Hunky Dory. Jean Ure

you gotta be aware of the signs. You gotta know how to respond.”

      I said, “I don’t want to respond!”

      “No, but if you did.”

      “I don’t!”

      “Can’t say I blame you,” said Aaron. He sucked in his cheeks. “Amy Wilkerson! Have to be careful with that one.”

      I wish now that I hadn’t mentioned it to him. Aaron is one of those people, he always claims to know everything about everything. But you can’t actually rely on him. Like the time he told me that a prendergast was someone that molested children, and for ages I believed him and wouldn’t go into the newspaper shop cos of the lady in there being called Mrs Prendergast, until in the end Mum wanted to know what the problem was, so I told her, and she laughed and laughed and explained that Prendergast was just a perfectly ordinary surname like Smith or Jones and nothing whatsoever to do with molesting children. Aaron had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. As usual. It was very embarrassing.

      I refuse to let him embarrass me again! When it comes to girls, I’m not convinced he knows what he’s talking about. I don’t believe that Amy Wilkerson fancies me. Why should she? I’ve hardly ever spoken to her. I reckon she was just, like, doing it for a joke. I bet what it was, her friend Sharleen had dared her. I bet that’s what it was! Like the Microdot getting all her friends to hang about at the gates and giggle. Just to upset me.

      On the other hand, who told Janine Edwards to keep beaming? There can’t be two of them that fancy me! I don’t want to be fancied; I just want to be left alone!

      I’m really glad it’s Friday; I am beginning to feel persecuted.

      Wee Scots is coming tomorrow. That should be liven things up.

       Saturday

      Wee Scots arrived this morning, bright red as usual with the usquebaugh. Mum went to fetch her from the bus station. As they came through the front door Dad said, “Watch out, here she is, Hell’s Granny!” Wee Scots bashed him with her handbag and cried, “Och, awa’ wi’ ye!” They have a really good relationship.

      After lunch, while me and the Microdot were doing the washing up, which is one of the tedious tasks we have to perform in order to get any pocket money, the Microdot said she’d got a secret to tell me. She said, “You know my friend Linzi?”

      I didn’t, but I didn’t bother to say so; I just grunted. The Microdot has so many friends I can’t keep up with them. Last year for her birthday she invited twenty people. Boys, as well as girls. She claimed they were “all my friends”. I can’t understand why she’s so popular; she is very bed-tempered.

      “My friend Linzi?” She snatched a plate out of my hand before I’d even had time to put it on the draining board. She always treats washing up like it’s some kind of competition. “The one with the plaits?”

      When she said that, I had this faint uneasy feeling come over me. I’d noticed a girl with plaits in the middle of the gigglers. She’d been giggling along with the rest, but more in a sort of embarrassed way. Grudgingly I said, “What about her?”

      “She’s got a crush on you.”

      “What?” I was so alarmed I let a glass go slipping through my fingers on to the kitchen floor.

      “Now look what you’ve done,” said the Microdot. “You’ve gone and broken it.” Like I needed her to tell me? “That was Granny’s favourite usquebaugh glass.” I said, “It’s not an usquebaugh glass. She uses tumblers for usquebaugh. This is a water glass.”

      “It’s still broken.”

      “I can see that, thank you very much!”

      “Yes, well, anyway. Like I was saying…about Linzi. She’s got this massive crush on you.”

      I said, “What d’you mean, crush?”

      “Crush! Like she wants to crrrrrrush you!”

      Before I knew what was happening, the Microdot had flung both arms round me and was squeezing me to a pulp. I said, “Geddoff!”

      “I’m just showing you what she’d like to do to you. She’d like to hug you! And kiss you. Aaaah…it’s so sweet!”

      “Why don’t you just shut up?” I said.

      “Cos I want you to know how she feels. She’s in love with you! Only she’s too shy to tell you, so I thought I would.”

      I said, “Is that what all the stupid giggling was about?”

      “Yes. It’s really pathetic! They’ve all got crushes on you…they think you’re so cute!” She gave this great cackle, like she was inviting me to join in. “But poor Linzi, she’s got it worse than anyone. She is totally gone. She is, like, demented. She’s written your name all over, everywhere! I’ve told her what you’re like, but she just can’t stop herself. I feel sooo sorry for her.”

      Crawling round the floor with the dustpan and brush, keeping my face hidden because I just knew I’d gone bright beetroot, I said, “So what did you tell her I was like?”

      “Well, like you are…peculiar! Anyone that spends their time digging holes in the back garden and playing about in the mud…where’s the sense in having a crush on someone like that?”

      This is what I mean about my family, and the difficulties I face. Scorn and derision at every turn. I don’t play in the mud and I’m not just digging a hole, I am excavating. It is serious work. They know this perfectly well; I’ve told them over and over. It is an archaeological dig. But the Microdot still treats me like I’m some kind of geek. Even Mum and Dad have a secret giggle—well, not all that secret, either, cos I heard them the other day telling someone about “Dory’s hole”, like it was just totally hilarious. It is an uphill struggle, in this house, trying to make something of yourself. One day when I’m Sir Dorian, and famous for my work on dinosaurs, they’ll look back and feel ashamed of the way they treated me.

      Of course I might be famous as a Crime Scene Investigator. That’s another career I’m thinking of pursuing. I reckon I’d be good at it, as I find it most interesting on television when they examine the contents of people’s stomachs or collect maggots and bugs that have taken up residence inside dead bodies. The Microdot says I am gruesome. She says it is totally disgusting and would make any normal person feel sick, but that is just her point of view. Mine happens to be different.

      Anyway, if I’m peculiar so is she. She screamed her head off the other day, all because there was a spider walking across her bedroom ceiling. She screeched, “Get rid of it, get rid of it!”

      I’ve told her about a hundred times that spiders are perfectly pleasant and harmless creatures, just going about their business.

      “What d’you think they’re going to do, bite you?”

      She screeched that they might fall on top of her while she was in bed. They might even get into the bed.

      “They could get down my nightdress!”

      How peculiar is that? Fantasising about spiders getting down her nightdress. What makes her think any self-respecting spider would want to? I can’t understand it when girls start freaking out at the sight of anything with multiple legs. The Herb came across a centipede the other day; she didn’t freak. But then the Herb is different.

      I spent the whole afternoon excavating. I’ve only got till the end of the month, then the builders are coming in to build Dad’s new workshop, so I’m trying to get as much done as I can. Aaron and the Herb are helping me: they are my official assistants. I am doing my best to train them, but I have to say it is uphill work. They don’t seem able to grasp the fact that there is more to excavating