It really wasn't the right time for Brie to be having one of her regularly scheduled weepathons. I'd begged and cajoled and pleaded to get her to sign up for the summer drama workshop that was starting today. Getting her through the auditions, getting her to pass her audition, had taken years off my tender, young life. Because no way, no how, was I going to spend another summer watching daytime TV and eating crisps while Brie watched me eating crisps and occasionally snuck one into her mouth when she thought I wasn't looking.

Getting Brie out of bed and in the mood to kick some drama-workshop butt wasn't just a matter of necessity. It was a matter of life and death. Like that bit in a movie when there's a bomb with a ticking clock attached to it, and it's counting down sixty seconds, and the guy who knows whether the red or the blue wire should be cut isn't going to talk. Down-and-dirty tactics was all that I had left.

"Okay, don't come," I said, like I didn't care in the slightest, while bouncing up and down on her bed in a manner that I knew was going to piss her off. "It's not my problem if you have nothing else in life and you fail your certificate in Beauty Therapy Sciences and have to end up pretending that you're between jobs when really you're working in a call center or worse! Yeah! You're working in Burger King, and the grease is clogging up your pores, and you can't afford proper products anymore, so all the shine has gone from your hair because you're using supermarket own-brand shampoo."

It worked. There was an anguished moan from the bedclothes, and then Brie was falling out of bed to shoot me a baleful glare before disappearing into the bathroom.