by Anne Fine
‘Nothing,’ I said. (I’m not stupid.)
He opened the dictionary and showed me a page full of M-words.
‘Very good.’
‘And what do you bet me I can’t find the D’s?’
‘Nothing.’
He opened the book again, in the middle of the D’s.
‘Excellent.’
‘Bet me I can’t find the S’s in one go?’
‘I’m hanging on to my money.’
Just as well. He opened to the S’s in one go.
He went back to his salad. I opened the dictionary, looking for E, and landed on F. Then I tried B and landed on A.
‘So how did you do that?’ I asked him finally.
‘Old trick,’ he said.
‘But it’s a new dictionary.’
‘It works with all dictionaries,’ he said. ‘Open it right in the middle, and you’re in the M’s.’
I tried it. He was right.
‘Now try exactly halfway to the end again.’
‘Three-quarters through?’
‘That’s right. You’ll land on S.’
I did. Then I tried the first quarter, and I landed on D.
‘Works every time,’ he told me.
‘I’m impressed.’
Not half as impressed as Joe was, the next day.
‘Do you realise that now you’ll only have to riffle through a quarter of the dictionary each time you want to find a word?’ I told him.
‘So I will.’
He tried it, humming his little alphabet song under his breath.
‘It works!’
‘Of course it works.’
‘You are so clever, Howard!’
‘Thank my dad.’
Miss Tate interrupted our little festival of praise. ‘Shouldn’t you two be getting on with your work?’
Joey was radiant. ‘Oh, really! We are!’
He might be, I suppose. I haven’t actually got any work done since I came. My How-to book is still a total blank. But now he won’t be riffling and humming quite so much, I suppose there’s hope. At least it’s getting quieter around here.
6
‘Why are you torturing him like this?’
Within a week or two, I’d got his sloppy bag packing down to an art.
‘So where are we going now?’
He’d look at everyone rushing through the door, brandishing their gym stuff.
‘To games?’
(Sherlock the Second, this boy.)
‘So what do you need?’
He wasn’t allowed to say it until he had it safely out of his locker into the bag.
‘Sneakers. Shorts. T-shirt. Socks.’
Then off we’d go to games. Not that there was much point. He wasn’t very good at them. (I’m being nice, here. Joe was terrible at games. He was so bad that even Miss Tate’s pack of Goody Two-Shoes had to grit their teeth not to groan aloud if he ended up on their team.)
And he was terrible at maths, as well. Whatever page of problems Miss Tate gave out to him, he’d sit there, fidgeting and sighing till my nerves were in tatters.
‘So what’s the matter now?’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘What don’t you get?’
(I don’t know why I bothered. I might as well have asked someone who was stone deaf, ‘What can’t you hear?’)
‘I just don’t get it.’
Why should I work myself into a frazzle for free? Miss Tate gets paid for it.
‘Miss Tate. Miss Tate! Joe’s stuck again!’
You have to hand it to the lady. She did her best. Day after day, she’d haul the coloured rods and blocks over to his desk, and set them out, and go through the problems again.
‘So, Joe. Let’s take it step by step. This block here is worth –’
‘A hundred?’
She’d shake her head.
‘A thousand?’
‘No. Think, Joe. We went through this only yesterday.’
‘Ten, then.’
Third guess lucky. Not that there was that much left to choose. But still Miss Tate managed to crank the enthusiasm up into overdrive.
‘That’s right, Joe! So if we don’t have enough of the red blocks to . . . drone . . . drone . . . drone . . . drone . . .’
Joe tried. He’d nod. And carry on answering her step-by-tiny-step questions, one by one. But there was no point in it. None of it took. The moment she walked away, he couldn’t remember the right questions to ask himself, to get to the answer. He couldn’t understand. And all the blocks and rods cluttering his desk were baffling him as much as the numbers that confused him in the first place.
‘I reckon only the people who can do it in the book can do it with the rods and blocks,’ he grumbled to me once.
‘Spotted it right away, Joe!’
‘So what’s the point?’
I shrugged. ‘Search me.’
Sometimes, just for a rest, she’d give him something he knew how to do. And still he’d get it wrong. I’d lean across to sort him out, and find he’d copied out the question wrong. This writing backwards business had crept into his numbers.
‘You’re supposed to be multiplying by thirteen, not thirty-one.’
‘Am I?’
He’d spend ten minutes finding his place on the worksheet.
‘So I am!’
Not that he’d even get the answer after that. His next mistake was usually to copy the right number into the wrong place.
He’d go through it four times over, to be sure. Then:
‘Have I made any mistakes at all in the adding?’
I’d check for him.
‘No. No mistakes in the adding.’
‘So it’s right?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
And I’d call Miss Tate over yet again, with all her rods and blocks, to try and explain.
One day, I asked her:
‘Why are you torturing him like this?’
Miss Tate looked hurt and horrified.
‘Torturing him? Howard, what on earth do you mean? I was just asking Joe if he understands.’
‘But Joe doesn’t know if he understands.’
‘Maybe he’ll get it suddenly. Some people do.’
She turned her back on me.
‘So, Joe,’ she said patiently. ‘Let’s try this one again. We start in this column, don’t we? So what’s seven times eight?’
We wait forever. And then, at last (because Joe can lip-read Beth) the answer comes.
‘Fifty-six?’
Miss Tate was thrilled.
‘Excellent, Joe!’
One mini-micro-second later, she’s asking him:
‘And what’s eight times seven?’
And he’s back to picking miserably at his fingertips.
‘Come on, Joe. You just did it.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Just now. You told me: “Seven times eight is fifty-six”.’
‘But I thought you wanted eight times seven now.’
‘Joe, they’re the same!’
He fakes it well enough. Slaps on his bright ‘I-think-I’ve-got-it-now’ face. And she pretends she’s fooled (because that’s her job). But I don’t have to act the idiot.
‘See? You’re just torturing him. If he hasn’t even grasped that seven eights is the same as eight sevens, how can you start him on fractions? It’s not fair.’
‘They’re very easy fractions.’
‘Thumbscrews are gentle compared with the iron maiden, I expect.’
‘Howard!’
She’s getting cross with me, I can tell. But I am cross with her. How can she carry on week after week, acting as if, deep down inside (if she could only reach it), Joe’s brain is just like mine or hers? Why can’t she see his clockwork doesn’t tick like ours?
‘He’s getting a lot more right these days, aren’t you, Joe?’
‘That’s just because Howard’s helping me.’
�
�I’m sure it isn’t.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said.
‘Howard!’
‘It’s true,’ I insist. ‘Joe gets along all right. But only by bluffing and guessing and mind-reading you, and lip-reading Beth, and getting answers from me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘Ask him – if you feel lucky!’
She doesn’t dare. She simply turns on her heel. And I know what I said hit home because, when she gets to her desk, she wheels round on me, and says, her face scarlet:
‘I think perhaps I ought to move you, Howard.’
Joe’s wail is pitiful.
‘Oh no, Miss Tate! Don’t separate us, please! I like sitting next to Howard! He’s a great help to me!’
She doesn’t push it. But later, when the bell rings, she takes my arm and draws me aside.
‘I think maybe you’d do a whole lot better, Howard Chester, if you took less interest in other people’s work, and more in your own.’
She had a point. For when I opened my How-to book to prove her wrong, it was still blank.
7
The golden rules
‘Today,’ I told him, ‘I am getting on with my own work.’
‘Just start me off first,’ he pleaded.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to get on myself. Once I start with you, there’s never any stopping.’
So, sadly, he set off in his brutish handwriting across the page.
It was no good. I couldn’t concentrate. I laid down my pen and slid the photographs he’d brought in to show me out of their envelope.
‘I’ve said this before,’ I told him. ‘And I shall probably say it again. I don’t understand how someone who can stuff eighteen jumbo-sized models into one tiny bedroom without breaking any of them can’t copy one word without losing his place half a billion times.’
I glanced at his work again.
‘Or six words in a row without falling off the edge of the paper.’
Look how he’d finished this time.
I touched his hand.
‘Are these the fingers that built that three-metre Eiffel Tower out of spaghetti?’
‘Macaroni.’
‘Whatever.’ I tapped his head. ‘Is this the brain that worked out how to make his sister’s Hallowe’en mask flash orange and green? Is this the same boy who stuffed all the speaker wires back in the right holes when Ben Bergonzi put his great hoof through them?’
‘That’s different,’ he said sadly. ‘I don’t have to learn wires and glue and stuff.’
I shook my head.
‘You’re in the wrong place,’ I told him. ‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s sapping your confidence. You ought to be trailing behind someone who builds bridges, or invents light displays for famous bands on tour, or bugs other people’s telephones.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Only –’ I did a rapid calculation in my head. ‘Only about one thousand, six hundred and forty-six days to go.’
He looked up, interested.
‘Till when?’
‘Till you can switch to doing what you’re good at.’
Wistfully, he stared at the photos spread across the desk.
‘One thousand, six hundred and forty-six days . . .’
I glanced at my watch.
‘And this one’s slipping away pretty sharpish,’ I warned. ‘So pick up your pen and get your own personal little Knuckle-head Show back on the road.’
‘I’m stuck.’
‘Just have a go. No one’s expecting you to win any prizes.’
‘I won one once,’ he said proudly.
‘Really?’
I wasn’t really listening. For suddenly, right then and there, I’d worked out exactly what to do with my own empty How-to book, down to the very last page.
But he was determined to tell me.
‘Yes. I won a prize. Two years ago at the Summer Fair.’
He looked so proud that, even though I was desperate to get on with my idea, I couldn’t help asking him:
‘Which prize?’
‘The prize for the boy who could keep his head in a hole longest while people threw wet sponges at him.’
Okay, then. I admit it. I’m not a stone. I have a heart. And I have heart-strings, too. And my little underachieving deskmate had just twanged them so hard they almost bust.
‘Right-ho,’ I said, picking up my pen. ‘I’ll help you.’
And pushing my own How-to book aside, I started off on his.
To write really badly (in Joe’s chicken-scratching style) you’ll need some paper – any grubby old scrap will do – and a pen that makes terrible blotches. Look for a lumpy place to work. (Rocks and laps are good, but runaway buses are better.)
Sit exactly right. Slouch to one side, and stick out your legs on both sides. Make sure you’re in poor light, or can’t see what you’re doing over a pile of books.
Grip the pen so hard your knuckles go all white, and make sure you’ve twisted your hand round till you’re almost writing upside down.
‘I don’t do that, do I?’
‘Yes. Yes, you do.’
It’s very important not to write any letter of the alphabet the same way twice. A really bad writer can make the same letter look completely different twice in the same word.
Example:
I handed him the pen.
‘Go on, then. Do the example.’
‘Me? I’m rotten at examples. You know that. I always get them wrong.’
‘You’re the only one who can get this one right.’
‘Really?’ His eyes lit up. ‘What shall I write?’
‘Write “pancake”,’ I told him. ‘That has two letters the same in it. If you spell it right.’
He spelled it right because I told him how.
Example:
‘Beautiful!’ I said. ‘Perfect! See what I mean? Always trade on your strengths. You’d never think those two “a”s were the same letter.’
‘So can I do all the examples?’
‘No one else but you.’
The next day, we did capitals.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Guess which of us wrote the examples on the top?
Right.
You can use capital letters to start people’s names, and new sentences. But if you’re trying to write really badly, you won’t bother. (And try making some of your capitals smaller than little letters. That’ll fool people.)
Example:
The day after that, we did small letters.
Guess which of us wrote the bottom ones? Right again!
To save time and effort, the end of one letter can be used as the start of the next.
Example:
Don’t worry, you’ll soon learn which letters don’t matter at all, and can be left out completely.
The next day, we did special exercises.
Don’t ever try to write two letters together the very same height.
Example:
And always make sure your tall letters slope in funny directions.
Example:
Try not to use lined paper because, if you’re trying to write really badly, the last thing you want is everything neatly on one level.
Example:
And we did numbers, too.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
How about making your 5 look like a letter S? Or your 6 like an 0? Remember that really important numbers should be smudged. And, for a nice change, why not write half the number as a word, and the rest as a number?
Example:
As you can see, this could easily be taken for ‘thirty!’
I thought it was important to cover dotting ‘i’s and ‘t’s.
The Golden Rules for dotting are:
1. Don’t give a dot to anything that should have one.
2. Put it a few letters away (in either direction).
Joe provided the example.
So I thought of something else.
Always make sure that you have more dots than you need. The extra dots should be scattered just anywhere over the page of writing.
Then we went home.
After the weekend, we started on punctuation.
Too much punctuation is fussy and unattractive. Forget about question marks and exclamation marks, and be very mean indeed with commas. But you can sprinkle full stops anywhere in the sentence (except at the end). Example:
And then, just to finish it all off neatly, we did spacing and layout.
Always go right to the very edge of your paper, even if you fall off. Any bright reader will be able to guess what your last word was going to be.
Example:
If you are sitting right, your work should slope right up or down the page. Don’t worry about paragraphs. Esteemed chicken-scratchers never worry about paragraphs.
I handed the pen to Joe.
‘Now write “Good Luck” to finish.’
Out popped the old tongue, and he wrote:
Then he studied the last bit more carefully.
‘What’s “esteemed”?’
‘Respected. Honoured. Famous for something.’
‘So,’ Joe said, much taken with all this ‘example’ stuff he’d been so good at over the last few days, ‘we could say, “Example: Joe Gardener is esteemed for writing really badly”.’
(No way round this one.)
‘We most definitely could.’
8
A little, secretive, one-person crime wave
Now Joe was finished with his own work, he started taking an interest in mine.
‘Why are you sitting like that, all twisted round? Are you trying to write really badly?’
‘No. I’m just hiding my work from you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s secret.’
He was hurt.
‘I’ll get to see it anyway, on Open Day.’
‘But not till then.’
He shrugged. Then Mr Hurt turned into Mr Worrywart.
‘It must be hard for you, writing bent round like that.’
