Iggy and Me. Jenny Valentine

       Iggy and me

      My name is Flo and I have a little sister. When she was even smaller than she is now, my little sister changed her name. One morning she woke up and she just wasn’t called it anymore.

      It was very confusing.

      We were sitting up in my bed making snowflakes. She woke me up early to make them. My sister often comes into my bed in the mornings, before I am quite ready for good news or making things. There were tiny bits of paper all over the sheets and the floor. That’s how she got me to sit up, by sprinkling them on my face.

      My sister had only just got good with scissors and she found it very exciting.

      We were supposed to make snowflakes out of old magazines because we’re not allowed to use new paper for stuff unless we have a very good reason, like a birthday or a sorry or a thank you letter. Snowflakes were not a very good reason andeven though I told my sister that more than twice, she was using new paper because she so wanted them to be pure, bright white with no writing on them.

      “Look at mine,” she said, holding up snowflake number twenty-seven.

      “Very good,” I said. “Can I have the scissors now?”

      “I’m using them,” she said.

      “You’re not.”

      “I am in a minute.”

      “Sam,” I said, because that was my sister’s name. “You have to share.”

      “My name’s not Sam,” she said.

      I didn’t say anything, because I thought it was just her annoying way of not sharing. I didn’t realise she was serious. And I had to wait ages for the scissors.

      Later, we were all in the kitchen in our pyjamas. On not-school days we always eat breakfast with pyjamas on, sometimes even lunch. Mum and Dad look funny in their pyjamas in the mornings, all creased and sort of puffy. Mum’s hair was wild and frizzy, and Dad’s stuck out more on one side than the other. And they had no slippers on even though they are always telling us to wear ours.

      My sister had stuck all her white snowflakes on to the fridge until it looked like it was wearing a wedding dress. Every time you opened the fridge door, the snowflakes fluttered in the breeze like lace.

      I said, “The fridge is getting married.”

      My sister said, “To who? To Daddy?” and laughed at her own joke like crazy. She loves her own jokes.

      “Sam,” Mum said. “Toast or cereal?” My sister didn’t answer.

      “Sam,” Mum said. “Hello? Earth calling Sam?”

      She still didn’t answer. She turned her face away and her forehead went all smooth like it does when she’s pretending not to hear you.

      “Sam,” Mum said again. “What do you want for breakfast?”

      Nothing. Not a peep.

      “Sammy,” said Dad, putting his arm round the fridge and kissing it. “Mum is talking to you.”

      “No she’s not,” said my sister, and then she pointed at him and laughed. “Mr and Mrs Fridge.”

      “She is,” Dad said. “You heard her. We all did.”

      “She’s not talking to me,” my sister said. “She’s talking to Sam.”

      Nobody said anything for a minute. It was very quiet in the kitchen. I could hear the kettle bubbling and my cereal landing on itself in my bowl. I looked at Mum, and Mum looked at Dad, and we all looked at my sister. She still looked like Sam to me, twiddling her hair and wearing her pyjamas with the fairies on.

      “We thought you were Sam,” said Mum.

      My sister looked behind her, both sides, as if Mum was talking to someone there. “Who, me?” she said, “Who, ME?” Like we were the dumbest people on Earth.

      “Yes, you,” Mum said.

      “I’m not Sam,” my sister said all matter-of-factly. “There’s no one here called that name at all.”

      Dad started looking under the table and in the cereal boxes and in the bin. “There’s a Sam around here somewhere,” he said. “I know she was here a minute ago.” He made a big show of it, checking in his armpits, looking in her hair like a monkey at the zoo, calling, “Sa-am, Sa-am!”

      My sister giggled. “She’s not here,” she said. “Sam’s not here.”

      Mum said that there used to be a little girl in the family called Sam. She said, “I’ll be a little tiny bit annoyed if somebody has gone and lost Sam because I was starting to quite like her, thank you very much.”

      My sister shrugged. She said, “I don’t know where she is.”

      “So who are you?” Dad said.

      And I said, “What’s your name?”

      She looked at us and smiled, like it was about time somebody asked.

      “My name’s called Iggy,” she said. She looked so proud of herself that she made me think of a peacock with its tail all fanned out behind.

      Mum laughed and my little sister told her not to, so she pretended to drink her tea instead, but I could see she was still smiling. Dad said Iggy sounded like a piglet, or a puppet of a piglet, or a knitted egg-cup with a piglet’s nose.

      “Or a girl,” my sister said, and she frowned at him. “Because it’s my name and I am one.”

      “What, a piglet?” said Dad.

      “No, silly, a girl.”

      “It doesn’t sound like the one we bought,” Mum said. “The little girl we bought was definitely a Sam.”

      My