Cover

A MESSAGE FROM CHICKEN HOUSE

Make a wish! And another! And another! And another! What could go wrong? Well, maybe getting what you wish for doesn’t always turn out to be what you really want. Brandon Robshaw tries it all out in his funny and rather revealing story of the boy who has it all.

Here I go, I wish for . . . Oh, no, I didn’t mean it! Urghh!

BARRY CUNNINGHAM

Publisher

Chicken House

Title Page

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

People often talk about having butterflies in their stomachs. Butterflies? With me it was . . . bees! Bats! Birds! Lobsters, snapping their claws!

It was a bright morning in early September and I was all kitted out in my brand-new school uniform: dark-grey trousers and blazer, white shirt, tie with diagonal red, black and white stripes. New black shoes without a scuff on them. Two-day-old haircut. My Adidas shoulder bag had a new calculator in it, along with a collection of pens, a geometry set and my packed lunch, which consisted of a cheese-and-coleslaw sandwich, an orange and a fruit-and-nut cereal bar.

I was sitting in the kitchen, trying to eat my toast. The sun was streaming through the window, the radio was on and the DJ sounded insanely cheerful. ‘Happy Monday, everyone!’ and all that. It was all right for him. All he had to do was lounge about in a studio, play records, burble on and get paid shed-loads of money for it. He didn’t have to go to a great big massive new school with a thousand kids in it.

All bigger than him.

‘Are you all right?’ my mum said. She always knows when I’ve got something on my mind. It’s like she’s telepathic. ‘Not too worried?’

‘He should be!’ said Maeve. ‘They’ll eat him alive!’

Ben was so shocked he stopped scratching his head. ‘Eat him alive? They’ll go to prison if they eat him alive!’

‘It’s just an expression,’ Mum said. ‘Don’t worry, Sam. They won’t eat you alive.’

‘You don’t know the place like I do, Mum,’ said Maeve. She finished there last year and she’s about to start sixth-form college. ‘There are some real psychos.’

‘Be quiet!’ said Mum. ‘Don’t be so mean! Don’t you worry about those psychos, Sam. Just keep out of their way.’

‘Oh, yeah, that’s a really good idea, Mum,’ I said. Touch of sarcasm there, you know.

‘Oh, come here!’ Mum said, and she got up and hugged me, pressing me to her like I was a really little kid again. Only in those days my head only came up to her waist and now it was almost level with hers. And for a moment I wished I was a little boy again, with nothing to do except swing on swings and dig in sandpits and play with my toys and eat sweets and watch CBeebies . . .

There was a rap at the door.

‘That’ll be Evan,’ I said.

He was standing there on the doorstep in his Mary Seacole Comprehensive School uniform. It was his big brother’s cast-off uniform – the trousers ended way above his ankles, the sleeves of the jacket ended way above his wrists, and it wouldn’t do up at the front. Evan’s a bit overweight. Not actually fat. Just . . . well, he’s in shape, and the shape is round, as my dad would say.

‘What are you staring at?’ Evan said. ‘Do I look really stupid?’

‘No, no, no,’ I said quickly. ‘You look fine. Uber-cool.’

‘No need to be sarcastic.’ He sounded a bit huffy.

I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Except – a funny thing – now Evan looked so worried, I felt a lot less worried myself. I’d handed on the worry-baton, like in a relay.

Mum came out into the hall. ‘Hello Evan. Good luck, you two!’

Maeve appeared behind her. ‘They’ll need it!’

‘You survived it there, didn’t you?’ said Mum.

‘Yeah, just about!’ said Maeve.

Anyway, we set off up the road, me and Evan. Mum stood at the gate and called out, ‘Make some wise choices!’ She’s always said that, ever since I started primary school. She thinks it’s funny. But it’s just annoying.

Parents don’t always know the difference.

Mary Seacole Comprehensive is a massive new building. Mostly yellow, with steel girders on the outside, and between the yellow walls there are sheets of glass you can see the staircases through.

‘Weird, isn’t it,’ I said to Evan, as we stood outside. Hundreds of kids streamed past, jostling us as they went by. ‘We’ve gone from being the biggest kids to being the smallest kids.’

‘Yeah,’ said Evan. ‘Like in Gulliver’s Travels. When he goes from Lilliput, where everyone’s tiny and he’s the giant, to Brobdingnag, where everyone’s a giant and he’s the tiny one.’

Evan says stuff like that all the time. And he hadn’t just seen the film, either. He’d read the book, you could be sure about that.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guess.’

‘But it’s going to be OK,’ Evan said. ‘Remember what Mrs Protheroe said – about the school’s strict anti-bullying policy?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

We looked at each other. ‘Well,’ Evan said, ‘we’d better get in there.’

We knew where to go. They’d shown us on the Induction Day. We were in Mrs Protheroe’s class in Room G11 on the ground floor. But there’d only been year sevens there then. It was all nice and quiet. Today it was like entering a giant beehive.

‘You sure this uniform looks OK?’ Evan said.

‘Well, er, yeah,’ I said. ‘Totally.’

‘Your hair’s sticking up.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I like it like that.’

So we went in and found our way through the noisy, crowded corridors to Mrs Protheroe’s room, and went off to our first class, which was English with Mr Swaledale, and do you know what? Nothing bad or scary happened at all.

Until break time.

Me and Evan were kind of ambling along the side of this tarmacked area where some of the big kids were playing football. We were talking about who was the best ever Captain in Captain Invincible.

‘Matt Lukovitz is good,’ I said. ‘He’s funny. But I think I gotta say Garrett Butcher, on the whole, ’cause—’

‘My dad says Sidney Kronk was the best.’

This put me in a bit of a dilemma. I’d seen an old Captain Invincible episode with Sidney Kronk in it and I wasn’t that impressed. But I didn’t want to sound as if I was contradicting Evan’s dad, who’s really ill. He’s been in and out of hospital for the last two years having all sorts of treatments and operations, and he can’t work any more. So I felt like it would be bad manners, if you know what I mean, to start saying that Evan’s dad was all wrong about Sidney Kronk. Before I had a chance to work out what to say, a football came whizzing towards us at about a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour and smashed Evan right in the face, knocking his glasses off.

‘Oi!’ shouted a really horrible voice. ‘Give us our ball back, you muppet!’

A tall kid with a pale face, black hair and cold, hard eyes was glaring at us.

Evan was on his hands and knees looking for his glasses. Blood trickled from his nose. I picked up the glasses and gave them to him.

‘The ball! Kick it here, you little jerk!’

‘Aren’t you even going to say sorry?’ I said. ‘You just whacked him in the face.’

‘He should keep his ugly face out of the way then!’

His mates were all laughing. But the boy himself didn’t look like he thought it was funny at all. He started walking towards us. I threw the ball back, but he ignored it.

‘What’s your problem?’ he said.

‘You are.’ It just sprang to my lips. I knew it was suicidal, but it was true.

He opened his eyes wide. He was right close-up in front of us now.

‘You what? You what?’

He made a sudden movement with his hand like he was going to hit me. I jumped to one side, but then he casually moved his hand up and smoothed back his hair. His mates burst out laughing.

‘Who are they letting in to this school these days? Look at this pair of doughnuts. This one’ – he poked Evan really hard in the stomach, you could see his finger push right in – ‘is so fat he couldn’t get a uniform to fit him! And this one’ – he poked me in the ribs and it really hurt – ‘has hair like a bogbrush. A ginger bogbrush!’

His mates laughed even more and came closer, crowding around us. I gave Evan a kind of helpless look at the exact moment he turned and did the exact same look to me.

‘What’s your name?’ said the tall boy.

‘Evan Carter,’ muttered Evan.

‘What? Evan Farter?’

Cue gales of laughter from his mates. Evan went red.

‘And you?’ He turned on me. ‘What’s your stupid name?’

‘Why? What’s yours?’

I don’t know why I was acting like I had a death wish. I have this idea that life should be fair, you know? If he could ask me my name, why couldn’t I ask him his? I know life isn’t fair – grown-ups are always coming out with that one – but it should be.

There was a gasp from his mates. ‘You better teach him a lesson, Scorpus.’

Scorpus gave a sneering grin – like a bit of string was pulling his lip up on one side. ‘Yeah, ’cause that’s what school’s for, innit? Learning lessons.’ He pushed me right back against the wall. I could feel the bricks scraping against my vertebrae. And I wished, more strongly than I’d ever wished for anything in my life, that I had super-powers, like in Marvel comics. If I was Spiderman, I could punch him to the ground using all my spider-strength, and then tie him up in a web. Or if I was the Incredible Hulk, I could hurl him right across the playground and he’d go splat against the far wall. Or if I was the Mighty Thor, I’d get out my hammer and—

‘You gotta pay tax,’ Scorpus said. ‘For being cheeky. Give us your money.’

‘Leave him alone!’ said Evan. ‘This school has an anti-bullying policy—’

Hurricane of laughter.

Scorpus held his hand out in front of me. ‘Dinner money.’

‘I haven’t got any, I brought a packed lunch.’

One of his mates – a thickset boy with a dyed-blond streak in his hair and a piercing in his eyebrow, even though that was against the rules – upended my Adidas bag. The calculator, geometry set and pens tumbled out, plus the lunch box.

‘Oh, what we got here?’ Scorpus picked up the calculator and geometry set. ‘He’s got all his little instruments, sweet or what?’ He slipped them into his jacket pocket.

‘Give those back!’

‘Er, how can I put this? No.’ Then he opened the lunch box. ‘What we got here? Cheese? I hate cheese.’ He dropped the sandwich on the floor and ground it under his heel, and all the coleslaw came splurting out the sides. He threw the orange up and down a couple of times, then pulled back his arm and sent it whizzing right across the playground. It splatted on the wall on the far side, just like he’d have done if I’d been the Incredible Hulk. Finally he took the cereal bar, looked at it, and slipped it into his other pocket. It was a chocolate-coated one.

‘That’s the end of the lesson,’ Scorpus said. ‘The lesson is, show some respect. You get me?’

All I had to do was say OK, or even just nod. But somehow . . . I just couldn’t. I was scared of him. But I didn’t respect him. So I just stared back dumbly.

‘I said, d’you get me?’

‘Oh, come on,’ said one of Scorpus’ mates. ‘Let’s get on with the game, the bell’s gonna go soon.’ He was a black kid with a shaved head, and even though he looked seriously hard, something in his voice gave me the idea he’d started to feel a bit sorry for me.

Scorpus turned to look at him. ‘I’ll “come on” when I’m ready, all right?’

‘Look – a teacher’s coming!’ Evan said.

I felt a surge of relief as I saw a bald teacher with glasses and a brown corduroy jacket walking our way.

Scorpus swore. ‘OK, let’s play football. You two’ – he fixed us each in turn with a laser beam-stare – ‘if you say anything, you’re dead.’ He drew his finger across his throat. ‘Capeesh?’

‘What?’ I said. ‘I don’t know what capeesh means.’

Scorpus took half a step forward and for a second I thought he was going to start on me again. But the teacher was close now. Shaved-Head pulled Scorpus’s arm, and Scorpus finally slouched away.

‘Whew!’ Evan said shakily. ‘That was horrible!’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Well . . . you can share my packed lunch.’

‘Thanks. But I meant, we’ll have to tell, won’t we?’

‘Will we?’

‘Yeah, Mrs Protheroe said—’

‘Yeah, but he said—’

‘Yeah, but Mrs Protheroe said—’

‘Yeah, but he’ll kill us!’

‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘They won’t let him.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Look, they’ve got an anti-bullying policy. They have to, like, enforce it. Anyway, why should we let him get away with pushing us about like that and stealing my things? It’s not fair!’

‘Life’s not fair,’ said Evan.

‘Well, we’ll have to try and make it fair, then,’ I said.

So we went to Mrs Protheroe and dropped Scorpus right in the poo.

And dropped ourselves in it too, as it turned out.

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

When I got home from school, my mum asked, ‘How was your first day?’ etc, etc. I said it was fine. I didn’t want to explain about Scorpus and his gang. It made me feel embarrassed, even though it wasn’t my fault.

I was seriously worried about going back to school the next day. Mrs Protheroe had got us together with Scorpus and made him give the stuff back, which he did, with his face fixed in a sneer. He said he was only messing about, and she said she hoped there would be no repetition of the incident, or Scorpus would be in serious trouble.

So that might sound all right, but outside the classroom Scorpus had looked at us and said, in a low, fierce voice like he was acting the part of a baddie in a soap, ‘I told you two losers if you told on me I’d kill you. And I always keep my word. See you after school.’

Our last class was History with Miss Spiggins, which was close to the main entrance, so we were able to get out of school fast and run all the way home before Scorpus appeared. So, OK, that was a result. But we couldn’t keep dodging him for ever.

It turned out we’d picked the absolute worst person in the school to get on the wrong side of. Really. It was like making an enemy of Doctor Doom or Darth Vader or someone. Scorpus was a terror. A legend. He was the hardest kid in school, and last year he’d been suspended for assaulting a teacher. His dad was a well-known local hard case. He’d just come out of prison after doing time for breaking a man’s jaw in a pub and then breaking the nose of the copper who came to arrest him. So I didn’t want my mum and dad going up to the school to complain and get a meeting with Scorpus’s parents so they could tell them off in their posh voices using lots of long words. I had a feeling that wouldn’t exactly help.

So when my dad got in from work that evening and asked me how it was, I told him it was fine too.

‘They didn’t eat you then?’ said Ben, scratching his head.

‘No, not yet,’ I said.

My dad sat back in the armchair and sighed. ‘I’m glad your first day at school went well, Sam. Wish I could say the same about my day at work.’

‘Why?’ my mum said. ‘They didn’t . . .?’

‘They did,’ my dad said, in this deep kind of gravelly voice he uses when he’s being dead serious. ‘Roger Haggerston said the restructuring is going to take place next month. And my department is . . . vulnerable.’

Mum looked stricken. Money’s always been a bit tight in our house. Not as tight as in Evan’s, but still. Tightish. We’re not one of those families that has a giant plasma telly or buys a new car or goes on long-haul holidays.

‘What do you mean, vulnerable?’

‘I mean vulnerable – you know what that means, don’t you?’

Maeve stuck her head round the living-room door. She was just about to go out with her friends – she was wearing a short skirt and a tight top and about two kilos of make-up, but she still looked incredibly bad-tempered. ‘What? What’s vulnerable?’

‘My job.’

‘What do you mean, Dad? They’re giving you the sack?’

‘It’s not definite yet.’

‘Oh great, that’s all I need,’ said Maeve, and flounced out, banging the front door behind her.

‘I’ll smash Roger Haggerston’s face in!’ Ben said. He’s only six and it often looks like he’s in a world of his own, but he picks everything up.

My mum’s like, ‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ my dad said heavily. ‘If the worst comes to the worst there’ll be some redundancy money, but I don’t know how much.’

‘How can they do this to you, after sixteen years?’

‘They can do what they want.’

He sounded so sad and weary that even the dog noticed, went up to my dad and stuck his head on his knee. Dad stroked the dog’s ears.

‘Come on, Billiam. Shall I take you for a walk?’

Billiam started leaping and capering about. My dad got up and went to get the lead.

‘I’ll come,’ I said.

I just felt like getting out of the house. And maybe cheering my dad up a bit.

It turned out to be a fantastically good job I went.

It was just getting dark. Me and Dad walked along, not saying much. I was thinking about having to go to school tomorrow and I s’pose Dad was thinking about not having to go to work any more. But it was kind of comforting, somehow, to walk along together in silence.

A few streets from our house there’s a bit of forest where you can let dogs off the lead. Billiam ran backwards and forwards, looking for a stick. He found one and dropped it at my feet. I threw it and he galloped off after it.

‘So,’ said Dad, ‘tell me a bit more about school.’

‘It was all right.’

‘What lessons did you have?’

‘Oh, you know. English and stuff. The usual.’

‘You’re Mr Communicative, aren’t you? Did you make any new friends?’

‘Well, not yet, I just went around with Evan.’

‘But do they seem nice there? It’s a good atmosphere?’

‘Oh yeah, yeah. Very good. Yeah.’

I’d already decided I wasn’t going to lay the Scorpus problem on him, but after hearing about him probably losing his job I wasn’t going to even more. I didn’t want to add to his worries.

Billiam came bounding back with the stick. I threw it again and he galloped off after it again.

Dad pointed upwards. ‘Look!’

A bright silver streak was moving across the velvety blue sky.

‘Is that a shooting star?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You can make a wish on it?’

Dad laughed. ‘Well, that’s the story. It’s really just a meteor, burning up as it hits the Earth’s atmosphere. A chunk of rock from space. So I don’t quite see how it could grant wishes . . .’

‘Well, I’m going to wish,’ I said. ‘You never know!’

‘Better hurry then, before it burns up!’

My mind started working fast. As fast as the meteor. I could wish that Scorpus would leave me and Evan alone. Or that I was so strong I could pick him up and chuck him over the school wall. But then, what about Dad and his job – maybe I should wish he’d keep it? Or even get a promotion? And then I thought, if I wished for a million pounds it wouldn’t matter about his job. And it was then I thought, What if I wished for a million wishes? Then I could take care of everything.

I want to make it clear that I didn’t actually believe in the wish at this point. I didn’t really think a piece of hurtling space-rock could or would change the world for me. It was just comforting to think about it – like it’s sort of comforting to pray sometimes, even if you don’t believe in God.

So I said, in my head, I wish for a million wishes.

The shooting star disappeared behind the trees.

My dad’s like, ‘Did you wish?’

‘Yeah, I wished.’

‘What for?’

‘Better not tell. Or it won’t come true.’

My dad gave a little smile. A sort of slightly weary, grown-up smile. ‘I don’t expect it’ll come true anyway, Sam.’

‘No, I s’pose it won’t.’

But in my head I was saying, I wish Scorpus doesn’t beat me or Evan up tomorrow. And I wish Dad keeps his job.

Which meant, theoretically, I had nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight wishes left.

I didn’t bother to wish for the million pounds, though. That seemed a bit too unlikely.

We turned back and went home, and I went to bed.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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