How to Spell Catastrophe, page 1
About How To Spell Catastrophe
Nell McPherson is a catastrophe expert, but nothing has prepared her for the impending catastrophe of her mum’s plans to merge families with boyfriend, Ted and his annoying daughter, Amelia. As if that’s not dire enough, grade six is turning into an emotional obstacle course as Nell moves away from her old spelling bee friends and into some rule-bending with new girl, Plum.
When Nell decides to tackle the biggest catastrophe of them all, climate change, and campaigns for grade six to attend the School Strike 4 Climate, old friends and new will come together, and along the way plans to foil the family merge give way to an understanding that it might not be such a disaster after all.
Contents
About How to Spell Catastrophe
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Like Being on a Swing
Bad News Breakfast
New Girl Socks
Our Classroom
Spelling Bee Doubts
Way to Wreck a Friday
Pizza Surprise
Don’t Call Me Nelly Noo!
Fire Dreams
Digging In
The Smart Family
Fruitcake and Plans
Ted Smells
Skype with Map
Sneezing Plan
Spelling Bee Surprise
Plum’s Place
Favourite Catastrophes
Still a Mity Worrier
Leadership Challenge
Showing Off
After School with Cecily
Pizza Sulks
Plum’s Place Again
Half True
Bad News: Good House
Brave Like Lyra
Hamburger Hell
Feeling Mean
My Daemon Dog
Important to Me
Pitch Preparation
School Strike 4 Climate Plans
Moving Plans Get Real
Fire Dreams Again
Some Friendly Help
Spying On Ted
Writing Like Fury
Climate Action, Talking the Talk
Unfriends?
Colour Me Excited
Colour Me in Big Trouble
Trying to be True
Hair and Hurt Feelings
Babysitting Plans
Library Angel, Library Devil
In Need of a Friend-Mend
Pizza Night Ruined
Babysitting
Escape to the Park
Amelia
Don’t Look Away
School Strike 4 Climate
Greta and Lyra Energy Needed Urgently
Juggling Friendship
Triumph!
Disaster!
Punishment
The Other Woman Isn’t
Depths of Despair
Pizza Pleading
More Punishment
The Upside of Worry
Cecily the Peacemaker
Protest Signs
A Small Fry and Another Daemon Dog
Climate Change, Walking the Walk
Daemon Dreams
Changes
A Note from Nell
Acknowledgements
About Fiona Wood
Also by Fiona Wood
Copyright
Newsletter
for Walter and Edgar
Prologue
Years and years and years ago, when I was little, I drew a self-portrait.
I was a warrior, in chain mail armour, holding up a sword and wearing a spiky crown.
The picture shimmered with bronze and silver and gold and copper, coloured with metallic markers sent to me by my grandmother, Map.
At the bottom I wrote, Nelly, A Mity Worrier.
Sure, it was a spelling mistake, but – accidentally accurate.
A mighty worrier is someone who worries a lot.
A mighty warrior is the one who goes into battles.
I am Nell, now.
Not Nelly.
But I’m still more a worrier than a warrior.
Like Being on a Swing
In another world I love mornings and I even like school most of the time.
‘Nell! Eleanor!’
In the world of right here, right now, this particular Friday, 13 August at 7.08 am, even though I know there’s going to be a spelling bee meeting with snacks today –
I
just
don’t
feel
like
getting
out
of
bed.
Despite not technically being a teenager, I think that’s a pretty teenage way to feel.
I curl up, settle Snoog-bunny under my chin, and put my head in a pillow sandwich.
Two more precious minutes of snuggly silence.
‘Eleanor. Fry. McPherson.’ Mum has entered my room.
Boundaries!
Where’s a drawbridge when you need one?
‘Your breakfast is not going to eat itself.’ She leans down to say in a singsong voice, ‘Blueberries.’
I groan and roll over. ‘I don’t feel good.’
She puts her lips to my forehead, which is how she checks my temperature. I’m usually okay with that, but this morning the mother lip thermometer is super annoying.
‘No temperature. Come on. Upupupupup!’
‘If I’m not sick, why do I feel so urghhh?’
‘Hormones?’
That’s our joke reason for anything that doesn’t seem to have another explanation.
At school we had our second annual sex education talk, presented by the Hormone Hub, just last week.
It was mostly about hormones and puberty, with a side order of reproduction.
As I told my grandmother, Map, it made me feel extremely conspicuous, being one of the girls in grade six who doesn’t have her period.
My best friend Cecily Smart does have her period, but it’s not regular.
As she says, anything could happen at any time, and in her opinion that is worse than not having your period at all.
I don’t agree.
But Cecily and I do agree that we’d like the whole idea of puberty better if only it had a less disgusting name. Pubic is bad, too.
Sometimes we say it just to enjoy being revolted. We attach it to something stupid.
Pubic nostrils.
Pubic sneakers.
Pubic gravel.
Any other word, please!
Sure, it would still mean periods, pimples, moods and sprouting hair, but at least we wouldn’t ever have to hear anyone say puuuubic or puuuuuuuuuuberty.
After the Hormone Hub talk, Mum asked if I had any questions.
Um, no.
But I do like that my mum is up for giving me information about anything if I ask her.
She says it should all be on a need-to-know basis, and if I ask that means I need to know.
Once when she was busy she told me to look something up on Wikipedia. But when she looked over my shoulder and saw the page, she said, Hmmm, those illustrations are very explicit.
She meant: too much information.
I stay in bed for four more toasty minutes then head into the bathroom for a Sleepy Shower, which is quickly washing bits that count and then standing like a zombie for the longest possible time with water pouring over me – before my mum starts yelling about not wasting water.
The opposite is the Fully Present Shower where I use orange blossom shower gel and my daisy wash mitt and wash every square inch, also shampoo my hair, twice, and condition, just the ends, plus do a tea-tree oily-face wash – before my mum starts yelling about not wasting water.
Because it’s a Sleepy day I’m shampooing my fringe only and will jam my hair into a ponytail-bun.
Rinsing my fringe until it squeaks and letting the warm water pour over my face, I wonder about . . .
Why I desperately need to sleep in some mornings.
When, when, when, when, if ever, will I get my period.
Who Plum Clarkson, the new girl in our grade, will end up being friends with.
Why my mother keeps arranging catch-ups with her boyfriend, tedious Ted, and his daughter, awful Amelia.
What my ‘Important to Me’ Civics and Citizenship talk should be about.
And,
What even is Important to Me?
Shouldn’t I know that by grade six?
It feels like being on a swing.
Looking down at the ground, heading backwards, legs tucked under, I want everything to stay the same forever and ever, and the next second, head back, eyes full of sky, legs stretched out, can’t wait for everything to change.
Confusing.
‘NELL! Water!’
Some things never change.
Hopping across the rug, drying between my toes, I land on one corner of my catastrophe notebook*, poking out from under the bed, and only just manage to stagger backwards so I fall on the bed instead of facedown on the floor.
Phew.
Catastrophe averted.
I might have broken my nose!
Not everyone knows what to do in case of an emergency, disaster or catastrophe.
And that’s okay because emergencies, disasters and catastrophes don’t happen every day.
But they do happen occasionally.
So some people need to know.
I’m one of those people.
I have an interest.
I keep notes.
And I remember this sort of information; it sticks like glue.
* This is where I keep all my catastrophe information – practical tips, trivia, random thoughts – a two-hundred-page spirex binder with tabs. One catastrophe is banned: climate change. It’s too big for me. Or I’m too small for it. I like a disaster that I can do something about.
The shower is definitely a place of potential catastrophe.
One slip could turn out to be fatal.
And, no question, the shower is a slippery place.
If the shower head is over a bathtub, like ours, it is possible to slip, knock yourself unconscious, fall over in such a way that you block the plughole and then drown as the bath fills with water.
You’d have to be unlucky.
It would depend on a string of unlikely – but not impossible – events.
Overheating and fainting is also a possibility.
On the other hand, because it’s likely to be a strong structure, a bath or shower can also be a safe place to shelter if certain other catastrophes are on the go, for example a tornado, earthquake or hurricane.
So, there’s that.
Things are never simple.
Bad News Breakfast
Okay, I do love porridge with blueberries.
Cecily says porridge looks like lumpy glue, but I think you’re either a porridge family or you’re not.
We are, and the Smarts are not.
Right into the middle of my three bears – or two bears, in our case – thoughts, just as I am about to drop a thick slice of bread in the toaster for stage two breakfast, Mum drops the bomb.
‘Ted and Amelia are coming over for dinner tonight.’ She looks at her watch.
‘Noooooo! Amelia is the worst! Can’t you tell them I’ve got something contagious?’
‘You haven’t, and it’ll be fun.’
Mum and I have such different ideas about what that word means.
It is not fun listening to a seven-year-old tell you scene by scene about their favourite episodes of The Inbestigators.
It is not fun wondering if a seven-year-old sitting right next to you, in your own house, is scratching her head because she has head lice.
It is not fun being demoted to invisible entertainer of itchy seven-year-old while your mother is laughing merrily at something that Ted is telling her.
‘Where’s the peanut butter?’ I ask.
Mum flips the lid off an alien jar – almond butter – and hands it over. While I’m spreading my toast with the inferior nut butter she rinses our bowls and puts the maple syrup back in the fridge.
My mum is a wide-awake, super-efficient morning type who clears up, washes up, wipes up while you’re still eating – and by the time we leave there will be no sign that humans had breakfast in this house on this day.
I make myself a cheese bagel and pack it together with the container of salad that is ready for me in the fridge.
I sigh, loudly.
We may be the only family on the planet actually eating the recommended daily number of vegetable servings.
A mandarin, a couple of homemade cookies, water bottle, iPad and I’m ready to go.
‘I’ve said yes to the spelling bee permission request,’ says Mum.
I grunt.
‘I’ll take that as a thank you.’
My mum understands that I’m not a morning person. She does help me to wake up, but it’s not compulsory for me to talk at breakfast.
We save chit-chat for later in the day.
Today, it will be cranky chit-chat about why our pizza night is being invaded by two people I do not want to see.
We leave the house at the same time, heading in opposite directions.
I’m walking to school, which is two blocks away, and my mother is driving to Glenbrook Terrace where she goes every Friday morning to treat a bunch of old people.
She works with them on mobility, gentle exercise classes, and rehab after they fall over.
Stuff like that.
She’s a physiotherapist.
Her name is Anne Fry, which is how I get Fry as my middle name.
Three days a week she works in a big physio practice in the city, helping lawyers and accountants with their stress-related, sitting-too-long-at-the-desk-related and bike-gym-marathon-related problems, and on Mondays she takes classes in hospitals for women who are pregnant. Antenatal classes.
‘Ante-’ means before, not to be confused with ‘anti-’, meaning against.
Handy to know if you’re a spelling bee person, which I am.
Anty, covered in ants, or relating to ants, is not really a word but obviously should be, particularly in Australia, a land of thriving ant communities.
Our street, Little Stuart Street – which we call Stuart Little Street after our favourite mouse – is mostly Victorian-era houses with a couple of 1970s apartment buildings.
The corner houses that face onto Purcell Street are tagged all over their Stuart Little Street sidewalls.
Our council used to remove graffiti regularly, but now they only do it if there’s offensive language.
Turning left into Purcell Street’s tunnel of budding plane trees, I can’t stop stewing about Ted and Amelia which is a shame because it’s Friday, a good day. Wrapping up the week, weekend coming into view. It’s my top-ranking schoolday.
Wednesday is obviously the wishy-washy worst.
Mondays are fine.
Everything is freshly possible on Mondays.
It’s a clean sheet of paper in art class, a blinking cursor at the top of a blank screen, wet sand that hasn’t been stepped in.
I came up with those three when we did similes and metaphors in English last week.
Tuesdays and Thursdays can fall either way – it depends what else is happening.
As I walk towards school, I imagine seeing Plum – what a great name – in the bag room, and saying hello, in a casual but friendly way.
Hi, Plum.
Hiya!
Hey.
Hey there, Plum.
It’s Plum, isn’t it? Hi!
I don’t expect her to remember my name.
We only have her name to remember, but for her there are twenty-four new names.
What will she be wearing today?
What am I wearing? I glance down: my grottier trackies.
What might she and I have in common?
Will we be friends?
Having a cool new girl in class sure has put crispy bits in the day.
I pick up the pace, barely dodging a splattering magpie poo as I approach the school crossing.
The most likely on-the-way-to-school catastrophe is falling over and having to go straight to sick bay with bleeding knees or elbows or nose.
The second most likely is abduction.
It’s extremely rare, which is good. It hardly ever happens.
We have all known since forever: never go near a car that slows down or pulls up next to you.
Don’t get lured over to look at a puppy or help with directions or accept a lolly.
Your parents will never ask someone you don’t know to pick you up.
Don’t be shy about screaming, shouting and making a big fuss if a stranger approaches you.
Run.
And so on.
You might only be a kid, but as Map says, forewarned is forearmed.
That of course is not talking about actual forearms; it means you are prepared and armed with a weapon.
The weapon in this case is street knowledge.
Of course, natural disasters can also happen on the way to school: lightning strike, being swept into a stormwater drain by a flash flood, being electrocuted by a falling power line, being swooped by a bird, etc.
All you can do to avoid these is read the weather forecast and be ever alert.
New Girl Socks
It’s unusual for anyone to start at school part way through the year, let alone four weeks into third term, but that’s when Plum Clarkson joined our class – grade six blue – on Wednesday, wearing casual clothes.
Wearing sparkly lurex socks.
Hollyhill Primary School had never seen anything like it.
‘Socktacular,’ said Cecily under her breath.
‘Specsockular?’ added Gus.
‘Socktastic,’ I agreed. ‘Where did she even get them?’
Our school has a uniform. You can wear grey anything on the bottom, with a lighter grey (they call it ‘silver’, but it’s just light grey) school-crested polo, grey socks, black shoes.
Our crest is bright orange, which looks good with the grey. Our official schoolbag is also bright orange.
