Many Worlds of Albie Bright (2 page)

But before I could find out more about quantum physics, I had to go back to school.

You’d think that going to your mum’s funeral on Tuesday would get you the rest of the week off, but not according to my dad.

“We need to get things back to normal,” he says when I try to protest. “That’s what Mum wanted and that’s what I’m going to make sure happens. That’s why I’m going back to work at the Deep Mine Lab to check on my experiments, and you need to start catching up on all the lessons
that you’ve missed.”

“But I want to ask you about quantum—”

“We can talk tonight,” he says firmly. “I’ve got to go now, Albie. Be good for Grandad and don’t be late for school.”

Same old excuses. Same old Dad. Always more interested in his work than he is in me. If Mum was here she’d help me find out what I need to know about quantum physics. Which is kind of ironic if you think about it.

I could ask my mum anything. Why does the cheese on toast always go stringy? Where did all the dinosaurs go? How come people have two nostrils but only one mouth? Whatever question I asked her, she wouldn’t just give me the right answer straight away. Instead she’d usually ask me what I thought and then we’d investigate it together. We’d make toasted cheese sandwiches, go looking for fossils or even practise shooting out snot rockets until we worked out the answer for ourselves.

Now I was left with “The Man Who Can Explain Everything” but who didn’t have any time to talk to me.

So while Dad heads off underground, I show up late for school only to find that my classroom has
been turned into some mad scientist’s laboratory. Every desk seems to be covered with cardboard tubes, helium balloons and plastic bottles dripping with gloop. On the nearest table, Victoria Barnes is building a mountain out of mashed potato, while behind her Kiran Ahmed is fixing a parachute to a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Everybody is talking at once, the volume fast approaching the critical level that will send Miss Benjamin into meltdown.

Miss Benjamin is an NQT. This means she’s Not Quite a Teacher. On the plus side, this means we get to do fun stuff like this Science Fair she’s set up where everyone’s got to think up their own amazing experiment. Miss Benjamin even invited my dad to come along and judge the experiments next week, but he’s already said he’ll probably be too busy with his work at the lab.

But, unlike a proper teacher, Miss Benjamin is rubbish at keeping us under control. The boiling point of water is 100º Celsius. The boiling point of Miss Benjamin is 100 decibels. This is as loud as a Harley Davidson motorcycle revving its engine, a jumbo jet taking off and, according to Miss Benjamin, the noise Class 6 make when we get “a little bit overexcited”. Wesley MacNamara says she’s
like a volcano. When her left eye starts to twitch, that’s when you know she’s going to blow.

For the moment, Miss Benjamin has her left eye under control as she sits me down next to her desk.

“I’m so glad to see you back in class, Albie,” she says. “We’ve all missed you while you’ve been away and I think you’re very brave to come back to school so soon.”

I don’t tell her that my dad has practically forced me to come back to school. Instead I just stare down at my shoes. Dad polished them before the funeral, but it looks more like he’s painted them with dark matter instead. I’ve never seen them looking so black and shiny. Maybe if I keep on staring at them for long enough, a black hole will swallow me up and get me out of this place.

“Now, I’m sure you’re going to be fine,” Miss Benjamin bores on, “but if you ever feel you need to take some time out of class, I’ve asked Mrs Forest to keep a quiet corner for you in the school library. If anything ever gets too much or you just want to be alone with your thoughts, all you need to do is tell me and you can go there right away. No questions asked.”

At the back of the class, a helium balloon pops
with a sudden bang. I look up at Miss Benjamin to check whether her left eye has started to twitch.

“I just want to get on with my work, miss.”

“Of course,” she replies with the faintest flutter of her eyelid. “Well, as you can hear, everyone is busy working on their experiments ready for the Science Fair next week, but you’ve still got time to make a start on your own project, Albie. Why don’t you take a look at what Victoria and some of the others are doing? It might give you some ideas.”

So while I head off to see why Victoria Barnes is making a mountain out of mashed potato, Miss Benjamin rushes to the back of the class to stop Wesley MacNamara from recreating the Big Bang with the help of his compass.

Victoria Barnes is the most popular girl in our school. I know this because that’s what she told me when I started at Clackthorpe Primary six months ago. “I’m the most popular girl in school. Your dad is on TV. We should be friends.” Our “friendship” lasted until first break when Victoria realised that Dad didn’t have any celebrity friends on speed-dial and I told her that the only way she’d get on his TV show was if he could film her falling into a supernova.

A supernova is when a supergiant star explodes in space. Imagine the biggest firework display you’ve ever seen and then multiply it by a trillion. That’s what a supernova looks like. I didn’t mean to annoy Victoria by saying this. I just got a bit mixed up when she said she wanted to be a big star on TV.

I watch as Victoria plasters another layer of slop over the slopes of her mountain. Her long blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail and the tip of her tongue is sticking out from the corner of her mouth as she concentrates.

“Why are you making a mountain out of mashed potato?” I ask her.

She looks up at me with a scowl.

“It’s not mashed potato, Lame Brain. It’s papier mâché.” She plasters on the last of the gloopy mixture around a large round hole at the top of the mountain. “This is Mount Vesuvius.”

Victoria knows my name is Albie but by the end of my first day at school she’d convinced most of Class 6 that it was really L.B. and told them they had to guess what the initials stood for. Lame Brain was her favourite suggestion and she’s made sure that it’s stuck. I just ignore it now. Like Mum always
told me, there are much worse things than someone calling you names.

Victoria takes a step back to inspect her creation. I can see now that what I thought was a mountain of mashed potato is actually strips of plain paper smothered in glue and moulded into a papier mâché peak. At the bottom of the slope there’s a row of Lego houses guarded by Lego Roman soldiers and plastic farm animals. Victoria points her brush at this Lego brick town.

“This is Pompeii. I borrowed the Lego soldiers from my little brother’s bedroom, and the toy cows and sheep come from Early Years. Miss Benjamin says it’s one of the best science projects she’s ever seen. Your dad had better choose me as the winner next week.”

I don’t want to set Victoria off again, so I decide to keep quiet about the fact that Dad probably won’t be judging the Science Fair after all. Instead I ask her why her mountain has a hole in it.

“It’s not a mountain, Lame Brain. It’s a volcano. Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly two thousand years ago. When it blew its top it buried the town of Pompeii under a layer of volcanic rocks and ash. Nobody could escape the deadly lava flow and
thousands of people were buried alive or burnt to a crisp.” Victoria’s eyes glitter as she describes the destruction. “And when I pour vinegar and bicarbonate of soda into the crater of
my
volcano then – KABLOOM! It’s firework time.”

I look down at one of the toy soldiers, his tiny spear pointing towards a plastic cow twice his size. I imagine Victoria’s volcano burying his house under a tidal wave of bubbling lava.

“Why didn’t the people try to escape?”

“Nobody knew that Vesuvius was going to erupt,” Victoria replies smugly. “One minute they were sitting in the sun eating pizza, the next KABLOOM! Total wipeout.”

Mum used to tell me that I worried about things too much. Global warming, asteroids hitting Earth, whether her experiments would create a black hole that would destroy the known universe. If I’d lived in Pompeii, you wouldn’t have caught me hanging around eating a hot and spicy pizza.

“Miss Benjamin told us about your mum,” Victoria says. “She said we had to be extra nice to you when you came back to school.”

Victoria’s definition of being “extra nice” obviously doesn’t include not calling me Lame
Brain, but it’s what she says next that gives me a bigger surprise.

“So do you want to come to my birthday party on Friday? It starts at seven o’clock in the village hall. There’s going to be a DJ, a photo booth, a dance competition – I’m
so
going to win that – and tons of cool people. And my mum said I should invite you too, to cheer you up.”

On a scale of completely miserable to totally cheered up, the thought of going to Victoria’s birthday party scores pretty low. I don’t like having my picture taken and I can’t dance to save my life. But Dad said we had to start getting things back to normal, so maybe I should give Victoria a second chance too.

“Thanks,” I tell her. “I’ll ask my dad if I can come.”

Victoria picks up another Lego soldier and turns back towards her volcano. “Don’t forget to bring me a present,” she calls out over her shoulder.

“Did Victoria Barnes just invite you to her birthday party?” From the desk behind me I hear Kiran whistle in surprise. “Wow, I’ve seen everything now.”

Kiran Ahmed is my best friend in Class 6. In fact, he’s probably my only friend in Class 6. It’s tricky
trying to make friends when you start a new school in the middle of Year 6. Everyone else has known each other for the past six and half years – they’ve learned their times tables together, played football in the playground, and all remember when Wesley MacNamara carried out the Great Stick Insect Massacre in Year 2. Everyone has got all the friends they need and nobody was going to waste any time making me feel welcome. Apart from Kiran, that is.

At first I thought he only wanted to be my friend because my dad was on TV – just like Victoria – but then I found out that Kiran was obsessed with space. He says he’s going to be the first man to set foot on Mars, but if he can’t make it that far he’ll settle for being the first British Asian astronaut instead. He’s taking scuba-diving lessons at the swimming pool to practise being weightless and he knows the names of every moon in the solar system.

“Check it out,” he says, dangling Buzz Lightyear from his mini parachute. “I’m sending this bad boy to infinity and beyond!”

Tied to the corner of Kiran’s desk is a helium balloon in the shape of a My Little Pony. The end of the string holding it down is looped around Buzz Lightyear’s utility belt.

“With a My Little Pony balloon?”

Kiran shakes his head. “I’ve got more than just one balloon. My dad bought a job lot off eBay – only £9.99 plus postage and packing for a hundred balloons. He got them for my little sister’s birthday party, but she’s into Spiderman now so he gave them to me instead. Miss Benjamin is storing the rest in the stock cupboard until the day of the Science Fair. You’ve seen that film
Up
? Well, I’m going to use these helium balloons to send Buzz Lightyear into space. The first action figure to make it into orbit.”

If Kiran can put Buzz Lightyear into space powered only by a flock of My Little Pony balloons he’s bound to win first prize at the Science Fair. There’s just one problem with his plan to launch the first action-figure astronaut.

“The
Discovery
space shuttle took a Buzz Lightyear into orbit back in 2008,” I tell him. “My dad showed a video of the toy Buzz floating around on the International Space Station when he did a countdown of the top-five weirdest astronauts on his TV show. Buzz came third behind a jellyfish and a Russian space dog called Laika.”

Unfortunately, Kiran doesn’t take this news very well. He bangs his Buzz Lightyear down on the table,
and Buzz’s flight wings snap open as his voicebox squawks, “To infinity and beyond!”

“Not if you’ve already been there before,” Kiran snaps at Buzz. “I want to be the first. There’s got to be something special I can send into space. Something that’s never been done before.”

“How about a Lego spaceman?” I suggest, glancing back at Victoria’s volcano. Maybe Kiran’s balloons can airlift the Lego people of Pompeii to safety before Mount Vesuvius blows its top.

Kiran shakes his head.

“Nah, two Canadian kids sent a Lego man into space back in 2012. I saw their video on YouTube. That’s what gave me the idea for the balloons.” He starts to unhook the string from Buzz’s utility belt. “Are you going to be doing a project for the Science Fair? You can always help me out with mine if you’ve not got time to do your own. You know – because of your mum.”

At the moment the only science I’m interested in is quantum physics. But before I can explain this to Kiran, the sound of a loud shriek comes from the back of the classroom.

“Miss!” Lucy Webster shouts out. “Wesley has let Mr Sniffles out of his cage!”

Mr Sniffles is the class hamster. Squeals and shouts follow his escape route across the desks, a furry brown streak weaving between test tubes and pots of play dough as Miss Benjamin battles to make herself heard.