Free Summer Secrets by Sarah Webb Page A

again.
    “No. Go away, Spawn,” I mutter. I’m in no mood for him.
    “Poor Amy-damy’s got the boyfriend blues,” Clover tells him. “I wouldn’t go too close to her; she might bite.”
    “Amy’s got a boyfriend,” Denis chants. “Amy’s got a boyfriend.”
    “So have I,” Clover says mildly. “Brains, remember? And in a few years you’ll be smooching girls yourself.”
    “Will not! Girls smell like farts.” He blows a raspberry and then whips round and pulls down his shorts, showing us his dimpled moon-white bum cheeks.
    Yuck! I squeal and look away.
    Clover sighs. “Do you want a go or not, Denis? If you do, put away that pasty toosh. And if you let any stinkers rip in this room, you’re out. Comprende? ”
    Denis is hopeless at boxing, so he tries baseball (even worse!) and then tennis. He’s a little better at tennis.
    Denis has just about beaten his opponent when Brains walks in, one hand buried in a huge bag of spicy tortilla chips. “Looking good, Deni-Deni.” He pronounces it Din ee , like the old Blondie song. (I know it well; Polly’s a huge fan, and Seth and I have listened to some of her CDs.)
    Brains offers the bag to me and Clover, and we dig in. I crunch down on a triangular wedge. It’s so hot it makes my eyes water. Then Denis pulls out a huge handful and starts wolfing it down.
    “Your old dear says it’s bedtime, dude,” Brains tells him.
    “Bum, bum, bum,” Denis says through the tortilla chips. He’s clearly showing off, but at least he’s keeping his shorts on this time. “I’m not going to bed.”
    “Then you’ll have to go the pinky-winky room again,” Brains says calmly. “With ickle baby Ollie. Shame.”
    Denis swiftly changes his mind.
    An hour later the olds are still in the living room. Clover and Brains have taken over the kitchen, and I’m sure they want some privacy, so I’m on my safari bed, reading over Seth’s email one more time.
    I hear a noise in the hall: stumbling footsteps. Must be Denis using the loo. Then I hear a loud belch. Gross! Opening the door, I look down the corridor to see Denis slapping at the wall below the bathroom light switch.
    “Denis,” I hiss, “what are you doing? You’ll wake the babies.”
    “Have to turn it off. Mum says switch off lights and save the planet.” His voice sounds odd.
    I stare at him more closely. There’s a sticky red rash at the corner of his mouth. I stare at it. It looks lumpy and disgusting. “Have you just been sick?”
    “Don’t tell Mum,” Denis says. I’ve washed the gunge from round his mouth and made him drink a glass of water.
    He’s lying in bed now, the lilac duvet pulled up to his chin. A plump tear runs down his cheek and lands on the pillow. I start to feel sorry for him. He’s a big mess.
    He admitted sneaking downstairs to steal a whole bag of mini KitKats, a giant bag of tortilla chips, half a white sliced pan loaf and a large box of Coco Pops from the kitchen. He ate it all, except for a third of the box of Coco Pops, and then hid the evidence under Brains’s bed.
    “Why did you eat all that food?” I ask, sitting on the bed. I want to wipe away his tears, but something stops me. “No wonder you were sick.”
    His lips turn down and his chin starts to wobble.
    “Denis, talk to me.”
    “But you hate me,” he sobs. “Everyone hates me. Even my mum and dad hate me.”
    I’m shocked. He sounds so unhappy.
    “No, they don’t,” I say. “They may not like what you do sometimes, but I’m pretty sure they love you.”
    He snorts. “They fight about me all the time. They think I can’t hear them, but I can. They’re always going on about my weight and stuff. I’m worried they’ll get a divorce and it’ll be all my fault.”
    My stomach flips. My parents used argue all the time too and think I couldn’t hear them. They’d close the kitchen door tightly and then start taking verbal lumps out of each other. And I could hear everything. Everything. The same