Free How to Write Really Badly by Anne Fine Page B

church on Sunday
    To pray to God to give her strength
    To kiss the boys on Monday
.
    I turned to Joe. ‘Is this some kind of special day?’
    He trotted out his puzzled look. ‘What do you mean?’
    I didn’t quite know how to put it. ‘What I mean is, are you all pretending to be sweet little orphans, or something? Is this some sort of History Day?’
    I wasn’t ringing his doorbell, you could tell.
    ‘History Day?’

    ‘You know. Like when all the girls dress up in pinafores, and everyone sits with their arms folded neatly on their desks, and the teacher pretends that it’s a hundred years ago.’
    A light came on in his attic at last.
    ‘Oh! Like when we did our Victorian School Day?’
    I shrugged.
    ‘Whatever. Something all goody-goodyand old-fashioned, anyhow.’
    He stared round the playground. In one corner, two of the bigger boys were putting their arms round a sobbing toddler who’d lost his pet marble, or something. By the porch, boys and girls were practising a hornpipe. (I am
serious
.) Next to the gates, a gaggle of merrymakers were doing a complicated clapping game. And all the rest were ambling around, smiling andwaving to one another, or loyally waiting for friends outside the lavatories.
    ‘What I mean is,’ I said, ‘where
are
we? On the planet
Zog
?’
    Joe’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, yes! That would be fun. Let’s both be visitors to the planet Zog, and you –’
    I gave him my hardest killer stare. Who did this blintz-brain think I was? Some bedwetter, keen to play his Betsy-wetsy games?
    ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I think maybe it’s time that I explained something to you.’
    But he’d clapped his hand to his mouth.
    ‘Oh, Howard,’ he told me. ‘It’ll have to wait till after break. Because I’ve just remembered I promised Miss Tate I’d help her cut the covers for our new How-to books.’
    And just at that moment, the lady herself appeared on the steps.
    ‘Jo-ey!’ she warbled. ‘Jo-ey Gardener!’
    ‘Coming, Miss Tate!’ he trilled.
    And he was off.
    I slid my back down against the nearest wall and sank my head in my arms. Oh, just my luck. I’ve made my way in schools where the uniform is so itchy it brings you out in hives, and schools where you have to stand and pray five times a day, and schools where they make you do your work over and over again, until it’s right.
    But never had I fetched up somewhere like this. Already I could hear the scuffling of anxious little feet. Nervously I looked up, and found myself encircled by worried faces.
    ‘Howard?’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘It’s difficult for anyone on their first day.’
    ‘You’ll soon get used to us, honestly.’
    ‘Do you want to come and skip?’
    I opened my mouth. I was about to speak. The first words were just rising to my lips when the bell rang.
    Just as well . . .

3
Ugly stuff!
    An hour later, Miss Tate explained the whole soul-rotting business again, for any beef-brains who weren’t listening the first ten times.
    ‘So here are your lovely covers, which Joe has very kindly helped me cut to size.’
    Our Joe took his tenth bow.
    ‘And paper is on my desk. Lined here, and unlined here.’
    She pointed twice, just in case anyone in the room was so deeply brain damaged they were going to get in a tizzy, searching for something in a space one metre by two.
    ‘And all of you get to choose what you write about. But it does have to be a little How-to book. So it could be –?’
    She pointed to Beth.
    ‘How to keep rabbits,’ Beth saidpromptly, and beamed.
    (This wasn’t news. We had been through Beth’s plans at least a zillion times since we’d trooped in.)
    ‘Or how to –?’
    She pointed at some of the crawlers in the front row, and they jumped to it again.
    ‘How to make a kite.’
    ‘How to start your own candle factory.’
    ‘How to grow mustard and cress.’
    ‘Train your dog.’
    ‘Plan a night’s camping in winter.’
    ‘Decorate hard-boiled eggs.’
    I’ve fallen in some