The Worst Thing About My Sister Read online

  It wasn’t the slightest bit funny or witty or original, but they always howled with laughter when they said it. I made out I didn’t care, though I did really. Dreadfully. And then horrible Alisha started calling me Bluebottle too, because she always sucks up to Katie and Ingrid. I almost expected her to do that, but I was taken aback when half the class caught on and called me Bluebottle too. Most of them didn’t even know why, because they hadn’t been to Alisha’s awful party.

  ‘Never mind, Marty,’ said Jaydene, putting her arm round me. ‘Just try to ignore them.’

  She was now my very special best friend for ever, and deeply loyal to me, but she wasn’t much use at defending me against Katie and Ingrid. Jaydene was very tall and very big, so you’d think she would be a really fierce, fighty girl – but she was a total wuss. She cried if anyone so much as shouted at her. Jaydene was scared of so many things: worms, stepping on the cracks in the pavement, dogs that barked, lifts, swimming, spiders, her strict auntie, maths lessons, stinging nettles … I could fill the whole page. She was especially scared of Katie and Ingrid.

  I had to fight my own battles with them. I wasn’t really too fussed about Ingrid. When Katie was off school with chicken pox, Ingrid was almost nice. She didn’t pick on anyone, or call them names, or sniff and say they smelled disgusting. She played rounders with a whole crowd of us in the playground at lunch time, and when I scored a rounder, she patted me on the back and said I was brilliant. But as soon as Katie came back to school Ingrid changed back to being mean. Even meaner. The next time we were playing rounders together, Ingrid pushed me hard as I ran past, and I fell over and was caught out. Everyone saw, but no one dared say anything.

  Katie didn’t ever push anyone, but somehow she was the scariest. She didn’t look scary. She was little, with a pretty face and long shiny black hair – but inside her little rosebud mouth was a tongue as sharp as a Stanley knife.

  I decided I had to sharpen my tongue. I brooded on the Bluebottle name-calling. I wasn’t quite sure what a bluebottle was, so I went to the library at lunch time. It was good to have somewhere to go. I couldn’t hang out with Jaydene because she didn’t stay for school dinners. She went home for lunch, the lucky thing. I didn’t feel like playing rounders or footie or tag, not with people calling me the dreaded B-word.

  Mrs Grinstead was on library duty. I loved Mrs Grinstead. She was a big, soft, smiley lady with very blue eyes behind her glasses. She wasn’t a class teacher, she looked after children with special needs. I always thought how lovely it would be to cosy up to Mrs Grinstead and look at storybooks together and do lots of wax crayoning, instead of having to sit up straight in class and do difficult sums and get poked in the back by Katie and Ingrid.

  ‘Hello, Marty,’ said Mrs Grinstead, smiling.

  That was another magical thing about her. She knew all our names, even if she didn’t teach us.

  ‘What are you looking for today? I’ve seen a brilliant new book about polar bears and penguins – and there’s a lovely old comic book on the shelf over there.’

  Mrs Grinstead is spot-on when it comes to sussing out exactly the sort of book I like.

  ‘I think I’d like both, Mrs Grinstead – but actually I’m really here to look something up in a dictionary,’ I said.

  ‘Really, Marty? How splendid! Well, we have a very fine selection over here, though they might be a bit dusty. No one ever seems to look at a dictionary nowadays. Here we are, dear.’

  She sat me down at a little table and gave me the biggest dictionary of all – so big I could barely lift it. I started flipping through all the B pages. I got side tracked a little, finding all sorts of unexpected words there – even rude ones. But then I found blue bottle, with the definition: Another name for the blowfly. So then I had to swap pages and peer all down the list for blowfly, and there it was: Any of the various dipterous flies of the genus Calliphora and related genera that lay their eggs in rotting meat, dung, carrion and open wounds.

  So that told me. I didn’t have a clue what at least five of those words meant, but I didn’t want to spend the entire lunch time flipping through the dictionary, so I wrote it down. I had to borrow Mrs Grinstead’s pen, but I used it very carefully, not pressing too hard, and gave it right back to her. Then I asked her to show me the books she’d mentioned. They were ace, and she let me borrow them both.

  I holed up in a corner of the corridor, not wanting to encounter Katie and Ingrid just yet. I needed to come prepared. I read about polar bears and penguins, and then I looked at this brilliant comic book about a boy called Little Nemo. I planned a new Mighty Mart adventure in the frozen north. She could be queen of a whole tribe of polar bears, and keep a comical gang of penguins as special swimming pets. I usually did Mighty Mart’s adventures in little square boxes, but the Little Nemo comic had shown me a different way of doing it.

  I intended to creep into the classroom and snaffle a piece of paper and someone’s pen to sketch it out, but Mum – of all people – came hurrying along the corridor, dragging along some little kid from the Infants who had been sick all down themselves. Mum didn’t look very pleased about it, and she looked even less thrilled to see me.

  ‘Really, Martina, what are you doing skulking indoors? You know perfectly well you’re not allowed in the classrooms at lunch time,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum – I was just in the library and—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Michaels,’ said Mum. She has this daft rule that we have to call her that at school. ‘Now off you go straight away.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare pen on you, Mum— Mrs Michaels?’ I asked.

  ‘Please, miss, I think I’m going to be sick again!’ said the Infant.

  ‘Oh, Lord! Come to the toilets, quick! Martina, go outside,’ said Mum.

  I had to wait till I got home to start on my amazing new Mighty Mart adventure. Jaydene had lent me another of her pens, so I could get cracking straight away. I did the pictures all different sizes, with my characters sometimes sticking an arm or a leg or a paw or a beak out of the main frame. I did an enormous king polar bear, as tall as the whole page, and then a very long, narrow horizontal frame of lots of little penguins waddling across the snow, and then on the next page I had Mighty Mart sliding down an enormous glacier from the top left-hand corner all the way to the bottom right.

  I went running out to the garage to show Dad. He was busy putting together all the pieces of our new shelf unit and cupboard space.

  ‘Hey, Marty,’ he said, but he didn’t even look up.

  ‘Hey, Dad, take a look at my new Mighty Mart adventure!’

  ‘I’d love to see it, Curlynob, but not just now. I’m a bit busy.’

  ‘Oh, Dad, let me show you. I’ve got ever so good at drawing polar bears – and the cutest little penguins – look!’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’d love to see them, but the thing is, I’m trying to sort out your shelving, and it’s like a giant jigsaw piece and I’m a bit stuck at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll help you,’ I said, bending down and picking up several planks of wood.

  ‘Don’t move them! Oh no, I’d just got that bit worked out!’

  ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Push off just now, Marty, there’s a love,’ said Dad.

  So I did. I went to find Mum instead, but she was in her brand-new sewing room with Melissa. Mum was whirring away on her sewing machine, making a poppy dress. It had lots of bright red petals for a skirt, and a black velvet bodice. Melissa was sitting cross-legged on the floor sewing a big black blobby velvet shape.

  ‘What’s that, Melissa?’

  ‘It’s a squashy cushion for our room,’ she said proudly.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, losing interest immediately. ‘Look at my new Mighty Mart adventure!’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Melissa. ‘You and your silly old Mighty Mart comics. They’re all the same. She’s just a great big you swooping here and there, going zap-zap-zap.’

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