by Nigel Smith
Dad beamed.
Nat choked on her prawn crackers. “What? How? WHY?”
“Dolores – that’s Miss Hunny to you, Nat – had the deciding vote. She was very good. She said it wasn’t fair to judge me on Nat’s party as that wasn’t an official school affair.”
Nat put a squidgy cushion on her head in despair.
“How is little Marcus Milligan, by the way?” said Mum, meaning the boy who bounced into a tree.
“Out of hospital days ago,” said Dad brightly. “He didn’t break himself too much at all.” Mum shook her head. “The air ambulance got him out of that tree very quickly,” added Dad. “They’re very good. Although the pilot did say I should give him a few days’ advance warning the next time I organised anything, which I thought was rude. Cuppa?”
Dad pottered about in the kitchen for a few minutes. He started singing. Badly.
“We probably shouldn’t tease your dad QUITE so much,” said Mum, smiling at Dad’s song-mangling efforts. “Everyone had a brilliant time at your party, which was the whole point of it. And both our neighbours have put their houses up for sale and I never liked them very much.”
Nat peeked out from under the cushion.
“Thing is,” continued Mum, “no matter how irritating or annoying or embarrassing he is, I can’t stay angry with him very long. He always makes me laugh.”
“I know,” said Nat. “It’s like Darius.”
“Annoying, isn’t it?” said Mum. “I guess we’re stuck with them.”
“Although Miss Hunny still hasn’t managed to get Darius out of that class and back into mine,” said Nat.
Then she grinned to herself. Darius was bringing in his one-legged pet frog tomorrow. A couple of older girls she didn’t like were terrified of frogs.
Dad came in with tea. “There’re no biscuits,” he said.
“Yeah, Nan was here,” said Nat.
“I’m going to have to break some bad news to the committee though,” Dad went on. “Kerri, Bonehead and Cabbage can’t do your school disco.”
It was all Nat could do to stop herself from punching the air in triumph. She had been dreading Dad arranging the end of term disco, as she knew he would never be able to resist getting on stage and making a total spanner of himself. But now, with his ‘celebrity’ friends unavailable, there was NO WAY the school would let him organise anything like a disco. For every cloud … she thought.
“Why can’t they do it?” Nat asked, just wanting to be sure they wouldn’t change their minds.
“Kerri got fired for prank-calling the Prime Minister and telling him she’d found his cat run over by a steamroller. She asked if she should just put a stamp on it and post it back to him.”
“It’s not often you hear the leader of a country sob on live radio,” said Mum. “Bonehead’s still missing on his charity swim up the Limpopo river,” continued Dad, “and Cabbage packed it all in to become an estate agent.”
“Poor Cabbage,” said Mum.
“There is some good news though,” Dad added, swigging his tea.
Nat held her breath, and prayed …
“I managed to persuade the committee to have a quiz night at school, just as long as I agreed not to actually run it. I thought that was a bit mean, but still, it should be fun. And if it all goes well, who knows, maybe they’ll let me do the disco after all.”
At the words ‘quiz night’, Nat stiffened like a cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way by a person they don’t like, who was wearing a glove made of dog.
“Urgh, I hate quizzes,” she said.
“But you like facts,” argued Dad.
Nat reluctantly admitted this was true. She quite liked facts. She just didn’t like Dad’s ideas.
“You’ll be even more pleased when you hear I made you a team captain.”
“WHAT?” yelled Nat.
“I still have a bit of influence,” said Dad smugly.
Mum chuckled into her tea. “See,” she said. “Your dad always makes me laugh. Told you.”
“But I won’t know the answers,” Nat complained. “And it’s in front of the whole school!”
“Not just the school,” said Dad proudly. “I’m selling tickets around town.” Nat buried her head in her hands.
“Anyway,” said Dad, “you don’t have to know all the answers. You’ll have a team. And because you’re captain, you get to pick your team members. I thought you’d be pleased!”
“I’m the OPPOSITE of pleased,” she shouted.
“But being team captain is the thing the cool kids do, right?”
“No, Dad, being football team captain is the thing the cool kids do, not spoddy quizzes. That’s just for swots and show-offs.”
“If you’re team captain, you can pick Darius and show everyone how clever he is,” said Mum thoughtfully. “If he’s as smart as you say he is, then show the whole school. Maybe get him back to your class.”
Nat and Dad stared at Mum in awe.
“Mum, you’re a genius,” said Nat. “Why couldn’t I have got your brains instead of Dad’s?” said Nat.
“Sorry about that,” said Dad, “but on the bright side, you got your Mum’s pretty face.”
Dad spent the rest of the night NOT being told off.
T BREAK NEXT DAY, AFTER DARIUS AND HOPPY the lopsided frog had chased soppy Trudy Merriweather around Mr MacAnuff’s organic vegetable plot enough times, Nat told Darius about her plan for the quiz. Nat wasn’t worried he’d say no because Darius never said no to anything.
Then she asked Miss Hunny to be on her team. She didn’t think Miss Hunny was that clever, but she was the only person in the universe who could make Darius sit still.
But now Nat had a problem. Quiz rules said she needed a pupil, teacher and parent on her team. Which parent to choose? The obvious choice was Dad. Dad loved quizzes, but was properly rubbish at them. Her favourite Dad answers to quiz questions were:
Q: What is created when you boil a kettle?
DAD: a hot kettle.
Q: Where are the Andes?
DAD: At the end of your wristies.
Q: What do you call a tribe in the desert who
travel all the time?
DAD: Gonads.
Sometimes she thought Dad said these things just to make her laugh, but in reality she suspected he was probably just plain daft. Either way, there was no way she was going to pick Dad and have another disaster on her hands. And she couldn’t ask Mum either because Mum got very cross when people asked her too many questions.
Nat was sitting in maths measuring angles badly and missing Darius when she had a new and even more brilliant idea. She looked at the back of Flora Marling’s blonde, perfect head, bent over her textbook. She knew just who to ask.
She got her chance in the games changing rooms that afternoon. Flora Marling’s boot laces came undone as they were trotting out on to the wet playing fields. Not noticing they had lost their leader, her minions ran on, leaving Flora Marling briefly alone. As she bent down to tie her laces, Nat made a beeline for her.
“You want my dad to go on a quiz team – with Darius Bagley and Miss Hunny?” Flora replied after a thoughtful pause. “He’d be totally shown up. They’re both complete dimwits. My father would look like a total muppet.”
Nat felt her face going red yet again, and looked for a nearby hole to crawl into. “He has degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne and Ulan Bator,” recited Flora. “He’d be totally humiliated.” Nat, twisting the toe of her boot into the soft grass, was about to mutter an apology when Flora Marling broke into a huge grin. “It sounds brilliant. I’ll make sure he says yes.”
She trotted off just as the sun broke through the clouds. A wet clod of earth smacked Nat on the back of her head and Nat chased Darius triumphantly round the running track until they were both given detentions.
“The Massive Brains Massive.”
“No.”
“The Champion Bounty Hunter Manga Question
Force.”
“No way.” There were only a few days to go before the quiz and Darius and Nat were throwing pennies at a wall round the back of the science block one break time. The one who got nearest took the other person’s penny. The game was officially banned but no one was watching. Darius tried again. “The Eat My Answer Quiz Doom Die, Losers, Die.”
Nat went over and scooped up two pennies. “I am not calling my quiz team The Eat My Answer Quiz Doom Die, Losers, Die. It’s stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
“No, you’re stupid.”
“You’re both stupid for playing this game when there are teachers about,” said Mr MacAnuff, appearing from behind a bush. He was wearing his vest again, along with cut-off jeans, and had been wandering around outside Miss Hunny’s window trying to catch her attention.
“You’re not a teacher,” said Darius calmly.
Mr MacAnuff hissed like a steam pudding. “Say that again …” he said, in a dangerous voice.
“You’re not a teacher,” said Darius, saying it again.
“I’m more of a teacher than YOU,” replied the caretaker, a bit childishly, in Nat’s opinion. “Come with me now, or I will report you to the Head.”
Neither Nat or Darius could argue with that, so they followed him all the way to his prized lawn. Neither of them could see anything wrong with it. But Mr MacAnuff was definitely looking at something.
“Cock’s foot,” he said savagely.
Nat and Darius looked at each other.
“He’s finally cracked,” whispered Darius. “It’s because his vest is too tight. Cut off the blood supply to his brain. He’s gone mad …”
Nat giggled.
The caretaker gave Darius a stare of pure evil, and carried on. “Creeping Bent. Onion Crouch.” The man’s face darkened as he hissed, “Yorkshire fog.”
“I think I’d rather have a detention,” whispered Nat to Darius, a little alarmed.
“Weeds,” said Mr MacAnuff, handing them tiny, tiny garden forks. “Always weeds. Waiting to pop up and strangle the life out of The Lawn. Anything that doesn’t look like a blade of grass – kill it.”
Darius liked the sound of that and set to work immediately. Nat sighed and snatched up a tiny fork.
They worked together for a while in silence, then Nat saw Darius stop. He was staring at a bunch of bigger boys jostling each other near Mr MacAnuff’s shed. They had seen Darius and were shouting things at him. Not very nice things. She was used to being teased because of her name, but this seemed much nastier. This was vicious.
The biggest kid was a mean-looking boy Nat knew was called Wayne Garvey. He was smacking his fist into his palm. “Coming back for some more?” he shouted. From behind his shed, Mr MacAnuff told Wayne to get lost. Nat didn’t think Mr MacAnuff sounded quite as brave as when he was telling her and Darius off. Finally Garvey and his equally unpleasant-looking mates sloped off, laughing and spitting on the grass.
“How is it in that new class?” Nat asked quietly.
Darius stabbed a weed savagely. “It’s all right,” he said.
Nat didn’t believe him and just hoped her quiz idea paid off. They worked on in silence till the bell went and they both trudged back inside.
“How’s your general knowledge coming on?” asked Dad that night.
“I’m busy,” said Nat. She was sprawled on the sofa. She had the TV remote in her left hand, flicking. She was playing her DS with her right hand and had an earphone from her iPod shoved in her left ear. With Darius, Miss Hunny and Mr Doctor Marling on her team, she knew she could sit back and let them do the answering for anything she didn’t know. Easy.
Dad raised an eyebrow.
Nat took her earphone out and tapped an encyclopaedia that she’d been pretending to read. “Good,” said Dad. “Don’t forget the individual round.”
Nat looked at him in shock. “You said it was a team game,” she said.
“It is, but the captains have to answer questions on their own, didn’t I tell you?”
“WHAT?? No, you did not! Test me, test me,” she said, panicking.
“What’s an alkali?” Dad asked. “Someone from the Middle East?” she answered wrongly.
“What’s the capital of Spain?” asked Dad.
“Del Monte,” said Nat quickly.
“Hmmm, not quite right, love. Still, don’t worry, those questions won’t come up,” said Dad.
Nat jumped on him and grabbed his head in her hands. “You KNOW what the questions are?” she demanded.
“Not KNOW exactly,” he said, squirming, “but I’ve got Eric from the Nelson’s Arms to do the quiz mastering and he does tend to use the same questions every week. The regulars don’t mind because they always get everything right and it impresses everybody else.”
“You have to tell me the answers, Dad, I’m SERIOUS. You just have to.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’ll help Darius,” she said craftily. “I’ll show him the answers too.”
“I don’t think you’ll need to,” said Dad. “Miss Hunny thinks he’s so bright he’s off the scale.”
“I’ll show them to Miss Hunny then – she’s thick.”
“No, she’s not. She was on University Challenge.”
This was getting worse. Nat was set to be properly shown up. She had one more card to play. It was embarrassing, it was humiliating, but she had no choice.
“Dad. Do you want me – your little girl – to sit there, in front of ALL THOSE PEOPLE and be shown up as a complete idiot? You’ll look like a bad dad.”
Dad looked worried.
Nat knew he hated being thought of as a bad dad. “It’ll look like you never did any homework with me, and we just sit around eating pork pies on toast, playing top trumps and watching comedy programmes.” Dad looked sick. Nat cunningly had just described Dad’s idea of a perfect evening.
“Or worse,” she said, warming to the topic now she realised she was winning, “they’ll think you don’t do any homework with me because you go to the pub all the time.”
Dad went to the pub exactly once a week, on a Tuesday. He only went to see his mates Monkey Dave and Posh Barry and he only had a couple of pints but he still felt guilty about it because Nathalia made him feel guilty about it. Wednesday morning she would always say things like, “How’s your head?” or “What time did you crawl back last night, then?” or even “You know I can’t go to sleep until I hear you’re home safely.”
“All right,” he said, giving in. “There’s a quiz night at the pub next week. I suppose I could bring the questions home.” Nat clapped her hands in joy. “But I’m not telling you the answers,” he said uncomfortably. “That would be cheating.”
Thanks to Dad being such a soft touch, this was going to be a doddle …
T WAS THE NIGHT OF THE QUIZ, AND THE HALL WAS full. The teams were assembling on the stage and Nat was looking and feeling confident. Even Dad couldn’t ruin tonight, thought Nat, as they’d only let him help with the sound, on the grounds he couldn’t do much harm there. A screech of deafening feedback rang out across the hall. Three hundred people clapped their hands over their ears in agony.
“This quiz is such a bold and exciting event for the school,” the Head was saying to the Chairman of the Governors, from their reserved seats at the front.
“Blooming barmy,” shouted the Chair over the feedback. “I don’t know what the man’s thinking about, trying to bring together people at school like this. It’ll never work.”
Just then, Mr Kitkat the bearded drama and media teacher came over to them. “I’ve fixed up the video camera,” he said. “We can put it up on the school’s website tomorrow.”
“That reminds me,” said the Chair, raising his voice more loudly. “I tried to get on to the website yesterday.”
Nathalia, on stage with her team-mates, was now shouting instructions at Dad. The Chair shouted louder still as the feedback got worse.
“I just got a me
ssage that read ‘I am the champion bounty hunter, die, losers, die’ and a video of a dancing bare backside. My wife saw it and had to lie down.”
“We’ve taken the website down and we’re holding a full investigation,” said the Head.
“What? Can’t hear you above that awful noise,” said the Chair. “What you should do of course is compare bottoms. The culprit’s bottom is out there. You should line everyone up and see which one matches.”
Mrs Trout frowned. “What?” she said.
Darius hopped off the stage, flicked a couple of switches and the howling noise stopped, just as the Chair yelled,
“Bottoms. I want to see bottoms.”
There was a horrible silence. Everyone turned towards him. The Chair glared at Darius.
“Tell Ivor to get a move on,” said the Head, changing the subject. “I don’t like the look of this crowd.”
She had a point. Dad had suggested the quiz thinking it would bring cooperation to the school but in reality it had just brought competition. Which, as Nat had tried to tell him, brings out the worst in most people. There were four teams competing in the quiz, and they all wanted to win. And all the teams had friends and family in the audience – and they wanted them to win too. It was like putting four rival football teams in one stadium and chucking in a ball. Most sensible referees would then run away, really fast.
Mr Kitkat the bearded drama and media teacher turned on the video camera and got close-ups of the teams. Nat saw it was about to begin and put her hand in her pocket nervously. Her fingers closed round the bit of paper with her answers on. Last night, Dad had given her Eric the Quizmaster’s questions just as he had promised, and she’d carefully looked up all the answers. She felt fully quizzed up. A tiny part of her – like, a hair’s worth – felt a bit cheaty, but the massive rest of her was pretty relieved, especially as she looked at the opposition.
At last it was time to introduce the teams. Team One, The Quiz Park Rangers, was made up of Mr MacAnuff, who was delighted to have confirmed with this place on the team that he was, in fact, a teacher, if only according to Eric the Quizmaster; Marcus Milligan, whose arm was still in plaster after trampolining into the tree at Nat’s party; Mr Fletcher, the father of nut-allergy boy Stanley; and Trixie Merriweather, the girl tormented by Darius’s frog. All four of them, for their own reasons, were glowering at Nat and Darius. This contest was getting personal.