Llama Out Loud!

Ammi carried the heavy cake to the table with such care that it might as well have been a newborn baby. She gently placed it in front of Yasmin and was just about to light the candles . . . when Yasmin opened her napkin.

Pepper puffed out of the napkin’s folds.

It rose into Yasmin’s nose in a big cloud of spiciness, causing a loud –

Nobody moved.

Sounding like a plug popping out of the plughole, Yasmin unstuck her face from the icing.

For once, the whole family was quiet. Through icing-coated eyelashes, Yasmin could see that they were all staring at Ammi and holding their breath.

Ammi looked at Yasmin.

Yasmin looked at Ammi.

Auntie Gigi looked at her own napkin and then used it to wipe Yasmin’s face.

Then, in the loudest voice ever to come out of Ammi’s mouth – the equivalent of a jet engine and an earthquake – Yasmin’s mother boomed:

‘YASMIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!YOURUINEDTHECAKE!’

Yasmin’s brothers cackled with laughter. Tall Brother slyly picked up the pepper shaker and wiggled it teasingly at Yasmin. Her parents always seemed to miss their pranks.

‘Because of your outburst –’ (Outburst? thought Yasmin. It was a sneeze!) ‘– Ammi’s cake is ruined! Why didn’t you blow your nose before dinner?’ Papa ranted.

Ammi’s cake? Yasmin heard ringing in her head.

Ammi’s cake???

AMMI’S CAKE????

It was her cake, it was her birthday, and none of this was her fault. But would her parents listen to her side of the story? NO! And her aunties never helped, not to mention her horrible brothers.

A whole wave of noise came crashing down. Ammi was calling out an endless stream of orders. Papa was scooping up pieces of cake from the floor. Auntie Gigi and Auntie Bibi were trying to comfort Ammi and Yasmin’s brothers were just licking bits of icing that had fallen on the table.

Yasmin might as well have not been there.

So she did what she was best at, and disappeared.

Yasmin raced up all four flights of stairs, face caked in cake, and slammed her door shut behind her.

She grabbed her pillow and started beating it up.

Her stupid THUMP! brothers THUD! were always THUMP! THUMP! gettingherintotrouble THWACK! THUMP! THUD!

Her family always blamed her for everything.

Wiping her face with a towel, she kicked off her shiny shoes and threw them at her cupboard, where they slammed against the wooden door. Jumping on to her bed, she buried her head in the pillow and tried to block out the sounds of Ammi’s continued yells. It was no use. It was like there was a yodelling competition going on downstairs. She wanted nothing more than to stand on her bed, open her mouth and let out a roar so big that it would tear the whole house apart!

But . . . it wasn’t worth it. Nobody would stop talking for long enough to listen to her..

Yasmin got up and walked over to her mirror. She looked into the glass with such a severe expression she nearly scared herself. Finally she closed her eyes and, with all the brain strength she could muster, she made a wish.

I wish I could stand up for myself.

With her eyes closed, she listened out to hear if the shouting downstairs had died down.

What she heard instead was a thud. Coming from inside the cupboard.

And another.

And another!

Yasmin stared at the cupboard door. Where was the knocking coming from?

The cupboard fell silent. The noise from downstairs now seemed muffled compared to Yasmin’s own heavy breathing. She reached out and carefully knocked once on the wooden cupboard door.

The air seemed to chill around her. After a moment, she heard the knocking coming from inside again. Against her better judgment, Yasmin banged harder.

The knocking from within the cupboard was louder this time. Something was definitely in there – a mouse or a rat? – but Yasmin couldn’t ask her parents to come and investigate. She was still too angry with them.

She fetched her tennis racket from the corner of the room. Approaching the cupboard door on tiptoe, she closed her eyes, counted to three and then swung the cupboard open . . .

‘Oi, love! I’m having a kip here. Your stomping woke me up!’

In blind panic, Yasmin swung the tennis racket in the direction of the noise.

Yasmin slowly opened her eyes. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was, frankly, unbelievable.

‘Didn’t your mum ever tell you it’s rude to smack people with tennis rackets?’

Yasmin blinked hard. Was there a talking toy llama in her cupboard?

‘Hellooooo, anybody home?’ the llama said.

Yasmin remained frozen to the spot.

‘Right, well, I’m gonna give myself a tour of the house,’ the llama said in a broad cockney accent, getting up out of the pile of old socks it seemed to have been using as a bed. Before it could escape, Yasmin slammed the door shut.

Was she dreaming? Just to be sure, she pinched herself. Ouch! She was definitely awake, and now her arm hurt. But she was pinching herself because there was a talking toy llama in her cupboard. And not just any talking toy llama. It was the gross toy llama from the market! It must have fallen out of her schoolbag earlier when she tossed it to the ground.

‘All right love, tell you what. Openup the cupboard and I’ll explain myself,’ the llama said reasonably. ‘I don’t want no trouble.’

Tentatively, Yasmin opened the cupboard door just a crack. It felt like there was a swarm of angry bees in her stomach. She put her eye to the gap and peered in.

The llama laughed. ‘Come on!’

Yasmin opened the door an inch more.

‘That’s it, I don’t bite.’ The llama peered out at her. ‘But I do spit!’

With amazing precision, the llama aimed a perfect spray of matted fur fluff through the crack in the door, hitting Yasmin right on the nose. Seizing the opportunity, he jumped out of the cupboard and on to the desk, knocking off all her schoolbooks.

The little trickster! Yasmin thought, wiping her face. I’ll show him!

Grabbing her filled-to-the-brim laundry basket, Yasmin catapulted across the room with a trail of dirty clothes flying in her wake. She barrel-rolled across the bed like a cop in a Hollywood film and slammed the basket down, trapping the llama underneath.

‘I want to be angry, but I’m actually quite impressed,’ the llama remarked from inside his new prison.

Yasmin looked at him gruffly, putting her heaviest maths textbooks on the top of the basket to keep it secure. She sat down on the bed to catch her breath and make sense of the situation.

‘Wot?’ the llama asked cheekily. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

Oh! I knew there was something I was supposed to mention. The cat did, in fact, have Yasmin’s tongue. Though not literally. In a world of talking toy llamas, it’s probably best I’m clear about that.

What I mean is, Yasmin didn’t speak. Ever.

In the last seven years or so of her life, Yasmin had barely said a word. It’s not that she didn’t know how to speak; she did. It’s just that she didn’t want to, and for three very good reasons.

1: You’ve seen how loud her family is. It’s a good thing this is a book and not a TV show, or you’d have a headache by the end.

2: When Yasmin first learned to speak, her brothers used it as yet another thing to tease her about. Every time she opened her mouth, they would burst into hysterics at the sound of her voice. They even started calling her Trombone which, if you’ve ever heard a Trombone, is a particularly unkind nickname.

3: The Purple/Poo Incident. To be discussed later.

So, Yasmin kept quiet. It’s not as if anyone noticed. She would just have been another voice trying her best to be heard over the dinner table. If she was going to speak, she wanted to be heard. To make an impact. So, just as she’d got the hang of talking at three years old, she gave it up, and she hadn’t looked back since.

Yasmin shook her head vigorously from side to side and let her eyes refocus. Nope, the llama was still there. Had she fallen over in the kitchen and banged her head? Was she having a weird dream?

‘Look, look, look, I think we might have got off on the wrong foot back there,’ said the llama. ‘I’m Levi. What’s your name, love?’

Yasmin chewed at her lip nervously. If this was just a crazy dream she might as well go along with it. Maybe she’d snap out of it and wake up in bed. Cautiously, she picked up her schoolbag and pointed to her name written on the front.

‘Yasmin, huh? Ya don’t speak?’

Yasmin shook her head.

‘Interesting . . .’ Levi seemed to be mulling something over in his fluff-stuffed head. ‘I don’t blame ya for keepin’ quiet. Best to keep yourself to yourself round these endz.’

Yasmin looked confused.

‘These endz?’ Levi prompted. ‘It means these streets. Whitechapel ain’t what it used to be. I’ve been living here for a while and even I don’t recognise the place no more. There’s more and more trendy young people in flashy clothes setting up coffee shops. I mean, how many coffee shops d’ya need?’

Yasmin couldn’t work this all out. A talking toy llama from Whitechapel? She was quite sure that even real llamas didn’t live in London, and certainly not in the heart of the East End. The most exotic thing she’d seen where she lived was a rat in the garden that turned orange after it ate a bag of cheese balls.

‘How long you lived here? Twenty . . . thirty years?’ Levi enquired.

Yasmin snorted and hopped up on to her bed to reach her huge blackboard. Picking up some chalk she wrote: I’m only ten! It’s my birthday Yasmin slowly opened her eyes. She.

‘Then where are all yer presents? Yer parents must be cheapskates.’

It was true that Yasmin was a bit miffed with her rubbish logic puzzle book.

‘What about your mates, they at least get you a card?’

Yasmin shook her head and wrote: I don’t have friends at school.

‘No mates, eh?’ Levi raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ll have to sort that.’

The chalk was still firmly gripped in Yasmin’s hand. This was really happening. This was real – a real pain in the butt! The last thing she needed now was another person – or llama – rabbiting on in her ear all the time. Maybe she could take him back to the bargain bucket? She might even get a refund.

But her thoughts were interrupted by a thud, thud, thud, coming up the stairs – the unmistakable sound of Ammi’s footsteps. She was five floors below, but Yasmin’s mother didn’t exactly have a light step.

With her best stern expression, Yasmin hopped off the bed and mimed zipping her mouth shut to Levi.

‘Eh?’ he said. ‘I ain’t a mind reader!’

She rolled her eyes and put her finger to her lips.

‘Ahhhhhhh, you want me to shut it? Tough luck, princess! I think I should let that person know about you hitting me with tennis racket!’ Levi laughed and stuck his tongue out at her.

How rude! Yasmin thought. Well, she could be rude too. She stomped up to the laundry bin and plonked her bum right down on top it, wiggling around for good measure.

‘I can see you’re a tough cookie to crack,’ Levi yelled up at the bum that was holding him hostage. ‘Well, I don’t give up so easy either!’

At the top of his lungs (do toy llamas even have lungs?) he began singing, ‘La la la laaaaaa, it’s Llama Time!’

Yasmin chucked some pillows and her duvet on top of the basket to try and muffle the sound. Levi responded by running around inside, causing the pile to shake and tremble wildly.

What was she going to do? Ammi was already making her way up the last flight of stairs.

In desperation, Yasmin grabbed the laundry basket and threw it aside. Swiftly, she caught Levi, who kicked and wriggled around in her hands, and took him to the window.

‘Oi, oi, ow! Let me go! You nasty little girl!’

He fought and fought but Yasmin held on tightly. Ammi’s footsteps were getting ever closer. She silently hoped that Levi’s teeth would be made of wool, just in case he decided to bite her.

With one hand tightly holding Levi, Yasmin opened her window.

‘HEY! Don’t you dare throw me out! There’s pigeons out there and they look angry!’

Yasmin held him out of the open window. And just as the bedroom door creaked open, she let go.

‘WHATONEARTHAREYOUDOING?’ Ammi’s thick eyebrows were raised so high, they could have touched the ceiling. ‘WHATSGOINGON WITHYOUCHILD?’

Motioning to the open window, Yasmin fanned her face to pretend that she was hot and puffed out her cheeks. Her bright red face made it all the more convincing.

‘ITSAMESSINHERE!’ Ammi yelled, picking through the chaos of Yasmin’s usually spotless room. ‘YOUHAVEBEENTHROWING ATANTRUM!’

Yasmin wanted to defend herself, but that would mean revealing that there had been a magic toy llama in her room. Or that she had gone totally bananas. She could feel her face flushing with frustration.

Ammi saw Yasmin’s red cheeks as a sign of anger.

‘HOWDAREYOU GETAN GR YWITHME! INMYDAYCHILDRENRESPECTEDTHEIR PARENTS . . .’

Yasmin thought the best she could do to ease the situation was to start tidying her room and nodding from time to time to show she was listening.

‘ANDAFTERYOURUINEDTHECAKE! WHATDID I DOTODESERVETHISNAUGHTYCHILD?’

Usually, if you let Ammi rant for long enough she began to run out of steam at around the eighteen-minute mark. But this time, Yasmin was saved by the bell. The telephone rang and immediately Papa was yelling up the stairs:

‘Darling, answer the phone! I’m doing my evening sudoku!’

Ammi narrowed her eyes. ‘WEWILLFINISHTHIS LATER.’ Then she turned and stomped back downstairs.

The anger started to creep back into Yasmin’s chest, making her face hot and her tummy tight. She turned around, trying to stay calm, before it all bubbled up and she launched herself on to the bed, pummelling the mattress with her fists.

A voice came from outside the window. ‘Wow, you can pack a punch.’

In all the ruckus, Yasmin had forgotten about Levi. She’d hoped she’d imagined him. Scrabbling up from the bed, she peeped out of the window.

‘Down ’ere!’

Yasmin lowered her gaze. She saw Levi hanging by his front two feet from the window ledge.

Fun fact: llamas don’t have hooves. I know, I thought they did too, but actually, they are ‘bump-footed’. They’ve got two toes with a bumpy pad underneath which is just all kinds of wrong.

With a huge groan Levi heaved himself up and on to the window ledge. ‘Lucky I’ve been doing all them pull-ups at the gym.’

Yasmin made a grab for him but he dodged her, leaping through the air and landing on the bed.

‘Whoa, don’t worry, I ain’t going downstairs.’ Levi padded about in a circle and then curled up on the duvet. ‘I only said that earlier to wind you up.’

Yasmin faceplanted on to the bed.

‘Besides, you’re the only one who can hear me talk or see me move. So, I think we should be mates,’ he said, settling down.

What did he mean she was the only one? Surely such a loudmouth llama could be heard by everyone?

‘Nope, just you,’ Levi confirmed. ‘Now, be a doll and tidy up. It’s a mess in here.’

Yasmin reached out and whacked him off the bed.

Yep. This was no ordinary day.

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