A Dog Called Homeless. Sarah Lean
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the calling out saying, “Funny Daniel should mention Disneyland because sometimes the children at Angela’s Hospice have that same wish.” Her voice went quiet. “It’s good to remember how lucky we are to be healthy. The money we’ll raise isn’t just for trips to Disneyland. It’s also for expensive equipment for very poorly children.”
Just then the two children from the student council came in. Jessica Stubbs and Harry Turner were holding a piece of paper between them and stood at the front of the class.
“The student council have decided we’re going to do a sponsored silence to raise money for Angela’s Hospice,” said Jessica, reading from the sheet. “We need three volunteers from each class to be silent and hopefully everyone will sponsor them.”
Harry waved the sponsorship forms.
I wasn’t really listening. The tip of my green felt pen had gone inside the tube. I was trying to poke it out with a compass under the desk. We had geography next and you always need a green felt tip in geography.
“We’re going to do it next Tuesday,” said Harry. “The people doing the silence are not allowed to talk between nine o’clock in the morning and three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“You have to be really sure you can do it,” said Jessica.
I took off the bottom end of the pen and poked through the top again. The inky felt shot out and landed on the floor by Florence. I tried to tell her to roll it over with her feet. She told me to shush. I told her to get it quick because it might leak into the carpet.
“It’s for an important cause,” said Jessica.
Miss Steadman rapped on her desk. “What’s going on over there now?” she said sharply.
Florence told her I wasn’t listening and was trying to distract her.
“I was just …” I started to say but Miss Steadman interrupted.
“Enough tattling, thank you!” she snapped. “Or we’ll be having words at the end of the day again.”
I watched the ink make a dark patch on the carpet.
“So,” she carried on, taking a deep breath, “who thinks they can manage to be silent for a whole school day? Any volunteers?”
She scanned the room, straight away looking at the quiet ones and the good ones. She nodded and smiled and thanked the two children who put their hands up and their names got added to the list.
“One more volunteer?” Miss Steadman asked.
Then I saw her eyes flick across to me. They silently said, Not you, Cally Fisher, not you. You can’t do it.
I’d seen the same disappointed, disbelieving eyes look at me like that the weekend before at the cemetery. Then she looked away, just like Dad had done. Sometimes you just have to prove people wrong. Sometimes you just want someone to believe you’re more than they think you are. Plus there was also the fact that the sneaky traitor Mia was about to put her hand up.
I reached over and held Mia’s arm down and shot my hand in the air. I ignored the giggles and whispers, the feet reaching out to nudge each other. I ignored Daniel Bird’s loud “Ha!” and Mia’s gaping mouth.
Jessica and Harry looked at Miss Steadman, pencil poised, not writing my name on their list. Miss Steadman shushed the murmurings and giggling and looked out of the window. Then she looked in the register as if she was checking for something. Her mouth twitched. She took a deep breath and straightened her back.
“What we need is—”
“It’s for an important cause,” I said quickly.
Just then I saw Daisy whispering to Mia. I saw Mia smirk and fold her arms, her eyes going narrow.
I straightened my arm, zipped my lips. Miss Steadman leaned back into her chair. I saw her heart go soft.
“What we need is people like you, Cally, who are willing to take up the challenge. Thank you, you can put your hand down now.”
She nodded to Jessica as if to say why aren’t you writing her name down already?
“Everyone else can be involved by sponsoring our volunteers. You will need to ask your parents. Remember what the money is for.”
She closed the register, kept her eyes on me.
“And our volunteers are going to need your support, not just with sponsorship money. You’re all going to have to encourage them to stay quiet.”
MRS BROOKS, THE SPECIAL NEEDS LADY, wanted to see me. She deals with all the problems – if you can’t do maths or English, if you’re in a wheelchair, or if you are the problem. She’s a tall lady with plum-coloured hair, orangey lipstick and an orangey tan. She looks like she’s just come out of a hot pan. Her perfume made it difficult to breathe around her.
For a while after Mum died she let me sit with her and draw pictures. She said I could talk about anything I wanted. But mostly she did the talking, mostly in riddles.
“I hear you’ve volunteered for the sponsored silence,” she said.
“Miss Steadman said I could.”
“Yes, she did. And we’ll all support you.”
She ran a finger round the gold chain on her sunglasses which she wore on her head all year, even inside school. She tilted her head and smiled.
“Well, I want you to know if for any reason you don’t feel you can manage a whole day of silence, then Mia Johnson has very kindly volunteered to do the morning.”
She reached out to touch my arm. I hate it when people look sorry for you. I hate it when they look at you like you’re hopeless.
“Perhaps you could each do half the day?” she said.
“I can do it,” I said.
“She’s just being a good friend—”
“I can do it all day!”
She signed my sponsorship form and said if you change your mind … without finishing her sentence.
She leaned back in her chair and held her sunglasses up to the light.
“I remember you in Year Four,” she said, huffing on the lens. “You were a lovely little girl who used to get on with people. You worked really hard to remember all your lines and songs for Charlotte’s Web. And I’m sure you would have been brilliant again last year …”
She poked me with her orange fingernail. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have the old Cally back?”
I told you she talked in riddles. And you can’t go back. There’s no such thing as time machines. Ask Daniel Bird.
“I’ve never been old,” I said.
Not like her. That wouldn’t be for at least another eighty years.
“What I meant was—”
“You mean I used to be good and nice and now I’m not.”
“No, of course not. What I meant was you’ve had some difficult challenges. Things happen in our life that can change us, make us unsettled.”
She sighed. “It was such a shame you had to pull out of the show last year. Such terrible timing.”
And the reason she said that was because I was supposed to be playing Olivia in the musical called Olivia!, which is just like Oliver Twist but with a girl. But because the show was only two days after the accident when Mum