Читать книгу The Tutti-frutti Collection - Jean Ure, Stephen Lee, Jean Ure - Страница 27

I asked Mum two things when I got in from school and to both of them she said no.

First of all I asked her yet again if I could take sandwiches instead of having school dinner because today it was something quite unspeakable, I mean it looked as if it had been scraped up off the pavement. It is only a question of time before I get terminally poisoned. Mum said, “You can take sandwiches so long as you’re prepared for them to be vegetarian” which as far as I’m concerned is the same as saying no because I am not going to change my eating habits just to please Slime. What’s being veggie ever done for him? Made him look like a fungus. And anyway, it would mean he’d won and then he’d get all unbearable and triumphant.

So we had a bit of a dispute about it, with me saying why couldn’t I have ham or chicken and Mum saying because it upsets Slime to see dead things in the fridge (and me thinking but not saying that it upsets me to see Slime in the house) and that if I choose to eat meat at school that’s up to me but we’re not going to have it at home, which means we shall all end up looking like fungus. Except by then I shall probably be dead of food poisoning so I suppose it really doesn’t matter.

Anyhow, we then had tea and I said, “Oh, by the way, Gemma Parker has invited me to her sleep-over tomorrow. Is that OK?” and Mum tightened her lips and said, “Well, no, as a matter of fact I’m afraid I don’t think it is. I think I’d rather that you stayed away from Gemma Parker.”

I knew she’d say that. She has taken it into her head that Gemma is a bad influence all because last term she heard her say a four-letter word that she doesn’t even know the meaning of. Gemma, that is. It was just something she’d heard her brother say. All the boys say it; all the older ones. Even Skinny’s brother, who Mum thinks is such a “nice young man”. They go round shouting it at each other. It doesn’t mean anything. They think it makes them sound butch and grown-up.

I said to Mum, “Everybody else is going. I’ll feel left out.” She said, “Not everybody can be. There wouldn’t be room for them.” “Well, everyone who is anyone,” I said. “The Melon, for instance. Her mum doesn’t mind.”

Mum likes the Melon. I thought it would sway her, but it didn’t. After about ten minutes of arguing she said, “Look, I’m sorry. Cherry, but that is that. I do not want you going to the sleep-over.” I shrieked “Why not? When the Melon is allowed to?” Mum said, “You don’t have to shout at me. What Melanie’s mother allows her to do is neither here nor there. She probably doesn’t know that family as I do. I just don’t trust them.”

The only reason she says this is because Gemma’s mum smokes cigarettes and she and Slimey think that anyone who smokes cigarettes is some kind of criminal and ought to be locked up, and also because Gemma’s dad happens to work in a place called Franco’s that once got raided by the police, which is hardly Gemma’s dad’s fault. He can’t help where he works. What Mum doesn’t understand is that Gemma is totally naive. She’s like a six year old. Her mum won’t even let her watch television without supervision in case she sees something she shouldn’t.

I tried explaining this to Mum but she plainly didn’t believe me. She said. “If you ask me, Gemma’s mother is rather flighty.”

What does she mean, flighty? Does she think she’s a witch, or something?

Mum told me not to sulk. She said that to make up for not letting me go to the sleep-over, we’d all have a meal in the pizza place tomorrow night and then we’d go to the video shop and I could choose whatever video I wanted. That cheered me up a bit as I thought that I would get something really gross that they normally wouldn’t let me have. But honestly, what does she think we do at sleep-overs? We don’t do anything! Just sit and talk and try on each other’s clothes and then tell scary stories in the dark. Gemma’s such a baby she usually falls asleep.

I am going to get a really gross DVD.