Free Miss Understood by James Roy

Jenkins had never been the best of friends. Actually, we’d never been friends – not since the first day of kindy, when she stole my brand new glue stick and I paid her back by cutting off one of her plaits.
    ‘Why would she miss me?’ I asked. ‘We don’t even like each other.’
    ‘Hmm,’ Jenni said. ‘ She doesn’t mind you .’
    Ouch.
    At dinner, I mentioned Jenni’s idea. ‘She thought I could wash Mr Hilder’s car or something. You know, to convince him.’
    ‘I strongly doubt that he’d agree to something like that,’ Mum said.
    ‘He might.’
    Mum shook her head. ‘He’s not going to accept a bribe.’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A bribe. It’s when someone pays another person, or gives them something so that they’ll do them a favour.’
    ‘Like what Dad does?’ I asked.
    ‘What do I do?’ Dad asked as he ground some pepper onto his vegetable lasagna. ‘Tell me.’
    ‘Well, all those restaurant people give you meals, and then you write nice things about their food.’
    Dad shook his head. ‘I don’t even tell them that I’m coming, Betty. I make a booking, just like a regular customer except I use a fake name, and I go along and eat my meal, and they don’t know that I’m there to review their restaurant.’
    Mum chuckled. ‘Not until you order three different entrees and a couple of mains. That’s when they start to suspect.’
    ‘Anyway, the point is that they don’t give me anything for free. If they do, I have to say so at the end of the review – I have to write something like “Marty Adams dined at Yuck Sausage as a guest of the chef”. Just so people know, you see.’
    ‘But it’s a bit different with Mr Hilder, isn’t it?’ I asked.
    Dad shook his head. ‘No, we’re just going to have to tell him that you’ve learnt your lesson, show him the letter you end up writing, and hope for the best.’
    ‘Have you even talked to him yet?’ I asked.
    ‘Not yet. We only talked about it this afternoon!’
    ‘Can you do it soon? Please?’
    ‘Yes,’ Mum said, and when I glanced at her, she was giving Dad quite a stern look, as if she’d already asked him to do it a million times, and it was super-important.
    That was when he took a deep breath and sighed and looked all tired. ‘I’ll add it to the list,’ he said.
    ‘Well, it is a bit of a priority, I think,’ Mum said. ‘You know, under the circumstances –’
    ‘Yes, I understand that,’ Dad replied. The way his words came out was kind of short and cross. ‘I’ll get onto it.’

CHAPTER 12
    T he next day was Saturday and Jenni came over, just to hang. I hadn’t seen her since I was expelled, but it was like we hadn’t even been apart (except for the Amanda Jenkins thing from the night before, but even though we were both thinking about it, neither of us said anything). We just lay around on my bed and played on our phones and talked and laughed and listened to music and made stupid jokes and baked muffins and forgot to clean up the kitchen and had to be reminded three times by Mum and played with Muppet and had to be reminded about the kitchen again. We also tried to think of somewhere I could volunteer that would show Mr Hilder how responsible I could be, but there wasn’t anywhere. Well, nowhere that sounded like much fun, anyway.
    As well as all the talking and baking and lying around and giggling, we had three lots of people knock on the front door asking if they could take a look through our house. The first time Mum answered the door and asked them (politely) to go away. The second time Dad asked them (less politely) to go away. The third time, Jenni handled it.
    Here’s how.
    We were at the door, putting on our shoes so we could take Muppet for a walk, when we heard the security screen rattle. The screen was locked but the main door was wide open, and we could see two ladies in the doorway. One of them was shaking and rattling the door like a chimpanzee in a cage.
    ‘Oh, not again,’ I said, but Jenni