Daizy Star and the Pink Guitar Read online

  Hi …

  I’m Daizy Star, and I have a bit of a problem. OK, make that a BIG problem.

  It’s my dad … he’s having a mid-life crisis and it’s seriously, seriously annoying. He keeps getting these crazy ideas about saving the world and, trust me, they are the worst ideas in the history of the universe. Bad times, huh?

  At least I have my cool new pink guitar and my dreams of rock superstardom to cling to in the middle of this nightmare.

  Who knows, music, friends and hot chocolate with melted marshmallows might just get me through …

  Love, hugs and custard doughnuts,

  Books for younger readers

  SHINE ON, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR AND THE PINK GUITAR

  Books for older readers

  DIZZY

  DRIFTWOOD

  INDIGO BLUE

  SCARLETT

  SUNDAE GIRL

  LUCKY STAR

  GINGERSNAPS

  ANGEL CAKE

  DREAMS AND DOODLES DAYBOOK

  LETTERS TO CATHY

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2010

  Text and illustrations copyright © Cathy Cassidy, 2010

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author/illustrator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194671-9

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Demo version limitation

  Birthday cake for breakfast is almost always a good thing … unless the cake is sunken and solid, with all the flavour of a wholemeal house brick. I gnaw on my slice politely, curled up on the sofa playing Pictionary with Beth and Pixie while Willow stretches out on the carpet, playing a computer game on Dad’s laptop.

  If Mum was here, she’d dispose of the cake quickly and quietly and whip up something yummy, but sadly, she’s on early shift at the hospital today.

  ‘This looks delicious …’ Beth tells Pixie kindly, selecting the smallest possible piece. ‘You are clever!’

  ‘It’s easy,’ Pixie shrugs. ‘Just like making mud pies, really!’

  ‘Mud pies?’ Beth blinks, then slides her plate out of sight behind the sofa when she thinks nobody is looking.

  ‘But with stewed dates and roasted linseeds instead of mud, of course,’ Pixie reassures her. ‘Dad says they are superfoods, designed to make you glow with health. I’m glad you like it.’

  ‘It’s very … um … unusual,’ Beth says weakly.

  My little sister takes a piece of cake and bites into it, grinning. Then her face crumples. ‘It’s all gritty!’ she howls, throwing down the cake in disgust. ‘Ugh!’

  ‘That’ll be the roasted linseeds,’ I sigh. ‘Never mind, Pixie. This healthy-eating kick of Dad’s is a nightmare. I wish he’d just get back to normal.’

  ‘Normal’ is not a word you could use about my dad, though. Not lately, anyhow. Ever since he packed in his job as a geography teacher at a local secondary school a while back, he has been acting very strangely indeed.

  My big sister Becca says it is a mid-life crisis.

  If you don’t know what a mid-life crisis is, then trust me, you are very, very lucky, because it is NOT a good thing. It’s actually quite sad and tragic, and deeply annoying at the same time.

  Becca says that some men have a mid-life crisis when they get to about forty and realize they are getting old and grey and wrinkly, so I expect that’s what has happened to Dad. He keeps having these deeply scary ideas for making his dreams come true, which is bad news because Dad’s dreams are a bit like everyone else’s nightmares.

  ‘Let’s bin it,’ Pixie decides. ‘Dad will never know!’

  Dad is out on his morning run, which means we are safe for a while, so I tip the remains of the yucky cake into the outside bin. I hope that this won’t affect my birthday wish coming true.

  I run upstairs and knock on Becca’s bedroom door.

  ‘Yeah?’ she yells over the racket of clashy, trashy punk music. I step inside. Becca’s room is a twilight zone of black and red net and wall-to-wall posters of scary-looking bands. Becca is sitting on the bed, painting her fingernails black.

  ‘Becca …’ I say. ‘Bit of a problem. We tried to eat the cake Dad and Pixie made …’

  ‘Ouch,’ Becca says, rolling her eyes. She reaches under the bed and pulls out her emergency jar of instant hot chocolate, along with a bag of marshmallows. My big sister is a great believer in the healing powers of hot chocolate, and luckily she is also very good at sharing.

  The two of us are in the kitchen, dropping marshmallows on to steaming mugs of hot chocolate, when the doorbell rings.

  ‘Surprise!’ says Murphy Malone, my best boy mate. He is standing on the doorstep carrying a plate piled high with custard doughnuts, with random birthday candles flickering in the November breeze. ‘I wasn’t sure what to get you, so I just took the easy option …’

  ‘It’s perfect!’ I tell him. I blow the candles out because I am not about to miss a second chance to make my wish come true and discover my star quality. Then I drag Murphy into the living room where Beth, Willow and Pixie fall on the doughnut mountain like a pack of starving wolves, with Becca and me close behind.

  Custard doughnuts and hot chocolate … now that’s a birthday breakfast.

  Murphy lives just over the street from me – we’ve been friends for ages. He is not all annoying like some boys I could mention. He is into cool clothes and funny haircuts and bands that nobody else has heard of, and he’s kind and funny and has never, ever put a worm down the back of my sweatshirt, the way Ethan Miller did back in Year Three. He also has a serious addiction to custard doughnuts, which is obviously very useful at moments like these.

  ‘S
o …’ Murphy asks, licking the sugar off his lips. ‘How was the girly sleepover?’

  ‘Great,’ I say. ‘We stayed up till midnight watching Disney DVDs. We painted our toenails every colour of the rainbow and dressed up in tiaras and fairy wings, eating pizza and choc chip muffins. And this morning, Willow chucked my alarm clock in the pond. The usual, really.’

  ‘Er … cool,’ Murphy says. ‘I think.’

  ‘It was. Have you seen what Mum and Dad got me?’ I pick up the pink guitar and strum a long rock solo, shaking my head about so that my hair whirls around like a whole bunch of snakes doing the hula. Luckily, the amp is not plugged in this time, so Murphy doesn’t have to cover his ears.

  ‘Looks amazing,’ Murphy says, biting into his fourth custard doughnut. ‘You should start a band!’

  ‘Oh, I will!’ I tell him, grinning. ‘As soon as I’ve learnt to play!’

  Willow looks at her watch. ‘Mum will be here to pick me up soon,’ she says. ‘Shall I shut this laptop down?’

  I flop down on to the floor beside her.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ I click a couple of times, then frown as I spot a file I’ve never seen before on Dad’s laptop. It says Africa Project. A little niggle of worry unravels inside me.

  Of course, an ex-geography teacher has every right to have a file on his laptop called Africa Project. It is probably crammed with dusty old graphs on the rainfall of the Kalahari Desert and essays on farming in the Congo – nothing but yawn-making facts. Probably.

  But then again, nothing Dad does is normal any more. I can’t help remembering his last crazy plan.

  Before I can help myself, I click the file open. Inside are lots of documents about a place called Malawi. It looks a lot like a geography teacher’s research project. When I open one of the documents, the screen fills with photos. A vast blue lake, a scorching savannah, smiling villagers in bright print wraps, and image after image of lions, elephants, leopards, rhinos …

  Beth, Willow, Murphy, Pixie and Becca crowd round the screen.

  ‘Wow,’ Beth says. ‘Is your dad planning a holiday? A safari?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Becca huffs. ‘We just don’t do holidays like that. We had a day trip to Eastbourne this summer, remember?’

  ‘But he’s changed lately,’ Willow reminds us. ‘He’s got all adventurous, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Kind of,’ I admit uneasily.

  ‘He wants to travel and see the world,’ Pixie chips in.

  That’s definitely true. Dad talks a lot about getting out of the rat race and following his dreams. A long-haul holiday to Africa might be exactly the kind of thing he would plan, now he is in the grip of the mid-life crisis. Mightn’t it?

  Before we have time to discuss any more, Dad comes in from his run, wobbly and purple-faced. ‘Hello, kids!’ he gasps. ‘Anyone for a nice wheatgrass and celery smoothie?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I say quickly. I’ve tried Dad’s wheatgrass and celery smoothies before. They taste like something you might use to clean the sink.

  ‘Dad …’ Pixie says. My little sister is bursting with excitement. In her shining eyes I can see visions of giraffes and wildebeest, lions and leopards. ‘Dad … are we really going on a safari holiday to Africa?’

  The smile freezes on Dad’s face as he sees the open laptop, the photos and files. He is looking shifty now, as well as purple-faced.

  ‘Um … not exactly a safari holiday …’ he admits.

  Pixie’s shoulders slump, and Becca folds her arms, her face stern.

  ‘I can explain,’ Dad says. ‘I wasn’t going to mention it yet, not until things were definite, but …’

  Beth, Willow and Murphy look at Dad brightly, waiting for the explanation. But me? Seriously, I do not want to know. There’s a cold, sour swirl of fear in my tummy that tells me I’m not going to like this.

  I’m not going to like it at all.

  Demo version limitation

  Luckily, I am eleven years old now. I am very nearly grown-up, and quite wise and mature compared to when I was ten and three-quarters.

  When a disaster unfolds right in the middle of my living room, which seems to happen quite a lot these days, I am not about to run for cover, screaming. I am not about to pretend it isn’t happening or try to keep it secret or lie awake for long hours all through the night, tossing and turning and having stomach-churning nightmares, like I did with Dad’s last big plan.

  No, those days are gone.

  Slamming gates and hanging upside down on tyre-swings will not cut it, either.

  I am eleven now, and I am going to deal with this problem in a mature and sensible way. I will stay calm at all times, and listen, and gather information. The more I know, the more I can do to stop this whole thing from happening.

  I even have a notebook, so I can jot down important points and then use them to come up with a plan later.

  While I was out at the park, Dad made some cabbage and kidney-bean soup for tea, with the misguided idea that this will cheer us up and win us over to his cause. Yeah, right. Anyway, now he is happily stirring it, filling us in on the little details of his big African dream.

  Becca is yelling that Dad is a deranged lunatic whose only dream is to rip our lives into tiny shreds and scatter them to the four winds, and Pixie is still trying to decide whether she would rather have a zebra or an anteater as a pet.

  Mum is sitting at the kitchen table, head in hands, shoulders shaking. I worried at first that she was crying, but no, she is laughing. In a slightly alarming kind of way. I am starting to think that I am the only sane one in my whole family, when thankfully Mum says something distinctly un-crazy.

  ‘Africa?’ Mum says, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘You want us to abandon everything and go to live in Africa so you can build a school and dig a well and keep a herd of goats?’

  School, I write. Well. Herd of goats.

  ‘Mike,’ Mum smirks. ‘Have you gone mad?’

  ‘What’s mad about it?’ Dad asks, puzzled, and Mum just rolls her eyes.

  ‘We have a nice home here. I have a job – a job that is keeping us afloat, by the way, now that you have decided you don’t want to be a teacher any more,’ Mum says patiently. ‘The girls have school, and good friends. And none of us – NONE of us, Mike – except you … want to go and live in Africa. Not right now. OK?’

  ‘We cannot put our lives on hold, waiting for the right time!’ Dad says. ‘We have to do this NOW. Malawi needs us. Think of what we could do! We have skills, Livvi, skills that could really help an African village. I can teach … teach kids who truly want to learn. You can nurse and save lives, help children to grow up strong and healthy. Can’t you see what a difference you could make?’

  Mum frowns. ‘I know, but that’s not the point …’

  ‘What is the point, Livvi?’ Dad demands.

  ‘What do you really want from life? Money?

  Status? A flat-screen TV? Or would you like to know that you had saved lives, made a difference to the world?’

  ‘A new TV would be quite nice,’ Pixie muses. ‘We could watch my Little Mermaid DVD on it.’

  ‘There won’t be any TV in rural Malawi,’ Becca snaps, and Pixie’s lower lip quivers a little.

  ‘Livvi?’ Dad repeats. ‘Voluntary work was always a dream of yours, before the kids came along. You cared. You wanted to make a difference.’

  ‘I know,’ Mum says. ‘I still do. I mean, I’d like to, of course, but –’

  ‘No buts, Livvi,’ Dad says. ‘Just consider it, that’s all I’m asking. All of you. I am asking you a difficult thing, I know. I am asking you to think about others, not yourselves. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘Think about others?’ Becca squeaks, outraged. ‘Think about OTHERS? When do YOU ever think about others, Dad? You cook up these crazy ideas and expect us to go along with them, but you never, ever think about how we might feel!’

  There are tears streaming down Becca’s face, making her eyeliner run into rivulets of bl
ack.

  ‘I want what’s best for you!’ Dad argues. ‘This would be the experience of a lifetime! Yes, there would be challenges, but you’ll thank me one day, I promise you!’

  ‘Wanna bet?’ Becca growls.

  ‘There are health risks to consider,’ Mum points out. ‘We’d have to have lots of jabs, and take malaria tablets every day. Is that fair on the kids?’

  Malaria, I write in my notebook, feeling slightly alarmed.

  ‘Life isn’t fair!’ Dad says with passion, setting the table with soup bowls and spoons. ‘Do you think it is fair for the children of Malawi? Do you know what those children would DO for a bowlful of this lovely cabbage and kidney-bean soup?’

  Becca whirls round, lifts the steaming soup pan from the cooker and chucks the whole lot down the sink.

  ‘Stuff your disgusting cabbage soup!’ she yells, in between sobs. ‘Stuff your kidney beans! I hate you! I am not going to live in Malawi and milk goats every morning, and that is final!’

  Stuffed kidney beans, I write.

  Things are starting to look kind of bleak. Becca has stormed off to her room, and Mum has marched upstairs to change and run a relaxing bubble bath to calm her nerves. Pixie is in the living room, watching a DVD of The Lion King to prepare herself for life in Africa.

  Dad looks at me across the table, sad-eyed and glum.

  ‘What about you, Daizy?’ he asks. ‘Do you think I’m crazy too?’

  ‘Um … only a little bit,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t worry about Becca. She is very dramatic these days. I think it’s her hormones. Or maybe something to do with being a Goth?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Dad sighs. ‘I’m just trying to follow my dreams. Is that so wrong?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Your mum and Becca are not convinced,’ he says. ‘I wish I could make them understand. At least you and Pixie are more open-minded, more adventurous, willing to give things a go.’

  ‘Er … right,’ I mutter. If Dad knew I was plotting to overthrow his plan, what would he think then? I smile guiltily and Dad ruffles my hair, the way he used to when I was Pixie’s age.