Monday was a national holiday and Dad was off, so I could have stayed home under my blanket but I actually chose to go to the park.

I know, right?

As Georgia ran, I sat on the bench, writing out the scenes in my head (not all of them had Bradley Porter in them). Back at home, Georgia helped me fix them up. She corrected my spelling, improved the songs, and added lines that made it hilarious. Because I’d ignored her all my life, it was a teaspoonful of shocking to find out she was so funny.

We tried so hard not to argue, but it wasn’t easy. She still did annoying stuff and I was no angel either.

That afternoon, it started to go wrong again. It was mainly my fault—I’ll admit that. I do stupid things sometimes. This was one of them.

We were in the living room. Georgia was on an armchair, reading. I was standing on the coffee table, singing into a hairbrush and looking in the mirror. (Well, I was practicing! It was my stage!) I did a final dance step flourish (stomp, stomp, stomp) and one of the skinny table legs went crick snap. I came crashing down along with a plant, a newspaper, and a coffee cup with cold coffee in it. Coffee goo mixed with soil and pink newspaper and the table tilted half up and half down like a sinking ship. I twisted my ankle in the fall and smacked my head (but luckily only on the sofa).

Mum must have heard, because she appeared at the door shouting, “What’s going on here?”

Georgia yelled, “Dara was standing on the table and—”

Arrrggghhhh. I couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right, tell on me as usual!” I screeched from the floor.

“What am I supposed to say?” Georgia cried. “Mum asked me what happened!”

“So lie!”

“DARA PALMER!” Mum roared. “You do not lie to your parents and you do not tell your sister to lie either. Now get a cloth and clear this up!”

My ankle was smashed to pieces—I didn’t think I’d ever walk again—but did anyone bother to ask how I was? Oh nooooo.

I pulled myself to the kitchen on all fours.

Mum inspected the table leg and marched out with it to Carl, our neighbor, who’s a carpenter. Georgia stormed to the trampoline in a huff. It felt so normal arguing with Georgia again, like being friends was hard work. But this? This was easy. I could do this all day.

I mopped up the coffee with paper towels, stuffed the soil back into the plant, and threw away the soggy newspaper. Then I limped up the stairs to write Georgia a note.

SQUEALY
TOAD

Five minutes later, she came up. Trampolines make your face perky and your breath bouncy. I ignored her and marched out. I didn’t say a word, but my silence was mega-loud. I wedged myself into a corner of the sofa, wrote in my notebook, and didn’t talk to her for the rest of the day.

We were back to how we used to be. It was a good try but uh-uh, no way, it was never going to work, and we should have known it from the start.

But when I went to my room that evening, she’d left a note on the closet door.

Sorry I was a squealy toad. It was your stupid fault you broke the table. Please be my friend again.

It made me smile. I was tempted to carry on being mean because it felt so good, but instead I wrote back:

Fine. But if you don't stop squealing on me, Tigger will get it again, and next time there'll be no sewing him back together. And help me with part three. I'm stuck.

So she did, but we were still stuck. Writing a musical is hard.

We gave up trying after a while, and Georgia handed me a book to read. She knows I don’t like reading one tiny bit. Just the look of it made me want to throw the stupid thing out of the window, but she was right. If I wanted to be a good actor, I needed to read well, not just watch TV. So I took it from her and resisted the urge to lob it when she wasn’t looking.

I’m not saying I was at the stage where I thought books made good birthday presents, but if I did get into reading, then maybe, just maybe, that weird day would come where I’d actually be happy to get one.

Nah.

Creepy.