To Be a Cat

by Matt Haig

  9 a.m.–9.30 a.m.

  The deputy head, Mr Waffler, broke his own World’s Most Boring Assembly record for the third time in a year, with a talk about the various types of moss he discovered while on holiday in the Lake District.

  9.30 a.m.–10.30 a.m.

  Maths. (As in, maths.)

  10.30 a.m.–11 a.m.

  Break. In which a perfectly nice conversation with Rissa was interrupted by Gavin Needle shouting, ‘Is that your girlfriend?’ To which Barney decided to foolishly answer, ‘No,’ for Gavin to shout back, ‘I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Rissa.’ And Barney was left with nothing to say except, ‘Funny,’ in a rather quiet voice.

  11 a.m.–midday

  Geography. In which Gavin displayed his usual virtuosity by pulling Barney’s chair back while Mrs Fossil talked about volcanoes.

  Midday–1 p.m.

  Barney spent lunch hour eating overcooked bolognese and undercooked spaghetti. He chatted to Rissa as she explained some stuff about stars and about how the sun – our closest star – was growing all the time and would one day turn into something called a red giant and destroy the earth. Which would have been interesting if Barney hadn’t felt a different kind of heat – that caused by Miss Whipmire’s glare – burning the back of his neck as she stared at him through the little window in the canteen door.

  1 p.m.–2 p.m.

  English. During which Mr Waffler waffled about Barney’s poor marks. (‘Such a shame for a boy of such fine imagination.’)

  2 p.m.–3 p.m.

  IT. In which Gavin and his friends seemed to be planning something, as they visited the catchily-titled website: www.waystogetpeoplecalledbarneywillowin-totrouble.com.

  3 p.m.–4 p.m.

  French. During which Gavin and his friends were mysteriously absent. At about 3 p.m. Barney went to the toilet. Then, while he was walking along the corridor, the fire alarm went off. Barney turned to see Miss Whipmire glaring at him.

  ‘You are in big trouble, Barney Willow!’

  ‘It wasn’t me! You can see I’m nowhere near a fire alarm.’

  But ten minutes later, with everyone lined up on the field, Miss Whipmire walked over to Barney Willow and harshly whispered into his ear the three most terrifying words in the universe.

  ‘My office. Now.’

  Miss Whipmire’s Pen Pot

  BARNEY COULD SMELL fish. The fish smell seemed to be coming from Miss Whipmire’s desk, but there was nothing on there except a typed letter and a pen pot.

  It was a weird-looking pen pot. Black with two holes in it, staring at him like eyes. But not fish eyes.

  Miss Whipmire had told him to wait there while she went outside to check something.

  He knew when she came back he was going to be in big trouble. And he knew the letter on the desk would tell him how much. He stood up, leaned forward and tried to have a look at the upside-down writing.

  But that was as much as he could read before he heard the door behind him. It opened, it closed, the click of the latch sounding as grim as a last nail hammered into a coffin.

  Barney shot back down into his seat. He didn’t dare turn round, even though Miss Whipmire stayed behind him for a moment, saying nothing.

  He pictured her standing there, watching him with disgust. Her eyes, bulging with evil, staring over her glasses towards the back of his head.

  Barney wished he could start the day again, wished that when he had felt Guster’s sandpaper tongue he had pulled the duvet back over his head and just stayed there.

  That was the thing with Barney these days.

  He did a lot of wishing.

  Miss Whipmire walked round the front of her desk and sat down, ready to talk about the fire alarm.

  ‘So, Barney Willow,’ she said in her crisp, dry voice. ‘Barney Willow, Barney Willow, Barney Willow … always Barney Willow … Now, tell me, why did you set off the fire alarm?’

  Barney sat uneasily in his chair. He looked again at the strange pen pot on the desk. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  Miss Whipmire took a deep breath and sat perfectly upright in her chair. She was looking cross. But she always did; her mouth a small tight ‘O’, her black hair scraped back so tightly it raised her thin eyebrows to such a height that the wide, angry eyes beneath them looked like they might roll out onto the desk, knocking off the tiny glasses that sat pointlessly at the end of her nose.

  ‘You didn’t do it?’ Her voice was ominous. ‘Of course. You never do it, Barney, do you? You never disrupt assembly, or write graffiti in the toilets, or pick fights with Gavin Needle.’

  That last lie was too much. Barney couldn’t stop himself objecting. ‘Gavin had put a drawing pin on my seat. As he always does. It’s his idea of a joke. Just like giving me a dead arm as he walks past is his idea of a joke. He’s a bully. He’s always been a bully.’

  For a moment Miss Whipmire seemed to be agreeing with him. She certainly didn’t like Gavin Needle. And as Barney spoke her head seemed to nod, and a distant sadness arrived in her eyes. But she soon snapped out of it. She hated Barney – that was clear. Not just because of today and last week, but from all those other times too. For instance:

  He had only been at this school for half a year but he had been thrown out of about ten of her assemblies. Once for saying ‘Ow!’ when Gavin had clipped his ear, but all the other times it had been for a noise someone else had made.

  Like when Alfie Croker had giggled.

  (‘Out, Barney Willow, we do not tolerate giggling in this school!’)

  Or when Lottie Lewis, sitting miles away, had sneezed.

  (‘Barney Willow, if you refuse to control your nose get out of this hall right now … RIGHT! Now!’)

  Or when Mr Waffler made a yawning sound.

  (‘Oh, Barney Willow, I’m boring you, am I? Well, perhaps you’d be more interested in detention!’)

  He’d once even got in trouble in the playground for reading his favourite book, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. (‘Reading at break! How dare you? Come to my office …’)

  ‘I’m not here to talk about Gavin,’ Miss Whipmire now said. ‘Or drawing pins. I am here to talk about you. What is it? Your problem?’ She smiled wickedly. ‘Missing Daddy?’

  Barney felt a surge of anger rise inside, like molten rock. ‘You can’t say that!’

  ‘Oh, but I just did. And, frankly, I don’t blame him. I think I would have run away if I’d had you as a son.’

  ‘He didn’t run away.’ Barney felt a tear rising. Closed his eyes, locked it up.

  ‘Oh, really? So what happened?’

  Course, Barney couldn’t answer this. After all, his dad hadn’t been living with Barney at the time. Barney’s parents had divorced a year before, and so his dad lived alone in a flat, seeing Barney only on Saturdays for outings to the zoo and pizza restaurants which never felt as much fun as they should have been.

  Then, last summer, he just vanished.

  Zip. Poof. Gone. Not a trace.

  Leaving a hole big enough for a million questions but not one single answer.

  The police couldn’t solve it.

  The Blandford Gazette had run an article displaying his dad’s face with a big question mark.

  And Barney’s mum began acting very weirdly, as though someone had just pressed a fast-forward button and made her go at triple-speed.

  Oh, and that was when Barney started having the dreams. Sometimes just him and his dad in the pizza restaurant like the one this morning. But other times they’d be nightmares. He’d see his dad screaming in agony, holding a hand over his eye, blood leaking through his fingers.

  Soon afterwards, Barney began at Blandford High, and from his very first week there Miss Whipmire began picking on him, blaming him for other people’s giggles in assemblies or graffiti that wasn’t in his handwriting.

  ‘What happened to your daddy?’ Miss Whipmire said, repeating her question.

  ‘No one knows.’

  She gave a little
laugh that came out of her nose. ‘Someone always knows. You’re just not looking in the right place. But then, you’re not exactly what one might call bright, are you? I’ve seen the marks you’re getting.’

  The head teacher stood up, went over to her filing cabinet and took out some kind of form. ‘Yes, you’re the lowest in your year. The most stupid eleven-year-old in the school.’

  ‘Twelve,’ Barney said. ‘It’s my birthday today.’

  Miss Whipmire shrugged, as if Barney’s age and birthday were the two most trivial things in the world.

  ‘Any idea why your marks are so low?’

  Of course, Barney had an idea. A few months ago he’d been getting As and Bs for his homework. Now he was lucky to get an F, even though he was working harder than ever.

  ‘It might be because you mark all my homework,’ Barney ventured. ‘When I was like all the other kids, getting marked by normal teachers, I did OK.’

  Miss Whipmire looked furious. ‘I have high standards. That is all.’

  ‘I just think it’s—’

  Miss Whipmire shut the filing cabinet, turned. ‘Silence. This is my office. You do not so much as breathe in here unless I tell you to.’ And she leaned and whispered into his ear. ‘Do you understand?’

  Barney nodded, staring up at a calendar on the wall. Above the month of February was a picture of a cat. A white fluffy Persian stretched out in the sun. Miss Whipmire saw Barney looking and seemed pleased. The whisper in his ear softened. ‘That would be the life, wouldn’t it? To be a cat, lying out in the sun, without all those human worries …’

  Barney felt almost hypnotized by her words. To be free! To not have any more scary meetings in Miss Whipmire’s office! To have no more nightmares! To not go to the same school as Gavin Needle!

  Miss Whipmire picked up the letter on the desk. ‘But you are not. You are you.’ And then she placed the letter in an envelope that was lying beneath it. ‘And this is for your mother.’

  Barney panicked. The last letter home had made his mum cry. And by cry, I mean wail. And by wail, I mean sitting on the stairs clinging onto the banister and rocking back and forth. He’d promised it would be the last time, even though he had only shouted at Gavin because of a drawing pin (and Miss Whipmire knew that).

  ‘In it,’ said Miss Whipmire, ‘I explain that this is the last letter home you get before you are expelled. If you step so much as a whisker out of line, you are finished here.’

  ‘Expelled? But I’ve done nothing wrong!’

  Miss Whipmire smiled. ‘Your mother will be very upset, I should imagine. You see, I am a mother too. Not many people know that about me. Anyway, I understand all too well the pains of motherhood.’

  Barney took the envelope, his hands trembling as he saw the tall, elegant writing: Mrs Willow. The last, looping stroke of the ‘W’ flicked up like a tail. Barney felt sick. The faint smell of fish mixed with his panic, making his stomach churn.

  Miss Whipmire gestured to the door, signalling for Barney to leave. ‘And you’d better give it to her. I’ll be phoning to check.’

  Barney stared one last time at the cat calendar.

  Miss Whipmire gave a little wave as he left. ‘Miaow,’ she told him with a sinister chuckle.

  Barney turned at the door. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Miss Whipmire pretended to think. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, with slow and sinister delight. ‘I just despise you. Of course, all children have a right to be despised, but with you it just comes too easily. Isn’t that enough? Oh, and remember, don’t run along to your teachers to moan about how unfair I’m being. It didn’t work last time, did it? Everyone knows I’ve turned this school around! It has the best results in the whole of Blandfordshire. Well, apart from yours, obviously … Now, if you would leave and go back to your pathetic little existence, well, that would be lovely.’

  Barney left the room as the bell went. Pupils rushed out of their classes, happy to be going home. He saw Gavin Needle and his friends, laughing in his direction.

  ‘Sorry, Barney,’ Gavin whispered. ‘I really thought there was a fire.’ Then he mimed pressing the alarm. ‘Oops!’

  Gavin turned, saw Rissa walking down the corridor. Then in a really loud voice: ‘Oh, better go, here’s your girlfriend!’

  And Barney went bright red so fast that Gavin pressed his palms against his cheeks.

  ‘I was right!’ the bully exclaimed, feeling the burning heat of Barney’s shame. ‘There was a fire. Right on your face!’

  A Tiny, Tiny Moment in Time

  ‘DON’T WORRY TOO much,’ said Rissa stepping off the bus at their stop. ‘Your mum’s a good person. She’s not going to scream at you on your birthday.’

  ‘She might,’ said Barney. ‘But I just don’t want her to go into meltdown. She’s going to be so upset with me.’

  Rissa thought. ‘Well, if you want me to stay with you and explain Miss Whipmire is a nutcase then …’

  Barney looked at his friend’s face. He could see in her eyes that she was genuine. But he didn’t want to drag her into this. ‘No. It’s OK. This is my problem.’

  When they were nearly at Barney’s house, he and Rissa saw a cat lying on the pavement right in front of his gate. It was just a very normal-looking cat. Not like the silver-haired, one-eyed cat Barney saw most mornings.

  No. This one was just your average, run-of-the-mill black cat, with two eyes, although one of those eyes – the left – did have a patch of white around it.

  ‘Hello, cat!’ Rissa said, and crouched down to stroke it. ‘I so want a cat.’

  ‘Why don’t you get one?’ asked Barney.

  ‘Oh, my mum and dad say it might be a bit risky with us living on the river. But I’m, like, Come on, guys, cats aren’t stupid. They can balance on fences so they’re hardly likely to slip off a barge.’

  Barney stood there as Rissa carried on stroking the little fellow.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great,’ she said, ‘just lying down and being stroked by giants all day long, without a care in the world?’

  At which point the cat looked towards Barney as if waiting for him to answer.

  ‘Yes, it would.’

  ‘Anyway, I’d better get going, Mister Birthday.’ Rissa stood up. She still had over a mile until she was home, but that was OK – Rissa loved walking. ‘I’m meant to be helping Dad pick vegetables at his allotment. We’re going to put them in a curry. Vegetarian, obviously. But you’re welcome to come round if you haven’t got anything better to do than sit listening to my dad singing ancient songs very badly.’

  Barney thought for a moment. It certainly was tempting, especially as Rissa’s parents were about as nice as parents could get before they tipped off the edge and became friends.

  But he thought of the letter in his bag, which made him feel an extra weight – far heavier than the paper and envelope themselves. The weight of dread. ‘I’d better stay in and wait for Mum,’ he told his friend. ‘I don’t want her getting more freaked out than she already will be.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Rissa, smiling warmly. And then she clapped a hand on Barney’s shoulder.

  ‘Listen, Barns, I’m there for you, OK? I know you might get in an incy-wincy bit of trouble tonight, but just think, this is only a tiny, tiny moment in time. Think of the stars. Think of our star. The sun. It is billions of years old. And it’s going to keep shining whatever happens. Look, in a year’s time this will be nothing. In ten years’ time, when you’ve got a long beard, you won’t even remember it.’

  ‘I won’t have a long beard,’ said Barney. ‘I won’t even have a short one.’

  ‘Hey, my dad’s got a beard. There is nada wrong with beards, I’ll have you know. Think of all the great, important people in history: Jesus, Emperor Hadrian … erm … Father Christmas – they all had beards.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d suit hairy,’ said Barney. Then he saw the cat looking up at him. ‘No offence.’

  Rissa walked away. ‘See you
tomorrow morning. Same time, same place.’

  ‘Yeah. See you, Rissa, and, thanks – I liked the card.’

  ‘Good. You made me one, so it was the least I could do. And, er, good luck with your mum.’

  Barney watched her walk down the street with her mad hair and her long coat and her black boots with the daisies on them. Instead of going back inside, Barney stayed still for a moment.

  Same time, same place.

  There was something scary about that, Barney thought. About how life was destined to stay the same. Especially when life came with such added ingredients as Gavin Needle and Miss Whipmire.

  The cat carried on looking at him, and Barney felt a little bit uneasy so he went inside and read the letter.

  Dear Mrs Willow,

  I am writing to inform you that your son, Barney, is a disgrace. His behaviour has become increasingly bad over the last few months, his teachers tell me, and now it has reached such terribly despicable levels that I am obliged to write you another letter. And, one way or another, this will be his last.

  Today, when he was meant to be in French class, Barney set off the school fire alarm. I saw him do this with my own eyes, and I am sure I don’t need to tell you about the obvious and intended disruption this caused.

  So it is my duty to tell you that if Barney commits a similar offence again he will be EXPELLED from Blandford High.

  Now, as his mother it is your job to make sure you discipline him very firmly to prevent this happening. I would recommend stopping all pocket money, switching off the TV, making sure he reads the right kind of books (very long and boring ones – such as dictionaries) and forcing him to spend lengthy periods in his room thinking about what a terrible boy he has become.

  Yours disappointedly,

  Miss P. Whipmire

  Head Teacher

  The Wish

  BARNEY PUT DOWN the letter and saw his reflection in the old mirror in the hallway.

  ‘I hate being you,’ he told it in a whisper.

  Then he had a thought, which made him feel happy. He didn’t have to give his mum the letter. If Miss Whipmire ever did phone to check, it was more than likely his mum would be out. So all he had to do was get rid of the letter.