How I Saved the World in a Week Read online

  ‘Yeah,’ he says and passes me an empty drinks can. ‘Just hold this for a second, will you?’ He has very dark curly hair and his bottom lip sticks right out. He holds what looks like a piece of plastic piping.

  ‘What’s that for?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he says. He rubs the plastic pipe with a cloth he takes from his pocket and then he says, ‘Okay, put the can on the ground.’

  He moves the pipe towards the can and it immediately starts to roll away. Then he moves the pipe to the other side of the can and this time it rolls back the way it came.

  ‘How are you doing that?’ I ask, and he answers me with a grin. He moves the can back and forth – never touching it – controlling it with the pipe this way and that until a gust of wind takes the can clattering off. He bounds off after it and I think that he won’t come back but he returns beside me moments later.

  ‘Cool, huh? Want to have a go?’ He hands me the pipe and cloth. ‘You’re Billy, right? I’m Anwar. We’re in the same class,’ he says as I make the can roll.

  I worry for a moment that he’s going to ask me about why I had started school so late in the year or where had I moved from – questions I don’t want to answer. But he doesn’t ask me anything. Instead we just play with the can, shifting it back and forth, until it keeps getting carried off by a breeze.

  ‘It doesn’t work when it’s too windy,’ Anwar says.

  ‘Well – thanks,’ I say, a little awkwardly, handing him the pipe. I walk back towards the wall. But as I do, Anwar walks with me.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ he says, although it’s not so much a question to me, but to himself. His eyes glance upwards as though he’s examining the options in his brain.

  ‘Bob,’ he says finally.

  ‘Bob?’

  ‘Have you met Bob yet?’

  * * *

  Bob has twitching whiskers, ink-drop eyes and a tiny wrinkled nose.

  He has such soft fur that it tickles me as he walks along the line of my underarm.

  Bob is golden brown and has a fleck of pink for a tail.

  He is, of course, a hamster, which I didn’t know until Anwar ran over to his cage, shouting ‘Bob!’ and plucked Bob from his food bowl and let him run from one hand to the other.

  We’ve snuck into the Year 3 classroom where Bob lives. He’s only supposed to be for the Year 3s, Anwar tells me, and we’re not allowed to be in here really, but Anwar has been coming back to visit Bob over the years.

  ‘When I was in this class,’ Anwar says, ‘I used to make him things to do – like the longest tunnel out of about fifty old toilet rolls – or once I made him a kind of seesaw. And a tightrope – but he didn’t really like that. I don’t think the Year Threes do anything for him like that, they just want to pet him and cuddle him, but Bob needs some excitement.’

  I can’t help but smile. Anwar reminds me of how Sylvia used to be. How she’d always be on the lookout for exciting things for us to do. How she’d get carried away showing me how to make something and so time would just disappear. For a moment I imagine that she’s there with me, I can almost smell her. I feel a hollow pit in my stomach, and my eyes burn, so I quickly shake off the memories.

  ‘Well… should we do something fun for him now?’ I suggest.

  ‘Yes, Billy!’ Anwar says and I smile. We look around the classroom for inspiration – it’s not long until we both settle on the large water tank in the corner of the room.

  We make a boat out of an old food container – we looked at quite a few different options from things lying around the classroom before deciding this was the best one: it would take Bob’s weight easily and it had high enough sides and so hopefully he wouldn’t fall over the edge into the water.

  ‘If he does go over,’ Anwar says, ‘we’ll just fish him out straightaway. A little bit of water won’t hurt you, will it, Bob?’

  We fill the tank and then set Bob on the water in his little plastic boat.

  At first, he doesn’t move – I think he’s getting used to the motion of the boat as it swings gently from side to side – but then he starts sniffing around the plastic container as it drifts around the tank.

  ‘You’re a pirate now, Bob,’ Anwar says.

  That’s the moment we’re caught.

  ‘What are you two doing in here?’ says a deep-barrelled voice. ‘Outside, now!’ the teacher roars.

  Anwar and I look at each other, both unsure of what to do. If we step away from the tank to face the teacher then he will be able to see Bob in the boat.

  ‘Outside!’ From the way he speaks I can tell the teacher isn’t used to people not doing what he tells them to do right away.

  He marches over to us and peers over at the tank.

  ‘What on earth…’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Belvedere,’ Anwar says solemnly. He points towards Bob who, whiskers twitching, explores the hull of his plastic ship, oblivious to it all. ‘No animals were harmed in the making of this boat.’

  Mr Belvedere has a funny little moustache and at first, it starts to bristle and tremor and then it wobbles violently before he begins really shouting at us.

  He tells us that we are a disgrace, he tells us that we don’t even know how much trouble we are in, he tells us that he can’t believe how stupid we are. Once he starts shouting, it’s as though he cannot stop himself. He’s a tornado of shouting.

  ‘You’re both going to the head immediately,’ he says finally. ‘I don’t expect anything less from you, Anwar, but you… you—’ For the first time he realizes that he doesn’t even know who I am. ‘Who are you? What’s your name? What class are you in?’

  I mumble a reply.

  ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ he asks me.

  I nod.

  ‘And this is how you choose to spend your first day at this school? It’s not a good start, is it? I’d think very carefully about who your friends are and how you want to spend the rest of this year.’

  I look down at my feet.

  ‘Now, follow me this instant. Both of you.’

  ‘But, Mr Belvedere,’ Anwar says.

  ‘Silence! I said follow me – nothing else.’

  ‘But shouldn’t I put Bob back in his cage?’ Anwar asks and looks over to the golden hamster still bobbing in the water tank.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ the teacher says. ‘I think that you’ve done enough.’

  He reaches roughly into the water tank and makes a grab for Bob. Then he shrieks loudly.

  ‘He bit me! He just bit me!’

  I really want to laugh, I can feel it tingling inside my belly. All I would need to do is open my mouth and I know that it would come ringing out. I clamp a hand over my lips to stop myself.

  ‘I’ll put him back,’ Anwar says and Mr Belvedere doesn’t speak as Anwar scoops Bob up gently and returns him to his cage.

  We follow Mr Belvedere to the head’s office but she’s in a meeting and so we have to wait outside.

  ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes when you’ll need to explain yourselves to Mrs Oglivie and we’ll decide what to do with the pair of you. Neither of you are to move or speak.’

  He stamps off, huffing with every step.

  As soon as he’s turned the corner, Anwar looks over to me. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble on your first day.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I whisper back. ‘It was worth it.’

  ‘I think Bob enjoyed it.’

  ‘He definitely did. He really didn’t want to leave that boat.’

  Anwar snorts with laughter which makes the school secretary glare over at us.

  ‘I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,’ she says to us.

  But I don’t care that we’re in trouble, I don’t care that everyone’s cross with us because there’s one thing that I’m suddenly sure of that makes everything seem all right: I have a friend.

  HOW TO SHARE

  Anwar lives in a flat not far from Steve’s house and so we’ve got into the habit of wa
lking home together each day in the last month. It sometimes takes us much longer than it should because Anwar often spots things that he wants to investigate as we walk along.

  Today it’s a petrol-coloured beetle in the bush of someone’s front garden.

  ‘Look at the size of it!’ he exclaims as it scampers over his fingers. It looks like a jewel, in a colour in between green and purple, shiny and iridescent. It opens its wings and flies off with a buzz back on to the open flower of a pink rose with petals that are starting to shed and fall away.

  ‘Have you ever seen a beetle like that?’ he asks me.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Want to come up?’ he asks casually when we get to his block.

  ‘Better not,’ I say. ‘Steve’s still being a bit funny about the Bob thing.’ Steve had wanted to have a ‘serious chat’ when the school contacted him to tell him what had happened on my first day.

  ‘I think you’d better stay clear of this Anwar character,’ he’d told me.

  ‘He’s not a character,’ I said hotly. ‘He’s… he’s my friend.’

  ‘You don’t need friends that get you into trouble,’ Steve said.

  But that hadn’t stopped us. At school, Anwar and I spent as much time together as we could and we would walk home on the days that Anwar didn’t stay behind late for Science Club.

  ‘Oh, he’ll get over that,’ Anwar replies. ‘Parents forget. Or I’ve found you can usually wear them down over time. You just have to be persistent. Or a pest. One of the two.’

  I grin.

  ‘Well, see you Monday, then,’ I say.

  ‘Not Monday!’ Anwar groans. ‘Let’s do something over the weekend. Are you doing anything?’

  I think of the next two days stretching ahead of me with nothing to fill them. No adventures. No Sylvia. Only Steve and I, not being able to talk to each other. I’ve been thinking about ways to keep practising things from How to Survive, but I don’t know how to without Steve finding out. I’m starting to worry that I’m beginning to forget the things that Sylvia had taught me. But I know I must find a way. I’ve been thinking about Rule number five for some time now: Never stop trying – you must never give up!

  ‘No, actually. I don’t have any plans,’ I say.

  ‘Well, let’s meet up. I’ve got some experiments I want to try out that need two pairs of hands. Or at least someone else to witness them. Tell Steve it’s educational or something. Parents love that.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say with a smile. ‘You’re on.’ And then I have a thought.

  ‘Spit it out!’ Anwar says, seeing the look on my face.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Whatever it is that you’re thinking of saying… I know you, Billy Weywood, you’ve had a thought.’

  ‘Well… it’s just silly. I just wondered if maybe, as well as doing your experiments, whether we could do some other kind of experiments too… Like survival skill things? Making fire, shelters… things like that…’ I tail off. What if Anwar thinks I’m mad, just like Steve thinks Sylvia is?

  But Anwar’s eyes widen. ‘Do you know how to do things like that?’

  ‘A bit,’ I say. ‘Sylvi— I mean, my mum taught me a lot.’

  ‘Amazing. Yes! Teach me.’

  Relief rushes through me. I should have known Anwar would understand. He’s nothing like Steve or the other grown-ups judging Sylvia.

  ‘She knew so much,’ I tell him. ‘She had this book. It’s this old kind of book really – she found it in a second-hand bookshop when she was about our age and it’s got loads of great techniques for how to do things. Sylvia said it’s the best survival guide out there. I’ve got it now, she left it with me. We can use that to learn how to do stuff.’

  Anwar nods so enthusiastically it looks like his head might fall off his body.

  ‘Bring it along, I can’t wait to see it. I just wanted to make parachutes but your book sounds more interesting.’

  ‘It’s my mum’s book really. I’m just borrowing it.’

  I pause for a moment but before I think any more, I hear the words flowing from me. Suddenly I want to tell Anwar everything. Maybe because he never asks me questions about Sylvia or my life before I came here, it makes it easier to talk to him about her.

  ‘I used to live with my mum before I moved here. But there was an accident and so we got separated. That’s why I live with Steve and started at school so late in the year. I haven’t seen her for about a month now and… and… I don’t know when I’m going to see her again. But she managed to get the book to me. She found out where Steve was living and threw stones at my window and so I knew it was her. And then I found How to Survive left under the bin for me.’

  It feels good to be able to tell someone. It’s as if it makes it real and not just a story that I have made up and am telling myself over and over.

  ‘Did you get to see her when she left the book?’

  ‘No – she was hiding. She had to keep hidden from Steve because he won’t let her see me. Not yet anyway – because of the… the accident. But it had to be her.’

  Anwar nods. I know that he believes me.

  ‘Well, definitely bring your mum’s book this weekend,’ he says.

  As I walk the final bit of the way back to Steve’s house, I realize that I feel lighter than I have in a long time. I don’t just have a friend, I have a best friend.

  HOW (NOT) TO MEET YOUR DAD’S GIRLFRIEND

  ‘Billy! Billy? Are you ready? They’ll be here soon!’ Steve yells up the stairs.

  Even though the walls of our house are so thin that he has no need to yell, he shouts. He can’t seem to do anything quietly.

  Steve will crash through a room.

  His footsteps fall heavily on the stairs.

  His breath whistles.

  He can’t stop himself from sighing loudly in humphs and gasps.

  I can hear him right now, humming along to the radio downstairs; he thinks he is doing it to himself but I can hear every off-key note.

  Sylvia could move around a room without a sound.

  I think of her as a cat – a silent prowler, padded paws in place of feet. Often she’d surprise me by appearing behind me as if out of nowhere. She’d ruffle my hair and I’d startle, thinking I was alone.

  But now that we’re not together, when it’s all quiet and still, I’ll feel my neck straining round to look for her. Waiting for her to appear. But now the shock comes because she’s not there, because she won’t surprise me.

  ‘They’ll be here soon,’ Steve bellows again.

  My bedroom door quivers.

  ‘Billy? Did you hear me?’

  I can hear Steve, of course, but I stay where I am.

  Steve first mentioned to me that he had a girlfriend last night. It came as a surprise because although I’d been living with him for a couple of months now, Steve hadn’t mentioned her at all and had never been to see her that I’d known of. I’d been about to go to bed. I thought he was just going to say goodnight but instead he blurted out: ‘There’s a couple of people I’d really like you to meet tomorrow’ and held my gaze with large, worried eyes.

  When I didn’t say anything, he muttered, ‘my girlfriend’ and then looked away to the floor.

  ‘You have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Julie,’ Steve said. ‘She’s very nice. She can’t wait to meet you. I didn’t want to spring this all on you, too soon – after… everything.’

  ‘I said that I’d meet Anwar…’

  ‘You see him every day at school.’ Steve pursed his lips and then blurted out: ‘I want you here to meet them. You’re not spending the whole weekend with Anwar.’

  ‘But—’ I’d tried to protest.

  ‘That’s final, Billy,’ Steve said.

  ‘Who’s the other person?’ I suddenly thought to ask.

  ‘She has a daughter, your age. Angharad.’

  ‘Oh,’ I’d said because there didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  ‘Billy? Are y
ou okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I’d answered, but I spent the whole night thinking about it.

  I can’t really describe how I feel about it now other than I know that I don’t really want them to come round. I don’t want to get to know them and have to talk to them and pretend that everything is normal.

  So instead I lie across my bed at an angle, my arms and head hanging off one side of it.

  From where I am, I can see out of the window, its glass flecked with diagonal dashes of rain. It feels like it’s always raining here. There are rows and rows of little houses all squashed up, going up the hill. They lean into each other as though they are holding one another up, huddling together for protection against the weather.

  A man is walking, trudging, up the hill. His face is grey with effort; it’s so without colour that it almost looks like he could be wearing a Halloween mask. One that’s made of rubber, making his cheeks sag and look like half-deflated balloons.

  The wind and the rain surge all around him like a whip that flails and lashes and could land just about anywhere; just one nudge here, and another there and it could throw him off balance. The weather feels on edge, as though the rain and the wind could tip over at any moment into a full-blown storm.

  I reach down to turn another page of How to Survive, that’s lying open on the floor in front of me. Reading the book seems to calm me somehow, it makes me feel closer to Sylvia.

  ‘Billy? What are you doing up there?’

  Steve again.

  I turn another page of the book and stare hard at the words but they blur in front of me, turning into just shapes and shadows. I’m not really reading any more.

  There’s a little voice inside of me that’s asking quietly whether maybe I should go downstairs. Try and be ‘normal’. Make Steve happy.

  I hear Steve stomp across the kitchen and open the oven door. Then there’s the shuffle and a clang that means he’s checking on what’s cooking in there. Slam! The oven door closes.

  I turn back to the yellowed pages of How to Survive and read: