Big Day Out Read Free

damp mucky grass.
    ‘Come on, Hayley!’ Mick called, holding out his other hand.
    ‘No thanks. I’ll wait here. I don’t want to go up the stupid hill,’ I said.
    ‘You’ve got to come too, Hayley,’ said Mum. ‘We can’t leave you here by yourself.’
    So they forced me up and I had to stagger onwards. Up and up and up and up. I wasn’t cold any more. I was boiling hot. My designer T-shirt was sticking to me. My shoes were not only all mucky and spoiled, but they were giving me blisters. If I was as little as Skippy I might have started crying.
    ‘It’ll be worth it when we get right to the top and you see the view,’ said Mick.
    What
view? He was crazy. We were right up in the clouds and it was grey and gloomy and drizzling.
    ‘Nearly there!’ Mad Mick yelled above me. ‘See!’
    Then Mum gasped. Skippy squeaked. And I staggered up after them out of the clouds – and there I was on the top of the hill and the sun was suddenly out, shining just for us, right above the clouds in this private secret world in the air. There were real sheep munching grass and a Skippy-sheep capering round like crazy. I stood still, my heart thumping, the breeze cool on my hot cheeks, looking up at the vast sky. I saw a bird flying way up even higher. I felt as if I could fly too. Just one more step and I’d be soaring.
    The clouds below were drifting and parting, and suddenly I could see the view. I could see for miles and miles and miles – the green slopes and the dark woods and the silver river glittering in the sunlight. I was on top of the whole world!
    ‘Wow,’ I said.
    Skippy smiled. Mum smiled. Mick smiled. And I smiled too. Then we all ran hand in hand down down down the hill, ready for our picnic.

 
    I’M THE ODD one out in the family. There are a lot of us. OK, here goes. There’s my mum and my stepdad Graham and my big brother Mark and my big sister Ginnie and my little sister Jess and my big stepbrother Jon and my big stepsister Alice, and then there’s my little half-sister Cherry and my baby half-brother Rupert. And me, Laura. Not to mention my real dad’s new baby and his girlfriend Gina’s twins, but they live in Cornwall now so I only see them for holidays. Long holidays, like summer and sometimes Christmas and Easter. Not short bank holidays, like today. It’s a bank holiday and that means an Outing.

    I hate Outings. I like Innings. My idea of bliss would be to read my book in bed with a packet of Pop Tarts for breakfast, get up late and draw or colour or write stories, have bacon sandwiches and crisps and a big cream cake or two for lunch, read all afternoon, have a whole chocolate Swiss roll for tea in front of the telly, draw or colour or write more stories, and then pizza for supper.

    I’ve never enjoyed a day like that. It wouldn’t work anyway because there are far too many of us if we all stay indoors, and the big ones hog the sofa and the comfy chairs, and the little ones are always dashing around and yelling and grabbing my felt tips. And Mum is always trying to stop me eating all the food I like best, pretending that a plate of lettuce and carrots and celery is just as yummy as pizza(!), and Graham is always suggesting I might like to get on this bike he bought me and go for a ride.
    I wish he’d get on
his
bike. And take the whole family with him. And most of mine. Imagine if it was just Mum and me …
    We had to do a piece of autobiographical writing at school last week on ‘My Family’. I pondered for a bit. Just writing down the
names
of my family would take up half the page. I wanted to write a proper story, not an autobiographical list. So I had an imaginary cull of my entire family apart from Mum, and wrote about our life together as a teeny-weeny two-people family. I went into painstaking detail, writing about birthdays and Christmas and how my mum sometimes produced presents that had
Love from Daddy
or
Best Wishes from Auntie Kylie in Australia
– although I knew she’d