Free The Bad Karma Diaries by Bridget Hourican Page B

a week.€50 a week is definitely a lot of money! It is the profit from one and a bit children’s parties! This Puts Things in Perspective, as Anna’s mum says, and probably we will never smoke, although – who knows? – when we start college, it might just happen. At college people sit around and drink black coffee and smoke and go on marches protesting about what the Americans do to poor people.)
    Anyway, so Celine really suits back-combed hair, and black eye-make up and black lips. It is A Good Look for her, and I could see why she wanted to put up that photo, and I don’t know if I’d have been able to resist myself if I’d had such a good photo, but Anna said sternly, no way, you have to exercise control, and that it diminished Celine, and she was right, it did diminish Celine! It would have been okay if someone else had put up that photo – like if someone was putting up photos of a party, and that photo happened to be among them, but it is not okay to put up a flattering photo of yourself. That is the rule! Now that we know Celine is trying so hard to be cool, she is less cool.
    Mum and Dad were out (at a garden centre probably! They are obsessed with boring things like garden centres), but Justine wandered into the study while we were looking, probably ’cause she heard us having hysterics laughing, so I said ‘Out, out!’ and then, ’cause Anna kind of looked at me, I added, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s private,’ in quite a nice voice. She left.
    Then Anna said, ‘We could let her into the secret.’
    I said, ‘Don’t trust her.’ That was not entirely true. I mean Justine hardly speaks. Who was she going to tell? She might tell someone in her class though, and then it would get round. Anyway I didn’t want her knowing! Things are no fun when your family knows.
    Afterwards we went round to Anna’s cause Declan was there and we wanted to thank him. It’s pretty amazing he did this for us. He is in fourth year! It’s amazing he’d bother.
    But he said, ‘It’s cool. I like doing those things.’
    It’s true he’s a computer wizard, and probably he needs to practise. Probably he is going to invent something like Bill Gates did and he needs to get experience. Which means that actually we’re doing him a favour! This is a good way of looking at it. He said he’d show us all the tricks of Photoshop in case we got more photos from kids’ parties, and also he said he’s not 100 per cent happy about the design, there are a few things he’d like to change, but he wants us to sign-off on them. So he said why not meet in town tomorrow and we’d go through it. He said to meet in Ukiyo because it’s got wi-fi.
    We said sure. He’s taking a lot of trouble with us! I dunno why we’re not just meeting in Anna’s, but it’s true we have to keep going up to Tommy’s bedroom because of not wanting the rest of the family to know, and Tommy’s bedroom is not the tidiest. There is another bed in it where John used to sleep, and still does sleep when he’s home, but you can’t hardly see it’s a bed anymore, it is so overloaded with clothes and books andDVDs and CDs and crisp packets and chewing gum packets too (those are pretty gross!) Actually, there is nowhere to sit really. You have to try and find space on the bed by shoving up all the stuff on it. Well, maybe there is nothing you can do about boys’ mess? Also Anna’s mum believes in self-expression. Once Charlie began to draw on the wall with his crayons, so I screamed, ‘Oh my God!’ and she just said, ‘Well, he needs to express himself. We mustn’t inhibit him.’
    I guess I looked shocked because she added, ‘It will wash off. They’re washable crayons.’ So I wonder would he be allowed express himself in oil paints (ha!) Anyway, maybe Tommy’s incredibly messy room is his form of self-expression?
    What does ‘sign-off’ mean? And where is Ukiyo?
S UNDAY O CTOBER 25 TH
    So now we know an awful lot about web design. The thing is,