The Summer We Turned Green

by William Sutcliffe

  Praise for

  ‘Probably the funniest and most authentic novel that I’ve read about being an awkward, self-conscious teenage boy since I WAS an awkward, self-conscious teenage boy!’

  John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

  ‘Made me cry with laughter. A comic novel like this is a gift to the nation’

  Amanda Craig, journalist and author of The Lie of the Land

  ‘So, so funny and recognisable – I immediately forced it on my fourteen-year-old’

  Jenny Colgan, Sunday Times bestselling author

  ‘Sharp, witty and brilliantly observed … I haven’t laughed out loud like that for a long time’

  Brian Conaghan, Costa Award-winning author

  ‘Great characters, packed with wisdom and reminiscent of Adrian Mole (and there’s no higher praise, let’s face it)’

  Sathnam Sanghera, journalist and author of The Boy with the Topknot

  ‘It made me laugh out loud on the tube’

  Patrice Lawrence, award-winning author of Orangeboy

  ‘I blasted through this corker by William Sutcliffe … YA needs more books like this’

  Phil Earle, author of Demolition Dad

  Books by William Sutcliffe

  FOR ADULTS

  New Boy

  Are You Experienced?

  The Love Hexagon

  Whatever Makes You Happy

  FOR ADULTS AND YOUNG ADULTS

  Bad Influence

  The Wall

  Concentr8

  We See Everything

  The Gifted, the Talented and Me

  The Summer We Turned Green

  FOR YOUNGER READERS

  Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom

  Circus of Thieves on the Rampage

  Circus of Thieves and the Comeback Caper

  For Saul, Iris and Juno

  and for all the school climate strikers

  Contents

  The sleeping bag

  The end of the world isn’t our fault

  The things they don’t want you to hear

  Who is this creature and when did it last wash?

  It can’t be easy being her

  Things just happen to you, then that becomes your life

  Space

  The wrong chair

  The wigwam controversy

  The double-down

  Barrel Woman

  Shorter!

  The house of cards

  Whoever I am when I come out the other side

  If you put it like that, I suppose you can come in

  Diplomat!?

  I didn’t know that was even possible

  The nest

  The sweet spot

  Should I be worried about you?

  Sometimes you have to do these things

  The ranting middle-aged man chained to a tree

  A good day out

  I want to be part of it

  Rebel outlaw

  You’ve had your last warning

  No defeat! No surrender!

  Move with the tree

  How long do you think we have left?

  Say what needs to be said

  The call

  The party

  Acknowledgements

  The Gifted, the Talented and Me

  About the Author

  It starts with a knock at my bedroom door.

  Without waiting for an answer, my sister walks in, closing the door behind her as if she doesn’t want anyone to hear what she’s doing.

  Rose never comes into my bedroom. She barely even speaks to me, but I suppose this is normal, since she’s four years older and thinks that compared to her seventeen-year-old friends I’m about as interesting as a dust particle, so I have no idea what to say when she appears, says hi, then just stands there smiling at me.

  There’s a weird silence, because she doesn’t seem to know what to say, either.

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask eventually.

  ‘You all right?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’

  The room goes quiet again. Her eyes slowly pass over my posters and shelves, and I get the feeling she’s trying (and failing) to think of a topic of conversation. Then she says, ‘You’ve got a sleeping bag, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I borrow it?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Sleeping in?’ she replies, using the sarcastic statement-as-a-question intonation that drives our parents crazy.

  ‘Are you going somewhere?’

  ‘It’s not important where I’m going, I’m just asking if you’ll let me borrow it,’ she says, with her eyes narrowing into a particular stare she has – the one that makes me wither and obey.

  As always, it works, and next thing I know I’m rummaging under my bed, hauling out the sleeping bag and handing it over.

  ‘Thanks, Luke. You’re a star,’ she says, already heading out of the room.

  ‘When will I get it back?’

  ‘When I’ve finished with it,’ she replies, walking away without a backward glance, which feels much more like the sister I know than the strange, smiley person who walked in.

  A few minutes later, I hear the front door open and close. There’s no bell ring, just the sound of the clicking latch, followed by footsteps heading outside towards the street, accompanied by the judder of small, hard wheels trundling over concrete.

  I glance at my watch – it’s nearly 9 p.m. – then jump up and look out of the window, just in time to see Rose cross the road and go into the house opposite, wheeling a small suitcase and carrying my badly-rolled-up sleeping bag under one arm.

  I head downstairs. Dad is on the sofa in front of the TV, but he isn’t really watching it because he’s got an iPad on his lap, but he isn’t really looking at that because he’s got his phone in his hand, but he doesn’t seem to be looking at that either, because his eyes are closed and his mouth is open and he doesn’t notice me entering the room.

  I head for the kitchen and Mum is in her usual spot at the table, gazing intently at her laptop, ‘working’ (browsing Facebook).

  ‘Where’s Rose gone?’ I say.

  ‘Nowhere,’ says Mum, not looking up from her screen, which is showing a picture of a cousin she’s always hated sitting beside a swimming pool holding a cocktail. Mum grimaces, mutters the words ‘stupid cow’, and ‘likes’ the picture.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

  ‘How can she afford a holiday in Florida? She only just got divorced!’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘That’s how she affords it. She just got divorced.’

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Took him to the cleaners, and everyone knows she cheated on him first.’

  ‘Do you know that Rose just left the house with a suitcase? I think she went over the road.’

  This – finally – gets Mum’s attention.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw it out the window.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now.’

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Over the road?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With a suitcase?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mum springs from the table and charges up the stairs. I hear her open the door of Rose’s room, close it again, then thunder back downstairs and charge into the sitting room.

  I follow right behind her.

  ‘I wasn’t asleep!’ says Dad, jolting upright as we walk in, sending his iPad and phone clattering on to the floor.

  ‘Rose has gone,’ says Mum.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rose! She’s gone!’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I looked
in her wardrobe and she’s taken her clothes. We think she’s gone over the road!’ says Mum, with an air of tragic climax that Dad clearly can’t make sense of.

  ‘Er …’

  ‘With her stuff in a suitcase,’ I say, translating Mum’s panic into words Dad might actually understand.

  ‘Oh!’ says Dad. ‘Right. So … you’re not saying she’s popped out. You’re saying she’s …’

  ‘Gone!’

  ‘Over the road?’

  ‘She borrowed my sleeping bag,’ I point out. Dad tends to need things explained to him very slowly, a bit like a small child but without the fun.

  ‘SHE TOOK YOUR SLEEPING BAG!?’ yells Mum, which is when I realise I should have kept this to myself.

  I nod.

  ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US!?’

  ‘I’m telling you now.’

  ‘After she’s left! Why didn’t you tell us when she took the sleeping bag?’

  ‘Because she only took it two minutes before she went.’

  ‘Why did you lend it to her?’ says Dad.

  ‘Because she asked for it.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you just hand over a … sleeping bag … to a vulnerable teenager,’ says Mum.

  ‘What’s vulnerable about her?’

  ‘Everything!’

  ‘She seems very confident to me,’ I say.

  ‘She’s run away from home!’ says Mum. ‘You don’t give a sleeping bag to a teenager who’s on the brink of running away from home!’

  ‘I didn’t know she was going to run away.’

  ‘What did you think the sleeping bag was for? A camping trip?’

  ‘You always told me to be generous and share my things. Now I’ve done it and you’re angry with me.’

  ‘Not a sleeping bag!’

  ‘That’s not what you said. I don’t remember you ever saying, “Be generous with your sister and share all your things except your sleeping bag.” ’

  ‘We’re getting off the point,’ says Dad, turning back towards Mum. ‘You’re sure she’s actually run away? You think she’s not coming back?’

  Mum sighs and for a moment her eyes glisten with tears. A heavy silence fills the room, and my parents stare at one another like two people who have just stepped out of a car crash and have no idea what to say or do next.

  I should probably explain …

  Why the big drama about a seventeen-year-old girl crossing the road with a suitcase and a sleeping bag? Well, the boring street in the boring suburb where my boring home sits isn’t as dull and safe as it used to be, because the house opposite, which used to be even more boring than ours, has become a magnet for every climate protester, anti-capitalist, extinction rebel, outcast and dropout in the country.

  How?

  Well, to explain this you have to go right back to when I was small. Nobody seems to know exactly when rumblings were first heard about a proposed new runway for the airport near my home. For as long as I can remember the project was on, then off, then on again, and there was always talk of a never-ending round of meetings and consultations that sometimes sent the whole street into a panic about threats of demolition, and at other times seemed like an endless drone of irrelevant background noise.

  Then, roughly a year before the bizarre summer I’m going to tell you about, the project finally got a green light. On a morning that seemed like any other, the postman casually walked his usual route, unnoticed, delivering a small stack of dull-looking brown envelopes which would change the street forever. Twenty letters landed on twenty doormats that day, telling every family who got one that their home was going to be bought from them, whether they wanted to sell or not, then demolished. Ours was spared. All the houses opposite were condemned.

  Local outrage ramped up as the row of buildings emptied out and got boarded up, and the story even got some news coverage. Then gradually the abandoned house opposite ours filled up again with squatters: anti-airport protesters, climate activists and, according to my parents, anyone else who thought it might be a laugh to hang out in a derelict house all day instead of going out and getting a job.

  There’s an old saying: my enemy’s enemy is my friend. My street is a good test case for this idea, and, so far, it doesn’t seem to be true. A more accurate version would appear to be: my enemy’s enemy is even worse than my enemy if he wears strange clothes and looks like he doesn’t wash and makes noise late at night.

  Yes, since the protesters moved in over the road, all the nice, boring polite people on my side of the street simply don’t know who to hate any more. They don’t want their neighbours’ houses demolished in order to build an access road to a new cargo terminal, but even more than that, they don’t want weirdos waking them up at night with bongo drums, and they certainly don’t want their daughters going to visit anti-capitalist communes and deciding they like it there.

  That’s why the loan of my sleeping bag (which, to be honest, I didn’t really think through as I was doing it) was more than a little controversial, and why Mum ended up with tears in her eyes, staring at Dad in stunned silence, just because my sister had crossed the road pulling a suitcase.

  ‘I’m going over there,’ says Mum.

  ‘What are you going to say?’ asks Dad.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to say? I’m going to tell her to come home.’

  Dad pulls a sceptical face.

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  Dad shrugs.

  ‘You’re shrugging? How can you shrug at a time like this?’

  ‘I just … I’m not sure telling her to come home is going to work.’

  ‘Are you saying we should let her stay?’

  ‘No,’ says Dad, ‘I just think telling her what she can and can’t do doesn’t seem to be very effective at the moment.’

  ‘What’s the alternative? Giving up and letting her do whatever she wants?’

  ‘No … I … well, why don’t you give it a try? We can see how it goes.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ says Mum, striding to the front door and closing it behind her with a slam.

  I head upstairs and pretend to go to bed after Mum leaves, but I’m listening out for the front door, and I hurry down to hear the news as soon as she returns, which is surprisingly soon.

  ‘Well?’ says Dad, who has jumped up from the sofa to greet Mum in the hallway.

  Mum hangs her keys on the hook behind the door and slowly turns back towards us. Her face is pale, and the tip of her nose has gone white, which is what happens when she’s trying to pretend she’s not angry.

  She looks at us as if we are far away and barely recognisable, takes a deep breath, then says, ‘It didn’t go well.’

  ‘What happened?’ says Dad.

  ‘Well … she’s in a very determined mood. I tried to take things gently, and I told her that I admire her open-mindedness, and I think it’s good she’s making friends with people from other walks of life, and that she can visit them as often as she likes, but for her own safety she has to spend her nights at home with us.’

  ‘And … ?’

  ‘She just asked what I meant by “other walks of life”, and I tried to explain, but for some reason she didn’t like what I said and I got a long lecture about why I’m a snob, and how ignorant and blind I am for having no clue about who the climate protesters are, and what they’re trying to achieve, and how they’re the only people facing up to the most serious crisis the human race has ever faced. I tried to tell her I wasn’t talking about the end of the human race, I was talking about her coming home for bed, then she went off on one about how I wasn’t listening to a word she was saying and how the whole conversation was a perfect illustration of why she has to move out. When I asked her what this meant, she just told me I’m impossible to talk to. Can you believe that? I’m the one who’s impossible to talk to!’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Dad.

  ‘I told her she was too young to be there, and it wasn’t up to her, and she w
as coming home whether she liked it or not.’

  ‘And … ?’

  ‘Well, that’s when things got a little heated. Honestly, where did she get that temper from?’

  Dad and I avoid eye contact.

  ‘So … what’s the upshot?’ says Dad, dodging Mum’s self-answering question. ‘That it is up to her?’

  ‘No! But I can’t physically drag her back! What am I supposed to do? I don’t know what’s happened to her. She’s so angry.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Not sure. It’s either global environmental meltdown or us telling her what to do. She talked a lot about both, but I think the main problem is us.’

  ‘What have we done? The end of the world isn’t our fault.’

  ‘Well, Rose doesn’t seem to think so.’

  ‘How can it be our fault?’

  ‘Well, not just us, but people like us.’

  ‘People like us?’

  ‘Our generation. We’re complacent and selfish apparently, and we’re destroying the planet.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘She does have a point,’ I say. ‘I mean, she’s not wrong, is she?’

  Mum and Dad glare at me.

  ‘We’re not complacent,’ says Dad dismissively.

  ‘Are you actually doing anything? To stop climate change?’ I ask.

  ‘We recycle,’ says Dad.

  I give him a slow round of applause.

  ‘The end of the world isn’t the point here,’ says Mum. ‘It’s not our job to save the planet, but it is our job to save our daughter.’

  ‘From what?’ I ask. ‘The people over the road?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘What is it you think they’re going to do to her?’

  ‘She’s too young!’ says Dad. ‘You don’t just move out of the family home on a whim one evening, aged seventeen, without even a goodbye.’

  ‘Who says it was a whim?’ I ask.

  ‘We should have discussed it,’ says Mum.

  ‘You think you could have changed her mind?’

  ‘I could have tried. Why didn’t she talk to us about it?’ says Mum, turning to Dad.

  ‘Maybe she thought you wouldn’t listen,’ I say. ‘Maybe she thought you’d forbid it. Anyway, how do you know she’s moved out?’