Stargazing for Beginners Read online

  Annie smiles and does a little shake of her head, then she goes to the door, pulls it open and leaves us sitting in silence.

  After a moment, Jackson reaches up and pats Mr Curtis on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it, Sir. She does that in most lessons.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, then he pulls a briefcase on to his lap and snaps it open. He disappears behind the lid, reappearing with a red box. Budgen’s Broken Biscuits is written across the front. ‘Who wants a biscuit?’

  FOURTEEN

  Despite the biscuits, by the time I get to my last lesson, science, I’m running on empty. As we queue up outside the classroom, I rest my head against the wall and drift in and out of the conversations taking place around me. As usual, everyone is speaking a language I don’t understand, a language that today involves the words ‘contouring’, ‘jacking’, ‘TPU tips’ and someone – or something – called ‘Devo’. Harriet used to be my teen-speak translator. She had two older sisters and always knew what this sort of stuff was. Without her, I’m lost.

  Ed and Bella are leaning against the wall opposite me. Bella’s sucking a lolly and Ed’s telling her something that’s making her laugh. When she sees me watching them, she pulls the green lolly out of her mouth with a pop. ‘I heard you’ve been a naughty girl,’ she says with a smile.

  I swallow and try to prepare myself for whatever Bella’s about to say.

  Ed looks up. ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘She only went and got a detention!’

  ‘Really?’ Ed frowns and laughs.

  ‘I was just late to school,’ I say, but I’m drowned out by Ms Edgecombe coming out of the lab and shouting, ‘Who’s ready to get physical?’

  We’re working on our own at the start of the lesson so I get to zone out. I spent lunchtime in the library – sneakily eating a baguette and trying to revise the life cycle of stars – but I didn’t get much done. I should have just found a radiator, curled up next to it and gone to sleep.

  Sleep … beautiful sleep …

  ‘Meg!’ A bit of rubber bounces off my forehead and I look up to see Bella staring across the table at me. ‘I know you’ve gone all badass on us since you got your detention, but are you actually going to help us with this?’

  It looks like Miss handed round a worksheet without me even noticing.

  I pull it towards me and read it through. ‘The answers are “copper”, “attract” and “molecules”,’ I say. ‘Ed can do the rest.’ I push the sheet to him then take a big drink of water and press my fingers into my eyes. I need to wake up.

  Bella and Raj look at me curiously.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ says Raj. ‘You look –’

  ‘Super-hot?’ suggests Bella. ‘Bootylicious?’

  Weirdly, I’m too tired to be bothered by these comments.

  ‘Rough.’ Ed says this without looking up from the worksheet.

  OK. So I’m not too tired to be bothered by that. I feel my cheeks start to burn and Bella shrieks, ‘Woody! You can’t say that.’

  ‘What? She does.’ He turns to me. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve got a headache,’ I say. It’s actually starting to hurt to talk.

  ‘It was going to happen one day,’ says Raj, shaking his head.

  ‘What?’ Bella says.

  ‘Meg’s brain has got too big for her head. It’ll be coming out of her nose soon.’

  ‘I can see it!’ shrieks Bella.

  ‘Please be quiet,’ I say. The pain in my head is so bad that I haven’t got the energy to tiptoe around Bella. ‘Your voice is really loud.’

  Raj throws his head back and laughs. ‘You have got a big voice, mate.’

  Before Bella can reply, Ms Edgecombe slams her hand down on the buzzer she keeps on her desk. She keeps on pressing it until everyone stops talking … It takes a very long time.

  ‘I just wanted to remind you that your homework for the next two weeks is to work with your partner on your “What Space Means to Me” speeches. I know only Ed and Meg are representing the school in the actual competition, but I still want the rest of you to do it.’

  ‘Seriously, Miss?’ says Raj. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘The point is that you’ll be sharing your knowledge about space with your peers and developing vital speaking and listening skills … not to mention learning how to work with others. Basically, this homework is going to make you a better person, Raj.’ She presses her buzzer a couple of times to emphasise her point. ‘Now, you all know who you’re working with so spend the last five minutes of the lesson explaining to your partner what space means to you and arrange a time to meet up and practise.’

  Talking breaks out across the room.

  ‘Urgh,’ says Bella, looking at Raj and wrinkling her nose. ‘I can’t believe I’m stuck with you again.’

  Raj stretches his arms behind his head. ‘Stop moaning. You love it, babe.’

  ‘Er … no, I don’t.’

  Ed turns to me. ‘So what does space mean to you, Meg?’ He says this casually, but I know he must be curious about my speech.

  For a moment, I consider coming up with some vague answer like ‘improved technology’ or ‘solar energy research’, but I’m feeling so tired it just seems easier to tell him the truth. ‘To me, space means escape,’ I say. He frowns, so I carry on. ‘Somewhere in space there might be a new Earth, a habitable planet that hasn’t been mucked up by human beings.’

  ‘You mean a Goldilocks planet?’ Ed asks.

  They’re called ‘Goldilocks planets’ because for humans to live on them everything about them needs to be just right: the right amount of water on the surface, the right climate, the right distance from the sun – not too hot and not too cold.

  I shake my head. ‘No, not a planet like Earth, a planet better than Earth.’ Just talking about this is making me feel more awake. ‘Our sun has a lifespan of up to ten billion years, right?’

  He nods.

  ‘Smaller suns live for longer and might support a planet richer than Earth.’

  Ed’s got a half-smile on his face, and I know why: I never normally talk like this, but suddenly I can’t stop the words from tumbling out of me. ‘When you think about it, Earth isn’t that great. Around ninety-eight per cent of its surface is uninhabitable. We can only live on two per cent of it.’

  ‘So you’re not that impressed by Earth?’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s too crowded.’

  We fall quiet, then Ed says, ‘Now’s when you’re supposed to ask me what I’m doing for my speech, Meg.’

  ‘Oh, right. So … what does space mean to you?’

  ‘Space will be the saviour of Earth!’ he says, spreading his hands wide, then he sits back looking pleased with himself. ‘I’m going to talk about how satellites and space research will help us sort out all our environmental problems.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘Adults love it when young people talk about the environment. It makes them feel like they’re leaving the planet in safe hands.’

  ‘You’ve thought this through,’ I say. Honestly, I hadn’t even considered what adults might want to hear. Once again, I have that worrying feeling that Ed King is just one step ahead of me.

  Ed shrugs. ‘I’ve thought it through because I want to win.’

  ‘Time to pack up!’ calls Ms Edgecombe, and I turn away from Ed and start stuffing my books in my bag.

  As we’re filing out of the room, Ms Edgecombe reminds us to bring in our permission slips for the Sussex University trip next week. As I’m jostled and shoved in the corridor, I try to run through what I’ll do with Elsa. We’ll be getting back too late for me to pick her up from nursery. Suddenly, every single aspect of my life has become more complicated – even this trip that I’ve been looking forward to for so long.

  Outside school, I see Bella go off with her friends and Ed climb into the back of a black Range Rover. I get a glimpse of a cream leather interior before the door slams shut with a heavy
clunk. Then the engine purrs into life and the car pulls smoothly into the traffic.

  I check my phone: I’ve got ten minutes to get to Little Acorns. I grab hold of the straps on my rucksack and start to run.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘I need eight pounds, Grandad.’ I’m curled up on his sofa watching In the Night Garden with Elsa. ‘Little Acorns charged me a fine for being late.’

  In the kitchen, a pan bangs down on the stove and I hear pasta splash into water. ‘But you’re never late!’ Grandad shouts back.

  ‘Well, I am now. All the time. I was six whole minutes late.’

  Grandad appears in the front room and hands me a cup of scummy tea. ‘Your mum’s been caught out a couple of times.’ He nods at the tea. ‘I put three sugars in there to keep your energy levels high.’

  I look up and see Elsa standing by the TV, bumping her face into the screen and leaving snotty marks everywhere. ‘What’s she doing?’ I ask.

  ‘Kissing Makka Pakka. He’s her favourite.’ Grandad goes back into the kitchen, leaving Elsa smacking the TV (I don’t think she likes Iggle Piggle) and me trying not to fall asleep. It’s hard. Grandad’s homebrew is bubbling away in the corner of the room and along with the piano music coming from the TV, it’s making a very soothing sound.

  Soon, Grandad calls us in to dinner and while we eat our macaroni cheese, we talk about Mum.

  ‘Alice went to Myanmar just after she had you,’ Grandad says. ‘She was looking after elephants … No, hang on, I think it was Thailand.’

  ‘She never told me she went away when I was a baby.’ I thought Mum told me everything: the graphic details of Elsa’s birth (she tried to get me to watch; I refused), about her adventures volunteering abroad, tales from her wild teenage years … She’d even told me about meeting my dad in Vietnam – ‘the most beautiful man she’d ever seen’ – and then moving on to Australia before she realised she was pregnant.

  ‘Well, she was only gone a couple of weeks,’ says Grandad. ‘She had the baby blues and needed to get away.’

  ‘Plus she does love elephants,’ I say, thinking about the troop of rainbow elephants that Mum’s painted all through the hallway of our flat.

  Grandad nods. ‘You’re right. Elephants, animals, people … It doesn’t really matter who it is, Alice is a carer.’

  Suddenly, I don’t feel like eating any more of my macaroni cheese. The sauce is lumpy and Grandad didn’t cook the pasta for long enough. ‘I think I should get Elsa home.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to stay here tonight?’

  I glance at the cage on the kitchen worktop. A chicken is sitting inside watching me with her beady eyes. If an avian flu pandemic ever broke out, this is exactly where it would start. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘I’ve just got to be organised. Stay on top of things.’

  ‘You’re welcome here any time.’

  ‘Grandad, honestly, I’ve made up my mind!’

  Something about the way I say this makes him laugh and raise up his hands in mock surrender. I’ve seen him do this loads of times before with Mum when she’s arguing a point with him. ‘I suppose it’ll be a bit of an adventure staying on your own,’ he says. ‘You can think of it as a mission!’

  I laugh. ‘I think I’m a bit old to play “missions” now.’

  ‘Nonsense. Let’s talk logistics. Have you got a pen?’

  I pull one out of my blazer pocket. I’ve always got a pen.

  ‘Right, you find some paper and I’ll give Elsa an orange. That should keep her busy for a while.’

  Grandad and I spend the next half-hour making lists, drawing tables and working things through. When I was little and we played rockets, it was all about the mission. I’d put on one of Grandad’s shirts as a lab coat and we’d plan a trip to orbit Mars or land on Venus. We’d work out fuel supplies, distances and trajectories. I was so into the planning bit that sometimes we never got round to take-off. Plus, I was a bit scared of aliens.

  Soon we’ve written a plan to cover the whole two weeks Mum will be away. Everything’s on there, even little slots for me to rehearse my speech for the competition. Just looking at it makes me feel more in control. I remind Grandad that we need some money; Mum didn’t leave any and she took her bank cards so I can’t take any money out of a cash machine.

  ‘I got my pension the week before last,’ Grandad says.

  ‘That’s good.’ Grandad’s pension comes in once a month so it should cover the time Mum’s away. ‘I guess you’ve got most of it left?’

  ‘Ah, well …’ He looks a bit sheepish. ‘I did buy something on Saturday: a white silky bantam.’

  ‘Really, Grandad? Another chicken?’

  ‘A beautiful chicken.’

  I shrug. ‘I suppose we can always eat it.’

  This makes Grandad laugh. ‘Not until we’ve eaten the one Pongo killed. I’ve got her all ready in the freezer.’

  I remember that’s the ‘mangy’ one and make a mental note not to eat any chicken at Grandad’s for a while.

  After we’ve taken the new bantam into account, we discover we’ve got one hundred and twenty-three pounds to keep us going until Mum gets back. The three pounds is leftover from the pocket money Grandad gave me last Saturday.

  ‘Loads of money!’ he says.

  I’m not so sure. Sometimes Mum gets me to buy Elsa’s nappies and they cost a lot. I point at the first square on my mission plan: ‘Tues Evening’.‘I’m up to here,’ I say. ‘ “Elsa – bath and bed.” Easy.’ I push what happened last night to the back of my mind. ‘I’ll type this up later and laminate it.’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ says Grandad. ‘Now, do you want Pongo to stay here?’

  We both look at Pongo: he’s standing in the corner of the kitchen, growling at a cupboard door. Pongo might be terrified of everything, even the wind and moths, but he looks scary. It’s not just the scars. His teeth are permanently bared and he has wild eyes. ‘I think I’ll keep him,’ I say, ‘for protection. Come on, Pongo.’ I clip his lead on to his collar. ‘Let’s get this mission started.’

  SIXTEEN

  Back in the flat, I follow every stage of the plan. I give Elsa her bath, do up all the little poppers on her Babygro, then hold her on my lap and stick a bottle in her mouth. Straight away she goes quiet, and just sucks her milk and gazes up at me, holding on tight to one of my fingers. I, meanwhile, gaze at my physics textbook and learn about kinetic energy.

  The moment Elsa’s finished her bottle I look at the clock: bang on seven o’clock. I am so on schedule!

  ‘Time for bed!’ I say.

  ‘Na!’ She shakes her head.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, nodding.

  ‘NA!’ she screams, then, like a bar of soap in the bath, she slips out of my hands, off the sofa and crawls across the living room. Elsa can walk, but when she wants to move really fast, she reverts to crawling because she’s awesome at it.

  Three seconds later, she’s disappeared into the kitchen.

  With a sigh, I put down my book and haul myself off the sofa. ‘I’m coming to get you!’ I call out and I hear Elsa squeal with delight followed by a bang and a clatter.

  What is she up to?

  I walk into the kitchen expecting to see the bin or Pongo’s bowl tipped over, but what I actually see is nothing.

  Elsa has vanished.

  ‘Elsa?’ I call.

  Pongo trots in and starts sniffing his way round the room. I look behind the door. Pongo looks under the table. She’s nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Elsa!’ I shout again, louder this time.

  Then I hear a muffled ‘Da!’ coming from one of the cupboards. Straight away, Pongo shoots to the corner cupboard and starts tapping at the door with his paw. I pull it open – and there she is, curled up behind the carrousel thingy that’s full of herbs and baking things.

  ‘How did you get round there?’ I say. ‘Come on. You need to get out.’ I reach towards her, but she just laughs and wriggles wildly from side to side, trying to ge
t away from me. The clock on the cooker tells me it’s five past seven. I haven’t got time for this. I’m supposed to be doing my IT homework! I get my hands under her armpits (more squealing) and pull her forward, knocking over a bag of sugar. Immediately, Pongo sticks his nose into the cupboard and starts licking it up. I push him out of the way and pull Elsa again, this time even harder.

  ‘Na, na!’ she says, shaking her head.

  I sit back and look at her surrounded by bags of flour and pots of cinnamon and oregano. ‘Looks like you’re stuck, Elsa.’

  Her face crumples and she starts to cry.

  ‘Don’t cry. You’re the one who got in there and did all that wriggling!’

  She reaches out her arms to me, and with a sigh I start to take everything out of the cupboard. Soon jars, packets and bottles are piled up around me. Pongo is loving it, and Elsa has calmed down now that she’s found a bag of raisins.

  When everything’s out of the cupboard, I can see that the trailing foot of Elsa’s Babygro is stuck in the carousel mechanism. After pulling it and twisting in every direction, I have to accept that it’s not coming out. So I do the only thing my tired brain can think of: I get a pair of scissors and cut the foot off the Babygro. ‘No sudden movements,’ I tell Elsa as the scissors go snip, snip, snip.

  Finally, I can haul her out.

  Elsa throws her arms round my neck and rubs her sticky, raisiny face into mine.

  ‘Mama,’ she says sleepily.

  ‘Still in Myanmar,’ I say, carrying her to Mum’s room.

  I put her in her cot and she lies on her back and stares up at me. ‘Da?’ she says, pointing at her exposed foot.

  ‘I know. Your foot’s sticking out … Remember how you got stuck in that cupboard and I had to cut you out?’

  ‘Da …’

  ‘Well, no way am I putting you in another Babygro and doing up all those poppers again. I’m just too tired. Plus, I’ve got to go and put fifty jars of cumin back in the cupboard.’ That’s an exaggeration. There were only six jars of cumin.

  ‘Da!’ she shouts, sounding kind of outraged.