I’d also say Holly is probably the smartest out of all of us. Top of the class in science. I think she even knows more than the teacher. I don’t know any other kid who can use a soldering iron. She used it to repair the AV Club printer. Her dad, Timothy Tate (‘Please, Spike, call me Tim’), is an inventor. Just not a very successful one. All around their house are empty bits of circuit boards and the wiry guts of computers. In the shed, it’s like a graveyard of his failed inventions.
Personally, I liked his singing kettle that stopped singing when it was boiled. Sadly, it only ‘sang’ one song so people got fed up with it and it was voted Most Irritating Product of the Year. This was made worse by the fact that the number-two place on the list was taken by another of his ideas, a pillow that cut your hair as you slept. This ended up on the teatime news, with buyers of the Pillow Barber complaining that not only were random bits of their hair missing, but also bits of their ears too. Two hundred Pillow Barbers now rest in pieces in the shed under a blanket, as if hiding their shame from the world.
As I’ve already said, me, Holly and Artie are the only members of the AV Club. None of us will ever be one of the cool kids at school. Life has just decided it. I’m not saying we aren’t all great kids (as my mum is always telling me), but being ‘cool’ is like being an A-list star in those celebrity magazines. These A-listers may not be the smartest or even the prettiest, but they are the chosen ones and they get to walk on the red carpet.
Holly always says, ‘Who cares? We’re not one of the pinheads. Good.’
I’m not so sure. Sometimes I quite fancy a walk on the red carpet. I’d secretly hoped the radio show might bump me up a few letters in the celebrity alphabet to at least the O-list or the M-list. This would mean the girl of my dreams who I was going to marry, Katherine Hamilton, would not only talk to me, but not mind being seen talking to me. She’s red carpet. I’m the kind of carpet your nan and grandad have that looks like someone’s been sick on it every day for the last fifty years.
Artie, Holly and me go way back. Our mums have been friends since they met in birthing class. They bonded instantly over a love of gossip, fixing other people’s lives and elasticated maternity pants. The three of them are a powerful union. The league of mums.
Anyway, back to the story unfolding in Artie’s room.
‘I’ve been sacked from my show,’ I said to Holly.
‘Well, proves what an idiot that programme controller is,’ she said. ‘That’s why he isn’t working in a proper radio job. Running his fake station. Loser.’
‘Um. Yeah,’ I said.
‘Doesn’t mean you’re not a great radio presenter,’ continued Holly. Her head jutted forward to really drive the point home.
The three of us chatted it over before I had to ask one final question.
‘Please be honest: do you want me to resign?’ I said.
‘From what?’ said Artie.
‘The AV Club. I’ve been fired from an unpaid radio job. I’ve brought shame on you both.’
Holly rolled her eyes. ‘Spike. If you quit, then you’re not my friend any more. Only losers quit. I’ll kick your backside if you do and put you on your mum’s ward.’
‘But radio’s my thing,’ I said. ‘The only thing I want to do. The only thing I’m good at. What am I meant to do now?’
‘Well …’ said Artie. ‘We’ve been promised a school radio station for ages. Why don’t we ask again about it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Holly. ‘No more being fobbed off. We’ll show them the petition again. And you can present. You’ll be back on the radio in no time. I mean, no one else in the school has your experience, do they? I’ll make a list of action points.’
Holly is super-organised and loves making lists.
That’s what friends do. Lift you up when you’re down. And offer you out-of-date cakes.
The wafting aroma of pony poo told me I was nearly back home at 27 Crow Crescent.
Dad’s car would be caked in the stuff after taking my sister to some awful pony gymkhana. For those of you lucky enough not to know what a gymkhana is, it’s like a strange kind of sports day for ponies. All watched and cheered on by people with names like Tamara and Fenella.
One day last summer I was made to go to one of these events and help out. Worst day of my life. I was forced to wear a high-visibility jacket that would have been too big for a giant, and run the car park. It got even worse when Katherine Hamilton, the girl of my dreams, turned up with her mum. No girl is impressed by anyone in an oversized high-vis jacket. I couldn’t hear them laughing in their car, but I could guess they were, just from the small clues. Like the finger pointing at me, and them being doubled over in hysterical laughter.
My sister’s pony is called Mr Toffee. Mr Waste of Money would be more accurate. This super-sized pet gets better shoes than me. If you look up the word ‘pony’ in the dictionary, it should say ‘angry, pooing motorbike’. Why would any sane human want to sit on an animal that can go crazy and run off at any moment? They are huge beasts, yet will head for the hills at top speed at the mere sight of a packet of crisps. Sometimes they just decide to throw you up in the air and break your bones for the pure fun of it.
I could see Dad out the front of our house de-pooing his car. My sister was nowhere to be seen of course. Probably counting her new rosettes and making space for them on her bedroom wall. Dad’s car is not a BMW like Artie’s dad’s. We had to sell our decent family car for a second-hand one to fund Mr Toffee’s stable fees. So now we travel around in an estate car from the olden days all so Mr Toffee can sleep in luxurious five-star accommodation – with en suite hay. I’m talking wind-down car windows. It’s the colour of sick. Dad says it’s ‘golden sunrise’, but, trust me, the only way you’d ever see a sunrise this colour is if the world was ending and the sun was throwing up into the sea.
Whenever Dad picks me up from school, I ask him to park a few streets away so no one can see him. Often he will think it’s ‘hilarious’ to wait for me right outside the school gates, playing nursery rhymes at full volume and yelling at me, ‘Got your favourites on, Spike!’ Dad’s very funny. To himself.
I think he does all of this because his job is sooooo boring. He’s the manager of the local supermarket, but he used to be cool once, a very long time ago. He was a drummer in a band and that’s how Mum met him. Mum makes us all feel a little bit sick when she starts telling ‘our story’.
‘Your dad was in the coolest band in town; everyone was talking about them being the next big thing. One night after a show I invited myself backstage and we kissed.’
I’ve seen photos (no videos as they hadn’t been invented back then; I think people drew on cave walls) and maybe it was a different time, but you don’t see many famous bands these days with all the members wearing eyepatches.
‘We were called the Pirates you see, son. That was our gimmick. If you liked a girl in the crowd, you lifted up your eyepatch, like I did when I spotted your mum,’ Dad would confide, creepily.
It turns out they weren’t the next