Muffin Top

By Andrew Daddo

Once you've read Andrew Daddo's new novel, you'll realise what a top family you've got!Unless, like Ash and Kylie, you've got a mum who's a total embarrassment. She's into health food and exercise and deep inner work. And unless your dad's big on saying no to everything before realising he should have said yes.And you get dragged along, because everything they tell you sounds too good to be true. that usually means it is. And you end in up in a health farm run by a-But that would never happen to you, because your family's tops.Right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780730495383

Andrew Daddo

Andrew Daddo is an author, columnist, broadcaster and TV presenter. He has written 25 books (including the bestselling Goodnight, Me), presents the Golf Show for Fox Sports, has a regular column in Golf Australia Magazine and creates podcasts for Mamamia Women's Network. Andrew lives on Sydney's northern beaches with his wife and three children.

Book preview

1

What’s that?’

‘What?’

‘That!’ said Kylie, grabbing a handful of the flesh above my waist. We were dancing. Don’t worry – it’s not normal for me to get down with my sister. I was only doing it because I had my school formal in a week and Kylie said she was trying to save me from embarrassing myself.

‘You don’t want to look like Stephen Woddleton!’ she squealed when she got home from her school dance. ‘He was actually rap-dancing. He’s such a geek!’

And I didn’t believe she was trying to help me, either. I don’t believe much of anything Kylie says. She’s an eighteen-year-old attitude trapped in a thirteen-year-old body that watches way too much Dancing with the Stars. She tapes the show every week and tries to learn whatever dance the soapie star does. Her favourite’s the cha cha.

More than anything, Kylie wants to be famous. She says it’s absolutely no coincidence that her name is Kylie, and if she could just get on TV like the real Kylie did, she’d be a dancing star too.

She dances with Mum, mostly. Never Dad. He does watch Dancing with the Stars, even though he always says he hates it, but he reckons the problem with the show is that real guys don’t cha cha or rumba. And they definitely don’t tango. I reminded him that the guys on the show were real guys, and that was why they were such bad dancers, but Dad said, ‘Ashton. They are not real guys, they’re celebrities, and I spell that S-E-L-L. You know what I mean.’

I didn’t – not really. After one of his huge sprays about the footballer who seemed to take his shirt off every week, I said, ‘Why don’t you watch the girls instead of the guys, Dad?’ He winked at me. I was catching on.

Kylie was getting aggro with me for not taking this dance practice seriously.

I didn’t want to go to the formal – not to dance, anyway. And if I did dance, I’d just do air guitar the way Dad does at the end of every family barbecue we’ve ever had. I’d even make the dopy faces and play all the lead breaks right up the air guitar’s neck. I wouldn’t dance with anyone the way Kylie was trying to get me to dance with her. I couldn’t see myself wrapping an arm around Stephanie Gilbert’s waist and holding her hand.

Okay, maybe I could. But I knew I’d die. And if they made me dance with her, I’d put as much distance between us as possible. Kylie had the DVD on pause and was showing me that we had to have our bodies together: as in actually touching from shoulder to hip. It was totally off.

‘Caaarmon, Ash. Get serious! It’s the rumba!’ She was wrestling me towards her, and that was when she grabbed the handful of flesh above my hip. ‘What’s that?’

‘Ow!’ I growled, pulling away from her.

‘Ashton!’

‘What?’

And she gave it a squeeze. ‘Muffin top!’

I karate-chopped her hand and tried to get free, but she was onto me as soon as I turned. She grabbed me around the waist and steered me over to the good couch. It was as if we were in a scrum and I was a lazy front-rower needing a shove. She had me pinned: my face buried between the cushions, butt up. Then she lifted my t-shirt and started wobbling. ‘It’s fat – that’s what it is!’

‘Lemme go!’ I squawked into the cushion.

‘Oooooooh-eeeeehh! Chunkus-bunkus!’ Her cackling drove me crazy.

I kicked and thrashed and she gave me a last shove deep down into the couch, where there were crumbs and sand, and I came up spitting. My t-shirt had ridden halfway up my body. ‘That is fat, mate. Look!’

I pulled my t-shirt down and said, ‘You’d know.’

‘What?’ she hissed. ‘I’d know what?’

‘You’ve got enough of it!’

She looked as if she was about to have an asthma attack. I pointed at her bare stomach. She was dressed for soccer, but had her top tucked up under her training-bra so it looked as if it was a midriff dance number. ‘I’d be careful who you call muffin top. Muffin top.’

It was enough to get her breathing again.

Then, bang! It was on. Swing, and a miss! She lunged at me, but I was too quick. I ran for the kitchen – and I was in socks, so my grip wasn’t great. I’ll never know why kitchens don’t have carpet. Dad was propping up the bench with Mum. They were making easy work of a sticky bun for afternoon tea.

As soon as I saw them I tried to straighten up, but I was skidding like a TV dog on floorboards. Kylie’s bare feet gave her perfect traction and she almost had me as I rounded the bench. I grabbed Dad for support or shelter, he grabbed Mum as he came down with me and the three of us ended up in a pile on the floor. Mum’s stool collected her on the knee.

Kylie stood over us, panting. Seething. ‘No one calls me Muffin Top!’ And she lashed out with a kick.

She scored – and punched the air as she ran away.

2

Mum and Dad and I got back on our feet. After the ranting and the lecture and the what-the-hell-are-you-two-doings, Dad said, ‘What’s a muffin top?’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Mum. ‘It takes one to know one – and you should know.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m one too. We all are.’ Then she pulled up her shirt and showed us her belly. It seemed to hang over her pants the whole way round, but maybe that was because her tracky dacks were a bit tight. It was a weird thing for her to do, because we all knew she spent most of the time sucking her gut in. ‘See? This here –’ And she grabbed a handful that hung over the elastic waistband. ‘The pants are like the paper that holds the muffin, and this bit’s the top – only it’s not crunchy. Don’t you listen to the makeover shows?’

Dad shook his head. ‘Not if I can help it.’

‘Yeah, well I’m no muffin top,’ barked Kylie, as she opened cupboard doors and banged them shut. It was a wonder she didn’t add, ‘Der, Dad!’

‘Sorry,’ said Mum. ‘I don’t want to be one, and I definitely don’t want you to be one, but you know how it is. Two kids and all that –’

‘Count me out,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Dad. ‘Ash is just waiting for a growth spurt. Give him a break. He’s only eleven. He’s normal.’

I nodded. It sounded good to me.

‘Normal’s not what it used to be, honey.’

‘Oh, please. Ash, show us your abs.’ And then Dad lifted his t-shirt to show us his.

Mum squinted. ‘That’d be a sesame seed and hair muffin top. Hmmmm. Yum! Let me at it, babe!’

Dad pushed her hands away and sucked his gut in, but it didn’t help much, so he dropped his shirt.

‘Come on, Ash, your turn. Give us a look.’

‘Daaaaaaaaaaaaad.’

‘Give it up, mate. Fair crack. Let’s see ‘em.’

I grabbed a bit of bun – not the piece closest to me, like I’d been taught to take whenever we had visitors, but the piece with the most icing. ‘It’s like Dad said. I’m just waiting to grow. I’m normal, okay?’

‘Muuuuuuuuuum, stop gutsing yourself! We’re going to be late.’ Kylie had her soccer top where it should have been all afternoon. She gave me a you’re-the-bad-smell-under-my-nose look, spun round dramatically and headed for the door.

‘Oops,’ said Mum as she tied her hair up in a scrunchie. I hadn’t even noticed she was in her jazzercise outfit. ‘At least I’m trying to get rid of mine.’

‘Cheap shot,’ said Dad, taking the last bit of bun.

‘See you, stud-muffin,’ Mum said to me. Or him. We both smiled.

Kylie poked her bum out at me.

‘Let’s see if there’s any sport on the telly,’ said Dad. ‘That always makes me feel healthier.’

3

When Mum came home from jazzercise, she was either buzzing or in a flap.

She normally spent the dregs of Saturday afternoon pooped on the lounge, but this time she was different and even Kylie was revved up. She’d obviously had some game time at last. She and Mum were all giggles and noise, and with that carry-on it was pretty much impossible to enjoy the end of the footy.

‘What’s going on?’ said Dad.

‘Nothing.’ Kylie flipped her fringe.

‘Nothing’s never sounded so loud.’

‘Oh, I’ve just had an idea,’ giggled Mum, ‘for the paper. More of a feature than a column, actually.’

Kylie looked as if she’d wet herself laughing, but didn’t want to leave in case she missed anything.

‘As well as the pet care column you’ve already got?’ asked Dad.

‘This’ll be better,’ said Mum. ‘It’s still pets – guinea pigs this time – but human.’ Our family had always thought it was strange that Mum wrote a column for the local paper about pets when we hadn’t ever owned one. Our house was a flea-free zone, and that was the way she liked it. ‘Just make sure you’re home next weekend – or the weekend after. And switch that thing off!’

Dad sucked his teeth, shook his head and turned up the volume.

‘You’ll be sorry,’ clucked Kylie. ‘Won’t they?’ She got herself a glass of water from the tap and a carrot from the fridge. I let it go. If Kylie wanted to be a carrot muffin, that was her business.

Mum was Mrs Strango all week – happy and chirpy and busy. She wasn’t usually busy and happy at the same time, so this was weird. There were no sticky buns after school. No hot chocolates. No cappuccinos or babycinos or milkshakes. And there were definitely no muffins. She went the green tea and seaweed biscuits and I almost lost it when she made my lunch with rice crackers instead of bread. By Friday the local Yellow Pages looked as if it had been thumbed and the fridge had lost its war against her post-it note reminders.

Things were happening.

But Mum was the only one who knew what. Kylie pretended to know, but when I pressed her, I realised she knew nothing. She couldn’t piece together the clues in the post-it notes any better