Free Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce Page B

And then the doors opened. It was dark outside but the plane soon filled up with the smell of toasted sand.
    Florida said, “Are we on the beach?”
    I said, “No, we’re not on the beach.”
    “We are in the desert,” said Samson Two. “And taking into account speed and direction, I would estimate that the desert in question is the Gobi. Sometimes known as Han-Hai, or the Dry Sea.”
    Florida said, “I didn’t know we had deserts in England.”
    “England?” Samson Two laughed. “We’re not in England. We’re in China.”
    Florida turned on me. “CHINA! Ohmygodwhatveyou done? CHINA! How can we be in Chinayouidiot? I knew. I knew. I just knew you’d do something like this. Well, you can just take me home right now!”
    “Home?” I said, “What d’you want me to do? Hire a cab? Give you a piggyback? Do you know how far away we are?”
    “I know we’re in Chinayouidiot.”
    Chinayouidiot was turning into a country in its own right.
    Everyone was staring at her now.
    “Oh dear.” Dr. Drax sighed. “We girls are so complicated. Let’s leave Dad to sort this out, shall we? I imagine Mr. Digby knows how to deal with his own daughter.”
    I don’t know what made her imagine that. Florida was actually kicking me now and bawling, “You said we were going to a theme park!”
    “We are. This is it.”
    “It’s in the desert. Not even a normal desert. A Chinese desert. In China. You said it was down south.”
    “It is down south.”
    “I thought you meant London.”
    “But we were on a plane for hours. If you’re on a planefor hours and hours, obviously you’re going to go farther than London.”
    “I thought it was a slow plane.”
    A slow plane.
    Don’t be afraid of temper tantrums. Often teens will have something they need to tell you but which they find difficult to say. Anger helps them say it. Think of the anger as emotional FedEx—something you turn to when the normal post just isn’t fast enough.
    from Talk to Your Teen
    Talk to Your Teen does not have a chapter specifically called “When Daughters Kick You in Public.” In fact, when it came to Florida, World of Warcraft was more useful. You just had to think of her as a kind of monster and remember that every monster has a soft zone.
    I’d already identified Florida’s. So when I noticed that the others were all shuffling around on the steps of the plane, arranging themselves into some kind of group, I pretended to ignore Florida and shouted like I was talking to Dr. Drax, “It’s okay, Dr. Drax. Florida doesn’t want to be in the group photograph.”
    As soon as she heard the word “photograph,” Florida sat up and started listening. I said, “It’s just a group photo.For the newspapers or something. I’m not sure. Don’t worry about it. You just keep kicking me.”
    “Newspapers?”
    “Or magazines. I didn’t hear which. Oh, maybe it’s for TV. Honestly, kick away.”
    Florida was doing one of her smiles in the front row of that photograph before I had time to stand up. Dr. Drax said, “Well, Mr. Digby, you certainly seem to be a very effective parent. Smile for the camera, everyone.”

In Chinayouidiot
    “We have reached our destination,” said Dr. Drax. “Welcome to Infinity Park. It’s too dark now to see it properly and you’ll be too tired to appreciate it.”
    A thing like a minibus with Caterpillar tracks came to take us to our accommodation. I remember looking out of the window but there was nothing to see—just the odd campfire and every now and then a car.
    We’d been driving for about ten minutes when the minibus thing stopped suddenly and Dr. Drax asked us to look out of the windows on the left side of the bus. At first there was nothing but darkness, but then suddenly something like a massive door had opened. There was a building. It looked like a big red cliff lit by banks and banks of spotlights. It was bigger than the biggest skyscraper you’ve ever seen, and had massive Chinese letters painted