My Family and Other Freaks Read Online Free

kidding—right? I’m blessed to sleep next to the Stink Pit?
    I tell my mother that she is seriously misinformed. For a start, Treasure’s dad is loaded and spends tons of money on her because he’s always away working, PLUS her mother’s given her a Topshop account card. She goes on three foreign holidays a year and doesn’t come home from school to find that her little sister has made a hammock for Deirdre out of her best bra. Find me the bad bits in that, I challenge you. And what did we get? Two weeks in Gran’s camper in Wales where it rained for ten days without stopping and the showers had other people’s front-bottom hairs in them.
    â€œYou’ve got a lot to learn about life,” says Mom. Er, well, she’s got a lot to learn about what makes children happy.
    After school, Amber brings over the homework I missed. “You got B minus for your essay about the Romans,” she says, lookingdisappointed for me. B minus? This is a personal best!
    â€œDid anyone talk about me today?” I ask.
    â€œNo, they were all gossiping about Natasha Marshall cos she had a love bite on her neck,” says Amber.
Saturday
10 a.m.
    Am looking at my nose sideways in the mirror to see if it has grown any bigger. I think it has. Great. How long until they start calling me “Beaky” and buying me Trill?
    I’ve had a thought. Maybe I’ve imagined that Damian fancies Treasure. Maybe he’s just being polite. Yes, yes, because he was nice to me too that day. Before, erm … the Poo Incident, which from here on will be known as the PI. My imagination has been getting carried away with itself again.
    I make a list of 12 Solemn Vows, ways that I promise to be better if only God will make Damian like me instead of her … (yes, I know it’s usually ten on these occasions, but I have a lot to atone for).
    My Pact with God
    1. I will go to church every Sunday (except when I’m on holiday, and when it’s raining and I might catch a cold and when I actually have a cold. Oh, and when I’m having a sleepover at a friend’s house, because I don’t want them to think I’m some weird Jesus freak if I get up on Sunday morning and say, “No, I don’t want to go on Facebook with you and eat chocolate muffins. I’m off to listen to Father Michael talk about fish and loaves and stuff.”).
    2. I will never again hide the TV remote from my dad when he wants to watch the news so I can carry on watching
Hollyoaks
.
    3. I will never again swap my packed lunch withKieran Campbell for two tubes of Mega Dust sherbet and a packet of Monster Munch and then tell my mother I had a nutritious meal.
    4. I will definitely never eat meat again and I mean it this time. Amber says the world would be saved if we all stopped stuffing ourselves with cows and pigs. Not that it stops her.
    5. I will not do Deirdre Disco Ball ever again. Nor will I let Phoebe dress Simon up in her old bonnets and skirts or give him a makeover with Mom’s best eye shadow and lipstick.
    6. I will do my homework on time and only copy off Amber when it’s science or math. Or geography. And sometimes German, when it’s the grammar bit.
    7. I will not tell Rick’s friends again that he watches
Sleeping Beauty
with Phoebe and sometimes pretends to be the handsome prince riding by.
    8. I will not tell my mother I hate her becauseshe failed to wash my Daisy Duck top in time for the youth-club disco (although I wish to clarify that there really was no excuse).
    9. I will help old ladies across the road and not get impatient when they don’t move fast enough.
    10. I will not complain that my nose is big because, hey, everyone’s special in God’s eyes.
    11. I will not laugh when Andrew Slater calls Miss Jeffer, our PE teacher, Jeffer the Heifer just because she’s what my gran would call “well built.”
    12. I, erm, will think of another one later