Chet Flash wuz here Circulation: 175,178,063 Issue: 374 | 9th day of Sleeping, Y11
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My Special Round Notebook


by paperhippo

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I am writing this in my special round notebook that my friend Spotil gave me when she first came to our house.

     She said it was good to write down what you feel about things, because then you don’t get as angry or scared because it’s like talking to a very best friend, and I told her that I already had a very best friend called Sooty, but Spotil said that my special round notebook was a different kind of friend, because it couldn’t talk, it could only listen, and I quite liked that because Sooty does talk too much sometimes, even when we’re in class after Mrs Harvey has told everyone to be quiet and do their work.

     Mrs Harvey says my work has got a lot better since Spotil has been living at my house. She even gave me an extra uni sticker because I wrote a story and checked it over and over until there were no spelling mistakes and gave it into the Neopian Times and it got published, which is very rare because usually only big pets get their stories published – that’s what Spotil said. She cut my story very carefully out of the Neopian Times and put it in a special frame and hung it on the wall and said she was very proud of me and my brother Tovet said he was proud too and gave me a very big hug.

     Spotil gives me hugs sometimes, but not that much. When she does, the hugs feel stiff and scared, not like hugging my fluffy brother Tovet who is all squishy and comfortable. I think she’s a bit nervous, because she only just came to live with us and wasn’t even created in our family, so she doesn’t really know how things work, like what cupboard the pots are in and that you can’t open the little window next to the door because then it doesn’t shut properly. When she first arrived she bought lots of presents for me and my brother and now I have five plushies – Katy and Sara, Bluey and Softy, and Patch, who used to be called Spotty but he got a hole and needed to have a piece of different cloth sewed onto his leg and that’s called a patch so I decided Patch would be his new name. Spotil also bought lots of yummy food, and even more not-so-yummy food like carrots and tomatoes, which Tovet calls Cybunny food and he glares at it like he thinks it’s a bad guy he should be battling in the Battledome, which makes Spotil blush very red and I feel sorry for her so I have to eat all mine up very quickly to show her that I don’t think it’s Cybunny food, even though it really is.

     When Spotil first arrived, my big brother Tovet said we had to clean up the house so it looked nice, but it didn’t take us very long because we don’t have very many items to clean, and I’m a bad cleaner anyway, so I just pushed around the pillows on my sofa-bed and then went away to play with my plushies on Tovet’s blue rug while he stood by the door and chewed his bottom lip, so I thought he must be very hungry, but he said he wasn’t.

     Then I asked where Spotil was going to sleep and he looked very scared, like when the Pant Devil creeps up behind you and steals one of your items. That only happened to me once, and he stole a Cabbage, which Tovet said didn’t really matter very much, but I was still very very scared and I had bad dreams that night because I kept imagining that the Pant Devil would come back again and steal my Pink Vanity Desk which cost Tovet two thousand neopoins. But this time, that Pant Devil was nowhere around, and I know for sure because I had a very good look. He didn’t have time to answer my question, though, because there was a knock on the door and he opened it quickly and I saw Spotil for the first time but I didn’t know she was called Spotil then. I didn’t even know she was our new family member. I just thought she might be one of Tovet’s Poogle Racing friends who sometimes come round and talk for a long time in very noisy voices and don’t let me sleep so I have to go to school the next day with pink under my eyes like the grey Poogle who’s in the class above me, except I’m not painted grey.

     But she wasn’t one of his Poogle Racing friends because she came in very slowly, carrying big bags that were full of things. I didn’t know it then, but some of those things were Bluey, Softy, Spotty (who is now called Patch) and my special round notebook that I’m writing in now. But I was only looking at the bags a little because I was more interested in her fur which was green with lots of white spots and then a long piece of green hair on her head which was a bit like Sooty’s hair except Spotil’s had a pretty flower in it that she definitely hadn’t picked out of our garden because all that grows in our garden are weeds.

     She looked quite scared when she came in the door and she didn’t know where to put her bags because she wasn’t created in our family, so she didn’t really know how things worked. But Tovet knew how things worked, because he was my brother, so he took her bags and put them on MY carpet which meant that I was allowed to have a look inside because they were in my quarter of our neohome which I know because we’ve been doing math at school and only half our neohome has anything in it, and half of that is mine, which means it’s my quarter. So when Spotil went off to talk with Tovet on his blue rug on his quarter of the house, I went to look in the bags. The first thing I saw was Bluey, who wasn’t called Bluey then because I didn’t know if she was for me or not, but I hoped she was. Then I thought there might be a whole lot more plushies in the bag so I dived in very fast and it ripped open and all these things tumbled across my pretty white carpet and some of the rounder ones even rolled under my sofa. There was a lot of food, a few more plushies, some clothes and quite a lot of neopoints.

     “Kida!” Tovet shouted because he’d heard the loud rip and I was scared because I knew ripping things was bad. He stomped over and picked my up by my tail and put me back of my feet because diving into the bag had left me in an awkward position that I couldn’t get out of on my own so I was happy to be standing up again though I was a bit sad because it hurt a lot when people picked me up by my tail. Spotil was still standing on Tovet’s blue rug with a silly look on her face like she didn’t know what to do.

     “Do you have to destroy everything you touch?” Tovet shouted in a loud voice that hurt my ears. “Pick all those things up! How dare you go through Spotil’s things?”

     So then I knew her name was Spotil.

     I didn’t really want to pick everything up because I wasn’t very good at cleaning, but I was a bit scared of Tovet because he’d used a very angry voice which Mrs Harvey says we shouldn’t use because We’re All Friends Here and I thought we must not all be friends in my house right now which made me a bit sad but then I heard a different voice, which was not yelling at all but sounded a bit like Mrs Harvey but less crackly.

     “Here, I’ll do that.”

     It was Spotil.

     She had come onto my quarter and was picking up some things and I thought that was quite nice of her seeing as she didn’t really know how things worked. Tovet seemed to realise this too, because he stopped her and said:

     “No, let her do it. She made the mess.”

     Then he said something else which I didn’t hear because my ears were squished under my sofa while I reached for an apple that had rolled under there and got all dusty and horrible and I didn’t want to touch it but I knew Tovet would be mad if I didn’t get it, and he was more scary than a dusty apple.

     When I finally came out from under my sofa, Tovet wasn’t anywhere. Spotil was, and she was picking up some of the things that hadn’t rolled under the sofa and was putting them in a little pyramid by the door and I gave her the dusty apple to put on the top but we didn’t say anything because I was a bit shy and I think she was a bit shy too.

     Dinner that night was a very silent affair, and I know it was an affair because we had learnt that word at school. We were all eating a Mynci Meat Pie that Spotil had made over a little camping stove because we didn’t have a proper kitchen. We were all sitting on my Sofa-Bed, and I kept slopping pieces of pie onto the pillows that I had to lick off when nobody was looking. Tovet was eating with us too, which is very rare because usually he doesn’t eat in the house and he hardly ever eats with me. So I wanted to make the most of it and get a nice conversation going which would hopefully be about my new plushies which Spotil had said were indeed for me and I had named Bluey and Softy and Spotty (who is actually called Patch but he didn’t have his patch then) so I started talking.

     “This is a very silent affair.”

     I wanted Spotil to be impressed with how smart I was when it came to words, and I think she was because she looked up quickly and gave a little giggle which made the spots around her face wrinkle but Tovet didn’t even look up, but I knew he had heard because he had big ears and I’d seen them move when I’d spoken but nobody replied so I had to talk again.

     “Spotil, are you painted?”

     She didn’t answer right away because she’d just put a big piece of pie in her mouth so she had to put her paw in front of her mouth and chew until she swallowed and I thought she should have just answered because that’s what I always did and it didn’t matter if you could see a bit of what was in someone’s mouth because it was jut mushed up food which wasn’t very scary or rude because it was just food.

     “Yes, I am. I’m painted Speckled.”

     I had never met a Speckled pet before. My friend Sooty was the only painted pet I knew, and she was painted Island which was a very rare color and her owner had spent lots and lots of neopoints on the brush.

     “I’m going to be painted Pink,” I said, which I had decided last week when we went of a class trip to the rainbow pool and I took a little pamphlet on pet colors because it said Please Take One so I did and I saw that lupes could be painted pink which was my favourite color, and I told Spotil all of this.

     “That’s very nice, Kida!” Spotil said, and I wondered how she knew my name, because I hadn’t told her it. “But Pink paint brushes cost lots of neopoints, and you would have to save for a long time to get one.”

     Even though this was a bit of a bad thing to say, because it would normally make me sad, Spotil’s voice was so nice and kind that it almost made me happy to hear.

     “I am saving,” I said proudly, and saw Tovet shuffle uncomfortably and wondered whether it was because he’d sat on the zipper of one of my blue pillows. “I have thirty one neopoints in a special secret place. It used to be eighty one, but then Tovet had to take some because he wanted to do Poogle Racing and he promised to give it back but he never did because sometimes he doesn’t win.”

     And then dinner was a silent affair again.

     After dinner, we had to organise where everyone was going to sleep. Actually, Tovet organised it because he knew how everything worked, and even though I said that Spotil could sleep on my sofa-bed because I quite liked her, both of them said no so then I felt bad because it’s only ever been me and Tovet in the house and it was easier to argue with one person than two so I went off to play with my plushies on my sofa-bed and I went to sleep even though I didn’t mean to.

     When I woke up, all the pillows except the one under my head had been stolen, and I was very scared because I thought the Pant Devil might have been in the night, but then I saw Tovet, who was asleep on his blue rug and all snuggled into the missing pillows. It was a bit strange, because Tovet never slept on the ground because he had the big blue bed and I wondered if he wasn’t sleeping in it because it was infested with petpetpets and we might have to call the exterminator so I leapt up quickly in case my sofa-bed was infested too, but then I saw that there was someone asleep in Tovet’s bed.

     It was Spotil.

     I felt a bit annoyed because any time that I had gone onto Tovet’s bed I had got a big telling off which you would already know if you read the other story that I wrote that got published in the Neopian Times, but now Spotil was sleeping in Tovet’s bed and she wasn’t getting told off at all.

***

     Usually when I come out of class when the bell rings for home-time there’s nobody there to pick me up. Some pets in my class get walked home by their older brothers and sisters who are still at school but Tovet and Spotil aren’t at school anymore so they can’t walk me, and some pets get pricked up by their owners but I can’t do that either because I don’t have an owner, so I have to walk home by myself which is usually okay except for one time where a very scary Skeith came up to me and stole my special pencil case out of my bag and I ran home and Tovet called the Chia Police but it was too late and they never found the Skeith who stole my special pencil case.

     But today there was someone waiting for me.

     It was Spotil.

     She was standing there with all the other owners and pets and I felt very happy because now no Skeiths would steal my pencil case because Spotil was with me, and I ran to her very fast and she gave me a stiff hug but it was quite nice anyway. And I asked her why she was picking me up. And she said that my brother hadn’t come home so she’d come to get me and did my brother usually pick me up?

     And I said no, because he was probably at the Poogle Races.

     And she sighed, and took my red paw in her speckled one and said that she’d walk me to and from school every day and I thought that was very nice of her so I peeled my special uni sticker that Mrs Harvey had given me at home-time off the back of my paw and gave it to her, and she smiled and took it but then stuck it back on my paw and told me that it was my reward for being good at school, and that I should keep it.

     And I knew that if I’d given the sticker to Tovet he wouldn’t have given it back but that didn’t make me angry because I knew that was just how Tovet was because he was my brother and I knew him well, but it did make me like Spotil quite a bit more and I wasn’t even annoyed about her sleeping in Tovet’s bed.

    ***

      Did you know that I haven’t written in this special round notebook for a week? It’s because I lost it and I hunted and hunted for it and then Spotil hunted and hunted for it and then Tovet hunted and hunted and I thought we should put an advert in the Neopian Times because someone might have seen it but Spotil and Tovet said that there were better ways of finding it and we just had to continue hunting.

     In the end Spotil found it out in the garden because I had been writing in it out there and I had forgotten and only remembered when she found it. Luckily it didn’t rain so the pages hadn’t gone all soggy but it was a little bit dirty so Spotil had to clean it and when she cleaned it she read it and then she told me she read it in case I was mad but I wasn’t and she said that I was a very good writer and I said that I was only a good writer because I had something good to write about. And then she started to go all wobbly and I was scared because I thought I’d made her sad like the time where I accidentally hit Milly with my schoolbag when I turned around and she cried so I cried and Mrs Harvey had to get a lot of tissues and said we had to be Big Brave Girls because nobody was really hurt.

     But this time I hadn’t even touched Spotil so I was a bit confused and then she came towards me and I was a bit scared because she might hit me because I’d been so bad. But she didn’t. She put her speckled arms around me and squeezed me very tight in a hug that wasn’t stiff or scared at all. And I buried my head in her fur and I was so happy because I had three very best friends now:

     Sooty and my special round notebook and especially Spotil.

The End

 
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