me this morning, the angry glare in his eyes before Ty came over. I couldn’t have planned that better if I’d tried. Cam was all pissy and wanted to talk to me about it and oh, sorry Cam, I can’t talk to you just now because a rock star beat you to it and is declaring how much he loves my work, and yeah that was his number he wrote on my arm, what about it ? I bit my lips together, trying not to grin, to keep it cool in front of everybody. Suck on that, Cam. Yeah, he must have seen the video. I looked out the front window again, trying not to let the hint of guilt that was whispering to me from the corners of my smug self-satisfaction cloud my mood.
Whatever. It was just a song. Not like I named names.
I couldn’t help it, a little smile crept onto my lips. I couldn’t wait for next Saturday.
When I got home after school, there was a dog barking in the backyard. I walked over to the fence and a shaggy head with long ears bounced up and disappeared again. Up and then he was gone. He was still here. I peered over the fence at the exact wrong time and the first thing I saw was his head hurtling through space toward me as he jumped again. His nose smashed into my forehead and I could tell he wasn’t expecting that, because he landed sprawled in a heap on his side, knocked off balance. I swore and rubbed my forehead, then headed for the front door. What was he still doing here?
“Helloooo?” I called, but no one was home. I threw myself onto the couch, picked up the remote and at the exact same moment that I pressed the power button, the front door slammed open and a hoard of eleven-year-old boys jumped me. Well, just one of them jumped me. My little sister came in as well, but she walked straight over to the toy box in the corner and ignored the fact that I was surrounded by boys and The Pest, who had literally launched himself onto me and started wrestling for the remote.
“Get off, you freak!” I yelled, smacking him on top of his head repeatedly with one hand, and holding the remote out of his reach with the other.
“Give me the remote!”
“No!”
“I need the TV!”
“Tough – I was here first!”
“Poppy, give it to me! We’ve gotta play!”
“Suck it up, little man!”
He sat back and glared at me. Like I was this huge annoyance. He clearly had it backwards. “Damien’s team are online right now ,” he said. “We have to beat them or we’ll never live it down ever .”
“I don’t care,” I said, glancing around me. His friends stood back, watching the fight. They wanted the TV, they wanted the remote and two of them were close enough to my outstretched hand to snatch it up if they’d really wanted to. But they must have been raised right and decided not to get involved in someone else’s fight. Good boys.
Oh hell. I growled and pushed Rory off me and he fell onto the carpet with a thud. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.” I tossed the remote at him, hoping it would hit him in the face, but unfortunately it didn’t. I ignored the other boys, said hello to Bex and walked over to the back door, looking out at the dog.
He sat on the step, watching me. He seemed calmer now, seemed like he might behave.
I put my hand on the door handle. “Are you going to be good?” I opened the door and he rushed inside, jumped in the air in front of me and licked my face. Urgh! Tail wagging in a circle behind him, he ran through the house to the boys and Bex, sniffing everyone.
“Hey, what’s Poo Bum still doing here?” Rory said.
“You can’t call him Poo Bum!”
“Why not?” he asked, booting up the Xbox. “It’s a good name for him, have you seen the size of those turds outside?”
I scrunched up my nose. Gross.
“What’s he still doing here?” he said again, hugging the dog around the neck. I faced away as it stuck its tongue out toward Rory’s face.
“I don’t know.” I went up to my room and after a little while the dog followed me and lay down on the carpet. I
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