In any normal, average pigeon, those three or four feathers should swoop back neatly and tidily against its small head, I reckon. But with Marvin, they stick forward, rockabilly-style.
“If I had my baseball cap on, you wouldn’t think we looked alike,” Arch insists, sounding slightly freaked at the idea of being compared to a bird.
“Yeah, but what if Marvin was wearing a teeny-weeny baseball cap, too?” I suggest, happy to wind my friend up.
“BOO!” agrees Marvin as we turn into the drive.
Boo beams at her feathered friend and hugs him to her cheek.
On the return journey to St Grizzle’s we’ve learned all about her special chum. Yes, Boo TALKED, using a whole HEAP of words. Amazing, right?
Anyway, it seems Marvin used to regularly land on the windowsill of her lonely classroom-for-one. When her strict tutor and animal-phobic parents weren’t looking, Boo would sneak him leftover crumbs from her meals.
She did worry madly about Marvin – he limped, with one stumped foot. Even when he flew, life wasn’t easy. Boo would bite her lip, watching as he swooped and swerved with the local gang of crows trying ever more grumpily to drive him from their turf.
Then came the day, not so long ago, when her tutor announced – with great regret – that another family had offered him a vastly HUGE amount more money to home-school THEIR kid.
And pretty immediately after, her parents had looked at boarding school brochures and settled on one that sounded the VERY BEST (ie not too expensive and with no waiting list). Days later Boo found herself with bags packed for St Grizzle’s and a knot of worry in her tummy about what would happen to poor home-alone Marvin.
“Anyway, Boo, dear,” says Granny Viv as the statue of St Grizzle comes into view. “Remember what I said – Marvin might not want to stay here, no matter how nice it is and no matter how much you care about him. So please don’t be sad if he flies off when we arrive…”
“I know,” says Boo, at a regular-person volume, as she idly stares out at St Grizzle with today’s makeover of clip-on dangly earrings, blue eyeshadow and Hula Hoop crisps on every stone finger. “But even if Marvin decides to go, that’ll be OK. At least he’ll understand that I didn’t abandon him. Even if we’re apart, he’ll know that I Iove him…”
Arch.
Arch and me.
Arch and me lock eyes in the mirror as Boo speaks.
And in that moment it’s as if she’s speaking about US and not some wee bird-brained pigeon. (No offence, Marvin.)
“Even when you go home tomorrow, you are STILL my best friend,” I tell Arch, before I chicken out and the words get stuck behind a lump of shyness in my chest.
“Er … speaking of when Arch is getting picked up,” mutters Granny Viv, spinning the steering wheel round and parking beside a familiar navy Ford Focus, “have we slipped through a portal in time and space and missed a day out somewhere?”
Uh-oh…
After the happiness and grumpiness, after the muddle and making-up, Mr and Mrs Kaminski CANNOT turn up a day early and take my best friend away.
NOOOOOOO!
It’s time for goodbyes.
So here we all are, the whole school, waving frantically at Arch’s car as it crunches over the stones of the driveway and disappears off down the road.
The pigeon perched on the stone head of St Grizzle flaps its wings in fond farewell, too… But as a white streak drizzles down St Grizzle’s neck, I realize Marvin was just doing a poo.
“So they’re off, then,” a voice murmurs beside me. “Wish they’d taken me with them, Dani?”
“Shut up, you big idiot,” I mutter, and give Arch a sharp dig in the ribs with my elbow.
Oh, yes, Mr and Mrs Kaminski are heading back home but Arch is very much NOT.
His parents came here this morning to have a chat with Lulu. To see if she’d consider having Arch here for the rest of the term while they figure things out.
“If you’d like that, of course, Arch,” Mrs Kaminski had said when Arch went to join them and Lulu in her office.
Me, Granny Viv, Boo and Marvin had hovered in the corridor outside, earwigging.
When we heard Arch whoop a loud “YES, PLEASE!”, we’d whooped, too, and then everything went a bit bonkers. Boo accidentally let go of Marvin and he flew into the office, flapping around frantically.
Everyone had to duck and take cover while Boo chased him, and Lulu’s speech about Arch being very, very welcome at St Grizelda’s got kind of drowned out.
“Well, what an exciting morning it’s been!” Lulu says now, clapping her hands together and turning to face us all. “Hope there’s no more surprises in store. I’m quite worn out!”
“Ahem…” coughs Swan, and we see that she’s pointing down at a small, earnest person whose grey-eyed stare is focused on our head teacher.
Uh-oh.
Before they left, Lulu insisted that Mr and Mrs Kaminski have a tour of the school. Granny Viv had gently dragged Boo and Marvin away so that Arch and me could be zombie-and-pigeon-free tour guides.
But what had Boo gone and done in the meantime?
ONLY LET SOMEONE CUT OFF ALL HER HAIR!
I glance around for Blossom – random hair-hacking seems right up her street. But the chief Newt is busy feeding some cardboard name-necklaces to Twinkle and looking pretty innocent. What about the triplets then? They’re often Up To Something. Last weekend they’d decided they wanted a pet bee and tried to attract one by “borrowing” honey from the kitchen and smearing it on themselves.
And then I spot something.
Two somethings, in fact.
A flicker of a tell-tale smile on Granny Viv’s face and the glint of a pair of scissors sticking out of her trouser pocket.
“My!” gasps Lulu. “What a fantastic new look, Boo! I love it!”
Boo breaks into a pleased and relieved smile, and runs a hand through her cropped short hair with its longer flop of fringe.
“Doesn’t she suit it?” Granny Viv says brightly as she takes Boo by the hand. “Now, how about you come and try some of the cookies I made specially for you this morning…”
At the word “cookies” Blossom drops the name-necklaces and comes scampering. “CAN I HAVE ONE, TOO?” she roars at Granny Viv.
At the same time, without thinking, she reaches out for Boo’s free hand.
And, without thinking, Boo smiles.
“Looks like she might be getting the hang of this friend business at last,” I say as the rest of the school head inside, too.
Outside, the only ones left are me, Arch, Swan and Zed.
Swan is drawing circles in the stones of the driveway with the toe of her flip-flop. Zed is nibbling at his lip and looking shyly at Arch.
Hmmm… Even with all the sudden sunshine of happiness around here, there’s still a little breeze of awkwardness between my friends.
I’m desperately trying to think of something to say that’ll make everything better, when Zed speaks first.
“You look more like yourself now,” he tells Arch, pointing at the replacement baseball cap his parents brought along for him.
“Yeah,” says Arch. “I feel more like myself, too. And that’s HUNGRY. Who’s up for sneaking round the back and swiping the cookies?”
“Yaaaaayyyy!” yells Zed as Arch grabs hold of his wheelchair and hurtles Zed away at high speed.
Well, when it comes to biscuits and fun, Swan and me aren’t going to be left behind.
In precisely no seconds flat, the four of us zoom off in one big friendly blur…
Once upon quite a while ago, St Grizelda’s School for Girls was…
a) super-strict and swotty
b) crammed with a hundred or more pupils
c) just for girls.
Nowadays it’s…
a) super-fun and a bit bonkers
b) only got a measly 22 pupils (oops)
c) home to random boys, too.
And I’m explaining all about the latest r
andom boy right at this second.
“SQUEEEEE!!”
Wow, that’s quite an ear-piercing shriek of excitement in response to my news. AND it’s coming all the way from the South Pole!
The person doing the shrieking is a teeny figure on the screen of my mobile phone, bundled up in a duvet-sized parka and wearing chunky goggles to protect against the dazzling brightness of Antarctica.
What with the goofy goggles and the furry-edged hood you can barely see that it’s my very own mum under there.
“So, quite a surprise, right?” I say, smiling at the screen now that I’ve spilled the secret I’ve been saving.
My phone is propped up against the salt and pepper set on a sticky-from-breakfast table in the school dining hall. St Grizzle’s – which is what we (nearly) all call it – is tucked in a small pocket of leafy British countryside, a very, VERY long way away from freezy Antarctica. Behind Mum I can see a brilliant blue sky and vast expanse of dazzling white snow. Behind me this Sunday morning are cream-painted walls covered with glistening patterns of small, smeary fingerprints.
Oh, and Mum might be able to see a pair of horns too – I can hear the tippetty-tap of Twinkle, the school’s pet goat, passing the back of my chair…
But we’re talking about surprises here, and at the sound of Mum’s shriek, the “surprise” I’ve just given her leans in beside me and waves.
“Hi, Mrs Dexter!” says my best friend Arch.
“Arch Kaminsky, what on EARTH are you doing there?” Mum asks with a confused laugh, clearly all flabbergasted and kerfuffled. “Are you visiting?”
“Nope,” says Arch. “I’m going to be at St Grizzle’s for the rest of the term – Dani was missing me SO much, she BEGGED me to come!”
Well, that’s not exactly true, but I’m still super-glad my best buddy is here to keep me company, alongside the OTHER random boy at school – my sweet ‘n’ shy classmate Zed. We, along with Zed’s definitely-NOT-sweet-‘n’-shy twin sister Swan, make up Fungi class. We’re the oldest in the school, since we’re all eleven.
“I can’t believe it!” says Mum, slapping a fat, padded glove to her forehead with a dull flump. “First, your gran and Downboy move in, Dani, and now Arch is there as well?”
You know, I was in a VERY BAD MOOD when my zoologist mum dumped me at St Grizzle’s a few weeks ago and went off on a three-month penguin-studying expedition. I didn’t want to go to a stupid boarding school. I didn’t want to be apart from Arch. I also didn’t want to be away from my excellently mad Granny Viv or my daft dog Downboy.
But in the end, I didn’t have much time to miss Granny Viv and Downboy. One day, some of the younger pupils were convinced they’d spotted a witch with red pom-pom hair living in the nearby woods, but it turned out to be Granny Viv, who – along with Downboy – had come to spy on me and check I was doing alright.
She needn’t have worried, cos I was alright.
But I’m doing even better since Lulu the headteacher offered Granny Viv the job of live-in cook, homework-helper, bedtime story-teller and whatever-else-er-er at St Grizzle’s, all because there’s a shortage of staff.
There’s also a shortage of pupils too, so when Arch turned up out of the blue there was no problem with him becoming a temporary student.
So, yep – me, Granny Viv, Downboy and Arch are all back together again.
In the last few days I HAD thought about messaging Mum and letting her know about Arch joining the gang from home – and about his parents being cool with him staying – but then I thought it would be much more fun to wait till our planned mum-and-daughter video chat today. That way it could be a great big “TA-DAH!” kind of a moment. And everyone loves “TA-DAH!”s, don’t they?
“Oh, hello… Who’s this?” Mum suddenly asks, leaning in a little closer to her own propped-up phone.
Mum’s obviously spotted something I can’t see. I quickly turn round, and see that the New Girl has silently appeared behind me and Arch. The New Girl started at St Grizzle’s last week too, and like Arch, her arrival was a bit unexpected. However, she DID get dropped off in a posh car by her parents. Arch … well, he turned up via three buses, a trudge through a marsh, a short-but-frantic chase by a cow and a tight squeeze though a spike-tastically thorny hedge.
“Boo!” says the New Girl, in response to Mum’s question.
Mum’s furry hood tips to one side, as she wonders why a small stranger 16,000 kilometres away might be trying to make her jump.
“Mum, this is Boudicca Featherton-Snipe,” I quickly explain with an introduction. “Only she likes to be called B—”
“SQUEEEEE!!”
OK, so that’s NOT Mum shrieking this time – it’s Boo who’s successfully burst my eardrum.
“Ha! NO WAY! Check it out, Dani!” roars Arch, pointing at the phone screen.
With my ear properly ringing now, I notice that the view of Mum has been blocked on HER side by a large, looming, black-and-white head and a pair of circular, staring, yellow eyes.
“PENGUIN!!” yelps Boo, who is crazy for anything winged and feathered.
“Oi!” I hear Mum shout, as the big bird starts clunking on her phone’s screen with its beak. “Leave that alone, you nosey old—”
The phone screen goes blank as the connection is lost.
Uh-oh.
Seems like Mum has been the victim of a fishy-breathed mobile phone mugger…
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of the Little Tiger Group
1 Coda Studios, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2018.
Text copyright © Karen McCombie, 2018
Illustrations copyright © Becka Moor, 2018
eISBN: 978-1-84715-969-4
The right of Karen McCombie and Becka Moor to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.littletiger.co.uk
St Grizzle's School for Girls, Geeks and Tag-along Zombies Page 8
