I felt myself turn bright red and I wanted to make a dash for it, but she had this sort of big smiley face, and instead I blurted out, “Have you got any good adventure stories?”
“It must be your lucky day,” she said. “I put one of our most popular ones back on the shelf this morning. I’ll find it for you before someone else takes it out.”
She led me across to the children’s section.
“I haven’t seen you in here before, have I?” she asked. I shook my head and felt guilty because my English teacher was always telling us we should go to the library, but nobody did.
“My name’s Penny,” she said. “I’m the librarian here.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to tell her my name, so I just nodded my head and wondered if being a librarian meant that you got to read all the books in the library, and how long that would take.
“Were those boys who went past annoying you?” she said then.
She spoke really kindly, a bit snobby but friendly, and she was quite young. I felt like telling her that one of them was my brother and that he spent his life annoying me, but I just said that they were annoying me a bit and that I could handle it. She looked at me a bit like teachers do sometimes when they think you might be telling lies, but she just turned to the books and pulled one from a shelf.
“Here you are,” she said. “It’s had rave reviews, and everyone who has borrowed it says it’s great. I haven’t read it myself, though, so don’t shoot me if you hate it.”
So they didn’t read all the books, I thought. Then she showed me what I had to do if I wanted to take the book home for a few days, and I thought it was amazing that you could do that, because most of the people I knew would never bring it back.
Anyway, now I go to the library a lot; and Penny’s like a friend and I can talk to her about things. I’ve told her about Wills. She says he must be a nightmare to live with. I feel a bit guilty when she says that because he’s my brother, but at least she understands about the peace and quiet, and she doesn’t push me to tell her things that I don’t want to tell her.
Chapter Three
Dad doesn’t live with us anymore. He left three months ago. He didn’t say it was because of Wills, but I bet it was. Dad just can’t cope with him. He tries. He tries really hard. He’s not very patient though. He explodes like a volcano. You can just imagine it: Volcano meets Hurricane—WHAM, BAM, POW!—everything destroyed in their paths, including Mom and me, if we don’t dive for cover quickly enough.
When Dad told me he was going, I didn’t believe him first of all. I couldn’t believe him. I thought he just wouldn’t do that to us. Then when I realized he meant it, I begged him to stay. I hugged my arms around his waist, and held on as tightly as I could to try to stop him from going. He stroked my hair and I felt him sort of shudder and I looked up. I’d never seen Dad cry before, and he turned away so that I wouldn’t see him then, but I knew that’s what he was doing because he wiped a hand across his eyes.
“Don’t go, Dad,” I pleaded. “Please don’t go.”
“It’ll be all right, Christopher,” he said. “I won’t be going far, just around the corner, so you’ll be able to come and see me as often as you like.”
It was like he had cut himself off already when he called me Christopher, because he never calls me Christopher unless he’s angry with me.
“Don’t you love us anymore?” I asked, and he said that of course he did, but that it would be better like this. I couldn’t see how it would be better, but Mom came in with Wills then and I didn’t have a chance to ask.
Wills went berserk. He screamed and threw himself under the kitchen table and said he wouldn’t come out until Dad changed his mind. Mom pleaded with him, and I thought Dad was going to lose his temper but he didn’t. He crawled under the table, which is difficult when you’re shaped like a bowling pin, and sat there talking to Wills until he had calmed down. Mom and I looked at each other and sort of smiled—though it wasn’t really a smiling matter—because all we could see were four feet sticking out from under the tablecloth. We went and sat in the living room until the storm had passed. Mom put her arm around me and asked if I was all right. I said that I was, but I didn’t really know because Dad hadn’t gone yet, and I thought that he might have to stay because of the fuss Wills was making.
When at last they came into the living room, Dad was bright pink and sweating all over the top of his head. Wills had a big grin on his face.
“Dad’s going to take us motor racing,” he said.
“When?” I asked, even though I knew what the answer would be.
“When I can sort something out,” said Dad, dropping into an armchair and mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.
That’s typical Dad. He’s always making promises. But he’s not very good at the sorting-something-out part of it. I don’t think he does it on purpose. He just forgets, or he doesn’t get around to it, or other things get in the way, or he doesn’t know how to make it
