Daizy Star and the Pink Guitar (4 page)

I slap his hand, and the stolen sausage plummets down into the water jug, where it sinks without trace.

‘Ouch,’ he says.

‘It’s not funny, Ethan!’ I growl.

‘How would you like it if you had to work in the fields all day long in the scorching sun, just to help your family put food on the table? How would you like not being able to read or write?’

Ethan shrugs. I should have guessed. Reading and writing is no big deal to a boy like him.

‘Do they have football over there?’ he asks.

‘No!’ I snap, although I think they probably do. Football is the kind of stupid game that finds its way just about everywhere.

Ethan blinks. ‘No football?’ he gasps. ‘That’s terrible!’

Beth flutters her eyelashes at him sweetly. ‘That’s what Daizy is trying to tell you,’ she explains. ‘Malawi is a developing country, and Daizy’s dad wants to go out there and help.’

‘Help?’ Ethan echoes.

‘Yes, help,’ Willow explains, a little breathlessly, squinting at Ethan. ‘He wants to build a school, dig a well, teach the kids.’

Willow was reading my sister Becca’s
TeenGal
magazine at the sleepover. There was a feature called ‘Flirting For Beginners’, with tips for speaking softly and sending lots of mushy glances towards the one you love. Willow needs a bit more practice with the glances. A lot more, actually.

‘Er … cool,’ Ethan says. ‘He could teach them football, right?’

‘Right,’ Willow squints.

‘Have you got something in your eye?’ Ethan asks.

Willow stops squinting and rolls her eyes up to the ceiling in exasperation. ‘No, I have not,’ she sighs. ‘Do you want my sausage?’

It didn’t say anything in
TeenGal
about sausages as a flirting technique, but it seems to do the trick with Ethan Miller. He grabs the sausage and swallows it down in three bites, and Beth offers him hers too. It’s kind of sad to see your two best friends fussing and flirting around a footy-mad bonehead like Ethan Miller, but they say love is blind.

‘And Daizy’s mum is a nurse,’ Willow rushes on. ‘So she could be really useful too. The whole family might have to go over.’

‘To Malawi?’ Ethan blinks.

‘To Malawi,’ Beth sighs. ‘It sucks, right?’

Ethan frowns. He actually looks slightly upset, but that may just be because I made him drop the stolen sausage into the water jug, of course. Not because he would miss me, or anything. Ethan Miller is not that kind of boy. He is probably just wondering who else he could wind up and annoy, if I ended up living in Malawi.

‘It’s not definite,’ I say. ‘I don’t suppose it will really happen. Mum doesn’t seem too keen.’

I push my plate away and reach for the bowl of steaming sponge pudding and chocolate sauce. Mmmm … I take one bite, but the warm, sweet sponge seems to stick in my throat. A pudding like this could keep a whole family in Malawi going for a week, probably.

I put my spoon down again, tasting guilt instead of chocolate.

Ethan is digging me in the ribs. ‘I could bring in a spare football from home, if that would help?’ he suggests. ‘For the kids over there.’

I glare at him. ‘The kids in Malawi don’t need footballs, they need schools and hospitals and wells and herds of goats!’

‘Goats?’ Ethan puzzles. ‘What do goats have to do with it?’

‘A herd of goats can keep a whole bunch of families in food and milk for years and years!’ I say. ‘Not to mention providing manure to help grow vegetables, and skins to make shoes and things.’

‘My uncle keeps goats,’ Ethan says. ‘He makes this really disgusting cheese.’

Cheese? I worry about Ethan Miller, sometimes. He has a brain like a grasshopper.

‘Maybe I could bring you in a goat?’ Ethan muses.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I snap. Ethan just doesn’t get it. He thinks he can fix everything with an old football and a goat. As if it could be that simple. ‘What use is one measly little goat? You’d need a whole herd of them …’

I trail away into silence. I can feel little cogs and wheels creaking away inside my brain, slowly, painfully.

It couldn’t be that simple … could it?

‘That’s it!’ I grin at Ethan. ‘That’s what I have to do! Raise the money to buy a herd of goats and dig a well and get medical supplies and school books and everything! And if I can do all of that, then maybe, just maybe, Dad will decide we don’t have to go out there!’

Beth is frowning. ‘Daizy,’ she says patiently. ‘You’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of pounds! How are you going to get that kind of money?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But I’ll think of something!’

‘I hope so,’ Willow says. ‘I don’t want you to go and live in Malawi.’

‘Me neither,’ Beth agrees.

‘Nor me,’ Ethan Miller adds.

Beth, Willow and I turn together and give him a long, hard stare. Ethan winks at me, and just for a moment I wonder if it would actually be worth living in Malawi for a year, just to get away from the most annoying boy in the whole, entire world.

As for the winking, that will have to stop right now. I don’t want Beth and Willow getting the wrong idea about me and Ethan Miller, like they did at the start of term when they thought I fancied him.

I mean … eeewwww!

This time, though, Beth and Willow just smile. Beth flutters her eyelashes, and Willow gives him that squinty look again and links an arm through his.

‘Don’t worry, Ethan,’ she says in that breathless, whispery voice. ‘We won’t let anything happen to Daizy.’

‘No way,’ Beth adds. ‘The three of us can work together to come up with a plan.’

Ethan looks slightly alarmed, but you do not argue with Beth and Willow. They tow him off towards the playground, plotting and whispering, and I am left alone in an empty lunch hall. I look down at my dish of sponge pudding and chocolate sauce.

It’s cold and soggy and disappointing, just like my life.

D
ad does not seem to be giving up on his Malawi dreams. I think he is trying to wear Mum down, win her over to the idea, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working.

‘Isn’t it what everybody wants in life?’ he says. ‘To say they have made a difference? Changed things for the better? Helped other people?’

‘You don’t have to go to Malawi to do that,’ Mum huffs. ‘I do those things every day, at work. It’s what a nurse does.’

Well, I suppose so. I can see it is not quite what Dad has in mind, though. Mum has just been telling us about one of her patients, who managed to nick a wheelchair and make a break for freedom, returning half an hour later with fish, chips and chocolate bars for the whole ward.

‘You can’t blame him,’ Mum had said. ‘Hospital food is not the best.’

‘Livvi, I know you love your job,’ Dad says. ‘But I want to do something to make a difference too.’

‘You did, when you were teaching,’ Mum says.

‘The children at Green Lane Community School did not want to be changed,’ Dad grumbles. ‘They just wanted to send text messages under the desk and read copies of
Hello
magazine whenever my back was turned. They were beyond help.’

‘Nobody is beyond help,’ Mum tells him, but I think she could be wrong. I think that Dad might be.

‘Malawi needs us,’ he says with passion, and Becca throws her maths homework in the bin and says that if Dad doesn’t give up on the whole idea, she is going to run off with her boyfriend Spike and join the circus.