Wasim's Challenge Read online

  Wasim’s

  CHALLENGE

  Chris Ashley

  Illustrated by Kate Pankhurst

  Wasim’s Challenge copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited 2010

  Text copyright © Chris Ashley 2010

  Illustrations copyright © Kate Pankhurst 2010

  The right of Chris Ashley to be identified as the author and of Kate Pankhurst to be identified as the illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 (United Kingdom).

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

  Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 4 Torriano Mews,

  Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RZ

  www.franceslincoln.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

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

  ISBN 978-1-84780-056-5

  eBook ISBN 978-1-78101-002-0

  Set in Garamond

  Printed in Croydon, Surrey, UK by CPI Bookmarque Ltd in May 2010

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter One

  It was heaving outside the school gates, and the blue and silver coach was blocking the entrance, shuddering and pumping black fumes into the crowd.

  Wasim the commando unswung his rucksack and sent it curling through the morning air. Everything he needed for survival in extreme conditions was in that bag. He was part of Special Forces on a jungle mission. Only the very best would make it, only the elite could survive, only. . .

  Only Wasim’s bag landed right on top of Donna Smith’s bursting suitcase and sent a domino line of bags and cases skidding off the curb and under the chugging coach.

  “Oy! Do you mind, Sonny Jim?” The coach driver, whose huge stomach stretched his purple blazer and whose bald head dripped with sweat, glared out of the darkness of the coach boot like a troll from under his bridge. With a mumbled “Soz!” Wasim had to stop being Special Forces and go back to being plain old Wasim Ahmed.

  He retreated to the other side of the road where Mum, Dad and Shamaila were waiting to see him off, and watched his rucksack get bounced into the boot, feeling every bump and scrape as if it were happening to him. That rucksack was brand new and had been waiting, ready for today, in his bedroom since his birthday. Now it was stuffed with brand new waterproof trousers, a brand new anorak, brand new thick socks and his brother’s sleeping bag. The brand new walking boots were already on his feet, because it was here. The day. School Journey Day. Challenge by Choice Day!

  Wasim watched Charles and Ellis testing out their boots by jumping on each other’s toecaps, Dionne practising his rock climbing skills by getting halfway up a lamp post and Mr Abbot telling them all off and looking strange in ironed jeans and whiter-than-white new trainers.

  Now Wasim had to make a quick decision. Should he go and join in with Charles and Ellis and make sure he was going to be counted as one of the lads this week? Or should he join David and Joshua who were helpfully handing the bags to the coach driver? Or should he try and be first on the coach and get one of the seats near the back that he’d just spotted? They had tables and lamps, just like footballers had on the coach driving them to a Wembley Cup Final.

  Shamaila slid a little fist into his gloved hand.

  Or should stay for a last few minutes with Mum and Dad?

  Wasim felt a pang, a sort of dull thumping feeling. He’d never been away from them for even one night in his whole life and now he was going to be gone for four whole nights, and miles and miles away. Or wherever Wales and the CBC centre were.

  “OK, everybody, last goodbyes and line up!”

  Too late. Wasim was going to miss the tables, but the extra squeeze from Shamaila and the worried look from Mum meant that the pang felt worse than his coach worries.

  In fact, he had a few pangs going on. From the top of his itching head all the way down. His head was itching because of his bobble hat. It was designed for the Arctic winter, but Wasim wasn’t going to take it off.

  His gloves had been presents with his rucksack, and at the school journey meeting last week Mr Abbot had said that you could never trust the weather. So Wasim was keeping them on too, even outside the school gates in the middle of June.

  His next pang was in his chest and it was where his excitement and homesickness were meeting head-on.

  And then there was his stomach. That was the worst pang. He was hungry, and the packet of warm doughnuts that Donna’s mum had bought from the shop over the road had made him long for food. It hurt, but Wasim wasn’t going to give up.

  “Come on, everyone, the mountains won’t wait.”

  Mum pressed a carrier bag into his hand. “Packed lunch. Don’t leave it on the bus. Some nan, a kebab, a banana, some crisps and a Mars bar, an orange and two cans of drink. . .”

  Another pang – guilt! Mum had gone to all that trouble so that he wouldn’t be hungry and would have a packed lunch as good as anybody else’s, and he was tricking her.

  Psst. Someone opened a can of coke and Wasim groaned. Now his throat began to feel cracked. He smelt the doughnuts again and tried to work it out: the time now was ten to nine in the morning, the sun went down at 9.13 in the evening. . . Only eight . . . nine . . . twelve and a bit hours to go. He wouldn’t be eating or drinking for another twelve and a bit hours. Twelve and a bit hours!

  But that was the fast – no food or drink between sunrise and sunset. That was Ramadan.

  That was what Muslim grown-ups did, and this year that was what Wasim was going to do.

  He would have gulped if it wasn’t so painful inside his scratchy throat.

  But then Wasim remembered the classes at the mosque and clever Faizhan who learned his pages from the Koran without seeming to look at it, and who complained and laughed when they had to spend so much time waiting for Wasim to catch up. And he remembered Faizhan smirking, his pretending-to-be-surprised look around their little madrasa teaching room when he found out that Wasim wasn’t going to be fasting.

  Well, Wasim was going to be fasting! The only difference was that nobody could know. Not even Mum and Dad.

  Wasim gave a last wave outside the coach and made a head-down barge past the children fussing with overhead vents, putting hands up because of seat belts that wouldn’t click or cramming bags onto a luggage rack that was already bursting.

  He got to an empty footballers’ table seat. Phew! He had met the first challenge.

  He was almost ready to take off his bobble hat as he plonked his carrier bag of food onto the shiny table under the lamp.

  “All belts done up?” Mrs Scott was working her way down the coach and checking as she asked. The coach driver was also working his own way down, busily closing the vents that the children had dared to open.

  “Oy! No you don’t. . . Them seats are out of use!” He enjoyed giving the bad news. Wasim had to squeeze out just in time to see Ellis get the last back row seat next to Charles. He lif
ted his bobble hat to have a panicked look round.

  Nothing!

  “Oh, Wasim. . . You again,” Mrs Scott said. “Don’t worry, you can sit next to Mr Bird and keep him company.”

  Next to the teacher? Not even a teacher, a student teacher! Wasim couldn’t believe it . . . Mr Bird! “Bird the Nerd,” the Year Six kids called him.

  Wasim felt all of his pangs come together, as he managed a last wave of his gloved hand, and caught a hopeful smile from his mum and a thumbs up from his dad.

  There were massive cheers, waves and whistles, and before they’d even outrun Gemma’s dog yapping its way alongside the coach, the lucky people on the back seat had started a shouting version of She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain.

  “Not singing, Wasim?” joked Mr Bird.

  “Aye, aye yippee yippee aye,” croaked Wasim.

  Chapter Two

  Year Fives went to the CBC centre every year. CBC stood for Challenge by Choice and it meant that you could choose how hard to challenge yourself on lots of activities. The centre was in Wales, near Mount Snowdon, so they were going to be on the coach for hours.

  Mount Snowdon was the highest mountain in the world. Well, that was what Charles reckoned.

  Wasim didn’t believe Charles, and Mrs Scott had told them that Snowdon was very small compared to Everest and K2 and lots of other mountains, but that it was still quite high. And they were going up it!

  Charles said that they’d measured the other ones wrong and that Mount Snowdon was definitely the highest. But, as it had been Charles who had measured the hall and made Wasim announce in Achievers Assembly that it was 412 km long, Wasim believed Mrs Scott.

  Whatever it was, it was still a long way away and in the sweltering coach even Wasim thought that it would be safe to take off his survival gear. His hat, gloves and anorak came off, and still the coach was steaming.

  Up and down went Mrs Scott and Mr Abbot with the sick bucket, and when Donna was sick for the third time Mr Bird volunteered, and after that Wasim had to sit with the bucket and the smell at his feet.

  “Gross, Waz,” gagged Charles as he did one of his walks down to the front to ask if they were nearly there yet.

  “It wasn’t me,” blustered Wasim, but Charles stroked an imaginary beard to show that he didn’t believe him, and Wasim couldn’t do anything about it.

  At least the smell stopped him thinking about food for a few minutes!

  But when the coach lumbered into a motorway service station and the bucket got taken away, Wasim started to dream of the kebab, the Mars and the coke cans bulging in his carrier bag. This was a challenge, a big challenge. Everybody else was going to be having their lunch now.

  Luckily they were all too bothered with their own food to be interested in what Wasim was or was not eating. He carefully fiddled about in his bag, so that by the time the teachers started giving out fruit and drinks he had joined a toilet line, and then made for some swings where the early finishers were dashing.

  Then it was back on the coach and another two hours of sweating, watching the sick bucket be re-filled, answering Bird the Nerd’s questions about home and listening to him telling everyone about the places they were passing.

  Eventually they came off the motorway, and instead of the crowded streets of houses and flats that they were used to around their school, they saw tiny white cottages and schools that were so small they could fit into their hall.

  “We should play them at football,” shouted Ellis.

  “You’d still lose,” Mr Abbot winked and Ellis went all red because he didn’t know if it was a joke or not. They had lost every match last season, even though they’d had the Teamwork 10,000 coaches in.

  In fact, sitting with Bird the Nerd wasn’t too bad. Once they were off the motorway, he taught the people in the nearby seats to play Pub Cricket. You got a cricket point, a run, for every leg of the animal or person on the pub sign. If it didn’t have any legs you were out, just like in cricket. By the end, everybody was crowding round wanting to play and getting told off for being out of their seats. And rather than having the worst seat, Wasim secretly thought that sitting with Bird the Nerd might have been the best spot, especially when they passed The George and Dragon and he scored six runs. Two for George and four for the dragon.

  “Dragons have eight legs,” he tried to claim, but six was still good. Anyway, it kept his mind off his tummy, which was now beginning to complain seriously. It kept rumbling loudly, and Wasim had gone from feeling a bit sick to it really hurting. The thirst was the worst thing, though. Breathing the boiling air on the coach into his sandpaper throat was agony, and he couldn’t even manage a groan when the coach struggled up one of a million hills and they passed a pub called The Fox and Hounds. That meant that Mrs Scott beat his George and Dragon, because a fox had four legs and there must have been hundreds of hounds in the picture. Nobody cared, though, because now they were nearly there!

  “Hard luck, Wasim,” laughed Mr Bird, as they passed a brown road sign that read “CBC Centre, One mile” and then the same in Welsh.

  The teacher put out a hand and Wasim shook it, and risked his throat by joining in the cheers as they passed all of the things they had been looking forward to: a climbing wall, a circular track with quad bikes parked and ready to go, a giant tree platform and, best of all – bristling way above the coach roof – the ‘commando cord’, a great zip wire stretching from a platform halfway up into space.

  CBC. Challenge by Choice.

  They were there!

  Chapter Three

  “OK, guys, are you happy to be here?”

  “Yeah!” they shouted shyly.

  “I said, Are You Happy To Be Here?”

  “YEAH!” they hollered, Mr Bird the loudest, which made everybody laugh.

  The instructor moved his sunglasses up onto his head, rolled his eyes and pretended to be deafened, which got a better sort of laugh.

  “Right, guys.” They all looked at each other. This was better than being called “boys and girls” or “children”.

  “Guys, my name is Mr Holden, but you can call me . . . Mr Holden.” There were shrieks of laughter, especially from the girls.

  “Nah, we’re not at school now, so you can call me Dom.” More secret smiles. No, they were not at school. This was a thousand trillion times better.

  Mr Holden – Dom – was standing in front of an old mansion and the children were all in a straight line, with their rucksacks, cases and sleeping bags at their feet.

  Dom jumped up onto a wall to show how fit he was and then started explaining.

  “So, this is CBC – Challenge by Choice – Wales. There are some tough challenges here and we know you’re really going to enjoy them. You can challenge yourself by going high, or fast, or simply by passing the hill walk challenge. It’s your choice. . . Get it? Challenge by Choice.”

  They all nodded. They got it.

  “I’m doing it all,” nudged Charles.

  “Me too,” said Wasim who had left Mr Bird and managed to get back with his mates.

  “Is it dangerous, Mr . . . Dom?”

  They all giggled. Trust Donna!

  Dom put on a grim face. “That’s a good question, sweetheart.”

  Donna beamed.

  “Everything is dangerous here. Everything is safe here. It depends on whether you follow the rules. Rules are here for your safety so. . .”

  And then Dom droned on about wearing helmets for all activities, tying long hair back, having asthma sprays with you at all times, being silent if an instructor whistled, staying in safety areas, not running between activities and not having food in the dorms.

  “Rules are essential. If you break ’em . . . you’re out. No questions!”

  They quite agreed and they all exchanged nods, except for Dionne, who looked at the ground and smiled, because he knew that everyone was looking at him.

  “So, you guys, it’s time to unpack, get some tucker – that means food, guys!”


  They all cheered.

  “Evening activities – tomorrow, disco.” They all screamed.

  “I hope you’ve all brought your best dresses . . . boys.”

  They all screamed again, this time with laughter.

  “And tonight, an adventure game . . . IN THE WOODS.”

  Another massive cheer, arms gripped in excitement, and then they were off to the dorms.

  They charged up the stairs and Wasim got there third. That was OK. He was still in with Ellis and Charles, but he also got the last top bunk in the bedroom, or ‘dorm’ as they called them at CBC.

  “Top one, Waz. Get it?”

  Charles had got one too, and Wasim did get it, but laughing wasn’t something he could trust his tummy to do. The dorms were in another part of the huge house, and Wasim looked at the shiny wooden walls and remembered that really rich people had once lived here. But the rich people had probably had bulging bellies, not empty ones like Wasim’s. And now Wasim’s stomach hurt, really hurt. It was taking his breath away and making his legs feel tingly, like they were not his.

  But at least he was in the right dorm. There would be laughs, but not too much trouble. Not like next door. Even though Dionne was with Wing Ho and Joshua, who were supposed to be good influences, there was no way Dionne could get through the night without getting in trouble.

  There would have been a race downstairs to the dining room, but Mr Abbot was standing on the landing, so the brakes had to go on. Wasim wasn’t in a rush anyway.

  In fact, he was dreading dinner. His stomach was crying out for food, and when he saw the chips and pizza and the little orange juice containers he almost gave in.

  “Wasim will fast next year,” Dad had announced. The elders at the mosque had nodded. He wasn’t ready yet. He wasn’t ready to do one of the five most important things that a Muslim could do to show his faith.