance to feel with a sense of relief that she was no longer cross with me. ‘I am coming round right now,’ she said excitedly. ‘Do not move or do ANYTHING without me.’

  I hesitated for a milli-second and then said, ‘Erm – can I put the phone down?’

  CLICK.

  That was Molly putting the phone down at her house. ‘OK,’ I thought. ‘It’s probably all right for me to do that too: putting the phone down could not possibly count as actually moving, could it?’ Then I thought, ‘How will I go to open the door if I am not allowed to “move or do anything”?’

  ‘MUM!’ I shouted. ‘Molly is coming round in about a few minutes and she has said I must not move, so will you answer the door?’

  Mum came out into the hall and looked at me weirdly and said, ‘What on earth are you talking about, Summer?’

  Just then the doorbell went, so I gestured to the door with a flick of my head, and Mum sighed and went to open it.

  ‘Hello, Molly,’ said Mum. ‘Do come in. Apparently I have just been employed as Summer’s own personal slave.’

  Molly curled her lip in puzzlement and said, ‘What?’

  Mum shook her head, ‘Nothing. Come in.’

  Molly ran up to me and squealed. ‘I’ve brought one of my new notebooks especially so that we can start planning and Making Lists! Let’s go!’

  ‘You told me not to move,’ I said.

  ‘You can be one hundred and ten per cent der-brainish, sometimes,’ she said, but in a sort of friendly way, with her head on one side. ‘I meant it FIGURATIVELY, not Absolutely Literally,’ she explained.

  ‘Oh RIGHT!’ I laughed in response to Molly. ‘Come on then!’ And we did literally zoom up to my room with Honey hot on our heels. Once she was in safely, I slammed the door behind us and we started planning.

  Now, as I have already mentioned Molly is RENOWNED in our school for being the Queen of Notebooks, but this new one which she had brought with her was something else. In fact, I would say that it should have been protected by a law for the Protection of Areas of Stationery of . It had a cloth sort of cover like an Olden Fashioned Days reading book and it had gold sticky-uppy letters on it. And it also had a swirly purple and light blue pattern all over it like a kaleidoscope pattern when you look down the tube and turn the bottom bit. It made me SOLWH (which is a short-for type of language that Molly and I have invented for: ‘Sigh Out Loud With Happiness’).

  Molly did a beamy smile of satisfaction. ‘It is mega-lush, isn’t it? I am only going to write in my most neatest handwriting in it, and I am only going to use these really thin propellery pencils on the pages so that if I make a HIDEOUS mistake, I can rub it out and it will not have spoilt the general beauty of the thing,’ she said importantly.

  I did agree that it was important not to spoil it.

  ‘Now first of all we must decide on a THEME,’ said Molly.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘But I am not one hundred and ten per cent certain that April will like having a party with a theme.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll like it all right,’ said Molly. ‘People always do. My auntie had a party for her fiftieth or something – it was one of those big parties people have for an Old Age. It might have been forty or even sixty, actually . . . Anyway, who cares? She just got old. The important thing is that she had a theme which was basically “silver”, so the house was decorated in silver things and everyone came wearing something silver and it was MEGA as I was allowed to buy some shoes that were actually silver! So what I say is, if you can have a theme when you have got to one of those ancient ages, then why not have one when you are young like April?’

  ‘April is not YOUNG!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I do not want to wear silver shoes, thank you very much. They will not go with my auburn shade of hair.’

  ‘I am not suggesting we copy the exact theme that my auntie had, for heaven’s above sake,’ said Molly impatiently. ‘And April may not be young, but she does still like to go out and have fu
n at least, so we should make sure that this party of hers is the most fun ever.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said again.

  ‘So,’ said Molly, after she had sat and tapped her pencil against her teeth for a while and I had started daydreaming and yawning. ‘How can we make this party totally different and special?’

  We both went silent. Honey got bored and padded over from where she had been sniffing around by my bed and put her head in my lap and sighed very loudly.

  I stroked Honey’s head as I thought and I looked into her chocolatey brown eyes . . . And that is when I had my most SPECTACULAR wave of brain activity that I have ever had (almost).

  ‘PUPPIES!’ I shouted, punching the air in a triumphalist salute.

  I grinned at my Best Friend, expecting that she would join in with my victorious feelings, but she was looking at me with an expression which said, ‘You are the looniest loony tune on Radio Loony and I am going to switch you off in a minute.’

  ‘What?’ I said, my grin fading fast.

  ‘Er – “What?” yourself,’ said Molly.

  ‘Eh?’ I said. This conversation was going to turn into a very boring one unless we were careful.

  ‘“Puppies” what?? Why do you always have to bring puppies into everything? I mean, I love puppies of course I do, but puppies and parties do not mix, not unless the party is FOR the puppy, which in this case it is most definitely not. Not unless there is a particular puppy who is having a birthday any time soon – oh!’

  And finally she did at last stop talking and had a bit of a Light-Bulb Moment herself and she realized what it was that was making me so excited and victoriously triumphalist.