Boys on the Brain Read online

  Boys on the Brain

  JEAN URE

  Illustrated by Karen Donnelly

  Copyright

  HarperCollins Children’s Books

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2001

  Text copyright © Jean Ure 2001

  Illustrations © Karen Donnelly 2001

  The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

  Source ISBN: 9780007113736

  Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007401628

  Version: 2016-12-12

  For Eleanor Warren,

  who writes wonderful letters

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Tuesday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Three years Later…

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  Also by The Author

  About the Publisher

  Tuesday

  (1st day of winterterm)

  Honestly! Mum is impossible. She is obsessed with boys. She has boys on the brain.

  First thing she says to me, over tea: “Guess who I travelled in with this morning? Brad Sullivan!”

  Not, “How was school?” or “Who’s your new class teacher?” or “What’s your timetable like?” but Brad Sullivan.

  “He’s turning into a really nice boy,” said Mum.

  I felt like saying, “Feel free! He’s all yours!” But Mum has such rotten taste in men she might just take me at my word. My mum and Brad Sullivan! I can just see it. And then, what about poor old Harry? He’d be out on his elbow.

  On the whole I do feel that Harry is a Good Thing. The first decent bloke she’s ever had. I wouldn’t want her ditching him. So I restrained my worst impulses and said, “Really?” in a polite but yawny sort of way, hoping that she would get the message. The message being that I do not want to hear about Brad Sullivan. Or about any other boy, come to that. I am sick of the whole subject!

  Instead, I tried talking about school. I said, “I’m so relieved! Me and Pilch are both in 9C.” I’ve been worried, just lately, that they might split us up. “We’re together for almost everything,” I said. “Oh, and we’ve got Mrs. Adey for English again!”

  “Have you!” said Mum. “That’s good!”

  To be fair to her, she did try to take an interest, but in the end temptation overcame her. As usual! The opposite sex just dra-a-a-aws Mum like a magnet.

  “Brad was telling me,” (she goes) “how he’s joined this new youth thing. They’re going to put on musicals.”

  Meaning, in Mumspeak, why don’t you join the youth thing? Join the youth thing and meet some boys!

  “They’re going to do a rock panto for Christmas,” chirrups Mum.

  “Wow,” says I.

  “They’re desperate for female voices!”

  Mum is so transparent.

  “You can sing,” she says. “Why don’t you try joining?”

  I said, “Because I have a voice like a corn-crake.”

  “No, you haven’t!” said Mum. “You’ve got quite a nice voice.”

  “Pilch is the one who can sing,” I said.

  Of course, she jumped on this immediately.

  “So you can both join!”

  “Mum!” I yelled. “I haven’t got time!”

  She’s always doing this to me. I wish she wouldn’t! I know she means well. I know she only has my interests at heart. What she considers to be my interests. But I wish she would just leave me alone!

  “You know what they say,” sighed Mum. “All work and no play…”

  I happen to like work. In any case, you have to study if you’re going to get anywhere. And I am going to get somewhere! I am absolutely determined.

  I said this to Mum and she said, “Oh, Cresta, you’re so focused!”

  I’m still trying to work out what she meant. Like, did she mean “I’m so lucky to have a 14-year-old daughter who thinks of something other than boys and clothes and make-up”? Or did she mean, “I wish I had a 14-year-old daughter that was a bit more like other people’s 14-year-old daughters”?

  I think that is what she meant. I think what she would really like is for me to be all dizzy and dumb. Well, maybe not dumb, exactly; but if we could have these cosy conversations about women’s magazine type stuff. A hundred different ways to do your hair, or how to get your man in six easy lessons. That kind of thing.

  I know I’m a disappointment to her, but I can only be how I am. And how I am is me. I wish Mum could accept that!

  Friday

  Harry the Hunk came round this evening and he and Mum went to the pub. Mum wanted to know what I was going to do. I said, “Oh, I’ll probably get on with my homework.”

  Harry said, “Homework on a Friday? You’re keen!”

  “Oh, she is,” said Mum. She said it kind of… wistfully.

  “I’ve got simply stacks,” I said.

  I haven’t, actually; it’s too early in the term. What it was, I’d had this thought about Carlito and I wanted to write it down to read to Pilch tomorrow. I have thoughts about Carlito almost every night! Sometimes I find it hard to remember that he is only a figment of my imagination and not a real person. I only hope I never have to have an anaesthetic as I dread to think what kind of stuff I might start splurging on about as I come round!!! How embarrassing! Some of the things that go on in my head…

  This latest thought, I am glad to say, is perfectly respectable. It came to me in bed, as thoughts so often do. (Bed is a good pla
ce for having thoughts.) It started with the discovery that Carlito cannot read or write, and just went on from there. This whole scene unrolled itself in my head. Pilch is bound to shriek “What?” And then when she has got over her shock she will instantly demand to know “Why?” and I will have no answer for her. I have no idea why! It is just something that happened.

  It is a bit weird, in a way, since I am sure that in real life I would find it extremely difficult to converse with someone that was unable to read or write. Whatever would we talk about??? I think what it is, I think it is the Heathcliff factor. Like last term when we were reading Wuthering Heights, Mrs Adey said that Heathcliff represented a “primitive force”. Carlito is a primitive force!

  Boys like Brad Sullivan simply pale into insignificance. This is something Mum couldn’t even begin to understand. The power of the imagination!

  What I pictured was this sultry scene in a Spanish night club, where Carlito has gone with a party of his friends. One of them, who is secretly jealous of Carlito’s smouldering good looks and the way he can have any girl he wants, tricks him into somehow revealing the fact that he cannot read. (Not yet sure how. I shall have to work this out!) The so-called friend, who is English and not very attractive, sneers in a superior way, thinking the rest of the party will also sneer and that the girls will no longer find him attractive, Carlito I mean, but of course they do.

  Carlito himself is not in the least bit abashed. As Harry would say, in his coarse earthy way, “He doesn’t give a monkey’s!” This is on account of his wild gypsy blood, being very proud and fiery. He simply tosses his head and snarls -

  I am not sure what he snarls! Something rude in Spanish. I wish I knew something rude in Spanish! All I can think of is “Tu madre!” which I read somewhere is swearing, though I don’t quite see how it can be since all it means is “your mother”. But it sounds good. In Spanish!

  At any rate it will have to do for now. Perhaps later I will think of something better.

  Saturday

  Mum and Harry came back from the pub last night with some friends they had met. They sat up for simply hours shrieking and talking and playing music very loudly, so that in the end I had to go downstairs and ask them if they would mind being a bit quiet as I was trying to sleep.

  “It is gone midnight,” I said.

  They seemed for some reason to think this was funny. But they did at least turn the music down.

  Went into town after lunch and met Pilch. We mooched round the shops, ending up in Paperback Parade where we each bought a book. I bought War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and Pilch bought Anna Karenina, also by Tolstoy. We have made a vow to read them! War and Peace has almost fifteen hundred pages. One thousand four hundred and eighty-five, to be precise. Gulp! But last term Mrs Adey said it was a great book, so I am sure it will be interesting.

  Bumped into Cindy Williams and Tasha Lansmann in the shopping centre. They were with boys. They are a bit like Mum: boys are all they ever think about. Cindy has put white stripes in her hair. She looks like a zebra crossing.

  Told Pilch about Mum trying to get me to join the youth thing, just because of Brad Sullivan, and Pilch said her mum is the same. I don’t see how she can be! Pilch’s mum isn’t man-mad. I said this to Pilch and she said, “No, but my sister is and in some ways that is even worse.”

  She said that Janine spends all her time, practically, in front of the mirror practising make-up and how to look flirty.

  “And she’s only twelve years old! It makes you feel like you’re abnormal, or something.”

  “It’s surely not abnormal,” I said, “to want to get somewhere?”

  I reminded Pilch of our pact that we made last term. Our sacred, solemn pact to foreswear the opposite sex until we have taken our A-levels and got to uni.

  “It’s the only way,” I said.

  Pilch sighed. She said, “Yes, I know.”

  “I mean, if we’re going to be brain surgeons -”

  I said this to cheer her up and bring a smile to her face. Becoming brain surgeons was what we always used to say when people asked us. We didn’t mean it literally. It was just, like, a symbol of our determination to go places. To get somewhere. To be someone. Probably, in my case, a great writer, or maybe a TV journalist. I still haven’t made up my mind. Neither has Pilch. Sometimes she thinks she’ll be an architect, building glass bubbles and upsetting Prince Charles, other times she thinks she’ll be an archaeologist, digging up lost civilisations. But anyway, something. We are not just going to be cogs! We are certainly not going to be like our mums.

  After shopping we went back to Pilch’s place and locked ourselves in her bedroom (away from her little brother) and read each other our latest episodes. My one about Carlito, Pilch’s about Alastair.

  Pilch’s was in-ter-min-able! She has now decided that Alastair’s parents are hugely noble and live in a castle somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland. She’s got this book all about clans and she’s written pages and pages describing in excruciating detail the tartans that people are wearing. She seems to think that men in kilts are sexy. She’s even got Alastair wearing one! Blue and green, the clan of Mackenzie. He keeps saying things like “Och ay the noo”, which I thought was a bit odd considering that last week she said he was speaking in “very cultured English”. She explained, however, that when he’s back home in the Highlands (or Heelands, as she calls them) he goes all Scottish and speaks “in a soft lilt”.

  Hm!

  I didn’t say anything, as it obviously turns her on.

  After Pilch had read her bit, I read mine about Carlito in the night club. Pilch kept going “What?” just as I’d known she would. I told her to shut up and listen. After all, I hadn’t gone “What?” about all that tartan stuff, and this was far more inspired! I’d pictured the whole scene. Carlito sitting there all smouldering and sultry and this pale geeky English type believing himself to be so-o-o-o superior and everyone thinking he’s just dross. I’d written how Carlito curls his lip and goes “Tu madre!” with the candlelight glinting in his jet black hair.

  All Pilch could think to say was, “What’s he going on about his mother for?”

  Honestly. I bet people didn’t ask Tolstoy things like that!

  I am writing this in the evening. Mum and Harry are downstairs watching telly. They asked me if I was going to stay and watch with them, but I said I’d got to make a start on War and Peace.

  “It’s nearly fifteen hundred pages,” I said.

  Harry then made one of his coarse earthy remarks which is totally unprintable. Four-letter words just spew out of that man! It is simply no use trying to impress him. Or Mum. I don’t know why I bother.

  Anyway, I don’t really think they’d want me there with them. They’re still at the stage of snogging on the sofa. I nearly caught them at it the other day. I swear I heard this slurping noise as they prised their lips apart. I cannot see the attraction! I could if it were Carlito. But that is another matter…

  Sunday

  Managed twenty pages of War and Peace last night. It is rather hard to get into, but I suppose that’s because it is a classic. Classics are not meant to be easy. Anyone could read them if they were.

  Harry the Hunk seems to have become a permanent weekend fixture. He stayed overnight on Friday and was still here this morning. And I don’t think he sleeps on the sofa. Mum used to pretend that he did. She used to make this big production out of lugging bedclothes downstairs and saying how inconvenient it was living in a two-bedroom terrace and not having a spare room. But I used to lie awake and hear the stairs creaking, so I’m sure it was just for show. Now he’s, like, here every weekend, all weekend, Friday night till Monday morning.

  I’m not sure how I feel about this. OK, I guess. I mean, if it makes Mum happy. She’s had lots of boyfriends over the years. Most of them have been dire; some of them have made her cry. And they’ve all regarded me as a definite impediment. Like, “Oh, that horrible spotty snot-nosed brat.”
/>   Harry just accepts me, like I am trying very hard to just accept him. It is not always easy, as I said to Pilch. It is all right for her, as she is used to living with a man, i.e. her dad. But when you are not accustomed to having a great hairy male about the place there are certain things that you have to try and remember. Like for instance you cannot just leave your underwear and stuff dripping over the bath. Well, I mean, you can. You could. It’s not like there are any rules about it. But then I would feel embarrassed, and it is the same with the loo. To think that you are sitting where a male bum has been sitting. Not that there is anything very much that you can do about it, unless you carry your own portable loo seat with you.

  Pilch giggles when I say this, but I am serious! It is a big intrusion into one’s life. However, I will accept it for Mum’s sake. She is obviously one of those women who needs a man to make her feel complete, and it is probably too late for her to change now.

  But just imagine! If she didn’t spend all that time snogging on the sofa she could be educating herself. She could be going to evening classes! She could be taking an OU course! She could be doing almost anything. And then instead of just being a bank clerk, she could be the actual manager!

  I did once suggest this to her, but she said, “I cannot think of anything more boring!”

  It is strange how different Mum and me are. I have this burning ambition, while Mum, it seems, is content with her lot. All she asks is a man in her life. And now she has one! So I must be happy for her and not worry about trivial things such as lavatory seats.

  Monday

  (2nd Week)

  Pilch rang last night. It was almost half-past eleven, so I thought it must be one of Mum’s friends. They are always ringing at these weird hours. They are a pretty weird bunch of people. Always shrieking and giggling. They don’t act their age at all. But Mum seems to think they are amusing.

  Anyway, it wasn’t one of Mum’s friends. Harry came back from the hall and said, “There’s a fish on the phone.”

 
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