Nathalia Buttface and the Most Embarrassing Five Minutes of Fame Ever

by Nigel Smith

  Plastered over the name of the home was a big notice which read:

  CLOSING DOWN – BY ORDER

  OF THE COUNCIL.

  WITH THE HELP OF BLACK TOWER

  ESTATES DEVELOPERS

  Helping you to help us to help ourselves.

  “There’s nothing I can do about it,” explained Porter Ogden once they were inside, over cups of tea in chipped mugs. “There’s these developers, offering the council lots of money.”

  “Where do you want the revolting rats?” asked Darius as he emerged from behind some crates at the back of the cramped kitchen.

  “Anywhere,” said Mr Ogden. “Just as long as Simba doesn’t get a sniff of them. Now come and have a cuppa.”

  “Don’t use the milk from the blue jug,” said Darius, clanging about. “It’s been out of the fridge for a fortnight.”

  Mr Ogden quickly hid the blue milk jug behind the biscuit tin and Nat decided she wasn’t very thirsty after all.

  Dad drank his tea in one gulp. He pulled a face. “That pop leaves a nasty taste in your mouth,” he said. Nat decided not to tell him about the milk.

  “These developers want to build a block of flats and a car park on top of my house,” said Mr Ogden, eyes filling up with tears.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Dad. “The parking’s terrible round here.” Nat kicked him.

  “And now they say I’ve only got a couple of weeks to get out before the bulldozers turn up and flatten everything.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Nat. “Where will you live?”

  “Oh, I can have one of the new flats, but it’s tiny. I don’t care about me, but there’s only room for half a dozen three-legged mice.”

  “Even King Kong’s got to go,” said Darius, appearing with the scruffy monkey on his shoulder. The monkey combed through Darius’s short tufty hair and nibbled something tasty.

  “Is there nothing you can do?” asked Dad.

  “Not unless you want to take hundreds of unwanted, horrible, ugly, badly behaved monsters home with you?” said Mr Ogden hopefully.

  “I will,” said Darius.

  “Not really,” said Dad. “Can’t you pay the council more money than the developers?”

  “That’s a great idea,” said Mr Ogden. “I hadn’t thought of that. I completely forgot about the million quid I’ve got stuffed in an empty tin of spam.”

  “I’m just thinking out loud,” said Dad helpfully.

  “Well don’t,” said Nat. “Why don’t we all think in silence? Especially you, Dad.”

  And so they did. Nat didn’t need to ask what would happen to all the animals. This home was the end of the line. NO ONE else was mad enough to take them in.

  And then she had another horrible thought.

  She remembered what the Head had said about Darius – that this job was the only thing keeping him from being thrown out of school. She thought about trying to make him behave and then realised it would be easier to raise one million quid.

  “We need a celebrity campaign,” said Dad, breaking the silence.

  “What’s that?” asked Mr Ogden, who was pretty unsure about Dad’s ideas.

  “We just need to find a celebrity to get behind the home, and do a campaign to raise money to save it. If enough people want it kept open, the council can’t bulldoze you.”

  “Two problems,” said Mr Ogden. “First, no one round here wants this home kept open. Not after the last mass break-out. In fact, when the council stuck that closure sign up outside, the neighbours organised a street party to celebrate.”

  “Oh, our old neighbours did that when WE moved,” said Dad. “It was just their way of saying they’d miss us.”

  Mr Ogden gave Nat a quizzical look. “Yes,” she said. “He is always like this.”

  “What was the second problem?” said Darius.

  “I don’t know any famous people.”

  There was a long pause. All that could be heard was the sound of Simba chewing through iron bars somewhere.

  “Well, do you know anyone famous?” asked the old man.

  Dad and Darius both looked at Nat. If the home closed, the animals AND Darius would be chucked on the scrapheap, Nat thought.

  And then another thought formed. A little evil thought, about being famous and popular and Flora Marling’s birthday party.

  “OK,” said Evil Nat, “you’re both un-sacked as my agents and I’ll do everything I can to get as famous as possible,” adding quickly, “to save the ugly pets, of course.”

  ARIUS STAYED OVER AT NAT’S HOUSE THAT night, plotting with Dad. Luckily for them, Mum wasn’t around to help/tell them off for stupidity, because she had been called away on urgent business. Nat was never quite sure what it was Mum did for a living exactly, but she absolutely knew it was more sensible than whatever Dad and Darius were up to.

  She could hear them well into the night, drinking cans of WAKE UP!!!! pop and coming up with ever more nutty ideas on how to make her more famous and save the horrible pets.

  Well, as long as it meant she got invited to Flora Marling’s mega secret birthday pool party, she didn’t really care. She fell asleep that night smiling to herself, thinking about what dress she might wear to the party of the century.

  Next morning, Dad drove Nat and Darius to school. He was wearing a suit, which puzzled Nat. She didn’t even know he HAD a suit. She wondered if it was actually his suit, because it was about three sizes too small for him. His arms stuck out way past the sleeves and she could see over the tops of his socks.

  Dad saw her looking at him. “This suit was a bargain,” he said as they drove noisily along in the Atomic Dustbin, all the boxes of WAKE UP!!!! pop clanking and clanging about in the back.

  “I ordered it online. I got it made in Bulgaria specially.”

  “What, by a blind person?” said Nat.

  “I might have made a small mistake with my measurements. Stupid inches and centimetres.”

  “Why are you wearing a suit anyway?” asked Nat.

  “Probably in trouble with the police,” said Darius, swigging from a can of bright orange pop. His eyes opened wide. “This stuff is AWESOME,” he said.

  “Have either of you actually been to bed?” said Nat.

  “I’m not in trouble with the police, thank you,” said Dad.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Nat.

  “Not fair,” said Dad, laughing. “I’ve only been arrested once and that was on that barge holiday in France. And ANYONE can sink a couple of priceless antique vintage French sailing barges.”

  “Why ARE you wearing a suit then?” asked Nat. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a job?”

  “Back after the adverts,” said the witless radio DJ, who was called Cabbage.

  “Woof,” went the dog, who hadn’t said much up until then.

  “You sure I can have all these cans?” said Darius.

  “Yes, Darius, whatever, do what you want with them,” snapped Nat.

  “I’ve got a meeting at the park actually,” said Dad. “About YOU.”

  Nat wanted to ask more, but Dad suddenly turned the radio up.

  “It’s our advert!” he said. “Listen.”

  Nat listened in horror as her argument with Dad was broadcast to kids all over the country on their way to school. Finally, it ended with radio Nat yelling: “Do not let your kids drink this!”

  The real Nat put her head in her hands.

  “You know what this means?” asked Darius.

  “I’ve been humiliated again?” said Nat.

  “Oh yeah that. But more importantly, I can sell these at school. Everyone’s gonna want a can.”

  Just then a news item came on the radio saying that due to recent complaints from parents about the terrible effects of a new fizzy pop drink called WAKE UP!!!!, all sales of it were now banned.

  “Even better!” said Darius.

  “Why? Because they’ll stop playing the stupid advert now?”

  “Nah,” said Dari
us, with an evil grin, “it means the price of WAKE UP!!!! has now doubled!”

  “Why are you helping Darius sell banned pop?” asked Nat as Dad backed the Atomic Dustbin into the school’s entrance.

  “He said he’d give the profits to the save the ugly pets’ fighting fund,” explained Dad, watching as Darius took out the crates of banned pop and began hiding them behind the bins.

  “MOST of the profits,” corrected Darius.

  Nat knew the real reason Dad was helping was that Dad HATED rules. Dad never wanted to do anything wrong, right up until the moment someone told him he couldn’t do it.

  Darius was a bit different; he just did what he wanted.

  Both of these things made Nat feel stressed. She liked rules, on the whole. They made life simpler. She reckoned she only spent so much time with Dad and Darius to keep them out of trouble. Which she didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of so far that day.

  In fact, it turned out to be one of those rare days where Darius wasn’t sent out of a class once. Instead of his usual hyperactive self, he was strangely quiet. He still didn’t do any work, of course, but teachers were so relieved that he hadn’t locked anyone in a cupboard or superglued himself upside down off a door or written any more of his disgusting epic poo poem ‘Diarrhoea’ (now at verse 367) that he got two gold stars and a bar of Fruit and Nut as a reward.

  He wasn’t even insisting on being called Elvis Greed Bugatti any more. Darius was being … good.

  In the playground, Nat overheard Miss Hunny tell the Head that it was all due to her getting him a job at the pets’ home. Then Miss Austen slid up with a nasty grin on her face.

  “Shame it’s being closed down then, isn’t it?” she said, in a voice that made it obvious that she didn’t think it was a shame at all, before giving Nat another detention for eavesdropping.

  Nat knew the truth about Darius’s behaviour: Darius was being good because Darius was Plotting. All day he was scribbling notes and drawing diagrams in a tatty old notebook. She knew it must be important because Darius didn’t have many notebooks; his horrible brother, Oswald, ripped them up for a laugh.

  She kept pretending she wasn’t interested in his plotting all day, right up until home time when her curiosity got the better of her.

  “What are you up to?” she said by the school gates. “And why haven’t you sold any pop? Have you finally realised it’s a bad thing to do?”

  “It’s called a business plan,” said Darius. “You wouldn’t understand because you didn’t do the online course like me and your dad last night.”

  He yawned. “Sleep is for wimps,” he said, glugging a can of banned pop. “See you in the morning. Get here early.”

  She didn’t get much sense out of Dad that night either, partly because he hadn’t slept for a couple of days, but also because Mum was home so they all went for a Chinese and Dad said not to bother Mum with things they’d been up to recently as Mum always called it.

  This was due to the fact that things they’d been up to recently usually made Mum cross.

  The next morning – early – Nat tracked Darius down to a hiding place behind the bins, where he’d stashed the pop. He handed Nat half a dozen.

  “First, we salt the mine to generate a non-calm market,” said Darius.

  “What?” said Nat.

  “I can’t say it any clearer.”

  “Yes, you can, you big chimp. You can say it loads clearer.”

  “We’re giving twelve cans away for free.”

  “That’s a stupid idea.”

  Darius ignored her. “But we only give them away free to taste-makers.”

  “You’re doing it again,” growled Nat. “Do you want a Chinese burn?”

  “We give them to the most popular kids in school. Then, when everyone else sees them drinking WAKE UP!!!!, they’ll want a can too. But this time, they’ll have to pay.”

  Nat thought for a moment. “Actually that’s quite clever,” she admitted. Darius started to shove cans in her schoolbag.

  “Oi, I’M not doing it,” she said. “I’ll get into trouble.”

  “The faster we sell these, the quicker they’ll be gone and the less chance there is of getting caught. You don’t want to be caught, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Get a move on then.”

  “I’m not sure about this,” she said, loading up her bag.

  “If you keep being negative I’ll have no choice but to rationalise my workforce,” said Darius.

  “Is that bad?” said Nat.

  “It is for you – you’ll be de-hired,” said Darius.

  “What?” said Nat.

  “Sacked.”

  “You can’t sack me. You’re my agent. I sack YOU,” said Nat crossly. “Aren’t you supposed to be making me famous?”

  “Later. Just hand out those cans.”

  Nat was way too shy to talk to six really popular kids, so she just gave them all to Flora Marling.

  “Is that the banned pop?” asked Flora.

  Nat went red. “Yeah. Oh, I’m sorry, don’t think I’m a bad person,” she stammered. “I’m only doing it for a good cause. There’s this pets’ home and—”

  “I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think you get cooler by the day,” said Flora, hiding the cans in her bag. “Thanks.”

  Nat spent the rest of the day floating on Flora Marling-scented air. Doing good is really great for your image, she thought.

  AT HAD TO ADMIT DARIUS’S EVIL POP SCHEME worked brilliantly. Over the next week the cans of dodgy drink proved irresistible to every kid at school. Demand for the fizzy menace skyrocketed, as did the price.

  Nat was pleased that they were building up a good fighting fund for the pets’ home, but a bit alarmed to learn that everyone thought SHE was the brains behind the pop scheme, not Dopey Darius.

  “I just did the advert,” she would say about a hundred times a day, when someone would ask her for a can, but everyone thought she was joking. Even worse, because it was banned, kids gave the pop a secret code word. They would ask for a can of NORMAL pop, and then wink at her.

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” she laughed to Penny one lunch break. “Being famous for doing a silly video, or being famous for flogging dodgy pop.”

  “Mmm,” said Penny, who seemed a bit distracted. She was looking like that a lot these days, thought Nat.

  “I mean, I don’t feel too bad about selling the pop – I’m just providing a service.”

  “Hmm,” said Penny, toying with a chip.

  “It’s like being famous,” said Nat.

  “Is it?” said Penny, staring off into space.

  “Famous people are providing a service too. People need to look at them. I mean, if no one wants you to be famous, you won’t be famous, stands to reason.”

  “I think I’m getting a stomach ache,” said Penny.

  “Is it the pizza?” asked Nat.

  “No,” said Penny, getting up to leave just as Julia Pryde and Trudi Button plonked themselves down by Nat, giggling.

  “Where are you going?” said Nat. But then she forgot all about Penny as Julia and Trudi started talking excitedly about what they were going to wear to the social event of the century: Flora Marling’s mega secret birthday pool party sleepover.

  As the week went on, Nat watched as Darius charged more and more money for each can. His masterstroke was starting a rumour that the last of the cans were almost gone. He was immediately mobbed in the playground by a gang of twitchy kids all offering him more pocket money.

  “But we’ve got lots of boxes of pop left,” said Nat as they walked to double geography, looking at Darius’s bulging, cash-filled pockets.

  “Don’t tell anyone that,” said Darius. “Have you seen the price I can get these days?” He patted his pockets and grinned. “Supply and demand. They’re my two new favourite words.”

  Nat had a sudden horrible vision of an adult Darius in a business suit sitting on top of a va
st evil business empire, finally able to build the underground lair of doom he’d always wanted. The world was NOT SAFE.

  “Maybe you should stop now,” she said.

  “I’m only doing it for the little ugly animals,” said Darius.

  Nat gave him a hard look. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Only, you seem to be wearing new trainers.”

  “I have expenses,” Darius said, looking shifty. “Anyway, I have to look smart so people trust me,” he continued, hurrying to class.

  But soon children who’d been drinking the pop began acting very oddly. Teachers were baffled. Lessons were being disrupted by kids shouting and running around and fighting and singing.

  “Zis is ein classroom, not ein stadium,” shouted a harassed Mr Frantz, the tiny old maths teacher one afternoon during a particularly manic lesson.

  “Vy are you all behaving like ze football hooligans?”

  He would have said more, but a few of the bigger boys had picked him up and were running around the class with him on their shoulders like he’d won the World Cup, chanting:

  “He does sums when he wants, he does sums when he wants, ohh, Mister Fra-antz, he does sums when he wants.”

  “I’m zo glad you like my lesson,” said Mr Frantz, confused. “Please put me down und ve can get on wiz fractions.”

  Soon even the children who hadn’t managed to get their hands on WAKE UP!!!! were getting caught up in the mad mood and joining in the school’s mayhem. Worse, the naughty kids who normally played truant decided that school finally seemed like a fun place to be and stopped hanging about in the shopping centre. The classrooms had never been so full.

  One day it took two hours to get everyone in from lunch break, and that didn’t include Benny Prefab from 7C who was doing press-ups in the flowerbeds until home time. He was last seen being carted off under Mr KitKat’s arm shouting: “I’m going for two thousand, don’t stop me!”

  Every day it got worse. The noise became terrible. Classrooms were in uproar. Books and pens and paper and bags and blazers and the less heavy teachers were chucked around willy-nilly.

  No work was done at all. Classes and corridors were a blur of running, giggling, jumping children who couldn’t sit still for more than a minute, along with the less brave teachers who didn’t fancy being passed about the place like a beachball.