My Secret Life by Leanne Waters

Author:Leanne Waters [Waters, Leanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: non-fiction, eating disorder, food, bulimia, health, teenager
ISBN: 9781908518071
Publisher: Maverick Publishing Ltd
Published: 2011-10-26T23:00:00+00:00

I am ten years old. I don’t like doing knick-knacks because I know it’s bold and see how angry Mum and Dad get when it’s done to them. We will all be sitting together watching television, when the doorbell rings. Dad will answer it but the children who rang the bell have run off. When Dad comes back into the sitting room, he’s really angry and curses about the bold kids who did it.

I don’t want to be one of those naughty children, but here I am, playing knick-knacks on my neighbours. If Mum knew she would be so angry with me. We have targeted my next-door neighbour’s house and after three knick-knacks, the man who lives next door is fuming. We can hear him shouting in his sitting room about the children who keep doing it. While the girls laugh hysterically, all I can think about is how my Dad does the same thing when it happens to us. I wonder if my Dad or my neighbour, Mick, ever feel embarrassment that they are being picked on. When I think about this, suddenly I feel sick and guilty. I want to stop playing the game; not because I could get into trouble but because I feel as horrible as the children who do this to my Dad and wonder if it would upset him knowing that his daughter is just as bold.

The only reason we’ve played a knick-knack on Mick’s house so much is because we won’t get caught. When someone rings the doorbell, we all run to the lane at the side of my house. Though I’m too short, the girls are tall enough to reach over the gate and unhook the latch, releasing us into the back garden and keeping us safe when Mick comes into his driveway, his face red with anger and his hands on his hips. We hide behind the big gate, watching him through the cracks. The girls are battling with their silent chuckling and I’m simply trying to steady my breathing, while my heart races with fear and remorse.

‘It’s great we can get in here’ one of the girls says, fighting back the laughter. ‘We can do this all day!’

But I don’t want to do this all day. Aside from the growing twitch of guilt festering in my tummy, it’s nearly teatime and Mum will come outside to call me very shortly. But I can’t tell the girls I want to stop because then they’ll tell me I’m a goody two-shoes and won’t play with me again. Instead, I say I can only do one more knick-knack because I have to go inside for dinner soon. This seems to satisfy them. Because it’s the last one, the girls tell me that they want to watch from across the road.

‘I’ll go unlatch the gate now for you,’ one of them says walking back down the lane.

‘And then we’ll run over and hide behind the bushes,’ says the other. ‘We’ll wave at you so you know when to ring the bell.

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