Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Storms

mostly Sunny

with a chance of storms

Also by Marion Roberts
Sunny Side Up

with a chance of storms

marion roberts

To Susannah Chambers – best and trusty editor,
despite being an avid objector to the word
iota.

First published in 2009
Copyright © Marion Roberts

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act
1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax:     (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
Web:
www.allenandunwin.com

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Roberts, Marion, 1966-
Mostly sunny with a chance of storms
978 1 74175 859 7
A823.4

Cover and text design by Design by Committee
Cover illustration by Ali Durham
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

I was fresh
back at Mum’s place after spending the weekend with Dad and Steph and my new baby half-sister, Flora. True to form, Mum had me doing chores within the first five minutes. I’d hardly even said hello to Willow before I found myself bundling the washing off the line because it looked as if it was about to bucket down.

Would you believe Mum chose the moment right when I had my arms full of half-dry socks and undies, to tell me the biggest piece of news since I found out Flora had been born.

‘Sunny,’ Mum said, bunching a sheet into the laundry basket. ‘I’ve got some exciting news. At least, I hope you’ll think it’s exciting.’

‘You’re not having a baby are you, Mum? Because lately
that’s what people have meant when they’ve said they have exciting news.’

Mum laughed and looked a little embarrassed. ‘Ah, no, sweetheart.’

‘Disneyland?’

‘Not quite.’

‘What then?’

Mum unpegged the last of the washing, and I heaped my pile onto the top of the basket.

‘Well, you know how you just loved your grandmother’s big old house?’

‘Yep.’

‘How would you feel about moving there? All of us. Granny Carmelene’s house is ours now. She left it to me in her will.’

Mum looked dead excited, and I guess she thought that I’d be excited too. And maybe I should have been. I mean, it’s not every day your family finds out they’ve inherited their very own big old white-and-black mansion. But to be honest, I found the idea about as exciting as a wet sock, and I guess it showed on my face.

‘I thought you’d be thrilled, Sunny,’ said Mum. ‘You love that old house.’

‘I
loved
the house because it was Granny Carmelene’s. When she was
alive
! I can’t imagine living there
now.
It’d be sad.’

‘There’s always the option to sell it, Sunny, but—’

‘That’d be even
sadder
! What if dodgy developers bought it and turned it into fifty apartments? Granny Carmelene would—’

Just then, Willow came hurtling out the back door and raced at full greyhound-speed around the side of the house to the front gate. She must have heard it clicking open with her supersonic hearing.

‘Aaaagh!’ came Saskia’s voice. ‘No jumping, Willow! Down!
S-u-u-u-n-n-y
!’

‘I think she might need rescuing,’ said Mum, picking up the laundry basket. ‘I’ll take this lot inside. We’ll talk more later.’

‘Willow!’ I called. ‘
Come, Willow!
’ Within moments she was circling me frantically, doing laughing-hyena laps of the clothesline, looking over her shoulder the whole time, hoping I would chase her. I stood up tall and clicked my fingers.

‘Willow,
sit
!’ I said in my best obedience-school voice. But she must have heard the gate clink open again because instead of sitting she streaked back to the front of the house. It was Lyall coming home, and by the sound of his voice he was finding Willow’s welcoming ceremony a little less distressing than Saskia had.

‘That dog needs help,’ said Saskia, wiping the side of her face with her scarf. ‘She tried to bite my earlobe.’

Willow finally came trotting back, puffing like anything. with a look on her face that said,
Oh, sorry, Sunny, you asked me to sit, didn’t you? I knew I’d forgotten something.

I made the ‘sit’ hand signal again (because apparently they work better on dogs than words do), and Willow sat up tall at my feet and said,
I’m a good girl, really, Sunny, most of the time.
Just to be sure, I held her by the collar.

‘Hey, Sunny, you’re back,’ said Lyall, dumping his bag. ‘Did you hear the news?’

‘
Shoosh, Lyall,
’ urged Saskia through clenched teeth. ‘Dad said not to say anything yet.’

‘News about what?’ I asked.

‘About how we’re going to be moving into your Grandmother’s old place.’

‘Lyall-luh!’ squealed Saskia, punching his arm. He shrugged her off as if she were a blowfly.

‘’Course I know,’ I said casually. ‘What do you think I am, Lyall, chopped liver?’ I averted my gaze downwards and noticed my knuckles all clutching and white, strangling the life out of Willow’s collar. ‘Come on, Willow,’ I said, making my way to the back door. I marched down the hall and stomped straight past Mum in the kitchen. Then I slammed my bedroom door as hard as I could, hoping I might even shatter a window or two, because that would really be saying something along the lines of,
Good one, Mum. Make sure I’m the last to know, why don’t you.
Can
you imagine? Even the precookeds knew before I did.

I sat on the bottom bunk feeling dead powerful for my door-slamming effort, and for how the whole world was locked on the other side.

Then I slouched on the bottom bunk and waited, because everyone knows when you slam the whole world out, you’re secretly hoping that the world will barge back in and say,
Whatever is the matter, Sunny?

But no one came, not even Willow. I felt pathetic, like Eeyore, and I soon realised that there were certain things (like Mum coming to rescue me in my sulkiest Eeyore moments), that had been left behind in the good old days before Carl and his kids moved in.

To make matters worse, I could hear the muffled voices of Mum and Lyall and Saskia from the kitchen, and I’m pretty sure they were laughing and saying cringeable things like,
Just leave her be,
and
Sunny just needs some Time Out.

Finally, Willow wedged her snout sideways under the door, making small sooky whimpers.

‘Come on, girl,’ I said, opening the door just enough for her to squeeze through. I even let her jump up on the bed because there was nobody about to tell me not to, and we lay down together with both our heads on the one pillow, and I told her all the reasons why moving into Granny Carmelene’s big old white-and-black mansion was the dumbest idea on earth.

For starters:

My school is exactly three minutes away from here, my favourite and only home. I can make it on time even if I accidentally sleep in until five to nine (provided I skip breakfast and don’t do my hair).

If we move, my best friend, Claud, would suddenly be a long bus-ride away. What is the point of a best friend who lives on the other side of town?

Claud and I happen to be co-owners and operators of Pizza-A-Go-Girl, a successful Friday night pizza delivery business that is right on the verge of going world-wide. Granny Carmelene’s doesn’t have a shed or a wood-fired pizza oven. Surely Pizza-A-Go-Girl would become Pizza-A-Gone-Girl in five minutes flat.

There is no beach at Granny Carmelene’s. There is a big chance Willow would sink into doggie depression if she can’t race about on the sand. (The fact that the new house has its own private patch of river in no way makes up for this.)