Being Grown Up Is Cool (Not!) Read online

  I was a bit bored.

  OK, I was a

  bored.

  Which is why I’d spent twenty minutes in Caitlin’s bedroom, gawping at all her amazing clothes, flicking through her piles of magazines and sniffing all of her perfumes and body sprays.

  I knew Caitlin wouldn’t mind me being in her room. And I knew she wouldn’t mind me gawping, flicking through and sniffing at her stuff, as she is very cool that way.

  A part from being cool, here are

  OK, so the last one’s not true.

  But Caitlin must think she’s very smelly, if she needs all those perfumes and body sprays that are cluttering up her dressing table…

  Anyway, it was nearly tea-time, and -like I said - I was bored.

  I’d had a pretty nice time round at my dad’s earlier. Because it had been a really rainy Sunday afternoon, me and Dylan(my step-brother) and Fiona (my step-mum) and Dad (my, er, dad) had played five games of Mousetrap in a row, and I’d won four of them (hurray!).

  Then I came home and Mum was busy with boring work stuff, and our three dogs were all snuggled and snoozly by the radiators and didn’t want to go out for a walk (boring), and everything on TV was boring, and Caitlin was out at the movies, so I couldn’t talk to her about non-boring things, and I was just plain

  Suddenly, Mum shouted through that tea was ready, so I put the perfume bottle I was sniffing back down on the dressing table and stood up to go.

  Only I didn’t get very far.

  The “whoooooooaaaaaah!!!” thing? Well, that was me doing a wobbly windmill impression. I’d kind of forgotten that I’d tried on Caitlin’s cherry-red platform trainers, and it took a minute of flapping my arms in wild circles to get my balance and not fall over.

  Then I fell over - over Dibbles the dog, who must have ambled in and fallen asleep by my feet when I wasn’t looking.

  It took another minute to scrape myself off the carpet, check Dibbles wasn’t squashed, and put the trainers back where I found them.

  “Uh, hi,” I tried to say casually, when I finally got to the kitchen two minutes and a lot of flustering later.

  I expected Mum to ask what the and had been about, but she didn’t.

  I was quite chuffed about this, as I knew Mum wouldn’t really be thrilled about me noseying around Caitlin’s room on my own. Thank goodness there was no way she could know about me trying on Caitlin’s shoes and stuff - she’d be really cross with me then…

  “Sorry, babes…” Mum muttered instead, plonking a sand wich in front of me. “Got a lot of, erm, homework to do tonight, and didn’t have time to cook you anything.”

  “That’s OK,” I said with a shrug, eyeing up two squint slabs of bread with lettuce sticking out like a frilly tutu in the middle. “What’s your homework?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Is it more about how to look after tree frogs?”

  “Hmmm?” Mum hmmed again, not really listening to me.

  “I SAID, ARE YOU READING MORE ABOUT TREE FROGS?”

  Mum is the Assistant Manager of the Paws For Thought Animal Rescue Centre. This week, they rescued three tree frogs (very cute; very green; very small). This was good news for the tree frogs, but tricky for Mum and everyone at the centre ’cause they hadn’t a clue how to look after them. In fact, Mum had to phone (or something) and find out what kind of frogs they were in the first place.

  And now they were temporarily living with us, till they felt a bit more happy and hoppy.

  “No, it’s not about frogs,” Mum mumbled, flicking through a bunch of notes. “This is just other … stuff.

  ”I was about to ask what sort of stuff it was when I started wondering what my frilly sandwich was exactly.

  “Justlettuce?” I asked in surprise, lifting the top squint slice of bread.

  “What?” said Mum, glancing up from her secret homework and frowning.

  “But where’s the tuna?”

  “I dunno,” I muttered, wondering if she might want me to check my pockets or something. “Still swimming in the sea, maybe?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Indie,” Mum said, rubbing a hand through her messy blonde hair and making it look even more messy. “I meant to make you a tuna salad sandwich…

  I must have got muddled, because I was thinking about all of this.”

  She waved some sheets of paper in front of her.

  “That’s OK,” I told her, not really bothered about her ditziness (I was totally used to it). “But what is all that?”

  “Hmmm?”

  I really wished Mum would stop with the hmmms and maybe just listen to me for five seconds, especially when I was trying to be interested in her job.

  “Um … nothing for you to worry about, Indie.”

  “What do you mean, it’s nothing for me to worry about?” I asked, feeling worried now.

  “Look, I didn’t mean it like that, ”Mum said, sounding ever so slightly irritated. “It’s just work stuff.”

  Now I was ever so slightly irritated too. It was funny, but my normally v. nicemum had been a bit grouchy and grumpy over the last few days. And usually she’d never talk to me in that I’m-a-grown-up, you’re-a-kid-and-wouldn’t-understand way.

  I mean, I could understand most things, even BIG complicated things like people getting divorced (ie Mum and Dad), and people not having as much money as other people (ie Mum and my friends’ families), and people having to work very hard and get lodgers in (ie Mum and Caitlin).

  So why was Mum suddenly talking to me like I was a baby? She’d done that a few times over the last couple of days…

  What was up with her?

  Y’know, at times like this, I couldn’t wait to be a grown-up too. At least I’d get treated as if I had a brain!

  “INDIA…?!”

  Uh-oh. When Mum spoke just then I jumped - she hardly ever uses my proper whole first name.

  “What?”

  Doubleuh-oh.

  She was staring hard -

  really hard -

  at me.

  “Where on earth has half

  your left eyebrow gone?!”

  Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh…

  “India … what have you been up to?”

  “I just tried some of Caitlin’s face cream, that’s all!” I squeaked, as Mum came

  around the table now and took my chin in her hands for a close-up stare.

  HELP. I didn’t think anyone would notice or mind if

  I rubbed just a weeny little bit of Caitlin’s moisturiser on my face. How could that make half my left eyebrow disappear?

  “India, which cream did you use?” Mum said urgently.“ Can you remember what it looked like?”

  “It-it was in a sort of pink tube,” I mumbled some more. “It didn’t smell very nice…”

  “Oh, Indie! I think that might have been hair-removing cream, you silly sausage!”

  Hmm, I guess being bored can sometimes be dangerous.

  And I guess - considering that Mum was looking stern and rolling her eyes at the same time - that it would be quite a while before she started treating me like a grown-up.

  Drat…

  Mum sat on the edge of the bath, tutting at the tube in her hands, as if she was trying to figure out how her daughter got to be so dumb.

  While she was busy tutting, I decided that being ten years old really sucked.

  At least when you’re a grown-up, people don’t go around telling you off like a bossy-boots teacher…

  “You know, I really can’t believe you did this, Indie,” sighed Mum.

  OK, so two eyebrows are better than one, but did Mum have to make me feel so much of a dorky little kid?“

  But I didn’t know it was hair-removing cream!�
�� I muttered from behind the soapy face cloth. (Mum had told me to wash my face, to get rid of all traces of hair-removing cream, before any more of my eyebrow started disappearing.)

  “Indie, for a girl who zoomed through all the Harry Potter books with no problem, I’d have thought you’d have managed to read a couple of simple words on a tube!” she said, reaching over and handing me a towel now.

  “Look, I thought it was just moisturiser!” I tried to tell Mum (again).

  “Indie,” Mum sighed (again), “it doesn’t matter whether it was normal face cream, or hair-removing cream, or magic cream that makes you invisible. The point is, you shouldn’t rummage about in anyone’s things without checking with them first. It’s not very nice, is it?”

  “Caitlinwasn’t around to ask! And anyway, I knew she wouldn’t mind,” I muttered, too scared to look in the mirror again and see my WEIRD, semi-missing eyebrow.

  “India, Caitlin is a guest in this house, and our friend. What you did was very rude. And silly.

  ”Y’know, I really loved my mum, but she was acting like

  a …

  a …

  mum, making me feel like a complete baby.

  “Hiya!” said someone at the bathroom door, who just happened to be Caitlin. I hadn’t realized she’d come in – the dogs were obviously too sleepy and lazy to bark her hello.

  She was looking v.v.v. cooltoday, I noticed. She’d tied her hair into loads of tight bobbles over her head, had a new, twinkly stone in her pierced nose, a T-shirt that said,

  ‘I’M SHY BUT NOBODY KNOWS IT’ in huge letters, a tartan mini-kilt, and a purple pair of her chunky, big trainers.

  “Hi! How was the movie you went to see this afternoon?” I blurted out quickly, hoping Caitlin wouldn’t ask what was going on, since the answer would be way too embarrassing.

  “Yeah, it was good,” Caitlin nodded. “It was about these mutant dinosaurs from space who try to take over the world and eat half of Texas.”

  “Wow…” I mumbled, thinking how much cooler and grown-up that sounded than winning four games of Mousetrap in a row and accidentally making half your eyebrow disappear.

  “So… what’s going on with you guys?” Caitlin suddenly asked, sending my heart slip-sliding to the floor with a

  .

  “Indie, are YOU going to tell Caitlin, or will I?”

  Mum’s (two matching) eyebrows were raised as she spoke, as if she was asking a question, except it was an order really.

  “Sorry-Caitlin-I-sort-of-used-some-of-your-stuff…”

  The words tumbled out in an embarrassed jumble, and now I didn’t dare look Caitlin in the eyes.

  “Huh? What stuff?” I heard her ask.

  Caitlin sounded curious, but not annoyed or anything.

  So I peeked up at her – and saw that she was blowing pink bubble of gum.

  “Um … I tried your moisturiser out, only it wasn’t moisturiser,” I waffled – while Mum held up the tube of hair-remover as evidence of my dumbness.

  “Oops,”said Caitlin, sucking her pink bubblegum back in. “If it makes you feel any better, kid, I once got hold of my dad’s electric razor and accidentally shaved a big chunk of hair off right above my ear.”

  “Oh, dear!” gasped Mum. “But I bet you were just a little girl when you did that. Indie’s ten and should really know better.”

  “No – I was seventeen,” said Caitlin, leaning casually on the doorframe and blowing another mega pink bubble of gum, and sucking it right back in again.

  “Really?”Mum said with a frown. “Well, anyway, I think that Indie owes you an apology – not just for using your things, but for going into your room without permission.”

  “Uh, yeah, sorry…” I muttered on cue.

  “Whatever,” said Caitlin with a shrug.

  “As long as you don’t doodle dumb stuff all over my posters, Indie, it doesn’t bother me!”

  for Caitlin!

  She didn’t act like a mum or a bossy-boots teacher. She was a grown-up, but she was funny and laidback and cool.

  It was then that I decided it was time for a new project: I was going to try and act like a cool grown-up too –and Caitlin could be my inspiration.

  And first, I’d have to go and buy myself some gum and practise blowing

  BIG,

  pink

  bubbles…

  I like doing projects.

  Not the sort you sometimes do at school, like‘Why The Dinosaurs Disappeared’. (By the way, I think it was ’cause they ate each other. They’re always eating each other on TV shows.

  No, I like doing cool projects. For my first project, I had to think up things I could be good at (turned out I was good at finding a home for an ugly dog at Mum’s rescue centre—Dibbles moved in with us).

  For my second project, I had to help find some best friends for my step-brother Dylan (his new best friends turned out to be me, and my mates Soph and Fee).

  Anyway, it was Monday, and I was round at Soph’s house after school, busy telling Dylan, Soph and Fee about my brand new project…

  “I want to be more like a grown-up. A really – gulp – cool grown-up,” I mumbled, finding it kind of hard to talk and chew a big wodge of bubblegum at the same time. “Like Caitlin.”

  “Why?” asked Dylan, perching on Soph’s bed and boinging a neon yo-yo up and down.

  “I’ll read you this list I’ve started writing, then—gulp - you’ll see why.”

  “No, Indie,” he said. “I mean, why are you chewing gum? You never chew gum!”

  “Well, I do-gulp - now, OK?”

  Dylan often asks questions you don’t expect. Which makes them really hard to answer.

  “What’s on your list, Indie?” asked Fee, as she snuggled an armful of Soph’s Beanies.

  “I’ve only got three – gulp-things so far,” I began. “It goes like this…

  “Who treats you like you haven’t got a brain?” Fee interrupted.

  “My mum,” I told her. “She-”

  Oops. I nearly launched right into how much of a dork Mum had made me feel over the half-an-eyebrow thing. But I didn’t want to do that – it was way too embarrassing and not very grown-up at all.

  “Er, she’s gone all weird and grouchy on me the last few days,” I said instead, stroking the long piece of hair I’d combed over one

  side of my face. “

  Your mum? But your mum is always dead nice!” Soph said in surprise.

  “Yeah, well you haven’t had her telling you off like you’re five years old lately! And that’s what’s next on my list:

  “Yeah, but what’s your mum been telling you off for, Indie?” Fee interrupted again.

  Great – another tricky question.

  “Just … everything,” I said vaguely, stroking the long piece of hair again.

  I was so, so glad that Caitlin had come up with the idea of me brushing a bit of my hair over like this – neither of my friends or Dylan had noticed my eyebrow (or lack of it). It obviously wasn’t too different from my usual hairstyle for anyone to make a big deal of it.

  “Why have you done your hair like that, Indie?” said Dylan suddenly.

  Dylan would have to say something.

  “Done my hair like what?” I mumbled with a shrug. “It’s just in two bunches, just like normal!”

  “No, it’s not! Why have – you combed that one long bit over your face?” Dylan persisted, pointing to my head. “You can’t see out of one eye!”

  “Look, it’s just a fashion thing. You’re a boy – you wouldn’t understand,” Soph told him, without realizing she’d just helped me out of an awkward situation.

  (’Cause let’s face it, it wasn’t so much a fashion thing as a hiding-my-half-an-eyebrow thing.)

  “Shut up and let Indie talk about her list, Dylan!” Fee laughed, chucking a Beanie frog at him.

  Yes… I wanted to get back to the list, and off the subject of my a-bit-different hairdo and the secret it was hiding.


  “Uh, OK,” I said quickly, glancing down at my notepad. “The next one is:

  “What’s that about, then?” asked Sophie, looking at me kind of confused.

  “I got the idea from Caitlin. Y’know, when she was eighteen, she left her family in Scotland and moved all the way here for her first nannying job!”

  “But you can t do that, Indie!” said Dylan.

  “I can’t do what?” I asked, trying to figure out what he was on about now.

  “You can’t get a job and live wherever you want, ’cause you’re only ten!”

  “Yes, I know that, but all I’m saying is that it’s one of the very cool things about being a grown-up. And someday I’ll be able to do it!”

  “I wouldn’t like to live on my own,” said Soph. “Wouldn’t it be lonely, not having your mum and dad around?”

  “No, it would be very cool,” I replied, thinking that I didn’t live with my dad anyway, and Mum had been just as annoyingly distracted with me this morning. (She’d even got a bit cross when I said as she fed a cricket to the tree frogs…)

  “Why?” asked Dylan.

  Honestly. What’s he like?

  “Because … because it just would!” I said, feeling like taking the yo-yo out of his hands and strangling him with it.

  “No,” Dylan said with a shake of his head. “I mean why have you got

  written on your T-shirt? And what does mean?”

  “It’s ,” I corrected him.

  I’d really taken my time copying Caitlin’s T-shirt. It didn’t look quite as good as her printed one, but I’d made sure I wrote out the words in red fabric pen really neatly. How could Dylan think it said ?!