Miss Understood by James Roy Page A

I know. Five stars?’
    ‘Yes, Marty, five stars. I gave it five stars. How about you?’
    He stared at the plate, then at Mum, then at me, back at the plate, kind of bunched up his eyebrows a bit, and then said, ‘Four and a half stars from me.’
    ‘Marty!’ Mum snapped, and I looked in her direction just in time to catch her giving him this huge scowl.
    ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘five stars. It’s a five-star meal. It’s great. Thanks, Lizzie.’
    ‘Marty!’
    ‘What?’
    That was when Mum pushed back her chair, picked up Dad’s plate, and took it out into the kitchen.
    ‘Hey!’ Dad said, first looking all blinky and surprised, then standing up and going after her. ‘What are you doing? I was eating that!’
    I heard them arguing quietly for a while, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, since they were arguing in voices only a bit louder than whispers. But a little later Mum came back into the dining room and lifted Richie out of his highchair, bent down and kissed me on the top of the head and said, ‘Thanks for a delicious dinner, Lizzie.’ Then she went.
    Dad had followed her back from the kitchen, and with a deep sigh, he sat down at the table once more. He scooped up a huge forkful of salad straight from the serving bowl and stuffed it into his mouth. ‘Mmm, great stuff, Betty,’ he said.
    ‘Do you like it?’ I asked.
    ‘Yeah, it’s very tasty. Thanks.’
    ‘Mum didn’t very like it, did she?’ I said.
    ‘Why would you say that?’
    ‘She left most of hers behind,’ I replied.
    Later, when I was in bed and about to turn off the light, Mum knocked quietly on my door and came in. She sat on my bed and rested the palm of one hand on the side of my face. Her skin was cool against my cheek. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked me.
    ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t I be okay?’
    ‘Dinner.’
    ‘Are you sick?’ I asked, feeling my stomach go droppy. ‘The bacon was out of date, wasn’t it?’
    Mum frowned for a second. ‘No, it was fine. It was good. I’m talking about the way . . .’ She stopped. ‘Lizzie, your dad feels bad.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘You know he appreciated it, right?’
    ‘Yeah, of course,’ I said.
    But I was almost telling a lie.

CHAPTER 10
    I t was early the following afternoon, and I was working on some maths questions when I heard Dad go into the garage. That didn’t mean much – he goes into the garage for all sorts of things, like to fix stuff, or to find nails to bang into the walls to hang pictures on, or to drive our car (although he doesn’t really drive the car in the garage, but into and out of it).
    Most of the time, when Dad goes into the garage he doesn’t scream, and he doesn’t yell. But this time he did both. First there was a huge crash, then another smaller crash, then a scream, then a yell which included a whole heap of new words that I didn’t know.
    A minute later I heard Dad slam the door that leads from our entryway into the garage. Then he walked into the dining room where I was working, and he just stood there.
    I stopped doing my maths and looked up at him. He was staring at me, with his hands on his hips and a cranky expression on his face.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, since I’m not very good at reading people’s minds.
    ‘Where’s your mum?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said, because I didn’t. ‘Playing with Richie probably, or maybe changing his nappy. He was really smelly a minute ago.’
    ‘Hmm,’ Dad grunted. ‘Well, when she comes back, can you tell her that I’ve gone to the hardware shop?’
    ‘Why?’ I asked.
    ‘Because the whipper snipper keeps falling on my head,’ he answered. ‘Therefore I’ve decided that hooks are in order.’
    ‘What do you mean, “hooks are in order”? Like, little ones at one end, bigger ones at the other?’
    Dad made his eyes all squinty. I think he was trying to work out if I was joking. I wasn’t – I really didn’t know what he meant, mainly because he wasn’t