Daizy Star and the Pink Guitar (2 page)
Read Daizy Star and the Pink Guitar Online
Authors: Cathy Cassidy
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-194671-9
Contents
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B
irthday cake for breakfast is almost always a good thing … unless the cake is sunken and solid, with all the flavour of a wholemeal house brick. I gnaw on my slice politely, curled up on the sofa playing Pictionary with Beth and Pixie while Willow stretches out on the carpet, playing a computer game on Dad’s laptop.
If Mum was here, she’d dispose of the cake quickly and quietly and whip up something yummy, but sadly, she’s on early shift at the hospital today.
‘This looks delicious …’ Beth tells Pixie kindly, selecting the smallest possible piece. ‘You are clever!’
‘It’s easy,’ Pixie shrugs. ‘Just like making mud pies, really!’
‘Mud pies?’ Beth blinks, then slides her plate out of sight behind the sofa when she thinks nobody is looking.
‘But with stewed dates and roasted linseeds instead of mud, of course,’ Pixie reassures her. ‘Dad says they are superfoods, designed to make you glow with health. I’m glad you like it.’
‘It’s very … um … unusual,’ Beth says weakly.
My little sister takes a piece of cake and bites into it, grinning. Then her face crumples. ‘It’s all gritty!’ she howls, throwing down the cake in disgust. ‘Ugh!’
‘That’ll be the roasted linseeds,’ I sigh. ‘Never mind, Pixie. This healthy-eating kick of Dad’s is a nightmare. I wish he’d just get back to normal.’
‘Normal’ is not a word you could use about my dad, though. Not lately, anyhow. Ever since he packed in his job as a geography teacher at a local secondary school a while back, he has been acting very strangely indeed.
My big sister Becca says it is a mid-life crisis.
If you don’t know what a mid-life crisis is, then trust me, you are very, very lucky, because it is NOT a good thing. It’s actually quite sad and tragic, and deeply annoying at the same time.
Becca says that some men have a mid-life crisis when they get to about forty and realize they are getting old and grey and wrinkly, so I expect that’s what has happened to Dad. He keeps having these deeply scary ideas for making his dreams come true, which is bad news because Dad’s dreams are a bit like everyone else’s nightmares.
‘Let’s bin it,’ Pixie decides. ‘Dad will never know!’
Dad is out on his morning run, which means we are safe for a while, so I tip the remains of the yucky cake into the outside bin. I hope that this won’t affect my birthday wish coming true.
I run upstairs and knock on Becca’s bedroom door.
‘Yeah?’ she yells over the racket of clashy, trashy punk music. I step inside. Becca’s room is a twilight zone of black and red net and wall-to-wall posters of scary-looking bands. Becca is sitting on the bed, painting her fingernails black.
‘Becca …’ I say. ‘Bit of a problem. We tried to eat the cake Dad and Pixie made …’
‘Ouch,’ Becca says, rolling her eyes. She reaches under the bed and pulls out her emergency jar of instant hot chocolate, along with a bag of marshmallows. My big sister is a great believer in the healing powers of hot chocolate, and luckily she is also very good at sharing.
The two of us are in the kitchen, dropping marshmallows on to steaming mugs of hot chocolate, when the doorbell rings.
‘Surprise!’ says Murphy Malone, my best boy mate. He is standing on the doorstep carrying a plate piled high with custard doughnuts, with random birthday candles flickering in the November breeze. ‘I wasn’t sure what to get you, so I just took the easy option …’
‘It’s perfect!’ I tell him. I blow the candles out because I am not about to miss a second chance to make my wish come true and discover my star quality. Then I drag Murphy into the living room where Beth, Willow and Pixie fall on the doughnut mountain like a pack of starving wolves, with Becca and me close behind.
Custard doughnuts and hot chocolate … now
that’s
a birthday breakfast.
Murphy lives just over the street from me – we’ve been friends for ages. He is not all annoying like some boys I could mention. He is into cool clothes and funny haircuts and bands that nobody else has heard of, and he’s kind and funny and has never, ever put a worm down the back of my sweatshirt, the way Ethan Miller did back in Year Three. He also has a serious addiction to custard doughnuts, which is obviously very useful at moments like these.
‘So …’ Murphy asks, licking the sugar off his lips. ‘How was the girly sleepover?’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘We stayed up till midnight watching Disney DVDs. We painted our toenails every colour of the rainbow and dressed up in tiaras and fairy wings, eating pizza and choc chip muffins. And this morning, Willow chucked my alarm clock in the pond. The usual, really.’
‘Er … cool,’ Murphy says. ‘I think.’
‘It was. Have you seen what Mum and Dad got me?’ I pick up the pink guitar and strum a long rock solo, shaking my head about so that my hair whirls around like a whole bunch of snakes doing the hula. Luckily, the amp is not plugged in this time, so Murphy doesn’t have to cover his ears.
‘Looks amazing,’ Murphy says, biting into his fourth custard doughnut. ‘You should start a band!’
‘Oh, I will!’ I tell him, grinning. ‘As soon as I’ve learnt to play!’
Willow looks at her watch. ‘Mum will be here to pick me up soon,’ she says. ‘Shall I shut this laptop down?’
I flop down on to the floor beside her.
‘I’ll do it.’ I click a couple of times, then frown as I spot a file I’ve never seen before on Dad’s laptop. It says
Africa Project
. A little niggle of worry unravels inside me.
Of course, an ex-geography teacher has every right to have a file on his laptop called
Africa Project
. It is probably crammed with dusty old graphs on the rainfall of the Kalahari Desert and essays on farming in the Congo – nothing but yawn-making facts. Probably.
But then again, nothing Dad does is normal any more. I can’t help remembering his last crazy plan.
Before I can help myself, I click the file open. Inside are lots of documents about a place called Malawi. It looks a lot like a geography teacher’s research project. When I open one of the documents, the screen fills with photos. A vast blue lake, a scorching savannah, smiling villagers in bright print wraps, and image after image of lions, elephants, leopards, rhinos …
Beth, Willow, Murphy, Pixie and Becca crowd round the screen.
‘Wow,’ Beth says. ‘Is your dad planning a holiday? A safari?’
‘Doubt it,’ Becca huffs. ‘We just don’t
do
holidays like that. We had a day trip to Eastbourne this summer, remember?’
‘But he’s changed lately,’ Willow reminds us. ‘He’s got all adventurous, hasn’t he?’
‘Kind of,’ I admit uneasily.
‘He wants to travel and see the world,’ Pixie chips in.
That’s definitely true. Dad talks a lot about getting out of the rat race and following his dreams. A long-haul holiday to Africa might be exactly the kind of thing he would plan, now he is in the grip of the mid-life crisis. Mightn’t it?
Before we have time to discuss any more, Dad comes in from his run, wobbly and purple-faced. ‘Hello, kids!’ he gasps. ‘Anyone for a nice wheatgrass and celery smoothie?’
‘No thanks,’ I say quickly. I’ve tried Dad’s wheatgrass and celery smoothies before. They taste like something you might use to clean the sink.
‘Dad …’ Pixie says. My little sister is bursting with excitement. In her shining eyes I can see visions of giraffes and wildebeest, lions and leopards. ‘Dad … are we
really
going on a safari holiday to Africa?’
The smile freezes on Dad’s face as he sees the open laptop, the photos and files. He is looking shifty now, as well as purple-faced.
‘Um … not exactly a safari holiday …’ he admits.
Pixie’s shoulders slump, and Becca folds her arms, her face stern.
‘I can explain,’ Dad says. ‘I wasn’t going to mention it yet, not until things were definite, but …’
Beth, Willow and Murphy look at Dad brightly, waiting for the explanation. But me? Seriously, I do not want to know. There’s a cold, sour swirl of fear in my tummy that tells me I’m not going to like this.
I’m not going to like it at all.
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