by Chris Ashley
“Miss … Miss … Miss …” It still happened when he was excited. “Miss” was all that would come out.
“You are going to get on my nerves, young man. Choose your floats. Are you disobeying me?”
“Miss … M …”
Carol turned purple, but Wasim was going to get it out. “Miss … we’ve got to do our One Star, Miss.”
There was silence. Even the shrieks from the kids in the water seemed to stop. The lifeguard gave Carol a look and walked off to his chair. But he didn’t sit in it. He looked back to see what Carol would do.
“And who says?”
That was it. They all knew it then. Carol wasn’t going to let them do it!
“John said, Miss.” It was Gemma and they all looked at her. Wasim decided he was going to give her his prawn cocktail crisps after. “John said last week, Miss.”
Nothing happened. Gemma knew what she was doing. John was in charge, he ran the pool. They all knew he was above Carol. Nothing happened. Donna and Jamila climbed in and started jumping up and down keeping their heads out of the water. The rest of them waited.
Wayne looked puzzled.
“Do not move.”
They weren’t going to. Carol gave them a last glare and, with her arms folded to show she was taking her time, she walked in slow motion to where John was crouching next to the group of High School children. The Splash group watched as John looked up. No one breathed. Carol’s arm flapped in their direction and, shivering again, Wasim tried to swallow.
John was looking at them and … John was nodding. Yes, yes, yes! John was nodding.
Carol, her arms still folded, began a long, slow walk back while they all looked at the floor in case she saw them being pleased. Wasim, though, looked up through his eyebrows and managed to meet Andrew’s eyes.
He flared his nostrils wide and he could see Andrew killing himself not to laugh. Wasim hoped he wouldn’t, as that really would ruin it.
Carol got back to them and snatched a pole from the wall. They were going. “Not a sound,” was all she said and she led the way up towards the steps while Wasim looked at every tile on the bottom and tried to imagine every droplet of water as he began the twenty-five metre walk that in a few seconds he would be trying to swim.
He’d let somebody else be first, he decided, just for once. Somebody overtook. Let them, thought Wasim. It was Wayne, his straight cropped hair bouncing as he walked.
No, Wayne wouldn’t be doing his One Star, would he? He hadn’t even done his width for Miss yet. No, no, he should be down there with Donna and Jamila.
Wasim tapped Wayne’s back. Wayne turned and smiled. Wasim thrust his thumb back in the direction of the shallow end. Wayne kept walking.
“Back!” said Wasim, but it was too quiet. “Back!” he hissed. But this time it was too loud. He knew before it had finished coming out that it was too loud and yes, Carol had stopped.
“Right. I don’t even need to ask who that was, do I? I said silence and I am already more than fed up with you.”
“M … Miss …”
But she had turned, dangerously slowly, and was almost at the steps now. Wasim had to tell Wayne without talking. Wasim tapped him. Wayne ignored it. He knew what getting in trouble meant and Carol’s mood was Carol’s mood in every language in the world. So Wasim did it.
He grabbed Wayne’s shoulders, turned him round and tried to push him back to the shallow end. Wayne, looking hurt, broke free and turned back. Wasim tried again. He reached out, got Wayne’s shoulders and… it was then that Carol turned round.
All the smells, all the sounds, all the colours and Wayne’s hurt, puzzled face, they all crowded in on Wasim and got jumbled up. Only one thing was clear. It was one of Carol’s words in between all the stuff she was shouting about Wasim fighting in the line. It echoed through his head and it made him feel sick. It was, “Out!” She’d said, “Out!” and she was pointing at the changing room. “Out!” The pool was silent now. “Out. You’ll have to do it next week.”
Wasim tried to breathe. There wasn’t a next week, it was the holidays. This was it until his class’s turn next year.
Wasim found that he had carried on walking. He was the only person moving in the whole pool. He was right up with her now. He’d explain. “Miss, M …” He needed time for the right words. “Miss.”
But Carol wasn’t going to give him any time. “Out! Out!”
So that was it. Wasim turned, a huge sob was coming up and he had to get out before it exploded out of his mouth and down his nose. He turned and walked with his elbows pumping, glaring at the ground, then at them all, at Wayne and at Gemma.
“So?” he managed to spit at Donna looking up at him from the shallow end. And then he’d finished his walk and he was past the steps.
Twenty-five metres. No armbands and no One Star.
Chapter Five
Wasim did what he always did first and put on his glasses. But he was crying now, sitting on the bench under his peg really sobbing, and so his glasses just steamed up… useless. A huge rolling tickle went through him and he wanted to hit something or throw something or scream out loud. Then he thought of tonight, going in through his front door and not being able to tell them that he’d done it, passed.
He wanted home now, Mum and Dad, Shamaila his little sister and Atif his brother. He thought about his house and all the love that was in it. His house and how Carol had said she’d hate to live there. Well, he’d hate to have her there… How dare she say that. He’d never let her in his house and he knew why she’d really hate to live there. Well, he couldn’t be sure but…
Wasim took his glasses off and wiped them while he thought of his dad taking time off to practise swimming on the last two Saturdays. He was cold. He pulled his towel from his rucksack and a piece of paper fell out. Wasim wiped his glasses again and picked it out of the puddle. His glasses were still no good so he squinted and read it without them.
“Good luck.”
Wasim heaved again in a great gulp.
“What’s that say, then? That’s not English.”
Wasim jumped, startled.
“What’s it say?” The kid was coming over. He was from the High School, the small one whose trunks the others had thrown around.
“Nothing.” Wasim stuffed the note back into his bag.
“Please yourself. What’s up with you, then?”
Wasim pulled his bag down and began searching for his shirt. He could remember stuffing it down there somewhere.
“You the one that got chucked out?”
“So?” Wasim searched harder to stop the tears coming again.
“They nicked my trunks so I can’t go in, can I. We were doing our lifesavers. We, we …” The boy was cuffing his nose.
Wasim stopped punching in his bag and looked up. The boy said a swear word and brushed an arm across his eyes. Wasim felt sorry for him. “It said ‘Good luck’, my note.”
“Oh,” said the boy.
Wasim forgot about his shirt and started pulling on his trousers which he’d found under the bench. He looked up.
“Do you want these?” His trunks were still dry.
The boy sniffed again, “No, you’re all right. They’ll all be out in a minute.”
Wasim pulled his trousers up over his trunks and sat down again.
“Here …” The boy was up again. “Have a laugh. Don’t tell no one, eh?” The boy had gone over to a big metal door, the warm door where Wasim liked to get a peg. “We always go in here when no one’s around. Come on.”
The door was opened and Wasim was hit by a great balloon of heat. “Come on, it’s a grin.”
Wasim didn’t move.
“Come on. What are they going to do, chuck you out?” The boy disappeared and Wasim got up. Then he sat down.
The boy’s head popped back. “Come on.”
This would mean trouble. Wasim looked at the steps leading up to the poolside and heard the shouts of everyone having fun. And then he h
eard some clapping. He knew what that was for. Yeah, what could they do, chuck him out? This would mean real trouble, but somehow he was heading towards the darkness and the heat.
“Shut the door.”
Wasim couldn’t see anything. He could just feel the warmth and hear a great humming noise.
“It’s the boiler. It heats up the water.”
Things were getting clearer and Wasim could make out a blue light where the voice was coming from.
“Come on over here, quick.”
Wasim put his hands out like a tightrope walker and edged past the shadowy heat of three huge shuddering machines.
“This is it. Look. Like portholes. That’s the pool.”
Wasim reached the boy and the blue light. Yes, they were portholes, two of them, like windows on a ship, and that was the pool. He was looking through a window into the deep end. Underwater.
“Look at his mug!” The boy laughed and suddenly Wasim was laughing too. He was roaring. Through the window he could see Ben Perry trying to get something, a brick, off the bottom of the pool. But what a face he was pulling and yuk, there was stuff coming out of his nose! Wait till Wasim got back to school and told everybody that. He’d tell them when they were all eating, that’d show Ben up. Wasim laughed again and looked through the other porthole. Someone’s legs were coming down the steps right next to the window. The legs started moving and Wasim lost sight of them in the thick blue glass. That would be someone doing their One Star.
Wasim’s smile died, but the boy was pulling him back to the top window and Wasim could see why. Here was Ben again, going for the brick and this time his trunks were coming off and he was trying to pull them up and get the brick all at the same time. The High School boy was curled up with laughter. Wasim hugged himself, they’d never believe this.
“What’s your name?” Wasim would have to know for when he told them.
“Titch, Titch Jarvis.” The boy sort of laughed but Wasim didn’t know whether to or not. Maybe it was only in his school that you had to call people by their proper names.
He went back to the other window. Some more legs were coming down the steps … slowly, very slowly. And there were trunks, so it was a boy. The legs started kicking, and there was … and there was Wayne, legs kicking, arms clawing, face screaming and reaching, silently reaching up to the air and sinking past Wasim’s glass. But Wasim had gone.
He sped through the darkness, letting the burns from the huge machines on his bare sides guide him back to the chinks of light where the door was. He crashed it open, ran through the changing room, made a mini-tidal wave in the foot-bath and slipped on the steps. He hardly had a breath left but he pulled himself up by the hand rail and finally reached the poolside.
Which way? He headed for the steps – he’d know where they were in his sleep – and banged straight into a hard body. It was John, herding his group back to the changing rooms.
“What …?”
“Miss, Mm …” Wasim knew nothing would come out, so he dragged John’s shirt and turned him to face the steps at the deep end where Carol, her back to the water, was chatting to her lifeguard friend.
John looked down at him. Wasim pointed again and this time John was off, moving like a bullet along the side and into the water without a splash.
There was a second, a silent second, two, three, and then there was a huge bubble and one… two heads came out of the water. Still there was silence and then a wail, a huge wail from Wayne.
Wasim realised that he had been holding his own breath too. He took in a great lungful of air and let out a wail of his own.
Chapter Six
He wasn’t very good at looking as if he didn’t care. Wasim cared about everything he did. Sometimes that led to praise for hard work, like with his reading, and sometimes it led to arguments, like when he was playing football in the playground or when he moaned at somebody on his table for losing a group point. And now, in Friday assembly with his mum sitting at the back with all the other mums and dads, it meant that he couldn’t sit still and laugh and clap with the others when Mr Abbott handed over a white certificate and said, “Andrew Foster, you are a star.”
It wasn’t very funny really anyway.
What was worse was that he could feel as many eyes on him as on the lucky things out at the front. Everyone knew what had happened on Monday. They’d talked about it all week and up until today it had felt good. But today there was no getting away from it – whatever else he had done, he had not swum that twenty-five metres from the deep steps to the shallow steps.
Nicola was next up and Wasim slowly forced himself to clap. Then he saw Miss looking and clapped a bit faster. He looked round for Donna and Jamila. They were the only other two who hadn’t got a certificate. They were clapping like anything and Wasim forced his hands together again while he sneaked a look at the clock. Topic time next, then break.
“And now, boys and girls, we’ve got one more star.”
Wasim jerked up. Donna hadn’t done it, had she?
But Mr Abbott wasn’t talking about swimming; he was talking about something else, rules again. Wasim began cleaning the crack between two floor tiles while Mr Abbott went on about something to do with the school rule about calling people by their own names. Something about a boy who had come from another country and who had been so worried that nobody would say his name properly that he had chosen a footballer’s name, a United player’s name. There was a buzz and Wasim stopped picking at the crack. “Just,” Mr Abbott whispered in his very quietest specially-for-infants voice, “to make it easy for people to say.”
Heads twizzled everywhere. Who was it? Mr Abbott waited until they settled down.
“But,” he told them finally, “the boy had found a really good friend, a friend who was willing to give up things, very important things, like a special certificate, to help him. And because of this friend, the new boy trusted everybody at the school to be just as kind. So from now on,” Mr Abbott was walking down the middle and smiling, “we are all going to call Wayne by his proper name – Wing Ho.”
They all swung round to where Junior S were sitting and everybody in the hall tried saying it … “Wing Ho.” It wasn’t that hard and Wayne, Wing Ho, was beaming from ear to ear.
Then Mr Abbott called for quiet again and said, “I reckon a friend such as Wing Ho has found is a very special friend, don’t you?”
They all said yes.
“Let’s give him a big cheer then, shall we. Come up here, Wasim Ahmed. You really are a star.”
All that had happened an hour before. The rest of his class were doing their Vikings work now but Wasim had a tight grip on the rail, his foot on the first rough plastic step, and he was staring down through the shimmering water to see how deep 1.5 metres actually was.
It was deep. What if he didn’t make it? Mr Abbott had driven him and Wing Ho to the High School and then on to the baths in his Mondeo. He was missing a meeting just to give Wasim a chance of his One Star.
“OK, Wasim? Take your time.” It was John with the pole. There was no sign of Carol but there was a new lady on the other side doing a lifesaving test with Peter Jarvis.
Wasim looked down again. What if he didn’t make it? He gripped the rail harder, had one last look along the pool and there, right down there by the other steps was Wayne. No, not Wayne, Wing Ho, and Wing Ho was shouting and clapping.
So what if he didn’t make it. Wasim was already a star. He let go. Twenty-five metres, he thought, and no armbands.
Also available:
Wasim the Wanderer
(selected for Boys into Books 5-11)
Wasim’s Challenge
Praise for other Wasim titles:
“A character that primary school children and teachers will recognise and respond to with pleasure.”
The Guardian
CHRIS ASHLEY
Chris Ashley is a headteacher and it was when he took a class of children for their weekly swim that an adventure just like W
asim’s unfolded.
“I could see that one boy who couldn’t swim wasn’t listening to the instructor and sure enough, he jumped straight into the deep end. We fished him out and it was almost a happy ending,” recalls Chris, “except that as I got out of the water I remembered that I was wearing my best suit!”
Chris loves swimming and football and has also written about Wasim’s football skills in Wasim the Wanderer.
Also available from Frances Lincoln Children’s Books
Wasim the Wanderer
Chris Ashley
Illustrated by Kate Pankhurst
No one at school can score a goal like Wasim! So he is trying out his football skills for Teamwork 10,000 and that might just lead to a trial with the Woodley Wanderers! But how can he play his best football with Robert Bailey lurking around every corner – and then on the football pitch too?
Wasim’s Challenge
Chris Ashley
Illustrated by Kate Pankhurst
Wasim’s class are off to Snowdonia on a Challenge by Choice week and he can’t wait! And that’s not the only challenge Wasim is facing – this year he has secretly decided to fast for Ramadan for the first time.
But as usual nothing goes right for Wasim, and when a box of Mars bars disappears, he becomes prime suspect. Can he prove his innocence, and complete his challenges?
