“I think ten pounds should cover it,” I said, pouring Rice Krispies into a bowl. “I don’t want a cheap one because my hair might fall out.”
Dad didn’t even look up from his Art + Design magazine.
“Or I might get an anaphylactic shock.”
Dad started humming.
“That’s when your face and throat swell up and you can die, by the way,” I added.
Dad casually turned a page in his magazine. I could have an anaphylactic shock for real and he probably wouldn’t notice.
“Dad, the hair dye. I want to get it this week. I’ll accept an advance on my pocket money.”
Dad sighed extra loudly. Sighing extra loudly is my dad’s thing. That and doing The Look. If he does them both at the same time, then you know it’s serious. Last term, this girl in my year, Pippa Williams, was picking teams for rounders. She looked directly at me and said she didn’t want a hippo on her team. I told her hippos can actually run faster than humans, and that I didn’t want to be on a team with someone whose brain resembled a fruit fly’s. We both got in trouble with Ms Newton for that. She told us to apologize to each other. I said it wasn’t my fault Pippa Williams was excrementitious. Ms Newton looked the word up on her phone, then said she’d be telling my dad about my attitude. Like he didn’t know about it already. I got The Look and the extra-loud sighing pretty badly when I got home that day.
“Jemima, hair dye is not a human right,” Dad said.
“It is for people with hair the colour of mine.” I smiled my best smile, the one I’d been practising in the mirror.
He only looked up for a fraction of a second. Clearly I needed some more smiling practice. “There’s nothing wrong with your hair,” he said, so I sighed extra loudly. Dad gave me The Look.
“Dad, I inherited this hair colour from you, so I think it’s only right you pay for me to change it to super luminous honey blonde.”
Dad gave me The Look again. “You’re too young to dye your hair.”
“I’m almost thirteen! Anyway, there isn’t an age limit on hair dye. If you’d started dyeing my hair years ago then maybe it wouldn’t have got this bad.”
Dad closed his magazine and took a deep breath. I thought he might finally be listening to reason. He wasn’t. “Well, I think it’s a nice colour. Same as mine, right?”
“Honestly, Dad? I think yours would look a lot better if it was a light mahogany brown.”
Dad laughed and shook his head.
“Anyway, it will probably start turning grey soon so you should let me stock up for you.”
“Jemima! I don’t need to dye my hair, thank you very much. And neither do you. It looks nice natural!”
I sighed and pushed my Rice Krispies down into my milk with my spoon. “You don’t get it, Dad. You have to dye your hair to make it look natural.”
“You’re not allowed to dye your hair. School rules.” The annoying invention called my brother. Jasper thinks he can boss me about even though he’s only nineteen months older. “Hurry up, Jemima. I don’t want to be late on the first day back.” Jasper looked at his reflection in the mirror in the living room and straightened his tie. He had the beginnings of a moustache forming, like, deliberately. “School is a lot more serious for me this year. I’m officially in the Upper School and I’m starting my GCSEs, you know.” He licked his two forefingers, smoothed them over his eyebrows and looked at me through the bead curtain. “It’s not playtime any more.”
“Did you hear that, Jemima?” Dad said. “I hope you’ll take a leaf out of Jasper’s book.”
“No thanks,” I muttered. “I’d probably catch something.”
“I don’t want any phone calls about your attitude this year, Jemima,” Dad said.
“Well, that’s easy. Just switch your phone off.” I beamed a full smile at Dad.
He gave me a super-strength version of The Look. “You know what I mean,” he said and collected his paintbrushes from the pot on the drainer.
My dad’s an artist, but not the kind that earns lots of money. He paints shop signs and fancy window frames and stuff like that. The best thing he’s done was years ago when the council commissioned him to paint the map of Clifton-on-Sea on this huge wooden board on the promenade, to celebrate the pier turning a hundred years old. Dad painted dolphins in the sea, and a basking shark, and people eating candyfloss along the promenade. If you look really closely, you can see me and Jasper playing in the rock pools, with Mum holding our hands and Dad sitting on a rock nearby. We’re tiny, just coloured dots really, so you wouldn’t know it was us unless my dad told you. I always look at it when we go to the beach, but Dad doesn’t. He doesn’t like talking about Mum. Or even looking at her painted as a tiny pink-and-turquoise dot.
I promised Dad I’d make “mature decisions” this year then headed upstairs to brush my teeth.
“Dépêche-toi, Jemima!” Jasper shouted after me. He always tells me to hurry up in French. It’s one of the ways he shows off. Our mum’s half-French, so we both spoke it when we were little, apparently, although I can’t remember that much. Jasper’s won the French Prize every year at Clifton Academy. It’s sort of cheating because he’s a quarter French so it’s an unfair advantage. Also, he over-pronounces the French accent and it’s really annoying.
Jasper shouted, “Dépêche-toi!” again, so I shouted a French swear word back at him. Not a bad one, but Dad’s voice immediately came booming up the stairs, “JEMIMA, DO NOT USE THAT LANGUAGE!”
I leaned over the banister and said, “You mean French?”
The blood vessels in Dad’s eyeballs looked like they were about to burst. “You know exactly what I mean! Don’t swear at your brother. In any language. You shouldn’t even know those words.”
“Tell that to Monsieur Poisson!” I said. “People write them in his textbooks!” Then I got doubly told off for calling Mr Picard that. Like it’s my fault his classroom smells of fish.
We arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was pulling in. I hated getting on the bus because people always stared. I held my rucksack in front of my stomach, and let Jasper get on first. I sat on the first empty seat I could find. I hated walking down the bus aisle. There were always a few people who kind of gawped at me. If there wasn’t an empty seat, I’d spend the entire journey with my legs squeezed together, trying to shrink myself into the side of the bus, or half-hanging off the seat, worried the person next to me might say I was taking up too much space. I’d always try to be first on the bus on the way home. But we’re the third stop in the morning so people have already got the best seats.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and messaged my friend Miki to say I’d meet him by the front gates. Miki started at Clifton Academy halfway through Year Seven because his parents got divorced so he moved here with his mum. It was about the same time my best friend Alina decided to drop me for Lottie Freeman. We’d been friends since primary school, but I guess there’s only so long you can hang around with Jemima Big before you realize your life would be a lot easier if you didn’t. Miki didn’t know anyone at Clifton Academy, and the only spare seat in our form class was the one next to mine, so I suppose we became best friends by accident. But it was a serendipitous kind of accident, because Miki is the best person I know. Even though he hates maths.