Not long after that, Dad announced that he wasn’t going back to his old job after all. He said what was the point of doing a job he didn’t like? And then he gave me a really big smile. Dad went to college to learn about horticulture, which is all about plants and stuff. He said he really wanted to be a gardener. Mum explained that we’d have a lot less money but it was important that adults tried to do jobs that they enjoy. She said they spend a lot of their lives at work and that Dad’s old job was making him very unhappy. He worked in a pub in the evening and studied really hard in the daytime and he passed all of his exams. Eventually he bought a van and set up his own business: “Eddie’s Gardening Services”. He was happy again.
I watched as this other version of my dad made his way through the crowds. In this world it looked like he was still working in his stressful office job in London. Did that mean he was going to get ill again? Why hadn’t he gone back to college to learn about plants and gardening? I watched as the back of his head disappeared in the crowd and then I stood up and headed to the shop to buy the milk.
Reg told me I could keep the change from the milk money so I bought myself a cheap toothbrush. I was quite proud of myself for being sensible and choosing something I actually needed. If I’d been in my old world I’d have just chosen sweets. This was all working out fine and I decided to carry on with being the new-me when I got back to Reg’s.
“Can I help you with any jobs while I’m staying here, Reg?” I asked.
Reg thought for a moment, and then his eyes lit up.
“As a matter of fact, you can!” he said.
I grinned back, but to be honest I was hoping he’d say no and we could just sit around on the sofa and watch TV. I planned to see if I could find Bex after school but that was hours away.
Reg asked me to help him get the lounge curtains down so that he could give them a wash. I stood on a chair and worked out how they came off as Reg held the curtain below until he had the whole lot in his arms. After that I did the vacuuming while Reg went around waving a yellow duster at things. We had lunch and then Reg sat in his armchair and chatted while I cleaned the insides of his windows.
“You are a thoughtful boy, Maxwell. Thank you.”
I squirted the glass with some spray then wiped it with a cloth. I smiled. No one had ever called me thoughtful before. Although all of this “being nice” business was hard. The windows kept going smeary so I folded and refolded the cloth a few times and tried again. After I finished I turned around and saw that Reg had nodded off in his chair. It was just after three o’clock. Time to try and find Bex.
I got to school at 3.25 p.m. to get in position behind the tree. At exactly three-thirty the bell blasted for the end of school and within five seconds the main doors burst open and hundreds of kids in navy uniforms spilled across the playground. I checked all the faces, trying to spot Bex, but there was no sign of her. I recognized a few kids from my class, including Marcus Grundy. He had another boy in a headlock and was walking along with him like he was carrying a bag under his arm. There weren’t any teachers around to see.
“Get off, Marcus!” the boy shouted. It was Charlie Geek. Marcus looked around pretending he didn’t know where the voice was coming from.
“Marcus! Let me go!” Charlie yelled again. Marcus shrugged his shoulders and the kids around him began to laugh.
“Oi, you!” I shouted, coming out from behind the tree and walking right up to the fence. “Let him go, you idiot!”
Charlie tried to look up but he couldn’t move his head.
“Who says?” said Marcus, snarling at me.
“Me!” I shouted. Unlike everyone else, I wasn’t frightened of Marcus Grundy. I never had been. He took a few steps towards me with Charlie still in a headlock. A small crowd began to gather around.
“Why don’t you come over here and make me, eh?” said Marcus. I looked up and saw Mr Townsend, one of the science teachers, coming out of the main doors.
I leaned closer to the fence.
“If you don’t let him go I’ll tell everyone what you did in your pants in Year Two. Remember the flowerpot, Marcus?”
A few people around him spluttered and began to laugh.
“What was that? What did he say about your pants?” said Charlie, from his awkward angle. Marcus tightened his grip but I noticed his face had gone pale.
“But how? How did you know about that?” he whispered. I grinned back at him and tapped the side of my forehead with one finger.
Marcus’s mum used to meet my mum for a coffee when we were in primary school. One evening I overheard her telling Dad something that Marcus’s mum had told her. Apparently, he had had an “accident” in his pants in school and rather than own up and tell the teacher he hadn’t got to the toilet in time, he tried to discreetly fish it out and dump it in a plant pot in the corner of the classroom. The teacher spotted what he was doing before anyone noticed and told him to go to the bathroom. The story never got out. I’d known all about Marcus’s little poo incident for seven years now and I’d carefully stored it away in my brain to use in case of emergency. That time was now.
“What was that about a flowerpot?” said Sanjeev Howe.
Marcus let Charlie go and he slowly stood upright, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Yeah, tell us all about it!” snorted Ebony Garland. “We are dying to know.” She’d had a tough time from Marcus in the past so she seemed especially pleased with how uncomfortable he was looking. Mr Townsend came over to see what was going on and I dropped back near the tree again.
“There you go, mate. No harm done, eh?” said Marcus, brushing invisible dust from Charlie’s shoulders as the teacher arrived. “I’ll knock for you in the morning, yeah?”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, OK. See you tomorrow, Marcus.”
I couldn’t believe it. They were friends? Charlie and Marcus? That was ridiculous! Charlie was fiddling with his hair and trying to get it to stick up again after it been flattened by the headlock. Now I came to think of it, Charlie’s hair was exactly the same as Marcus’s. He was even trying to look like him!
I checked my watch. 3.39 p.m. I quickly scanned the playground but there was still no sign of Bex. Maybe she didn’t go to this school any more? What would I do then? How would I find her, Mum and Monster if she wasn’t here?
I spotted some girls from her year, including Claudia Bradwell, the girl who had been cruel about Bex’s outfit at the ball. Everyone was leaving and before long there were just two boys left kicking a stone around until a teacher yelled at them to make their way home. There weren’t any clubs at school on a Monday. Where was she? A voice behind me suddenly made me jump.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
I turned around and faced Charlie Geek. He was gripping the strap of his rucksack on his shoulder and scowling. It was his “trying to be brave” look.
“Charlie!” I said. “How are you?” I gave him my best, friendliest grin, trying not stare too much at his hair. The school badge on his blazer was hanging off where the stitching had been unpicked. Marcus’s was like that too.
“Why are you following me around? You came to my house and now you’re at my school. What do you want?” He looked around nervously. “Are you from Prank Me Out?”
Prank Me Out is a show on TV where you set your friends up to look stupid and it’s supposed to be funny. There was one episode where there was this boy who secretly wanted to be a pop star. They hid cameras in his bedroom and filmed him singing into a comb while watching himself in the mirror. The following day he went to the cinema with his mates and, instead of the film coming on to the screen, the Prank Me Out team played the clip of him singing in his room. His mates, who had set him up, found it hilarious and the whole cinema screamed with laughter. The boy laughed along too but you could tell from his face that he was actually trying not to cry.
“What do you think I am? Prank Me Out?! No! I’d never do that,” I said. “I hate that programme as much as y
ou do!”
Charlie looked baffled.
“But … how do you know I hate Prank Me Out?”
“I’m just … I … erm,” I stuttered. “Everyone hates it, don’t they?”
“Who are you?” said Charlie, taking a step closer and folding his arms. I suddenly had an idea. “We went to the same nursery school. Remember? We were great mates and we played together all the time!”
The problem with this was that we didn’t actually go to the same nursery school. I had no idea where he went and I could barely remember where I had gone.
“We did?” he said, looking up to the left as he tried to find a memory of me. “What did we do there?”
I jiggled about on the spot a bit.
“Ohhh, well, we played with the playdough … and, erm, in the home area with the little wooden kitchen … and, oh! I know! We used to drive around in those big plastic cars where you had to push yourself around by your feet.”
Charlie smiled.
“I loved those cars,” he said.
“Yeah, me too!” I said, slapping him on the arm. “The teacher … old erm, what’s-her-name, she couldn’t get us out of them! Do you remember?”
Charlie nodded but he still looked puzzled. “What was your name again?” he said.
“Maxwell,” I said. Charlie rubbed his lip with his finger, thinking. “Anyway, none of that matters. I was in your past and now … I’m back! I remember you and you’ve forgotten me. But, you know. It’s no biggie…” I shrugged and stuck my bottom lip out. Charlie looked really uncomfortable then. Making him feel like he’d upset me so that I got my own way was one of my most-used skills. He was still frowning.
“B-but I really don’t remember you. At all,” he said. He looked a bit upset about it now so I gave him a beaming smile.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not offended!” I said, whacking him on the arm again. “Look, you don’t happen to know a girl called Bex in Year Ten do you?”
Charlie sniffed.
“Bex Beckett? Yeah, of course I do. Everyone knows her,” he said. My sister was always going up in assembly, picking up awards for “best history project” or “most successful student of the term” and that kind of rubbish. Of course he would know who she was.
“Do you know where she is?” I asked.
“Oh, she’ll be ages yet. Detention doesn’t finish for another twenty minutes.”
“What?!” I choked. “What do you mean, detention?”
“Bex Beckett has been in permanent detention ever since she started a fire in the art room bin at the beginning of term. The whole school was evacuated and six fire engines turned up! I’m surprised she hasn’t been suspended again, to be honest.”
“Suspended?! Again?!” I said.
“Yeah. Her crowd are pretty much out of control,” said Charlie, rolling his eyes. “Her mate Claudia Bradwell is just as bad. Anyway, I gotta go. See you later.”
And then he turned and headed off down the road.
This didn’t sound like my sister at all. And Bex was friends with Claudia after everything she’d done? That couldn’t be right. Charlie must have been exaggerating. Surely Bex wasn’t that bad, was she? I knew my sister and that really didn’t sound like her at all.
I checked my watch. Twenty minutes was up. Bex would be out any moment now. I decided that it would probably be best if I just followed her and found out where she lived. Then I could see if Mum was OK and give Monster a really big hug. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that bit but I really, really wanted to see my dog. I leaned against the tree and watched as an empty crisp packet blew around the playground. It swooped gently, this way and that, almost as if it couldn’t decide which way to go. I watched the packet blow towards the main gate. Suddenly a foot wearing a brown boot stamped down on top of it like it was crushing a butterfly. My jaw dropped when I saw who the leg belonged to.
It was Bex. Her long, brown hair was pulled into a really high ponytail. It was so tight she had a shocked look in her eyes. Her school tie was twisted so that only the smaller bit showed. You got an automatic detention if you did that, but considering she was already in detention it probably wasn’t going to make much difference. She was wearing skinny black jeans instead of the regulation school trousers and, more shockingly, she appeared to be wearing about two inches of thick, orange make-up. I watched, dumbstruck, as she turned left and headed down the road.
I started to follow. I kept my distance but it wouldn’t have made much difference as she was too busy scrolling through her phone to notice me.
When she got to the high street she went into a shop called Candy Lashes. Underneath the shop sign, which was written in bright purple, bubble letters, it said: Accessorize 4 Life. I looked through the window and was faced with piles and piles of stuff. There were brushes and bows and clips and slides and long pieces of hair that looked like they had been snipped off someone’s head. There was also a row of jewellery and a wall full of make-up. I stood by the window. This was a shop that Bex would never, ever go in.
A woman behind the counter smiled at Bex and then carried on serving a customer. I watched as my sister picked up a sparkly purse, studied it for a bit, turning it over in her hands. My stomach tightened as she looked over at the shop assistant and then it relaxed as Bex put the purse back. She made her way towards the make-up section. I stepped to the side so that I had a better view as she picked up a bottle of perfume, squirted it on to her wrist, gave it a sniff, then put it back. She then chose some pink, sparkly nail polish and looked at the tiny label on the bottle. She put her hand up to scratch her head and, poof, as if by magic the bottle disappeared.
“What the heck…” I said, squinting at the floor to try and see where it had gone.
Bex picked up another one, a green colour this time, held it as if she was looking for the price, scratched her nose and, poof, it vanished just like the pink one. This time I saw exactly where it had gone; she had dropped it down the sleeve of her school blazer. Her fingers gripped the cuff so that the bottles didn’t drop out on to the floor. She chose one more varnish, a blue one this time, and, abracadabra, that disappeared too. She was like a thieving magician. She glanced around the shop one last time then stuffed both of her hands into her blazer pockets and walked quickly towards the door. I turned away so she didn’t see me and then I followed her as she headed down the street.
My goodie-two-shoes sister was a thief! I couldn’t believe it! She crossed over the road and I did the same, keeping a few paces behind her. What was she thinking? Did she not realize how much trouble she could get into if she was caught? We got to the outside of the library when she suddenly stopped and turned around.
“Why are you following me?” she said. Her nose was scrunched up and her eyes were narrowed to slits.
“Bex!” I stuttered. She looked even more orange close up.
“How do you know my name? Are you at my school?”
I cleared my throat.
“Erm … yes,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes so much they were nearly closed.
“Well? What do you want?” she said.
I jiggled around a bit.
“I’m just. I … erm. I’m doing a survey … for school … for homework. I wanted to ask you a question.”
She glared at me again.
“Look. I’m not in the mood for stupid games. OK?” She dropped a shoulder one way and cocked her head the other and then she spun round and I watched her ponytail bob away as she headed down the street.
“Bex! Wait up,” I said, chasing after her. She turned around and huffed and rolled her eyes all at the same time.
“Can you just answer a question for my homework? Please? Otherwise I’ll get into big trouble.”
She sniffed and stared at the ground.
“OK. What is your stupid question?” she said.
“Erm. Well … it’s, erm… What breed of dog do you own?”
She frowned. “Is that it?” she said.
>
I tried to look serious.
“Yes. We’re doing a project on … erm … dogs in the community for, erm … geography.”
Bex rolled her eyes again. Eye-rolling seemed to be her thing.
“I don’t have a dog. Never have. Never will. Does that answer your question? Now, go away.”
She carried on walking. I skipped along beside her.
“You don’t have a beagle? A beagle that likes eating? He’s about this high,” I said, putting my hand down at my knee level. “And he smells a bit. Especially his breath. And he’s called Monster. Or any name, really. Any name you might have called him. Forget about the Monster bit … you probably called him something else, like Einstein or Nelson, knowing you…”
She glanced at me then and pulled a confused face but she didn’t say anything. We walked along in silence for a bit and when she realized I wasn’t going away she stopped.
“Look, weirdo, get lost! Got that?” she said.
“But you haven’t answered me properly! About the dog!” I said.
She folded her arms.
“I think I’d know if I had a dog or not, don’t you?” she said. “Anyway, what is your problem? Are you a freak or something?”
I blinked back at her. I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t have a dog. A terrible realization hit me. How could I have been so stupid? If I had never been born then of course I wouldn’t have been there on that day to save Monster. The day when he was lying in the middle of the road. The car must have hit him and killed him. A tear seeped out of the corner of my eye and I quickly brushed it away. Bex frowned and stopped.
“Are you … crying?” she said. I looked at my sister. Years ago, when Mum and Dad first started arguing, we used to sit at the top of the stairs together and listen. She’d put her arm around me and whisper that everything was going to be OK. I really wanted her to do that now.
“No. I’m not crying,” I said, frowning at her. She shrugged and carried on.
The Day I Was Erased Page 10
