Miss Understood (3 page)

Except he wasn’t really staring out the window at all, because the blinds were closed.

My phone rang while I was in my bedroom. It was Jenni, so I answered the call and flopped down on my bed, ready for one of those really long best-friend conversations. My shower could wait.

‘What happened to you today?’ Jenni asked, before I even had a chance to say hi. ‘You got called to Mr Hilder’s office, and then you never came back. And then when Ms Richardson let us out, your bag wasn’t on your hook, and I was, like,
huh
?’

This was great; now she was going to make me cry all over again, and I was kind of sick of blowing my nose, which was getting quite sore. Plus my eyes had gone even redder and puffier.

‘Lizzie? What happened?’ she asked me again. ‘It was about the fire, wasn’t it?’

‘Uh huh,’ I said.

‘I told you that it was a stupid idea.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘So what did he say?’

I sucked in a big, fluttery breath and began to tell the whole story. I had to stop a couple of times to pull myself together, but eventually I got through it all – being expelled, and the homeschooling idea, everything.

‘That’s so unfair,’ Jenni said when I’d finished. ‘Who will I hang out with now? And eat my lunch with? And sit next to in class?’

‘I don’t know what
you’re
complaining about,’ I said, sniffing like a big baby. ‘At least you’ll have other people to choose from.
I’m
going to be all by myself, with my mum as a teacher. My
mum
! Can you imagine?’

‘I heard that,’ Mum called from her bedroom, where she was putting away the clean clothes. ‘Careful, or I’ll put you on detention.’

‘She says she’s going to put me on detention,’ I told Jenni.

‘I hope she’s joking.’

‘I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.’

To be honest, I think I just assumed that I’d wake up when I’d had enough sleep, and while Mum was dressing and feeding Richie, I’d eat some breakfast and watch some cartoons in my pyjamas. And the more I thought about it (especially while I was taking a shower and brushing my teeth, since I reckon most of the best thinking is done when you’re in the shower or brushing your teeth) the better this homeschool thing began to look. I mean, Mum couldn’t sit there teaching me for every minute of the day. Could she? She’d have to go and change Richie’s nappy some time, and make lunch, and go food-shopping, and do all the other stuff she usually did while I was at school. Wouldn’t she?

All this thinking meant that by the time I finally climbed into bed and turned off the light, I’d decided that homeschool was probably going to be okay. In fact, it was going to be even better than okay – it was going to be like a stroll in the park, but with a late start. Which would be awesome.

Have you ever been really, really wrong about something?

I have.

T
o begin with, there was no late start. As usual, Mum woke me by standing at my bedroom door (which she’d opened without knocking) and saying, ‘Come on, Lizzie, up you get. It’s time to get ready for school.’

I groaned, rolled over and looked at my clock. It was seven-thirty, the same time I usually woke up! And what did she mean by ‘time to get ready for school’? This gave me some hope. Maybe she and Dad had forgotten about what had happened the day before. Or maybe Mr Hilder had called them after I’d gone to bed and told them that he’d had a big think about things and changed his mind, or that I was only suspended. Or that ‘expelled’ didn’t mean what Mum and Dad thought it meant.

These were promising thoughts. I threw back my covers, and Muppet plopped down off the bed, ready for some breakfast. (He’s
always
hungry.) I looked around. Ordinarily my school dress would be hanging over the back of my chair, ready for me to pull it on. But not today. Still, no one’s perfect, I thought. Maybe while Mum was busy forgetting that I was going to be homeschooled from now on, she’d also forgotten to put out my uniform.

‘Mum, I don’t have a school dress,’ I called.

‘You don’t need one,’ she called back. ‘You’re doing school here from now on, remember? You get to wear mufti every day.’

I groaned again. So Mr Hilder
hadn’t
called.

‘But you need to grab some breakfast soon, because we’re going to start at half past eight, just like normal,’ she called.

Was it totally necessary to do everything the same way we did it at school, I wondered. Was she going to mark the roll as well, and make me put my hand up if I had a question?

As I walked into the kitchen in my T-shirt and jeans, I saw that Mum obviously thought it
was
necessary to do things the same way, because she was wrapping a sandwich in wax paper and putting it into my plastic lunch box next to a muesli bar, one of those tiny packets of chips that has about three chips in it, and a green apple.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Nowhere,’ she replied. ‘I’m making your lunch. What would you like in your lunch box for recess? Is a lamington okay?’

It felt to me as if she was taking this
way
too far. ‘Recess? Really, Mum?’

She nodded. ‘Between maths and writing skills.’ Then she might have smiled, just a tiny bit. It was quite possible that she was actually enjoying this.

‘Are you serious?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely. Lizzie, could you get Richie down out of his highchair for me? I think he’s had enough.’

It turned out that she was completely serious. At exactly half past eight, when Mum called me into the dining room, I stood frozen at the door with my mouth half-open. I was in bigger trouble than I’d ever imagined. She’d set the room up just like a miniature classroom, with my pencil case and books ready and waiting at one end of the table, her books and folders at the other end, and my old chalkboard easel standing there all proud and obvious, with
WELCOME LIZZIE
written across it in yellow and pink chalk.

‘Have we got a new girl starting today, Miss?’ I asked, once I managed to find my voice.

Mum ignored that. ‘Good morning, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘Take your seat, please.’

‘Are you going to mark the roll?’ I asked.

She didn’t seem to find this very amusing, either. ‘Don’t forget your manners,’ she said as she set Richie up on the floor with some toys. ‘Now, I’d like you to take out your spelling book.’

‘We never do spelling first . . . Okay,’ I agreed when I saw her eyes going all squinty. ‘I’d
love
to do some spelling.’

‘Without the sarcasm,’ she said.

‘Sorry, Mrs Adams . . . I mean, Mum.’

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it was a really miserable morning for me, and because of that it was a really miserable morning for Mum as well. And if that’s what you’re thinking, then you’re wrong, because it wasn’t very long before I had to admit that Mum wasn’t a bad teacher. In fact, she was a very good teacher. Not as good as my third grade teacher Mr Norman, but he could turn his eyelids inside out and talk like Donald Duck, which was always going to be hard to beat. I also heard that he ended up living in a tent in the bush somewhere near Byron Bay, and wasn’t allowed to teach any more, but that’s a different story, and not really mine.

Still, even though she didn’t try to do any wacky voices, Mum was pretty good, and by the time ten o’clock rolled around, I’d already learnt a new way to remember the difference between
their
,
there
and
they’re
, and had started to understand how to do long division without getting a headache. Plus I got to do it all with Muppet at my feet, which never happened at Sacred Wimple (except for the time I smuggled him into school in my bag when he was a tiny pup. Maybe I’ll tell you that story another time.).

‘All right, Lizzie, it’s ten o’clock,’ Mum said, standing up and stretching. ‘That means recess for you, and a cup of tea for me.’

‘And me,’ I said. ‘I like tea.’

‘You do? Oh, okay, a cup of tea for you as well. Could you run upstairs and see if your dad wants one?’

‘What do I do after that?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘What would you normally do?’

‘I’d play,’ I said, a little crossly, mainly because I
was
a little cross. ‘I’d play with all my friends. But guess what? I
can’t
, because –’

‘You could play with Richie.’

‘I’d rather play with
proper
people.’

Mum sighed. ‘Lizzie, go and ask your dad if he wants a cuppa, then get something to eat from your lunch box and find something to do. It’s recess. Free time. I’ll call you back in half an hour.’

‘Are you going to ring the bell? Sorry, Mum,’ I said when she gave me a scowly look. ‘I’m going now.’

Dad was working hard. He had his little notepad open on his desk, with all the notes he writes about the restaurants he reviews, and he was typing fast. I didn’t want to interrupt him if his thought-train was going, so I just coughed.

He spun straight around in his swivelly office chair. ‘Betty!’ he said. ‘How’s things?’

‘Good.’

‘How’s school?’

‘Good, I guess.’

‘Is your teacher pretty? I’ve heard she’s really pretty!’

‘She’s okay. Are you writing a review?’

‘I am,’ he said.

‘For the newspaper?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘Is it a good review?’

‘Three stars, this one,’ he said. ‘Solid effort, eclectic menu, good service, a bit on the pricey side.’

‘Eclectic? What does that mean?’

‘Um . . . mixed up, I guess.’

‘So why didn’t you say that?’ I asked him. ‘Anyway, Mum wants to know if you want a cup of tea.’

‘Tell her I’d love a cup of Joe. That’s coffee, by the way.’

It was a nice autumn day, sunny and warm, but not hot, so after I told Mum that Dad wanted some Joe, I decided to go out into the front yard to eat my lamington and drink my tea. Dad fertilises the lawn all the time with this stuff that looks like chocolate sprinkles, and that makes the grass really soft and cushiony, so I flopped down there and ate slowly. It was quiet in our street, which isn’t even really a street – it’s actually called a
cul-de-sac
, which is just a fancy name for a dead-end.

Not much happens near our place on a weekday. It’s the weekends when it gets extra busy, with all the young families coming along with their enormous three-wheeled prams, and babies in backpacks, looking for somewhere to park their cars and wagons while they go and walk through all the HomeFest display houses. Often that includes our place.

Here’s why. The houses on both sides of Henry Court are display homes, almost all the way to where the bulby bit at the end begins. There are six regular houses with real people living in them around the bulby bit – first there’s us, then the Greens, then Mr Hanson (who lives by himself with his two little fluffy dogs who yap at everyone from inside his front security door), then the Nguyens, then Miss Huntley, who is old and lives by herself (and doesn’t have any pets as far as I know), and last of all the Franklins, who moved in not that long ago. That means HomeFest comes right up to the Franklins’ fence on one side of the street, and right up to ours on the other. And that means that sometimes people don’t know where HomeFest finishes and our normal, family houses begin. And it’s pretty annoying.

For a while, Mum put toys on the front lawn to make it look like someone lived in our house, but after someone stole my new scooter, she stopped doing that.

Next, Dad made a sign, which he laminated and put beside the front door. It said:
This is a private residence, NOT a display home
. But then people thought that meant it was the private residence of the person who looked after the display village, and they’d start knocking on our door at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning to ask what time we’d be unlocking all the houses.

That was when I took over. I made a sign that had a picture of a really angry dog (nothing like Muppet) and big, scary words that said:
OUR DOG IS DANGGERUS!!! PLUS HE HAS REELY BAD DIZEESES THAT YOU DEFINATELY DONT WONT!!! SO DONT COME IN!!!

Mum and Dad didn’t like that one much. Muppet didn’t seem to mind, but in case I haven’t made myself clear, Muppet is a dog. Even so, Mum and Dad told me to take that sign down.

Obviously my sign needed to be a bit clearer, and I decided I could make it more truthful as well, so I did another one on Dad’s computer that said:
This isnt one of the display house’s, so DONT TRY TO COME IN, and DONT NOCK ON OUR DOOR. Trespasser’s will be PERSECUTED!!!!!!!!!!

My parents didn’t like that, even though Mum said that she thought the idea of torturing people in dungeons for believing that our house was part of HomeFest was pretty funny. ‘But it’s still very rude, Lizzie,’ she said, once she’d managed to wipe the smirk from her face. ‘It’s not very welcoming.’

‘I didn’t think we
wanted
to be welcoming,’ I replied. ‘Isn’t that the point?’

‘And
I
think you’re just being a bit rude,’ she said. ‘Go and take it down.’

See? Misunderstood,
again
.

T
hat first day there wasn’t a lot of action in our cul-de-sac. Miss Huntley across the road was pruning the roses in her front garden, and some men in orange vests were digging a hole next to a white van at the end of the street. I could hear a mower somewhere behind the houses, way off in the distance, and a radio was playing a daggy old song. But that was about it.

I finished my lamington and brushed the dandruffy bits of coconut off the front of my shirt, which made me think about Thomas Spiegelman again. It’d be time to go back inside soon.

‘Good morning, Miss Elizabeth,’ Miss Huntley called. She was wearing a funny, floppy white sunhat. ‘Why aren’t you at school? Are you ill?’

‘No, I’m doing school from home now,’ I called back.

‘Been expelled, eh?’ she asked, grinning cheekily.

‘Sort of, yeah. Actually, that’s exactly what happened.’

‘Oh.’ Suddenly she wasn’t smiling any more, and as she straightened up, she pushed her hands against the lower part of her back and pulled a painy face. ‘Sorry about that. What did you do?’