How To Write Really Badly

by Anne Fine

  ‘You manage perfectly well.’

  ‘But I’m used to it.’ His eyes lit up. ‘I know! I’ll make you a screen!’

  He did, too. The very next day, he brought in a brilliant screen he’d made out of cornflake packets. It folded neatly when it wasn’t up, and fitted in his desk. But whenever Miss Tate said, ‘Time to get on with your How-to books,’ he’d take it out and set it up between the two of us, lowering the flattened lavatory roll stabilising flaps, and swinging the empty cassette case stability buttresses round into place.

  And it did the job perfectly. He couldn’t see.

  ‘Wonderful!’ I said gratefully. ‘That is so much easier.’

  Miss Tate wasn’t quite so keen on it, you could tell.

  ‘Must you two have all this junk cluttering up your desks?’

  ‘It’s my security screen,’ I told her. ‘It helps me work.’

  She sighed.

  ‘I suppose I should just be thankful you’ve started at last.’

  Started? Why, I was working like a fiend! I spent every hour I could checking my calculations, ruling perfect lines, and making sure my number work was flawless. Joe sat beside me, fiddling with scraps of cardboard and string and glue under the desk whenever Miss Tate wasn’t looking in his direction, and worrying about me all the rest of the time.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be finished by Open Day?’

  ‘I most certainly hope so.’

  I wasn’t sure, though, so I took it home and worked on it while Dad was making supper.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘This is my project,’ I told him. ‘It’s a How-to book.’

  ‘Oh, yes? How to what?’

  ‘Survive in school.’ I saw him staring. ‘It’s a present for Joe.’

  Dad wiped the pizza dough off his fingers and flicked through the pages I’d done.

  ‘This isn’t proper work. All this is, is a heap of numbered squares.’

  ‘It isn’t just any old heap of numbered squares,’ I said. ‘By the time Open Day comes round, in that book there will be exactly one beautifully measured numbered square for every single day that poor Joe Gardener still has to spend in school.’

  Dad turned to the last page, roughed out in soft pencil.

  ‘One thousand, six hundred and forty-six?’

  ‘We’re really down to one thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight now,’ I admitted. ‘But still I thought it would be nice for Joe to cross a good few off right at the start.’

  ‘That’s all it’s for? For Joe to cross them off?’

  ‘Or fill them in with coloured pens.’

  Dad was appalled.

  ‘But what’s the point?’

  ‘It’ll make him feel better. All prisoners do it. It helps them get to the end of their sentence without going out of their minds.’

  ‘But Joe’s not in prison. He’s in Walbottle Manor (Mixed)!’

  ‘He might as well be in prison. In fact, if he was in a prison, he’d have a better time. He’d enjoy fixing all the sewing machines they use to make mail bags, and inventing weird things for picking locks.’

  Dad started thumping his pizza dough really hard.

  ‘School’s not a chain gang,’ he protested. ‘It is a worthwhile journey of the mind to a valuable destination.’

  ‘Tell that to Joe!’ I scoffed. ‘To him, school is just somewhere he has to go because they make him, and when he gets there they just nag at him all day for doing everything wrong.’

  Dad stabbed my How-to book with doughy fingers.

  ‘I reckon he won’t be the only one being nagged, the day Miss Tate sees this.’

  I didn’t argue with him. I was too sure that he was right. But I still kept on ruling out my perfect squares each time Miss Tate told us to get on with our projects. And sometimes even when she told us to stop.

  ‘Pens down! It’s time to plan the class displays for Open Day!’

  Joe gave me a nudge.

  ‘You have to put your pen down now.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I told him, carrying on ruling squares. ‘Old Frost Top will never notice.’

  But Old Frost Top did.

  ‘Howard! You’re last to put down your pen, so I’m afraid you’ll have to run a little errand for me.’

  Oh, joy! I’m out of here for five whole minutes! But, as I pass, everyone looks sorry for me, as if they think she’s punishing me too hard. One thing you can be sure of, none of these wimpettes spent wet afternoons sticking pins in their dollies. Off I go.

  I whistle up the corridor, around the bend, past the assembly hall, and into the secretary’s office. No one is there. The list I’d come to fetch is lying on the table, though. Miss Tate’s Class: List of Open Day Prizes. And then a heap of dreary, crudbucket honours.

  Best Spelling

  Best Essay

  Best Reading

  Best How-to Book

  Best Number Work

  No prizes for Joe in there. And then an idea struck. I snatched the scissors from the secretary’s desk, and snipped off the bottom line – Whoops! Sorry, Beth! No prize this year! – and at the top, very carefully, I printed out:

  Best Home-made Model

  Then I went strolling back. Miss Tate was busy fighting a tragic avalanche of window display, and barely glanced at it.

  ‘Just stick it up where everyone can see it.’

  I prised a pin out of the pig dribble painting I hated most, and watched with satisfaction as it peeled off the wall and fell in the bin.

  ‘There!’ I said, using the pin. ‘I now declare this class’s List of Prizes officially on display.’

  A second avalanche fell on Miss Tate. And what with her sticky tape rolling away under the desks, and all the fuss about what sort of glue she ought to use to stick the photo of Ben’s mother’s stuffed owl, Patricia, on to the nature display, nobody even noticed my own little, secretive, one-person crime wave.

  9

  Mad Model Movers PLC

  My mum put up a fight.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, the firm I work for is called Hightechnicon Systems, not Huge Wobbly Models Removals Inc.’

  ‘Joe’s models aren’t wobbly,’ I told her. ‘He’s an expert.’

  ‘Chester, it costs a fortune just to keep that van idle on the tarmac. Think how much it would cost to send it on your little errand.’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘Loading and unloading.’

  ‘I’ll arrange all that.’

  Moodily, she poked at her pasta. I was winning.

  ‘Do this one thing for me,’ I said. ‘And I won’t moan about any school I’m in – ever again.’

  Dad’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Close the deal right this minute!’ he ordered Mum. ‘Close the deal instantly, or it’s divorce.’

  Mum closed the deal. She made a couple of phone calls, and that was that. The van showed up outside Mrs Gardener’s house early the next day.

  ‘We’ve come for all Joe’s models,’ I told the cleaning lady. ‘For the Open Day display.’

  Eye lighting-up time is getting earlier and earlier around this neighbourhood.

  ‘What? All of them?’

  ‘All of them,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Even the wall-sized cooked tagliatelle spider’s web?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And the disposable plastic coffee cup spaceman. And the fully spinnable tin bottle top Wheel of Fortune. And the personally collected driftwood crocodile.’

  The cleaning lady trembled.

  ‘So I’d be able to get in and vacuum under the bed? And wipe down the windowsill? And wash the walls?’

  ‘The room will be all yours. As empty as a summer desert drain till four o’clock. Just lead the way.’

  She stopped tremulously halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Will you be taking the dried bread lampshade?’

  ‘Yes, we’ll be taking that too.’

  She clutched her light-bulb duster tightly in her emotio
n.

  ‘Just along here!’

  I wouldn’t want to pass much time in Little Joey’s bedroom. I wouldn’t mind picking my way under the toilet roll holder flying rocket. Or through the papier-mâché Valley of the Kings. But I’d just hate sleeping directly underneath that filled plastic water bottle mastodon. Or waking up to put my feet by accident on to that jelly-filled freezer bag octopus.

  ‘Is that the lot?’ the driver asked, when I’d filled up the van.

  Joe’s parents’ cleaning lady wiped what I could only take to be a tear of joy out of her eye.

  ‘You promise me they won’t be back till four o’clock?’

  ‘No chance,’ the driver said, putting the van in gear. ‘You might think this is Mad Model Movers PLC, but actually I have a regular day job.’

  (It’s my belief that, in the rarefied Hightechnicon world, sarcasm passes for humour.)

  Joe’s parents’ cleaning lady raised her mop in warm salute as we drove off. The driver turned to me.

  ‘Where next?’

  ‘Walbottle Manor (Mixed).’

  ‘I used to go to that school,’ the driver said, running his gnarled fingers through his silvery hair. ‘I had a really nice teacher called Miss Tate.’

  ‘That figures,’ I told him. ‘Can we drive round the back?’

  He knew the way. In fact, I’ll swear I saw his rheumy eyes mist over as we passed the old school sign. He backed the van up to the fire doors beside the gym.

  ‘I don’t believe that you can open these from the outside,’ I warned him.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ he said, sliding a spectacle arm in a gap in the doors, and springing some catch. ‘I used to break back in here regularly, after I left, to get to sing on Fridays.’

  (This is what happens when you get a town without a bowling alley or a cinema. Everyone goes loopy.)

  He helped me carry the models along the corridor, past the big hall, where everybody’s eyes were goody-goody shut for prayers, into the classroom.

  ‘It looks just the same!’

  ‘I’m sure it does.’

  And we set everything up. How Joe got all this lot in one small room, I’ll never understand. They did fit in. But the huge water bottle mastodon loomed horribly over Miss Tate’s desk, and Beth’s angora rabbit, borrowed for the ‘Textures’ table, eyed the wall-sized tagliatelle spider’s web with real dismay.

  ‘Splendid,’ said the van driver. ‘A job well done.’ He patted his own particular favourite – the tin can baby elephant – with evident satisfaction. ‘And this is sturdy stuff. I’ve moved top-of-the-range Hightechnicon Systems that will fall apart sooner than this.’

  ‘Joe only uses the best glue and string.’

  He glanced round wistfully, and sighed.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘It isn’t Friday,’ I consoled him. ‘So at least you won’t be missing singing.’

  He hesitated at the classroom door, looking back one last time.

  ‘I spent the happiest days of my whole life inside this room.’

  See what I mean? Spend one term with Miss Tate, and you go bats. Quite bats.

  10

  By popular request . . .

  Miss Tate’s bun shook as she clapped her hands. I watched for moths.

  ‘Now, class!’

  They sat smartly in their seats, like doggies waiting for bones.

  ‘I hope everyone’s got over the surprise of all these –’ Nervously, she glanced up at the huge water bottle mastodon towering above her, gnashing his cardboard teeth. ‘All these wonderful models that Joe has so kindly brought in to show us today.’

  ‘I didn’t br–’

  I stepped on Joe’s foot to shut him up.

  ‘Because,’ Miss Tate went on, ‘it’s time to award the prizes.’

  She opened her desk drawer and brought out five rusty-looking medals she’d obviously bought cheap in bulk back in the Stone Age, when she started teaching. (As soon as I saw them, I realised that the van driver had had one exactly the same dangling from his rear-view mirror, but in the hoo-ha of the move, I’d taken it for a St Christopher.)

  ‘We’ll start from the bottom, as we always do.’

  She unpinned the list from the wall.

  ‘Best How-to book!’

  Believe it or not, this went to the hard-boiled egg decorator in the front row.

  ‘Best Reading!’

  That should have gone to me. I always win best reading, whichever school I’m in. But I had blown it this time because I hated our Reading Together book (Six Little Peppers and How They Grew) so much that, each time she’d made me stand and read, I’d hung my head, and pawed the ground in my embarrassment, and mumbled so softly that she couldn’t hear.

  So I didn’t get that one this year. Missed my big prize!

  ‘Best Essay!’

  Flora, of course. She came to fetch her chipped old medal with a beam on her face, stared at it meaningfully as it lay rusting in the palm of her hand, and then started one of those ghastly telly speeches.

  ‘The first person I’d like to thank today is my mo–’

  Miss Tate cut her off pretty sharpish.

  ‘I certainly hope no one helped you with the winning essay, Flora. That was supposed to be all your own work.’

  Flora shut up then, and went back to her desk.

  ‘Best Spelling!’

  This one was a toss-up, I reckoned. I usually get spelling as well. But Ben was pretty good.

  ‘Ben!’ Miss Tate announced. ‘Though Howard might have won, if he’d not had so much Hungarian goulash spattered over his book that I couldn’t read some words.’

  This is what comes of doing homework at home.

  ‘And the last prize.’

  Miss Tate was beaming at Beth now. Beth beamed back at her.

  ‘Best Num–’

  I coughed.

  She tried again.

  ‘Best Number –’

  I coughed again, even louder. She glanced down at the list.

  ‘Good heavens!’ she said. ‘I knew there was going to be an extra prize this year. But I never realised that there’d been a change.’

  She read aloud from the list.

  ‘Best Home-made Model!’

  And all hell let loose.

  ‘The spider’s web!’ shrieked Beth.

  ‘No! No! The mastodon!’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Ben cried. ‘That baby elephant is better than any of the others.’

  ‘I’d swap everything I own for that lovely Wheel of Fortune,’ Flora said wistfully.

  ‘I’ve become rather fond of the octopus,’ I admitted.

  ‘Does that lampshade made of dried bread count?’

  ‘The spaghetti tower!’

  ‘It’s not spagh–’

  Miss Tate cut me off, frowning at everybody.

  ‘I do think that, after all the work we did on Egypt last year, a few more of you might appreciate this beautiful papier-mâché scale model of the Valley of The Kings.’

  My big mistake, of course, was writing ‘Best Home-made Model’ instead of ‘Best Home-made Model Maker’. So the wrangling went on for hours, while Joe sat in a daze.

  And, in the end, we took a vote. The disposable coffee cup spaceman won by miles. And Joe stepped up to take his medal with a grin as wide as the mastodon’s.

  ‘Congratulations, Joe!’

  Miss Tate pressed the dingy old medal into his hand. He gazed at it as if it were some twinkling jewel. Then, closing his fingers round it and shutting his eyes from sheer rapture, he threw his arms around Miss Tate, and hugged her.

  ‘Joe! You old silly-billy!’ she said. But you could tell that she was thrilled to bits. ‘I knew you had hidden talents. And now I know what they are, I’ll be coming to you whenever I need models to explain the maths.’

  I nudged him as he sat down.

  ‘See?’ I crowed. ‘Things are looking up already. If you’re busy making pyramids and cones and tetrahedrons
for her all the time, she won’t be able to spend so much time torturing you into understanding them.’

  His grin got even wider.

  Now Miss Tate was patting the moths back into her bun.

  ‘It must be time to welcome our Open Day visitors.’

  Her hand was on the doorknob before Joe reminded her.

  ‘But, Miss Tate! What about the extra prize?’

  She turned back.

  ‘Whoops! Nearly forgot!’

  She took another medal from her drawer.

  ‘And now!’ she said. ‘By popular request, and secret vote, the extra prize! For the Most Helpful Member of the Class!’

  And she looked straight at me.

  I went for Beth on this one, so I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And finally, Miss Tate said:

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to come up and get it?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Who else am I looking at?’

  Stupidly (considering that Joe and I sit in the back row), I glanced behind me.

  ‘I mean you,’ she said.

  ‘Me?’ I said again. ‘Most helpful person in the class? Me?’

  ‘I was a little surprised myself,’ she admitted. ‘But this was a free vote, and all the papers except one had your name on them.’

  I looked around at them. They were all sitting, good as gold, looking at me with innocent, glowing faces. I felt a bit suspicious as I went up to the front. But the medal Miss Tate pressed in my hand didn’t explode, or blow a raspberry at me, or shoot a jet of water in my face.

  It was a real prize. No kidding. A real prize.

  Don’t think I’m not used to getting them, because I am. In his time, Chester Howard has won prizes all over the world for reading, writing, spelling and, once, for the most beautifully spoken Armenian nursery rhyme. (That was a fluke.) But I’ve never won a prize for any of those other things: Most Popular Member of the Class, Best Team-worker, Most Cheerful Pupil, or any of that ‘Nice Personality’ stuff.

  I stared at the medal. ‘Most Helpful Person in the Class’. Frankly, I’ve been in schools where the most helpful person could mean the one who didn’t spit on your homework every day, or set fire to your tennis shoes, or beat you up. In Spike City Juniors, it would probably mean the one who threw your crutches to you, not at you, or helped you bury most bodies.