The Life and Times of Eddie McGrath

By Brigid Feehan

Eddie wins a national competition where she can spend a day with her local MP and give a speech in Parliament (where she'll meet the Prime Minister) but it's a prize Eddie doesn't want! When her dad is injured in a workplace accident he sets his sights on getting better for Eddie's day with the PM...so Eddie sets her sights on going through with it. A spirited story about the times when what we don't want, turns out to be more than we could hope for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: OneTree House Publishers
• Release date: Jul 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990035081

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

What is wrong with you? Beth snarled at me as I entered the kitchen. Doom. Complete doom. I didn’t think she’d be home. I so wasn’t in the mood for her. I started to back out, balancing my book on the palm of my left hand with two apples wobbling on top of it. My cat Olaf was firmly tucked under my right arm and he stopped purring at Beth’s mean voice and made a questioning squeak.

Eddie! Come back! Beth’s voice followed me as I reversed into the hallway. Olaf started squirming and an apple rolled off my book onto the floor. I bent down to pick it up and the other apple rolled off. Olaf bit me. I dropped Olaf. I said a bad word.

Beth was in the hallway when I straightened up. Do you have any idea how incredibly weird you are?

Is that a rhetorical question? My glasses were smeared, and Beth was all blurry, which was nice.

It’s an insult to the school, you know, went on Beth furiously. Notice how she ignored my question about whether her question was a rhetorical question.

You’re talking about the prize. I sighed. You found out I turned it down.

"Yes! I’m talking about the prize! The only Wellington school to win a Member of Parliament for a Day award and you say no. Actually, you’re

letting Wellington down. My sister, the apathetic freak. And Mum and Dad, they’ll miss their chance of going to the Beehive, being the proud parents. They’ll be so angry."

Mum and Dad wouldn’t be angry. They aren’t like that. It was such a ridiculous thing to say I couldn’t help starting to smirk. Mum and Dad wouldn’t . . .

"Okay, okay! Maybe not Mum and Dad. But Claire will be gutted." Claire was our oldest sister and very serious. She was studying politics at university.

I had to admit she would be disappointed in me. She would think I was letting womanhood down. I looked down at Olaf who was now sitting on my feet. He was a funny-looking cat, mainly white but with random black patches, including over one eye, which made him look nice and piratey.

And Aunt Ruth. She’ll be so upset, she continued.

That’s stupid! I said. Aunt Ruth will just say something like ‘listen to the trees ’.

Aunt Ruth lives with us and she’s a Druid. Druidism is a sort of ancient Celtic religion and Druids are a tiny bit magic (Aunt Ruth denies the magic but, trust me, I’d seen some things). Anyway, she could always be relied upon to say something lovely and gentle – if a little bit unusual – about pretty much anything.

How did you find out about me turning it down anyway? I haven’t told anyone except Ms Blair, I said.

"We were going to publish the story about you winning the prize in What’sUp. I had written it and everything. But Ms Blair came in at lunchtime and told us to pull the article because it looked like you wouldn’t accept the prize, Beth said. ‘Course I should have known. It was too much real life for you. You’re only interested in life when it comes safely between the pages of a book. You don’t care about anyone but your stupid imaginary friends!"

The penny dropped. This was why Beth was so angry. I could imagine her before she heard I wasn’t going to accept the prize, preening herself, the editor of the school quarterly magazine,

the older sister of the award-winning essay writer, Eddie McGrath. ‘Of course a little sister

is always influenced by her older siblings and I

myself am a published journalist and very passionate about my principles.’ It was almost too easy to imagine, Beth staring at herself in the scuzzy mirror in the toilets at school, practising for TV interviews. Tidying her ponytail with her long, thin hands. New Zealand’s Greta Thunberg.

"Sorry to ruin your glory. I’m going up to the

turret now. Goodbye." I clutched Olaf, apples and book to my chest and started to climb the staircase, trying to make my departing back look dignified. The staircase, unfortunately, is spiral, so as I turned I could kind of catch Beth’s death stare out of the corner of my eye. The blurriness of my glasses help-ed a bit but the vibes coming off her were scary. It’s not nice being hated for thwarting someone else’s dreams.

To explain about this prize business: it started when we had to write an essay for English entitled The Future, about, well, you can work it out. Some people wrote about how we’ll all have to move to Mars (my permanently anxious best friend Liam), other people about how one day you’ll only need one lip gloss which will last forever because it will keep regenerating in its tube (my other, probably-not-anxious-enough, best friend Meri). I’d written about how the voting age would be lowered to 15 and there would be ‘youth seats’ in Parliament which could only be filled by people under 20. I only picked the topic because I thought it would be an easy one to get marks on. Everyone goes on about our generation being the future (like, duh?). But you know they really mean it’s all on us.

Anyway, our English teacher Ms Blair asked three of us (not, sadly, Mars Liam or Lip-Gloss Meri) if she could enter our essays in a national competition called Our Future Now being run by Parliament. We all said yes, because why not? The prize was ‘to be announced’. I forgot about it. Then, out of the blue – the news. I had won first place, along with three other entrants from around the country.

At first I was pleased. And then . . . I wasn’t.

The prize was to be a Member of Parliament (MP) for a day. You sit in your local MP’s electorate office (which will be somewhere in your community, not in the Beehive) with the MP for a whole morning during one of the community sessions they run on Mondays and Fridays. You listen to the problems that the local people bring to their MP to sort out. Out of all the problems that the people come in with, you have to find one that you would try and solve yourself. The MP was to help with wise advice of course. It would be a project, but a real life one.

A month later, all four award winners, and three of their whānau, would go to the Beehive to meet the Prime Minister. We would each make a speech in which we would talk about our experiences of how the democratic system could be used to help solve problems.

There would be TV cameras. It would be streamed live . . .

The whole idea, from beginning to end, filled me with total horror. First, I hate talking to people I don’t know. Especially important adult-type people. Imagine turning up to an MP’s electorate office and asking to sit in on their meetings! Like, I know the teacher would inform the MP first that you were coming, but what would you even say when you arrived? Hello, I’m that random student person you hopefully have heard about, now make room for me in this incredibly busy office and let me get down to work. No. I’m sorry, but no. Can’t do that. And as for the Beehive presentation – where do I start? I hate people looking at me, never mind having to do a speech in front of them. Never mind that one of the people looking at you and listening to you is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Never mind that it’s going to be live-streamed. And on TV.

I’m so the wrong person for all this. I’m a ‘happy-in-the-background’ (preferably with a book and a cat) sort of person.

I’m the sort of person who likes to be left alone.

The prize had been announced yesterday. I didn’t talk to anyone about it because I knew what everyone would say (‘Do it!’). So, after a long nerve-wracked night, when even a reread of chapter 23 of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (a favourite comfort read) failed to calm me, I’d gone, dry-mouthed, to Ms Blair and told her I wasn’t going to accept the prize. She had said, ‘Hey, why don’t you take a week to think about it?’ I had said okay but I wasn’t going to change my mind.

So that’s that. I settled down in the window seat of the turret and stared down at the driveway below. I was so tired I felt as if I had sand under my eyelids. But it was nothing a few hours alone with my book and Olaf couldn’t fix.

One-and-a-half hours later and I was starting to feel pretty good. I was reading Skulduggery Pleasant, another comfort reread but funny, so a perfect tonic for when you feel ground down by life (and sisters). My eyes were still gritty but I felt lighter-hearted.

There was a tap on the door. I leaned back against the windows and yawned, saying Yup? just at the end of the yawn. It was Mum. She stood in the doorway, looking apologetic, her hair in a messy bun wisping down around her face. Hi, darling. Sorry, do you mind if I . . . She gestured at the desk in the middle of the room. I jumped off the window seat, gathering my apple cores from the sill and peeling a sleeping Olaf off the emerald-green cushion. No worries, Mum. I was going to go down anyway.

Mum grunted and started arranging all her bits and pieces on the desk. She is an illustrator of children’s books and the turret is also her workroom. She let me treat it as my room if she wasn’t using it because I had such a tiny bedroom. I’ve just got a few touches to do before dinner, which Ruth’s cooking. How was school?

I looked at Mum, her head already bent over her work, her eyes squinting down at the illustration she was working on. It was a kiwi emerging shyly from a dark bush. Mum had made its eyes look so fearful you wanted to reach into the picture and stroke it (though that would probably give it a heart attack). It was fine, Mum, I said softly. See you soon.

The thing with Mum was that when she was

drawing she was not in the world. She disappeared and was only a hand and an eye, creating beautiful images. Okay, she didn’t turn into one big hand and one big eye, that would be bad. But she did get totally absorbed, with the kind of absorption it feels cruel to break.

I went down the staircase, wondering whether it was weird that I hadn’t told Mum about turning down the prize. The reason I hadn’t was – you know how some people have pushy parents? Well, we don’t. Is ‘leave-you-alone parents’ a thing? That’s what Mum and Dad were.

Mostly, anyway.

I liked the no-drama approach. It meant annoying things just went away by themselves. I decided not to think about the stupid prize again.

What’s for dinner? I asked Aunt Ruth who was frying something in the kitchen.

A lovely bit of fish. Aunt Ruth turned to smile vaguely at the top of my head. She was very tall.

You always say ‘lovely bit of fish’, I said, as though there were some mean bits of fish out there.

You never know with fish, Aunt Ruth said darkly, turning back to the pan. She had on her normal clothes today, blouse and business skirt, so it must be a work day. Aunt Ruth works part-time as a radiographer at the hospital and when she’s not working she tends to wear long floaty clothes with little mirrors or embroidery. She wears ceremonial robes and cloaks when it’s a special day for the Druids, which is obviously very embarrassing to be around.

I poured some dry cat food into Olaf’s bowl (he was mewling – the fish smell was driving him a little crazy) and sat at the table to check my phone. Two messages.