Tiger Moth (12 page)

‘Zack, if you do happen to meet Alice, you will be nice, won’t you?’

I ignored her and carried on pushing a piece of pasta round the bowl. I could feel her looking at me and when she saw my miserable face and the half-eaten pasta she said that if I wanted to I
could run over to the shop and get some chocolate.

‘Don’t run through the churchyard!’ she shouted after me as I raced over the little bridge.

That night, when I was just about to turn my light out, Mum knocked at the door and peered inside. I looked at the floor that was covered in clothes, a plate from three days
ago, a heap of wet towels and several empty crisp packets.

‘Come on, Zack. I asked you to clear this mess up two days ago.’ She walked in, almost tripped over a pair of shoes and sighed. ‘Look, you’re going to have to be a bit
more grown-up about stuff like this. How would you like it if I left the house in a tip?’

Why couldn’t she just leave me alone?

‘I couldn’t care less, Mum, I really couldn’t.’ And with that I turned and lay back on the bed and opened a magazine to tell her the conversation was now over.

She stood over me for ages, tapping her foot like eleventy million times.

‘Your dad would be so sad to hear you talk to me like this.’

‘Well, he isn’t here, is he?’ I said angrily. ‘And now we’re stuck here, aren’t we?’

She didn’t say anything after that so I just carried on looking at my magazine, hoping she’d leave me alone.

‘Zack,’ she said seriously, ‘I know this is really difficult. If I was you, I’d be cross with me too. But listen, if you carry on with that attitude, you’re going
to be really unhappy. If you talk to other people like that, you’re going to get in trouble. If you kick off every time I ask you to help me, we’re both going to be miserable and, more
importantly, if you go to your new school with this rubbish “poor old me” attitude, you won’t have any friends.’

I put down my magazine and glared at her. ‘Have you finished?’

She looked down at me with a sort of surprised, shocked face.

‘OK, fine, be like that, but do me a favour, will you? Try and stay out of trouble when I go to work on Tuesday. Please? Just . . . I don’t know, be cool, would you?’

Like Mum knew what that meant.

Mum and her ever-changing hair colour which was like: THE OPPOSITE OF COOL.

Yesterday Mum went to work and I got to stay in the house all by myself. Well, almost all by myself because Mum had arranged for this woman she’s known for years to keep
checking up on me. She said that she wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to let me hang around all day by myself. ‘Who
knows
what you’ll get up to?’ she’d
said when I asked her why.

‘This is Pippa,’ she said to me on Tuesday morning. Pippa wore the sort of clothes that a man would wear: a pair of dark blue shorts with lots of pockets, a sort of big black belt
that had a purse at the front and a pair of heavy-looking sandals that showed all her toes were kind of muddled up and sticking out. I didn’t like the look of her at all so I stared at her
with my ‘I don’t like you already’ face. And she peered over her glasses at me in a ‘you look like trouble’ kind of way. She chatted to Mum for a while so I went
upstairs to clean my teeth. I was just thinking about when I could sneak out and down to the beach when Mum came barging into the bathroom.

‘Leapfrogging over gravestones is NOT ON at all, Zack!’

Oh
, I thought, remembering the short cut I’d taken through the churchyard the other night.
Oops
. Then she went off on one about how it was a really disrespectful thing to
do and that Granddad was buried there and how unkindly I was behaving. She said how lucky we were to live here and how I needed to make an effort.

‘“Centre of the universe,” my dad used to say! And you know what, Zack? Being here again makes me realise that this is a much better place for you to grow up. It’s safer.
People look out for each other. People care about each other.’ I heard a tremble in her voice and I felt bad.

When Mum left for work, Pippa sort of hung around for a bit, asking lots of stupid questions. I looked up at her from the sofa and sort of grunted back at her.

‘Hmm,’ she said, peering over her glasses. ‘My grandson is about your age. He’s football mad. I bet you’re like that too?’

I thought of Lou and the hours of football we’d played together in our old garden. It made me think of Dad and his ability to save just about any goal we tried. I’m not very good
really.

‘My dad played for his school and stuff, but I’m not . . .’ I drifted off, but Pippa just smiled down at me kindly.

‘Well, my husband says I’m a pretty bad cook, but I’ve not poisoned anyone yet. I left a casserole in the oven last year and forgot all about it. Came back from the beach and
the thing was a lump of black bones in the bottom of the pan. Stunk the whole house out for weeks. Even the dog seemed to turn his nose up, as if to say, “Good gracious, Pippa, when are you
going to learn to cook properly?”’

It made me laugh, sort of, then she ruffled the top of my hair and left, saying she’d be back at lunchtime. I watched her waddle across the little bridge and that’s when I realised
that I quite liked being left in the house by myself. At our old house, in our old life, my mum had to come everywhere with me and I was never, ever allowed to just stay home alone. Back then I
didn’t mind, I didn’t really like sitting on my own, but now I loved having the little cottage all to myself where I could stay in my pyjamas, watch TV and eat cereal out of the box
without anyone telling me what to do.

The next morning I ate three bowls of cereal, two slices of toast and by the time Pippa came over to check on me I’d already eaten my lunch and the last bag of crisps so
there was nothing left to take to the beach at all. I watched her cross the bridge again and as soon as she was out of sight I headed out once more.

The thing about Alice is she brings the best picnics to the beach. She always has much nicer sandwiches and cakes and biscuits than me, and most of the time she lets me have some of hers too. We
must have been there for about an hour or so when I watched Alice wander off down the beach and at that exact moment I felt my tummy rumble. I was so hungry that it actually hurt a bit. Do you ever
get that? Anyway, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but the lovely foodie smells that were coming out of Barbie world were too nice to ignore and, before I knew what I was doing, I’d
stuffed nearly all of Alice’s Jaffa cakes in my greedy mouth. I was just finishing the last one when I spied her notebook. It was opened at a page, and I saw she’d written my name, so I
bent down and picked up the book. At the top of the page she’d written:
Things I like about Zack
, and then there was a sort of list. It kind of made me smile a bit. But, when
I got to the bit where she’d written
He has really nice eyes
, it made me laugh out loud and boy, was she unhappy about it.

At first I thought she was going to kick sand in my face or something. I thought she’d really shout at me; instead she grabbed the notebook out of my hand and smacked me over the head with
it. I’m not kidding. And it wasn’t some little girly smack either: it was a proper whack and it totally hurt. I thought she was completely mental. I mean, I was only teasing, but she,
like, lost the plot. Then she started crying and it made me get angry. You don’t catch me crying every five minutes and I just blurted out a load of stuff to her that I knew I shouldn’t
have.

She did that typical girly, pouty, sulky thing and went off in a huff. She sat at the other end of the beach for ages and after a while I felt really bad. I called out to say I was sorry, but
she just put her hands over her ears like some kind of baby. I was going to go over to her and say sorry again, I really was, but I realised that the tide was starting to come in and I’d have
to leave before it got too dangerous.

I really didn’t ever want to do that scary swim again.

I wandered back slowly. I felt the sunburn on my nose and started to pick the skin off from around the edges. I had just reached the other side of the headland when I heard the chugging sound
again. It got louder and louder, and when I looked up towards the other side of the bay I could just see the little blue plane soaring high above the hill. It flew higher and higher, and I watched
it get further and further out to sea until it became a smudge and disappeared. I stood like that for a while, kind of hoping it would come back, but it didn’t.

My legs felt tired so I sat down on one of the larger flat stones, stared out to sea and thought about Dad. How do you get to be brave like he was? Is it something I’d learn like cricket
or tennis? Is it something that would just happen? Like the time my school shoes were too small and Mum had said, ‘My goodness, Zack, your feet must have grown overnight.’

I looked back towards the headland. I watched the waves as they crashed on to the stony beach, but then I saw something else. At first I thought it was just seagulls diving into the sea, then I
thought it was the seal again, and finally I realised it was none of those things. The shape that was splashing around in the water was Alice. What was she doing? Why was she swimming so far out?
Then I saw with horror that she WAS NOT SWIMMING. Alice was drowning! I saw her head dip under the water and pop up again. She waved her arms around in the air and all the time she was getting
further and further away. She was being dragged out to sea! If I didn’t do something, she was going to be pulled all the way to the other side of the bay where she’d be smashed against
the rocks.

Without thinking, I ran over to the lifeguard’s hut, grabbed the lifebuoy off the side of the wall and ran as fast as I’ve ever run in my whole life. Slinging the cord of the
life-buoy round my waist, I dived into the sea and swam so fast it was as though there was a great white shark chasing me.

One, two, three, four, breathe.

One, two, three, four, breathe.

The further out I swam, the colder and rougher the water became. I felt the seawater burn as it went up my nose, but I didn’t care. I kicked and kicked my legs until they ached so much
that I thought I’d never make it. As I got nearer, I felt my legs being pulled and realised that it was the undercurrent that Mum warned me all about, but I was going to beat it. I saw
Alice’s head dip under the water and for a second I thought I wouldn’t make it. For a moment I thought she was gone for good, but my hands reached out just in time to feel her tiny
wrist. I grabbed it tightly and quickly pulled her towards me, looping the lifebuoy round us.

I don’t remember the swim back to shore, but the final wave almost threw us both on to the stony beach where I dragged Alice’s limp and lifeless body to safety. My heart was pounding
so hard that it felt like a deafening drumbeat inside my head. I turned her over and pulled the seaweed away from her face. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving at all.
Oh God
,
I thought,
she’s dead! I didn’t make it in time
.

Then I remembered the lifesaving lessons we had at school. As Alice lay there motionless, the lifeguard lesson came back to me. I knew what to do! I had to breathe air into her. I had to give
her mouth-to-mouth. I pinched her nose with one hand, leaned over her face quickly and took a deep breath of air, but, as my mouth touched her mouth, she opened her eyes. As my lips touched her
lips, she shoved me backwards, sat up quickly, coughing up water and taking big gulps of air, and shouted: ‘OH MY GOD, ZACK, DON’T BE SO DISGUSTING!’

I rubbed my eyes and stared.

I wasn’t sure what was scarier: the swim, the near-dead Alice or the fact that she was speaking for the first time.

I looked up at her, smiled and said: ‘Well, that got you talking.’

And the two of us lay back on the stones and laughed.

Zack Ethan Drake saved my life. He’s also the first person I’ve talked to in ages!

We sat laughing on the stony beach until my feet got pins and needles and I started to get so cold I was shivering. Every time I spoke, Zack smiled and shook his head because it was as though
all the words that had been hiding for six months came rattling out of me. I told him everything about me, well, almost everything, and when I said that I was forbidden to go down to Culver Cove he
looked surprised.

‘Why? It’s your beach, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but—’ Suddenly I felt really sick and I quickly turned over and threw up salty seawater all over him.

‘Nice one, Alice. Nicely done. I rescue you and then you chuck up all over me?’ But he was smiling when he said it and the way he kind of pulled a face made me laugh a bit.

‘Are you OK?’ he said as I spat up the last bit of water.

Normally I cry when I’m sick. Usually I go and get Mum, and she rubs my back while I’m sick into the bucket we only ever use for yucky stuff, but this time I didn’t. I wiped my
mouth with the back of my hand and nodded.

‘Will you get in, like, major trouble then?’

‘Yes,’ I said, standing up. ‘Mum and Dad will be really angry with me. You mustn’t tell anyone we’ve been going to the beach. No one can ever know. And I have to
get home quick before they notice.’

‘Er, you’ve been away for hours though. They will have noticed by now anyway.’

‘Not since the baby got here. They don’t care about me any more,’ I said angrily, but Zack looked at me like I was really crazy again.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Alice,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Do you really think your mum and dad will have suddenly forgotten all about you because you have a baby sister?
What a crazy thing to think.’

I felt the tears in my eyes once more and I just looked up at Zack’s puzzled face and nodded.

‘Oh my God, that’s such a totally crazy thing to think. Mental,’ he said, wringing his wet T-shirt out and shaking his head to get the water out of his ears.
‘That’s like me saying, “Oh, my dad is dead so I’ll never think of him again.” That would be well stupid, wouldn’t it?’