A Thousand Water Bombs

by T. M. Alexander

  ‘We’ll have to make sure all the kids at school know to bring things on the day to swap,’ he said. ‘If not they’ll only bring money.’

  ‘Posters,’ said Bee. ‘We’ll ask the Head. And maybe an announcement in assembly. She’s bound to agree if I explain what a good use of resources it is. I’ve just thought – if it works, the school could do a swap stall for Earth Day.’ (Bee’s meant to be suggesting something for next year’s Earth Day, when we’ve all gone to senior school.)

  So the summer fair was all agreed. We handed in our Tribe subs, had a chat about what to buy for the hut (not a lot because we only had £3.78) and then it was time for Fifty to have his tea so we all dived through the cat flap and went home. I walked with Copper Pie for a bit. His plan was to buy all the water bombs himself and co-ordinate an attack on a series of key targets, including his little brother, Charlie.

  If only he’d stuck to his plan.

  nine days to go and no definite plans yet

  The next day I was running across the playground to catch up with the other Tribers when I was ambushed by Flo – the little sister with the not-so-little voice.

  ‘Keener, what are you going to do at the fair?’

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘That’s not nice, I’m your sister.’

  ‘You’re not nice,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell Mum,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘She already knows you’re not nice.’

  I should have been ready for it, but I was busy thinking about all the things we needed to do before the big day. She got me on the left shin with her sparkly purple trainers.

  ‘I’ll find out what it is. And I’ll tell everyone not to have a go on your stall because you’re mean.’

  And then the right shin. Ow!

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said. I didn’t want anyone to catch me being pulped by a Year 3. ‘I’ll tell you.’ I leant down to whisper in her ear. ‘We’re selling home-made chocolate babies.’ Flo loves babies. She smiled, a rare and frightening sight.

  ‘I want one for free.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just don’t tell anyone. We don’t want loads of stalls selling home-made chocolate babies.’

  When I made it to our patch under the trees – the home we share with stag beetles, longhorn beetles and other weevils all identified by our resident entomologist, Jonno – I found Bee in tears.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Shall I tell the terrible tale?’ said Fifty.

  Bee nodded.

  ‘Bee’s dad has left home.’

  Crikey. I searched my stupid head for something to say but all the words were hiding in the creases of my brain. I don’t know anyone who’s divorced, except Fifty’s Uncle Terry.

  THE NOT-SO-SAD TALE OF FIFTY’S UNCLE TERRY

  Fifty’s Uncle Terry left his wife and ran off with a lady he met at church, to work with poor people somewhere in Africa. One day he cut off all the fingers on one hand with a chainsaw and drove himself to the hospital because he didn’t want to upset his new lady. Soon after that they came back to England to visit a plastic surgeon and we all went round for tea to see the hand with only a thumb.

  After tea Bee said, ‘We hope you get better,’ and Fifty’s mum said, ‘There’s no need to worry about Terry. He’s “found himself” in Africa.’ (She meant he was happy.) And Copper Pie said, ‘Pity he couldn’t find some fingers’. There was complete silence and red faces from everyone until Uncle Terry slapped his hand of four stumps and a thumb down on his leg and laughed till his tears rolled down his face and along his moustache.

  ‘But he’ll be back,’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘It’s just a question of when,’ said Jonno.

  So, not divorce, I thought. Something more complicated.

  ‘He says he’s not coming back until the twins find somewhere else to squat.’ Bee sniffed between every word.

  Now I understood. The twins have jobs and a car and are really old. Bee’s mum likes having ‘her boys’ at home but Bee’s dad keeps trying to chuck them out. He’d obviously given up and moved out instead.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ said Jonno.

  Bee shook her head. ‘They had a row and then he went to football and didn’t come back.’

  Copper Pie made a strange noise and wriggled.

  ‘What it is?’ said Fifty. ‘Are you trying to burp?’

  ‘He’s at mine. I think. Bee’s dad. Maybe. At mine. Maybe.’ It came out of C.P. like a volley of bullets.

  ‘What?!’ shouted Bee. ‘Why didn’t you tell me right away?’

  Copper Pie looked worried. More worried than when he was sent to the Head for throttling Jonno (before Jonno was a mate).

  ‘Don’t kill me.’

  Bee didn’t – she was too busy crying.

  ‘Is he at yours or not, Copper Pie?’ I asked. It seemed as though someone should. There were too many ‘maybes’.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know it until Bee said she didn’t know where he was.’

  ‘You aren’t making any sense, Copper Pie,’ said Jonno. ‘Have you seen Bee’s dad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why did you say you had?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I saw his trainers.’

  ‘But no body,’ said Fifty.

  ‘No. If there was a body I’d have known it was Bee’s dad.’

  It wasn’t the most straightforward of conversations.

  ‘We’re not following you,’ said Jonno.

  ‘There were two big trainers at the top of the stairs when I left for school. And when I was in bed last night I heard Mum and Dad laughing so I reckoned there was someone —’

  ‘Laughing?’ Bee hunched her shoulders and stared down at the floor.

  Jonno nudged Copper Pie who caught on pretty quickly . . . for him anyway.

  ‘Maybe not laughing. No. More like crying.’

  I winked at him. You could tell he felt uncomfortable about harbouring the criminal at his house, even if he’d only just realised.

  ‘Why would Bee’s dad go to yours?’ asked Jonno. I forget that he doesn’t know everything about us. He’s only been here a few weeks but the rest of us have been friends forever.

  Bee’s dad and Copper Pie’s dad play football together on Wednesdays and Sundays. It’s a team for old people and Copper Pie says they’re Rubbish with a capital R. He also says that on Wednesdays, the football’s in the pub. It made sense that Bee’s dad had gone to a mate’s. That’s what I’d do if I ran away. I’d go to Jonno’s because he’s got a fantastic bedroom with loads of techy stuff and his mum and dad are cool and he’s got no brothers or sisters to mess things up.

  ‘Come home with me after school,’ said Copper Pie. ‘We’ll see if he’s still there.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Bee. ‘If he doesn’t want to live with us, you can have him.’

  Oh dear!

  I really wanted to get on with the water bomb discussions. Should I ask Dad to order them? Should I make a sign for the stall? Who was making posters? What should we put the money in? But something told me we were meant to carry on with the sorry-your-Dad’s-gone discussion so I shut up and let Jonno and Fifty try and make things better.

  Jonno asked Bee why her dad didn’t want to live with her brothers. She told him about all the things they DIDN’T do: wash up, wash their hands, wash their feet, change their socks, clean their teeth, cook, put the toilet seat back down, change the sheets, go to the supermarket, turn the telly off, clear away after tea.

  And then she told him all the things they DID do: eat everything in the fridge even if it says Don’t Eat, watch telly till three o’clock in the morning on loud, bring friends home without asking, borrow Dad’s stuff and lose it, sleep in till lunchtime, borrow money from Mum (Dad won’t lend them any) and never pay it back. Eat even more. Stay in bed even later. Watch more telly.

  ‘Sorry, Bee, but it sounds to me like your Dad’s right,’ said Fifty. ‘I mean, they ar
e nineteen —’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘That’s ancient,’ said Fifty. ‘I’m not going to live with my mum when I’m twenty.’

  ‘I’d rather not live with mine now,’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘I’m pretty sure she feels the same about you,’ said Bee. She sounded a bit more like herself – insulting – so I thought I’d say what I thought.

  ‘Maybe the twins should move out?’

  She sighed and put her hands on her hips.

  ‘Of course they should move out, Keener. Everyone knows that . . . well, except Mum. But everyone knows dads aren’t meant to run away from their kids either. It’s kids that are meant to run away, not parents.’

  I’d said the wrong thing, clearly.

  only eight days left

  As we hadn’t had a chance for a proper talk I made a list of everything we had to do for the stall. Some things were quite urgent – like ordering the water bombs. I needed a Tribe decision.

  I met Fifty on the corner, as usual, to walk to school. Mum takes Flo in the car but I never have a lift even if it’s raining. Walking’s better.

  ‘Guess what?’ said Fifty.

  Guesswhats are always to do with Probably Rose. I didn’t really want to guess but he gets stressy if you don’t pretend to be as excited as he is about his baby sister.

  ‘Probably Rose can do a roly-poly?’

  ‘No. Be serious.’

  ‘OK. Well, we know she can say “yoghurt”, so my guess is she’s learnt another word.’ If every word Probably Rose said was going to have its own story, conversations with Fifty were going to get very dull.

  ‘Exactly right, my clever friend. Do you want to know what it is?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. Of course not, I thought.

  ‘Star.’ Fifty looked at me with a beaming smile.

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘She looked up at the light and just said it.’ I didn’t bother pointing out that a star is not the same as a light bulb. Copper Pie and Jonno were by the school gate, but no Bee.

  ‘Is Bee’s dad at yours?’ Fifty asked Copper Pie.

  He nodded. ‘I didn’t see him last night but the trainers were there again this morning.’

  ‘You must know who’s staying with you. Didn’t you eat dinner with him? Didn’t your mum say you had a guest?’ said Jonno, a bit puzzled.

  Copper Pie didn’t answer so I helped out. ‘He eats tea with the nursery kids.’

  And so did Fifty. ‘And his mum isn’t that chatty. She tends to work on a need-to-know basis.’

  ‘Not all parents are quite like yours, Jonno,’ I said. I don’t think he realised dinner with place settings and proper food only went on at his.

  ‘Copper Pie, are you sure they’re Bee’s dad’s trainers?’ I asked. Footwear didn’t seem to be the most reliable way of identifying someone.

  ‘Good point, Keener,’ Fifty said. ‘Did you look for a name, Copper Pie?’

  I laughed and so did Jonno, but Copper Pie didn’t join in.

  ‘The shoes weren’t named. I looked underneath and inside.’

  ‘Grown-ups don’t have labels. Divvy!’ said Fifty. ‘Unless . . . does your mum label you, Copper Pie?’

  Fifty grabbed C.P.’s arms and turned them over looking for a label. He tried to look down the back of his T-shirt but he wasn’t tall enough to see so I did.

  ‘There it is,’ I shouted. I pretended to read the label. ‘A ginger nut with fast legs and a permanently empty stomach. Feed several pork pies daily, wash once a month and dry flat.’

  Copper Pie pushed me away and ran round to the Tribe patch, also known as the scrubby, damp, dark bit between the netball courts and the tree. We followed, laughing because Fifty’d pretended to spot C.P.’s barcode.

  As Bee wasn’t there it seemed a good time to get on with the list. (We didn’t need her anyway because she was swap stall.) I got it out but . . .

  ‘I rang Bee last night,’ said Fifty. ‘She said her mum says her dad can’t come back ever.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Jonno.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Fifty. ‘Bee wasn’t making much sense.’

  ‘Is she coming to school?’ asked Copper Pie.

  Fifty nodded. But she didn’t come. So at lunch I finally got to go through the list.

  WATER BOMBS STALL

  Decide where to order the bombs from – Tribe

  Order the water bombs - Keener

  Pay for them somehow? – Ask Keener’s dad to use his card

  Make a sign for the stall - Tribe

  Ask Flo if we can borrow her shop till - Keener

  Get something to put the water bombs in?

  It all seemed straightforward until Copper Pie said, ‘How are we gonna fill the balloons?’

  I looked at Fifty and said, ‘How are we going to fill the balloons?’

  Fifty looked at Jonno. ‘How —?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jonno.

  Copper Pie made a smug face. Fair enough. It’s not often he spots something we’ve all missed.

  If you’ve never filled a water bomb, you’ve obviously been living in Darkest Peru like that marmalade bear, but I’ll tell you anyway. It’s not that easy. You have to stretch the top of the mini-balloon over the tap and make it full enough to be round but not so full that you can’t tie the knot. Filling a thousand water bombs was not going to be a small job.

  ‘We can’t do it on the day,’ said Fifty. ‘No tap. Not enough time.’

  ‘Well we’ll have to do it at home . . . I suppose,’ I said.

  More problems were occurring to me. A thousand full-to-bursting water bombs would be heavy and take up a lot of room.

  ‘Could we do it at school?’ said Fifty.

  ‘We could . . . but where? The water fountain’s no good and I don’t fancy doing it in the loo.’ I made a face designed to mimic the idea of spending an hour in the not-that-clean bogs.

  ‘We could use the art room – that’s got a tap. Let’s ask Mr Morris,’ said Jonno.

  Mr Morris likes us because Jonno showed him the stag beetle that lives under the trees where we hang out.

  ‘Off you go then, Jonno,’ said Fifty.

  ‘OK.’

  Jonno went, leaving us to discuss targets. Top of the list were: Callum (number one enemy of Tribe), Jamie (Callum’s shadow), Miss Walsh and Flo (she got my vote).

  ‘Somebody absolutely has to bomb the Head,’ said Fifty.

  Well, it won’t be me, I thought. I’d get caught (or miss completely more like). As usual, Copper Pie thought differently. ‘Sounds like a job for me. I could use my catapult to lob the bomb. More speed, better aim and I could be further away – less chance of getting caught.’

  I could see there was going to be trouble at the fair.

  ‘Do you think we should go over to Bee’s after school?’ said Fifty.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. I could, but I didn’t want to. I’m no good at the soppy stuff. I mean, what do I know about dads leaving home?

  ‘Me neither,’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Looks like it’s only me then,’ said Fifty.

  ‘Let us know what’s going on,’ said Copper Pie.

  I wasn’t that bothered. It’s not like her mum and dad were splitting up. It seemed simple to me. Patrick and the other twin (I can’t remember his name. I’ve only seen him about twice, and even then he might have been the other one as they both look the same) should move out and it would be fine again. Better, in fact, because of all the things Bee said about washing and money and telly.

  At home I got on with buying the water bombs. I found a better site, selling a hundred for 99p. Billy bargain! All I needed was credit card details so I got Dad. He finishes early on Friday.

  ‘What’s this about then?’

  He never knows what’s going on. One of us could leave home and he wouldn’t notice for a week. He’s always away somewhere doing something that nobody knows about (or wants to). I don’t mind because when he is
here he hangs round with me, which Mum never does. Our family is sort of divided. Mum and Amy (my big sister) and Flo (my little sister) go and watch girly films and Dad and I watch action movies. They go shopping and we go off for the day, surfing (or skimboarding if there’s no swell). It’s great because there’s a long car journey – we listen to music, eat snacks we buy from the garage, and chat – and then we get changed into our wetsuits, and we stay in the sea till we’re blue and can’t grip the leash. Then it’s time for hot grub at the café on the beach and a hot chocolate. I fall asleep on the way home every time.

  Dad’s asked me loads of times if I want to take someone but I like being with him on my own, although I might invite Jonno one day. Fifty’s too puny and Copper Pie can’t swim very well and Bee’s a girl . . .

  ‘Dad, what’s going on is that we’re having a stall at the fair.’

  ‘Great. You haven’t done that before, have you?’

  ‘You’re only allowed one in Year 6.’

  ‘That explains it,’ said Dad with a wink. ‘And what’s yours?’

  ‘Water bombs.’

  ‘Guaranteed to sell out,’ he said. ‘Top idea.’

  ‘And a “Bring and Buy”.’

  ‘Like the W. I.?’

  I explained Bee’s swap stall.

  ‘All sounds good to me. Except it’s not really “Bring and Buy” if you don’t buy. It’s more like “Give and Take”.’

  ‘Whatever. But I need you to do some buying.’

  Dad tapped in all his card details and asked for next-day delivery, which isn’t actually next day.

  ‘If you order before twelve noon you get the parcel the next day but after that it becomes the day after the next day.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be called day-after-tomorrow delivery then?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t be bothered to answer that,’ said Dad.

  He always says that when I make a picky point. He says I’m pedantic. I thought that meant I had feet with toes, which I do, but it doesn’t. It means I like things to be correct.

  We all went out for supper, and Amy’s spotty boyfriend came too. I didn’t say anything to him. He talked to Dad about rugby, which I hate. I told Mum about Bee’s dad. She looked really shocked and said I should have told her before, so she could ring and see how things were. I was starting to get the idea that perhaps it was more serious than I thought.