A Bump on the Head, Caroline Tailby [good books to read txt] 📗

predict his own death, he usually tried to find a way around it. The sentence he had just spoken was so not him. And I didn’t like it.
“You’re not,” I said determinedly. “Not if I can help it.”
I pulled my hand of his and climbed out from under the table. “Liana!” cried Blousey. “Liana, what are you doing?” I ignored her. Then, summoning up all my courage, I charged straight at Dandy Dan, my fist clenched. It met his jaw with what seemed like no noise at all.
“Liana, NO!”
Too late. I don’t know whether I was caught up in the adrenaline of it all or still tired from running, but right at that moment I went off in a dead faint.


Entry 12

Waking Up

Blurs danced in front of me. Something was cold and damp on my forehead. I blinked to focus my eyes, and the blurs changed into the face of a woman with her arm above me. It was Blousey dabbing at my head with a wet cloth.
“Liana? Can you hear me?” she said in a soothing, comforting voice. “You’re coming round.”
I blinked again and made a low moaning sound. My head was swimming and I seemed to be resting on a cloud. Was this heaven? Were we all dead? No. This wasn’t a cloud I was resting on. It was a bed. A soft feather bed with wool blankets. I reached up to rub my eyes.
“Can you hear me?” Blousey asked again.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice was a strain. Then I gasped. “Dandy Dan! He…”
“It’s alright,” she said, again in that soothing tone. “Dandy Dan’s gone. We’re safe.” She put the cloth on the bedside table. I sat up and blinked hard to get my vision in focus. My head was thudding like a marching-band bass drum.
“What happened?”
“You fainted,” said Blousey. “after you punched him in the mouth. That surprised him even more than when Sam punched him and he fell over. I swear, if Sam hadn’t given him one last kick Dan might have killed you. He couldn’t move, he was in so much pain. He didn’t know what had hit him!” She laughed. “But anyway…that gave Bugsy time to run forward and get you out of harm’s way.”
“And you’re surprisingly light,” came another voice from the spare room door. It was Bugsy. “For an eleven-year-old, I mean.” He walked into the room and sat on the bed beside Blousey. I was surprised.
“You mean…you carried me up here?”
“Sure I did. How else could I get you up here? Both of us sprout wings and fly?” I chuckled at his joke. “Anyway, how ya feelin’?”
“I’m fine, I think,” I said. “Where are Tallulah and Sam?”
“Downstairs,” said Blousey. “clearin’ up the last of the splurge. You should’ve seen the mess it made.”
“What happened to Dan after I hit him?” I asked.
“We didn’t see,” said Bugsy. “We were too busy concentrating on you. But we did here Sam shouting,” He put on Fat Sam’s voice surprisingly well. “‘That’s right, get outta here, ya dummies! And don’t go messin’ with kids again!’”
“So he just ran?”
“Yep,” responded Blousey. “I guess he was scared!”
We all nearly split our sides laughing. Outsmarting Dandy Dan was one thing – scaring him was quite another!
“Anyway,” Bugsy chuckled. “We’re gonna go to the speakeasy. Sam thought we could all do with a drink.” He touched my forehead and winced. “Especially you. You’re burnin’ up!”
I felt my forehead. It seemed to be hotter than a coal in a fire.
I started to get off the bed, but Blousey stopped me. “Don’t move too quickly,” she said. I sighed.
“I’m OK, Blousey. Really.”
She reluctantly let me get off the bed, and they both shot me anxious glances as I got my trainers back on. Evidently Bugsy had taken the precaution of taking them off to stop the bed sheets getting dirty. I thought my shoes were pretty clean though. Not like I’d stepped in any dogs’ muck recently. I scooped up my things (the notebook, my pen) from the bedside table, put them in my pockets and they followed me downstairs, where Fat Sam and Tallulah were just finishing cleaning up, well, Tallulah was. Sam seemed to be opting out of it. He smiled in my direction.
“You’ve woken up then?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What does it look like?”
Bugsy and Blousey came up behind me. They now looked a lot less worried.
“You guys nearly ready to go?” asked Bugsy.
“Almost,” Tallulah called, not looking up from the splurge stain in Bugsy’s carpet, which she was scrubbing at like mad with a sponge. “There we go,” she said as it finally disappeared. “That’s one tough stain.” She got up from the floor and smoothed the hem of her dress. It had got a bit creased from kneeling over. “You might not want to step on that spot until it’s dry,” she told Bugsy.
“Come on, guys,” said Blousey. “Let’s go. I’m dying of thirst.”
The five of us walked to the speakeasy in companionable silence. None of us could think of anything to say after what we’d been through tonight, not even me, and I can be a bit of a chatterbox when I need to be. We reached the bookstore and Sam disappeared into an alley by the side of it. I tensed as I saw him go.
“Don’t worry,” said Bugsy. “That’s just the speakeasy’s back entrance. He’ll join us once we’re in there.” I breathed out with relief as the rest of us walked into the bookstore. Bugsy nodded to Pop Becker and knocked on the hatch.
“Jelly?”
“Hey, Bugsy.”
“Hey. Four of us now, but two work here.” Jelly just let us all in. Blousey and Tallulah ran ahead and disappeared backstage. Into the dressing-room, I presumed.
“They’re late!” laughed Bugsy.
“Ha. You can say that again.” I looked at my watch. It was half-ten.
“They’re late!” We both laughed again and walked up to a free table. Bugsy gave me another anxious look.
“Are you sure you’re OK?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I objected. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Oh, no reason,” said Bugsy. “It’s just that I keep feelin’ I need to look after you. It’s strange, I know. You ain’t even my kid!” He laughed again, his brown eyes sparkling. I smiled and looked at the stage.
“Show hasn’t started yet.”
“I know. It would have, but what with Blousey and Tallulah being late…” Bugsy didn’t need to finish. I knew why the show hadn’t started.
“Hey, you two.” We both swivelled out heads to where the voice was coming from. It was Sam. He’d got a special-on-the-rocks for Bugsy and a double for himself. “Didn’t know what you wanted, Liana,” he said to me.
“I’m alright with water,” I said quickly. “I need refreshing.” I did, but there was another reason I’d gone for water. I wasn’t about to force another glass of that revolting lemonade down my throat if I could help it.
“Alright,” he said, walking away from the table. He was back in a tick with a glass of water.
“Whew!” he breathed, sitting in a free chair at the table. “Wow. What a night we’ve had.”
“Yeah,” agreed Bugsy. “How exactly did you get out, Liana? I don’t think we’ve heard the whole story.”
“I just noticed the lounge door was open and barged out. The gang didn’t put up any resistance.”
“I suppose the front door wasn’t locked?” said Bugsy.
“I got lucky. It wasn’t. Heavy though. If they’d started chasing me the second I ran I might have got caught again.”
“I’m just glad we all survived,” smiled Sam.
“Innit?” I said. I’m not sure they knew what I meant by that, but I continued. “Dandy Dan could have killed you, Bugsy.”
“Ha-ha! Said I’d like to see him try, didn’t I?”
“Well, you’re the one who told me and Blousey you were going to die!”
“Meh, true.”
“Well then,” Sam cut across the conversation. “Liana, I guess we’ll all need to keep in contact with ya. Where should we write to?”
I took the slip of paper with Bugsy’s number on it and my biro out of my pocket and wrote my address down. 35 South Bank Lane, Chelsea, London, England.
“There’s the address,” I said, handing the paper to Sam. “Just don’t send them until March 2010.”
“Oh, great.” Bugsy rested his elbow on the table and put his head in his hand. “You don’t still think you’re from the future, do you?”
“But I am!” I said, trying to sound convincing.
“Quit foolin’ around, will ya?” Sam said. “You’re not. How could you have got here?”
“You guys don’t think I’m still nuts, do you?”
“You ain’t nuts,” said Bugsy. “Just confused.” Humph. “Nuts” and “confused” are pretty close synonyms. “And anyway,” he continued. “If you are, how you gonna get home?”
“Oh, er…” I hesitated. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
There was no time to think about it. Music had already started and I could hear the girls’ tap shoes hammering on the stage. The song had started and I couldn’t stop myself snapping my fingers to the beat. I sang along a bit too.
The song finished and the girls curtsied, then the whole speakeasy exploded into applause. Bugsy, Fat Sam and I stood up and cheered as loud as we could. I was cheering, but suddenly the loud undignified din of the speakeasy dampened around my ears. My head started spinning. I stopped clapping and held my head, then fell to the floor. This was different to ordinary fainting. My vision fuzzed around me, and even though I wasn’t moving it felt like I was tumbling, tumbling into a chasm as deep as death. The rough wooden floor smoothened under my hands and changed colour from brown to black, and the whistles and cheers of the speakeasy customers transformed into frightened shouts from easily recognised voices. So much easier to recognise than Bugsy’s, or Dandy Dan’s, or anyone’s. They were clearly children’s voices, with the exception of one adult. It was Miss Raymond and the whole of the cast of our play.
“Liana! Liana!”
“Oh my god, did that ladder hit her?!”
“Has someone called an ambulance?”
“Wait, quick! Come over here! I think she’s waking up!”
I blinked my way back to reality and realised that I was lying face down on my school stage. Rolling onto my back I could see a hoard of frightened, pale faces. Among them were Eleanor and Sophie. And Joe. He was frozen to the spot, unable to move or speak, white as a sheet. Sophie gasped.
“Oh, thank God! She is awake!”
“Liana, it’s OK!” said Eleanor, helping me to sit up. “There’s an ambulance on its way.”
My head was absolutely killing. I felt the back of it and got the same feeling you get when you have a bruise.
“Owww…” I groaned, tilting my head forward. “Have I just been knocked out?”
“OH…MY…GOD!” Joe had found his voice. “Liana, I’m so sorry! That ladder just…went out of control…”
“Joe!” Miss Raymond’s sharp voice interrupted him. “You will see the headteacher tomorrow morning! It’s not acceptable to hit people on the head with a ladder!”
“But it was an accident!”
“It’s still unacceptable.”
Thinking back on it now, I think Miss Raymond was being a bit hard on Joe. I would have made an objection, but it’s a bit hard to do that when your head kills and you’ve got no idea what happened. “That ladder swung and hit your head, Liana.” Sophie said to me, kneeling down. “You’ve been knocked out for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?!” I exclaimed. “But I’ve been away for almost two days! You see, I was on my way home when I got