Hunky Dory by Jean Ure Page B

s’pposed to be coming and helping me dig.”
    â€œYeah. That’s right! I could’ve. Dunno why I didn’t, really. ‘Cept…well! Fact is—” He swallowed again. Isaw his Adam’s apple almost bounce right out of his throat. “I’m sort of, like, kind of going out with her!”
    What??? There’s this long silence. I’m in a state of shock. Totally gobsmacked.
    â€œSee, what it is—”
    Aaron? My best mate? Going out with a girl ?
    â€œWhat it is—”
    Aaron, holding hands ?
    â€œI’m in training!” he says.
    I still can’t get my head round it.
    â€œTraining to be a giggle-o!”
    I pull myself together and say, “What’s a giggle-o?” I’ve never heard of a giggle-o. Aaron says it’s a man that’s looked after by an older woman. I think about it.
    â€œYou mean, like a mum?”
    He says no, like a girlfriend. “‘Cept older. They keep you, so’s you don’t have to bother going out to work. I read about it in this magazine at the dentist. Reckoned it sounded like a good idea. I mean, just staying at home watching telly or playing on the computer. You know?”He looked at me, hopefully. “Gotta be better than dragging off out to some boring office every day. Just gotta find the right girl.”
    I say, “A girl that’s older.”
    â€œYeah, yeah! They’ve gotta be older.”
    I point out that Sophy Timms is the same age as we are.
    â€œNah!” Aaron shakes his head, excitedly. “She’s twelve already!”
    I say, “That counts as older ?”
    â€œWell, a few months,” says Aaron. “Gotta start somewhere! Like I said, I’m in training. But it’s all right, I don’t have to train every day. I’ll see if I can take a bit of time off, come round and do some digging for you.”
    I find this all very disturbing. Why can’t things just stay the same as they’ve always been? Life is suddenly full of worrying complications. I can’t believe that Aaron would desert me and the Herb for Sophy Timms! But it’s not just Aaron, it’s life in general. It’s girls in particular.
Thursday
    Sheri Stringer came up to me today. (She’s the one with all the hair. It’s quite frightening, it springs about allover her head like forked lightning. Some kind of secret weapon…get spiked by the hair and psszzzz!
    Fried to a crisp.) Anyway, she kind of sidles up to me when I’m all by myself in the corridor and says, “Hi, Dory!” I go, “Yeah, hi.”
    She asks what class I’m going to, and I say maths, to which she says, “Yuck!” I say that I actually don’t mind maths, what class has she got? She says she’s got PE, so now it’s me going yuck. But I’m hoping she’ll peel off towards the sports hall and leave me alone, cos I don’t like the way she’s doing that flappy thing with her eyelashes. Flip, flap. How do they do that?
    We pass the turn off for the sports hall. I stop and say, “I thought you had PE?”
    She says, “Yes. It’s so gruesome! Do you like the Voice of Man?”
    For a minute I can’t think what she’s talking about, and then I remember it’s this band that Will likes and the Microdot doesn’t cos she says it’s sexist. Anything with the word man in it is sexist, according to the Microdot. She tries to have arguments with Will about it, but he’s too mature to have arguments with a ten year old. I wish I could be that mature!
    Sheri’s still waiting for an answer, so I just kind of mumble at her.
    â€œI’ve got their latest album,” she says. “Wanna come round some time and hear it?”
    I say no, that’s OK, my brother’s a fan, he’s bound to have it.
    â€œIt’d sound better at my place,” she says.
    Why? Why does she say that? It would sound exactly