by Maggi Gibson
PUFFIN BOOKS
Hi! If you're reading this you must like the look of my stuff – thanks! MASSIVE thanks also to (drum roll, please):
CORDELIA AND TASLIMA – my best buds EVER – always there to make me laugh and believe I can do this!
MUM AND DAD – sometimes you're so embarrassing. I'll try and stay out of trouble. No promises, though.
PIP – my lipstick-loving little sis – don’t grow up too fast!!
MAGNUS (THE MAGNIFICENT) – you gave me a bite of your muffin. Remember, in biology?
Some things you NEVER forget!
Finally, I'm dedicating this to the dolphins, butterfiies and all the endangered creatures on our planet. I'm GOING to make a difference (Twig – I told you I would!).
I'm going to be your star!
Love,
Sassy Wilde xxx
In memory of Maggie Evans
who helped Sassy take her first steps
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
puffinbooks.com
First published 2009
Text copyright © Maggi Gibson, 2009
Illustrations copyright © Hennie Haworth, 2009
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-32725-9
TRACK ONE
Oh why can’t people be more like dolphins?
A dolphin’s face always meets you grinning
A dolphin is free – he’s got no need to kill
A dolphin is happy – he swims for the thrill.
A dolphin just wants to live in the ocean
He doesn’t pollute, he ain’t got no notion
Of nuclear bombs and nuclear fusion
Or killing, or wars, or starting aggression.
Oh why can’t people be more like dolphins?
A dolphin’s face always meets you grinning
He don’t need no factories pumping out smoke
He don’t need no bombs, he doesn’t kill folk.
He don’t build no roads, he don’t poison the air
And we’re killing his world, acting like we don’t care
It makes me so sad, it makes me so mad
The planet’s in crisis, it’s us are to blame.
Oh why can’t people be more like dolphins?
I don’t wanna be human, I can’t stand the shame
But what can I do, ’cept stand up and sing
Don’t ruin our world. No! Not in my name!
By Sassy Wilde
‘So what do you think?’ I ask as I prop my guitar back on its stand.
Cordelia and Taslima are round for a girls’ night in and I’ve just sung them my latest song. Mr Hemphead, that’s our biology teacher, was telling us yesterday about how the oceans are warming up, and how humans are to blame with all their cars and factories and everything, but it’s the fish and sea creatures that are suffering. I felt so angry I wrote the song earlier today.
Cordelia’s a Dolly Goth. Her hair’s as black as a bat’s eyeball, and she wears it tied high in bunches with big scarlet ribbons.
‘It’s great, Sass.’ She grins, looking up from painting tiny white skulls on her black fingernails. ‘All your songs are, but I’ve got a hunch that this is the one, you know, to make you a star!’
I can’t help but smile. Cordelia’s psychic, on account of her mum being a witch, and more often than not her hunches are right. Even when it’s crazy things, like what’s the square root of 34,563 or the date of the Battle of Inverknockynooky.1
‘Yeah, I loved it too.’ Taslima smiles, picking up my guitar. ‘But what I really want to know (strum strum strum) is what’s going on between you (strum strum strum) and the gorgeous (STRUM STRUM STRUM) Magnus Menzies?’
‘Nothing!’ I protest, trying not to blush. ‘He offered me a bite of his muffin in biology. That’s all.’
I pick up Tiny Ted and fire him at the mini‐basketball hoop on the back of the door. His arm gets caught on the ring and he dangles dangerously. Which is pretty much how I’ve been feeling ever since I bit into Magnus’s muffin.
‘But it was chocolate chip and you never ever eat chocolate!’ Cordelia protests. ‘And you’ve been all starry‐eyed ever since. So give, Sassy! What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ I sigh. ‘I mean it was only a bite of a muffin –’ Tiny Ted loses his grip and plummets to the floor.
‘Only a bite of a muffin!’ Taslima’s eyebrows shoot up under her fringe. ‘Sassy! When a boy offers a girl a bite of his muffin, well, it’s like he’s saying, I really, really fancy you.’ Taslima wants to be a psychologist when she grows up. She insists on reading meaning into the tiniest, most innocent of actions.
‘Yeah, sure, little Miss Freud,’ I laugh. ‘But right now boys are NOT part of my life plan. I don’t have time for them. I’ve got more than enough to do as it is, thank you.’
‘Yeah, like the planet to save,’ Cordelia says dreamily as she flicks through a mag she’s just pulled out of her Scary Cat bag.
‘And my career to get off the ground,’ I add, taking the guitar from Taslima. ‘I’ve not even got my first demo disc yet!’
‘So let me get this right, Sass,’ Taslima says, her brow furrowed in a professional‐psychologist sort of way. ‘It’s not enough to just write a brilliant song?’
‘Course not!’ I protest. ‘I mean, if you write a song, it’s cos you want people to hear it, you want to be up there in front of the lights, belting it out, don’t you?’
I start tuning the guitar. ‘It’s so depressing (twang) I’m thirteen already (twang) next thing (twang) I’ll be thirty (twang) then I’ll be dead.’
‘So can we get back to the subject?’ Cordelia fixes me with a green‐eyed lie‐to‐me‐and‐I’ll‐turn‐you‐into‐a‐toad stare.2 ‘You have no feelings at all for Magnus?’
‘Oh, I don’t know… ’ I mutter.
Cordelia’s eyes widen dangerously.
‘OK! OK!’ I give in. ‘I do feel all squidgy when I see him… and I’ve only ever felt like that before about tiny panda cubs, or fluffy little baby seals, but –’
‘So face up to it!’ Taslima exclaims. ‘Look, Sass, you don’t really have a choice. It’s your hormones. You know when you leaned in to take a bite of his muffin? You must have got a whiff of his pheromones –’
‘Fairy gnomes?’ I interrupt.
‘P‐H‐E‐R‐O‐M‐O‐N‐E‐S,’ Taslima spells it out. ‘Like an invisible smell people put out to attract a mate.’
‘Aren’t all smells invisible?’ I ask, confused.
‘The thing is,’ Taslima continues excitedly, ‘his boy pheromones probably met up with your girl pheromones and they fizzled together like a chemical cocktail, so now you don’t have a choice. It’s hormonal. A teen thing. You’re destined to go all squidgy every time you see him –’
‘Never mind hormones!’ Cordelia squeals, flapping her mag. ‘This is Mum’s Wiccan Weekly. You’re Scorpio, Sass, that right?’
I nod.
‘Well, here’s what Psychic Psandra says: Red alert, Scorpio! The guy of your dreams is hovering nearby. Keep your broomstick polished to a sheen. Soon you and he will be heading for the stars.’
‘Cordelia!’ I laugh, chucking a cushion at her. ‘You can’t take that junk seriously!’
‘But you must!’ Cordelia exclaims, her green eyes shining. ‘Don’t you see? You and Magnus? It’s kismet. Destiny! Why fight it?’
Once Cordelia and Taslima have gone, I shower and change into my Greenpeace nightie. Then I close the bedroom curtains and switch on my Planet Earth lamp. It casts a beautiful blue light across the room. My crystal mobile tinkles gently in the breeze from the open window. The big polar bear on my wall poster gazes down from his white wonderland. I pick up my guitar and start to gently strum.
I really do need to cut a demo disc soon, but who knows when I’ll ever have enough money. Earlier today I counted my savings. It didn’t take long. Last year I adopted a donkey in the Dorset Donkey Sanctuary and that takes up most of my poverty‐level pocket money.
Softly I start to sing my dolphin song again. It makes me so angry to think about the oceans being poisoned, the ice caps melting, the forests disappearing…
And it’s up to me and my generation to put things right. I don’t care about hormones or kismet or anything else. I know what I want to do with my life, what’s really important to me, and I really don’t have time for all this silly Magnus stuff.
It’s Monday morning now. The weekend has whizzed by and I’ve hardly anything to show for it. Just my dolphin song and one complaints letter to the Chief Executive of Paradiso’s, our local supermarket.
33 Anton Drive
Strathcarron
The Chief Executive
Paradiso’s Supermarkets
Milton Keynes
Dear Sir,
I would be grateful if you would stop supplying free plastic carrier bags to your customers. Immediately. And remove all other plastic packaging from your foodstuffs.
Plastic is the curse of the planet. It is NOT biodegradable. Did you know that 1lb of plastic breaks up into 100,000 tiny pieces in the ocean, making it look like plankton? Fish and dolphins and whales then swallow it, mistaking it for food.
It may surprise you, but there’s now six times MORE plastic than plankton in the North Pacific. And it’s toxic. So the whole food chain is being poisoned.
How would you like to have a plateful of plastic for your dinner then wake up with a terminal tummy ache?
Yours faithfully,
Sassy Wilde
PS Your advertising slogan – ‘Paradiso’s, the supermarket that makes shopping heavenly’ – is simply not true. My mother drags me to Paradiso’s once a week. And it’s hell!
On the way downstairs for breakfast I check in the bathroom mirror and, sure enough, right in the centre of my forehead a big choccy‐fuelled spot is roaring up, red and angry. I so wish I’d refused that bite of Magnus’s muffin! I pull a few curls down over it, but it’s no use, they just bounce back up again.
In the kitchen Mum is slumped at the table, half asleep, reading her latest self‐help book, How to Raise a Well‐balanced Teen. I don’t blame her for swotting up. Pip – that’s my little sis – is only nine, but already she’s addicted to MTV. And she’s planning a career as a glamour model. Right now she’s perched on a bar stool flicking through one of her Lolitaz magazines. Lolitaz, the latest craze among tweenies, are twenty‐centimetre‐high dolls, with the most grotesque faces, all goldfish lips and pussy‐cat eyes with huge fluttery lashes. When Pip turns teen she’s going to be such a nightmare. Then my parentals will appreciate just how easy I am.
Dad pops some toast, spreads it with honey and tosses it in front of Mum. Dad’s a morning person. It suits him to be bristling about the place, brewing tea, scattering coffee grains everywhere.
I’m just making myself a delicious wake‐up smoothie, chopping some banana and kiwi and wondering how many food miles the fruits have travelled and how much that’s contributed to global warming, and whether or not I should feel guilty, when Dad whips off his frilly apron and clears his throat.
‘I’ve something important to tell you. Something that could affect all our futures,’ he says, then glances at the clock. ‘So we’ll have a Family Meet at four, OK?’
‘But, Dad, you don’t even finish work till six,’ I protest.
‘Not tonight,’ he says, grabbing his briefcase. ‘I want us all here at four. Now this is important. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
And he’s gone! Which is pretty typical of his odd behaviour this past couple of weeks. Always disappearing, staying out late, having whispered phone conversations.
‘What’s Dad on about?’ I ask Mum. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ she yawns, without looking up, even though I know her book says, Always give your teen a proper answer; shrugging them off could cause untold psychological damage.
Just then Pip gives a little squeal, leaps from her stool and boogies across the kitchen in her lacy black negligee and pink kitten‐heeled mules. Honestly! I can’t believe the way Mum lets Pip dress sometimes. And, what’s more, Pip’s had earplugs in all along, so hasn’t heard a word Dad said. She’s off on Planet Pip.
Then the big grandfather clock in the hall booms. Nine o’clock. Which fortunately it isn’t or I’d be late for school. Mum sets it half an hour fast, because that way, she says, we’ll never be late. (Sometimes I doubt my mum’s sanity.) I down my smoothie, pull on my jacket, grab my bag and give our old dog, Brewster, a quick tummy tickle, then dash out of the door.
It’s lunchtime before I get the chance to REALLY chat to Taslima and Cordelia. There are ears everywhere in our school. (Usually on the sides of teachers’ heads.) So we link arms and head for our special place, round the back, up three stairs, in the doorway. We found this hidey‐hole when we first started high school and Hannah Harrison from Third Year plus her sidekicks – including Megan Campbell who was once, in the mists of time, my bestest friend ever – were trying to terrorize us. But that’s all in the past now.
‘You do know this is a fire door,’ Cordelia says as we snuggle down on the top step. ‘Which means,’ she continues, ‘if there’s a fire and all the people inside rush out, they’ll be saved, but we’ll be tragically trampled to death.’3
‘Never mind dying,’ I mutter. ‘I’ve got a real problem.’
Taslima looks delighted. She just loves problems. She whips out a tiny pink notebook, licks her pencil and arches one eyebrow. It’s psychologist’s body language, apparently, for DO GO ON.
‘My dad’s been behaving strangely,’ I begin. Cordelia snorts and tosses her long hair. ‘What’s new? Your family are all totally weird.’
A bit rich coming from Cordelia, the Dolly Goth! But I decide to rise above it.
‘Anyway,’ I continue, ‘he’s hardly been at home these past few weeks. And when he is, he heads straight for his study. I’ve heard him on the phone too. Late at night. To someone called Digby.’
‘Digby?’ Cordelia echoes. ‘What kind of name is that?’
I shrug. Sometimes Cordelia asks questions which cannot be answered.
‘Have you tried checking his email and text messages?’ Taslima suggests.
I shake my head. ‘He’s locked them
with a password. Something else he’s never done before. And now he’s called a Family Meet for four and he doesn’t even finish work till six. He says it’s important we’re all there. It’s something that could affect all our futures. And there’s someone he wants us to meet.’
Taslima chews the end of her pencil. ‘What’s your mum saying?’ she asks quietly.
‘Not a lot. She just seems totally stressed. In fact, she’s been acting weird for weeks. They both have. You know the way, they’re in the kitchen or the living room or wherever, talking about something, and you walk in and there’s this AWFUL silence.’
‘Sounds like a serious relationship problem.’ Taslima nods wisely. ‘Now, if it had been a woman he’d been phoning –’
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Cordelia cuts across Taslima. ‘I mean this is just a hunch. A kinda gut feelingy thing.’
‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Spill!’
‘It’s just an idea,’ Cordelia begins slowly, ‘but has your dad changed his appearance recently?’
I think about it for a moment. What self‐respecting girl actually LOOKS at her dad? Dads are dads. They’re just there. And then it strikes me. ‘Yep! He’s had his hair cut in this ridiculous way. Like he thinks he’s cool. And he’s started using hair gel.’
‘I don’t know how to put this, er, delicately.’ Cordelia drops her voice to a whisper. ‘But is it possible, just maybe, that your dad’s gay?’
My imagination is often referred to as overactive. As in, Sassy would do well in English if only she could rein in her overactive imagination.
Usually I think my OI is a real asset. For example, it’s my OI that stops me from dying of complete boredom in maths. I can copy perfectly well from Taslima, who sits next to me and whose brain is like a calculator, while my OI is up and off out of the window swimming with the dolphins, or getting up on stage to collect my first Brit Award.
But there’s a downside to my OI. Someone just needs to plant the seed of an idea – like my dad might be gay – and, wey‐hey, suddenly it’s sprouted into a little plant. Then the eensy‐weensy plant grows bigger, then bigger and bigger, till it’s a huge great beanstalk, and I’m struggling among all the leaves and branches in a total panic.