I realized I didn’t actually have any money on me. I just said, “No. Not like that. Not at all.”
“Hasan is a genius with money.”
“Excuse me,” said Samson One, “I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation. Is your boy really a genius?”
“More than a genius. A wizard with money.”
“Oh. With money,” said Samson One, shaking his head with disappointment. “Samson Two is officially a genius. He did a project on irrigation, and it was so good the government bought it.”
“How much did they pay?” asked Eddie.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“My Hasan would’ve got you twice as much.”
Monsieur Martinet chimed in. “Money is a terrible distraction. My Max is too focused to care about money.”
“What’s he focused on?” I asked, just to be polite.
“Success.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Are you interested in success, Mr. Digby? I have written a bestselling book on the subject. I believe everyone can be a winner. It just takes a little discipline.”
My World of Warcraft guild had once taken over an entire territory. We were even going to rename it. But then it was completely destroyed by a flight of dragons. I said, “Interested but not, you know, bothered.”
“What about Florida? What is her speciality? Is she a financial wizard? A natural leader? A genius?”
“You are joking.” I laughed.
They all looked a bit baffled, and after a while Samson One said, “Why would that be funny?”
“All she thinks about is shopping and celebrities. All she wants is to be famous.”
“How strange,” said Monsieur Martinet.
“Not really. All her friends are just as bad.”
“I meant, how strange for a man to talk about his own daughter in that way.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well…you know…”
It turns out that being a dad is a competitive sport. You’re supposed to think your kid is the best kid. You’re even supposed to try and convince other people that your kid is the best kid. You’re supposed to be proud of your child.
I sneaked my dad’s copy of Talk to Your Teen out of my waterproof backpack, but I thought the other dads might be suspicious if they caught me using the instruction manual so I took it to the loo. (Reading in the loo is definitely dadly.) It’s all about listening, apparently. If you don’t listen, your child becomes introverted and sulky. The more you listen, the more you’ll understand. The more you understand, the more you’ll find to be proud of them. And if you’re proud of them, they’ll be proud of themselves. Later I tried listening to Florida—she was down at the other end of the plane going on about Daytona or Paris or Britney or someone:
“You see, her mother had chronic obesity. You know what that is?”
“She was fat for a very long time?”
“And that’s why she has got all these eating disorders, because she doesn’t want to be like her mother….” Et cetera.
It didn’t seem to help. In fact, I thought it might be better if she did get a bit introverted and sulky.
Then we landed. And then the doors opened. It was dark outside but the plane soon filled up with the smell of toasted sand.
Florida said, “Are we on the beach?”
I said, “No, we’re not on the beach.”
“We are in the desert,” said Samson Two. “And taking into account speed and direction, I would estimate that the desert in question is the Gobi. Sometimes known as Han-Hai, or the Dry Sea.”
Florida said, “I didn’t know we had deserts in England.”
“England?” Samson Two laughed. “We’re not in England. We’re in China.”
Florida turned on me. “CHINA! Ohmygodwhatveyou done? CHINA! How can we be in Chinayouidiot? I knew. I knew. I just knew you’d do something like this. Well, you can just take me home right now!”
“Home?” I said, “What d’you want me to do? Hire a cab? Give you a piggyback? Do you know how far away we are?”
“I know we’re in Chinayouidiot.”
Chinayouidiot was turning into a country in its own right.
Everyone was staring at her now.
“Oh dear.” Dr. Drax sighed. “We girls are so complicated. Let’s leave Dad to sort this out, shall we? I imagine Mr. Digby knows how to deal with his own daughter.”
I don’t know what made her imagine that. Florida was actually kicking me now and bawling, “You said we were going to a theme park!”
“We are. This is it.”
“It’s in the desert. Not even a normal desert. A Chinese desert. In China. You said it was down south.”
“It is down south.”
“I thought you meant London.”
“But we were on a plane for hours. If you’re on a plane for hours and hours, obviously you’re going to go farther than London.”
“I thought it was a slow plane.”
A slow plane.
Don’t be afraid of temper tantrums. Often teens will have something they need to tell you but which they find difficult to say. Anger helps them say it. Think of the anger as emotional FedEx—something you turn to when the normal post just isn’t fast enough.
from Talk to Your Teen
Talk to Your Teen does not have a chapter specifically called “When Daughters Kick You in Public.” In fact, when it came to Florida, World of Warcraft was more useful. You just had to think of her as a kind of monster and remember that every monster has a soft zone.
I’d already identified Florida’s. So when I noticed that the others were all shuffling around on the steps of the plane, arranging themselves into some kind of group, I pretended to ignore Florida and shouted like I was talking to Dr. Drax, “It’s okay, Dr. Drax. Florida doesn’t want to be in the group photograph.”
As soon as she heard the word “photograph,” Florida sat up and started listening. I said, “It’s just a group photo. For the newspapers or something. I’m not sure. Don’t worry about it. You just keep kicking me.”
“Newspapers?”
“Or magazines. I didn’t hear which. Oh, maybe it’s for TV. Honestly, kick away.”
Florida was doing one of her smiles in the front row of that photograph before I had time to stand up. Dr. Drax said, “Well, Mr. Digby, you certainly seem to be a very effective parent. Smile for the camera, everyone.”
In Chinayouidiot
“We have reached our destination,” said Dr. Drax. “Welcome to Infinity Park. It’s too dark now to see it properly and you’ll be too tired to appreciate it.”
A thing like a minibus with Caterpillar tracks came to take us to our accommodation. I remember looking out of the window but there was nothing to see—just the odd campfire and every now and then a car.
We’d been driving for about ten minutes when the minibus thing stopped suddenly and Dr. Drax asked us to look out of the windows on the left side of the bus. At first there was nothing but darkness, but then suddenly something like a massive door had opened. There was a building. It looked like a big red cliff lit by banks and banks of spotlights. It was bigger than the biggest skyscraper you’ve ever seen, and had massive Chinese letters painted down the side.
“What is it?” said, well, everyone really.
“That,” said Dr. Drax, “is the Possibility Building.”
“But what’s inside?”
“Inside there is our main attraction. Inside there is the Rocket.”
“But what is the Rocket? What kind of ride is it? What’s it like?”
“What’s it like? It’s not like anything. It’s unique. It is the biggest thrill ride in the history of the world, that’s all. I can’t describe it because it’s indescribable.”
When I was being a grown-up in Liverpool, I got free yogurt. In China I got My Own House! The minibus thing dropped us off at a little cluster of bungalows with lawns and street-lights and traffic islands, like a housing development.
A whole
bungalow all to ourselves. I said to Florida, “Isn’t this brilliant?”
“Basically you’ve kidnapped me and taken me to a desert, a desert in China.”
“I suppose. But come on—apart from the fact that it’s in China—what d’you think? I mean, look at this house!”
“There’s nothing apart from being in China, Liam. Being in China is major.”
The house was mostly one big open room—with a kitcheny bit at one end and two huge couches at the other and a weird kind of little garden full of cacti in between.
“And,” said Florida, looking all around it, “it’s got no TV.”
“Well, maybe we could ask for a TV. Anyway, it’s probably good that we haven’t got one because we’re supposed to get up early in the…”
Florida had found a little panel of buttons in the arm of the couch. When she touched one, the whole living room wall turned blue and started to hum, and then a picture appeared with sound. The television was an entire wall of the living room.
“Now this,” said Florida, “is good.”
We both flopped onto the couch. We were hypnotized. It was amazing even when it was only showing farming news in Cantonese, but after a bit of channel flicking we found an American channel that was showing Celebrity Séance (where living celebrities try to contact the spirits of dead celebrities) and Florida looked like she’d gone to heaven.
“Look!” she yelled. “There’s Lindsey. Aaaah!” Lindsey was the presenter, but Florida acted like Lindsey was like her mom, her sister, her cat and her favorite blanket all rolled into one.
I said, “As soon as this is finished, lights out and bed. Big day tomorrow.”
“Liam, stop talking like a grown-up. There’s no grown-up here—that’s the only good thing about it.”
“But I’m supposed to be your dad. That’s the whole point. I’ve got to act the role of your dad. So I’m getting into character, like Lisa said.”
“If you’re going to be a dad, be like my dad, not like yours. Get me presents, and ice cream; don’t sit there telling me about history and stuff.”
“D’you know what time it is? Isn’t it a bit late for ice cream?”
“It would be if you were a real dad. But you’re not. You’re a kid. I’m a kid. We can do what we want. If we want ice cream for supper, we can have ice cream for supper.”
And apparently we did want ice cream for supper. Luckily there were buckets of ice cream, including Chocapocalypse flavor, in the freezer.
Florida took it back to the couch and sat there in front of the TV. Every few seconds, she’d poke her spoon in. “And if we want to watch TV all night,” she said, “we can.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Not ‘Yeah, but.’ Just ‘Yeah.’”
While she was busy with the ice cream, I sneaked another look at Talk to Your Teen and found a bit about how to lay down ground rules and make sure your teen has barriers. I was just going to set a few barriers in place when Florida yelled, “Liam! Come and look at this!”
She’d discovered that you could send pictures from her Draxphone to the big screen. She made me video her doing an acceptance speech and then project it onto the wall.
“I want to thank my mom and especially my dad. I hope you’re proud of your little princess now,” she said. “And I hope together we can end global warming and poverty and stuff.”
It looked wobbly but convincing on the big screen. I said, “What exactly are you accepting?”
“An award.”
“For what?”
“For being famous.”
I went to get a drink out of the fridge and found some little bottles of water shaped like rockets, with fins and a pointy bit at the top. They were perfect weapons for a water fight. I stuffed three in each pocket, tiptoed back to the living room and squirted Florida. She shrieked and ran after me. I threw her a bottle just to make it fair and we had this excellent water fight all over the house. I hid behind the couch, hoping to ambush her. I must’ve fallen asleep there, because the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing.
“This is your alarm call,” it said. “Please join your party in the car park of the Possibility Building at eight a.m.”
I picked my way through the discarded ice-cream buckets and over the soaking wet floors and eventually found Florida curled up asleep in the cupboard with the cleaning stuff. I woke her up (she wasn’t happy) and went to get changed.
I emptied my bag onto my bed so that I could sort everything out. There were some Warcraft notes, and an unexpected envelope, which turned out to contain a photograph of me, Mom and Dad on my First Communion day—Mom must have sneaked it in there. Dad’s broken St. Christopher statue was at the bottom of the bag too. He must’ve sneaked that in too. He’d obviously been worried about me going to the Lake District on my own. I’ve brought it with me into space. It’s standing on top of the multifunctional display, just like it used to stand on the dashboard of his taxi. If my dad could see it now, he’d be really worried.
Thrill Ride of the Century
This part of space seems to be a communications dead zone. I can’t get any signal on my phone. Maybe we’re on the wrong side of the satellites. I’m going through old messages in my in-box for company. I’ve still got the last one Dr. Drax sent: “Tk care of u-self & children. C u in 10 hrs.” That was about twenty-four hours ago. Not only have I not seen Dr. Drax, I haven’t seen her planet.
I’ve also still got the first one. It says: “Welcum 2 Infinity Park. B @ Poss Blding car park @ 8. Courtesy car in drive. Use phone to open car. Drv safely.”
Courtesy car!
“What’s a courtesy car?” said Florida.
“Well, it’s a car that they lend you and you can use it as much as you like.”
“You mean a car for you to drive? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Not after last time,” said Florida. Then she said, “What kind of car is it? Is it another limo?”
“Let’s go and see.”
It was a little greeny Toyota-y thing. It looked like a big toy really. I put my hand out to touch it.
“Liam…,” said Florida. “We can’t.”
“No, we can’t. You’re right. Except…”
“Except what?”
“Except I am supposed to be a taxi driver.”
“Oh.”
“So I’ve got to pretend I can drive.”
“Liam, you can only pretend you can drive in a pretend car. In a real car, you have a real accident and get us really killed.”
“It doesn’t look that dangerous. I mean, it looks a lot less dangerous than the Porsche did. The text said you open it with your phone.”
I pointed the phone at it and the headlights blinked and all the doors popped open. Then a robot-y voice from the dashboard said, “Climb aboard, Liam Digby.” You have to admit this was interesting. You can’t really blame us for getting inside the car. It would’ve been rude not to.
As soon as we were in the seats, the car spoke again. “Hi, Liam, hi, Florida,” it said. “This drive should take fifteen minutes. Don’t forget to fasten your seat belts.” And, without us doing anything, the engine started up. A nice, gentle little engine. It sounded so reassuring. It sounded like it trusted us. We fastened our seat belts.
Florida was looking around the inside of the car. “There’s something missing,” she said. “It’s got hardly any levers or buttons.”
“It’s an automatic. My dad drove one once when he was covering for someone else. He said it was like driving a bumper car.”
Florida said, “Bumper cars are easy to drive.”
It was hard to disagree with this. I’ve driven loads of bumper cars. Not one of them stretched my abilities. And this car seemed so helpful.
While I was trying to come to a decision I touched one of the buttons on the dashboard. Florida yelped, “Don’t! It could be the ejector seat or something!”
The windshield wipers started banging over and back across the windshield. We both laughed. At least
we knew what one of the levers was for. And the one with the picture of the headlight on was probably the headlights, so the one with the numbers on must be the one to make it go. I pushed it down one notch very gently and the noise in the engine changed to an angry roar. And the satnav said, “That’s my accelerator. Don’t forget my handbrake.”
It wasn’t even me. It was Florida who found the handbrake and slipped it. The car rolled forward, purring. Suddenly there was a different noise—a big honking noise, and some squealing and lights flashing. Another car was driving up behind us when we pulled out. Other cars! I’d forgotten about other cars. This one swerved out past us and honked us again. Another one squealed and honked just behind us.
“This is brilliant!” whooped Florida inexplicably.
The hardest part about driving a car is keeping it in the right place on the road. You mustn’t go too near the curb (your tires make a weird screaming noise) or too far over to the middle (drivers coming the other way look frightened and angry).
At first I tried to stay pretty much in the middle. When I looked in my rearview mirror there was a line of cars behind me doing exactly the same, so it must’ve been right. There was nothing at all ahead of us.
“Kings of the road!” yelled Florida.
We did everything the satnav told us and soon, instead of driving past neat lawns and white bungalows, we were bumping along a narrow cinder track through a field full of tents and huts. Little kids kept running up to the car, banging on the window and smiling at us. There were donkeys and ponies tied up at the side of the road. A camel even walked in front of us. I said, “This can’t be right.”
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