My Family and Other Freaks Read Online Free Page A

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    I roll the list into a scroll, tie it with a hair bobble and put it under my bed.
6 p.m.
    Gran comes around, fussing about her bowels again. “I’ve been lovely and regular and then Istayed one night at Sissy’s—just one night!—and my body clock’s all gone to pot again,” she’s saying to my mom in the kitchen. Why are old people like this? If we went on about our poo all day at school we’d get told off for being “crude” and “vulgar,” but once you’re past 70, it seems you can say what you like.
    â€œHow old are you, Gramma?” says Phoebe, who is for some reason painting her Barbie dolls’ eyes black and white, like Marilyn Manson’s.
    â€œI’m 79 years young, love,” says Gran, like always.
    â€œOh,” says Pheebs sweetly, “does that mean you’ll die soon?”
6:30 p.m.
    I know what will happen when I go down and say hello. “Hello, Danielle—have you done your packet?” she will ask. “Phoebe, Rick—have youdone your packets?” She means have we done a poo today. She always asks this, even when people are here from school and I have to pretend she’s talking about sending a parcel to an African charity or something. She really does need her head examining.
    Remember I need to put Clearasil on my blackheads.
7 p.m.
    That’s funny—Mom and Gran are still murmuring in low voices in the kitchen and Mom hasn’t even shouted up telling us not to be so rude and come down and say hello to our grandmother. I go into the kitchen. They stop talking immediately. “Oh, hello, Danielle,” says Gran absentmindedly. Not so much as a “how are you?” She didn’t even inquire after my packet! I am offended. Old people are so self-obsessed.
7:10 p.m.
    It’s meat-and-potato pie for tea, my absolute favorite, but I inform my mother that I am now vegetarian and that it’s about time she started considering the welfare of animals too.
    â€œAre you going to last more than two days this time?” she says.
    I explain that this is a life decision.
    â€œWell, you’ll have to make yourself a cheese sandwich then.”
    I hate cheese. I also hate vegetables. This is a problem. Maybe I will starve to death. Not that anyone will notice. But imagine how good that would look to Damian as my epitaph: “She loved animals so much, she perished.”
Sunday
    Mom decides we should all go to the park with Simon “as a family.” Rick lies that he’s got mocksto revise for so it’s just the four of us. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle when Simon ruins someone’s picnic by running through the middle of it and stealing the sausage rolls, but after we’ve calmed Mr. Angry Middle-Aged Man down it’s quite a nice day all in all. Mom is still being a bit weird and emotional, saying to me and Phoebe stuff like, “You’re both still my babies, you know. Don’t forget that!”
    Dad rubs her like she’s a distressed pony. Phoebe is outraged. “I’m not a baby!” she says. “I wipe myself.”
Monday
    Drag Amber to the drugstore with me after school. Have decided that in order to make Damian see sense and prefer me to Treasure I am going to have to change my look. I spend £3.99 on a mascara that promises “telescopic lashes to get you noticed!”
    â€œYou can’t wear it for school,” says Amber, always the goody two-shoes. “Mr. Cook [the principal] will just make you scrub it off.”
    â€œLook, if Treasure can get away with it, so can I,” I say. “Now I need some tanning lotion.” Amber says it might be toxic and that I have no idea what I’ll be putting on my skin and why don’t we go home and research it on the internet first?
    Honestly—what is she like? “Everyone uses it,” I say, and at least I’m not going on one of those sunbeds that give you