Читать книгу Boys on the Brain - Jean Ure, Stephen Lee, Jean Ure - Страница 8

Mum and Harry came back from the pub last night with some friends they had met. They sat up for simply hours shrieking and talking and playing music very loudly, so that in the end I had to go downstairs and ask them if they would mind being a bit quiet as I was trying to sleep.

“It is gone midnight,” I said.

They seemed for some reason to think this was funny. But they did at least turn the music down.

Went into town after lunch and met Pilch. We mooched round the shops, ending up in Paperback Parade where we each bought a book. I bought War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and Pilch bought Anna Karenina, also by Tolstoy. We have made a vow to read them! War and Peace has almost fifteen hundred pages. One thousand four hundred and eighty-five, to be precise. Gulp! But last term Mrs Adey said it was a great book, so I am sure it will be interesting.

Bumped into Cindy Williams and Tasha Lansmann in the shopping centre. They were with boys. They are a bit like Mum: boys are all they ever think about. Cindy has put white stripes in her hair. She looks like a zebra crossing.

Told Pilch about Mum trying to get me to join the youth thing, just because of Brad Sullivan, and Pilch said her mum is the same. I don’t see how she can be! Pilch’s mum isn’t man-mad. I said this to Pilch and she said, “No, but my sister is and in some ways that is even worse.”

She said that Janine spends all her time, practically, in front of the mirror practising make-up and how to look flirty.

“And she’s only twelve years old! It makes you feel like you’re abnormal, or something.”

“It’s surely not abnormal,” I said, “to want to get somewhere?”

I reminded Pilch of our pact that we made last term. Our sacred, solemn pact to foreswear the opposite sex until we have taken our A-levels and got to uni.

“It’s the only way,” I said.

Pilch sighed. She said, “Yes, I know.”

“I mean, if we’re going to be brain surgeons -”

I said this to cheer her up and bring a smile to her face. Becoming brain surgeons was what we always used to say when people asked us. We didn’t mean it literally. It was just, like, a symbol of our determination to go places. To get somewhere. To be someone. Probably, in my case, a great writer, or maybe a TV journalist. I still haven’t made up my mind. Neither has Pilch. Sometimes she thinks she’ll be an architect, building glass bubbles and upsetting Prince Charles, other times she thinks she’ll be an archaeologist, digging up lost civilisations. But anyway, something. We are not just going to be cogs! We are certainly not going to be like our mums.

After shopping we went back to Pilch’s place and locked ourselves in her bedroom (away from her little brother) and read each other our latest episodes. My one about Carlito, Pilch’s about Alastair.

Pilch’s was in-ter-min-able! She has now decided that Alastair’s parents are hugely noble and live in a castle somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland. She’s got this book all about clans and she’s written pages and pages describing in excruciating detail the tartans that people are wearing. She seems to think that men in kilts are sexy. She’s even got Alastair wearing one! Blue and green, the clan of Mackenzie. He keeps saying things like “Och ay the noo”, which I thought was a bit odd considering that last week she said he was speaking in “very cultured English”. She explained, however, that when he’s back home in the Highlands (or Heelands, as she calls them) he goes all Scottish and speaks “in a soft lilt”.

Hm!

I didn’t say anything, as it obviously turns her on.

After Pilch had read her bit, I read mine about Carlito in the night club. Pilch kept going “What?” just as I’d known she would. I told her to shut up and listen. After all, I hadn’t gone “What?” about all that tartan stuff, and this was far more inspired! I’d pictured the whole scene. Carlito sitting there all smouldering and sultry and this pale geeky English type believing himself to be so-o-o-o superior and everyone thinking he’s just dross. I’d written how Carlito curls his lip and goes “Tu madre!” with the candlelight glinting in his jet black hair.

All Pilch could think to say was, “What’s he going on about his mother for?”

Honestly. I bet people didn’t ask Tolstoy things like that!

I am writing this in the evening. Mum and Harry are downstairs watching telly. They asked me if I was going to stay and watch with them, but I said I’d got to make a start on War and Peace.

“It’s nearly fifteen hundred pages,” I said.

Harry then made one of his coarse earthy remarks which is totally unprintable. Four-letter words just spew out of that man! It is simply no use trying to impress him. Or Mum. I don’t know why I bother.

Anyway, I don’t really think they’d want me there with them. They’re still at the stage of snogging on the sofa. I nearly caught them at it the other day. I swear I heard this slurping noise as they prised their lips apart. I cannot see the attraction! I could if it were Carlito. But that is another matter…