The Slinkies will most definitely be at the Youth Club tonight, which is another good reason not to go. The Incident of the Falling Over on the Decking and this outbreak of spots are just too much to have to deal with in public, especially against stiff competition like SamDanandEmmyLou.
I’m quite relieved even though I spent all of last week getting in and out of every scrap of clothing I possess trying to choose just the right outfit. I settled on my pale-blue denim shorts and a red-and-white halter-neck top with a navy, lurex shrug and my navy wedge sandals, but I’m now thinking it’d all have been a bit too sailor-looking and I hate themed outfits because they’re only a step away from fancy dress.* It would have been asking for trouble and having to listen to ‘Ar, me hearties’ and ‘Shiver me timbers’ type comments all evening.
I practised my make-up too, including trying to tame some glitter eyeshadow – I think I went for too dark a colour and I looked like a shiny panda for most of the day. There’s sparkle on everything I own now. Then both Dix and I had accidents with fake tan, which went v v streaky, so the shorts had to be ruled out as an option. She’s wearing Capri trousers tonight as a result and hoping no one looks too closely at her ankles, where all of the surplus tan seems to have gathered in an orange riot.
‘You have to come,’ Dix is insisting, ‘for ME.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘What if I have to make friends with someone else and then can’t get away from them ever again?’
I’ll admit I don’t like the sound of that. At all. ‘Stay close to Uggs and you’ll be fine,’ I advise.
‘What will you do?’ she wants to know.
Good question.
I shrug and look into the distance in a profound way. I’m hoping it’ll bamboozle her into leaving me alone on the subject. No such luck.
‘Well?’ she presses.
I give in and tell the truth. ‘I’ll perform surgery on a few of these bubonic boils, get into my pyjamas and eat a lot of chocolate. Maybe not in that order. Then you’ll text me reports on what I’m missing.’
‘It all sounds a bit wintery.’
She’s right. PJs and choc need a fire to be curled up in front of. Dad might barbecue something this evening and that will have to do instead. She’s giving me a squinty eye over something.
‘What?’
‘Are your buzooms getting bigger?’
My boobs have been slow off the mark compared with most of the others in my year, but I had been thinking they might be on the move of late.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I say, and we both have a look at them till I go, ‘Can we stop staring at my chesticles now or they might decide they don’t like the attention and stop growing?’
So Dix holds up her newly painted nails. ‘Verdict?’
Her nail varnish is a vile shade of yellow, a yellow that even Uggs’s mum would baulk at. ‘Epic fail.’
‘It’s the colour of the sun,’ she insists.
‘The colour of a sickly sun that has just vomited up some very runny, bad egg,’ I point out. And it is.
Dix is not pleased with my verdict on her nail varnish and decides to be mean to me. ‘Same yellow as –’
I hold my hand up and stop her before she says, ‘Some of your zits.’
We sit in a v v awkward silence, not looking one another in the eye because we both know I have just saved our friendship because what she was about to say was true but just too personal. It’s hard having a Bestest (and being one in return) because you just CANNOT be as mean to one of those as you can to your immediate family. There is a line. It must not be crossed.
Eventually she says, ‘That was close,’ and we both try to giggle at the near catastrophe.
