The Day the Ear Fell Off (15 page)

For a moment I thought how easy it would be to hold my breath . . . but Keener of Tribe doesn’t do that.

Time to face up to things,
I thought.

‘Hi, Keener.’

I looked up and saw Fifty’s black curly hair and two eyes peering at me over the high hedge that runs round the park. He was obviously standing on the platform in the play area where you
wait for a turn on the pulley. A waving hand appeared next – Copper Pie’s – you can tell from the browny-orange spots all over it. He clearly wasn’t on the platform because
that’s all I could see of him.

‘Get in here, Keener,’ yelled Fifty.

‘Are the others here?’ I shouted back.

‘Not yet,’ said Copper Pie. ‘Come on. We can all pile on together.’

Hooray! Copper Pie was:

a) talking to me,

b) willing to share a ride with me.

‘Coming.’ I ran round the hedge, belted through the swing gate making it clang behind me, sprinted through the sandpit and up the slope and leapt on to the base of the pulley,
grabbing the rope before I landed with my feet on top of C.P.’s, nearly knocking Fifty off at the same time. With a bit of wiggling, we made room for six trainers. I hung off to one side and
grinned at my two mates. Copper Pie was acting as an anchor – hanging on to the wooden post at the back of the platform to stop us drifting off before the big push.

‘Ready?’ said Copper Pie.

‘Ready,’ said Fifty.

‘Ready,’ I said.

Copper Pie dragged us as close to the pole as he could, and then threw all his bodyweight against it to get the speediest launch.

Wow!

We screamed along. (Three boys are definitely faster than one.) As we hit the end, our bodies flew up so we were nearly horizontal before flopping back down and coming to a stop halfway back
towards where we started.

We had a few more goes before I spotted Bee’s shiny ponytail bouncing along beside the hedge, and the top of Jonno’s frizzball.

Seeing all my friends together made me realise what I needed to do. I had started it so I needed to finish it. I practised in my head:
Let’s not bother with the Tribe Truth Trial.
It sounded fine. We could all be friends again. I waited for everyone to stop the hellos so I could say it loud and clear . . . but then Bee told us her mad dream about a pony eating strawberry
jelly and then Fifty said, ‘Let’s get on with it.’ And then Jonno started speaking and it was already too late.

As he talked, in his oh-so-proper voice, I realised the person who deserved to be tried in a court was me. I was the disloyal one. Bee and Copper Pie may have used un-Tribe-like tactics, but I
was the one that found them guilty rather than sticking up for them.

Please don’t chuck me out,
I thought.

‘Keener,’ Jonno looked directly at me. ‘We’ve got something to tell you.’

No. Please no. I’ll be better. I’ll be brave and I won’t mind about getting into trouble. I’m sorry. Please don’t . . .

‘Breathe, Keener,’ said Fifty. ‘Get on with it, Jonno, or he’ll go weird on us.’

‘We met up last night at Bee’s to talk about the voting that went wrong.’

Why didn’t they invite me? Shouldn’t I have had a chance to explain? Why did they go to Bee’s? We never go there.

‘Fifty told us how you felt so we decided it might be better if you weren’t there,’ Jonno went on.

‘But I’d like to have come. You see I’ve changed my —’

‘Shut up and listen,’ said Copper Pie. ‘Get on with it, Jonno.’

‘Anyway. What Callum and Jamie said wasn’t one hundred per cent accurate. Turns out that when Copper Pie asked the footie boys to vote for me, they said, “What’s in it
for us?” So Copper Pie said, “You get to keep your place in the team.” Jamie turned it round: no vote for Jonno, no place in the team, which wasn’t exactly truthful. But not
completely made up either.’

Bee took over. ‘And I only said I
thought
Jonno would agree to
suggest
a girls-only area in exchange for votes. It wasn’t definite.’

‘So why didn’t you tell Miss Walsh that?’ I said, looking at Bee.

‘Because Callum’s lot didn’t exactly lie,’ said Jonno. I swivelled my head back to face him. ‘It was close enough to the truth for Bee and Copper Pie to know Miss
Walsh wouldn’t believe them. She’s always got it in for Copper Pie.’

‘
But
we managed to convince the Head,
and
we told her why we wanted someone on the council,’ said Bee.

‘But she kept you in the office for ages,’ I said.

‘Yes, but not as a punishment. The Head thought if we could study the map of the playground we’d understand how much of it is wasted by the clump of trees that we use as our patch.
She said that turning it into a garden could be part of the
Go Green
project we’re meant to be working on. Growing your own stuff is good for the planet.’

‘So I was wrong about everything,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

Would ‘Sorry’ be enough or had they given up on me?

‘Jonno, speed up. Put him out of his misery,’ said Bee.

‘The thing is, Keener, we talked about it for ages —’

‘Bee’s mum was mad because the lasagne was getting cold,’ said Fifty.

‘But it still tasted fantastic,’ said C.P.

‘Shut up about Mum’s cooking and let Jonno finish,’ said Bee.

‘We talked for ages and decided that in a way you were right. If your friends do things you don’t agree with, you don’t have to go along with them.’

Bee took over. She’d been jogging around all the time, desperate to hurry it all up. ‘We decided it was a kind of braveness to stand up against us because you thought we hadn’t
behaved like proper Tribers.’

Copper Pie went next. ‘The football team didn’t get my joke, that’s all. I’d never drop a good player, whatever he did – I like winning too much.’

‘They didn’t get the joke because ever since you kicked the goalie for letting in a lame ball they’ve been terrified of you.’ Fifty can always be relied on to fill in the
details.

‘Are you ever going to let me forget that?’

‘Nope.’

A feel-good wave was spreading over me.

Not expelled. Yippee!

Keener of Tribe was back.

And that meant time for my confession.

‘I don’t think I really behaved like a Triber either. Instead of believing Jamie and Alice, I should have at least listened to your side.’

‘Don’t worry, my mum never bothers,’ said Copper Pie.

We all laughed. It’s true. Copper Pie always gets the blame when Charlie (his brother) is around. But then, it is usually C.P.’s fault!

‘And I did
nothing
to help get votes for Jonno,’ I said. ‘Nothing. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone to vote so I stood next to Fifty while he asked.’

‘Maybe I should confess too then,’ said Fifty. ‘Just so that I’m not left out.’

‘Too much talking,’ said Copper Pie. ‘Everyone was wrong. Everyone is sorry. I declare a Tribe handshake followed by all five of us on the pulley.’

‘Fist of friendship first,’ said Jonno. ‘Rules are rules.’

We made fists and pressed our knuckles together. Then Fifty slapped his hand down and we followed: one, two, three. We didn’t shout out or anything, but for me it was the best handshake
ever. I was never going to risk losing my friends again. No way. Never.

Five on a pulley was tricky, but it didn’t stop Bee gassing: ‘One more thing. With Jonno disqualified, we might have lost the school council battle, but we’ve still got to save
our little wooded area from the nasty woodcutter who eats people’s grannies.’

‘But we haven’t come up with anything,’ said Fifty.

‘There must be something else we can do. We can’t lie down and play dead while combine harvesters destroy Tribe territory,’ said Copper Pie.

‘Combine harvesters don’t fell trees,’ said Jonno.

‘It’s an old joke,’ I said. ‘Copper Pie used to call everything that wasn’t a car but had wheels a combine harvester.’

‘But at least I didn’t have to write
R
and
L
on my hands like Fifty did,’ said Copper Pie.

‘Still does,’ I said. My turn to be disloyal.

Fifty jumped off the platform and put his hands behind his body but we wrestled them out. Under his wrist there was a faint
R
, half washed away.

‘You’re for it,’ said Fifty.

Copper Pie ran away pretending to be scared. Fifty chased him and the rest of us chased Fifty for no reason at all. We ran around like dogs let off the lead.

We were about to lose the corner that had been ours for ever, but we still had each other, and tribes often move on to find better food or water so we could do the same.

Tribe isn’t a place. It’s the Tribers.

summoning the executioner

‘I’m pleased to be able to tell you that after a flood of most original and entertaining suggestions, the school council and the staff have agreed that the wooded
area of the playground will be turned into a kitchen garden, growing food to be used in the school lunches. The area will be cleared over the weekend after which Mr Morris has volunteered to take
charge of fencing it off and preparing the soil for a range of delicious vegetables and herbs.’

The Head gave one of her beaming smiles that scans the room like CCTV. It’s meant to make every one feel included.

We trooped out of the hall, past the statue of the school’s founder, Charles Stratton, who was wearing his cardboard ear proudly. I was sure the baby elephant ear was there last time I
looked. Jonno switches them every so often and waits for someone to notice. Last week Copper Pie stuck a sucked barley sugar behind the good ear as a test to see if the cleaners ever dust the
statue. It’s still there.

‘Going to volunteer to be Mr Morris’s right-hand gardener, are you, Keener?’

Callum’s sneery words went straight to the angry centre of my brain.

‘Might do. But don’t worry, I’ll leave the weeds to you.’ (Quite witty for me.) I nodded at his dozy deputy who always follows him.

‘My, my, we are getting brave now we’re in a tribe. Where’s your spear and human scalp?’ Callum snapped back.

Our name was bound to get back to him eventually. I was surprised it had taken so long.

I didn’t have a second clever answer.

‘Those practices died out some time ago, Callum,’ said Jonno, appearing beside me. ‘But we still mess with voodoo.’

Callum made his eyes mean and slitty and walked off to class with his bodyguard.

‘I didn’t think it would end like this,’ I said to Jonno, as we sat down in class.

‘Nor me.’

‘I thought something would turn up.’

‘Me too.’

‘Same,’ said Fifty, catching up with us.

‘Oh well,’ said Bee. ‘I guess we can’t expect to always get what we want just because we’ve formed Tribe. We’re still just five kids against everyone
else.’

‘It’s annoying though,’ I said.

‘And the gardening club will never work,’ said Jonno. ‘We had one in my one-before-last school, but when the kids realised how long it takes to grow anything apart from mustard
and cress they all gave up. They ended up more interested in the insects and worms than the courgettes and the mint.’

‘So we’re gonna lose our trees for an allotment that no one cares about?’ said Copper Pie.

Jonno nodded.

‘Well, we could still do a sit-in,’ said Copper Pie.

‘We could, but we don’t really have a cause do we?’ said Bee. ‘It’s not like we’re saving the last elm or we’ve discovered an ancient silver birch or
whatever. Why should anyone care, except us?’

‘Bee’s right,’ said Fifty.

‘As always,’ said Bee.

We didn’t bother to groan.

‘So Tribe has failed,’ said Fifty.

‘That’s enough talking now, class,’ said Miss Walsh. ‘I want you facing me, legs under your desks, chair legs all touching the ground.’

All through the lesson Fifty’s words stayed in my ear. I didn’t want to believe him, but maybe Tribe couldn’t sort things out this time . . .

After school we hung around under our trees for longer than normal. It was hard to imagine the playground without the dark corner. One more day and that was it: the weekend, time for the
executioner. I was worried my eyes would have trouble coping with so much sunlight having spent every break forever in the dark.

‘Goodbye, my friend,’ said Jonno to a piece of bark half hanging off, half attached to the trunk.

‘Talking to trees now, are we?’ said Fifty. ‘Third sign of madness.’

‘What are the first two?’ asked Bee.

‘Talking to yourself, then talking to my mum.’

Pretty funny, but I tried not to laugh for too long because I do quite like Fifty’s mum now.

‘Actually, I’m talking to this horned beetle. He’s kind of a friend because I’ve known him since the first day here when I squatted on your land.’

‘Jonno. Do us a favour – don’t tell anyone you talk to insects. It’s embarrassing,’ said Bee.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’d rather talk to a beetle than some people I know.’

‘Same,’ said Fifty. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

We all started trudging towards the gates. Copper Pie offered round some yellow cough sweets, but only Fifty took one. No one spoke until we reached the alley.

‘Come on, Tribers, cheer up,’ said Copper Pie. ‘At least we saved the alley even if we couldn’t save our den.’

People murmured, ‘S’pose so,’ but it didn’t make it any better.

At home, I went up to my room and laid in my hammock
without
a book. I had decided to make sure there was absolutely, completely, totally, utterly nothing we could do to stop the combine
harvester (Copper Pie’s got me saying it now) demolishing our trees.

Think laterally,
I said to myself.

Nothing happened. I needed a pen and paper. It helps.