Hurricane Wills

me Curly Girly. Anyway, when Wills misbehaves, which is often, people tsk even more because they think he’s a sixteen-year-old behaving like a two-year-old, rather than a thirteen-year-old behaving like a two-year-old, which is bad enough. It doesn’t worry Wills though. He just grins and tsks back. Once, in a supermarket, he picked up a huge, and I mean HUGE, jar of pickled onions and held it up to Mom because he wanted her to buy it. When she said no, he dropped it. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but it smashed to smithereens and pickled onions shot across the floor. I wanted to die of embarrassment, and Mom stood there in horror. Wills thought it was hilarious. He started kicking the onions under the shelves and shouting, “Goal!” even though Mom told him to stop. Then he grabbed one and shouted, “Catch!” to me. I missed and it hit an old woman—SPLAT!—in the chest. Everyone tsked and said it was disgraceful behavior for a boy of Wills’s age and that Mom should learn to control her children. Wills just thought it was my fault because I was such a lousy catch. He always blames me.

We can’t go to that supermarket anymore. Even though Mom apologized, they told her that she and her unruly children weren’t welcome, and Mom won’t go there again anyway because she says she has her pride. Now we have to go to a supermarket five miles away, and I know Mom isn’t very happy about it but she doesn’t complain.

Sometimes it makes Mom angry when people say she should learn to control her children. “What do they know about what I have to deal with?” she says. It makes me angry too, because it’s not me causing the trouble and I hate being lumped together with Wills, and also because I know what Mom has to deal with. If other people knew what she had to deal with, they’d think she was amazing. I think she’s amazing. So does Dad, because he couldn’t deal with it.

“I take my hat off to your mom,” he says. “She deserves a medal for putting up with what she puts up with and coping like she does.”

I reckon I deserve a medal too, for putting up with what I put up with. I’m the one Wills picks on. I’m the one whose homework he scribbles on. I’m the one whose things he takes without asking. I’m the one whose bedroom he turns upside down when he’s lost something of his own. I’m the one who’s made to look a fool at school, in the street, in the stores.

“This is my baby brother,” he’ll say. “Isn’t he cute? And he’s such a goody-goody.” He’ll tickle me under the chin, then thump me hard on the arm, or stamp on my foot, and run off laughing with his horrible friends. Or he’ll grab my backpack and take my work out. “Look at this,” he’ll say to his horrible friends. “Ten out of ten for spelling. He’s so clever, my baby brother.”

I hate Wills when he’s like that. Hate him, hate him, HATE HIM. Wish he’d never been born. Wish I didn’t have to live with him. You’d feel the same, I bet you.

But sometimes, especially when he’s not with his so-called friends, Wills gets all sorry, really sorry, and puts his arm around me and says, “Sorry, bro, I didn’t mean to,” and stuffs a bag of marshmallows into my hand, or a pack of chewing gum.

“Are you sure they’re not poisoned?” I’ll say, or, “You haven’t licked them, have you?”

He’ll look all hurt then. He’s good at looking hurt, and he makes me feel bad because I know sometimes he is hurt. He’s trying his best to make things up and I’m being all suspicious because it’s too easy for him to say sorry and I don’t want it to be easy because the sorry is never enough—and neither are the marshmallows or chewing gum.

Wills is good at looking innocent too, even when he’s as guilty as a dog that’s eaten its master’s dinner. He opens his eyes wide, looks around him, and says, “Who me? Course not.” Once he followed me into a store and dropped a firecracker on the floor. He stood there looking so innocent that everyone thought it was me because I blushed bright red, and it was me they asked to leave.

I wish that didn’t happen, the blushing thing. It’s always happening to me. I only have to see a policeman and I blush as if I’ve done something wrong. When Wills picks on me at school I always blush, and that gives his friends something else to laugh at. They call me Tomato Head and Little Miss Ruby. I can feel the blush coming on and I try to make myself think cool, calm thoughts, but it’s not easy to stop a blush once it’s started. The worst time is when someone in class farts. I always blush then, even if it’s not me, and I have to bend right over my work with my head down so that no one can see my face, in case they think I did it. My friend Jack sits next to me and sometimes he farts on purpose, just so that he can watch me blush.

Thank goodness Wills isn’t in my class. He shouldn’t even be in the same school as me. He should have gone to high school by now, but he’s so far behind with his work that he’s got to repeat a year. It’s not that he’s stupid, because he’s not. When they made him take tests because of his behavior, to see if there was anything wrong with him, they said that he was very bright but had the concentration of a gnat (that’s how Dad put it). The concentration of a gnat and ants in his pants—that’s how I put it—because most of the time Wills can’t sit