The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair Read online

  Unfortunately, I don’t have to act surprised at all. I am surprised, as Dad hands me a bit of paper folded into a weird shape and says, “This is it.”

  Dad says he’s pleased that I’m so stunned. To be honest, he was a bit surprised by it all too. Turns out, Dad was moving around a few of the boxes we brought with us and he found this on the floor and thought of me.

  Let’s get this straight, Dad found a bit of paper on the floor and thought: Hey, my son would LOVE this for his birthday instead of the skeleton he asked for.

  “I think it’s funny how it turned up on your birthday. It reminded me of something from the past.” Dad pauses, his eyes unfocused. Then he closes them gently and whispers, “Once, a long time ago, your mum and I went on a date. It was to this great burger bar called Two’s Company in Honeydown Hills. It’s not there any more.”

  Oh.

  Dad opens his eyes again and sighs. “Your mum had fries and I had a triple burger with fried onions – soft as a slipper they were – and there was an egg on top.” Dad pauses and smacks his lips together, remembering it fondly. A second later he shakes his head. “But I’m not talking about the food. At the end of the meal your mum folded up the napkin into a little star. Your mum was so good at making things. She gave me the folded star and a kiss that night.”

  “But this isn’t a star, it looks like a bird,” I reply, staring at it and thinking Dad’s definitely not getting a kiss from me. “You said Mum made stars so where did the bird come from?”

  “I don’t know. I just found it lying in the corner of the living room, like I said. I didn’t notice it at first and then when I was moving things around I spotted it. It reminded me of that date with your mother. Truth is, I lost your Mum’s star,” says Dad, rubbing the koi carp tattoo on his arm absent-mindedly. “If only I knew then how precious that star was…” The words float away like a helium balloon let go by a child.

  I stare at the tiny bird in my palm before shoving it in my blazer pocket and whispering, “Today is rubbish and a stupid paper bird that the previous flat owner probably left behind when they moved isn’t going to make it any better.”

  Nothing is.

  Dad deposits Billy and me in the reception area at Bleeding Heart School. The secretary, who introduces herself as Mrs Parsnips, gives Dad a wodge of paper to fill in and then takes him away somewhere. As Dad disappears, Billy tugs on my blazer and whispers that Pearl should have been here to drop us off at school. He asks if she ever sent a text back and I say she hasn’t yet but she still might.

  “But what if she forgets who we are?” says Billy, shuffling from one foot to the other.

  “She won’t,” I reply.

  “Granddad Albert did before he died,” says Billy. “Every time we visited him he didn’t know who we were. Ibiza Nana had to say I was Billy over and over.”

  “He wasn’t well,” I explain.

  Then Dad returns and grabs Billy and me into the biggest hug ever, nearly crushing our bones to dust. He only stops to let another boy rush through. With a final cheery wave goodbye, Dad’s off; we watch as he climbs into The Codfather van and zooms away as fast as his flat tyre will carry him. The one-eyed cod disappears over the horizon.

  As the secretary excuses herself to take a phone call, Billy’s eyes brim with water. “I wanted Pearl to be here more than anything,” he wails. “I wanted one of Pearl’s special hugs and now I can’t have one.”

  Desperately I try to hush Billy, telling him Pearl’s probably having a great time at the circus, um, flipping around on a soft mat and laughing at the Tyrannosaurus rex. Billy wipes his eyes and tells me he doesn’t think she’s at the circus any more. She’s been kidnapped by aliens instead. He saw a strange light in the sky recently. It might have been a spaceship.

  “Or could it have been an aeroplane?”

  But Billy isn’t listening to me because he’s too busy saying he’s scared that Pearl’s gone for ever, just like Mum.

  “Mum didn’t go on a spaceship though,” I mutter. “You know that.”

  The secretary finishes her call. She directs me to my new class and then takes Billy off to his. As they walk into the distance, I hear Billy say, “Thank you, Mrs Parsnips.”

  “It’s Parsons,” she replies and laughs.

  “Go in, they don’t bite.”

  I’m peering in through the small porthole to my classroom when this voice booms behind me. Quivering, I open the door and venture my foot in. All eyes swivel towards me like a whole room of zombies sensing fresh meat. Well, if that’s the case, they do bite. Repeatedly.

  “Go on, inside a bit more. You won’t learn anything in the corridor.”

  No, but I’ll still be alive.

  Once I’m in the classroom properly, the voice from behind says, “I’m Mr Beagle and, class, this is Becket Rumsey, he will be joining us here. Becket, there is a place at the back, please take a pew and then I’ll take the register.”

  A few minutes later I’m in my seat, playing around with my new pencil case as Mr Beagle calls out the names. As he reaches D on the register I take out a pen and write GOODBYE across my knuckles, remembering number seven on my list (design my own tattoo). Perhaps this is the way to say goodbye to Mum. I give the two Os eyes. Next, I draw a few teardrops. They look like squashed flies. Then I realize I’ve been drawing with permanent pen and so I start licking my hand like a thirsty dog. Mr Beagle has moved onto M.

  “Oi, licky lips,” whispers a girl with cornrows sitting at the desk next to me. I put my tongue away. “Want a bracelet? I’ve made it especially for you. Honestly, it’s for you.” She fires a rubber bracelet with a tiny butterfly charm on it across to me and it lands right in front of my pencil case.

  I shrug. How could she have made it for me when this is the first time she’s ever clapped eyes on me? “I don’t wear bracelets,” I mumble back.

  The girl says that I’ll want to wear this one. “Put it on.”

  Thinking it would be rude not to, particularly as this is my first day, I shove the bracelet on my wrist and stare at it.

  “Looks good,” she mutters. She’s either short-sighted or lying. “I’m Nevaeh, by the way, and that bracelet is your lucky charm.” She glances towards Mr Beagle, who is now onto P. “By the way, it’s bad luck to take it off,” hisses Nevaeh. “You must wear it until it falls off by itself and when that happens something amazing will occur. I got the idea from this story I read where the lady wore a green string on her wrist and it was supposed to protect her from danger. She couldn’t take it off until it fell off.”

  I only manage to squeak, “Did it fall off?”

  “Yes, after she broke her wrist.”

  “So, it didn’t protect her from danger then?”

  Great, that’s all I need. Day one and I’m stuck with a rubber butterfly bracelet that I can’t take off thanks to a crazy girl. What I need to do now is keep right away from her.

  It turns out there are a few other people at Bleeding Heart that I reckon I need to avoid. The first is the boy who sits in the row in front of me, with hands like ham slices and a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. He answered to the name Robert Absolom on the register. I went to the toilet halfway through morning class, and when I walked back in, he looked at me like I was something yucky. I tried to smile but he pointed at my shoe and then I realized I’d got some toilet roll attached to it instead of attached to the toilet bowl. Mr Beagle got very excited when he saw it and told us how the average person goes to the toilet about 2,500 times a year. A boy in the front row said he goes at least double that and everyone laughed.

  “Thank you, Donté Moffatt,” said Mr Beagle, before adding, “World Toilet Day is November 19th and recycled toilet paper does not mean using old toilet paper.”

  The third person I think I need to avoid is the girl with the plait so big Tarzan phoned and asked if he could have his jungle rope back. At morning break she sidled up to me, said her name was Mimi and welcomed me to the class, saying every
one thinks I’m ace but it’s only because I’m new. Once I’m old no one will care any more. In fact, she already doesn’t care. She’s too busy doing ballet, chess, French and kung fu to have time to be interested in me. Then she glared at me and skipped away.

  An hour later, I’ve decided I do not like anyone in this class. I will ask Dad when I get home if I can come and work with him on the fish delivery rounds. He’ll only have to change the words on the van slightly: THE CODFATHER AND THE CODSON.

  As I’m working out what I can say to Dad to convince him, Mr Beagle says it’s time to finish a project they were doing before half-term. “We were looking at important items from our past, but we didn’t get the chance to look at your important items before half-term, so I asked you to bring them in today. Becket, you can just talk about anything important from your childhood. You don’t need the item. Perhaps you can start, in fact?”

  I’m so shocked, my intestines feel like they’ve just fallen out of my pants. Gutted! At least I know exactly what my important item would be: my mum’s armchair. But I can imagine it now: I say my important item is my mum’s armchair and then the teacher asks me why (because teachers are like robots programmed to ask questions). Then I have to lie, because I don’t want to tell everyone it’s where I feel safe, it’s where Mum told me stories and I curled up beside her and felt happy. I don’t want to tell everyone it’s important because I still have the armchair but I don’t have Mum. Anyway, Robert Absolom will sneer at whatever I say, Mimi will probably strangle me with her plait and Nevaeh will try to force me into wearing more jewellery.

  My fingers are so shaky I would totally ace it at playing the maracas in music class. Only we’re not in music class so I have to shove them into my blazer pockets so no one notices. And that’s when it happens. I feel something: the tiny paper bird that Dad found on the floor. I pull it from my pocket and put it on the desk. Perhaps I can make up some story about that. There is an air-suck of appreciation from Mr Beagle as he spots the bird, and I’m guessing he’s so impressed that I’ve magically brought something in without even knowing about the project that he has vacuumed all the air from the room. He says this is brilliant, I am brilliant and I can feel Mimi bristle in front of me. Nevaeh points to the bracelet and mouths, “It’s amazing,” only it’s nothing to do with the stupid bracelet because it hasn’t fallen off yet, it’s still stuck on my wrist.

  And then Mr Beagle writes two words on the whiteboard: A LEGEND

  Wow! Mr Beagle has recognized what I knew already. I am a legend! To think I was having a bad birthday. Now, I’m a legend in my own lifetime. Ace is what it is. Oh yes, ham-hand boy Robert is looking round at me and I’m looking right back – not so yucky now, eh? Nevaeh is still pointing at the bracelet and Mimi is stewing in her own anger, because obviously I am a legend and it’s not just because I’m new.

  Mr Beagle raises his hand and wiggles his fingers, which is quite a feat considering he’s got digits the size of pork sausages. “This little origami crane that Becket has brought in is incredibly special. And I can tell you that, folded within its wings, there is the most amazing legend of all. Pin back your ears.”

  You can’t do that, unless you have a pinnaplasty (which is on page 255 of my copy of Marvin’s Medical Manual). Only, I sort of do it anyway, because I’m desperate to hear the legend of my little paper bird. Even if it means it’s not me that’s the legend after all.

  Mr Beagle clears his throat. “Once upon a time, in a land of cherry blossom, samurai warriors, great mysteries, magic and myths, there was a legend that many had heard of.” Mr Beagle sails between the desks with my paper crane in his palm.

  “My dad says myths are female moths,” says Donté Moffatt. Mr Beagle stops abruptly and says female moths are called female moths and being quiet is called saying nothing in case the teacher gives you extra work.

  “Now, where was I before I was interrupted?” asks Mr Beagle, as if he hadn’t only told us one solitary sentence. He begins sailing between the desks again. “Ah, yes, the legend of one thousand origami cranes is where I was. It says that if a person manages to fold one thousand origami cranes, like this one” – Mr Beagle holds it aloft like it’s the world’s biggest diamond – “then they shall be granted one magical wish. The crane is a mystical creature that is said to live for a thousand years, which is why you need a thousand paper cranes for a wish – one for every year of the crane’s life.”

  Donté Moffatt hoists up his hand and says, “Spiderman down my nan’s bingo hall looks about a thousand years old.”

  Mr Beagle says it’s lovely to hear a story where an elderly gentleman has been named after a superhero like Spiderman; that even when you’re old, you can still be brave and active.

  “Oh, he calls himself Spiderman, not anyone else,” replies Donté, adding, “He says it’s because he’s like a spider. Once he’s in the bath he finds it really hard to get out again.”

  Mr Beagle clears his throat again and makes a halt sign with his hand, which is clearly the signal for Donté Moffatt to zip his lip. “Time and time again, people would try to achieve one magical wish,” Mr Beagle continues. “Some did, while others failed. As the years passed, the legend of the paper crane grew. Paper cranes were given as wedding gifts in the hope that the couple would have one thousand years of happiness. They were also given to new babies to bless the baby with a lucky life.

  “That is the legend of the paper crane and as soon as I saw Becket’s item I remembered having read about it. Why is it important to you, Becket?”

  “My dad gave it to me,” I reply, slightly gobsmacked.

  “Well, that’s lovely,” says Mr Beagle, walking towards the bookshelf. He runs his finger along the book spines before finding a book and pulling it out.

  I am like a mint sweet in cola I’m fizzing with so much happiness. The legend of the paper crane is the best birthday present ever! It hands down beats the story I read about how the obese William the Conqueror exploded at his own funeral and all the monks in the abbey were covered in his rotten guts, and the one about how Romans gargled with urine to keep their breath fresh. I look around and a few people look like they’ve got a hula-hoop jammed in their mouths. Mimi is one of them.

  “I can tell you’re all stunned,” says Mr Beagle proudly, sailing back down the classroom aisle, his tie fluttering behind him like a flag. “Thank you for allowing us to see this wonderful item, Becket.” Mr Beagle delivers the crane back into one of my palms and the book he picked from the shelf into the other. He says it’s about origami and it might be of interest to me and I can return it when I’ve finished reading it.

  Everyone gives me a little round of applause. It’s as though I’m a hero, even though I’ve done precisely zero. As Mr Beagle goes on talking, I take a sneaky look at the crane. Oh, how wrong I was to think it wasn’t anything important. I can see now that this paper crane is the best. By association, I am now bathing in the golden bath water of brilliance. I am surrounded by the foam of fabulousness. I am soaking in the soap bubbles of smarts. My paper crane, the one that I thought was just folded paper, is actually quite incredible, because Mr Beagle says so.

  My paper crane can give me a wish.

  What could be a better birthday present than that?

  THE ORIGAMI BOOK FOR BEGINNERS:

  Never too much paperwork!

  1. Start with a square piece of paper. (Heck yes, I can do this. I’m feeling confident.)

  2. Fold the top corner to the bottom corner. (This is a piece of cake. Call me Becket Origami Rumsey Esq. Although I won’t answer to my initials.)

  3. Crease the paper and open it up once more and then fold it down again but sideways. (I just read that a few times to get the hang of it. Maybe I’ll just read it again.)

  4. You should have lovely creases now. Bring the top three corners to the bottom corner. Now flatten the piece of paper. (Flattening I can do, it’s folding I’m getting a bit confused about. My creases are increasingly rubbish
.)

  5. Fold the top to the centre and unfold and then fold everything down and unfold. (I am folding. I am unfolding. I am folding. I am foaming. At the mouth.)

  6. Open your top flap. (What top flap? I have no flap. I am flap-less. Would a cat flap count? Would it be easier to scale Everest with a toothpick than it is to make an origami crane? The answer is: yes, I think it would.)

  7. Bring the flap down and press the sides at the same time. (No, wait. I’ve got something here. It’s a paper fortune teller. I’ll just twist it between my fingers a few times and open it up. I half expect someone to have written YOU’RE STUPID on the inside.)

  8. Turn the model over and repeat on the other side and fold the upper flaps to the centre and repeat on the other side and then fold up the two parts that look like legs and crease and unfold and then reverse and fold the legs along the creases and then inside reverse and fold one side. You now have a head. (I have a head. I had to cut the shape with scissors though.)

  9. Fold the wings and your crane is complete. (I have a bird that looks like a triangle with a trimmed head and a cat flap for a bum.)

  I dedicate my entire evening to making paper cranes according to the instructions in the book Mr Beagle gave me earlier. My first attempt is so bad I should set up a blog in my ICT class called Crane Wrecks. In the end, I tore the first bird up. My second attempt isn’t dreadful. My third looks like it belongs to the bird family. I’m saying dodo. My fourth is the best.

  Oh yes, it seems I am well on the way to getting my wish. And since I haven’t found Pearl and I haven’t worked out how to say goodbye to Mum, that’s what I’m going to use my wish for. Okay, so I know it’s sort of two wishes, but I don’t like to follow rules.

  The next day, when Billy and I are walking to school, I tell him my birthday was better than I thought. There is a spring in my step. I wave to Cat Woman, who we see through the glass at Crops and Bobbers. I say hello to the pavement, the clouds, the hedge, a stray dog peeing up a lamp post. Although I soon stop saying “Hello” and start saying “Scoot” when the dog attempts to pee on my school shoes as I pass. When Billy asks what made it so good, I tell him “A piece of paper” and I’m not lying. Perplexed, Billy says he has loads of paper but it never makes him feel so excited. I say he hasn’t got the right piece of paper. So, I explain about the paper crane and how the teacher gave me a book on origami and now I’m making more cranes to get a wish. Billy says he’d like a wish of his own. I already know what Billy would wish for so I tell him we’ll find Pearl, I promise. Billy smiles and I smile back, throwing my arm around his shoulder. Today is a good day.