Fortune Cookie (3 page)

If I was in a wheelchair I'd be so frustrated I would probably scream and smash things. But Joey was such a bright, sunny little boy! He'd always just seemed to accept that there were certain things he couldn't do. Until I'd gone round the previous weekend I'd never known him to be grumpy. Cupcake had been riding
round the garden on Joey's tricycle singing her silly cupcake song, but for once he hadn't shown any interest. Usually he demanded that I do “the bird poo one”. I did offer. I said, “Come on! Let's do it together… you get on the bike and I'll push you, and we'll both sing.
Fudge keeps a-falling on my head
… ”

But he wouldn't. I grabbed his hand and tried to coax him, but he just snatched his hand away and shouted, “Don't wanna!” I was really upset. Now Cupcake was upsetting me as well!

I said, “Look, I'm just saying… if he had a dog he mightn't mind so much about—”

“What?” she said. “About what?”

“About…” I faltered. She'd sounded really fierce. I wasn't used to Cupcake sounding fierce. “Being in a wheelchair?” I whispered.

Cupcake's face had gone bright red. “Why don't you just shut up?” She hissed it at me. “You don't know what you're talking about!”

What had I done to deserve that? She was in a really
weird mood. I hated to quarrel with her, but you can't just let yourself be trampled on. I said, “OK, if that's the way you want it. Sorry I bothered.” And then I walked off, swishing my tennis racquet and leaving her there to sulk.

It was the first time me and Cupcake had ever seriously fallen out. And I still didn't know what it was I had done to upset her!

In school next day we didn't seem to be talking. Instead of sitting next to each other like we usually did, we both deliberately chose seats next to other people. Everybody noticed. At lunch time we even ended up at different tables. Livy said, “What's going on?”

I said, “Nothing. Why?”

“Just asking,” said Livy.

I gave her this stony glare, and she pulled a face and said, “Well, pardon me for breathing!” and began to talk to someone else.

Me and Cupcake caught each other's eye and quickly looked away again. I think we both felt a bit
foolish. And upset, too. I can always tell when Cupcake is upset. She droops, and sags, and goes very quiet. I tend to do the exact opposite. I get all busy and
LOUD
, and charge about yelling and making jokes in the hope that no one will notice. I did a
lot
of charging about and yelling that particular day. In art, I charged about so much I managed to upset the fruit and flower arrangement we were supposed to be painting and skidded halfway across the studio on a bunch of grapes. Mrs Rae, who is normally very relaxed, threatened to send me out if I didn't control myself.

“What's the matter with you, Danielle? You're completely hyperactive!”

Next day, it was like nothing had ever happened. Like both of us had decided the time had come to make up. We didn't actually
say
anything, but Cupcake came and sat next to me, same as usual, and asked me how I'd got on with the French translation we'd been given for homework. When I said that I hadn't got beyond the first few words, she said, “D'you want to
borrow mine?” and slid her book across the desk for me to look at. It was like a sort of peace offering. Like in her own way she was saying sorry for having been so mean and grouchy. It immediately made me feel that I wanted to say sorry, too, so I thanked her and promised “I won't actually
copy
.”

Cupcake said, “You can if you want. I don't mind.” Which was really generous of her, since she nearly always gets an A in French, whereas I am totally hopeless and usually get a big red D, plus rude comments along the lines of “
Danielle, I really would
appreciate it if you made a bit of an effort to stay awake
when I am teaching you
.” But anyway I didn't totally copy as it might have got us into trouble. I am used to being in trouble, but it wouldn't have been fair on Cupcake.

After that, we were back to normal. I still had this feeling that Cupcake was a bit down, but sometimes with her it is hard to tell as she is naturally a quiet sort of person. She's also quite secretive. I tend to blurt everything out, whereas Cupcake keeps things to
herself. Still, I didn't want to upset her again, so I did my best to pretend I hadn't noticed. I thought if I talked loudly enough it would act as a sort of cover and nobody else would notice, either, which I don't think they did. They are used to me being noisy and Cupcake being quiet.

Saturday morning I went round to her place, same as always. We liked to give Joey a bit of time before we went off to mooch round the shops or practise my tennis. He was really on form that morning! All bright and bubbly and wanting to do things. We took him into the garden and he insisted on trying to get on his tricycle without any help from me or Cupcake. Unfortunately he couldn't quite manage it, and toppled over on to the grass. We rushed to pick him up, but he pushed us away, going, “I can do it, I can do it!”

It is very difficult to just stand by and watch, but we knew we had to let him. He almost made it. Slowly he pulled himself back on to his feet, muttering, “Now I
fall
down
, now I get
up
. Now I fall
down
… now I get
up
!” And then, at last, he let us help him.

We both hugged him, which was something we wouldn't have dared do a week ago. He'd been so angry the previous Saturday he'd probably have punched us. Now he was all cheeky and grinning and demanding the bird poo song as we pulled him round the garden on his bike.

We played for about an hour, until it was time for Joey to rest. I said to Cupcake, “Let's go and see if Cookie's there!”

He was, but so was the old woman, so we didn't like to call to him. We just perched on our bucket and watched for a while as he pottered about the garden. His legs were still rubbery, and while he was digging in a bit of old earth, one of them suddenly gave way and he sat down with a thump, looking quite surprised. I immediately thought of Joey;
his
legs kept giving way. It was what had happened that morning, when he'd tried to get on his bike. Now I fall
down
, now I get
up
.

Impulsively, as we stepped off the bucket, I said, “Joey seems so much happier! D'you think he's getting better?”

Cupcake didn't say anything. She just frowned, and dug the tip of her trainer into a bit of soft earth at the bottom of the wall.

“I mean… he almost managed to get on his bike by himself!”

In this small, tight voice Cupcake said, “This time last year he
could
get on his bike by himself.”

“Well… y-yes. But he's better than he has been!”

“Last year,” said Cupcake, “he could still ride round the garden. When we first came here, he could still walk.”

I fell silent, chewing on my lip. I could remember Joey walking. He used to come with Mrs Costello to pick Cupcake up from school.

“He just gets worse all the time,” she cried. “He's not ever going to get better!”

And then she burst into tears and I didn't know
what to say. I felt that I should do something, like put my arms round her or something, but I just stood there, staring at the ground and twiddling my tennis racquet.

After a bit I managed to mumble that I was sorry.

“It's all right. It's not your fault.” Cupcake wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “You weren't to know.”

But I should have done! I'd watched Joey grow weaker and weaker and I'd never once asked any questions. I'd tried telling myself it was because of not liking to think about people being ill, but maybe it was simply because I was scared of what the answer might be. The truth is, I hadn't really wanted to know.

“I should have told you,” said Cupcake. She said that she had always known, right from the beginning. Her mum had never kept any secrets from her. “I'm sorry! It's just – ” the tears came welling up again – “I couldn't bring myself to talk about it!”

I pulled a crumpled tissue from my pocket and silently handed it to her. Then I patted her on the back a few times, like I'd seen people do in movies when
they were trying to comfort someone. I felt really ashamed of being so useless. I'm not usually so useless! If Cupcake had fallen off a cliff I would be the first one scrambling down to save her. If she were to fall into the canal I would dive straight in after her, never mind that I can't swim. If she got sucked into a bog I would tear off the branch of a nearby tree and push it out to her, and wouldn't let go no matter how close I came to being sucked in with her. But now, because she was crying, I couldn't think of a single thing to do except just stand helplessly by and watch.

After a while she dried her eyes and blew her nose and said again that she was sorry.

“Want to play some tennis?” I asked.

We played for a bit, but not for very long. It suddenly seemed kind of pointless, bashing tennis balls against a wall when Cupcake was so sad. We didn't go and look round the shops, either; I didn't even suggest it.

“Think I'll go home now,” said Cupcake.

She didn't ask me to go with her, but I understood.

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

Cupcake just nodded, and ran off.

 Mum was surprised to see me back so soon.

“I thought you were out there training for Wimbledon?”

It was her idea of a joke. Danielle training for Wimbledon, ha ha! Mum always treats my ambitions as a joke, it doesn't matter what they are. She thinks my
present ambition, to be a TV celeb, is the biggest joke ever. She says, “Surely celebs have to
do
something?”

I will do something! It's just I haven't yet decided what.

Rather sternly I said, “Cupcake had to go home.”

“Oh. Well! In that case, if you're at a loose end,” said Mum, “maybe you could entertain Rosie.”

I didn't want to entertain Rosie.

“I wish you would,” said Mum. “She's feeling a bit sorry for herself.”

Just because she had the sniffles. Not even a proper cold! And there was poor little Joey, stuck in a wheelchair and still managing to laugh.

“Go on,” said Mum. “Do something nice for once!”

I said, “I don't feel like it.”

“Why? What's wrong?”

“Cupcake said Joey isn't going to get any better!” I blurted out. “She said he's only going to get worse!”

“Oh.” Mum stopped what she was doing, which was chopping stuff for dinner. She wiped her hands on her
apron and held them out to me. “Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry!”

I used to have lots of cuddles with Mum when I was little, until Rosie came along. Not that I cared. I was too old for all that kind of stuff in any case. But just now and then, like when
she
isn't around, we have a bit of a secret snuggle. It can be quite a comfort.

“Is that why you're back early?” said Mum.

I nodded, with my head pressed into the bib of her apron, which smelt for some reason of oranges. Now I always think of oranges when I think of Joey. I expect I always will.

“It's not true, is it?” I whispered. “He won't just go on getting worse?”

Mum knows how much I love that little boy. She made me sit down with her at the kitchen table, and explained to me how Joey had this condition that made his muscles weak. She told me that what Cupcake had said was true: Joey wouldn't ever get any better. He would just slowly get worse. I cried, then, like Cupcake
had cried. I was still crying when Rosie came into the kitchen whining that she was bored. For once, Mum sent her packing.

“Not now, Rosie! I'm talking to your sister.”

She's not used to being spoken to like that. She went into this massive sulk and curled up on the sofa sucking her thumb like a stupid baby. Thankfully, Mum didn't suggest I might like to entertain her. Instead, she took a
£
5 note out of her purse and told me to “Go and buy something to cheer yourself up.”

It's the funny thing about my mum. She is one of those people who can either be totally unreasonable – like the time I accidentally set fire to my bedroom curtains and she started yelling and bawling and going completely raving berserk like I'd purposely run at them with a lighted match – or she can be, quite simply, THE BEST.

I immediately rushed down to the shops to find something for Joey. I spent ages dithering about like Cupcake, unable to decide whether to get him a
boy
thing, like an Action Man or a Star Wars figure, or a boy/girl thing, like a soft toy. I thought maybe a soft toy that he could cuddle. First I picked up a fluffy bunny, and then I picked up a woolly frog, and then I put the frog back and picked up a tiger. And then I put
that
back and picked up the frog again. I just couldn't make up my mind. I thought how awful it must be to be Cup, and to live like that the whole time. I was driving myself mad!

And then I saw it… a tiny little dog, like a miniature Cookie. It was only a few centimetres high, but it was brown and white with big, flappy ears, just like Cookie. It also cost
more than Mum had given me
, but I didn't mind. I still had my pocket money, which I'd probably only have spent on sweets.

When I got home, Rosie was full of her usual nauseating bounce.

“What have you got there?” she said.

I told her it was none of her business. “It's a present for someone far nicer than you!”

“I suppose it's for
Joey
,” she said.

I said, “Yes, cos he deserves it!”

“Just cos he's in a
wheel
chair.”

There are times when I really
would
like to hit her. If I believed in violence, which I don't. But sometimes you can just about be driven to it.

“I saw you crying earlier,” she said. “What were you crying about?”

I said, “I wasn't crying. You just shut up!”

She immediately started screeching. “I'll tell Mum you said that!”

At that point Mum came in and asked rather wearily what was going on.

“She told me to shut up!” screeched Rosie.

I said, “Yes, cos she was sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong!”

Later, Mum told me that I shouldn't be too hard on my dear little sister. She said, “Sometimes I think she feels a bit jealous.”

I said, “
Jealous
? What of?”

“The way you make it seem that you love Joey more than you love her,” said Mum. “I know he's a very sweet little boy, but Rosie is your sister!”

I was gobsmacked when Mum said that. If anyone was going to be jealous I'd have thought it should be me, considering how Mum always
always
took Rosie's side.

When Dad got back from football, happy cos for once his team had won, she hurled herself at him going, “Daddy, Daddy!” in this silly little voice that grown-ups seem to find cute. Dad said, “Hey! How's my little one?” and picked her up and tossed her about and started tickling her. Totally sick-making. “Feeling any better, Babyface?”

And then he remembered that he had another daughter, and turned to me and ruffled my hair and said, “And how about old Fudgekins here? No need to ask how she is. Tough as old boots, this one!”

You see what I mean? One of us is
spoilt
and
pampered
, the other is tough as old boots. Well, OK!
That suits me. I might have had a bit of a cry in the kitchen earlier on, but it wasn't the sort of thing I do every day. When Dad came up to me later and put his arm round me, he said, “Sorry, Fudgekins! Mum told me you've been a bit upset.” I just shook my head and muttered, “I'm all right.”

“About Joey… ” Dad sat down next to me on the sofa and tried to pull me close, but I made myself go stiff, like a board.
I did not want to cry
. Crying makes your head ache. It also makes your eyes go red. I didn't want Rosie to see me like that.

“Fudgekins? I know it's unfair,” said Dad, “especially when he's hardly any older than Rosie, but it's a sad fact of life that these things happen. At least he has a mum and a sister who love him, which lots of kids don't have.”

My eyes were starting to prick. I wished Dad would just go away!

“You love him, too, don't you?” said Dad. “See, in some ways he's a very lucky little boy.”

I thought,
Dad, how can you say that
? I swallowed very hard. Any minute now, I'd be in floods of tears.

That was when Rosie came prancing in.
Again
. But for once I was actually glad to see her. I immediately jumped up, going, “I just remembered! I've got homework to do!” and rushed down the passage to my bedroom.

I did actually do some homework. It was only boring geography, but at least it took my mind off things.

Next day, I whizzed round to give Joey his present.

“See? Look! A tiny little Cookie!”

His face lit up and he stretched his hands out eagerly. His mum said, “Joey! What do you say?”

He obediently told me “A big
THANK YOU
!”

“And give Dani a kiss?”

“Give Dani a
BIG
kiss!”

And he did, too, reaching out with both arms and hooking them round my neck.

“Thank you, thank you!”

It seems very odd to me, that a little boy who has so many problems should be so easy to please, while Rosie does nothing but whinge and complain.
She
wouldn't be content with anything less than the latest mobile phone or a flat-screen telly. She actually asked Mum the other day if she could have an ipod for her birthday. “For when I'm seven.” What does
she
want with an ipod??? I don't expect Joey even knows what an ipod is. Unlike Rosie, who thinks she's just
so
smart and
so
sophisticated, Joey is still just a little boy. Rosie likes to pretend she's six-going-on-sixteen, but Joey is more like an innocent five-year-old. It's not that he's slow, just that he's never had a chance to get streetwise. That's all.

Anyway, we went into the garden, same as usual, and Joey insisted on taking Cookie for a ride on his bike. Cupcake said, “Why don't we make a collar and lead for him? Then you could ride and he could walk.”

Joey liked that.

“I'll go and do it,” said Cupcake.

It was while she was indoors, making the collar and lead, that I had my bright idea: we could take Joey to see the
real
Cookie. I suggested it to Cupcake, and she said, “Oh! Yes. He'd love that!” We had to check first with Mrs Costello that it would be OK. Naturally, we didn't tell her about climbing over the wall to get tennis balls back, we just said there was this adorable little puppy that looked like Cookie. Mrs Costello said all right, so long as we were back by midday, and we set off triumphantly with Joey in his wheelchair, still clutching his new toy.

“We're going to see a real Cookie,” I told him.

Well! I really do think it was one of the very best ideas I've ever had. I think Cupcake would agree with me. She doesn't always approve of my ideas as sometimes in the past they have got us into trouble, like when I decided to give us both a fake tattoo and our arms swelled up and we had to have antibiotics. Our mums were quite cross, and so was Cupcake, as antibiotics make her tummy go funny. But even she said
that watching Cookie chasing round the garden was the best treat Joey had had since coming to see me in our school play at Christmas. He was, like,
transfixed
. We stood him up on the seat of his wheelchair, with me on one side and Cupcake on the other, supporting him. I was on the bucket, and Cupcake was on an old car tyre we'd lugged over. It wasn't as high as the bucket, but she's taller than me so she could still see OK.

We couldn't call out to Cookie that day as the old woman was out there, sitting at a table drinking coffee. Cookie was doing his usual doggy stuff, digging up bits of garden, tugging at plants, chewing at what looked like one of our tennis balls. Joey got really excited. He kept squealing, and holding up his new toy going, “Cookie! Cookie!” We had to shush him in case the old woman came crosspatching up the garden and told us off. By the time we took him home he was obviously exhausted, cos of standing for so long, but he was still talking excitedly about Cookie.

Mrs Costello said, “Well, I can see you've had a good time!”

After that, of course, he wanted to come with us every day. What with wheeling him there, then wheeling him back, it meant I wasn't getting as much tennis practice as I should have done, but I was already beginning to wonder if perhaps I wasn't really cut out for life as an international tennis star, so I didn't really mind. In any case, making a little boy happy was far more important.

One day, when we were watching Cookie dig a hole at the foot of a prickly shrub, we saw his back leg give way again so that he sat down, with a flump, on his bottom. Joey chuckled happily. He said that Cookie was like him.

“Now he fall
down
, now he get
up
.”

Another day, he was chasing to and fro in the middle of the garden, tossing something small and bright and shiny into the air and catching it again. Last time he had done that, the old woman had come running out in a
rage and whacked him. This time, she obviously hadn't noticed.

“Serves her right,” said Cupcake.

And then it happened: our
second
step towards a life of crime. It was Saturday morning, just one week after Cupcake had told me about Joey and I had gone home and cried all over Mum. We'd got Joey standing on the seat of his wheelchair, and we'd scrambled up beside him, but the garden was empty. No sign of Cookie.

“Looks like he's indoors,” I said. “Want to go for a walk round the park, instead?”

“You can see lots of dogs there,” said Cupcake.

But Joey fiercely shook his head and said
no
. “Wanna see Cookie!”

It got kind of boring, just standing there, staring at nothing. I was about to suggest the park again when the back door was suddenly flung open and Cookie came hurtling through the air, straight into the side of a big stone flower tub,
wham
. We heard the old woman's
voice screaming after him: “You get out there and you stay out there!” With that, she slammed the door shut.