All of the Above by Juno Dawson

Author:Juno Dawson [Dawson, Juno]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471404733
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2015-09-02T21:00:00+00:00

The idea was we would ask the council to step in and run Fantasyland as part of its Parks Programme, either permanently or until such a time that a new owner could take over running the attraction.

This, we felt, wasn’t unreasonable. The council maintained the putting course and boating lake in Greenacre Park and were responsible for the beach, so it kind of made sense, at least to us. We formed a group called ‘Save Fantasyland’ and Beasley knocked us up some pretty professional-looking letterheaded paper. If you want something doing … do it right.

Break times and lunch took on a whole new purpose. We talked the printing shop in town into doing us a discount on some ‘Save Fantasyland’ T-shirts, which we had made XXL to wear over our jumpers on the freezing playground. In pairs we strolled around the school, looking for signatures. ‘Have you signed the petition yet?’, ‘Do you ever go to Fantasyland?’, ‘Help us keep Fantasyland open.’

We were – how can I put this lightly? – bullish. The football team, the pretty girls, the scary girls, the nerds, the musicians, the theatre lot, the emos, the Goths – we interrupted all of their sandwiches. Most people signed the damned thing to get rid of us, to be honest, but that didn’t matter. Of course some people were downright rude: ‘Is it a dyke petition? Will it make me gay?’ some Year 9 boys wanted to know.

‘Yes. It will make you gay,’ I responded. ‘Just sign it or I’ll tell everyone you have a pseudo-penis like a shrivelled olive.’

I got the signature.

Polly was in hysterics. ‘I can’t believe you said that! It’s really hard not being able to punch people.’ Polly had decided to go on a charm offensive to get the petition signed. She hadn’t maimed anyone in days. Quite an achievement.

We attached copies of the petition to the noticeboard outside the main hall and in the sixth-form entrance area. We appealed to teachers, dinner ladies and even the head teacher.

On a weekend we took to the high street. Although people mistook us for charity muggers – those tabard-wearing monsters who try to wrestle your bank details from you outside Primark – if we engaged people they were happy to sign. Most people had no idea Fantasyland had shut down and seemed genuinely disappointed. ‘Oh, that’s a shame. I used to take my kids there when they were little,’ was what we heard a lot, or ‘Aw, man! I used to go there all the time when I was a kid.’ Fantasyland wasn’t only ours, it belonged to the town. Even those who weren’t there three nights a week had such fond memories of the place. It was a good, positive, harmless thing and the town was better with it. It wasn’t clogging arteries or damaging livers or emptying wallets. Like anything harmless it had been an easy target. Evidence Exhibit A? The local library, Daisy once told me, is now a Poundland.

Daisy did a great line in ambiguous foreboding too.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.