Chapter Seven: Dip Dip, Dog...Poo?

Claire was asleep on the couch when I snuck back into the house. I’d left before I’d pulled the dog to pieces, (and before I’d had to clean up her dogs pee pee) and as I’d been wandering aimlessly the best idea in the whole world had hit me.

Being friendly was going to be thrown out the window. Sorry Jerry, but I’m not her friend, and my animosity towards her has lessened since the whole chilli-I’m sorry-Let’s be friends moment, so now she’s just someone I can pull tricks on.

Ahem. I mean, sure Jerry, we’ll all be friends and skip in circles singing ‘Ring A Ring O’ Roses’. And when we all fall down, Claire will land slightly harder than she maybe should.

On her rather ample rear. Possibly fracturing her tailbone and causing immense pain for a long time. Meaning she can’t sit down.

Ahem.

Ah yes. This was going to be fun.

The dog was sitting on Nanna’s favourite armchair, and I grabbed the stupid creature, slipping a piece of cloth over its nose and mouth so it wouldn’t bark. It struggled, but the thick little fluff ball wasn’t getting the best of me again.

TAKE THAT, PUPPY!

Waltzing happily and mentally humming, I danced to the door, crept outside and tied the dog’s leash around its neck and front legs, being careful not to strangle it in the process.

It was a deep inner battle. Really.

Claire really should be more careful with what she leaves lying around.

It was a harness leash too. Which just suited me fine. Ish. Except for the part where I can’t strangle it…yeah. Fine.

Ish.

Too easy, I thought as I made my way down the path. Way to easy, and my mind was getting suspicious. Oh well, Claire’s loss!

But, haven’t I learnt that I should trust my inner suspicious teenager? Nope…Okay.

Hanging that dog in a tree was going to be the hardest part. The animal was so damn fidgety, and kept squiggling like a worm.

Except worms weren’t fluffy and didn’t have an annoying tendency to pee in the worst possible places.

And bark. Can’t forget the barking. Gargh. Yuck. My ears are still ringing.

Oh, and eating the seasickness tablets and vomiting everywhere! ARGH!

But when it was up there, it almost looked adorable, fluffy and cute. And then I remembered the puddle, and the noise, and the vomit, and I hated Chu-chu the Chihuahua once again.

Slipping the piece of cloth off its mouth, I raced back into the house and dived into bed just as it started barking. I covered my head with a pillow, and drifted off to sleep.

Which sounds very un-cliché of me, because I should’ve sat up and waited for Claire to find her precious pooch, but a heroine has to sleep, yes?

Uh huh, I thought so.

“CLEOPATRA!” screamed a very high-pitched voice from somewhere in the house. Even the dog whimpered, which was something…the dog whimpered.

Oh goodie. Claire had finally found her darling pooch.

Oh damn. I’m in some serious doo-doo. And not the doggie kind.

Because that would just piss me off.

I mean, really.

“Yes?” I asked softly as I walked tentatively downstairs. Claire must work pretty damn hard to keep up her image, because her hair was a mess and I swear that zit had doubled in size over night.

I wonder what hour of the morning she would have to get up to keep up her appearances…

Actually, she probably doesn’t go to sleep at night…

Yes, that’s it. Uh oh. She’s holding the dog.

“Why, in the name of the good Earth, was poor darling Chu-chu in a tree?” she asked, her voice teetering at the edge of calm and falling back into hysterical.

“Because she decided to climb a tree?” Obviously that wasn’t what Claire wanted to hear, because her nose wrinkled and she looked like she wanted to hit someone.

Only person in sight…oh yeah, you guessed it, me.

Do I cue my run now, or should I give her a few seconds?

Me, I’m guessing now.

“Would now be a good time to run?” I asked, backing up the stairs (which is actually quite hard, needs quite a bit of skill…that I have, duh). When Claire didn’t answer, I tried a different tactic.

“Can I have five seconds head start?”

Claire grunted. Not attractively. “One…five!” she yelled as she started up the stairs after me. For a prissy teenage princess she was pretty fast.

I must say, I was faster. I was out the bathroom window and scaling the edge of the house before she’d even finished coming up the stairs.

Yes, I admit it; I had the escape route planned before leaving my bedroom. So I’m a coward, so what?

Remember: Cowards where a crown, stupid courageous nosy people get their heads chopped off by big scary-ass men carrying swords.

Um yeah, I did just make that up on the spot.

“Cleo?” Claire called out the window. She peered out and saw me, her eyes widening in surprise. “Holy (insert swear word of choice here)!” she said, and I blinked. I hadn’t even known that she knew that word, let alone had the guts to say it.

God. Just when I didn’t have a tape recorder switched on in my back pocket.

“Yep, I’m fine, don’t panic. I’ve done this a million times before.” Claire squealed in a suspiciously giggle-like way, and I looked down in time to see the bricks I was standing on crumble and fall.

“CRAP!” I yelled, and I swear they heard me in town. I started tumbling, but my shirt caught on the tree that was down below (you know like what happens in the movies?).

I swear, the Fates up there hate me. Honestly, they do!

It was the same tree the stupid dog had been hanging in. I am so cursed.

“What does it feel like, hanging from a tree?” Claire asked from high above me. I looked up, and she was hanging out the window smirking at me.

“Uh, yeah, about that. I’ll answer if you get me down!” I said. As luck would have it, as I wriggled a bit, my shirt tore, and I landed on my butt with a thump. Getting up and rubbing my sore backside, I saw the dog sitting on the lawn. I reckon it was grinning at me.

Demon’s spawn. No, no, better; DEMON’S PET!

That was my favourite t-shirt.

“You do that all the time?” Claire asked as I limped inside. “Falling off buildings and hanging in trees?” I glared at her, and limped up the stairs. Quite difficult, in fact. The limping part, that is. Glaring, that I have no problem with.

I mean, trying to go up stairs with dignity and whilst limping are two things that cannot, even in a sentence, go together without someone sniggering and saying, “Yeah right.”

“No, Miss Smart-arse, I don’t happen to do that all the time.” I glared at her extra-evilly, and then closed my bedroom door in her grinning face.

“Ah well, now you know what poor Chu-chu feels like,” Chelsea said from outside the door. I heard her clunking downstairs, and then she called back up, “I’m having breakfast.”

My stomach growled, reminding me that it was now nine o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t eaten in ages. Reaching for the door handle, I stopped. It was covered in blue ink.

“Nice try Claire!” I yelled, grabbing a rag that was conveniently on the floor. That should’ve set my teenage suspicion clock a-ticking, but it didn’t. Lack of sleep and aching butt are the symptoms of teenage stupidity, but did I take any notice? Noooo! Even though the rag felt kind of sticky, which was again a suspicious sign, but since it was good to use to turn the doorknob, I didn’t take any notice.

“You fell for it,” she replied as I opened my door, and I let go of the rag. It didn’t fall out of my hand. I pulled it, and my skin pulled too.

“CLAIRE!” I yelled, hopping up and down, not that it was helping. Pulling and twisting, I felt a corner tear, my skin tearing with it.

“OW!” I screeched, racing down the stairs. Claire stood at the bottom, holding that wretched dog and sneering.

“Hah, got you now!” she said before walking into the kitchen. Oh yeah, well just you wait, little Miss I-got-Cleo-Bad. Just you wait.

Where’s the Dissolve-It, damn it!

“Oh come on Erik, please! I need to get her back!” I whined at him over the phone.

“Nope. No dice Cleo, Ma’s still mad about last time I went out with Damien, and I’m still grounded from the whole teacher-suspended thing.” He sounded so goody-two-shoes I had to laugh.

So he hung up on me. Damn him.

I called Dad instead.

Uh yeah, well, that number was on speed dial. Number 1.

I love my Dad, okay? Stop with the looks already!

“Daddy, how are you?” I asked in my very best voice. I heard him huff; mumble something to Mum, and then a door clicked.

“What do you want?”

“Dad, I just wanted to call and make sure you were all right, isn’t that allowed?” I sounded so, so, so, I don’t know, stupid. Insincere and totally stupid.

“No, because you want something. You always want something. Yes, I’m on your side, what needs to be done?”

My Dad’s so cool, because he understands what it’s like to have an arch nemesis pulling pranks on you. He and Mum still play jokes on each other, and they’re old.

Which is just really lame and shouldn’t be done, but whom do you think I learnt off?

“Well…” I trailed off, thinking of how to tell him my plan. And what I’d already done.

“You did what?” he yelled in my ear once I’d told him. I looked at the phone in disgust.

“Yes, and I didn’t actually need my eardrums Daddy, I was just going to learn sign language and be deaf as a dodo for the rest of my life,” I scolded him. He laughed.

Insert frustrated growl at father who is laughing at my pain here.

“High fives Cleo, high fives.” There was some yelling, and then Dad returned from what I think was one of the many shouted conversations that go on in our house.

Yeah. Shouted. Probably why my hearing kind of sucks.

“Your mother and I are going out for lunch, so I have to go.” The word lunch once again reminded my stomach of the precious little I had eaten, so I said goodbye and wandered down the stairs (cautiously I might add).

Claire was sitting in the living room, on the same couch she’d fallen asleep on last night, surfing the channels on the television. Of course, that dog was sitting beside her. And it was grinning at me.

Devil’s advocate. Demon’s pet. Satan’s spawn. I can’t damn it to hell, because that’s where the freakin’ thing lives!

“I’m getting some food, you want anything?” I asked politely, and when Claire shook her head violently, I thought something was wrong. Every time I’d asked about the words “food” and “you want”, she’d said yes.

When I walked into the kitchen, though, I was only vaguely prepared for the mess that was in store.

Food was strewn from one corner of the room to another. There were some half baked cookies sitting on the bench, lots of flour and eggs, milk on the floor, and what looked like broccoli and zucchini mashed into the tiles. There wasn’t a surface in the entire room that didn’t need to be cleaned.

Claire materialised at the door. “I tried to do some cooking,” she said, grinning evilly. “I didn’t know where the cleaning supplies were, so I, um, I decided to leave it for you.” She disappeared back into the living room before I could through something at her.

Pretty lucky for her, because I had found a whole egg still sitting on the floor. She was so evil. So evil. Pure evil in fact.

She beat me out for the most evil category. And that is saying something.

“Claire, come and help me,” I moaned after half an hour’s cleaning. I had only just gotten one out of the six cupboard doors clean, and my arms were aching. She appeared at the door again, and looked disdainfully at the equipment I had set out.

“Can’t,” she said bluntly, “I might break a nail.”

This time she didn’t move quickly enough. My wet sponge hit her square in the back, causing her to squeak. She kept running though, and I threw another sponge at her, but missed and hit the dog. The dog squeaked, exactly like Claire had, and went flying after her.

Take that, you stupid animal creature. Teach you to follow after your owner. Idiotic little snoop.

“Claire, get your ass back here now!” I yelled after realising that attacking the only person that could possibly help me get this atrocity cleaned up with a sponge was the most stupid idea ever.

“No!” she yelled back.

So I ended up cleaning the rest of the kitchen, shortsheeting her bed, and dying her dog’s hair pink.

Let me tell you, the last one didn’t go over so well.

But you are probably wondering, “Did she pull the dye out of her ass or what?”

Well, the answer, my dear lovelies, is that I am prepared for everything. Including dying a stupid fluff ball hot pink when its owner is being a total and complete cow.

So there, Claire.

Score for the day: At the end of a very long, very tedious day, we are at a tiebreaker, because Claire managed to pull itching powder out of her sleeve and dump it onto my seat in the lounge room.

Yeah. So right now I am resisting the urge to scratch my posterior in a very unladylike way.

Hmph.

So I’m going to need maybe a little help to take this Princess and her Devil’s Advocate down.

…

All right, maybe I’m going to be needing a lot of help.

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A/N: Woot! Record update! Man, I'm on a roll!

And hopped up on sugar! LIFE IS GOOD!

But it would be so much better if I could get some loving with the reviews and all. So, my lurker, be lovely and review, even if it is one word.

Please?

Love and heaps of huge cyber cookies,

Crazy.Until.Proven.Otherwise.

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