Darcy Burdock Book 3

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Special Chapter

  Special Acknowledgements

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Laura Dockrill

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Hi So Much and hold your unicorns - you need to read my third book NOW!

  My name is Darcy. I see the extraordinary in the everyday and the wonder in the world around me.

  Why is my new pet more angry dumpling than cute kitty?

  Must I spend every lunch time for all eternity with mad old Mavis the school secretary?

  And how will I cope at Big School without my best friend Will?

  Chapter One

  Ever had one of those weeks? You know, those weeks that grown-ups talk about all the time. They say, ‘It’s been one of those weeks.’ And everybody nods in deep understanding and I never knew what ‘one of those weeks’ even meant. But now I think I do.

  It means a whole week where NOTHING is right. Where nothing is on your side. Where the world is like a wall, and no matter how strong you feel it just won’t be knocked down. One of those weeks that makes you so mad and angry, mixed in with sad. A week so crazy that all you want is a little bit of calm. A week that makes you so cross all you want is to immediately create a recipe for a magic cake that when you take a bite of it the world zones out into relaxed calmness and nothing is difficult or hard work, and all you feel is peace.

  A Peace and Quiet Cake? Does that exist? If not, I am going to invent one.

  But until I do, when I’m feeling like a shaken-up bottle of lemonade mixed with an Angrosaurus rex, I do this and you can do it too.

  Stand in front of the mirror. That’s right. Next, open your mouth as wide as it will possibly go and roar like a lion. If your face does not change colour, then I’m afraid you are doing it wrong.

  I’ve been feeling a lot like roaring these days. See?

  ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!

  Does that feel any better?

  ‘Dinner!’ Mum calls up. She is really inconsiderate, interrupting my roaring session like that – I’ve a good mind to tell her what’s what . . . or maybe I’ll just EAT HER UP instead.

  The food smells incredible. Le regarde (bit of French there for you that I learned at my new school, oh sorry about me, how I fall into wordsmith genius wordplay). See how edible is written secretly inside incredible? In my mind the word incredible was made up by a big fat queen who loved pies and treats and would scream ‘INCREDIBLE’ every time she bit into something delicious. I hope you see her too whenever you think of using that word. It’s good to use your imagination at all times rather than switching it on and off.

  I let the smoky, warm and even spicy trail of smell lead me to the kitchen. Spicy food and me are a bit friends these days, now that I am all growed up.

  ‘I’m becoming a vegetarian!’ I announce halfway through eating my BBQ chicken wings; the sticky red sauce is all over my fingers.

  Mum nods. ‘Good idea,’ she says. ‘I’ve been a vegetarian.’

  The idea doesn’t seem quite so glamorous now Mum’s already done it. Why can’t I be the firstest one to try anything?

  ‘You don’t want to be a vegetarian, Darcy, you wouldn’t be able to do it. Think about all the foods from around the world that you won’t get to try,’ Dad says, his beard covered in the BBQ sauce so it looks like he’s been snogging a pot of jam.

  ‘I don’t care. I love animals, and that’s why I’m doing it. You should think about Lamb-Beth!’ I scream. Lamb-Beth – my pet lamb – is in her kitchen bed, snoring and gently getting on with life.

  ‘YOU should think about Lamb-Beth . . .’ Dad shout-whispers. ‘You’re the one that might wake her up.’

  ‘I’m allowed to wake her up if I want. She’s my lamb.’ I lick my fingers triumphantly and everybody goes mental at me.

  ‘She’s not JUST yours!’ Poppy rages.

  ‘She’s mine too!’ Hector argues.

  ‘She belongs to EVERYBODY!’ Mum snaps.

  ‘Everybody,’ Dad repeats like a squawky copy parrot; he needs to seriously consider getting some of his own material.

  But alas, they are right. She is a part of the family. ‘Fine,’ I mumble in agreement, because if I don’t agree with this they will expect ME to do EVERYTHING for her. Thank the earth I think this through otherwise that’s a serious amount of lamb poo to be cleaning up.

  ‘Darcy, if you become a vegetarian you’re going to need to learn how to cook. It’s nice to sometimes just eat vegetables, but on the days when we do eat meat I’m not going to cook something for you especially,’ says Mum.

  ‘YOU don’t cook the most anyway, Dad does.’ I don’t know why but I want to fight with everything they are saying. I have a furious lion trapped in my bones.

  ‘OK, whatever, just make sure you learn to cook. At least pasta.’ Mum’s not joining in on the battle with me today.

  ‘YES, I WILL!’ I screech. ‘I can cook already anyway!’

  ‘Yeah, if eating your bogeys counts as cooking!’ Poppy snarls.

  How gross – I would NEVER EVER eat my bogeys. Pick them, obviously, but eat them . . . never. Every good farmer knows not to eat his own crop.

  ‘Go away, Poppy, you’re just jealous because I’ve got a thing.’

  ‘I’ve got things!’ Poppy argues.

  ‘OK, what’s your thing?’

  ‘Dancing.’ Poppy flicks her fringe out of her eye with her little finger so as not to get sauce in her hair.

  ‘You gave that up.’

  ‘All right then.’ She thinks for a second. ‘I’ve got double-jointed fingers.’ She beams, wriggling her hands to try and show me. Mum looks at Poppy’s sprawled-out fingers crab-walking across the table.

  ‘That’s not double-jointed, poppet,’ she sighs.

  ‘See?’ I say.

  ‘Well, fine, I’ll be a vegetarian too.’

  ‘NO!’ Dad protests. ‘My kids are losing their minds – everybody’s going mad!’

  ‘You can’t be!’ I yell. ‘That’s my thing.’ Case closed, I lick the BBQ sauce off my knife.

  ‘Darcy, don’t lick your knife, and also, if you wanted to be a vegetarian for the right reasons surely you would want to convert as many people as possible? It would be great if Poppy was vegetarian with you.’ Mum sips from her glass of red wine; everybody knows red wine should only be drunk out of a goblet like a king. Hmmm. I’ve lost respect for Mum. Wish I was a king.

  Actually, here’s a full list of my current wishes:

  That I was a grandad.

  That I had a beard.

  That my job was to be a customer.

  That I had webbed fingers.

  That I could be a writer whilst doing all of this.

  And a mermaid, but a bit normal like marmalade, equalling a new species known as a ‘mermalade’.

  Yeah, OK, that I was a king.

  ‘She’s not even listening!’ Poppy yelps, like a stupid singing canary, breaking my trail of imaginarianism. What a creaturette.

  ‘Why doesn’t everybody just calm down and stop being a smarty-pants for one single second to let me sort my head out?’ I say,
as if I’m one of those angry teenagers in TV programmes. I am nowhere near ready to be a teenager because if you’re truly going to be a teenager, you must be committed to being livid at all times of all days. I pick at my chicken.

  Dad pipes up, ‘Surely you should stop eating that if you’re going veggie?’

  Mum throws Dad an evil look. ‘Let her eat her food, please,’ she says through gritted teeth. Mum knows that when I mean business I mean SERIOUS BUSINESS, but this chicken is too scrummy to put down just this very moment.

  ‘Look, this is my thing, and so it’s up to me to make the rules, not any of you lot. I HAVE to eat my chicken or guess what? I STARVE. Is that what you lot want? Is it? To be seeing me deaded?’ I shout.

  Dad laughs at the mania of me, but then Poppy starts to get upsetted. ‘I just really wish right now that I had a thing!’ she whines.

  ‘You’ve got loads,’ Mum soothes, my dramatic performance forgotten. ‘You can sing, you can dance, you can act, you’re funny and kind . . .’

  ‘And annoying,’ Dad jokes. ‘You get that from me, obviously.’

  ‘I know!’ I crack into happiness. ‘Why don’t you get braces?’ I know this is a bit mean because nobody as young as Poppy really wants braces, but I could see an in here on how to make it REALLY uncomfortable for her to eat things like toffee apples (her favouritest thing at fairs) and chewing gum – not to mention killing the enjoyment of nail biting, a most disgusting but also equally satisfying habit, EVER again. Life will be tough in braces land. ‘Loads of girls have them at my school,’ I add.

  ‘NO! Poppy doesn’t need braces, and they’re not a fashion accessory.’ Mum goes to wash her hands. I’m thinking: Good luck getting this sticky BBQ stuff off, Mum.

  ‘What about glasses?’ I sneer. Yeah, ha-ha-ha-ha, I know – I’m going to convince Poppy she needs glasses to look clever and then help her pick out some AWFUL ones, and that can be her thing, and my thing will be being a most glorious, healthy and hippy vegetarian who loves the planets and the bears and the lions and the rivers and the trees.

  ‘What’s wrong with you tonight?’ Mum says to me.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Dad. ‘She’s ALWAYS like this.’

  ‘NO, I AM NOT!’ I shout. ‘I do think Poppy should get glasses, they should be her thing.’ I smile as sweetly as my lips can stretch. ‘They are EVER so stylish. How about we do an eye test?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ Poppy shudders.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘In case my eyes are terrible and then I’ll need glasses.’ Great. Reality sinks in. Poppy no longer wishes to sit snugly under my big sister wing and now wants to fly freely from the nest and as much as I want her to detour a bit and crash I know she will, as always, land on her dainty feet. Perfect Princess Poppy-ton with a cherry on her head with her big mahoosive annoying moose beast sister lagging behind. That’s me. The wretched one. Plan busted.

  ‘You won’t need them. Don’t be silly,’ Dad reassures her. ‘Come on, let’s do an eye test and you can see how good you can see. It’ll be fun.’ He jumps up and starts looking around for bits and pieces to make his test come to life. ‘OK, I’ll tack this newspaper article to the wall and then I’ll point to sentences and you have to read them from where you are sitting now.’

  Obviously it would be way too much to ask in this house that there’s some Blu-tack to hand, so Dad makes do with the bit of sellotape used to keep the plastic back of the remote control on. I leap up to get a glass of milk – am not sure if vegetarians are allowed milk or not because it comes from a cow’s boobie but I sink it in one glug anyway (P.S. really sorry if I just burst a blissful bubble that you were living in where milk is like snow juice or whatever . . . it’s not . . . it’s cow boobie juice). Being a vegetarian is actually going to be tricky. What else am I meant to eat with my Coco Pops? This eye-test thing is already looking boring and I suddenly immensely regret the whole suggestion. I could be actually using this time to radiate my radical mind someplace else. Sigh.

  Dad takes a strand of rawed spaghetti from the jar to use as the pointer. ‘OK, Poppy, have a go at reading this headline here,’ he says, using the spaghetti as his bossy stick.

  ‘OK,’ she sniffs and reads: ‘BREAKING NEWS, MAN ARRESTED FOR BANK ROBBERY.’

  ‘Perfect,’ says Dad. ‘And this line here, this is harder because the words are smaller . . .’

  ‘Arnold Moose was arrested yesterday afternoon after neighbours reported him fran-ti-cally burying money in his back garden.’

  ‘Really good reading, Poppy. Now it’s your turn, Darcy.’ Dad beckons me with the uncooked spaghetti.

  I could do with a distraction from the future horror of living off cabbage and apples for ever when I am a vegetarian, so I slump back in my seat and say, ‘Fine.’

  ‘Read this line . . .’ Dad says.

  Whoa! The lines are all a bit blurry, I’m thinking. This is really far away. I squint. This can’t be right; Poppy’s letters must have been so much bigger than mine. This is ridiculous. This is NOT a fair test.

  ‘Come on then, monkey,’ Dad ushers me along.

  ‘All right, hold your unicorns!’ I yelp.

  ‘It’s actually hold your horses, Darcy,’ Poppy says, all show-offy because she is so clever and not one bit blind. Still at least she is thing-less, but then again she does get to eat ham.

  ‘Shut up, Poppy, OK . . .’ I squint and move my head as close as I can to the wall so that I’m almost tipping over. ‘PLANE . . . ALMOST . . . CRASHES INTO . . . EXOTIC FLAMINGO SALOON.’

  ‘When did that happen?’ Mum looks over at us, alarmed.

  ‘It didn’t!’ Dad laughs. ‘Come on, Darcy, take it seriously. It’s just a game, but at least try.’

  ‘I did,’ I say, going red. ‘I said what I could see.’

  ‘Darcy, it says: “Plane almost crashes into England Football Stadium”.’

  I look back at Dad’s makeshift eye test and the words fuzz and bundle together and suddenly make sense.

  Everybody looks my way.

  ‘I’ll call the optician in the morning,’ Mum sighs.

  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

  Hector and Poppy have been singing the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice at me for nearly two hours. I want to punch them both in the back and wind them until approximately all their air is sucked out of them and they are empty and exhausted like deflated balloons. But really I just have to concentrate on not getting spectacles.

  I can’t get glasses. Glasses? Lots of people think they look amazing and make you look super-clever with brains that are so GINORMOUS they hardly fit into your head. But not me. I don’t understand how I’ve shifted from awesome, amazing chick of wonderful elegance and Princess mermalade-ness to a geekazoid glasses-wearing vegetarian. I am grumpy and go to sleep with Lamb-Beth sprawled across my chest like a fluffy heavy heart, and a zillion thoughts fluttering through my head. Livid.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Hello, Darcy, my name’s Anisha and I’m going to be checking your eyes today,’ says the optician, leading me to a dark room. Dad is acting like a child and slurping his McDonald’s milkshake extra loud – it is like a volcano in my skull.

  Obviously I had to be bribed with lunch from McDonald’s to get me here. I always choose nuggets because they look exactly like boots, and when you dip them in the sauce it’s like getting mud on the boots. Oh. The nuggets were chicken nuggets. Great. I am already a rubbish veggie and more crosserer at Dad for not reminding me that I am a vegetarian. I scowl and then I have to sit and look through these unfashionable binoculars until I see the picture on the screen of the air balloon get closerer and closerer, then tell her when it goes out of focus.

  ‘That’s great,’ says Anisha, but I’m thinking, What’s great? Great that I need glasses, or great that I don’t?

  Next I have to sit on this wretched plastic school chair and cover one eyeball with my hand and say the letters that I can see out loud. They are all letters in an unorganized jumble,
not in alphabetical order and not spelling out any particular word, so it’s extra hard.

  P H V X B R U O N J

  ‘That’s great,’ says Anisha. What’s great? Did I do good or not? How do I know Anisha is not getting a serious slice of commission pie and wants me to have to buy all the glasses in the shop? So yes, it would be terrifically great for Anisha if I was a bit blind. ‘And now try these . . .’ Anisha shines a light towards the back of the screen and more letters come up.

  I H A T E T H I S

  ‘I hate this,’ I say out loud.

  ‘Darcy!’ Dad coughs his milkshake up.

  ‘What?’ I gawp.

  ‘You hate what?’

  ‘I hate this.’

  ‘That’s not what it says.’ Dad is a bit annoyed.

  ‘Well, it’s what I sawed.’

  ‘No, “saw”,’ Dad says.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘No,’ Dad growls. ‘Saw.’

  ‘How about you stop telling me what I sawed?’

  ‘It’s saw. When you see something you say saw, not sawed. See, saw.’

  I get stern. ‘Dad, this isn’t really the time for fun and games, we’re not in the playground, my eyesight is on the line here. This is not appropriate behaviour’ – Oh, SORRY about me sounding SO growed up here like an excellent mature Queen. Dad gulps, I point my finger at him. ‘Act your age and stop slurping on that milkshake like a five-year-old. As you were, Anisha.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Dad snaps, folding his arms. He is impatient now. I can hear his mind clicking away getting all itchy. ‘You’re wasting my time, I’m meant to be at work. Just finish the eye test please, will you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I have what I need.’ Anisha smiles sweetly. ‘Why don’t you go through to the waiting area and I’ll process this for you.’

  We walk out into the main waiting bit where there are hundreds of thousands of every type of glasses all lined up – people are trying them on and looking at themselves in mirrors. Like a fancy-dress shop for only secretaries and doctors.