Free One More Little Problem by Vanessa Curtis Page A

soap.
    The soap has to be a brand new fresh bar and not an old slimy brown one.
    All my pocket money (when Dad remembers to give it to me) has been spent on soaps in cellophane wrappers over the last few weeks.
    Other kids are going to the cinema or lying in the park eating ice creams or hanging around clothes shops with their friends or going to Disney Land or going up to London by train to see a show.
    And me?
    I’m sitting on the toilet trying not to touch it with any bits of my skin and I’m worriedabout going on a date with a strange boy who could turn out to be some creepy old man for all I know and my ex-best friend probably pities me because I’ve made such a mess of things and she hates my other sort-of-friend Caro, who hates her, and she regards Dad as a bit of a weirdo and I’m not sure Dad’s all that happy in his new job and Sol’s somewhere out there in the big wide world and I’m all unsure what to do about Alessandro and . . . and . . .
    ‘OCD!’
    Caro is banging on the bathroom door. Not again.
    ‘Please tell me you haven’t produced more blood,’ I shout. ‘If you have then you’ll just have to drown in it. I am not coming out until I am ready.’
    ‘Your little friend Fanny is here!’ she yells.
    Fran’s nearly an hour early.
    Great.
    ‘Make her some tea,’ I yell. ‘And be NICE.’
    I hear Caro’s evil little chuckle and my heart sinks further towards the bottom of the (very clean) toilet bowl.
    How on earth do I get into these situations?
    I dry off with a nice clean white towel and do fifty jumps on the bathroom mat.
    By the time I’ve finished scrubbing my face, brushing my hair and cleaning my teeth Caro has been up twice to complain.
    ‘Jeez, OCD,’ she hisses through the bathroom door. ‘Can’t your sodding rituals wait? I’m stuck downstairs with Frigid Fanny.’
    ‘Just a minute,’ I hiss back.
    I need to finish off by cleaning my teeth with my left hand. Don’t ask me why. I’ve already done them with my right, but somehow my brain is telling me that I can’t say I’ve completed my rituals until I’ve done them with the left hand too.
    Another weird moment in the life of Zelah Green.
    When I get downstairs I ban Caro from following me upstairs with Fran by bribing her with money.
    Then Fran and I tip all the contents of my wardrobe on to the bed and Fran starts rifling through them with a frown on her smooth brown forehead.
    ‘Zelah, you like,
so
need to update your capsule wardrobe,’ she says.
    I ignore the insult and allow her to hold a long red flippy skirt in front of me and team it up with a white vest top.
    ‘Yeah, that’s nice,’ she says. ‘Kind of girly but casual.’
    My heart does somersaults of guilt ’cos Dad bought me that skirt last year and it’s my favourite and now I’m lying toDad about where I’m going today.
    Dad looked a bit suspicious when Fran said that we were going to the cinema and then out for pizza.
    ‘You two girls seem to be getting on very well again,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you have some major bust-up a few weeks back? Didn’t I hear you say, Zelah, that you’d rather plunge your hands into an un-flushed toilet than ever clap eyes on Fran again?’
    I went puce with embarrassment.
    Dad’s not great at being tactful.
    Fran got her revenge straight away. She looked him right in the eye – she’s a fabulous liar – and said, ‘Yeah, but I’ve forgiven Zelah now. After all, she does have a lot to put up with.’
    I felt like murdering her when she said this.
    Her forgive ME?
    It wasn’t me who confessed that ritualsmade her feel ill.
    Or me who said that everyone at school thought I was a weirdo.
    But Dad seemed to swallow the lie so I bit my tongue and said nothing.
    Fran sits me in front of the mirror and plugs in her portable hair straighteners.
    ‘There,’ she says, smoothing my strands of black frizz into something sleeker and less wiry.
    I look at her reflection. She’s biting her lip with concentration as