My Heart is Laughing Read online

  My heart is laughing

  WRITTEN BY

  Rose Lagercrantz

  ILLUSTRATED BY

  Eva Eriksson

  GECKO PRESS

  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 1

  This is a story about Dani, who’s always happy. She’s unhappy too, now and then, but she doesn’t count those times.

  She doesn’t like unhappy. It makes her go to pieces. That’s why she makes new endings for stories with unhappy endings.

  Dani’s interests are hamsters, doing crafts, sleeping in late, and playing with her friends.

  That’s when she has friends to play with.

  When she started school she didn’t know anyone in her class, but she does now.

  She knows Meatball and Cushion. And Jonathan who has 146 pets: they’re all walking sticks. He thinks they’re really cute.

  And she knows Vicky as well. Everybody does.

  Vicky runs to brush her teeth every five minutes. Her mother is a dentist and gives her fluoride to rinse with every day.

  Vicky has been in love with just about all the boys in the class. Poof, just like magic, there she goes again.

  Mickey’s the same.

  This story is about the day they both fell in love with Cushion.

  At exactly the same time…

  They both decided to ask him if he wanted to go out. They could hardly wait to see which one he’d choose.

  “Most likely me,” said Mickey, looking very pleased with the big paper heart she had cut out.

  “Don’t be so sure about that.” Vicky started to snip out a heart herself.

  Vicky and Mickey always copied each other.

  Chapter 2

  As soon as it was playtime they ran up to Cushion and grabbed him.

  “I’m your girlfriend, aren’t I?” shouted Vicky.

  “No, I am!” shouted Mickey.

  Cushion shook them off without answering. He didn’t have time. He had to work on his goal-kicking.

  After a little while he came back.

  He didn’t want to go out with either of them. He came to ask…

  …Dani. He gave her a piece of gum from his pocket.

  Then he had to go off and do goal-kicking again.

  If his team didn’t win every match he got yelled at by his father. Sometimes his father yelled at the coach.

  Dani sniffed the gum.

  It smelled like raspberries.

  When she looked up, Mickey and Vicky had disappeared. They’d run off to play hopscotch.

  Dani hurried after them and asked if she could play too, but Vicky didn’t answer. She treated Dani as if she was invisible. That’s what you say when someone pretends not to see you.

  Mickey treated her as if she was a rotten banana.

  Dani was sad. More than anything she wanted everyone at school to be nice to her.

  “You can have my gum if you like,” she said.

  “No, thanks,” sniffed Mickey. “You’re not allowed gum at school.”

  “Don’t you know that?” snapped Vicky as they hurried off to the jungle gym.

  Dani stayed where she was and watched them. Then she threw her gum away.

  Chapter 3

  After playtime Dani couldn’t be happy. She missed her best friend Ella who had moved to another town. Since then no one had been allowed to sit at Ella’s desk. Not Jonathan, not Susie, not even…

  …Cushion, who came and asked if he could. Dani shook her head.

  “Where would Ella sit?” she asked.

  Cushion looked surprised.

  “I mean when she comes back,” said Dani.

  “Dani, Dani,” sighed the teacher, who had overheard the conversation. “Ella is not coming back.”

  “You never know,” mumbled Dani.

  She was not one to give up hope, even when everything seemed hopeless.

  Otherwise Dani took things as they came.

  On Mondays they had P.E.

  On Wednesdays they had spelling.

  The best thing about spelling was that you were given a gold star when you got them all right.

  And every day at twelve o’clock it was lunchtime.

  Chapter 4

  In the dining room Dani and Ella had always sat next to each other. Every day. Right over in the far corner.

  Dani sneaked over there with her lunch. It was sausages and mashed potatoes.

  She wanted to be on her own, to think about something fun. That was her speciality!

  First she thought about all the hamsters she knew.

  There was one called Partyboy and another called Littleboy.

  And there were her own hamsters, Snow and Flake.

  Then she thought about all the different places she had been.

  Like Rome, where her granny lived.

  And the other side of town, where her grandma and grandad lived.

  And Northbrook. That’s where Ella lived now.

  It was the most fun place Dani knew.

  It had a park with lots of different kinds of trees. Some are easy to climb and some are a bit harder. When Dani was there visiting they decided to climb the hardest one. It was a tree without a single low branch.

  It was so high they had to go and find a chair so they could climb up it. They climbed for hours pretending to be monkeys.

  It was around Easter.

  A long time ago.

  They talked monkey language, which is mostly made of smacking and howling noises.

  And they ate bananas, of course, and tried hanging by the tail.

  Since they didn’t have tails they had to use their arms and legs.

  They left the tree for just a moment to run home and get more bananas.

  When they came back the chair was gone.

  They had to find another one.

  How else would they get up the tree?

  They didn’t stop playing in the monkey tree until night time. Then they ran home again, singing at the tops of their lungs. Monkey songs, of course.

  The moon shone and the trees sighed and a dog barked nearby. And everything was fun, as it always is in Northbrook.

  But the next day the other chair had also disappeared. It was a mystery.

  Ella’s mother scolded them and said they couldn’t take any more chairs.

  And Ella’s extra father agreed with her.

  Ella has two fathers. A real one she never talks about and an extra one called Patrick.

  Except that Ella calls him Paddy.

  Paddy said that chairs belong at home in the kitchen and not in the park.

  Dani and Ella stopped playing monkeys and went to play with their hamsters instead.

  It was fun, too.

  Chapter 5

  While Dani sat in the school lunchroom remembering the fun she’d had in Northbrook, the teacher came over.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” she asked.

  Dani looked at her plate in surprise. She had forgotten where she was.

  “I think you should go and sit with the others.”

  Dani got up. The teacher picked up her chair. Dani followed reluctantly. Where did the teacher want her to sit?

  Oh no! Not between Mickey and Vicky!

  “This is not going to go well,” Dani mumbled to herself.

  She was right.

  Mickey and Vicky complained loudly when the teacher put Dani’s chair betw
een them.

  “Noooooooo,” said Vicky. “I’m going to faint.”

  “But we’ve decided to sit next to each other till we die!” protested Mickey.

  But they didn’t make a fuss. They didn’t dare.

  Dani sat down between them, reached over for the sauce bottle, and squeezed some sauce on her plate.

  She had hardly put it down when Vicky took it.

  “Look,” she said. “I touched the sauce bottle even though Dani’s touched it.”

  As if Dani had a terrible disease!

  “Me too,” said Mickey and she picked it up as well. “Bleeeeegh!”

  Dani pretended nothing was going on.

  Chapter 6

  Then something even worse happened. Vicky pinched Dani hard on the arm!

  Dani kept pretending that nothing was happening.

  That’s what you do when someone does something stupid, her father had told her.

  But soon Mickey pinched her, too. Even harder!

  It hurt.

  They pinched and pinched till Dani howled and leaped out of her chair.

  She took a quick look around, grabbed the sauce bottle, aimed it at Mickey, and squeezed as hard as she could.

  Sploosh! it went as the sauce flew out…

  …and hit Mickey right in the face.

  Dani turned around and aimed at Vicky.

  Sploosh! Sploosh!

  But this time she missed and the sauce hit the teacher.

  Dani gasped…

  …and dropped the bottle.

  She ran to the door.

  Then she turned to look back. What had she done?

  “Stop,” called the teacher. “Stop, Dani!”

  But Dani pretended not to hear and rushed out.

  She charged out of the room, left the school, and ran home.

  Chapter 7

  The house where Dani lives is on Home Street, next to the hill.

  In winter lots of children play there in the snow.

  But now it was spring and the hill was green with grass and covered in little blue flowers called scilla.

  However, that day Dani wasn’t thinking about flowers.

  She didn’t even see them. She just wanted to get inside as fast as she could!

  The door to her house was locked. It always was when her father was at work.

  But luckily she remembered that a key lived under the flowerpot on the step.

  All Dani had to do was pick it up and unlock the door and go in and kick off her shoes.

  One shoe ended up on the hat shelf.

  The other one flew off towards the small table with a vase on it.

  The vase fell to the floor and broke.

  Dani did too, it felt like. She broke into pieces.

  She sank to the floor and started to cry.

  First she cried about the vase. Then she cried because she had squirted sauce on the nice teacher. Then she cried because Mickey and Vicky had been so awful.

  But most of all she cried because Ella hadn’t come back yet.

  She cried so hard that her eyes went as red as a white rabbit’s.

  The hamsters were watching her, worried.

  They normally ran around squeaking with delight, beside themselves with happiness when Dani came home. But now they sat quite still, with their paws together, looking at her.

  Hamsters are sensitive animals. If they notice that their mother is unhappy, they’re unhappy too. And Dani is like a mother to them.

  They love her, whatever she does, and they agree with her about everything.

  Flake thought it was good that Dani had squirted sauce. You have to defend yourself!

  And Snow always likes it when something exciting happens.

  But suddenly there was a noise in the hall.

  Dani jumped to her feet and put her ear to the door.

  Of course, it was her dad!

  On Wednesdays he finished early.

  Chapter 8

  Dani heard the cupboard door open. It squeaked.

  Her father was taking out his jogging clothes. Every Wednesday he went to the park for a run.

  There was silence.

  And then came footsteps…

  Dani quickly turned the bedroom door key. Just in time!

  Her father tried the door handle.

  “Dani,” he said, “what’s the matter? Why aren’t you in school?”

  Dani kept her lips sealed.

  “Are you upset about something?” her father continued.

  More silence.

  “Is it because of the vase? It’s a shame it broke, but that happens. What do you think is more important: my little girl or an old vase? Open the door now, please!”

  But Dani wasn’t obeying her father any more. That was a new thing about her.

  She thought she would never tell him what had happened at school.

  She didn’t need to because just then the phone rang. Her father left her door and went to answer it.

  But soon he was back again.

  “Come out now!” he said crossly. “We have to go to school to say sorry to everyone you’ve squirted sauce on!”

  Dani burst into tears and threw herself on the floor.

  “I’m dying,” she told the hamsters, “and it serves him right!”

  The hamsters agreed and ground their teeth, as hamsters do when they’re upset.

  After a while her father gave up and went away.

  Chapter 9

  It took a long time before Dani could think about something else. That’s what she usually does when she’s upset. She thinks about something fun.

  Thoughts flew around her head like startled birds, not knowing where to land.

  It was a while before she remembered to think about Northbrook. That made her feel a little better.

  Northbrook is something you can think about whenever you need to. The only bad thing that happens there is that you have to go home again.

  That’s how it was for Dani at Easter when she visited Ella.

  Right when they were having the most fun, Dani’s father came to get her in the car.

  They had just finished operating on Ella’s dolls and animals and were putting them all to bed when he showed up.

  Then it was time to say goodbye and travel back home.

  “But shall we have a cup of coffee first?” asked Ella’s mother.

  “That would be lovely,” said Dani’s father and he disappeared into the kitchen after her.

  Then Ella had an idea.

  “Let’s run away,” she whispered.

  So they did. Ella quickly gathered up everything you need when you are on the run: a blanket, a hot dog, two pillows, two toothbrushes, and a few other nice little things that are good to have.

  Dani ran and fetched a book, a packet of bandages, a pair of scissors, two apples, and two stuffed animals that were all better now.

  They put everything into a sheet and tied it together to make a big sack.

  “We’d better not forget to take a chair with us,” said Ella.

  Her plan was that they would run to the monkey tree.

  They could be sure that no one would find them there.

  They sneaked away.

  Silently, like thieves in the night.

  No one noticed anything.

  They were hardly in the tree before they discovered that they had forgotten the most important thing: an umbrella!

  Because it started to pour down rain. They were wet through. The toys were, too.

  In the end they had to run home with their animals so the poor things wouldn’t get sick again.

  They left behind the wet sheet and tucked all the other things in between two branches.

  The rain whipped their faces. It whipped at the grass and the trees and the whole of Northbrook.

  And that was the end of running away.

  As usual, they forgot the chair.

  This time Ella’s mother didn’t say a word about chairs. She just scolded them for going out in such
bad weather.

  And Dani’s father said they had to say goodbye.

  The only thing left to do was to get in the car and put on the seat belt.

  Dani would never forget sitting in the back seat staring out at the raindrops on the window. They matched the tears running down her cheeks.

  But just as they were about to drive off, Ella came running, wet as a mermaid.

  “Wait!” she cried. “I forgot your goodbye present!”

  The present was an autograph book, one of those ones where your friends sign their names and write beautiful poems.

  But so far all the pages were empty except the first one.

  Ella had written on it in her best handwriting:

  I am the thorn,

  You are the rose.

  I’ve written my name right under your nose.

  NEVER forget

  your best friend in the world,

  Ella

  Chapter 10

  Every time Dani reads that poem she is happy. Especially when she gets to the end:

  NEVER forget

  your best friend in the world,

  Ella

  As if Dani ever would!

  Of course sometimes Dani forgets things. For example, her hat and jacket when she leaves school. That happens quite often.

  Not to mention her backpack.

  She forgets her sports bag, too.

  And her homework book. And her packed lunch when they’re going on an outing.