'You've been on a waiting list for practically my whole life.'

'Don't start, Sunny. It's a dull argument,' said Mum, pulling on rubber gloves.

'Yeah right, Mum, like lung cancer isn't dull and chemotherapy isn't dull and sneaking around the side of the house to smoke isn't dull and being a stinky addict isn't dull and-'

'Enough, Sunday! Surely you've got something better to do than to hara.s.s your mother? If you're looking for a job there's a pile of dishes here.'

'Can I borrow your camera?'

'It's in my bag,' said Mum, nodding towards the table. 'And don't you dare touch my cigarettes!'

I used to steal Mum's cigarettes and break them in half. Sometimes I'd even pour water on them, 'cos once I found her smoking the broken bits I'd put in the bin. But I gave up on confiscation because she gets really angry and just buys more and hides them. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a stash buried out in the garden. Maybe that's what she's really up to while pretending to be gardening at night?

I'm also totally over listening to all of Mum's excuses, especially the bit about being brainwashed by the glamour ads in the seventies with supermodels on yachts or the Marlborough Man or some guy called Paul Hogan who said Anyhow, have a Winfield.

But this is the best bit: Mum told me that in the nineteen forties and fifties young people were expected to smoke and girls even had smoking lessons at school. They were taught things like how to light a cigarette and how to let someone else light it for you. Can you imagine? It makes me wonder what we might be learning nowadays in school that people are going to look back on and shake their heads and say Oh My G.o.d, they actually told kids that maths was important. What were they thinking?

But you'd have to agree, a smoking naturopath is about as wrong-town as you can get. Why is it taking her so long to get to hypnosis? I mean, I know a lot of people are scared of it because of all those stories you hear about hypnosis turning you into a chicken, but I think Mum's just putting it off so that she can smoke for a bit longer. And I'm not buying this waiting list business. It just doesn't wash, which is why I end up getting so angry and wanting to do radical things like the Greenpeace activists do.

By the way, in case you're wondering what happened to the Tangent Police a I just sacked them. There was n.o.body down at headquarters at the time (typical), so I just stuck a post-it-note on the door. That should do it.

Anyway, Claud and I spent the rest of the afternoon wearing wet clothing to cool down, while doing prep (that's chef talk for preparation) for Pizza-A-Go-Girl. It must have been about fifty degrees in the shed. We had everything stacked in square containers in the fridge ready to go, just like they do in real pizza shops. Then we made a quadruple batch of dough and left it to rise in a big metal bowl. Claud screwed up b.a.l.l.s of newspaper and piled them onto the floor of the pizza oven dome, and I stacked a pointy pile of kindling on top, then some bigger pieces of wood, ready to light the fire. Mum came out to supervise while I held a match to a corner of newspaper at one edge of the pile. Flames whooshed up towards the metal flue, making a whirring hum as the fire took off.

'I'll build up the fire for you,' said Mum, 'if you want to go for another swim.'

'Thanks, Mum,' I said, and we got on our bikes and headed for the beach.

Carl was out in the shed when we got home, but there was no sign of Lyall and Saskia or Mum and Willow.

'They're at the shops,' said Carl, 'getting some ice-cream for later.'

I felt happy and hurt at the same time. Happy at the thought of ice cream, but hurt because Mum never bought it just for me, only when Lyall and Saskia came to visit. It's as if I'm not good enough for ice-cream just on my own, or as if she cares more about impressing Lyall and Saskia than she does about impressing me. Any minute now she'll be making bombe alaska for them, which I can tell you right now will be the moment I run away with one of those sticks over my shoulder and a spotted scarf tied around the end containing all my possessions. You know, like in Snoopy.

The oven was glowing with red embers and Carl asked whether he should put another couple of logs on.

'Sure,' I said. 'Then we need to push the fire across to one side with the rake.'

I remembered the blending talk, and felt a bit hopeful 'cos surely Mum and Carl weren't going to launch into a totally cringe-able discussion right when I've got a friend over? Still, I was feeling dead uncomfortable especially as I didn't know whether Mum had told Carl that she'd told me, or whether Lyall and Saskia knew and what they thought about it. There was so much not-knowingness in the room I may as well have been in maths.

Willow ran into the shed, wagging her tail, followed by Lyall and Saskia and Mum, who had changed her outfit and had her b.o.o.bs all squashed together and dished up in a push-up bra.

'Hi. What's the deal with the egg on the footpath?' asked Lyall putting the ice cream in the freezer. 'And is there anything, like, to drink?'

'How about some, like, water, Lyall?' mocked Carl. 'And do you think you can say, like, a whole sentence, like, without, like, saying like every second word?'

'Dad-duh! Don't be so mean,' said Saskia. 'Hi, Sunny. Hi, Claud. What's with the egg?'

'It's an experiment,' said Claud. 'We proved it was so hot today you could fry an egg on the pavement.'

'Oh . . . Was that, like, um . . . I mean, was that an important experiment or anything?' asked Saskia sheepishly.

And I said, 'Why?'

And Lyall said, 'Like, 'cos Willow just ate it.'

See? Siblings wreck your things, even if it is by accident. It reminded me of the time Walter let Claud's entire family of sea monkeys die when she went away for a weekend. Imagine the damage Lyall and Saskia could do to business. That's why, no matter how much Mum says I should be kind and let them join in, Lyall and Saskia will have to be kept well away from Pizza-A-GoGirl.

Lyall and Saskia look nothing like one another but I know for a fact they both had the same parents and that neither of them was adopted. Lyall is long and bendylooking and has a rubbery face, like Carl, which makes the things he says seem funnier. Saskia, on the other hand, is more st.u.r.dy-looking and usually dead serious. They both go to the local Catholic school, which is why Saskia is going to cla.s.ses to learn how to marry Jesus and why she says grace in Italian.

Mum and Carl were working on the crossword Mum had started that morning. I just wanted to make our pizzas and get out of there, in case the blending talk actually happened and Mum and Carl asked us all about how we feel, which, you've got to admit, would be dead cringe-able. When people ask me about my feelings, I just go numb and red and forget how to make words or feel anything at all.

And then, right when Claud and I were dividing up the pizza dough into neat lines of small floury b.a.l.l.s, right when Lyall and Saskia were arguing about who was going to help, and right when Mum had just got the answer for eighteen across, Carl blurted out: 'Well, isn't this something? Why don't we do this all the time?'

And Saskia said, 'What? Make pizzas?'

And Carl said, 'Did you hear the one about the blind skunk?'

And Lyall said, 'Daaad-duh, we've heard that one, like, a thousand times-suh.'

And Claud said, 'I haven't.'

And Carl said, 'It fell in love with a fart.'

And Saskia said, 'Daaaaad-duh! That joke is so lame!' and punched him hard in the arm and rolled her eyes.

But I laughed and laughed, even though it was pretty daggy, and so did Mum and Claud because we hadn't heard it before.

And then Mum came out with, 'We've been thinking-'

And Carl put his arm around Mum and took over like it was something they'd prepared earlier and said, 'We've been thinking, and I'm sorry Claud because this doesn't really concern you, but-'

And then, without even looking up from the crossword, Mum said, 'We thought it might be nice if we all moved in together . . . here. What do you think?'

Everybody stopped in their tracks, as if the music had just gone off in a game of Statues. I held my breath, hoping someone else would say something a anything a to break the silence and allow my lungs to work again.

Then Mum said, 'Six down. Earthenware. Ten letters. It's terracotta.'

And Carl said, 'Nice one darl, how about a vodka tonic?'

I slid the Larkin's second pizza off the peel (that's the professional term for those pizza-oven shovels) and into the box, where Claud cut it into quarters with the wheelie pizza cutter. The Larkins are vegetarians and live over the road. They were having one pizza with broccoli, fennel, garlic, chilli and lemon, and one with onion, buffalo mozzarella, rosemary, thyme and cherry tomatoes, which is a combination that Claud and I saw in a book about Naples, where pizzas were invented. Claud did the delivery while I got started on the order for the Ferdinands who live next door.

The Reverend Ferdinand and his wife, Josephine, were more adventurous than they sounded. They always left the order up to us, and the stranger the combinations the happier they were. I guess being a Reverend and living such a pure and polite life, the mystery of a Friday night pizza was the one way they could really break out. Mrs Wolverine round in Scott Street was having a pizza with pancetta, spinach, pine nuts, ricotta, garlic and nutmeg. Then there was Uncle Quinny's plain old hot-salami and olives and Buster's Hawaiian, which was our last delivery before we could come home to count our profits and do our book-work.

You know, sliding a pizza off the end of a pizza peel into a wood-fired oven is all about wrist-action, a bit like frisbee. If you flick too hard it can slide too far towards the fire, and if the shovel isn't floured enough the dough sticks to the peel while all the topping flies off and ends up sizzling on the oven floor. It's all about the perfect amount of flour on the peel, and the perfect type of wrist action. Getting it right makes you feel dead powerful. I imagined our pizza business really taking off. Every Friday night we'd make hundreds of pizzas and have Pizza-A-Go-Girl T-shirts and our own delivery guy who could take Carl's Vespa, or ride a bicycle if he wasn't old enough. And there'd be people to wash up and chop and take orders while Claud and I worked the oven, thought of exciting new combinations and counted all the money. I have to say, though, that because there's only one pizza peel and Pizza-A-Go-Girl is ultimately my invention, the shovelling job would still be mine. I know that thinking about having a worldwide business possibly makes me a capitalist, but when you're an inventor and an entrepreneur it's sometimes hard to have ideas that don't make money. I mean, wait until Street Poetry takes off. Besides, I'm going to be the sort of capitalist that shares a lot of money around in ways that make the world better, like finding new homes for polar bears.

Claud and I locked our bikes outside Quinny's apartment block on Marine Parade. I had the pizzas tied to my pack rack with ockie straps, which I think is short for octopus because of the way they stretch outand latch on to things. It was twenty-five minutes past eight so we were almost perfectly on time, which is important in a business like ours and important for me because, as I may have mentioned, I'm an on-time person. A swarm of leathery bikers sped past on low-riders with big handlebars. Then a convoy of bogans in hotted-up Commodores roared by. We could hear Kylie Minogue playing very loudly from a balcony.

I was thinking about the peach and white-chocolate pizza that I was going to make when I got home . . . with ice cream on top. (That's if Mum had stopped Lyall and Saskia eating it all while we were gone.) Claud pressed the buzzer of number 77.

'Yo!' It was Uncle Quinny through the intercom. 'I'll send Buster down a Buster! Get down there would ya,' he yelled. 'How much do we owe yers?'

'They're fifteen dollars each,' I said leaning into the speaker.

'Jeez, you women make things b.l.o.o.d.y complicated. I didn't ask how much it cost for one, I asked how much we b.l.o.o.d.y owe ya? a Where's that kid? a Buster! I said get here! a You still there, Canary Legs?'

'Um, yes, Quinny. It's sixty dollars.'

'Right, so why didn't you just b.l.o.o.d.y say that? Listen, love, you'll have to bring 'em up. Buster's gone AWOL. I'll kick his b.l.o.o.d.y behind. Push the door, seventh floor, turn left.'

Claud pushed the door open and I really wished we had spat in their pizzas after all, on account of Uncle Quinny calling me Canary Legs twice in one day. The foyer was hot and airless and smelt like fish fingers.

When we got out of the elevator Uncle Quinny was standing in the doorway of his flat wearing his shiny track pants with no shirt. He looked muscly like Popeye a I think 'cos he works out at the gym in case he ever gets in a fight, which he probably does all the time. We handed Quinny the pizzas and he beckoned us with his head.

'Come through girls, the boys are just gettin' the cash together.'

Claud and I stood in Quinny's entrance hall. There was a television blaring in the lounge room where I could see the back of Buster's head on a huge curvy couch. He was playing Grand Theft Auto and was in the process of carving up a police bike with a chainsaw, which is probably why he couldn't hear Quinny when he called him. There was a woman lying next to him with a sarong tied around her. She was asleep. Quinny plonked Buster's pizza on the gla.s.s coffee table in front of him.

'Nah nah, don't get up your highness, don't you move a b.l.o.o.d.y muscle!' Quinny joked. Buster didn't notice. Quinny gave him a clip across the back of the head saying, 'Where's your b.l.o.o.d.y manners, kid?'

'Hey, Buster, I told you we knew where you lived,' Claud said, and did the fake laugh again, looking at me to laugh along. To be honest I really couldn't see what the joke was, especially as Buster could lose his temper any moment and we weren't exactly in a position of power, being stuck in a flat full of criminals. I just wanted to get out of there.

'Come with me, Sunshine,' said Quinny moving into the kitchen. 'Hey, boys, give us sixty would ya?' he shouted. There were three men sitting around the table playing cards. One was wearing a suit like a real estate agent and sitting in front of an electric fan. There was another guy wearing boxer shorts and a singlet, and a younger dude in a beanie and full, shiny black tracksuit with white stripes down the sleeves as if he was smack in the middle of winter. He took some money out of the middle of the table and handed me three folded twenty dollar notes, while Quinny opened the pizza boxes and put them on the table.

'If they're any good, we'll order some more next week,' said Quinny. I could hear Claud fake laughing again from the lounge room.

'Well, you better beat it then girls,' Quinny said, standing by the door.

'Okay, thanks, Quinny. Have a good weekend,' I said, putting the money in my pocket. He left me at the door and went back to the kitchen.

'Come on, Claud,' I said, but she was still talking to Buster and looked as if she'd been caught doing something she didn't want me to see. 'Are you coming, Claud?' I said, a little louder.

She turned around quickly, flicking her hair over her shoulder, and said, 'Hope you enjoy your pizza, Buster. I don't think I remember spitting in it, but you can't be sure!' And then she did the fake laugh. Again.

'Whatever,' sneered Buster, trying not to smile.

We waited a long time for the elevator to come. It seemed to be stuck on the twelfth floor. Claud kept jiggling the down b.u.t.ton and singing Funky Town in time, which was super annoying and made me feel like I wasn't even there.

Just as the elevator doors were closing, the man from Uncle Quinny's who was wearing the beanie squeezed himself through the elevator doors. He was carrying a Puma bag. Claud pressed the b.u.t.ton for the ground floor. She was still singing 'Funky Town', which was really embarra.s.sing, even if it was just in front of some stranger who was wearing a beanie on a forty-something degree night and was staring at the ceiling and whistling.

Claud and I had a record-breaking night at Pizza-AGo-Girl, but something still wasn't right. Claud was bouncing around like Tigger from the Hundred Acre Wood and kept humming and singing annoying songs like you do when no one else is around, or you're in the shower. And whenever I said anything to her I could tell she wasn't really listening.

'How much of a loser is Buster?' I said, when Claud and I were chatting in my bunks. 'I mean, could he wear any more Lynx? It almost gave me a headache.'

'It's better than having B.O. At least he cares about personal hygiene,' said Claud.

'Yeah, but he never does anything. I bet you he stays on that couch in front of his PlayStation all weekend. It's no wonder he doesn't have any friends.'

Claud didn't answer.

'Claud?' I said, but she didn't answer me, again. 'Claud?' I leant over the side of my bed to the bottom bunk. She was listening to her iPod.

'Claud!' I said loudly. She pulled out one of her earphones.

'What?' she said, in an impatient way.

'What are you doing?'

'Um, let me see, I'm making a ham sandwich. No, I'm doing my homework. What does it look like I'm doing Sunny?'

'You don't have to be mean.'

'Well, maybe you're being mean,' Claud said, putting the earphone back in, which made my throat ache.

'Fine. I'll turn out the light then,' I said, flicking off the lamp. I waited a few seconds. 'Night, Claud,' I said, but she didn't answer.

I woke up and leant over the side of my bunk. Claud was already up, I could hear her chatting to Mum in the indoor kitchen. I leapt out of bed, hoping I hadn't missed out on anything like pancakes.

'Here she is,' said Mum. 'Morning, sleepyhead.'

'Morning,' I said, rubbing my eyes. Willow sat tall in front of me, thumping her tail against the floor. Claud was already dressed and had her back pack on. She smiled at me and said, 'I gotta go.'

'Weren't we going to shoot some hoops?' I said. 'We've got time before Dad comes.'

'Nah, I've got to get home. I forgot, Mum's taking me shopping. Gotta get some new school shoes for Monday.' Claud looked at her watch. 'Oops, I'm actually running late. Thanks for the sleepover, Alex.'

'Any time, Claud, you're always welcome,' said Mum as Claud made her way down the hall.

'Bye, Sunny,' Claud shouted over her shoulder. 'See you at school on Monday!' I held Willow's collar to stop her running after her.

'Claud's gone weird,' I said to Willow, rubbing her ears. 'Don't you go weird, Willow.'

While I was waiting for Dad and Steph to pick me up, I dug my school bag out of the cupboard and tried on my school shoes. They still fitted. Dad was running late and although I was trying to make all sorts of excuses for him, like perhaps Steph had morning sickness again, it was pretty normal for Dad to be running late because he's officially a late person. You'd think I'd know it by now and make internal adjustments, the way you change the clocks for daylight savings, but I always forget, because I'm absolutely and undeniably an on-time person and am chronically bad at waiting.

Waiting makes me itchy and twitchy and I pace up and down as if I'm in prison. Even if you have a lot of things you could do while you're waiting, it's as if the waiting itself makes you forget them all. Waiting makes me feel like I'm a puppet lying in a heap, hoping someone will come and pull my strings. Sometimes I feel like the only on-time person in the whole world. Even the cool change was late and hadn't come through in the night the way it was meant to. It was as hot inside the house as it was outside.

So I lay on the bottom bunk for a while and thought about all the different kinds of waiting and how some of them are worse than others. Like waiting for Christmas, for instance, which is almost fun because the more you wait, the more exciting it gets. Especially if you've got a chocolate advent calendar and can possibly resist opening all the little windows and eating all the chocolates in one day. Waiting for something that is running late a like your dad, or a train, or a cool change a is a different sort of waiting, though, on account of the lateness taking complete control of your life.

Waiting for an important letter to arrive can be exhilarating but torturous at the same time, like when you enter a compet.i.tion and don't know whether or not you've won. Waiting for Steph's baby to arrive is delicious, especially since the longer we wait, the more we get to feel it kick.

I wondered how long I'd have to wait for Claud to become normal again and start behaving the way a best friend should?

Auntie Guff does a lot of waiting. She's waiting to meet the one and fall in love. She never seems to get tired of waiting either, because she says she's got full faith in the forces of the universe. Steph wants her to try speed dating because she says a woman's got to take control of her own life, but Auntie Guff says that control is just an illusion and that everything happens in its own perfect time frame.

I think I agree with Steph, though. At least if Auntie Guff tried speed dating it would fill in time while she's waiting for the universe to get it together.

Waiting at Dr Robinson's surgery is a total dead drag of a bore. Why do they go to the trouble of making an appointment time for you if the doctor's always running forty minutes late? Plus, all the mags are way out of date and have important pages missing.

Waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off after you've had a filling at the dentist is sort of fun because your face feels all thick, and if you try to drink a gla.s.s of water, you spill it down your front.