One More Little Problem by Vanessa Curtis Read Free Book Online

Marilyn Manson T-shirt and black combats with silver safety pins all up the sides, matching the one hanging through her eyebrow.
    ‘All right,’ says Caro. ‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Fran, right?’
    Fran wriggles on her chair and nods.
    ‘How did you know?’ she says.
    Caro laughs. It is not a friendly sound.
    ‘OCD here told me all about you,’ she says.
    ‘It wasn’t all my fault,’ Fran is saying to Caro. ‘Zelah was getting a bit much to handle with her rituals.’
    Caro raises one pierced eyebrow, sits downopposite Fran and gives her a long, hard stare.
    ‘That so?’ she says.
    Uh-oh. I recognise the signs of a major Caro temper-fest about to strike.
    ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s talk about something else. Anyone like some cake?’ There’s none of my lemon cake left but I’m desperate to avert the impending hurricane.
    ‘Sod the sodding cake,’ says Caro, turning to Fran. ‘Let me tell you something, little girl.’
    Fran makes an indignant little-girl squeal of protest. She’s only one year younger than Caro but she does look a lot more innocent when you compare her pink dress, neat brown plaits and shoes with little flowers to Caro’s big black baggy outfit.
    ‘Anybody who upsets my best mate OCD here,’ and Caro tilts her blonde head towards me with a sharp gesture, ‘has me to reckon with. OK?’
    Fran turns pale and then flushes pink.
    This is a total nightmare. And since when did Caro become my best friend? ‘That’s enough,’ I say. The iron in my voice takes us all by surprise. ‘Leave Fran alone. She’s come to help me with something.’
    ‘Oh, have I?’ mutters Fran. ‘That’s news to me. I haven’t actually agreed to do anything yet.’
    She looks at my gritted teeth and hands-on-hips posture and shuts up.
    ‘I’ll give you my blue sparkly earrings,’ I say. Fran always used to stare at them with longing when she thought I wasn’t looking.
    ‘Done,’ says Fran.
    ‘Yeah, excuse me interrupting your business transactions but I’ll have that cake now,’ says Caro. She manages to make it sound as if she’s doing me a massive favour by suggesting this.
    Oh great. I’m going to have to demonstrate some more OCD weirdness now.
    I scrabble around the bottom of the cake tin with my rubber gloves to avoid contamination by old sponge and find an ancient Battenberg. I cut two slices for Fran and Caro (I don’t do out-of-date cake – major
Germ Alert
) and we sit in silence.
    The girls make a great play of separating the pink and yellow squares and peeling off long sticky strips of marzipan. It’s like watching a children’s television presenter trying to make something, except without the happy smiles and silly music.
    I check my watch. We’ve already wasted loads of time arguing so I take Fran upstairs and leave Caro smoking and casting the evil eye at Fran’s neat departing bottom in its flowery dress.
    Fran struts out of the kitchen with her nose stuck in the air.
    *
    Fran waits for me while I do my jumps on the stairs.
    I can see her biting her tongue and trying to be patient.
    It’s all a bit awkward.
    And sad.
    We used to chat away without pausing for breath in the back of the biology lesson, collecting detentions like Smarties. When we weren’t chatting we were texting and when we weren’t texting we were either on the phone every evening catching up on gossip or emailing each other in the dead of night.
    How can five years of chatting turn into this awkward moment of tension on the staircase?
    But that’s what’s happened.
    She follows me into my bedroom, glancing around at the gleaming white walls and bleached-white pillowcases, sniffing the sterilised air.
    ‘Still got the OCD, then?’ is all she says, but it’s enough.
    I flush and look down at my silver flip-flops.
    ‘Never mind that,’ I say. ‘I need your advice please. I’ve got this email from a boy and I don’t know whether to reply to it or not.’
    Fran gives me a look of