Page 15 - WTP Vol.IX #3

Never talk to a copper.
Don’t bother with hopes; they never come to anything.’ Then he got in the panda car.
wavy Tinder hair thing the next day. He said he does have long black wavy hair—on his back.
It was the night before.
SATS. Sweat And Terror Situation. SATS. Shaky And Terror Symptoms. SATS. Sums And Trigonometry Stinks.
In a few hours: a clock on the wall, the Head at the front, me staring at an exam paper. Maybe I should just write on it, ‘Dear Mrs Chestnut... I am so sorry.’ Then suck the ink out of my pen and poison myself.
I had that biley taste in my mouth, so I phoned my best mate Kirsty. I love Kirsty; she’s someone who always always says yes.
‘Y’alright, Kirsty?’ ‘Yes.’
‘At your Gran’s?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Had your tea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thinking about SATS tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘D’you know the difference between a simile and a metaphor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me then.’
There are some times when Kirsty needs to say more than ‘yes’ and this was one of them, cos that’s what we need from a best friend isn’t it, the ability to help us out when we’re stuck.
There was a clicking sound. I knew she was Googling. Then a text came through.
‘A simile is a figure of speech that makes a compari- son between two different things with the help of the words “like” or “as.”’
I decided to write it on the kitchen message pad so I wouldn’t forget. But before I could, Leo wandered in. He’d called round to return my homework which he’d
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Mum, who had finished one eye, opened up my SATS
revision notes, found something that made no sense to her and said, ‘Write this where no-one can see it.’
I was going to ask her if this was cheating, but I knew that cheating was a word Mum wouldn’t want to hear, so I wrote the numbers 3.1416 on the inside of my forearm.
She turned the pages of the revision notes onto the section marked ‘Essential Literacy.’ ‘And a second thing,’ she said, as if this wisdom was coming from her own brain when in fact her brain was crammed full of thoughts of Uncle Dennis: ‘Always remember the difference between a simile and a metaphor.’ Then she chucked the book down and went outside cos Uncle Dennis was shouting, ‘Trixie!? Where the hell are you, Trixie?’
I stood at the top of the landing and looked out the window. They were kissing. Not pretty kissing. Ugly kissing like their mouths were trying to eat each other. Uncle Dennis didn’t care she had only one eye painted; he was concentrating on undoing Mum’s bra one-handed. When he looked up and saw me watch- ing he stopped his one-handed fumbling and waved at me. He pretended he was scratching Mum’s back.
One day I just happened to be snooping around on Mum’s phone and just happened to find her Tinder account in the folder marked ‘Secret’, and just hap- pened to find the password to it in the little book
in her handbag where she keeps her passwords, and I stumbled across Uncle Dennis’s profile. I was surprised to see it said he had long black wavy hair, because he is bald as a boiled egg. Men do that don’t they, when it’s thinning—shave it all off and try and look young. I think it’s why Mum has her fou-fou waxed, to look like a baby again. Fresh. Untouched. Innocent. I challenged Uncle Dennis on the black
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