Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Author:Frank Cottrell Boyce
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-06-28T05:00:00+00:00

I just sat by myself and watched another repeat of Celebrity Séance—the one where Dracula comes on and complains about being misunderstood. “All I ever did was impale people on wooden stakes, which wasn’t that unusual at the time. My negative image was all media spin, et cetera.”

Suddenly Florida’s door banged open again and she yelled at me, “Excuse me. I’m upset. You’re supposed to come and cheer me up.”

“Errrm, no. By slamming doors, you’re marking off some personal space for yourself and the best thing is for me to respect that need.”

“What are you on about?”

“It’s in this book.” I showed her the bit about banging doors in Talk to Your Teen.

She said, “That’d work if you had a TV in your room. But I was getting bored in there.”

“You could always read a book.”

She stared at me. I said, “Joking.”

Then she stared some more. “You really think I’m thick, don’t you?” Her bottom lip was starting to go. “Maybe I am thick.”

I was really scared that she was going to cry. I said, “Florida, don’t cry. I’ve read the bits about when teens cry and it says you have to hug them. Please don’t make me hug you.”

“Well, reassure me then.”

I said, “You’re not thick at all. Who said that? You know loads of stuff—just not the right stuff, that’s all.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, you’re really good at remembering things. You know all those celebrities’ names, and who they’re going out with and everything. You’re very good at storing and retrieving information. It’s just that it’s not very useful information.”

Florida was starting to look a bit better. “It was good today when they were all sitting round explaining to me about buoyancy and pressure and stuff. I was like—so that’s why we don’t just fall into millions of pieces. I never even thought about it before. Did you know all that already?”

“Some of it. I’m in Gifted and Talented, you know.”

“Maybe you could teach me stuff. You are supposedly my dad after all, and dads teach their kids stuff, don’t they?”

“They’re supposed to, yeah.”

“Only my dad’s been too busy. Because he’s so important. But you’re not busy or important. You could help me get to know stuff. And I could show you how to be a better dad. Because this book is rubbish.”

“Okay.”

Florida looked thoughtful for a bit and was surprisingly quiet. Then she said, “You know when your in-box is full on your mobile and you delete old messages? Can you do that with your brain, do you think?”

“Mmmm…not sure. Why?”

“Cos my brain is full of un-useful information and I was thinking of deleting all of it and filling it up with useful information instead. What d’you think? Or maybe new good stuff could just force out the old stuff. Like if I learned about gravity, I’d forget about Jennifer Aniston’s alleged struggle with depression.”

“You wouldn’t need to delete anything. Your brain’s got loads more storage capacity than a mobile phone. You can put new information in with no need to take old information out.

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