A Thousand Water Bombs

by T. M. Alexander

  Miss Walsh disappeared, like Marco.

  ‘Should we have said about the lunch box?’ mouthed Fifty. Good job I can lip read.

  I shook my head. Why admit something that might have nothing to do with the reason Marco had vanished? He’d probably gone off on his skateboard to terrorise some old ladies with walking sticks out for their afternoon stroll. Or got lost.

  ‘Same,’ he mouthed.

  Bee got up and went over to Jonno’s desk. They had a quick talk and then she went back and sat down. Jonno winked at me. Amazingly Copper Pie was doing what Miss Walsh said. He was actually writing – if the hieroglyphic symbols he makes can be classified as writing.

  If no one else was worried, why should I be? I read the beginning of my story, titled: The Day of the Great Wave. We were meant to be writing about a journey – not necessarily on a train or a bus, it could be the sort of journey where you go from being a wimp to being brave, or fat to thin, or thin to fat I suppose – but that would hardly be a happy ending.

  I hadn’t written one word when Miss Walsh flew back in.

  ‘I’m very pleased to see you all sitting quietly. Carry on working on your own. Hands up please if you need any help.’

  Alice’s hand shot up. Yawn!

  ‘Where is Marco, Miss?’

  ‘It appears he went home, Alice. I expect he felt unwell and wasn’t familiar with the rules, which are . . .?’

  ‘We mustn’t leave the school grounds without a letter,’ said Alice.

  ‘Excellent. So let’s get on, shall we?’

  The journey in my story was a second-by-second description of lying on my surfboard in the green water far out at sea, way beyond where the waves were breaking. I was waiting for the perfect wave. I watched as a massive wave built up until it was like a wall of water behind me. I got ready (positioning my board and getting my head together – after all, surfing’s a dangerous sport) and then paddled like crazy to stay ahead of the white water, before catching the wave and riding the surf all the way in.

  ‘Yes, Alice.’

  ‘I’m stuck, Miss.’

  Miss Walsh walked over to Alice’s desk and they started discussing Going to Grandma’s House on the Train. It sounded thrilling – buying tickets, eating snacks, and the highlight – doing a puzzle magazine. She needed to spice it up. Glancing out of the window and witnessing a murder at an old not-used-anymore station would do.

  ‘Can you think of something a little more unexpected, Alice?’

  Even though she keeps her voice the same, you can tell Miss Walsh would like to put Alice in solitary confinement. If Alice spent a few minutes thinking, instead of always putting her hand up, she’d have ideas like the rest of us.

  The door opened.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss Walsh.’ What did the Head want? ‘Once again, I need to talk to five members of your class.’ It sounded serious. And I didn’t like the use of the word ‘five’.

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Miss Walsh.

  There was no time to wonder what was going on . . .

  ‘Bee, Keener, Copper Pie, Jonno, Fifty. Come with me please.’

  My heart started thumping twice as fast and twice as hard. My face went a raspberry colour. My armpits went soggy. The unswallowable lump appeared in my throat.

  I heard a whisper. ‘Don’t cry, Keener.’ It was Callum, obviously enjoying the look of terror on my face. I tried to look not-bothered. I couldn’t.

  I was last so I shut the door behind me and followed the queue of Tribers marching behind the Head. We went into her room. She sat down and left us all standing in a ring opposite her. She stared at each one of us in turn. The silence was killing me. I just wanted to confess, to whatever it was we’d done. I did it. I did it. Punish me.

  ‘I have had a most unpleasant conversation with Marco’s father.’

  She did the CCTV scan of all our faces again, before she went on.

  ‘I understand you have taken it upon yourselves to rifle through his desk, which is a violation of his personal space. Do you know what I mean by that?’

  ‘You mean it’s his and it’s private,’ said Fifty. ‘We’re very sorry —’

  ‘AND you have removed his lunch and ridiculed it, which could be seen as . . .’ The Head paused.

  ‘Racist?’ said Fifty.

  What was he thinking of? Racist is a worse word than bully.

  ‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ said the Head. ‘But . . . Marco told his father that you were studying his lunch as though it was something odd or funny.’

  ‘It smelt,’ said Copper Pie. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Loads of kids smelt it in the lesson before lunch,’ said Bee. ‘We were trying to find out what it was, that’s all. To help out. People were nearly sick.’ Lay it on, Bee, I thought.

  ‘We didn’t only look in Marco’s desk. We looked in Roddy’s too.’ Why did Copper Pie think admitting more crimes would help?

  ‘So that proves it wasn’t anything to do with Marco. It was to do with the smell,’ said Fifty, looking like a smug, but small, lawyer.

  ‘So you would have me believe the incident was not directed at Marco?’ The Head could do with a lesson in plain English. It was almost easier to understand Marco.

  ‘It was directed at the sm-e-ll,’ said Copper Pie, as though the Head was thick.

  ‘And we didn’t laugh when we found out what it was,’ said Jonno. ‘Why would we? I’d always choose something spicy over a ham sandwich.’

  ‘Me too. I love piri-piri,’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘We were about to find Marco to tell him his lunch had leaked when he came in and started shouting at us,’ said Bee. Not quite true but . . .

  The Head’s face relaxed and some of the really deep trenches in her forehead smoothed out a bit. Much less scary.

  ‘Perhaps there has been an element of misunderstanding. It isn’t easy to join a school midway through the term, as Jonno should know, and, as you may remember from when Jozef joined your class, we need to help those whose first language is not English.’

  What was she talking about? Joe could always speak English.

  ‘I’d forgotten that, Miss,’ said Bee. ‘He used to get all muddled up and now he speaks like the rest of us.’

  ‘Better than some of you,’ said the Head, nodding towards C.P. ‘But back to the matter of the lunch. Amends must be made.’

  Most of my problems had gone away. I could swallow, the beating inside my chest wasn’t quite so violent and my raspberry face felt more like pale pink – not that I could see it.

  Get on with punishment and let me go back to my daydream about the ginormous wave and me on it, I thought.

  ‘I think it would help Marco, and his parents, to feel more comfortable about his start in the school if he were made to feel welcome. And who better to show them that there was no malice intended than you five?’

  Bee nodded. Everyone else did too. We didn’t want to, that was obvious, but you can’t say ‘no’, can you?

  ‘He will be back in school tomorrow, and I’d like you to take care of him at break times, including lunch, every day for a week, so that he’s not left to cope on his own. By then he should have settled in, and your duties will be over, although of course you still have to be friend-ly.’ The school motto, again! We don’t all have to be friends, but we all have to be friend-ly. ‘I know I can rely on you.’ She clapped her hands and shooed us away.

  ‘I don’t want to babysit that lunatic,’ said Bee, on the way back to class.

  ‘You’re the one who went snooping in desks,’ said Fifty.

  ‘Only because Copper Pie went smelling.’

  ‘It’ll be torture,’ I said.

  The only Triber who wasn’t moaning was Jonno. Bee noticed too.

  ‘You think we’re mean, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I do. I hated being new, but at least I could understand everything that was going on. He’s new and can’t speak very good English. Don’t you feel a bit sorry for him
?’

  Silence.

  Jonno and Bee didn’t wait for us after school because they were going to the pet shop on the way home to buy treats for Doodle.

  ‘My friend Ravi, who’s got the Labrador, says you have to have treats for the puppy with you all the time, so that your dog gets a reward every time it’s good.’ Jonno was like a talking dog manual.

  So that left the three of us to moan about babysitting Marco without Jonno making us feel mean.

  ‘What are we going to do with Marco? I said.

  ‘What can we do with him?’ said Fifty. ‘He’s a total nutter.’

  Worse than that – he’s a scary nutter, I thought. I kept seeing his angry face when he leapt over the desks. I’d rather babysit Doodle.

  ‘We could talk football,’ said Copper Pie. ‘Ronaldo’s from Portugal.’

  ‘And I suppose we can tell him everything about school,’ I said. ‘You know – don’t go in the far loo because it leaks over your shoes.’

  ‘Don’t go to the dinner lady with the black bun because she’s mean with the pasta,’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Never be late for PSHE when the Head takes it. If Miss Walsh is messing with her hair it means she’s stressy and about to explode. That sort of thing,’ said Fifty.

  ‘But it means a whole week not being Tribe, except after school,’ I said.

  ‘Well, we can’t get out of it,’ said Fifty.

  ‘Maybe Bee could bribe some other kids to do it?’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Bad idea. Bribes always mean trouble,’ I said.

  ‘Same,’ said Fifty.

  Moaning doesn’t make you feel any better – it makes you feel worse. ‘Let’s not think about it,’ I said. ‘Let’s think about the surf trip instead.’

  Fifty and Copper Pie didn’t look too thrilled. Copper Pie says he can’t swim, but I’m sure it’s a lie, and Fifty doesn’t like the sea because when we’re knee-deep he’s underwater.

  ‘Come on, it’ll be fun.’

  ‘Let me think,’ said Fifty. ‘Cold, wet, more cold, more wet, salty, cold, wet. Count me out.’

  ‘Fine. Me, Bee and Jonno then. Wimps.’

  ‘Did your dad really say he’d take us?’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Yep! This Sunday. All the Tribers are invited. It’ll be great. We’re going to Woolacombe.’

  ‘Great for you,’ said Fifty. ‘You can do it.’

  ‘Is it hard?’ said Copper Pie. A flicker of interest, I thought.

  ‘Think of it this way,’ I said. ‘You have a great big board that floats. No one cares if you ride in on your belly. That’s not hard. That’s like lying on a bed that moves a bit.’

  ‘OK,’ said Copper Pie. ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘Mum’ll call all the Tribers tonight. Even you, Fifty.’

  ‘The answer’s still “no”.’

  But of course it wasn’t.

  telephone calls

  Fifty’s mum said it would be good for him. ‘A day out with his mates doing something outdoors-y will do him the world of good.’

  Fifty was shouting in the background. Mum said it sounded like, ‘No, Mum! No!’

  Copper Pie’s mum said she’d be glad to have him out of the house.

  Bee’s mum said it would give her a chance to train the dog to use the newspaper for his toilet and not the floor. How disgusting is that?

  Jonno answered the phone himself. ‘My mum’s out, but I’ve asked her and she says it’s fine. Thank you very much for inviting me.’

  It was all set. Sunday: road trip.

  making friends with Marco isn’t easy

  ‘Hi there,’ said Bee.

  Marco ignored her.

  She smiled anyway, and tried again. ‘The Head asked us . . .’ I think she was going to say ‘to babysit you’ or something like that, but she paused so Jonno helped out.

  ‘. . . if you’d like to hang out with us?’

  ‘No,’ he said. It was the first word he’d said that I’d understood. And not a great start.

  ‘You can ask us if there’s anything you don’t understand,’ said Bee.

  Marco made his eyes go close together in a frown.

  ‘We’re so-rry a-bout your lun-ch,’ said Fifty, sounding out every bit of every word like people do when they’re on holiday somewhere foreign.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Marco said. Great, I thought. We’re getting through to him. But turns out he was only halfway through his sentence. ‘. . . to be in England.’ Oh! Not so great.

  Being friend-ly wasn’t going too well. But at least Marco’s English was better than we thought.

  ‘What’s it like where you live?’ said Bee. ‘Lived, I mean.’

  ‘The sea,’ said Marco. They were only two small words but I immediately saw a picture of Marco in my head, all brown-skinned and dark-haired, swimming like a seal. No wonder he didn’t fit in to our concrete playground. He belonged on a beach.

  ‘You lived by the sea?’ Jonno asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘You’re a long way from the sea here,’ said Fifty. ‘But there’s always the pool. Keener had his party there.’

  There might just have been a chance of getting into a normal conversation, but Copper Pie blew it.

  ‘What d’you think of Ronaldo?’

  ‘I hate football.’ His accent made all the words sound familiar but different. I quite liked it.

  ‘How can you hate football when the only thing famous about Portugal is Ronaldo, and he’s a football player?’

  Marco flashed his black eyes at Copper Pie, turned round and walked off.

  ‘Idiot,’ said Bee.

  ‘I’ve been to Portugal,’ shouted Jonno, taking a few quick steps to catch up with the boy we were meant to be looking after, not annoying. Marco said something back but I didn’t hear what. But the two of them were talking, which was good, so we left them to it.

  ‘Well that went well,’ said Bee. ‘Copper Pie, you should try for a job as a peacekeeper.’

  ‘I don’t think Marco’s interested in peace,’ said Fifty.

  ‘I don’t think he wants to be babysat by us,’ I said.

  ‘Same,’ said Fifty.

  ‘But it’s not up to Marco, is it?’ said Bee.

  On that Friday morning, a whole week and a bit seemed a long time. At least we had the road trip to look forward to.

  ‘I’m not coming,’ said Fifty.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I said. ‘We won’t let you drown.’

  ‘Too right, you won’t. Because I won’t be there.’

  ‘That’s not what your mum said.’

  Fifty tried to look as though he didn’t like me. It looked more like I’d stolen his rattle.

  ‘Please come,’ said Bee. There was a long silence. ‘Please’ isn’t a word Bee says very often.

  ‘All right,’ said Fifty. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’ll get in.’

  When the bell went, Jonno lined up at the back with Marco. I was pleased he seemed to have found a way to get on with the mountain-boarding maniac. Jonno could babysit Marco for the week. (I can’t wait to start babysitting – all that money for watching telly. Amy takes her boyfriend.)

  It was all up to Jonno. Problem solved.

  TIPS FOR WHEN THE TRIBERS ARE OLD ENOUGH TO BABYSIT

  BY AMY

  • Never agree to look after anyone younger than two. Too many things can go wrong: crying, pooing, milky burping.

  • Make sure the child is already in bed when you arrive. (Be late if necessary.)

  • Make sure you can work the telly.

  • Take chocolate buttons for emergency use – all toddlers like buttons.

  • Don’t eat all the snacks left for you. Leave one, to show you’re not greedy.

  • Say ‘Thank you very much’ when they pay you.

  problem not solved

  Jonno did a pretty good job of turning Marco from an alien into a human. We left them to it at break and by lunchtime Marco was sitting at the Tribe table with us ha
ving lunch – smiling, talking and generally being a completely different person.

  ‘Have you got any sisters?’ asked Fifty.

  ‘Yes. Two.’ Marco held up two fingers.

  I made a poor-you face. Fifty made the opposite sort of face.

  ‘What are they called?’ said Bee.

  ‘Adriana and Teodora.’

  ‘Who’s the oldest?’ said Fifty.

  ‘Me,’ said Marco, grinning as though he’d won something. ‘They are bebês.’

  It turned out one of his sisters was three and the other one was one.

  ‘My big bebê sings all the time.’ Marco started singing something in gibberish. Everyone looked at our table.

  ‘What does the little one do?’ said Fifty, over the racket.

  Marco shut up, put his hands together and rested them on one side of his face. ‘Sleep.’

  It was quite a laugh getting Marco to tell us the Portuguese words for things like knife and fork, fat, ugly and smelly. In the end, even Copper Pie joined in. Don’t get the wrong idea, I still didn’t particularly want Marco with us every minute of the day, but I reckoned we could cope for a week.

  After school we walked home together, the five Tribers, talking about plans for Sunday. Which were about to change.

  The phone rang a few minutes after we got back from our Friday night out at the pizza restaurant. Amy’s boyfriend came, again. He still hasn’t actually said anything to me. And he’s not getting rid of those spots. Flo picked it up.

  ‘Hello, who’s there?’

  The other person must have said something.

  ‘It’s Flo here.’

  The other person must have said something else.

  ‘I know. You’re going surfing,and me and mum and Amy are going to make beady necklaces and go for a cappuccino after.’ You’d think my sister was seventeen, not seven.

  I realised the call was for me, but Flo wouldn’t give me the phone.

  ‘I’ll ask Dad,’ she said and passed it to him.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked.

  She made a foul face.

  ‘Well, hello, Jonno,’ said Dad.

  Why was Jonno talking to my dad? Weird.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Dad.