Earth to Daniel

by Gwyneth Rees

‘Mum, I don’t want you speaking to me at all in school or acting like you know me, OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ Mum said. ‘That suits me too. I mean, it would be so embarrassing if the other teachers saw us together …’ She started to smirk.

  Quite often when Mum’s teasing she does it with such a straight face that you don’t realise she is only teasing until you’ve started to take her seriously. Then her face cracks and she has a big laugh at your expense. She always wants me to laugh too and if I don’t, she goes on about how she hopes I’m not going to turn out like her father, who was renowned for never laughing at anything except this one thing that someone said at a family funeral, when he laughed out loud in the middle of the service.

  I didn’t laugh when she did today though. ‘Mum, what sort of a teacher are you?’ I demanded. ‘I mean, when you were deputy head at your last school, did the kids there like you?’

  She laughed again. ‘Well, so long as they behaved themselves, I never used to insist on it!’

  ‘So how do I know all the kids here aren’t going to think you’re a really duff head teacher and take it out on me?’ I blurted, hearing my voice rise up into more of a shriek at the end than I’d intended.

  ‘Daniel …’ Dad began sternly – because he hates me acting all dramatic – but this time Mum interrupted him.

  ‘Because, Daniel …’ she said firmly, straightening up her face although her eyes were still smiling, ‘… I am not going to be a duff head teacher, OK?’

  There wasn’t much I could say in reply to that. I just hoped she was right.

  My first day at my new school was one of the scariest I’d ever experienced. For a start there was the size of the place. Mum had driven me past the building before and I’d seen that it was a lot bigger than my last secondary school, but that hadn’t prepared me for the feeling I had now of being lost amongst a herd of strange kids I’d never seen before, most of them bigger than me. If I was the sort of person who had panic attacks I reckon I’d have had one then. As it was, I started to get this tight feeling in my chest when the bell rang and everybody started to move in the same direction all at once.

  After I got to my classroom, I tried to forget about the size of the school and concentrate on being in my new class. That was scary enough since I didn’t know anybody. I know I’m not the bravest person when it comes to introducing myself to new people, but for the whole of that day I really tried to make an effort. I remembered what Mum had told me about how I tend to scowl when I’m nervous and how that doesn’t look very friendly. So I kept forcing myself to smile all the time even though I didn’t feel like it, and I kept asking people their names even though there were far too many for me to remember, and I knew I was just going to forget them again and be too embarrassed to ask them a second time and have to spend the rest of the term not knowing what anyone else was called.

  I also found myself keeping a lookout for Mum.

  Mrs Lyle was our English teacher as well as our head of year and English was our last lesson that day. It took me a while to find the right classroom, so I ended up at a table right at the front, right under Mrs Lyle’s nose, and I was the only person who didn’t have anybody sitting next to them. Mrs Lyle started reading out our names from the register and when she got to mine she paused for a moment and took an extra long look at me, and I knew that the reason she was staring at me was because she knew that I was the head teacher’s kid. And I instantly decided that she wasn’t ‘pleasant’ at all.

  My eyes were brimming up, which was really silly. It was just that at the start of term at my old school I’d always been surrounded by friends. And even the people who weren’t my friends all knew me. There I had belonged. Nearly all of us from my primary school had gone to the same secondary school. I used to walk to school every day with Mark. There was also Kirsty. Mark used to tease me a bit about liking her so much but I didn’t care. I’d got to know Kirsty after our teacher made her swap seats with Mark last year because she thought I might not talk to her as much as I did to Mark. Except I had done and Kirsty and I had become pretty good friends. She had been going to Disneyland this summer. She’d promised to send a postcard to my new address but so far she hadn’t.

  Suddenly someone else arrived at the door. It was the girl from the library. She looked different in school uniform and the side bits of her hair were fastened back neatly in a clasp, but it was definitely her. She was mumbling something about being new and having just been transferred to this class and Mrs Lyle was nodding as if she already knew about it, telling her to hurry up and take a seat. And, of course, the only remaining seat was the one next to mine.

  Abby. That was her name. I could tell she recognised me by the way she scowled when she got to our desk. It seemed idiotic not to say something like, ‘Hi again,’ or, ‘Do you remember me from the other day?’ Just sitting there as if we’d never seen each other before seemed more awkward than actually stating the obvious.

  But it wasn’t until nearly the end of the lesson, by which time Mrs Lyle had told me off twice for fidgeting in my seat and once for fiddling with my rubber and knocking it on to the floor, that I finally got some words to come out of my mouth. ‘You were in the library the other day, weren’t you?’ I whispered.

  Abby turned to look at me, but before she could answer, Mrs Lyle’s loud voice boomed out from the back of the class where she’d gone to look at somebody’s book. ‘Daniel, do you have something you wish to share with us?’

  ‘No, Miss,’ I gulped, twisting my head round to face her.

  ‘It’s Mrs,’ Abby whispered. ‘Mrs Lyle. She’s got a thing about it.’

  Mrs Lyle was just opening her mouth, presumably to tell me herself that she had a thing about it, when a boy who was swiping at someone with a ruler caught her attention. ‘CALUM!’

  ‘My big sister used to have her for English,’ Abby told me under her breath. ‘She says she’s got ears like a bat. You have to be careful.’

  ‘You’re quite right, Abigail. I have got ears like a bat,’ Mrs Lyle announced tartly, making Abby jump. ‘And everybody in this class will do well to remember that.’

  The bell rang then and as everybody scraped back their chairs ready to make a dash for home, Mrs Lyle looked for an instant like she might be about to yell at us that her permission – and not the school bell’s – should be our signal to leave the room. But she waved us out impatiently instead. Mum says teachers find it as much of a struggle as we do to adjust to starting school again after the summer holidays and, right then, Mrs Lyle looked like she’d had enough for one day.

  I know I had.

  It was when we were out in the playground that the boy called Calum spoke to me. ‘Hey, Daniel … is it true your mum’s the new head?’

  I felt my stomach flip over. So far nobody had mentioned that. I could feel the flush I always get when I’m embarrassed creeping up my neck. I loosened my tie.

  ‘Well, is she?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mumbled.

  ‘What’s she like then?’ Calum was glancing over his shoulder to make sure his gathering audience was appreciating this. ‘Is she any good?’

  ‘At what?’ I snapped.

  I knew as soon as I said it that I shouldn’t have. It sounded superior, a put-down, which was of course how I’d meant it, only I shouldn’t have said it out loud, not on my first day at a new school, not if I wanted to fit in. I knew I had to say something else quickly, something that would stop them from starting to dislike me.

  ‘I mean, she’s not bad at being a mum,’ I gushed, ‘but I can’t vouch for what she’s like as a head.’ I pulled what I hoped was the right sort of grimace to go along with it – a grimace that was meant to convey that, if she turned out to be a right pain of a head teacher, I’d be on their side rather than hers.

  There was a brief silence. The other kids were staring at both of us as if they were waiting to see which way this would go.

  ‘Well, she can’t be any worse than our last head,’
Calum finally said. ‘She was a real pain. Even the other teachers didn’t like her.’

  The others started agreeing with him and talking heatedly about their old headmistress.

  ‘See you,’ I said quickly, hurrying to get away from them before they started asking me any more questions.

  Abby had slipped by while we were standing there and it turned out that she walked home the same way I did. I saw her in front of me as soon as I got out of the school gate. At first I thought I might catch up with her, but she was walking just fast enough to keep the same distance ahead of me the whole time.

  When I was almost home, I passed a couple of girls about the same age as me getting off a bus at the stop near my house. They were wearing different school uniforms so they obviously went to the other secondary school near here – the one I had begged to go to when we’d first arrived. They were shouting after Abby, who had already passed the bus stop.

  ‘Your mum’s a nutter! My dad says she should be locked up!’

  ‘Yeah! She’s killed off all her brain cells with booze!’

  They both started laughing.

  I hurried past them, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead. I felt a bit sick inside, almost as if they were shouting that stuff at me.

  ‘So how was your first day?’ Dad asked as he opened the door to me.

  ‘OK,’ I said quickly. I just wanted to forget about school now that I was back home again.

  Fortunately, Martha joined us in the hallway before Dad could ask any more questions. ‘Daddy’s taking us to get ice creams. Can I have a whirly ice cream with a Flake, Daddy?’ She grabbed hold of Dad’s hand to drag him towards the door.

  ‘Of course you can!’ Dad said. He told me to hurry up and get changed out of my uniform. Mum wouldn’t be back until later so there was no point in waiting for her.

  In the car, Martha wouldn’t stop talking about all the things she had done at school. She’d had a much better time than me, by the sound of it, and at playtime she had played with Sally, her new friend from singing class. ‘Sally’s mum is going to call our mum to see if I can go there for a playdate next week,’ she added proudly.

  I was trying not to feel irritated. I just wished I could make friends as easily as Martha, that was all. ‘So what’s your new teacher like?’ I asked, to stop her going on about how nice Sally was.

  ‘She’s very nice too,’ Martha gushed, ‘and she has a cat and guess what he’s called …’ She gave me about two seconds to guess before adding, ‘He’s called Felix.’ And she gave a little giggle as if that was a very funny and original name for a cat.

  ‘That’s the same name as the cat food,’ I told her. ‘She’s just copied it from there.’

  ‘No she hasn’t!’ Martha was in the back seat behind me and she leaned forwards against her seat belt to jab my shoulder.

  I twisted round and reached behind to jab her back, but Dad poked me in the leg instead. ‘Stop it, both of you! Either you both sit still and stop arguing or nobody’s getting any ice cream except me!’

  Martha sat very still after that, with her nose squashed against the window as she looked out, and I told her she looked like a little piggy with a snout. I don’t know why I kept wanting to annoy her this afternoon.

  Dad said, ‘What did I just say to you, Daniel?’, in his sternest, most about-to-confiscate-ice-creams sort of voice, so I didn’t say anything else, but I started to fidget in my seat, tugging at my seat belt and opening and closing the glove compartment a couple of times before I caught Dad glaring at me and stopped. I felt all restless and wound up inside and I couldn’t seem to find any way of letting it out except by fiddling with things.

  We were nearly at the sea now. ‘There it is!’ Martha yelled, while I felt momentarily awed. It felt really weird to be driving down a main road full of shops and seeing the sea at the end of it. We turned at the end of the road and drove along the sea-front for a bit, staring at all the different people.

  When we had parked and got out of the car, there were all these tourists and foreign students walking about, and it felt really strange to be standing outside the shops, tripping over seagulls. For a few moments I allowed myself to imagine that this was only a seaside vacation and we were all going home again at the end of the week. I could even see myself – in a cosy parallel life – buying a rude postcard to send to Uncle Robert and a stick of rock to take back for Mark. I felt a bit better while I was pretending that.

  Dad took us to buy the towels Mum had asked him to get. I didn’t see why we needed new towels. There was nothing wrong with our old ones except they didn’t match our new bathroom, but since our new bathroom is a horrible lilac colour, I didn’t see why we’d want them to match.

  Finally Dad said we could go and get our ice creams, so we went and got whirly ones with Flakes in them and ate them on the pier. It was sunny.

  ‘Daddy, how do they make rock?’ Martha asked, as we passed a shop on the pier that was full of the stuff. Martha is always asking questions about things that nobody else would bother about. Normally I think that’s OK since she’s only seven but that day I just wanted to tell her not to be so dumb.

  ‘Sugar, Martha. Lots of it!’ Dad was saying. ‘More than enough to rot all your teeth and pull out a few fillings besides.’

  ‘We don’t have any fillings,’ I grunted.

  ‘Exactly,’ Dad replied. ‘And have I ever allowed you to eat rock? No!’ He rubbed his hands together gleefully. ‘Gosh, I’m a good parent!’

  Martha giggled as he went to steal a lick from her ice cream, but the funny mixture of feelings inside me seemed to get even stronger and even more mixed up when he said that. It felt so safe having Dad here to look after us and tease us and tell us off when we weren’t being nice to each other that I suddenly felt really furious with him for going away at the end of the week.

  And knowing that I needed him so much and that he was still going away made me feel even angrier.

  ‘If you were a good parent, you wouldn’t be going off and leaving us just when everything’s all new and horrible,’ I blurted out, tossing my ice cream on to the ground, where it landed upside down on the wooden slats of the pier.

  Dad looked surprised. If I’d done that in front of Mum, she’d have gone ballistic.

  ‘Pick that up and put it in the bin,’ Dad said in a low voice. ‘Now.’

  I picked up the cone, but the blob of ice cream just stayed there, and Martha started to giggle. She soon stopped when she noticed the look on Dad’s face though.

  We left the pier in silence. When we had almost reached the car, Martha asked if she could go and play on the beach and Dad nodded. She was still eating her ice cream, carefully controlling the drips with her tongue. I was starting to feel a bit sheepish. After all, I must have looked pretty much like a toddler having a tantrum to anyone who’d been looking just now. Also, Martha’s ice cream looked really good and I was starting to wish I hadn’t thrown mine away.

  On the beach, while Martha was searching for the best pebbles to throw into the water, Dad began talking to me quietly. ‘Daniel … if you knew that Mum or I were going to die soon, wouldn’t you want to see us again?’

  I flushed. ‘Of course I would, but –’

  ‘But you don’t think it’s so important for me to see my mother again?’

  I flushed even more. ‘It’s just not the same …’

  ‘Isn’t it? Daniel, if you think grown-ups don’t still love their parents, then you’re wrong. We might not need them in the same way children do, but it’s still a very big deal when we lose them. I really want to see my mother again, and say goodbye to her properly before she dies. Can you at least try to understand?’

  I swallowed. Dad had never spoken to me quite like this before – as if he was talking to my soon-to-be grown-up self rather than a kid. He didn’t look angry. He just looked worried. And suddenly I could see that he was worried about his mother and worried about us because we all needed him now. And nobody cou
ld be in two places at the same time. Not even Superman.

  ‘I wish we could just cut you in half,’ I said, sniffing. ‘Then you could stay with us and go and see Grandma.’

  Dad put his arm round me. ‘Listen, Daniel,’ he said softly. ‘It’s only for a few weeks, and Mum’s still going to be here. I’ll be staying with Aunt Helen and you can phone me there or on my mobile. It’s not like I’ll be completely out of touch.’

  ‘I know,’ I mumbled, burying my face in his jumper and hugging him. I didn’t know why I felt as bad as this about Dad going. After all, it wasn’t like I was a little kid any more. Maybe it was just that Dad never went away.

  ‘Daniel, are you crying?’ Martha called out.

  I pulled away from Dad and glared at her. ‘No!’

  ‘You look like you are!’ She was starting to pick her way across the pebbles towards us.

  ‘Come on,’ Dad shouted, clapping me on the back. ‘The last one back to the car has to do all the dishes tonight!’ And he began to stride across the stony beach in the wrong direction, making out that he’d totally forgotten where he’d left the car.

  I got back first, Martha was second – giggling like mad – and Dad came in last.

  ‘You’ve got to do the dishes, Daddy!’ Martha shouted gleefully.

  ‘Hey, I thought I said the last one back to the car doesn’t have to do them!’ he protested.

  ‘No, you didn’t!’ Martha and I both dived at him and started tickling him, one under each arm, until he gave in. And as I sat in the back seat as we drove home, so that Martha could have a turn in the front, I decided I was going to do my best not to cry or make a big fuss when we took him to the airport in three days’ time. Instead, I was going to hold it together so that he’d be proud of me.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was the adults who started crying first when we took Dad to the airport. Mum didn’t even get as far as the check-in desk before she was flinging her arms round Dad, saying, ‘Oh, Malcolm, I know you have to go, but I wish you didn’t!’ And then she was crying and kissing Dad and he was kissing and hugging her back, which was really embarrassing since they were standing in the middle of the check-in area and everyone was having to wheel their trollies around them. Dad pulled back from her and that’s when I saw that he was crying too. At least, his eyes had gone all watery and he was fishing about in his pocket like he was searching for a tissue.