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Only last week he had got into trouble when he and Gavin Needle had been sent to her office.

Gavin Needle had stuck a drawing pin on Barney’s seat, and he had sat down and yelped in pain. Their geography teacher had told them both to go to Miss Whipmire’s office. But when they got there Miss Whipmire sent Gavin back to class and concentrated all her evilness on Barney. If it had been anyone else’s behind that had been pin-punctured then Miss Whipmire would have delighted in the opportunity to humiliate Gavin (or ‘Weedle’, as she called him), but not when that behind belonged to Barney.

Which meant Gavin was free to carry on sticking drawing pins on Barney’s chair. Or, if he had no drawing pins, just pulling back the chair seconds before Barney sat down. Oh yes, Gavin had read the ‘Chair Torture’ chapter in The Bully’s Handbook at least a hundred times.

So, between Miss Whipmire and Gavin Needle, Barney didn’t want to think about what lay in store today. He just wanted to keep his eyes closed and pretend it was still night-time. Which was hard, given that his face was being licked by a rough, wet tongue.

Barney pulled the duvet over his head but even that didn’t stop the spaniel, whose narrow nose and long tongue nuzzled into the darkness to find him.

And then, as every morning, his mum urged him out of bed.

‘Come on, Barney! I know it’s your birthday but it’s time to get up. I’m going to be late for the library!’

So Barney got out of bed, watched his mum whirling about at her normal hyper-speed. Then he washed, brushed and dressed everything that needed to be washed, brushed and dressed, and went downstairs.

In the hallway Guster nudged against his knees. Barney looked down and saw his dog’s brown floppy ears and rather proud, upturned nose.

‘All right, boy. Walkies.’

To Be a Cat

‘IF YOU REALLY want a dog, you must be prepared to look after it,’ Barney’s mum had told him before they had brought Guster home from the dog rescue centre five years ago. ‘And that means walking it twice a day.’

To be honest, Barney didn’t mind taking Guster for walks. It was often the nicest bit of the day, especially when the weather was behaving itself. Today, though, it began to rain as Barney sat on the park bench waiting for Guster to do his business. Harsh, heavy rain which blatantly ignored the fact that Barney hadn’t brought an umbrella.

‘Some birthday,’ Barney mumbled as he clipped the lead back onto Guster’s collar.

He knew he was feeling sorry for himself, but he couldn’t help it.

On his way home, he passed a house on Friary Road with an old, silver-haired cat sitting in the window, snug and smug in the warmth. To be a cat, he thought to himself. That would be an easy life.

No school.

No Gavin Needle.

No need to be woken before seven in the morning.

Total freedom. And, unlike dogs, you don’t even have to go out in the rain.

As he was thinking all this the cat turned towards him, and Barney realized it was the same cat he often saw staring out at him from this house. The cat only had one eye. Its other eye socket was stitched up with a white thread so thick Barney could see it from the street.

Guster saw the cat too, yanked hard on the lead and began yapping.

‘Come on, Guster, stop being stupid. You’re not fooling anyone.’

Just before arriving home Barney bumped into the postman. ‘Anything for number seventeen?’ he asked.

The postman had a look through the bundles of post. ‘Oh yes. Yes, there is.’

And Barney took the envelopes and quickly shuffled through them. A birthday card from Aunt Celia was there amid the brown-enveloped bills, but there was nothing from his dad. He knew it

was unlikely, and it was stupid to expect anything, to hope for a glimpse of that handwriting he knew as well as his own. But if his dad was still alive Barney had been sure that his birthday was the most likely day he’d make contact.

But no. Nothing.

‘Oh, more bills,’ sighed his mum, receiving the bundle from her son.

‘Never mind, Mum,’ said Barney, trying to sound convincing.

His mum pecked him on the cheek, in fast-forward, then shot out the door. ‘I’ll be late tonight,’ she said. ‘There’s a meeting. I’ll be back around sevenish. But there’s some salad in the fridge if you get hungry.’

Salad?!

On his birthday!

You know, he wasn’t expecting a ten-course meal followed by a hot-air balloon ride, or anything, but maybe he’d expected a little bit more than a night on his own eating lettuce and doing his homework.

He watched his mum get into the Mini and couldn’t help feeling she wasn’t really a person any more. She was just a blur, always on the move and only stopping every now and then for a sigh.

She drove away.

And Barney stood on the doorstep, watching the rain and wishing his dad was there.

‘Oi, cheer up, Willow, you’re only twelve,’ came a voice. ‘No reason to start looking like an adult already.’

The voice was Rissa Fairweather’s. Barney looked up and saw his best friend standing there, tall and grinning, and with an umbrella spotted like a leopard.

‘Hi, Rissa,’ he said, smiling for the first time that morning.

Rissa Fairweather

‘MADE IT MYSELF,’ said Rissa, handing Barney a birthday card. ‘You know, gets a bit boring sometimes on the barge on a cloudy night.’

Oh, yes, dear readers. I should tell you – and I must break my promise and interrupt again (I’m not good with promises, they make me itchy) – that Barney’s best friend was a little bit unusual. She really did live on a barge. And she didn’t have a TV. She had a telescope instead, and spent most of her nights watching the sky, looking for star constellations (until he met Rissa, Barney thought Orion’s Belt was an item of clothing).

You might think that such a girl would get picked on at school. No TV. Strange hobby. Lives on a boat. Hair like a pirate. And at least a foot taller than any other person in her year.

But no.

Unlike Barney, for whom Gavin Needle and his friends made life a daily torment, Rissa was one hundred per cent bully-proof. Do you want to know her secret? She genuinely didn’t care what people said about her. In fact, she quite enjoyed it if people called her names. It made her feel shiny inside.

On her first day at Blandford she’d had a few people shout ‘Weirdo’ and ‘Barge girl’ in her direction, but that just made her smile. She always thought of something her mum said: ‘If people pick on you, they see something inside you that they are scared of. Something special, which they might not have, which shines out of you like a jewel.’

If anyone ever did pick on her, Rissa always imagined a shining emerald getting another polish. Or, if she was really bothered about something, she’d say the word ‘marmalade’ (her favourite food).

It might sound silly, but that’s what her dad had suggested, and it worked for her.

Anyway, I’m rambling.

You are wondering what all this has to do with magic cats, aren’t you? I can see it in your face.

Well, you’ll get to that in a minute. Or a hundred minutes. It depends how fast you read. But right now let’s go back to the tale and learn more about Barney’s totally terrible birthday at school. In fact, let’s grab a timetable. Hasta luego.

Barney’s Totally Terrible Birthday Timetable