How to Be Good(ish) Read online

  For Dylan Hood (Indie’s got her Dylan, but this one’s mine!)

  K. McC.

  I was named after a DOG.

  For three years, my dad didn’t know that.

  “India?” he’d said, just after I was born, when my mum suggested it. “India Kidd… We could call her ‘Indie’ for short. Yeah, I like it!”

  When Dad was trying my name out for size, he was thinking of spice and heat and beautiful scenery. Mum decided it was best to let him think she’d been inspired by a very large country, and not the small brown dog with a flea allergy who’d come into the animal shelter where she worked.

  India got a new home after only a few days, even though she looked a bit odd (she was a POMERANIAN, which is a kind of dog that’s supposed to be as hairy as a sheep, but she’d scratched off her fur with all that itching).

  Mum said her lovely temperament and appealing eyes were the reason why India got a new owner so soon. But I reckon someone just thought it would be really cool to have a small bald dog…

  Anyway, three years later, when Mum accidentally let the truth about my name slip out, Dad wasn’t very pleased. That was around the time they were splitting up, so neither of them was in a very good mood, I don’t suppose. But I was little back then, so I don’t remember any of that. And I don’t really remember a time when Dad wasn’t living with my step-mum Fiona and her son Dylan.

  I live with Mum, our lodger Caitlin, and all our pets: Kenneth and George (both dogs), Smudge (a cat that looks like a cushion), One, Two, Three, Four and Five (our goldfish) and Brian (a very shy angelfish).

  Me and Mum are totally and completely nuts about animals, but not just at home. Mum is the assistant manager of the Paws For Thought Animal Rescue Centre. Mum is so good at looking after sick, hurt or abandoned animals that she sometimes forgets about less important stuff, like people and sleeping and birthdays, for example.

  I only mention birthdays because (oops!) Mum forgot my tenth birthday. I didn’t blame her, really – I just blamed those baby hedgehogs…

  Only joking; I didn’t really blame the baby hedgehogs (how could you blame something so small, helpless and cute?). And I didn’t mind too much that Mum had forgotten my birthday just this once; after all, I knew she had other things on her mind, like small, helpless and cute baby hedgehogs, for example.

  The night before, she’d had to get up out of bed and hand-feed them about a zillion times (I’d helped and took a turn at 6 a.m.).

  When I came downstairs on the morning of my birthday, my very pretty but very tired-looking Mum was already rushing towards the front door, on her way to work. In fact, she was so tired that she nearly forgot something, and I don’t just mean my birthday.

  “Mum!” I called, holding a small plastic box out to her.

  And no – it wasn’t her packed lunch; the box was full of snoozly mini-hedgehogs, all curled up in a prickly mound. (OK, so I might not know how to pay bills or assistant-manage a whole animal rescue centre, but there are times when I think I’m more grown-up than my ditzy mother…)

  “Thanks, Indie!” Mum grinned at me, tucking a tangle of messy blonde hair behind her ear. “You’re such a good girl. What would I do without you?”

  I felt myself blushing. I can’t help it; even if there are times when I feel all grown-up, I still come over all dopey and shy when people give me compliments. (Isn’t it funny how you can feel brave one minute and weedy the next?)

  Mum gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, took the box of hedgehogs and hurried so fast towards the door that I thought she might trip over George (our greyhound), or the didgeridoo (our lodger Caitlin’s), or the BIG pile of post (birthday cards from Dad, and both my grans and everyone).

  But somehow Mum managed not to trip, or spill any hedgehogs, and left the house without noticing the telltale birthday cards or the fact that her jumper was on inside-out and back-to-front.

  After waving Mum and the hedgehogs off to work, I wandered into the kitchen with my bundle of post and spotted a white envelope on the table, with scrawled on it in Caitlin’s handwriting.

  KID !

  (Caitlin always calls me ‘kid’. I don’t mind – mainly ’cause I’m glad it’s not my real name; Kid Kidd would be too weird, wouldn’t it?)

  Inside the envelope was a torn-out bit of paper that read,

  Well, it was the thought that counted. Still, I couldn’t wait to get to school to see my best friends Soph and Fee. I knew they’d make a real birthday fuss of me, same as I did when it was their birthdays…

  I suddenly heard my mum yelling as she came bursting back through the front door and hurtled into the kitchen.

  Gently plonking the box of hedgehogs on the table, she gave me a huge cuddle of a hug.

  “Indie, I am so sorry I forgot!” I heard Mum say, though I couldn’t see her – I was still lost in her hug.

  “Thassokay,” I mumbled into her inside-out, back-to-front jumper. “Right! I know! Close your eyes!” I did what I was told, and tried to picture what all the thudding, clanking and stomping was about.

  Well, OK, it was more of a slightly stale fairy cake, with one full-size candle shoved in it at a wonky angle.

  But it still made me feel all fuzzy inside: Mum hadn’t quite forgotten my birthday after all!

  “I’ll get you a proper birthday cake tonight, after work,” Mum promised. “So come on; blow the candle out and make a wish, Indie!”

  I took a step closer - and tripped right over Kenneth our Scottie dog, who’d sniffed that there was cake somewhere close by.

  “Gerroff!” I laughed, as I lay sprawled on the floor, with Kenneth, and then George, trying to lick me better, before Mum managed to help me up.

  Well, that had been quite a good (and silly!) start to my birthday…

  But if I didn’t hurry up, I’d be late for school, and spending my birthday in detention wouldn’t be very good at all!

  My best friends Soph (Sophie Musyoka) and Fee (Sophie Dean) didn’t get a chance to make much of a birthday fuss of me after all.

  “Indie! You’re very late!” said my teacher, Miss Levy, when I came hurrying and hassled into class. “What happened?”

  Miss Levy tried to look stern, but didn’t do a very good job of it, ’cause she’s way too nice. Still, it was one of those moments when I felt very not brave, and a whole lot weedy.

  “Um… I kind of got talking to my neighbour,” I tried to explain, feeling my face burning red with running and embarrassment.

  “Indie, you shouldn’t really stand around chatting to neighbours when you’ve got school!” Miss Levy said, frowning and smiling all at once.

  “Yes, I know. But it was Mrs O’Neill…” I replied lamely, wondering how I could explain how Mrs O’Neill, our very old lady neighbour, wiffles and waffles and never stops once she’s got started.

  Like this morning: Mrs O’Neill had stopped me as I was leaving the house to wish me happy birthday, which was very nice of her, but not when I was in such a hurry that I was even eating my breakfast (fairy cake) as I ran.

  The trouble with Mrs O’Neill is that she’s a bit lonely, Mum says. So it’s not nice to rush her, even when she gets sidetracked and starts talking about slugs on her marigolds or the price of jam.

  But before I got a chance to explain all that, Soph said: “Please don’t tell Indie off, Miss Levy – it’s her birthday today!”

  I gave Soph a thank-you smile.

  “Well, happy birthday, Indie,” said Miss Levy. “But sit down now and let’s get on with the lesson. I’ve already told the class this morning that I want you all to do a CV, which stands for ‘curriculum vitae’.”

  That sounded very complicated. Soph thought so too; I could tell from the way she looked at me
and crossed her eyes. I tried not to giggle (which made me go even redder). Fee didn’t pull a face because she is very good at hard words and probably already knew what a curly lum vitty was.

  “Anyway, a CV is basically just a list of your talents,” Miss Levy continued.

  “She means we have to write down what we’re good at,” Fee whispered to me, and got a shush from Miss Levy for her trouble.

  “Enough with the chit-chat! Let’s get on with our lists!”

  Miss Levy LOVES lists, because she says they…

  “And I know all of my fantastic pupils have plenty of talents,” Miss Levy called out encouragingly, as everyone shuffled around getting out exercise books and pencils. “But to make it easier, have a think and then choose only the top three things!”

  I sat for a minute and realized that I couldn’t think of any three things.

  Take today, for instance… I mean, I knew there was stuff I liked doing – like getting up at 6 a.m. and feeding mini-hedgehogs, but that’s not what you could call a talent, is it?

  And I always reminded Mum about things she was too busy to remember (like mini-hedgehogs), and I had the patience to listen to Mrs O’Neill’s wiffle-waffling, but both of those were just about being nice, weren’t they?

  Oh, why hadn’t Miss Levy asked us to do a ‘Nice Things I Don’t Mind Doing’ list instead of a ‘Top Three Talents’ one?

  “What have you put down?” I whispered in a mild panic to Soph, who was sitting at the desk to the left of me.

  Soph pushed her exercise book to the edge of her desk so I could see. Her really big, whirly, swirly handwriting had already covered nearly a whole page.

  Soph is very good at Irish dancing, even though she’s half-Somalian and half-French and not very Irish at all (I tried going to her dance class once, but my legs just got very confused). And she can speak all those languages (she taught me how to say ‘sausage’ in Somali and French), and she is a very good swimmer too.

  Altogether, Soph’s was a very good list. Which would make mine look even more rubbish, when I got around to writing it.

  Oh, IF ONLY I could dance, or speak Czechoslovakian, or jump off even the bottom board at the pool without belly-flopping…

  “What did you put down, Fee?” I asked, turning to the desk on my right.

  “Um… I wrote: 1. Scrabble, 2. Spelling, 3. Hair,” she whispered back, not even having to look at her work book to read out her (short) answers.

  Fee has really gorgeous, long, wavy, red hair, which she is VERY, VERY proud of, even though some people are a bit funny about ginger, aren’t they? But she has this really white skin and these spookily light green eyes, and when you try to imagine her with brown or black or blonde hair, it makes you realize that they’d be all wrong and the only colour hair that works is ginger.

  I gave Fee a quick smile and then stared back down at the blank page open in front of me. Hardly noticing I was doing it, I started twisting one of my (mousey-brown) bunches while I thought.

  And then finally, when I saw Miss Levy wandering between the desks in my direction, stopping to glance at everyone’s lists, I realized I’d better stick something down fast.

  “OK, birthday girl!” She smiled down at me. “Let’s have a peek at what you’ve got here!”

  Miss Levy kept smiling, but I think she was only doing that to be kind.

  “Um … well … I guess that’s a good start, Indie,” Miss Levy lied kindly. “Those are all very interesting facts, but I’m sure you can think of a few more good points and talents if you try a bit harder!”

  There are things you can say to teachers and things you can’t.

  I mean, you can’t say stuff like, “Want to bet?,” ’cause it would sound way too cheeky.

  “Why don’t you think about it a bit more, and get back to me with a new list, Indie?” Miss Levy suggested. “Let’s see … by the end of the week, shall we say?”

  “OK!” I nodded, trying to look like that wouldn’t be a problem, even if my tummy sort of instantly scrunched up in a worry ball as I wondered what on earth I could come up with instead.

  Urghhh…

  It was right then that I realized the one thing I should have wished for on my pretend birthday candle this morning … a talent.

  Anyone know where I can find one?

  Soph and Fee (my super-talented friends) had decided to help me think of a talent, which is why – on my birthday – I went round to Fee’s after school, taking George and Kenneth too.

  Talking about my birthday, Soph had given me a huge badge that said, It’s my birthday, hug me!, and Fee had given me a tiara with glittery pink jewels in it. I decided to wear them both around to Fee’s, just to feel more special and properly birthday-ish. (Now that was an example of being very brave, and definitely not weedy.)

  I got a few stares (and no hugs) on my way, but George and Kenneth weren’t in the least bit embarrassed to be seen with me, mainly ’cause they were just happy to be going for a walk somewhere.

  Only now, sitting in Fee’s bedroom – working our way through a mountain of munchies – Kenneth was sort of embarrassing me…

  “Er, Indie… Kenneth’s doing that weird thing again,” muttered Fee, who likes things to be sensible.

  “Maybe Garfield just tastes good?!” suggested Soph, who likes to be silly.

  “He’s just grooming him. He does it to our cat Smudge too,” I told them, as we watched Kenneth lick, lick, licking Fee’s fat cat Garfield.

  I frowned a bit at Kenneth, trying to figure out what was going on in his furry, doggy mind.

  “Hey, maybe Kenneth fancies being a hairdresser. Or should that be a fur-dresser?!” giggled Soph.

  I don’t suppose Kenneth really daydreams about being a fur-dresser, but I do reckon that both my dogs aren’t very talented at being, well, dogs.

  I mean, for a start, Kenneth thinks he’s a cat. It’s not just the fact that he likes hanging out with cats; a couple of months ago Mum had to rescue him out of a tree.

  And George: well, he was supposed to be a racing greyhound – but he fell asleep at the start line during the one and only race he was ever in.

  (By the way, Brian our angelfish doesn’t seem very good at being a fish – instead of swimming around, he spends most of his time hiding in the tank weeds. My step-brother Dylan says maybe Brian’s just modest, and doesn’t like to show off the fact that he’s prettier than the goldfish. Dylan could be right, but he hasn’t actually seen Brian for himself, ’cause he’s not allowed to come to our house, since he’s allergic to anything furry or scaly, and our house is full of furry, scaly things.)

  “Look,” said Fee, suddenly turning away from Kenneth and Garfield and staring seriously at me and Soph. “There are only five biscuits and half a packet of Quavers left and we still haven’t come up with a talent for Indie!” She was right.

  “Maybe Indie could become a biscuit expert!” grinned Soph, holding up her half-eaten Hobnob. “We could blindfold her and make her guess which bis–”

  “I know!” Fee said, interrupting Soph’s dumb suggestion.

  Me and Soph watched (and nibbled biscuits) as Fee rummaged around under her bed and brought out a box (along with big fuzzballs of dust, a dried-up felt pen and a missing sock).

  “I got this as a Christmas present,” said Fee, handing the box to me, “but I’ve never used it. Maybe you could give it a try, Indie?”

  The lid of the box said,

  Hours of fun with Hair Wraps!

  and there was a picture of a grinning girl with loads of brightly coloured threads wound around sections of her hair.

  “Give it a try, Indie!” Fee smiled. “You can practise on me!”

  Suddenly, I was kind of excited. Could hair-wrapping be my talent?

  Er … first I had to work out how you got started. Call me a doughball, but all this string and twisting looked as complicated as physics, at first glance.

  “Come on, pick some colours, Indie!” Soph laughed.r />
  So I picked pale pink (to match the twinkly stones in my tiara), light blue (to match my jeans) and bright red (to match my cheeks, which were blushing ’cause I hadn’t a clue what I was doing).

  “Tie the ends of the thread near the root of the hair,” Soph read aloud from the instruction leaflet.

  “OWW!” yelped Fee.

  “Sorry!” I said, blushing some more. “OK, Soph –- I’ve done that. Now what?”

  “Urn… Wrap the threads really tightly around the hair–-”

  “OWW!”

  “Sorry, Fee!”

  “–-varying colours till you get a nice pattern !”

  For a few minutes, I bit my lip and concentrated, as Soph silently watched what I was doing. (Soph being silent is a BAD sign, by the way. Normally, she can chatter about all sorts of rubbish for days on end.) “Well? How’s it looking?” asked Fee. I wanted to tell her that it was brilliant; that it was like a work of art; that everyone at school would be hassling me to do a hair wrap for them (even the boys!).

  But the trouble was, Fee’s hair wrap looked like a bit of old knitting that had gone very, very wrong.

  Worse still, I’d managed to get two of my fingers knotted up in the wrap, and the tip of my middle finger was turning white, ’cause of the thread cutting off the blood supply.

  “Hold on,” said Soph, seeing the mess I was in and reaching over to help. “Let’s give this pink thread here a little tug…”

  “Oh! Sorry, Fee!” I said in a panic.

  “Yeah, sorry, Fee!” Soph joined in, her dark eyebrows creasing together. “Indie was in a tangle and I had to–- Uh-oh… !”

  It was actually a very big case of uh-oh.

  My fingers were still tangled up in the jumble of thread – but the long twist of hair wrap wasn’t attached to Fee’s head any more. Which – EEK! – left Fee with a small, round, bald spot where lovely ginger hair used to be! Looked like I still needed to find a talent, since I was not very good at hair-wrapping at all…