It was SO hot today. We went to the seaside, me and Dad and Bumble. Yesterday was Bumble’s thirteenth birthday. I got him a faded grey t-shirt in Next that I knew he liked, and he wore it today.
My nose is burnt, because I forgot to bring sunscreen with me. When we dropped Bumble home, his Mam gave me a little tub of natural yoghurt to put on my nose, but it seemed such a waste of good food. I love yoghurt, especially with a banana chopped into it. Luckily, we had one banana left at home.
One good thing is that Marjorie Baloney has kept her distance since the whole shoplifting business. She and Dad still go out, usually on Friday nights, but she hasn’t been around to our house since that day, which suits me just fine, and Dad never mentions her. He’ll probably get sick of her any day now, and that’ll be the end of that.
Dad only goes into work in the mornings while I’m on holidays. In the afternoons, he works from home, on the computer that he brought back home again. He said nothing when he carried it into the house, and neither did I. I haven’t gone near it, even when he’s out at work in the mornings. Who needs it now?
I can’t believe I’ll be starting secondary school in a month and a bit. It’ll be the first time Bumble and I won’t be together since Junior Infants.
That was where we met. We were sitting beside one another on our first day at school, and I hit him and made him cry when he broke one of my crayons, and I was put sitting on a chair facing the wall, and the next day he gave me a new box of crayons that his mam bought when he told her what happened, and we’ve been best friends ever since.
Of course we’ll still meet after school and at weekends and stuff, but I’m a bit afraid it won’t be the same. He’ll probably start hanging around with boys now, and maybe he’ll be ashamed to be seen with me, so we’ll have to meet in secret.
Or maybe I’ll have to disguise myself as a boy. I’ve been practising making my voice lower, just in case. Bumble’s voice was the first to break in the class, just after we went into sixth, and he got an awful slagging from the other boys. I bet it was because they were jealous that Bumble sounded all grown up, and they were still talking like girls.
And now Chris Thompson is the only one whose voice still hasn’t broken. Hopefully he’s not in a hurry to get a girlfriend. Maybe some girls wouldn’t mind having a boyfriend with the same kind of voice as them, although I have to say I’d be a bit embarrassed.
But apart from his voice, there’s nothing wrong with Chris – he’s easily the cutest-looking guy from our old class, with greenish-brown eyes and lovely floppy, dark blonde hair, and a gorgeous dimple in one cheek when he smiles, much nicer than my horrible chin dimple.
And really straight teeth too, once his braces came off.
Next week I’m going to be fitted for my new school uniform. It’s brown and cream, not that colours really matter when you’re talking about a school uniform – they’re not exactly the height of fashion. My old one was blue, and just as boring. I’m going to see if Dad will spring for a new pair of shoes too, even though I got some in May. Maybe he’s forgotten.
It’s usually pretty easy to get money from Dad for stuff – I just tell him I have to buy girl’s things, and he gets his wallet out really quickly and asks how much I need. You can guess what he thinks I’m getting.
I have to tell you – Ruth Wallace was wearing the dorkiest hat I ever saw yesterday. It was bright orange with a fat red stripe going through the middle of it. It looked like a baboon’s bottom sitting on her head. I didn’t say that, of course, not even when she made puking noises as I passed her.
What a moron she is. I am not going anywhere near Wallaces until this nose calms down. Imagine the fun she’d have with it.
It’s really stinging now. Pity I ate all that yoghurt. Maybe I’ve got sunstroke. Can you die of that? Imagine if Dad came in here in the morning, wondering why I wasn’t getting up for breakfast, and found me stretched out on the floor, deathly pale except for a bright red nose.
You’d think he’d have remembered the sun cream. Mam would have – and she’d have had natural yogurt too.
When Mam lived here, our fridge was always full of healthy food like cottage cheese and cucumbers and broccoli. Now we have things like salami and smoked mackerel and tubs of duck pate, which Dad loves, and big jars of crunchy peanut butter and Nutella for me.
And we eat white bread, which Mam never bought. She said it was rubbish, even the kind with the seeds and stuff in it.
And these days there’s always at least one tub of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer. When Mam lived with us, we’d get Ben & Jerry’s once in a blue moon, only on very special occasions. And the funny thing is, I’m not half as mad about it now as I was then. I mean, I still eat it, quite a lot actually, but somehow it’s not the treat it used to be.
Funny, isn’t it?
And when Mam was here, she stuck things like bin collection times and dentist appointments and the plumber’s emergency number on the front of the fridge. Now it’s covered with takeaway menus, all our favourite ones. I wonder where all the other stuff went. Maybe it’s still there, under the menus.
Not that I’m bothered. I just wonder, that’s all.