Over the Moon (9 page)

“It’s mostly grown-ups … neighbours and stuff. Aunties and uncles. That sort of thing. It’s Dad’s special after-Christmas get-together. Dad
invented
it. It’s to keep people going between Christmas and New Year … it’s quite fun! Hattie always comes, don’t you?”

Hattie nodded, without actually saying anything. It occurred to me that she could have been a bit more supportive.

“What we sometimes do,” I said, “we sometimes go and mess around in the pool. We’ve got this indoor pool, it’s fun! Isn’t it?”

I turned again to Hattie, who said, “I guess so, if you like that kind of thing.”

I could have brained her. It’s true that Hattie herself, personally, doesn’t much care for going in the water, but really! She is supposed to be my
friend.
It was all the excuse Simon needed. He said apologetically that he not only couldn’t dance, he didn’t swim, either. Frankly I was beginning to feel quite out of patience with both him and Hattie. With my best bright smile, I said, “But Matt does, doesn’t he?”

Simon said yes, Matt did. “He’s on the school team.”

“Well, there you are, then! He’d enjoy it,” I said, “wouldn’t he?”

Simon said yes, he probably would.

“So you could ask him! Tell him I’ve invited both of you. If Matt comes, you’ll have to come, as well,” I said, “to keep Hattie company, cos she’s not mad on swimming, either. Are you?”

Hattie shook her head. She seemed kind of resigned; so did Simon. He promised that he would speak to Matt and let me know.

“Talk about
obvious,”
said Hattie, when Simon had gone and we were on our way back through the shopping centre.

Loftily I told her that there were times when you had to be.

“Things don’t happen all by themselves, you know. You have to do something to help them along.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Hattie. But I felt that I detected a note of her famous sarcasm, and I started to worry that perhaps I might have been a little bit
too
pushy and Simon would never talk to me again. I needed him, to get to Matt! But Monday morning he was waiting for me at the station. He said he’d had a word with Matt and they were both going to come. Three thousand cheers!
Definitely
an over-the-moon day!

I babbled at him that I was so glad. I said that we were desperate for more young people, “Cos otherwise, it’s like some kind of geriatric convention”. Simon said that he was pleased to be of help. He said it very solemnly, so that I couldn’t tell whether he was teasing or being serious. A bit gushily – I have this pathetic tendency to gush when I am feeling unsure of myself – I said that if they wanted, he and Matt could stay over.

“We have oceans of room, it wouldn’t be any problem.”

Well, it wouldn’t have been, they could easily have slept downstairs. I don’t know what call Mum had to get so uptight about it.

“It would just be
nice
,” she said, “to be consulted. I mean, who are these boys? I’ve never met them! I’ve never even heard of them before.”

As it happened they didn’t need to stay over, which I thought was a pity as it would have been ultra romantic to wake up and meet over the breakfast table, but in any case Mum couldn’t say very much in view of my
rather dazzling
end-of-term report. In every single subject there was “marked improvement” or “she has made great strides” or even, glory hallelujah, “Scarlett has turned in some excellent work”!!! Now it was Mum’s turn to be over-the-moon. She hugged me and said that she was “so pleased”. Dad said, “Blimey O’Reilly, I’m living with a couple of bluestockings!” Mum told him not to tease.

“She’s done so well!”

Dad winked at me and said, “Go on, it’ll never last! I give it until … when do they let you know about the founder’s thing? Middle of Jan? I give it till the middle of Jan!”

“That would be cheating,” said Mum. “That would be false pretences!” Oh, dear! Mum was being so earnest about it. But I have to admit, it did give me quite a warm, cosy feeling to have a favourable report for once. And while doing homework was a real drag, it was kind of satisfying when you got good marks, so I thought that most probably I would continue even if I were lucky enough to be selected. I mean, now that I’d started, I might just as well go on. On the other hand, if I didn’t get selected, after all my hard work and striving to be better – well! I would be sick as a parrot. But I didn’t want to think about that right now. Matt was coming to the after-Christmas party and everything was, like, GO.

And then disaster hit the world. This is what I wrote in my diary:

The most terrible thing. A huge tidal wave called a tsunami has killed thousands of people in Thailand. It was on the television, we were all so shocked. Mum and me were in tears, thinking of all the children that had lost their parents, and the parents who could do nothing while their children were washed away from them. Mum said, “That would be my worst nightmare,” and Dad agreed with her. How can God let such things happen???

This was a question I put to Hattie, hoping she would have something comforting to say, or maybe even some kind of explanation, but Hattie just grimly stated that “There isn’t any God”. She said, “You know I don’t believe in all that sort of thing  … big daddy god father looking after us all. It’s just a fairy tale!”

Not
very comforting; but I felt that she was probably right: there wasn’t anyone up there, caring for us. Or if there was, He wasn’t making a very good job of it. I don’t mean to sound blasphemous, but that is the way that I saw it. I think that I still do. It is one thing if human beings behave badly and do horrible things, because we have free will and it is up to us how we use it; but there is nothing we can do to stop earthquakes and volcanoes and such, and if God can stop them and doesn’t, then He is not very loving. And if He
can’t
stop them, then He is not as powerful as He is supposed to be. That is all I am saying.

But there was something else which troubled me, apart from the question of God. When so many people were suffering, how could I still be excited at the thought of Matt coming to Dad’s get-together? How could I still be dithering about what to wear?

I knew if I asked Dad he’d tell me not to bother my pretty little head, cos Dad really doesn’t like to think about bad things. Quite often, when the news is on, he’ll go and make a cup of tea or pick up a magazine. Mum says he’s a bit of an ostrich like that. On the other hand, if I were to ask Mum I’d be scared she might start … not lecturing me, exactly, but going on. That is what me and Dad used to call it when Mum got on her high horse:
going on.
In this case, going on about my obsession with clothes and the way I looked. I could do without that! So, as usual, I turned to Hattie. Hattie can always be relied upon to speak her mind, but she doesn’t lecture, and she doesn’t
go on.
I asked her if she thought that I was vain and shallow-minded, and Hattie gave one of her guffaws and said, “Of course you’re vain! You’re one of the vainest people I know.” She then added that she’d probably be vain herself if she looked like me. “It’s all part of the package.”

Well! That solaced me
slightly.
“But what about shallow-minded?” I said.

Hattie thought about it, then went, “Mm … I s’ppose you are a bit. But no more than most people.” She said that with so many truly ghastly things happening in the world, what with AIDS, and people starving, and wars and floods and hideous disasters, you couldn’t afford to let it take over your life or you would most likely end up going into a deep depression or even killing yourself.

I was relieved when Hattie said this. I said, “So you reckon it’s OK for me to forget about the tsunami for just a few hours?”

Hattie said, “Yes, absolutely! But I think probably we should think about it afterwards … I mean, like, maybe we should actually
do
something?”

I agreed, eagerly. “Yes! Let’s do something. We could have a fundraiser!”

I was just so grateful to have been given permission to be shallow and self-centred for just the one evening.

Brilliant best party of all time. Simon and the Sun God came. The Sun God – Matt! – is even more gorgeous close-up than from a distance. Sun God is the right name for him! We sat by ourselves for a while and talked, and got on really well. So well, in fact, that I plucked up my courage and asked him the question … if I am selected for Founder’s Day, would he like to come with me as my partner? Looking back, I don’t know how I dared! It just, like, shot out of me
before I realised what I was doing. But it’s all right, cos he has said yes. HE HAS SAID YES! I can hardly believe it. Just wait till I tell Hattie!

It
was
a good party, but only because Matt was there. If he hadn’t come, it would have been the same as every year: a load of grown-ups and just me and Hattie, with a couple of younger kids plus Weedy Gonzalez and my cousin Tina. Tina’s OK, but she’s what I would call a bit of a dimbo, meaning that she giggles a lot about nothing, and squeaks and clasps her hands together, and even presses them to her bosom (what little there is of it). Weed is a boy in my class at school. His dad and my dad play golf together and are what is known as buddies. Poor old Weed! He is terrifically geeky and boring. I know he can’t help it, he is really quite nice and totally harmless, but just not anyone that I could fancy in a billion trillion years.

The best part of the evening was when we went in the pool. Me and Matt, that is. Tina and the Weed insisted on coming, too, but fortunately they can’t swim so they just pottered about at the shallow end and left us pretty well in peace. Simon said no thanks and Hattie
told me, in a whisper, that she had her period, which wasn’t strictly true as I knew for a fact that it had finished. Me and Hattie always know these things about each other. But I didn’t say anything as I didn’t want to embarrass her. She’d become very strange and oversensitive about herself just lately, and I guessed she didn’t want to be seen by Matt in her bathing costume, so I told her to keep Simon amused and that we would be back in a few minutes.

In fact we stayed in the pool – or at any rate, sitting on the side of it, dangling our legs – for almost an hour. Matt said he’d never been in an indoor pool before, not in someone’s actual house, so I explained how Dad was a builder and had got the place cheap and done it up.