Ging Gang Goo

Ging Gang Goo

  Oh, she made me irate. For all the drama that Devon and Aimee were prone to exposing me to, all the cattiness of Keisha and Chan, and even the unwarrantedly snobby corruption of Asta and Courtney, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen such a nasty side to someone who wasn’t Dad.

  “Why do you put up with it, Harley? Why do you stick up for her? You know why? Because you’re a mouse!”

  I gritted my teeth and returned my gaze to the chair in front. This time, the chair. For some reason whenever I got this angry, I couldn’t stand to think of men. I was not a mouse. My hair was mouse, and maybe I did let people get away with a little too much, but if I was a mouse, that made Rachel a flea. Digging and digging on us, an itch we couldn’t scratch but ultimately were too kind to spritz with Frontline. Sometimes she seemed to turn her attention to someone else, but it never lasted.

  Ging Gang Goo

  Dillie Dorian

  Copyright 2007-2014 Dillie Dorian

  Oops! Did I Forget I Don’t Know You?

  Double Dates & Single Raisins

  A Bended Family

  While Shepherds Washed My Socks

  Sitting Down Star Jumps

  Now, Maybe, Probably

  Was He The Queen?!

  Not Zebedee!

  Angry Coral Week

  An Amicabubble Breakup

  And many more…

  https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk

  Contents:

  #0 Preambling Note To Shells

  #1 Hair Without A Face

  #2 Sickproof: The Coach Ultimatum

  #3 Disgusterous Thoughts, Overtime

  #4 Bucketing Cockadoodles!

  #5 Diss-Orienteering

  #6 Roasted Starburst

  #7 Ging Gang Goolie Goolie Goolie Goolie Watcher...

  #8 The Second

  #9 Foxes, Eggs & Beans On Toast

  #10 The Dani McDimon Movie

  #11 Ithinkyou'recute!

  #12 U.T.: The Unattainable Twentysomething

  #13 Having A Ball, & A Windy To Boot

  #14 Comedy & Tragedy & Lisdexia

  #0 Preambling Note To Shells

  Dear Shelley + Assorted Prying Aussies

  I can’t say I was looking forward to it, but a week free of school and (most of) my family – full of mates and (supposed) fun – was exactly what I needed to take my mind off the Zak Thing. It was only camping at a Scout centre, but you’d be surprised at how much can possibly go wrong with the (allegedly) simple act of living in a field for a week*.

  Wished you’d been there, though. In fact, I wish you were here now, helping me fix old Groovy Chick stickers onto a certain person, along with “Missed You!”-scrawled Post-it notes**.

  So lie back on your private sandy beach and shoo away any Corys and Sheilas so that you can read in peace.

  Weather’s (still) crap, (still) wish you were here.

  Harley.

  *Under unsupervising supervision, that is.

  **Send in your order now if you, too, want to be adorned with “Missed You!” Post-its!

  #1 Hair Without A Face

  “Come to the front and sit with me,” shouted Devon, dragging me one way.

  “Over here!” Rachel demanded, pulling me the other.

  “What?” I managed, over the hubbub. “Why don’t we just sit at the back again, and I’ll go inbetween you two?”

  “I’m not talking to her!” snapped Rachel.

  “I wasn’t talking to her first!” Devon hissed.

  “I heard that!”

  “You were supposed to!”

  “Weirdo!”

  “Horse-face!”

  “Skank!”

  “Rich bitch!”

  “Dirty gypper!”

  “RACIST!”

  “Oh, ho, how predictable!” snickered Rachel, who was nearly winning the tug-of-war because she had such a tight grip on my wrist that I could feel my hand turning blue. “Your mum wasn’t even gypsy by marriage! You told me yourself!”

  “And how would you know that wasn’t a joke?!” seethed Devon, thunk!ing Rachel over the head with her travel flask. “It’s not for you to comment!”

  “Girls! Girls! Break it up!” yelled Miss Winterbottom. “That’s not very ladylike! We want good, clean competition on this trip.”

  I dithered. There was still a seat next to Dani, who like myself clearly hadn’t known what she was getting into. But… if I took it, would old Nelly force Devon and Rachel to sit together? I imagined myself being torn limb from limb later at the campsite.

  Devon bolted Dani’s way, and I was left with Rachel.

  “Nouveau middle class!” snorted Rachel, as she plopped down and yanked me into the seat next to her. “She doesn’t understand.”

  “I was adopted!” shrieked Devon, from two rows back on the other side of the aisle. “It’s still a racial slur, no matter who you say it to,” I heard her attempt to mutter.

  “Harley!” snapped my coach buddy.

  I would’ve stared coldly out of the window until she got the message, but since I had the aisle seat the best I could do was eye the back of Jordy’s head. Lucky Andy now had him all to himself while Charlie retched into a Waitrose bag by Mr Wordsworth’s side.

  Don’t get me wrong; dibsing the back row as a group had turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The boys already took up three seats, and then there was Devon next to Charlie and me next to her. Being gloatingly the thinnest out of us girls, Rachel had had to squash up next to Dani in front, which sucked for her because Charlie was so travel sick that he splattered my jean cuff from two seats away. We’d just spent an unplanned twenty minutes running her hair under one of those inadequate service station taps in the dank cottage of a loo, which as I’m sure you can imagine was difficult given its pre-programmed insistence on soaping, wetting and drying over and over and over.

  “Harley!”

  Even if it was Jordy, I didn’t know how long I could keep this up. His hair without a face was only marginally more titillating than the peanut butter rolls I had stowed in my bumbag. (Thankfully sickproof.)

  “Har-lee!”

  I sucked in breath. “What?” I grumbled.

  “Nouveau middle class!”

  “New-vogue whatnow?”

  “Devon. She’s nothing but a wannabe.”

  And you’re not? Strutting around in a tracksuit for two and a half years, lest anyone actually realise you’re not as poor us the rest of us.

  “You know what I mean, Harl,” she went on. “She puts on airs and graces and that stupid cutesy dimples voice, innit!”

  The cringemaking clash of Rachel’s rhetoric? Now that was grating…

  “She’s just eccentric, Rach,” I groaned. “I don’t want to talk about her anyway.”

  This was true. Packing and planning with “total non-couple” Devon and Charlie had been an irritation not worth describing. If it had done anything to aid in the normal excitement of going away, it was that I couldn’t wait to be out in the open air, with no cliques and seating plans to bind us together for the best part of a week. A supposedly summer week. It was such a shame that the claustrophobia of private-public transport had to come before it.

  “But you know what I mean, Harley! You live on your street, and we don’t see you planting a perfect rose garden or owning a passport! You’re not a poser!”

  Er, thanks?

  “I just think people should stick to their roots, that’s all. And Devon’s roots aren’t well-off. She’s not a gypsy either. She’s got to be a benefit bum like her mum.”

  “Who says her mum was even on benefits?” I hissed. “None of us have ever even met her.”

  “What kind of person has an unwanted baby and keeps it and runs away on a mental one to live in a cara
van? I’ll bet she owed money and all.”

  Oh, she made me irate. For all the drama that Devon and Aimee were prone to exposing me to, all the cattiness of Keisha and Chan, and even the unwarrantedly snobby corruption of Asta and Courtney, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen such a nasty side to someone who wasn’t Dad.

  “Why do you put up with it, Harley? Why do you stick up for her? You know why? Because you’re a mouse!”

  I gritted my teeth and returned my gaze to the chair in front. This time, the chair. For some reason whenever I got this angry, I couldn’t stand to think of men. I was not a mouse. My hair was mouse, and maybe I did let people get away with a little too much, but if I was a mouse, that made Rachel a flea. Digging and digging on us, an itch we couldn’t scratch but ultimately were too kind to spritz with Frontline. Sometimes she seemed to turn her attention to someone else, but it never lasted.

  #2 Sickproof: The Coach Ultimatum

  Second rest stop, second switcharoo – and boy was I glad.

  Dani and I wearily flopped down at the nearest bench to unwrap our lunch.

  “I’m going to the loo!” announced Devon, abruptly. “Who’s coming?”

  Clearly she was on a mission to commandeer the pair of us and leave Rachel on the outside, and it sure was tempting – but I knew better than to get on that ride. If one of us didn’t pair up with Rachel, she’d be off like a shot in Asta’s direction, and then knowing Dev, all the fun of camping and teamwork would turn into a petty war.

  I fingered the bumbag, eager to tuck into a roll. It was not so sickproof after all. Great; now I had to waste my giftshop money on a petrol station sandwich, but before that I had to wash my hands.

  “Me,” I told her, with a heavy heart. I unclipped my bag and tossed it to the boys’ table. “Charlie! For you. You must be starving.”

  I followed Devon into the toilets, thanking my lucky stars for the mediocre soap-wet-dry cycle of the chrome wall-sink. A little of my PMT OCD must’ve hung around, because I couldn’t bear to use the toilet with Charlie’s barf on my hand. I was soap-wet-drying for the second time when it occurred to me that Devon was taking a while.

  “Dev, I need to get a sandwich or I’ll die on the coach, so you’ll have to catch me up.”

  “It’s OK,” she replied, mock-brightly as the cubicle door clicked open. “Just found out why I was in such a terrible mood!”

  “So you’re not now?” I asked, inferring a lot on the spot. If that had been me halfway to a campsite with the scrappier twelfth of our year group for five days, I wouldn’t have thought life could get worse.

  “Nope. At least I’m not pregnant.”

  “You’re a virgin.” Aren’t you…? My brain squick!ed. Given that the prime culprit for that would result in me being a real-not-step auntie at fourteen, and especially at the thought of Charlie being reproductively… capable. Given that our family already had one baby and another on the way.

  “Obviously,” she tittered. “It’s still reassuring.”

  Maybe when it’s yours… I thought to myself. Mine just reminds me that the only thing a working uterus is good for is something I’m utterly terrified of doing. Visions of Alien spring to mind, except the stomach.

  “Omigod!” squee!d Dani, one second out of the toilet cottage. “Rachel is driving me crazy!”

  “You should try sitting with her,” I snarked.

  Dani looked at me like I’d straightfacedly suggested she ram needles under her fingernails. I’d forgotten that she wasn’t the greatest appreciator of sarcasm unless it went “Yeah, ’cause I’d be seen dead in that!” in the most obvious of tones.

  “I don’t mean actually,” I backtracked, even though if I had anything substantial left after my sandwich I was considering paying her.

  Uh-oh. Rachel had already sidled up to the Snoot Sisters. It was ironic, given Asta’s status as the Council Estate Queen because her dad was willing to get into debt renting a pony. Rachel must just have been determined to have a problem with Devon, and she’d particularly lost it over the past couple of weeks since Keisha and Chan had finally laid it down that they were just joking about hating her, the same as they did with Rindi.

  “Ok, here’s the plan,” I hissed. “We have to get the back row. We need the back row. I’ll even sit next to Charlie if I have to. We have to get Rachel pinned down or else she’s going to take it for herself and those two. Do we really want gang rivalries on our nice little getaway?”

  “Harley,” snickered Dev. “You know I’ll be sitting next to Charlie. You’re just trying to engineer it so that you can sit with Jordy!”

  Dani giggled along.

  “No, that’s really not it.” I sighed a gigantic sigh. “I’m seriously serious. She’s got ties with their group that could bring everything down on top of us. Rachel, who has been around for a lot of our sleepovers, has the opportunity to bitch to the two bitchiest bitches going. Do you want everyone to know everything about us?”

  “Oh come on, Harley,” said Dev. “We’re not ten. A crush on Orlando Bloom is hardly sniggerworthy material anymore, and I don’t have any proper secrets. Even if I did, she’d be sure to lie and come up with something juicier.”

  “I agree with Devon,” said Dani, meekly.

  “Then maybe I’m just hungry,” I grumbled, heading for the little shop.

  “Everyone back on the coach!” barked Miss Winterbottom. “NOW!!”

  #3 Disgusterous Thoughts, Overtime

  I eased an eye open.

  Yes, we were still on the coach, and I had fallen asleep from the hunger. To his credit, Andy had offered me the broken half of his packet of crisps, but in my fatigue I’d turned that down because of how dirty his fingers looked.

  That much I remembered. What came next seemed to have completely slipped. At least I had a nice, soft pillow. If I could just snuggle back down before the hunger started to gnaw again, everything would be fine until the campsite.

  Hang on – I didn’t remember getting a pillow out of my bag. I hadn’t had time. So what was it that my head was so luxuriously nestled into?

  I sat up. Everything span. Perhaps I was confusing hunger with bona fide motion sickness. I focussed enough to recognise the pillowy surface as Andy’s shoulder – his canvas-coloured anorak, fortunately not as grubby-looking as his hands. He seemed sound asleep, and I only hoped he’d been the one to nod off first.

  “You ’rite, Harley?” he mumbled, yawnily.

  Omigod. What should I say? Maybe we’d once been friends, in the sort of way you have to be friends if someone’s friends with your twin, but these past few years we’d really grown apart. There were owl moments but then there were bra-stealing moments, so it sort of evened out into a mush of resentment. I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been the one to do something wrong, falling asleep on him like that. Why were we even sitting together?

  Oh yeah, Charlie and Devon. They’d squished up together at the very front, where he’d been told to sit by the one and only caring teacher we had onboard. That rucked up my Rachel plan already, but then Dani had made a dive for Jordy and somehow lumbered me with Andy because I just couldn’t take another minute of Rach. Wherever she was, it surely involved Asta and Courtney.

  “…yeah,” I managed back, after the longest silence of the year.

  He sat up too, and asked, “God, what time is it?”

  I looked at the watch I wasn’t wearing. “I don’t know…”

  “D’you think we’ll stop soon?”

  “Well, I think we must be nearly there now. These road signs look practically Scottish.”

  “Good, ’cause my bowels are a-rumbling.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Well can you think of anything better to talk about? Anything better to do…? Well, absolutely anything would’ve been a better thing to say, I’ll give you that, but-”

  “I don’t know, have you got a CD player?” I asked, so tired that I honestly imagined everyone else to be as technologically b
arren as I was.

  “I’ve got a camera phone,” he offered. “Let’s take photos of everyone who’s asleep and make them pay us to delete them.”

  “That’s a crap idea.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, my legs ache, so I’m going to do it anyway.”

  I shrugged and stretched out a little as he got up. One of my thighs had got so squashed against the armrest that it felt bruised – not that I was in any position to check.

  I glanced at Andy. He was grinning like a loon, already snapping away (silently, because he’d turned the shutter sound off), weaving back and forth drunklike in the aisle as we went over bump after bump on the country road.

  “Godfrey! Back in your seat!” hollered Mr Ball, who was really not far enough away to merit the volume.

  Andy flumped back down beside me just as the hubbub of people waking up began.

  “What did you get?” I whispered, conversationally.

  He flicked through the different shots. There was: Rachel with her hair rucked up on top, falling out of her soapy ponytail; Jordy looking like heaven on legs with his mouth part open; Lauren and Sophie somehow asleep on each other’s shoulders both at the same time; Asta and Courtney – well, this was strange – they had writing on their foreheads.

  “Can you zoom that one up a bit?” I asked. “I want to see what it says.”

  Andy did so. We both spluttered. Asta’s read: “Courtney I want to shag your muffin.” Courtney’s said: “Asta has lush breasticles.”

  OK, so this was obviously the work of a male. Obviously? Yeah, obviously. I’d never met a female in my life who thought “breasticle” was a funny thing to say.

  “These are the last two,” Andy warned, flipping forward from the Snobgoblins. The first was Devon spooning Charlie, with her nose buried in his hair. I hoped it still had sick in it. The second, Miss Winterbottom clutching Mr Ball’s arm, gob wide open and white furry tongue on show. So that had been his reason for shouting – poor target, Andy, but worth it.

  “Omigod! My hair’s a total mess! Have you got a brush on you?”

  “My makeup has run!”

  “My mouth tastes of crap!”

  “Eurgh! How would you know?”

  “Scott eats poo!”

  “Get off of me, Lauren!”

  “Whooooo farted?!”

  “He who smelt it dealt it!”

  “Yesssss!”