Stuff

by Jeremy Strong

  I don’t know why I’d bothered to ask, really. It was perfectly clear what she was doing. I suppose I was just surprised. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? There you are, with this great plan – I know, run away from home and my horrible new stepfamily – and then you find your horrible stepfamily running away from home to avoid … you? Did I mean me? Is that what Tasha was doing? Running away from me? Killer!

  Tasha eyed me furiously. ‘I might have known it’d be you. You ruin everything in my life.’

  ‘Me? What about you?

  ‘What about me?’ Tasha demanded.

  ‘This was my idea. You’re not supposed to be here.’

  ‘Oh, excuse me. Think you’re the only one allowed to run away? That’s typical male thinking, that is. Totally thoughtless of other people.’

  We stared at each other, all frowns and hunched shoulders, jutting jaws and clenched fists. My eyes fell on her rucksack. Elephant’s pants! It was even bigger than mine.

  ‘You’ll never carry that,’ I said.

  ‘Oh really? You reckon?’ She grabbed the straps and with an immense effort swung it on to her back. The sheer momentum of it all spun her round, right off her feet, and sent her crashing to the ground. She lay on her back like an overturned tortoise, feebly waving her arms and legs.

  ‘Help me up,’ she hissed, and I grabbed her by one hand. ‘Just … help … me … up!’

  That was when we started to giggle. We couldn’t stop. Our laughter swept away the silent shadows of the old house. I had to leave Tasha lying there. I was laughing so much I didn’t have the strength to help her.

  She tried to speak. ‘I … I bet I’ve broken all my eggs now!’

  And we started laughing all over again.

  ‘Your eggs!’ I spluttered. ‘I’ve been pinching them too. No wonder your mum ran out! I suppose you took bread as well?’

  Tasha nodded and shouted, ‘The egg whisk – I wanted that! God, the house must be empty. They’ll think they’ve been burgled!’

  ‘Strange burglars,’ I said. We lapsed into a rather thoughtful silence. I had to ask her why she was running away.

  ‘You were always arguing with me.’

  ‘You were arguing with me,’ I said defensively.

  ‘And you’ve been drawing all those pictures about me and calling me Trash.’

  ‘You knew that was me?’

  ‘Everyone knows,’ muttered Tasha. She sighed. ‘OΚ, we were arguing with each other. And Mum kept telling me off because I was snapping at your dad, but he’s not my dad, is he?’

  ‘Same for me and your mum.’ I nodded.

  ‘And Darcy’

  ‘Darcy?’

  ‘He wants me to go out with him. I don’t like him but he won’t leave me alone and I didn’t know what to do any more.’ Tasha paused to get her breath. ‘And there was nobody I could talk to,’ she said slowly.

  ‘This is stupid.’ I was thinking that all along we’d both been in the same boat – and it was probably the Titanic.

  ‘I know. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Go back? Don’t think I really wanted to run away anyway. I was dreading it. Pete was supposed to come with me.’

  Tasha’s head jerked up. ‘Pete?’

  ‘Yeah, but he was too chicken.’

  ‘More like too muddled,’ said Tasha. ‘He can’t tell fantasy from reality’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘All that stuff he makes up,’ Tasha answered.

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Those stories he tells everyone about his aunt and her car and the things he’s seen and done.’

  Beaver’s buttocks! It had never, ever, ever occurred to me that Pete was inventing it.

  ‘He’s just trying to make himself interesting,’ Tasha suggested. ‘We’ve all done it.’

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘Yeah – made things up to make ourselves look bigger, better – whatever. It’s like wearing a push-up bra with added padding’

  ‘It is? Like a push-up bra?’

  ‘Same principle. The bra’s just a metaphor.’

  I went quiet. I was thinking of that metaphorical bra, but it rapidly stopped being metaphorical and became a real bra instead and there was a real person inside it. She was very nice too, quite possibly Sky My androgens were at it again. And the Citroën.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Tasha asked.

  Pop! She’d gone. Shame. I glanced at my watch. Half five. ‘Go home? Nothing has happened. We go to school and we stick together. If Darcy tries to make trouble, there’ll at least be two of us. And we stick together at home too.’ I scuffed the floor with one foot. ‘I didn’t realize home was horrible for you as well.’

  ‘I hated you. You did such stupid things, you even used up all my bath stuff. You made me want to laugh and I hated myself for wanting to laugh at you and I hated you even more for making me hate myself and – well – bit of a mess.’

  ‘Yeah. Come on. Let’s go home.’ We went to the door. After you, sis.’

  Tasha managed a little smile.

  25

  Toilet Trouble

  People are like icebergs. I don’t suppose you know that. It has only just occurred to me. I’ll tell you what I mean. When you see an iceberg floating along (as you do, if you happen to be an Inuit), what you actually see is only one-tenth of the iceberg. Only one-tenth of an iceberg sits above the waterline. The other nine-tenths remain hidden below. It’s no wonder the Titanic got ripped apart.

  And that makes me think of other floating objects, like ducks. Maybe, when you look at a duck, you can only see one-tenth of it. Maybe nine-tenths of the duck’s body is hidden beneath the water. Think of that – gigantically obese ducks with massive waddly bums and huge paddling feet. Next time you see a duck, take care.

  Anyhow, I was saying that people are like icebergs. We only see a little bit of them. There’s so much more to people than what we see. And I was beginning to discover this with Tasha.

  Strange how quickly things can change. By the time we reached home Tasha and I seemed to have gone from worst enemies to best friends. I found this oddly encouraging. It felt like I was Popeye and I’d just swallowed six cans of spinach. I could tackle anything now, even Darcy. If he tried anything I’d simply smash him to a pulp. Just like that. It wouldn’t be me lying on the ground, writhing about. It’d be him. And I’d say, ‘You try anything on me or Tasha again and you’ll need your coffin, Darcy. Understood?’ And he’d barely be able to nod before he crawled away in a trail of blood and guts. Oh yes. No probs.

  Later on, I came to a decision. Actually, I came to more than one decision – one of them being not to make too many decisions – but of the ones I had decided to make, the most important was that I was going to dump Delfine. Obviously, I wasn’t going to walk up to her and say, ‘Hey babe, you’re dumped. You and me are history. Our relationship has been tossed into the Black Hole of Dead Romance.’ I’m not that cruel. Even so, there was no pleasant way. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  So, when Tasha and I were walking down the corridor and found ourselves marching straight towards Delfine and Darcy, I made another quick decision. This was definitely not the moment to break up with Deify. This was the moment to scarper double quick. Was it the red-eyed hurt splattered across Delfine’s face, or was it the invisible multibarrelled, semi-automatic, hydrogen plasma, total-devastation gun that Darcy would have been carrying if there was such a thing? As it happened, his two fists were doing a pretty good impression of what was going to happen to me if I got too close to him. He was banging them together like giant rocks, cracking his knuckles. And he looked ginormous! He’d been so much smaller when I’d beaten him up in my head. The real Darcy was awfully big and awfully real. As soon as he saw us he shouted.

  ‘Dingoid! Gome here!’

  I grabbed Tasha by the arm, whirling round and pulling her after me. Darcy yelled something with lots of asterisks in it and came charging after us.

  There was
no way we could outrun him, but I was hoping to find an escape route. It was just my luck there was nothing except the boys’ toilets.

  ‘It’s our only chance!’ I panted, shoving open the door and making sure the room was clear.

  The door banged shut and suddenly all was silent apart from the hissing of the flush pipes and the slow trickle of water into cisterns. The windows were high, narrow oblongs, so no chance of climbing out. We were as good as trapped. I yanked open a cubicle door and pulled down the lid.

  ‘Stand on that,’ I whispered, ‘and don’t make a sound.’

  We stood there, huddled together, arms clasped tightly round each other, too scared to feel awkward. The outer door burst open and Tasha’s fingers dug into my back. I bit my lip to stop any noise coming out.

  ‘They must have gone somewhere!’ roared Darcy. ‘Oi! Who’s in there?’

  The cubicle door banged and rattled.

  I took a deep breath and dropped my voice as low as I could. ‘Naff off, Darcy, you dingoid, or I’ll make your brains into kebabs.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Hammerhead.’ Hammerhead was Wayne Hammersley’s nickname – the most feared boy at school.)

  ‘Oh. Sorry, Hammer.’

  ‘Naff off,’ I growled.

  Darcy grunted. The door banged but we stayed on the toilet seat, giving everything a bit of time to settle.

  ‘Has he gone?’ whispered Tasha.

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave a tiny giggle. ‘We can’t go on meeting like this.’

  We stepped down just as the main door banged open again. We caught our breath. Our feet and legs were showing and it was too late to do anything about them.

  ‘Now, there’s a funny thing,’ said a strong Scottish accent, which meant it could only be Mr Stewart, chief caretaker. ‘Four feet in one cubicle. I’ve never seen a laddie with four feet before, let alone with trousers on one set of legs and socks on the other.’

  A key turned in the lock. The door opened.

  ‘My I’ve seen some strange goings-on, but this is the first time I’ve seen a courting couple in a toilet. It’s hardly romantic. Could you not find a better place? I don’t know what you kids will think up next. You’d better get yourselves to the head’s office and explain yourselves.’

  So we escaped Darcy only to end up in front of the head teacher, Mr Prendergast. He was not impressed. ‘I get so very tired of dealing with this kind of activity. Don’t you ever think of anything but snogging and sex?’

  ‘But she’s myow–’ I winced as Natasha kicked the back of my leg. It really hurt.

  ‘Sorry sir,’ she mumbled.

  ‘It’s all very well to say “Sorry”, but where are your morals, girl? You can’t behave like this or the next thing you know you’ll be pregnant. Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Tasha muttered.

  ‘Neither do I. Neither do I. We all like a kiss and a cuddle but, please, really, standing in a toilet cubicle? Is that the best you could do?’

  I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to answer this or not, so I kept quiet. Besides, I was haunted by the image of the head having a kiss and a cuddle. Anyhow, Tasha seemed to be handling things, so I let her get on with it.

  ‘We’re very sorry, sir. It won’t happen again, sir.’

  The head suddenly looked tired. ‘Oh, go away’ he sighed, waving a hand at us.

  Outside his office I nursed the bruise on the back of my leg.

  ‘Sorry’ smiled Tasha. ‘I just thought that if he had known that we are almost brother and sister he would have gone ballistic. It was better to let him think … you know’

  ‘Good call,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be out of action for long’

  ‘Isn’t that Darcy over there?’

  ‘Where?’ I cried.

  ‘Don’t panic. He’s busy Looks as if he’s with–’

  ‘Sky!’ I gasped. Ever seen all your most wonderful dreams sucked into a Black Hole? It had just happened to me and it wasn’t nice. I couldn’t bear to look and I couldn’t bear to take my eyes off them. They were chatting like they were best buddies. He touched her arm. My heart turned to ashes and I turned away.

  Later that morning Pete tracked me down.

  ‘Haven’t seen you for ages,’ he grinned. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Got some good news,’ said Pete.

  ‘Really? What can it be? Sky’s dating every boy in school? You’ve been to an orgy with six nuns?’

  Pete pulled a stern face. ‘I refute it, thus! What’s got into you?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Pete studied my face for more information but soon gave up. ‘Yeah, got some good news,’ he repeated. ‘Aunt Polly’s agreed I can have a party at my place – her place.’

  ‘Right.’ And I was thinking: lovely, just what I need; a nice jolly party where I can watch Sky smooching in the corner with – who? There were so many to choose from these days. Her boyfriend? Pete? Darcy? How wonderful.

  ‘It’s going to be next Saturday. Aunt Polly will be there to keep an eye on things, but she’s pretty cool, so it should be great. I’m inviting everyone.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘You know, the crew. You, Tasha, Sky, Delfine, all the others. It’s going to be the most megatastic party ever. Nathan says he’s got some booze and I’m going to get some too.’

  ‘Right,’ I muttered. If Delfine was going, she’d bring Darcy. It seemed that my brushes with Death were getting closer and more frequent. Maybe this time he’d catch up with me. Maybe I wanted to die, even.

  About the only good thing that happened was when Miss Kovak saw me wandering about aimlessly and came over especially to tell me that the school couldn’t get enough of Skysurfer.

  ‘It is such a hit, Simon. I hope you’re pleased.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Everyone is talking about it, wondering who does it and trying to guess at the identity of the characters. They’ve all got Sky, of course, but they’re not at all sure about the others. Who’s that little tubby man that keeps kicking things for some reason?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Mr Hanson,’ I said.

  ‘Really? He’s such a fan. I’ve never seen him laugh so much. What about Obnoxx the Rather Unpleasant? Would that be Darcy by any chance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miss Kovak put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a steady look. ‘You be careful. Is Punykid going to make it? Will he find the secret Elixir of Preposterone?’

  ‘Wish I knew,’ I said.

  But deep inside I was pleased. People were waiting to find out what was going to happen. It was an odd feeling. Was I making this thing up, or was it making up me? Prawns in pants! A comic strip was taking over my life!

  On the way home I got a text from Pete. He wanted to go shopping for the party. Great. Maybe I could buy a subsonic plasma-annihilator gun so I could surprise Darcy.

  26

  Chugga-Chugga!

  You can never find a subsonic plasma-annihilator gun when you want one. Pete and I went up and down the High Street. We trailed round and round The Mall. Pete tried on umpteen pairs of trainers. Don’t ask me why. He didn’t have the money for any of them.

  ‘Yeah, I know, but you still have to know what they look like.’

  ‘They look like trainers.’

  Pete looked at me and shook his head sadly. ‘You are a disappointment to the God of Shopping. Come on, this party has got to be the party of parties! Girls and booze!’

  ‘Don’t you think of anything else?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Good question, so I ignored it.

  ‘Is Tasha coming?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I saw you talking to each other the other day. You were laughing and you haven’t slagged her off for at least forty-eight hours. What’s going on?’

  I told him about The Grange and how we’d sorted out a few things. ‘Tasha’s OK,’ I
said.

  ‘Yeah? Guess so. What about Sky? Everyone’s talking about you two at school. They reckon something’s going on.’

  ‘Wrong. She’s got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘Mystery man – no idea.’ I watched his face closely but he wasn’t giving anything away.

  ‘And Darcy reckons he’s Obnoxx the Rather Unpleasant.’

  ‘Clever Darcy. Fancy spotting that! Everyone knows it’s him.’

  ‘Does Sky pose for you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Shame. I never knew your brain was so weird. Those elephants are mad!’

  ‘Have you blabbed to anyone?’

  Pete shook his head. ‘And get you killed instantly? No way. But you’d better watch out. I think Darcy suspects.’

  I held up a hand. ‘Don’t say any more. My head’s full of nasty images already’

  ‘Being in hospital’s OK,’ Pete offered, by way of comfort.

  ‘Great. How would you know?

  ‘When I was three,’ he said, very seriously, ‘I was in a multiple pushchair pile-up.’

  I had to laugh. I couldn’t help myself.

  Pete’s Multiple Pushchair Pile-up

  This was long before Pete’s parents went off to America. They went to a big shopping mall where there was a special event at one of the kiddy shops. It was going to be opened by TV’s latest heart-throbs, Miles Better and Jemima Suffix. Then there’d be a demonstration of different disposable nappies.

  Pete and his parents were halfway round the mall when an announcement said that Miles and Jemima had arrived and were about to open the store, and afterwards they were going to demonstrate the disposable nappies.

  Instant panic. Half the shoppers seemed to think that the TV stars were actually going to model the nappies! Can you believe that? Instant mad dash by hundreds of shoppers down to the kiddy store. Since most of them had kids and pushchairs, it was a recipe for disaster.

  Pete’s parents got caught up in the rush. People were charging down the escalators from the floor above, shouting and yelling. Fists were flying as more and more people tried to cram into a smaller and smaller space. One pushchair locked wheels with another and, in trying to tear them apart, others got jammed and before you knew it there were pushchairs at all angles, blocking the escalator and the pile-up continued backwards, reversing up the escalator until it spilled right back on to the top floor The pile was three pushchairs high in places.