August

Operation Soggy Hamburgers

Sunday August 6th

10:00 a.m.

Mutti and Vati are going to Europe for a year. Without me.

"It was all your dad's idea. Isn't that romantic?" Mutti gushes. Mutti is in the bathroom, putting on lippy. I am standing outside the door like an outraged figure of outrageousity.

The thought of Vati being romantic makes me feel ill. I can picture him now, in an expensive Parisian restaurant . . . with roses . . . and a view of the Eiffel Tower . . . reading the bill. "Bloody dinner cost eighty quid? Garçon get your froggy arse over here!" He STILL doesn't think she notices when he buys her the cheap milk trays instead of Godiva and just tears the label off.

Mutti is bonking out of her bonkers tree if she thinks I am going to stand for this like some kind of standy thing with legs. "You're going to leave me alone to waste away to wotsit? I'll have to live off of jammy dodgers and carpet lint. I might even have to eat Angus. Are you happy Mutti?"

. . . I wonder what cat tastes like, though? They seem to fancy it in Chow Mein-a-gogo land.

"I don't think you'll have to worry about THAT any time soon." She looks me up and down even though I'm sucking in my stomach and cheeks and wearing this fabbity new black skirt I found in my closet. I look glamorously thin. I could totally pass for Kate Moss, only with bigger basoomas.

And a bigger nose.

A much, much, MUCH bigger nose.

Maybe that is why my nose is so freakishly huge. Maybe it absorbs all the fat in my body like one of those liposuction machines.

"Libby gets to go," I point out.

We turn to look at Libs, who is playing house with Mr. and Mrs. Next-door's nephew. She is making him a dinner. It is Mr. Potato Head, and she has taken away his arms. "I'm making chips," she says to us, while whacking away at him with a plastic knife. Mr. Potato Head, I mean, not Next-door Jr.

"There's shoes in my chips," says Next-door Jr. "I don't want them."

"Shoes are good for you." She makes a very scary face and brandishes the knife. "EAT THEM."

Next-door Jr. hastily begins to make smacking sounds at the sneakers.

It is slightly terrifying.

"Libby is seven."

"I'm seventeen."

"Is that my skirt?" demands Mutti.

"No, Mutti, the correct response is, I would never abandon you and leave you to die the slow and terrible death of starvation, Georgia Nicholson. You are my daughter and I love you."

If she throws her laundry in with mine and forgets about them that makes them mine, doesn't it?

"Stop being so dramatic." She starts tweezing her eyebrows. "It's not like we're leaving you here alone. You're going to live with your cousin while we're gone."

"James?"

I shudder remembering the leg business of three years ago.

That was before I got basoomas and became a woman. What if he only grabbed onto my leg because I hadn't got anything else? Suppose the gravitational wotsit of my nunga-nungas forces his hand onto my basooma in the dark? It all makes me feel a bit lurgy. I must stop thinking about this. It is distracting me from the urgent matter at hand.

"No." Tweeze, tweeze. "The ones in the States."

I have cousins in Hamburger-a-gogo-land? "WHAT?"

She thinks thoughtfully, adjusting her basooma harness. "Yes. Charlie Swan and his daughter, Isabella Swan. They live in Washington. I can't remember which one. Won't that be fab?"

"Yes, Mutti. Almost as fab as seeing Herr Kamyer burping the German alphabet while wearing leather shorts. Excuse me while I go kill myself."

10:05 a.m.

Just got a perv on Bella's Facebook. She looks wetter than wet Lindsay. And I'm not just saying that because of the rain. No wonder Mum kept her a secret all these years. I'd be ashamed too, if I had a niece that looked like she was keen on being a prat.

There's some gorgeous blokes at that school though.

Hmmmmmm.

10:06 a.m.

Just e-mailed Jaz a picture of Mike Newton.

"What do you think of the father of my future children?"

11:00 a.m.

"Blorgeous Goke."

I think she's drunk.

11:01 a.m.

Hahahahaha blorgeous goke. I think you're just blorgy.

11:24 p.m.

Packing. They're putting me on a plane tomorrow.

P.S. The town is called Forks. I wonder if the town of Spoons is anywhere close-by?

Tuesday August 8th

3:01 p.m.

Please kill me now.

I got off the plane and there was a squad car waiting for me. Naturally my first thought is that Angus somehow got loose and ate somebody's luggage, but then I see a growling cat carrier chasing after some Mrs. Next-door-type's poodle so I know that's not it.

The door opens and I am ready to say, "Officer, I can explain . . ."

Guess who it was? Uncle Chaz.

My uncle is the SHERIFF.

WHAT THE FORKS. How am I supposed to have any fun with the yank-equivalent of a constable under my roof?

The answer is, I won't.

I am so shocked by this merde-astrophe that it takes me a moment to notice that I am the only one in the car young enough to know not to wear socks with sandals. Cousin Prat is curiously absent.

"Where's Bella?"

"Er . . . at home."

I am getting a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach that can't be solely attributed to icky airplane food. She didn't even want to meet me? Perhaps she is chained up in the basement, and they only let her out to go to school. That would explain why she's double pale with knobs. My god, what kind of madhouse has my mother sent me to?

I make a forwarding motion with my hands. "Doing?"

"Reading."

"Reading," I repeat.

"Yup."

"Reading books."

Uncle Chaz nods happily, pleased that I have understood. I think he fancies me a bit slow.

My cousin is at home. Reading books.

Oh god how I wish the Fab Gang were here.

Ellen and Jules would say, "Where do you do reading? You do reading in Reading!" and then Sven would throw books on the floor and say "Oh ja, oh ja, redding in Redding is good, ja?"

I catch myself nodding and smiling and saying, "Oh ja, oh ja" in time to the radio. Uncle Chaz looks a bit frightened by it.

I smile at him (sucking in my cheeks so he doesn't feel threatened by my vicious attack-nose) and say, "So what do you lot do for fun around here?"

"Well. Bella likes to cook, clean, and do her homework."

"Hahahahaha!" I slap my knee. "Very funny, Uncle Chaz."

He blinks. Blinky-blink-blink.

I smile encouragingly. "Are there any clubs?"

"No."

"Malls?"

His face lights up. "There is Newton's Outfitters."

"Is that like Miss Selfridge?"

"Er . . . no, I don't think they sell refrigerators. They sell coolers, though. For picnics."

"For picnics."

"When the weather's good." He glances out the window. I glance out the window.

It is raining.

In August.

"Probably not too good of an idea today," says Uncle Chaz. "If you're a fan of the outdoors, though, I go on fishing trips with my friend Billy sometimes. If you ever want to go."

This has got to be the saddest conversation I have ever had.

Ever.

Including all of Uncle Eddie's jokes about polishing his bald head with the silver polish.

'No, Uncle Chaz. I do not want to go fishing with you and your friend and watch you reminiscence about the good old times. I would much rather jump off that cliff.'

Instead I say, "How far are we from California?"

"About seven hundred miles," says Uncle Chaz. "You didn't think you could walk there, did you?"

He laughs. Hahahahaha. I'm SUCH a funny old prat that my shorts are pulled over my large belly.

Pause.

"So how is your mother?"

"She is dead to me now, Chaz. She is a mother to me only in wotsit."

4:00 p.m.

Bella is in her room. Reading a book. About dead people. Not the interesting kinds of dead people that fancy human flesh, like that movie Jackie and Alison sneaked into and went around saying "Never let them see you at your most vulnerable!" while pouncing on first-years in the loos. But the kinds of books they make us read in Stalag 14 that are supposed to, according to Slim, "broaden our horizons." Which is total humorosity because I think Slim accidentally broadened hers too much. Hahaha. Broadened hers too much. I'm going to have to tell that one to Jaz.

I put on my best manners, what I call "going to tea with the Queen" and say, "Good afternoon, I'm Georgia Nicholson. How do you do?" in a very posh accent. It's trèsKate Middleton.

"Fine. I'm Bella." She doesn't look up from the book. The book is Pride and Prejudice. I'm pretty sure the BBC made a movie of that. It was eleventy billion hours long and I mostly fastfowarded to get to the part where Colin Firth is standing in the pond in that sexy frilly thing.

Yummm. I know he's old enough to be my dad, but still.

Ew, now I'm picturing vati wearing a frilly shirt saying, "That Elizabeth Bennett broad? She still single?" Ughhhhhhhh. Quelle horreur. Pass the basin, I'm going to be sick.

I say, "They made a movie of that with Colin Firth, right?"

She nods. "That's my favorite version. It stays truest to the book."

"Did that bit with the water and the frilly shirt happen in the book?"

"No. That never happened." She frowns. "That was kind of nattering, actually. You can tell that the director only added that scene because he was appealing to women's romantic sensibilities."

Whatever you say, Miss Pants. And I don't think 'nattering' means what you seem to think it means.

Even I know better than to throw around big words when you have no idea what they mean. That is why it is so much better to make up your own. You never have to worry about grammarosity that way.

But I don't say any of that because I am still channeling my inner Kate Middleton. Instead I wait politely and attentively, and I wait for her to ask ME about MYSELF, but she doesn't.

She just goes back to reading.

Well, then.

I nod towards her gigantic pile of books and say, "So your dad put you in summer school? Bummer. What did you do? My Mutti is always threatening to send me away to Summer Reading Camp whenever she catches me coming in late from the clubs." (She only says that because I "steal" her clothes. If she gave me the money to buy my own, I wouldn't have to. What kind of mother lets her daughter go to the clubs in rags (i.e. clothes purchased from the local Tesco on clearance that were made from recycled tablecloths)?)

Bella gives me a smug look. "No, I just enjoy reading it. Jane Austen is my favorite author. Who do you read?"

I can picture Mutti saying, "Mind your manners, Georgia!" Ugh. Uggy-Ugg boots. She wants to talk about books. Do I own any books? I have a think and then say, "Well, I like the bloke who wrote Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus. He's OK. And Just 17."

5:20 p.m.

Bella is cooking dinner.

I am tiptoeing quietly, trying to sneak outside with my suitcase, but she hears me.

"Do you want to bake the apple pie?"

5:33 p.m.

Bella is opening the windows to air all the smoke out of the house.

"You're supposed to REMOVE the aluminum before you put it in the microwave," she says crossly. "And it's supposed to go in the oven, anyway."

Well, how the flip am I supposed to know that? It's not like my name is Martha.

5:33 p.m. and two seconds

Blimey O' Riley it's cold enough outside to freeze Robbie. It's August, isn't it?

5:34 p.m.

Mustn't think about Robbie, though.

Will think about Mike Newton instead. The father of my future children.

5:35 p.m.

I wonder if Isabella would introduce me to him?

11:59 p.m.

Is a bell a swan, Isabella Swan? Hahahahahaha.

Wednesday August 9th

3:01 a.m.

Blorgeous Goke.

Author's Note: This idea came to me the other day when I was thinking about how everyone in the Twilight series is SO serious. What would happen if the grand poohbah of the fab gang came across the pond to shake things up a bit? Hilariosity, that's what.

I don't own The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson or the Twilight Series, nor anything else in here that you recognize (except Colin Firth — he's mine, wet frilly shirt and all).

P.S. I'm NOT British so if my slang or syntax is a bit off the map, that's why. I did live in the U.K. for a stretch, though, so I'd like to think of myself as slightly informed. ;)

Cheers,

-slobberknocker