Mum was sitting in the car in the drive, revving the engine noisily and shouting out of the window.
‘Come ON, Felix! We’ve got to get Flora!’
‘Yeah, hurry up, squirt. Your girlfriend’s waiting for you,’ Merv sneered, emerging from the bathroom at last.
Felix stuck his tongue out at his brother, snatched up his book on apes and shoved his feet into his shoes, slung his coat over one arm and his school bag over the other and raced to the car. He closed the door in time to avoid the smelly sock Merv had hurled from the house.
‘Flo is NOT my girlfriend,’ he announced, throwing his bag and coat over the back of the seat into the boot, narrowly missing Dyson. Not that the poor dog seemed to mind. He only snorted slightly before shuffling away from the bag and settling back down to sleep.
‘Mmmm,’ said Mum distractedly. She was taking Dyson to work with her after dropping Felix and Flo at school. Her office let her do that sort of thing. Dad’s didn’t, which seemed to annoy Mum rather a lot. Felix thought she should be Over the Moon about working in a place that was so cool they let you take your pets to work. He had personally tried on more than one occasion to convince his teacher, Mr Beasley, to have a Bring-Your-Pet-to-School Day, but he had not yet succeeded.
‘We are running an educational establishment, not a zoo, Felix,’ Mr Beasley had told him sniffily.
‘But having all our different pets to study would be a very Interesting and Educational Thing,’ Felix had persisted.
His teacher had not agreed.
This was typical of school. It was all very well when the teachers decided what was Interesting and Educational, but they never did want to take suggestions from the actual people who were there to be educated, i.e. Felix and the other pupils. This was one of the very many reasons why Felix had never had a particularly high opinion of school.
‘Mum?’ He leaned forward and shouted at Mum above the noise of the radio. ‘Mum! I’ve just had a brilliant idea. School would be a much better place if instead of all those children who are a Waste of Space and Badly Behaved, they let chimpanzees come instead. And maybe spider monkeys and possibly one or two gorillas as well!’
Mum parped the horn as a car pulled out of a side road right in front of her. She muttered something that Felix couldn’t hear properly.
‘Mum?’ he said, more loudly.
‘Yes, dear,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m sure the teachers would love that.’
‘Well, it would be more exciting than just having Jeff,’ Felix went on.
Jeff was kind of a school pet. He was the class mouse in actual fact. But he was a pretty useless sort of pet as he never did anything. Even Hammer did stuff, like put things in his pouches and build nests and sometimes escape. And the thing with Jeff was you were only allowed to play with him when it was your turn to clean out the cage. And that only happened once a month.
Once a month did not really count, in Felix’s opinion.
‘Oh well, at least Flo understands,’ Felix said to himself. He slumped back into his seat and stared out of the window.
School had definitely become a lot more fun once Flo Small arrived on the scene. Before that Felix used to spend break-time alone in a corner of the playground, mostly doing stuff like making ‘bug bases’ (which were homes for bugs and beetles built from leaves and twigs and stones) or digging holes in the ground to see if he could get to Australia and finally meet a real live kangaroo.
He was doing just this on the very first day that he met Flo. She had walked right up to him and said, ‘Are you digging a hole to Australia? If so, you might need some help as it is actually rather a long way from here.’ And she had got down on her hands and knees and started digging before Felix had thought of anything to say.
From that day on, Felix and Flo were always together and they didn’t care if the Girls Who Giggled teased them or if the Boys Who Played Football called them names.
Felix grinned to himself as he remembered what Flo had said one morning when she’d ‘had enough of that lot.’
‘You just have to remember that we actually lead far more exciting lives than they do,’ she announced loudly. ‘Yes,’ she said, turning on her heel and shoving her nose in the air. ‘We are too busy making Secret Important Plans to take any notice of Them.’
And it was true. Flo and Felix had discovered almost right away that they both knew lots of Incredibly Interesting Facts about wildlife. So they had decided to become officially best friends on that very first day of meeting. And because they lived two streets away from each other it was actually very convenient for them to go round to each other’s houses every once in a while – or quite a lot, depending on whether Mum said yes or no.
Flo had been the first person to come round when Felix had found a warty brown toad under a rock near the allotments.
‘You are sort of quite cool for a girl,’ Felix had told her, watching her hold the toad and stroke it. ‘Most girls hate toads.’
‘I am not Most Girls,’ Flo had said.
She had not been exaggerating. Flo never squealed if a particularly huge and tickly spider climbed up her legs, and she never ran away if a bee made a beeline towards her, and she never said, ‘Urgh! Disgusting!’ if Felix handed her a centipede or an earthworm. In fact, she was more likely to be the one to have found the centipede or the earthworm in the first place.
She didn’t even mind when Dyson came bounding up to her after swimming in the canal and shook water and slobber all over her.
Felix enjoyed spending time with Flo so much, that he thought it would be totally perfect if they could spend even more time together planning their Latest Animal Activity. And that was when he had come up with the suggestion of sharing lifts.
*
Mum had pulled up outside Flo’s house now and Felix had already started bouncing up and down in his seat in anticipation of seeing his friend.
‘Mum? Mum! Do you remember when I gave you the Very Good Idea of sharing the school run?’ he squealed.
‘Mmmm,’ said Mum. She was tapping the steering wheel and looking at her watch.
‘Can I go and ring the bell?’ Felix asked.
‘No! You know Flora’s mum doesn’t like to be hassled. They’ll be out in a minute,’ Mum said, looking at her watch again. ‘Or two . . .’
He had mentioned lift-sharing when his uncle was at their place having supper. Felix had realized long ago that if he wanted to bring up new things it was best to do it while Uncle Zed was there, as he was bound to be on Felix’s side about mostly anything.
‘Flo and me live really close, you see,’ he told his uncle. ‘And it would help you, Mum. You don’t like the school run,’ he added helpfully. ‘In fact, you are always saying that if they don’t do something about the traffic lights you will personally write to the council and tell them where to stick—’
‘Yes, all right, Felix,’ Mum said. ‘I think you’ve made your point.’
‘But, Mum—’
Uncle Zed quickly cut in above the fight that was threatening to break out. ‘Hey, it’s a cool idea! Think of the energy you’ll save, using one car instead of two, sis? It’s putting Green before the Machine. Sweet!’
Uncle Zed was always saying things like this.
‘Oh boy,’ said Merv, pushing back his chair and slouching off. ‘Here we go again: “You must recycle; you must eat mung beans and muesli; you must say ‘dude’ after every sentence . . .”’
‘Mervin!’ Mum growled. But he had gone.
Zed set to work on Mum after that, persuading her of all the benefits of sharing the school run. Mum was not easily convinced, saying she was ‘not sure I could face having Flora Small in the back of the car two or three times a week’.
But Zed was a very good persuader, especially when he mentioned things like ‘saving money’ and ‘saving time’, which were things Mum was always worrying about wasting. So in the end Mum had relented, muttering, ‘Who would have thought sharing lifts with Flora Small would be a good thing for the planet?’
As a result, Felix was a very happy boy indeed.