That would be nice thank you she sighs It’s the least he can do isn’t it Mom says Wills My mother doesn’t reply Wills stares at her right in the eyes waiting for an answer then he pulls her arm around him and says I’m sorry Mom I didn’t mean to do it He begins to cry and so does she and I feel like joining in 4
Chapter Two My brother has ADD Mom says it stands for At tention Deficit Disorder I say it stands for Acts Dumb and Dumber which isn’t very clever but it tells it like it is and you try coming up with something better Wills is thirteen eighteen months older than me but sometimes he acts like he’s six years younger Sometimes he acts like he’s only two Less even Imagine throwing your food across the room when you’re thirteen You just wouldn’t would you Not unless you were so so so mad with someone that you threw it at them because you couldn’t help yourself but even then you probably wouldn’t because you’d be too worried that you’d get punished Wills 5
doesn’t care about getting punished He’s been punished so many times but it doesn’t make any difference at all Mom says it’s like water off a duck’s back because most of the time he doesn’t seem to notice it and if he does he just shakes it off I don’t think he actually likes getting into trouble but he can’t always stop himself so he ignores the consequences The worst thing is that Wills looks older than he is He’s nearly six feet tall and big too Not like the rest of us Mom’s five feet nothing and as thin as a goalpost Dad’s only five feet eight and shaped like a bowling pin and I’m only just taller than Mom Wills has a moustache already though he hates if anyone mentions it Mom says it shows up because he’s got dark hair Dad used to have dark hair too before it stopped growing which Dad says was because Wills sent it into shock My hair’s fair like Mom’s and curly too which is a pain because Wills teases me and calls me Curly Girly Anyway when Wills misbehaves which is often people tsk even more because they think he’s a sixteen-year-old behaving like a 6
two-year-old rather than a thirteen-year old be having like a two-year-old which is bad enough It doesn’t worry Wills though He just grins and tsks back Once in a supermarket he picked up a huge and I mean HUGE jar of pickled onions and held it up to Mom because he wanted her to buy it When she said no he dropped it I don’t know if he did it on purpose but it smashed to smithereens and pickled onions shot across the floor I wanted to die of embarrassment and Mom stood there in horror Wills thought it was hilarious He started kicking the onions under the shelves and shouting Goal even though Mom told him to stop Then he grabbed one and shouted Catch to me I missed and it hit an old woman SPLAT in the chest Everyone tsked and said it was disgraceful behavior for a boy of Wills’s age and that Mom should learn to control her children Wills just thought it was my fault because I was such a lousy catch He always blames me We can’t go to that supermarket anymore Even though Mom apologized they told her 7
