Skellig

Chapter 23

MRS. DANDO CALLED THAT MORNING just after breakfast. She came on her bike on her way to school. She said my pals were looking forward to getting me back again.

“They say you’re the best tackler in the school,” she said.

Dad showed her all the work we’d done on the house. We showed her the backyard. She said everything would be bright and new for when the baby came home. She took her bag off her back. She took out a little cuddly black bear for Dad to give to the baby.

“And there’s this for you,” she laughed. “Sorry!”

It was a folder of homework from Rasputin and Monkey: worksheets with gaps to fill in and questions to answer. There was a note from Miss Clarts. (No real homework. Write a story. Get well soon!) There were sheets of math problems and a book called Julius and the Wilderness with a red sticker on the back.

Dad laughed as we watched her cycle away.

“No rest for the wicked, eh, son?” he said. “I’ll do the decorating. You get on with your work.”

I got a pen and took the work along the street to Mina’s front garden. She was sitting with her mum on the blanket underneath the tree. Her mum was reading, Mina was scribbling fast in a black book. She grinned and beckoned me over the wall when she saw me standing there.

Mina looked at the worksheets.

There was sentence after sentence like that.

Mina read the sentences out loud.

She said, “Blank blank blank,” in a singsong voice when she came to the dashes.

She stopped after the first three sentences and just looked at me.

“Is this really the kind of thing you do all day?” she said.

“Mina,” said her mum.

Mina giggled. She flicked through the book. It was about a boy who tells magical tales that turn out to be true.

“Yeah, looks good,” she said. “But what’s the red sticker for?”

“It’s for confident readers,” I said. “It’s to do with reading age.”

“And what if other readers want to read it?”

“Mina,” said her mum.

“And where would William Blake fit in?” said Mina. “ ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night.’ Is that for the best readers or the worst readers? Does that need a good reading age?”

I stared back at her. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to get back over the wall and go home again.

“And if it was for the worst readers would the best readers not bother with it because it would be too stupid for them?” she said.

“Mina,” said her mum. She was smiling gently at me. “Take no notice,” she said. “She’s a bit uppity sometimes.”

“Well,” said Mina.

She went back to scribbling in the black book again.

She looked up at me.

“Go on, then,” she said. “Do your homework, like a good schoolboy.”

Her mum smiled again.

“I’ll get on inside,” she said. “You tell her to shut up if she starts getting at you again. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

After she’d gone we said nothing for ages. I pretended to read Julius and the Wilderness, but it was like the words were dead and meaningless.

“What you writing?” I said at last.

“My diary. About me and you and Skellig,” she said.

She didn’t look up.

“What if somebody reads it?” I said.

“Why would they read it? They know it’s mine and it’s private.”

She scribbled again.

I thought about our diaries at school. We filled them in every week. Every so often, Miss Clarts checked that they were neat and the punctuation was right and the spellings were right. She gave us marks for them, just like we got marks for attendance and punctuality and attitude and everything else we did. I said nothing about this to Mina. I went on pretending to read the book. I felt tears in my eyes. That made me think about the baby and doing that just made the tears worse.

“I’m sorry,” said Mina. “I really am. One of the things we hate about schools is the sarcasm that’s in them. And I’m being sarcastic.”

She squeezed my hand.

“It’s so exciting,” she whispered. “You, me, Skellig. We’ll have to go to him. He’ll be waiting for us. What shall we take for him?”