All the little tricky th.., p.1
All the Little Tricky Things, page 1
It’s the start of the summer holidays and twelve-year-old Bertie is worried. Next year she’s going to a high school in the city, while all her friends stay behind in Merri, the small town she’s lived in all her life.
To help her feel better prepared for high school, her best friend, Claire, makes a list of tasks Bertie has to complete over the summer. They start working through the list together, only to find that some of the cracks in their friendship are beginning to show. Soon, Bertie’s not even sure she’ll have one friend by the end of the summer.
All the Little Tricky Things is a charming, heartfelt novel about a time when everything is changing, and a girl who’s trying to make sense of it all.
For Adrian
‘Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up,
step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.’
SYLVIA PLATH
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
‘I don’t think I’m ready for what’s next,’ I confess to the clouds as I lie in the long grass in the empty block at the end of my street.
The clouds keep drifting, not at all interested in my sad little story. I roll onto my belly and pick up my book. The grass, once green and lush, is beginning to dry out under the harsh summer sun, and crunches under my weight. It’s only seven a.m. but the day is already heating up. The freckles under my eyes, on my nose and on my shoulders are preparing to emerge from their hibernation.
Mum and Dad are still in bed. They say that once I’m a teenager I’ll stop getting up so early and they won’t be able to wake me before noon. But for now I am too restless to sleep past sunrise.
I left my primary school the day before yesterday for the final time. Graduation was last night at the town hall. We sang an embarrassing song about friendship lasting forever and lined up to receive certificates with shiny blue and gold ribbons glued on the corners.
Now, summer stretches out ahead. For some it’s an eternity, but in my eyes it’s hardly any time at all. High school is just around the corner, like a marathon I forgot to train for.
Luckily, I still have six weeks to get in shape. I just need a plan.
My book is one I’ve read at least ten times and, although I know the words practically by heart, my eyes are stuck on the same sentence, reading it over and over. The thought of next year paralyses me.
I turn my head to the sky and whisper to the clouds, desperately.
‘Help.’
But still, they keep drifting.
‘Alberta!’
My best friend Claire knows I go by Bertie; she just likes to be contrary. She’s a pain, but a mostly lovable one.
We’re the mismatched sisters that neither of us has for real.
She waves wildly from the bitumen below, and starts to walk up the steps of the grandstand towards the highest seats, where I’m sitting.
It’s our secret spot. Or one of them, anyway. Even when the local footy is on, hardly anyone comes all the way to the top.
Claire and I are unlikely friends in more ways than one. We’re not as different as the sun and the moon, but we have fewer things in common than would be expected from two girls joined at the hip.
Firstly, we look nothing alike. She’s got lovely olive skin and long, dirty-blonde hair that she always wears in naturally messy waves. She’s bigger than most of the kids our age: taller, broader, but not pudgy. Just bigger. On a weekend not that long ago, someone mistook her for my babysitter.
My mum said Claire ‘matured early’.
Claire’s mum said she could have been an even better swimmer than her brother, Cooper, who is two years younger. His wide shoulders and flipper feet have propelled him to victory in swimming races for as long as I can remember. He’s still pretty short, but he’ll probably shoot up even taller than his sister soon enough.
Claire likes netball better, and is the best player in our town. She’s got the MVP every season except one, and that was only because the coach felt sorry for another girl on our team, whose parents announced their divorce just before the grand final.
Claire’s parents are also divorced, and her dad lives overseas so she only sees him once a year. He often forgets her birthday, or that he even has kids at all. It doesn’t seem to bother her, from what I can tell. I’ve never asked a lot of questions about it, though. I guess I wouldn’t know what to say.
The way I look is on a different playing field to Claire. Or maybe a different planet. I’m pale and skinny, and of slightly under-average height. I did some research on it once, just to be sure.
I’m pretty much allergic to the sun. Claire calls my freckles ‘cute’ but I think they make me look even more like a little girl and I wish I could rub them off.
I always leave my fringe just a bit too long, so I have to peek out from under it to see properly. It’s my security blanket.
Claire takes up more space in the world than me. With her personality, too. Her laugh is loud and infectious. When she speaks, her hands flail around, and she doesn’t walk at a normal pace. She zips about, quickly and never in a straight line. She’s book smart and street smart. At least for a twelve-year-old from a small town. She doesn’t care about clothes but you wouldn’t tell from seeing what she wears.
The lady who runs the yoga place once looked her up and down and said Claire ‘has a good eye’. Which fluffed up her ego way more than necessary and quite frankly, since I was standing right next to Claire when the lady said it, made me feel like a dud.
I don’t want to be known as the frumpy one in our duo and I try my hardest not to be. On free-dress day last term I stayed up past midnight trying to find an outfit that looked cool. But it turns out looking cool is about not caring about looking cool. My desperation is clear and ruins everything.
I also don’t want to be known as the quiet one. I’m not mute, just softly spoken in comparison to my larger-than-life best friend.
Claire can charm anyone but she also doesn’t have a lot of friends for some reason. Just me. My theory is it’s because she’s not really like anyone else. She doesn’t want to be.
Most of the time I prefer to fit in. It’s not always easy though. Talking to clouds and hiding behind a fringe probably doesn’t help.
Claire arrives at the top step of the grandstand, a little out of breath, but with a grin glued to her face. She’s wearing a denim bucket hat that would look ridiculous on anyone but her. At least she’s being sun smart. It’s hot again today. We might go to the pool later.
She does a twirl as she shimmies off her cherry-red backpack and plonks herself down next to me. It’s clear she doesn’t share my current state of nervousness about next year. It’s almost certainly the last thing on her mind.
It’s easy for her. She’s going to the local school down the road, Merri High, with nearly everyone else from our primary school. Me on the other hand, my parents have been saving for years to send me to St Martin’s, a posh private school in the city.
They’ve talked about it for so long that I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t on the cards. It’s just that all of a sudden the cards are getting dealt, and everyone is ready to play except me.
It’s not fair that the more outgoing member of our friendship is the one staying in our comfort zone.
‘What are you looking so forlorn about?’ she asks, reaching over to give my ear a little flick.
‘Ouch!’ I say sulkily, rubbing it. ‘Is forlorn your word of the day?’
She rolls her eyes. She knows I’m making fun of her obsession from a few weeks ago, of reading the dictionary and using strange words like a pretentious twerp.
(Pretentious was one of her words. Twerp is one of mine.)
‘And anyway…’ I pause dramatically. ‘You know exactly what I’m forlorn about!’
‘Oh Alberta, stress less. We have nearly two months before you have to even start thinking about your high-school woes.’
I wish she’d try a bit harder to understand what it’s like to be in my shoes.
‘It’s so different for you, Claire. Hardly anything will change. Just your timetable and your uniform,’ I say, filled with envy. ‘You don’t even have to make new friends.’
Our primary school didn’t have any rigid friendship cliques. Just the odd best-bud pair like me and Claire, and then a whole bunch of different kids who mingled together. Because Merri is so small, there were only about forty students in our year level and everyone knew everyone. We grew up together.
We all sat together to eat our lunch, and played silly games like Sardines across our bushland school grounds, even when we were too old to be stacked in an awkward pile behind a big, thic
‘I feel so overwhelmed. And underprepared.’
My eyes start to water, and Claire’s flippant tone disappears instantly.
‘I’m sorry, Bert,’ she says, wrapping her long arm around my shoulder.
‘It’s okay. It’s fine. I just—’
‘You just need a dose of confidence.’ Usually her tendency to interrupt annoys me, but this time she’s onto something.
‘Yeah. I could use a bit of that.’
She turns her head on an angle and purses her lips in exaggerated thought.
‘What you need is to be able to saunter through those school gates on the first day and feel like…like, you belong there! Like, you can do it! Like, you’re ready for whatever high school throws at you.’
‘Exactly,’ I agree. But I’m thinking, Easier said than done.
We both drift off into silence. I look down at the group of boys playing cricket on the pitch, and then my gaze moves to a bright bulletin board on the other side of the oval. It’s advertising the Merri Show at the end of January.
I wonder if someone will try to steal the fairy-floss machine again this year. Someone has tried for the past few years. Last time they got as far as just outside the oval gates before abandoning it, probably because it’s a hell of a thing to carry. But imagine—your own fairy-floss machine! I know stealing is wrong, but it might be worth it for the endless sugary goodness.
We’ve never found out who keeps attempting the theft. It’s Merri’s greatest mystery. Which says a lot about how we stay entertained around here.
‘I’ve got it!’
‘Got what?’ I ask, thinking she means the fairy-floss culprit.
‘It didn’t take long because I’m basically a child genius,’ she says with just a hint of irony. ‘Gather round, everyone. I have an idea.’ She motions to our pretend audience among the benches. A pigeon perched on the awnings peers over at her, but only because her waving arm looks like it might be about to throw out biscuit crumbs.
‘An idea?’
‘Yep. An idea. For what we need to do to get you ready for high school.’ She nods encouragingly. ‘Or better yet, a whole list of ideas.’
I pull a face. Claire’s ideas are never straightforward.
‘Is this going to be like the time you wanted to get rich? And you made us pick all those flowers from people’s gardens and then go door to door, selling them in bunches back to the original owners?’
She throws her head back in glee. ‘Those fools!’
‘Yeah, right. Until Mrs Bianchi called my mum to complain that we’d dead-headed all her prized bougainvilleas.’
‘Okay. Yes. That was a bust in the end,’ she admits. ‘And I still have bougainvillea thorn scars to prove it.’
‘Is it going to be anything like the time you wanted to start a band and you forced me to watch hours of YouTube videos about how to play guitar? And you promised you’d do the same for drums but really you just watched makeup tutorials instead?’
‘No,’ she says shamelessly. ‘And besides, let me remind you that I did your eyeshadow for graduation the other day and you looked completely glamorous.’
I snort, remembering how I had to secretly scrub half of it off in the bathroom before we left the house, but she ignores me.
‘So maybe you should be thanking me for that one.’
I’m sure she thinks I should be thanking her for all our other wild adventures, courtesy of her short-lived obsessions with everything from making macaroons (disaster) to skydiving (never got off the ground… ha) and even that embarrassing vocabulary exercise (totally discombobulating).
She looks at me with her best ‘I’m serious this time’ face.
‘I’m serious this time.’
I’ve heard it all before. ‘You’re serious every time, until you get bored.’
She knows I’m right, but one thing Claire never does is give in. Or apologise. Or fall victim to negativity. She’s the most stubborn optimist I know. Grudgingly, I remember that’s why I love her.
Plus, her rowdy ideas keep things pretty interesting. We live in the country, after all.
‘Have some faith, Alberta.’
She pulls out a notebook from her backpack.
‘Watch!’
Opening the first page with a flourish, she scrawls a headline, all in caps:
THE SUMMER LIST
And underneath in neat cursive, a subtitle:
The eleven things Bertie will do these holidays to be ready for what is sure to be her illustrious high-school career.
At home that night, I’m setting the dinner table on the back verandah. Placemats, knives, forks. I arrange them for three.
We usually eat outside after a hot day. Which at the moment means every day. My dad says summer has been coming earlier and earlier. The large garden that surrounds our house is his pride and joy, but it’s been suffering.
‘Darling,’ Mum calls to me from the kitchen, through the flywire window. ‘Can you light a mozzie thingamajig please?’
I pick up the matches and pull a citronella coil from the packet, carefully lighting the end and placing it in a hanger under the table. The smoke that wafts up smells so good. Like cut grass and summer nights.
‘It’s getting dark, Sam!’ yells my mum, much louder than necessary. There are only three houses on our street, Rosella Lane, which is on a steep incline down to a green valley. Our house is at the top of the hill, followed by the two others and the empty block. There’s no breeze tonight, and I imagine Mum’s voice carrying down the street and into our neighbours’ living rooms. I’m sure they’re used to it. She’s a bit over the top, like Claire. It makes sense that I’m so quiet in comparison to all the loud women in my life.
Dad is further down from the table I’m setting, standing at the barbecue.
‘Got it, Jules,’ he says calmly. ‘Nearly done.’
My dad is always cool as a cucumber. It’s kind of his defining feature. But that’s where the differences between Mum and Dad end. Lots of my friends’ parents aren’t together anymore, but Mum and Dad are happy, as far as I can tell. They have all the same interests and friends, and even work together at the local hospital.
Dad is a physio, mainly working with the old people who seem to make up most of Merri’s population. Mum is a nurse. They met at uni, in the city. Dad says he was at the pub in his final year, and he heard her before he saw her. Love at first sound.
Dad starts to whistle quietly as he works, willing the steaks to cook faster to appease Mum, whose salad and baked potatoes have been ready for a while.
I open the sliding door, careful to shake the dead leaves and bits of grass off my feet before I step inside. Mum is a total neat freak. I am too, though not as intense. My bedroom is clean but haphazard, filled with books and pictures and my collections of odd things: shells from the beach, cardboard coasters from pubs we’ve been to on family road trips, mismatched buttons in jars. There is always a decent-sized pile of discarded clothes on the velvet chair in the corner.
A little mess is okay sometimes. It makes things more cosy.
I curl up on the couch closest to the back door and flick through my phone. I’ve only had it for a few months, not because I begged for one but because it made sense.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not above having a phone. I completely understand the obsession with everything online. The things you can find! How did people live without the internet?
At school the teachers warn us about becoming screen zombies. That’s what they call the kids who are glued to their devices—even on tech-free Tuesdays and Thursdays, when we’re supposed to be out in the sunshine or whatever.
The main things I use my phone for are texting Claire and reading my horoscope on this app I recently discovered. I know it’s all balderdash but sometimes it can be comforting. Or make me see things in a different way.
Today it says: Integrate new ideas with a hunger for transformation.
It takes me a while to understand. But when I do, I think: Ugh.
Somehow my app must have found out about The Summer List.
Mum comes round from the kitchen and sits beside me on the couch. She has long auburn hair that I did not inherit, to my great disappointment. She pulls out her scrunchie and lets her hair fall down her back. My mum is all soft edges and warm smiles. She’d say she’s lumpy but cheerful; I think she’s beautiful. Sometimes we drive each other nuts, but generally I feel like I got lucky in the mum department.
