Don't Ask Alice (4 page)

Y
ou couldn't really say that the trip to Fota Island was a total disaster.

It was much worse than that.

First Alice's dad showed up at school in really gross shorts, and a revolting purple and green striped t-shirt. That was bad enough, but even worse was the fact that he wasn't wearing runners and sports socks like a normal person. Instead he was wearing thick, brown sandals with socks under them – green and grey stripy
socks like someone's grandad would wear.

After living with my mum for twelve years, I knew plenty about bad dressing, but this was surely beyond a joke.

Peter came over to me.

‘Hi, Megan,' he said. ‘Where's your dad?'

I could feel my face going red.

‘Er, he… I mean… did I tell you he might have an important meeting? Well, he did… so… er… he couldn't come. He wanted to though.'

Peter didn't seem to mind much.

‘Oh well,' he said. ‘That's his loss. Now I'd better go over to Miss O'H and tell her I'm here.'

As he turned to leave I noticed that there was a huge hole in his left sock, and his big toe was poking out, all hairy and red and curly. Totally, totally gross.

I turned to Alice in horror. I was surprised to see that she seemed quite calm.

‘Look at the state of your dad,' I said. ‘Aren't you mad at him?'

Alice sighed.

‘Of course I'm mad at him.'

‘So what are you going to do about it?'

She sighed again.

‘There's nothing I can do, is there? It's too late for him to go home and change, and a big row wouldn't help anything.'

‘But how is Miss O'Herlihy going to fall for your dad if he dresses like that?' I asked.

Alice shrugged.

‘Lighten up, Megan. It's not his fault. He thinks he's going on a school tour. He doesn't know he's meant to be impressing anyone. And anyway, without Mum to boss him around, he has no idea of how to dress himself properly.'

I wasn't letting her off that easily.

‘Well what about you? Have you no control over him? Couldn't you have made him wear something a bit less embarrassing?'

Alice shrugged once again.

‘I didn't know, did I? I stayed with Mum last night. I just saw him now, same as you did.
That's what this is all about, remember? This whole plan is to get my family back together so fashion disasters like this will never happen again.'

I nodded. I was so shocked at the sight of Peter, I'd kind of forgotten what this was all supposed to be about.

Alice smiled suddenly.

‘Anyway, like I said, there's nothing we can do now. Let's hope Miss O'Herlihy can see past the horrible clothes to the nice man inside.'

I glanced over at Miss O'Herlihy who looked quite pretty (for a teacher) in a pale blue dress and sparkly flip-flops. Next to her stood Peter, looking like a very bad joke. I didn't feel like laughing though. This was
so
not a laughing matter.

As soon as everyone arrived, we all got onto the bus. Miss O'Herlihy sat in the front seat with Rachel, the class assistant. Alice and I sat on the other front seats, with Grace and Louise just
behind us. Melissa and her four buddies grabbed two whole rows of seats. Peter went down to the back seat with all the bold boys. I wondered if maybe it would be best if he jumped out of the emergency door before the bus even got going. Already I had a very bad feeling about the day.

As we drove away from the school, the boys started singing really loudly. Alice nudged me without turning around.

‘Just listen to them. Boys can be so immature sometimes.'

I laughed when I heard what they were singing—

‘
Oh you have a lovely bottom… … … set of teeth.'

Miss O'Herlihy wasn't very happy though, and she turned around and shouted,

‘Really, children, that's hardly appropriate behaviour. You're letting the school down before we even turn the first corner. At your age you should know better. We…'

She suddenly stopped talking, and I turned
around to see why. Peter was right in the middle of the group, singing louder than any of the boys. Miss O'Herlihy's face went a sudden pink colour, and she sat back in her seat.

Alice put her head in her hands.

‘I can't believe it,' she said. ‘He's showing off. He's trying to impress a bunch of bold kids. What have I done?'

Twenty minutes later, when we were well on the road to Charleville, we came to a huge traffic jam. Cars and lorries were stopped for as far as we could see. Miss O'Herlihy kept looking at her watch.

‘We're going to be late. We'll miss our seating for lunch,' she said, ‘And then what will we do?'

Just then Peter stood up. Leaving the boys alone in their version of ‘You should never push your granny off a bus', he came up to the front of the bus. He tapped the bus-driver on the shoulder.

‘I know a short cut,' he said.

The driver scratched his head and said nothing.

‘Really,' said Peter, ‘We just have to edge forward to this turn here on the left, and then we can by-pass Charleville altogether. We'll save loads of time.'

I leaned over and whispered in Alice's ear.

‘Didn't you say your dad has a rotten sense of direction? Didn't you tell me he always gets lost when you're on holidays?'

She made a face at me.

‘That's different,' she whispered. ‘That's on holidays. He knows this road too well to get lost on it. It'll be fine. Dad will get us out of all this traffic, and Miss O'Herlihy will think he's great. This is the best thing that could have happened.'

Still the traffic didn't move, and still the bus driver said nothing.

Peter gave a big long sigh.

‘I worked in Cork for years,' he said. ‘I know all the back roads.'

Alice grinned at me.

‘See?' she said.

The driver looked back at Miss O'Herlihy. Miss O'Herlihy looked at Peter. Peter gave her a charming smile.

‘Trust me,' he said.

So Miss O'Herlihy trusted him. She nodded at the driver who edged the bus forwards and took the left turn.

It was a big mistake.

The first thing that worried me was when the driver started to mutter rude words under his breath.

The next thing that worried me was when Peter went back to his seat saying,

‘You're the driver, you figure out where we are.'

I could have given Alice a hard time, but I didn't dare. She was sitting looking out of the window, like none of this had anything to do with her.

I knew things were really bad when the driver pulled into a field and tried to turn the bus
around to go back the way we came.

When the bus got stuck in a patch of mud, and we all had to get out and push, it was almost funny.

Only problem was, Miss O'Herlihy didn't seem very amused. She stood under a tree with Rachel, and looked like she'd love to kill someone. Maybe it was just me, but I had a funny feeling that person was Alice's dad.

Alice saw me watching them.

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘Everyone's happier when they have a full stomach. Miss O'Herlihy will be fine once she's had her lunch.'

She wished.

B
ecause of Peter's ‘short cut', we were more than an hour late getting to the wildlife park. This made us much too late for our lunch booking in the café. Miss O'Herlihy went in to the café to try to sort something out, and when she came back she didn't look one bit happy.

‘They've let another school take our place,' she said. ‘Obviously a school that didn't take “short cuts” through fields to get here.'

I thought it was a bit mean of her to say that. After all, Peter had only been trying to help. He
didn't deliberately direct the bus driver into a field.

‘What are we going to do now, Miss?' I asked.

Miss O'Herlihy sighed.

‘The best they can do is let us queue up for our food, and eat it out here on the grass.'

‘Yippee!' said Peter. ‘A picnic!'

Miss O'Herlihy gave him an evil look.

Peter put his head down.

‘Sorry,' he said, ‘You looked upset – I was just trying to cheer you up a bit.'

Miss O'Herlihy looked slightly less evil.

‘Tell you what,' said Peter. ‘You relax out here for a while, and Rachel and I can bring the kiddies in and organise the food. I'll bring you out something nice. How about that?'

Miss O'Herlihy actually smiled at him.

Alice nudged me and said,

‘See that, Megan?' she asked. ‘I think she likes him.'

‘Don't get too carried away,' I said. ‘She doesn't actually like him. She's just noticed his
socks, and she feels sorry for him, that's all.'

Everyone except for Miss O'Herlihy went in and queued up for food. Alice and I stayed at the back of the queue where we could keep an eye on Peter and stop him getting into more trouble.

While we were waiting, Rachel walked past with her tray of food.

‘Rachel's kind of pretty, isn't she?' said Alice.

I shrugged.

‘Mmmm. I suppose. I love her hair. I wish mine was like that.'

‘And she's good fun too. She…' began Alice.

Suddenly I realised what was going on. I put my hand up to stop Alice.

‘No way,' I said.

Alice looked all innocent.

‘But…'

‘But what?' I said.

She shrugged.

‘OK, I give in. I just thought if things didn't work out between Dad and Miss O'Herlihy,
maybe he could ask Rachel out instead.'

I shook my head.

‘No way. This whole thing is
way
too complicated already. Leave Rachel out of it.'

Alice sighed.

‘Spoilsport,' she said.

She smiled as she said it though, and I knew she knew that I was right.

Peter got lunch for himself and Miss O'Herlihy, and then squashed two cups of coffee and two large glasses of water onto the tray as well. Alice and I grabbed our food as quickly as we could and followed him outside.

Peter seemed kind of happy, and was humming to himself as he strolled across the grass to where Rachel and Miss O'Herlihy were sitting. Alice started to hum along with him. I had to smile. I leaned over and whispered in her ear.

‘What are you going to call Miss O'Herlihy when she's your stepmother?'

She giggled.

‘Nothing. ‘Cause that's never going to happen. Mum and Dad
can
get back together. They
can
be happy. They just don't know it yet. Once Dad starts dating Miss O'Herlihy, Mum's going to come running back. You just wait and see.'

I felt sure she was wrong, but I didn't argue with her. Alice has always been my best friend, and she deserved my loyalty. All she wanted was her parents to be happy. Was that so bad?

We were near where Miss O'Herlihy and Rachel were sitting when one of the boys shouted,

‘Hey, look over there! There's a squirrel under the table.'

The shout must have frightened the poor squirrel, as it bounded out from under the table, and right between Peter's legs.

Peter (who was supposed to love animals so much) gave a funny kind of squeal, and jumped in the air. The tray wobbled, and there was a rattling of dishes. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. There was a lot more wobbling
and rattling, as Peter tried to regain his balance. I suppose he did well not to drop the whole tray, but just as it seemed that disaster had been avoided, one cup of coffee slid off the edge of the tray, right towards Miss O'Herlihy's leg. Peter grabbed for it with one hand, but missed, and the cup fell to the ground, spraying coffee as it went.

Miss O'Herlihy jumped to her feet.

‘You've burned my leg,' she screeched.

Quick as a flash, Peter put the tray on the grass, grabbed one of the glasses of water and threw it all over her. It was only one glass of water, but it somehow seemed to soak Miss O'Herlihy from head to foot. It dripped from her hair onto her face, all over her dress and down to her pretty, sparkly flip-flops.

‘You big fool,' Miss O'Herlihy shouted.

Peter looked at her surprised.

‘But you were burnt,' he said. ‘I was trying to save you. Don't you know you should put cold water on burns?'

Miss O'Herlihy looked at him like he was a total eejit.

‘I was only splashed. I was fine. And look at me now. I'm like a drowned rat. Am I expected to walk around all day looking like this?'

Just then, Melissa came racing over with a bundle of serviettes.

‘Here, Miss,' she said. ‘Use these to dry yourself off.'

Miss O'Herlihy smiled at her.

‘Why thank you, Melissa,' she said. ‘How very thoughtful of you.'

Melissa gave Alice and me an evil smile, and skipped back to her friends. I wished I was the kind of girl who did things like punching their enemies. It was bad enough watching Alice's dad making a complete fool of himself, without having to watch Melissa enjoying it so much.

Eventually we settled down and ate our food. I'd kind of lost my appetite, and by the look of it, so had Miss O'Herlihy. She only picked at the food Peter had chosen for her. When she and
Rachel got up to go to the toilet, Peter came and sat by Alice and me.

‘Sorry about that,' he said. ‘I suppose I embarrassed you a little bit.'

Alice made a face.

‘Totally. What are you on, Dad?'

He shrugged.

‘Hey, spilling the coffee was an accident. These things happen. Anyway, if it has to be someone's fault, I blame the squirrel.'

Alice rolled her eyes.

‘That's big of you, Dad. When you get into trouble, blame the small furry creature.'

I giggled, but stopped quickly when Alice glared at me.

Peter went on.

‘And I only threw the water because Miss O'H said she was burnt. I was trying to save her from more severe burns. How was I supposed to know she was being a drama queen?'

Alice ignored the question.

‘And what about the supposed short cut to
Charleville?'

‘OK. So that was a bit unfortunate. But there used to be a road there, I'm sure of it.'

Alice put on a stern voice.

‘And what about the rude songs on the bus?'

He laughed.

‘Lighten up, Alice. That was only a bit of a laugh. Even Miss Prissy-Pants should be able to see the funny side in that.'

I sighed. Did Alice still think she could persuade her dad to go out with someone he called a ‘drama queen' and ‘Miss Prissy Pants'?

Apparently she did. She waggled her finger in Peter's face, and spoke to him like she was the parent and he was the child.

‘Look, Dad,' she said. ‘I'm warning you. No more stupid stuff. I want you to behave yourself from now on. OK? Just put your head down and stay out of trouble. You're making a complete show of me and you'll never—'

She stopped suddenly.

‘I'll never what?' Peter asked.

‘Oh, never mind,' Alice said crossly. ‘Just behave, OK?'