contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 1
It was late, but Dani couldn’t sleep.
Some people counted sheep, but not her!
Dani counted all the times she’d been happy.
Like the time when she was little and her cousin Sven gave her a frog.
And the first time she managed to swim three strokes without drowning.
And when she got her new schoolbag.
She was so excited. She’d waited her whole life to start school.
The summer had been very long because she was waiting so hard.
Chapter 2
But when Dani was finally on her way to school, she started to wonder what would happen.
Would she just sit there and learn to read and write?
She could do that already. A bit, at least. She’d learned at preschool.
"Do you think I’ll like my teacher?" she asked her father.
"Of course," he said. "Of course you will."
"Do you think I’ll like the other children?"
Dani had been to preschool somewhere else, so she didn’t know anybody at the new school.
Suddenly she was scared.
What if she made no friends?
If that happened, she wouldn’t ever go back. Definitely not.
"Keep your fingers crossed, Dad!" she said as they went through the gate.
Chapter 3
The teacher was waiting in the classroom to say hello.
One boy refused to go in.
His mother had to bribe him with money.
When everyone was seated, the teacher said, “Welcome to your first day at school!”
Then she called out their names one by one.
Those who were brave enough raised their hands and said, “Yes.” Dani raised hers, even though she thought she might faint.
Then they were given pencils and paper to write their names.
Dani’s real name was Daniela, but she wrote “Dani.”
A girl called Michaela wrote “Mickey.”
A boy called Eric wrote “Meatball.”
Jonathan just wrote “Jonathan.”
Everyone could write their own name except one boy. But the teacher helped him.
Just when it started to be fun, it was time to go home.
That evening, Dani’s family celebrated her first day.
Dani’s family was Dani, her father, and Cat.
Cat probably thought that Dani was grown up now that she had started school.
“It wasn’t so hard,” she explained to him. “Maybe a little bit scary, but lots of fun!”
But she didn’t have any friends yet.
Chapter 4
The next day, Dani stood alone on the playground.
She was all by herself, just watching, for the whole of the first recess.
During the second recess, she noticed another girl by herself. She was just watching, too.
At exactly the same moment, they looked at each other.
Dani got up the courage to go and ask, “Shall we play on the swings?”
Ella nodded. That was her name.
They played on the swings until the bell rang.
They played on them through all the other recesses, too.
When school was finished, they wanted to keep swinging.
They never wanted to stop.
In the end their teacher came and said they had to.
“You can play on the swings tomorrow,” she said.
And so they went home —after many ifs and buts.
Chapter 5
Dani was happy at school.
She was happy when she played on the swings with Ella.
And when they sat in the cozy corner, painting sunsets.
They both loved sunsets.
Dani was happy when the teacher said that she and Ella could sit next to each other.
Only one thing about school was boring: there was no homework.
“Not in the first week,” said the teacher.
But Dani wanted homework so badly that her father had to make some for her.
She was happy when the teacher said she could sit next to Ella at lunchtime as well.
They always ate the same number of sandwiches for lunch.
Dani ate triangles and Ella ate rectangles.
When they had to find a partner for games, they chose each other, of course.
And they chose each other when they went on a trip to the lookout. First they looked at the view. Then they ate their lunches. And then Ella took out The Surprise.
It was a box with two necklaces inside it, two halves of a heart.
“It’s called a friendship necklace,” said Ella.
They put on the necklaces and Dani was happy.
She was so happy!
She was happy when she went to Ella’s house and played with Ella’s hamster called Partyboy.
And with her little sister, Miranda.
“Buff!” screamed Miranda when she was angry with them.
She meant enough. But she thought it was buff!
Chapter 6
Dani was happy when Ella was allowed to come and stay the night at her house.
They started the Night Club.
That’s a club that starts at ten o’clock and goes on all night.
You talk and shine the flashlight on the ceiling and have a midnight feast of cheese-and-cucumber sandwiches.
When you can’t stay awake any longer, you rub each others’ backs until you fall asleep.
Dani was happy each time they had NC.
NC is short for Night Club.
She was also happy when she went with Ella to the pet shop where Partyboy came from.
There were two other very cute, snow-white hamsters.
Dani and Ella decided that one should be called Snow and the other one Flake.
“Ask your father if you can buy them,” said Ella.
When Dani asked her father, he didn’t answer.
It was the worst feeling: when Dani would ask her father something, and he didn’t answer.
She was very sad.
But a few minutes later, she was happy again. Or maybe it was hours—a few hours later, probably. Or even days.
She couldn’t remember because she was happy so often back then.
She was happy when Ella asked if she wanted to swap bookmarks.
Dani could have any bookmark she wanted, except for one. It was an angel that belonged to Ella’s grandma when she was little.
Dani offered her two bookmarks for it, but Ella said no.
She offered three, four, five! She offered all the bookmarks she had.
But Ella refused to swap the angel.
They even stopped being friends because of it.
That happened sometimes.
Not being friends.
But not for long. They usually made up after a
minute or two.
You couldn’t find a better friend than Ella. She and Dani stuck together through wet and dry, sun and rain, thick and thin.
Chapter 7
They had a fruit week and a vegetable week.
They learned all about fruit and vegetables.
And then it was Christmas.
At Christmas, Dani visited her grandma and grandpa with her father and Cat. She opened presents.
But after she had opened them all and played with them—especially the fluffy polar bear—she started to miss Ella.
Dani was happy when school started again.
They had milk and butter and cheese weeks.
One day they drew cows.
Dani drew a red cow with big horns.
Ella didn’t draw anything. She sat with her hands over her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” whispered Dani. “Are you crying?”
Ella didn’t answer.
The teacher had to explain.
Ella was moving away.
When Dani heard that, she started to cry, too. She cried and cried.
But what could she do?
Chapter 8
Dani lay in bed counting all the times she’d been happy. But sometimes things had gone wrong.
When Ella stopped coming to school, Dani wasn’t happy.
She was unhappy.
She wished she could move, too.
But she had to stay behind.
On the street where she had lived all her life.
With her father and Cat.
In the yellow house.
The one closest to the park.
Dani used to have a mother who lived there too, but she had passed away.
That’s what people said when someone died.
They said she had passed away, but how could a dead person pass anything?
And away to where?
Now Ella had gone, too. But she hadn’t passed away.
She had gone in a car to another town.
Her town was thousands of streets and roads away from Dani’s.
And many thousand forests and streams and hills and lakes…
Beyond the thousands of forests and streams and hills and lakes was where Dani’s best friend Ella lived now.
Chapter 9
The day after Ella moved, Dani just sat and stared at the empty chair.
The same day, she fell down on the playground and tore her tights and hurt her knee.
It hurt so much she thought she would never forget it.
Not until she was thirty-five or even older.
The bandage that her teacher put on didn’t help. It was very small and kept falling off.
Dani kept on crying.
She cried because it hurt.
She cried because Ella had moved.
Chapter 10
She cried the next day as well.
That was when they played soccer…
…and Jonathan tackled her so hard
that she fell and hurt her head.
Her father had to take her to the doctor where they stitched up the hole and put on a big bandage.
But that wasn’t why she was crying.
She cried because she wasn’t happy any more.
Chapter 11
They had bread week and learned all about bread.
But nothing was fun.
Then one day Dani was walking home with her father, and he asked if she still wanted those hamsters.
And she was actually a little bit happy.
But what if they were already sold?
When they came to the pet shop, she rushed to the hamster cage.
Snow and Flake were still there. And they were just as lovely and cute as they were the first time Dani saw them.
The shopkeeper put them into a box and gave it to Dani.
Her father bought a cage, two hamster houses, some vitamins, sawdust, hay, two water bottles, and two food containers.
When they got home, Dani made the cage nice, then Snow and Flake went into their hamster houses and turned their backs.
That’s what hamsters do when they want to be left alone.
When they’re angry, they grind their teeth.
When they’re happy, their eyes sparkle and they make a rumbling noise.
When they’re scared, they squeak. And poop.
Actually, they poop the whole time, whether they’re scared or not.
Chapter 12
Dani was probably the happiest person she knew but not all the time. She wasn’t very happy at recess after Ella moved.
She sat in the corner watching the boys who were building a city of blocks and Legos.
They kept making it for several days.
None of the girls were allowed to join in.
That made them angry.
When the city was finally finished, the girl called Mickey knocked over a tower.
And a girl called Vicky bumped a castle.
And suddenly Dani stood up—imagine! She went and sat right in the middle of the city.
You could say that really brought the house down.
The boys shrieked and started throwing blocks at the girls.
The girls threw them back.
And they all started shoving each other!
Dani shoved Jonathan so hard that he fell and hit his face on the floor.
Blood poured out.
The teacher rushed in. At first she thought it was a bleeding nose, but then she saw that Jonathan’s new front teeth had come loose and were going to fall out.
“Run and get the nurse!” she told Vicky and Mickey.
Dani didn’t know what happened after that. She didn’t dare look.
She was so scared that she hid under the table.
Chapter 13
After that, Dani wasn’t happy for a single moment.
That evening, her father went to a party and Dani’s grandma came to babysit.
Normally that would make Dani as happy as anything.
Her grandma was wonderful, and she cooked the best food in the world.
She made Dani’s favorite dinner—macaroni and tomato sauce.
But that evening, Dani couldn’t eat one bite.
All she could think about was how she’d pushed Jonathan and he’d almost lost his front teeth.
It wasn’t until they started watching a movie that Dani forgot about it for a moment. She took a gulp of water from a glass on the table.
She felt something hard on her lips. Grandma’s false teeth!
Grandma often took them out because they rubbed.
Then Dani couldn’t think about anything except false teeth.
What if Jonathan had to have them now?
It would be her fault!
What could she do?
In the end, she decided to write him a letter.
She wrote:
Hi Jonathan!
I didn’t mean to push so hard.
I’m sorry.
From Dani
PS If you get false teeth and they rub, you can take them out and put them in a glass of water.
Chapter 14
The next day Dani tried to give the letter to Jonathan.
But he wasn’t interested.
He had braces and a new bike. A BMX.
You got on a BMX as if it was a horse.
Otherwise there was nothing special about that sort of bike. It didn’t even have a basket.
Soon Jonathan put it down and started playing marbles.
Again, Dani tried to give him the letter.
He waited until he’d won three times before he read it.
He nodded to Dani. “I won’t need
false teeth.”
Then at last Dani was happy again.
When Mickey and Vicky shouted to Dani to come and jump rope, she was even happier.
Jump rope was one of her specialties.
That day she managed to do five hundred jumps.
Her whole class stood and watched.
Chapter 15
They had potato week and learned all about potatoes.
And once, after school, Dani went with Vicky and Mickey to look for empty cans and bottles.
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