by Nigel Smith
“Underneath that chimp-like exterior is a vulnerable little boy, Nathalia.”
“No there isn’t. Underneath the chimp is a gorilla, trust me.”
“Very funny. Just keep an eye on him. Would you do that for me?”
“Oh yeah. Well, of course. I mean, I don’t want to be a stupid team leader anyway,” fibbed Nat.
“You look a bit fed up,” said Miss Hunny kindly. “Sorry, Nathalia, I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. I was actually going to make you team leader but your father said I shouldn’t put too much pressure on you because you’re so delicate.”
I’ll show him how delicate I am when I get home, thought Nat.
Miss Hunny broke into a wide smile. “Oh cheer up. The REALLY exciting news is that we’ll be sharing the campsite.”
“Who with?” asked Nat.
“A lovely class from St Scrofula’s School. They were the other local school to win the essay competition.”
Miss Hunny said that as if it was a big deal.
“Big deal,” said Nat.
“Actually, that IS a big deal,” said Dad that night, as they drove home in his horrible, noisy, cluttered camper van, the Atomic Dustbin. “St Scrofula’s is a top school.”
“Don’t care, Dad,” said Nat, playing with the Dog in the back of the van. Her head was resting against a tent and some sleeping bags. They smelled of damp and mildew. Urgh, she thought, camping. Yuk.
“You should care. As it happens, your mum’s often talked about sending you to that school.”
A chill went down Nat’s spine. It was hard enough making friends at her own school, which was a normal one, let alone trying again with a bunch of snooty kids. She had worked her way up from the bottom of the bottom group of popular kids to nearly the middle of the bottom, and she wasn’t going to start at the bottom of the bottom again, thanks very much.
“It’s dead posh,” said Dad. “You’d like it. It looks a bit like a castle. It’s got a full-sized football pitch, floodlit tennis courts, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.”
“So?” said Nat.
“All their kids go to top universities.”
“You’d think they’d be too tired to learn much, after all that running and swimming,” said Nat.
“They’ve even got their own school ponies,” said Dad.
“We’ve got school rabbits,” said Nat. “Well, we used to have school rabbits until the caretaker bought a new dog. Now we’ve got no rabbits, just a fat school dog.”
Her own dog shook his whiskery head as if to apologise for the school mutt’s doggy crimes.
“I bet the kids are stuck-up and horrible,” said Nat, “which is rubbish cos even the girls in my class are a bit stuck-up and horrible – and they go to MY school and they haven’t got anything to be stuck-up about.”
“Give them a chance when you get to the campsite,” said Dad. “You might make some nice new friends.”
“I haven’t even got nice OLD friends,” muttered Nat. She settled down on the mouldy sleeping bag. “And please tell me you’ve listened to me and you’re not coming. This camping trip’s rubbish anyway – I found out it’s all about geography.”
“Sounds great. Rock climbing, canoes, caves, maps, fossils, all that stuff.”
“Sounds rubbish. And you’ll just find new and horrible ways to show me up.”
“No I won’t, I promise.”
“And stupid Miss Hunny’s made Darius Bagley team leader. AND I’m his babysitter.”
“That was my idea,” said Dad.
“Yeah, I know,” sighed Nat. “Thanks.”
“Anyway, responsibility is good for you.”
“How would you know?” said Nat. “Mum’s in charge of everything.”
“Responsibility is good for SOME people,” laughed Dad.
They drove in silence for a little while. Silence, that is, if you didn’t count the racket from the dodgy exhaust. Nat’s brain was racing ahead, writing a LIST OF DOOM. Worse still, at the back of her mind, a little nagging voice was telling her it was ALL HER FAULT. If she hadn’t helped Darius with his stupid essay in the first place, they’d never be going camping.
The doom list seemed endless: rubbish campsite, week-long geography lessons, Darius in charge, Dad and his horrible little ukulele tagging along, snooty posh kids prancing about on their own ponies …
How bad was this week going to get? What else was going to go wrong?
Just then Dad hit a pothole and a frying pan slid off a shelf and clonked her on the head.
“‘Lower Totley is a delightful town, full of historic charm’,” said Penny, sitting next to Darius and Nat on the back seat of the coach. “It says so on the town’s web page.”
“No it doesn’t,” said Darius, with an evil grin. “Not since ninja hacker Darius Bagley changed it.”
“He’s right,” laughed Nat, who had helped Darius with the spelling. “It now says: ‘Lower Snotley is a rubbish town full of historic zombies’.”
“You make him worse, Nat, you really do,” scolded Penny.
Nat stuck her tongue out at her.
Class 8H were on the coach to their super geography camping experience thingy. They had been travelling for less than ten minutes and Nat was already a bit cross.
To be fair, she had been a bit cross the entire week leading up to the trip, so the torrential rain that had been hammering down like wet nails all morning wasn’t likely to cheer her up.
“This campsite we’re going to has a website as well,” said Penny. “Don’t tell me you wrote something rude on that.”
“Nah,” said Darius, “better than that. I put this picture on it.”
He showed Penny a picture. She shrieked.
“And I can make that bit wiggle,” cackled Darius, chewing a toffee.
Penny peeped. “OK, now that’s funny,” she said.
“How about a singsong?” said Dad, standing up in the middle of the coach, holding his ukulele.
Nat threw Darius’s toffees at him. “Go away, sit down, shush. No one wants to sing,” she said.
“It is a bit early,” said Miss Hunny from the front seat. “At least wait until we get there.”
“Where we can hide in our tents,” sniggered Miss Austen.
“With earplugs in,” sniggered Miss Eyre.
Nat didn’t know why Misses Austen and Eyre had volunteered to come, as they were the laziest teachers in the school and she couldn’t imagine either of them rock climbing.
She grinned. She suddenly DID imagine them rock climbing. They were dangling in mid-air just as she pushed a massive boulder over the cliff …
PLINKY PLINK PLINK, went Dad on his stupid useless instrument.
“Oh, we’re off on a coach and it isn’t very quick, but two of the class are already travel-sick …” he sang.
“Join in on the chorus, kids,” he said.
“Dad, we haven’t got out of the one-way system yet and you’re already showing me up,” said Nat, jumping up and snatching his ukulele. “And you promised you wouldn’t.”
“I just want to make a good impression, for my certificate,” whispered Dad, sitting down on the back seat. “Budge up.”
He pointed to a man Nat didn’t recognise, sitting up by the coach driver. “That’s the organiser, Mr Dewdrop, from the Nice ’N’ Neat Countryside Alliance. It’s their essay competition that Darius won—”
“That I won.”
“Oh yes, whatever. But anyway, Mr Dewdrop is going to do a report on me this week. He’ll judge me to see if I can get my Approved for Kids certificate. Should be easy. Kids love me; I’m totally down with them. I watch all the soaps they like and I can rap and everything.”
“Please stop talking,” said Nat.
“It’ll be me getting top marks, obvs.”
Dad plunked a few notes on his tiny little guitar.
“Although, just to be on the totally safe side, it would be great if you and your friends could tell Mr Dewdrop just how utterly brilliant you all t
hink I am. All the time, every day, as often and as loudly as possible.”
Nat groaned. It was so unfair. Not only was she expected to put up with her mega-embarrassing dad all week, but she was also supposed to say he was great! She wouldn’t do it.
BUT another thought struck her. If Dad did well on this trip and then got his certificate, he could finally get a proper job and be out of her hair …
Dad pottered back to his seat at the front, trying to high-five the children as he went past. No one high-fived him back, so he pretended he was waving to passers-by outside. Someone outside waved back. Not nicely.
Nat cringed. It was going to be SO hard …
After a few hours, they were driving through yet another small soggy village, glistening and grey in the rain. Nat and Penny were sharing headphones, listening to Princess Boo’s new album, and Darius was working on verse 768 of his epic poo poem, “Diarrhoea”.
He kept pulling out Nat’s earpiece, asking her to suggest rhymes for words like “squelchy” or “explode”.
She was grateful for the interruption when Mr Dewdrop came and sat nervously by Darius.
Mr Dewdrop was a young man, very thin and pale, with ash-brown frizzy hair. He reminded Nat of a sickly reed, struggling for life in a marsh. He had encouraged a straggly moustache to cover up some of his red spots.
“Mr Bagley?” he said.
Darius looked around.
“He means you, idiot,” said Nat.
“What?” Darius said dangerously. He didn’t like strangers. He started shaking a can of fizzy pop and flicking at the ring pull as if to open it. It made Nat think of a rattlesnake shaking its tail, just as a casual warning.
“He doesn’t like people sitting too close,” said Nat, trying to be helpful, “although he probably won’t bite.”
Mr Dewdrop backed away and nervously checked a form he was carrying.
“Are you the Darius Bagley who wrote the prize-winning essay?” the young man said. “Or is there perhaps another Darius Bagley?” He sounded hopeful.
“That’s him,” said Penny, who was drawing fairies on a big sketch pad. “Have fun. And actually, Nathalia, he DOES bite.”
“We’re all very impressed with your hilarious essay,” said Mr Dewdrop quickly. His voice was sometimes high and trembly, sometimes deep and croaky, like a frog playing a flute. Darius just stared. Mr Dewdrop ploughed on.“We’d like to give you free tickets to our new garden centre, in Lower Totley Village. You can get a half-price cream tea too. Yum.”
Nat sniggered. She wasn’t jealous of THAT rubbish prize. Darius looked at Mr Dewdrop blankly.
The young man coughed. “Right. And I hear you’re team leader. So that means you get to stay in one of our luxury log cabins, with outdoor plunge pool and indoor table football.”
“Get in!” yelled Darius, jumping up.
“Where do WE stay?” said Nat, who was suddenly jealous. Darius was making a big loser ‘L’ on his forehead at her.
“The rest of you will be in our cosy eco-yurts, made from natural – well, let’s just say it’s very natural. Don’t worry about the goaty smell – you soon get used to it.”
Darius burst out laughing, which lasted all the way to the next village, when Nat pinched him into silence.
“I looked up ‘yurt’,” said Penny. “I think it’s like a tent, but not quite as good.”
Flipping luxury log cabins for the flipping team leader, thought Nat, as the coach wound its tedious way through the wet roads. Table football? Plunge pool? So not fair.
She stewed for a while, and then finally snapped at Darius, “How come you get a luxury log cabin and we have to live in rubbish tents made of recycled goat bum?”
“Stop moaning. You get to bring your dad.”
Nat always forgot that Darius actually thought Dad was great. She had NO IDEA why.
“We’re here,” shouted Miss Hunny, before Nat could carry on her row.
The coach stopped dead with a squeal of old brakes.
Nat looked out of the window and just saw trees, dripping with rain. In the distance she thought she could see a sliver of grey sea.
“You might wanna put your macs on. There’s a very light drizzle,” shouted Dad, “or possibly only a sea mist.”
The rain thrashed down harder. No one wanted to get out.
“It’s a good job I’M here to keep everyone’s spirits up,” said Dad.
He was met with a stony silence.
Mr Dewdrop made a note in a little black notebook he had stuck to a clipboard.
Their depressed geography teacher, Mr Keane, stood up. “The even better news is that there’s hail mixed in with the rain. That’s unusual for this time of year. Perhaps it’s global warming. We could go out and study it. Won’t that be fun?”
If silence could get even stonier, that’s what it got.
“No, I don’t blame you. Geography’s terrible. I wanted to be a vet when I was your age, but I didn’t pass the exams,” said Mr Keane, sitting down and putting his head in his hands. “Why didn’t I work harder at school?” he cried.
No one quite knew what to say.
Finally, Miss Austen took charge. “Come on, children,” she said bossily. “Last one off the coach is a Bagley.”
“Hey,” said Darius, as the stampede for the exit started.
They all ran helter-skelter from the coach towards the shelter of a large wooden hut in the middle of a clearing in the forest. Through the rain, from under her plastic hood, Nat could make out a sign reading:
Lower Totley Eco Camp
Parked next to the large hut was a gleaming-new white coach, with cool tinted windows and sleek curved lines. On it were emblazoned the golden words:
SAINT SCROFULA’S COLLEGE
And in smaller words underneath:
Gosh, what a great school!
Inside the smart coach, Nat caught a glimpse of a square-jawed driver in a uniform and peaked cap, watching a big TV screen. Then she heard a hacking cough behind her. It was their coach driver, Eric Scabb, sucking down on his first ciggy for two hours. He spat on a bush.
“Better out than in,” he said.
Nat’s coach had SCABB’S BUDGET COACHES FOR HIRE painted in flaking letters on the side.
“Their coach probably cost more than our entire school,” Nat muttered to Penny, as they squished through the mud and into the wooden building.
Inside, the teachers went into a small reception area to fill out forms while Dad led the damp, hungry children into a large dining hall. It was full of long wooden tables and benches. And it was also full of other children, who stopped their chattering and stared at the newcomers.
The kids from the other school were those “sit-up-straight” kind of children. They were scrubbed clean and shiny and had smart blazers and even smarter haircuts. All the girls were blonde, Nat noticed, and not even slightly murky blonde like her, but almost white, dazzling blonde.
AND NOT ONE OF THEM ATE THEIR PEAS OFF THEIR KNIVES.
Nat looked at her wet, bedraggled, muddy classmates. We look like survivors from a shipwreck, she thought.
The other children continued to stare at Nat’s class.
“You know in those cowboy films when they walk into the wrong saloon and it goes dead quiet?” Nat said to Darius. Then she thought for a minute. “Oh, I suppose you get that all the time, tee-hee,” she said.
He glared at her.
There was a long, makeshift kitchen counter at one end of the hall, where two large ladies were splodging food on to wooden plates. Behind them bubbled cauldrons of something or other. From a distance it looked like brown porridge.
Rank brown porridge.
Nat’s plan was to grab some food and sit somewhere away from the other kids as quietly and with as little fuss as possible. Which was pretty much the plan of everyone else in 8H too.
Except Dad.
Dad walked right slap bang into the middle of the dining hall and said, loudly, in his best ‘down w
ith the kids’ kind of voice:
“Hey, dudes, how’s it going down?”
Nat felt that familiar burning sensation trickle down the back of her neck.
“I’m Ivor,” the big idiot continued, “but you can call me Mr Fun.”
“Dad, stoppit,” hissed Nat.
“Best to break the ice as soon as possible,” said Dad cheerfully, while Nat tried to find a deep dark shadow to hide in.
Mr Fun turned to the perfect St Scrofula’s children. “Anyone want to see a magic trick?”
“Yes, I think we’d all like to see you disappear,” said a large boy with very short blond hair and startling blue eyes.
“We have a comedian,” said Dad. “Ha ha, I love a bit of banter.”
“Banter off, there’s a good fellow,” said Blue Eyes.
“As long as no one ever finds out he’s my dad, I might be OK,” Nat whispered to Penny.
“What’s brown and sticky?” said Dad, trying out his favourite joke.
“A stick,” said a bored blonde girl, who Nat reckoned was almost certainly called Jemima but who was actually called Plum.
“A stick,” said Dad. “Oh, you guessed it!”
“He’s an annoying little chap. Do you think we could pay him to go away?” said Blue Eyes.
“Oi, that’s my dad you’re talking about,” Nat shouted angrily, stepping forward.
The shiny bright children from St Scrofula’s turned to her and STARTED LAUGHING.
Oops, she thought. I’ve gone and blown it already! This is gonna be a loooong week …
Nat was wrong. It was a long day.
After a brown lunch of brown rice and brown lentils and brown bread, all the children were treated to a welcome talk by the owner and the team who ran the campsite.
The woman who owned Lower Snotley Eco Camp was called Mrs Ferret and she looked like a weasel. She had brown hair, sticky-out sharp teeth and little round glasses. She spoke so quickly and quietly that Nat had no idea what she was saying.
“I thought she said something about pooing in a hole in the ground,” Nat whispered to Penny, who was looking deeply unhappy.
“I think she did,” said Penny, “and then she said something about recycling everything.”
“Everything?” said Nat, alarmed.