Bindi Babes Read Online Free Page B

Auntie,” Geena said as we speeded up. “What are we going to do?”
    “Well, show her she's not wanted, for a start,” I said. “I mean, we do our own cooking, cleaning, washing—”
    “It might be nice to have someone else do it,” Jazz offered. Then backtracked quickly when she saw our faces. “Not Auntie, though.”
    “Amber!”
    Kim was scuttling down the street toward us. As usual, she was carrying her overstuffed rucksack, which bent her in two and made her look like a giant tortoise.
    “I thought we were getting the bus this morning,” she panted.
    “Sorry.” I'd forgotten about Kim. I did that quite a lot, without meaning to. “We've got problems.”
    “Oh.” Kim's face was always pale, but today she looked totally colorless. “Me too.”
    I tried not to look irritated. Kim's always got problems. She has a panic attack if she loses her pencil case.
    “No,
real
problems,” I said. Kim's face fell, but I ignored her. “Our auntie's coming over from India to live with us.”
    We all looked expectantly at Kim.
    “And?” Kim said, looking expectantly back at
us
.
    “That's it,” I said.
    “That's it?” Kim looked puzzled. Then she saw my face and finally got it. “Oh. That's terrible. Really, really terrible.”
    I sometimes wonder why I'm friends with Kim. She started hanging around with me in the Infants because I stopped George Botley from painting her face blue once, and she's hung around ever since. A bit like a piece of chewing gum stuck to your shoe.
    “Yes, it is,” I said. “She's going to interfere and boss us around. Like we're
really
going to put up with it.”
    “Is she awful?” Kim asked.
    Jazz and I looked at Geena. She was the only one of us who could possibly remember anything about Auntie's visit all those years ago.
    “Hmm.” Geena wrinkled up her nose. “She's sort of …
pretty
.”
    “
Pretty?
” Jazz and I shrieked. If Geena had said Auntie was a serial killer, we couldn't have been more shocked.
    “Wow,” said Kim. “That sounds bad.”
    I looked at her suspiciously, but let it go. Kim doesn't usually do sarcasm.
    “Sorry,” Geena apologized. “That's all I can remember.”
    It wasn't really much to go on.
    “I bet she'll interfere all the time,” I said. “She'll have too much makeup on, and she'll keep hugging us.”
    “Or pinch our cheeks,” Jazz added. Cheek-pinching is something our relatives love to do. It's embarrassing. Painful, too.
    “She'll be really strict and she won't let us go anywhere or do anything,” Geena grumbled. Dad was strict too, but he was never there so that was all right.
    We walked toward the lower-school playground. Someone had written I LOVE GEENA in blue chalk on the wall, and underneath, in yellow, was written I LOVE AMBER. To the side of that, someone had drawn a big pink heart, and chalked JAZZ 4 EVER inside it. There were some much ruder comments about us as well, but we hardly took any notice. We were used to theattention, good and bad, and we weren't stupid enough to think that everybody liked us. Two years ago, Geena had smacked a girl who called me a Paki on my first day.
    “I've got another present for you, Kim.” George Botley was on the watch for us, grinning all over his face. “Come and get it.”
    He held out his hand, which was curled tightly shut.
    “Keep away from me, Botley,” Kim sniffed, trying not to look petrified.
    “Oh, go on.” George winked. “You know you want to.”
    He unfurled his fingers. A large, fat snail sat wetly on his palm.
    “You pig, George Botley!” Kim howled, running behind me.
    “Give me that.” I took the snail, which retreated into its shell, and put it down carefully on the grass. “What a slimy, nasty, horrible thing.”
    “Snails aren't horrible,” George protested.
    “Who said I was talking about the snail?” I said, eyeballing him. George roared with laughter and sauntered off.
    “He fancies you,” Kim said gloomily. “That's why he keeps picking on