The Parent Problem Read Online Free PDF Page A

more. After all, I am nearly thirteen too,’ I add. There have to be some perks to getting older.
    Aubrey’s smile fades and her shoulders drop: she looks like an inflatable toy that has had a pin stuck in it. ‘Whatever,’ she says. She starts to gather her things. ‘I had better get going anyway – school tomorrow!’
    I walk her down to the hall. Normally I would offer to walk her home, and more often than not, the minute we got to her house, she would offer to walk me back to mine again so that we could carry on nattering. We have been doing this since forever. Our record for walking each other home on one night was twenty-six times.
    Not tonight, though. I don’t want to risk bumping into Boy Next Door. I open the front door and swiftly check the road for signs of him hanging around. Looks like he’s gone.
    Goodness knows what Aubrey would actually say to him if she met him – especially now that she has decided he
has
to join our school band. Fingers crossed he won’t even be coming to the same school as us.
    ‘So. See you tomorrow then,’ I say. ‘New term. Boring.’
    ‘Yeah,’ says Aubrey. ‘Boring as the most boring bore in Boringtown.’ She laughs and flicks her hair back over her shoulders. As she does so, I see her glance at next door.
    It is pretty obvious that Aubrey thinks this term is going to be the exact opposite of boring. Especially if Boy Next Door has anything to do with it.

I felt sick with worry once Aubrey had gone. A million and one questions began whizzing around my head, like this:
    Why did she lie about going to the school disco? Does Aubrey not want to be my friend any more? Is this why Mum said I should make new friends? Does she know something I don’t? Is it something to do with Aubrey turning thirteen and becoming a teenager? Do people dump their life-long friends at this stage in their lives? Is it necessary to completely reinvent yourself?
    I mean, I’m not exactly one hundred per cent happy with the way I am, but I am not dead keen on the idea of having to reinvent myself either. What would I reinvent myself as? Although, the way I am feeling right now, I wouldn’t mind being able to shapeshift into, say, a cat. Looking at Gollum curled up on my bed, I can safely say I would rather be her than me.
    The questions are still swirling even now. It’s like I have a tornado in my mind. I am actually feeling quite dizzy. I think I might lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. I’m sure that’s what writers do when they need to sort out problems or search for inspiration . . .
    Oh great, now Gollum is lying on my stomach. She is purring loudly, which normally makes me feel happy and safe, but I feel the exact opposite right now. Plus, it is difficult to hold a pen and write straight when you have a cat lying on top of you.
    Back to the brain-tornado . . .
    Why should turning thirteen change anything? About Aubrey, I mean. It is not changing anything about me, that’s for sure. I am nearly thirteen (well, OK, four months to go) and I don’t feel any different from how I have always felt. I still love building dens in my room and reading under a duvet by torchlight and pretending I am one of my favourite characters in a book and watching cartoons and . . . basically doing all the things I have always loved doing.
    All the things that Aubrey used to love doing with me.
    Aubrey and I used to be able to spend a whole day in each other’s company talking about stories we’d read and making up new ones. We went through a
Paddington
phase together when we were eight, a
Harry Potter
phase when we were ten and a
Twilight
phase last year. We did endless quizzes along the lines of ‘Which Harry Potter character are you?’ (I always came out as Hermione, obviously), and we even used to go on some of those FanFic sites and upload our own invented chapters for
Twilight
. (Actually, when I say ‘used to’, I
might
be still doing it . . .)
    We used to pretend that we were