Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful Read Online Free

mouth to protest but I know I have no choice. Either I go along with her or I’ll have to use most of the pocket money I’ve saved for Dan’s Christmas present to pay for my ingredients. “Deal,” I mutter.

4
    When Mum announces that she and Dad are going out for the afternoon I call Dan and ask if he wants to come over and be my sous-chef. He arrives as I’m weighing the chocolate for the brownies.
    â€œPerfect timing,” he says, grabbing a handful of chocolate buds from the bowl on the scale.
    I try to swat his hand, but he moves too fast for me. “I just finished weighing that!”
    â€œSorry. How can I make it up to you?” He grins suggestively.
    â€œYou can make it up to me later. Right now the oven’s preheating and I’m already running behind schedule.”
    â€œSo what should I do? Sift some eggs? Beat some flour?”
    I know he’s joking, but I’m beginning to regret asking Dan to help. We’ve had fun making brownies together in the past, but that was more an excuse to brand each other with floury handprints and lick melted chocolate off each other’s fingers – it had never mattered whether the end product actually turned out well. But these are the first real friends I’ve had since starting high school and I want everything I make for them to be perfect.
    â€œJust sit down for a minute while I finish getting organised.” I sound like Mum, which I hate on principle, but I’m starting to understand her saying “no” every time I asked if I could help make dinner when I was little. (Now she moans that she practically has to beg me to peel a potato, so I guess I’ve had my revenge.) Dan doesn’t seem to have noticed though; he sits at the kitchen table and flips through a copy of
The New Yorker
.
    Ziggy gets home a few minutes later. “Good afternoon, Danielle,” he says when he sees Dan. “You look ravishing, as always.”
    â€œLikewise, Zigolina, dear. Have you done something with your hair?”
    When Dan and Ziggy first came up with nicknames for each other and started talking as if they were two middle-aged women in an Oscar Wilde play, I thought it was funny. Now it just annoys me, especially when it eats into my time with Dan. Dad says it’s their
schtick
– their act together – and all but applauds if he’s around when they do it. I think Mum’s just relieved that Ziggy talks to an adolescent male other than Biggie, whom she calls “that little hoodlum” when Ziggy’s not around.
    â€œI’m on my way to the fitness centre,” says Ziggy. “Care to join me?”
    Ziggy’s “fitness centre” is a punching bag suspended in the corner of the garage where he’s taped some posters of boxers and big boofy footballers. It’s a pretty tight squeeze when the Volvo’s parked in there, but that doesn’t seem to bother him.
    Dan pushes back his chair. “Well, one must look after one’s figure.”
    â€œI thought you were here to help me,” I protest.
    â€œI am,” says Dan, leaning across the countertop to kiss my cheek on his way past. “Give me a yell when you find something for me to do.”
    The garage door has barely closed behind them when the distinct sound of boxing-gloved hands meeting vinyl punching bag starts. I reset the scales and start weighing out the sugar.

    Ninety minutes later they’re still out there. Last time I went to the garage to remind Dan that he was meant to be helping me, he and Ziggy were doing push-ups. The time before that it was squats. When I asked Dan to come back to the kitchen Ziggy made a whip-cracking motion and Dan told me he’d be with me in five. That was half an hour ago. In between sorties to the garage, I’ve got the brownies baked and set aside to cool, the white Christmas slice is in the fridge, and the candy cane crackles decorated. That