Stuff

by Jeremy Strong

  Ballistic bums! This was a bit rich. I could feel resentment charging up my chest, up my windpipe and into my mouth – and that’s where it all spilled out.

  ‘Selfish? Me, causing problems? Listen, Darcy, it’s you who causes the problems. You go round threatening everyone and beating them up if they don’t do what you want. That’s what I call selfish and causing problems. You’re the problem round here, not me.’

  The music had stopped. The party had stopped. My life was about to stop. Everyone seemed to have retreated to the sides of the room, leaving me and Darcy squaring up to each other. (Just bear in mind he’s much taller than me, and older.) He threw back his head and gave a snarling laugh.

  ‘Look at you!’ He pushed me back. ‘Stinknoid!’ Push. ‘Reckon I’m stupid, don’t you? Do you think I don’t know who does those drawings? Think I’m so stupid I can’t even recognize myself? Think I’m obnoxious, do you? Obnoxx the Rather Unpleasant? You don’t know what unpleasant means, but you’re going to find out.’ Push.

  I went back a step. My heart was thundering as I stepped forward again.

  The room was absolutely still and silent. I could feel fifty pairs of eyes on us as we circled each other. My head was screaming: DON’T BE SO BLOODY STUPID, SIMON! But it was too late. I was angry, really angry. Everything wrong in my life seemed to relate to Darcy.

  ‘Do what you like, Darcy, because it won’t change anything important. You can’t mess with my brain, whatever you do. So, as far as I’m concerned, you can get lost. In fact –’ and I pointed at him as sternly as I could manage – ‘I refute you, thus!’

  And I poked him. With my finger. I did!

  I saw Darcy draw back his fist. Suddenly a wonderful aroma enveloped me. Someone brushed past and stood between us. It was Sky.

  ‘Touch him and you’re dead,’ she said.

  Darcy’s eyes flicked around the room. I could see he was unnerved. He laughed again. ‘Oh right. You and whose army?’

  ‘That goes for me too,’ said Tasha, stepping up beside me.

  Darcy was sweating. He was hesitating. He didn’t know what to do. Sky stretched out and touched his arm, gently.

  ‘You don’t want to do this, Darcy. You know you don’t. Remember what we talked about?’

  Darcy stared at her. And the way she was speaking to him – that was odd. Brainflash! Was Darcy her boyfriend? The one she wouldn’t two-time?

  ‘Go and quieten down. Enjoy the party. We can talk tomorrow’ Sky patted his arm again.

  Something inside him switched off. He gave a tiny nod, turned and vanished into another room. Someone turned the music on again and slowly people drifted back into dancing and yakkety-yakking.

  My legs were jelly and my heart was galloping. Galloping jelly – not a good combination. Sky and Tasha and I just looked at each other. We let out our breath. We raised our eyebrows. We began to smile a little and finally we laughed, more from relief than anything else.

  ‘Thanks for the rescue,’ I said, my brain somewhat confused.

  ‘Had to,’ said Tasha. ‘Couldn’t let you do it on your own, not when I knew you were doing it for both of us.’

  I gave Sky a small grin. ‘You were pretty cool, jumping out from nowhere like that.’

  ‘Come on, Punykid,’ she said, ‘I’m Skysurfer, aren’t I? I had to.’ She seemed quite small, serious. She wasn’t smiling any longer – not superhero material at all.

  ‘What was all that “we’ll talk tomorrow” stuff about? Are you all right? Do you want to sit down somewhere?’

  Sky nodded. The rooms were full of people and noise. I caught sight of Darcy sitting in a dark corner, alone, gazing at nothing. He didn’t see us. Eventually we found the back garden and sat on a low wall, in silence at first.

  ‘I was a bit scared,’ Sky admitted.

  ‘Me too. More than a bit. You OK now?’

  ‘Yes. No. Some bits are, some bits aren’t.’

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’

  It’s … I …’ She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s too soon.’

  ‘You and Darcy – you know each other?’ I held my breath, waiting for the answer, and when it came I suddenly knew what the Titanic felt like when it sank.

  ‘Of course we do.’

  Down I went, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, all hands lost to the cold, icy North Atlantic Ocean, along with the sausages and the marmalade and the 36,000 oranges, 9,000 spoons, 20,000 bottles of beer and 7,000 lettuces, among other items. Down I went, right to the very bottom of the sea and I lay there in the deepest, darkest, coldest, loneliest place on the planet.

  30

  Stuff I Didn’t Know

  ‘We take classes together,’ said Sky.

  Did I hear that right? The Titanic slowly began to rise back towards the surface. (Along with 36,000 etc., etc., etc.)

  ‘But he’s older – he’s a different year group.’

  ‘Learning Support,’ Sky explained.

  ‘Learning Support? You don’t need Learning Support!’

  ‘Stuff, you haven’t got a clue. You don’t know everything, and hardly anything about me. Darcy and I both have problems. I’m dyslexic and he’s, well, a bit more complicated than that, but we do a lot of work together. He’s screwed up, and he knows he’s screwed up.’

  ‘Everyone hates him,’ I pointed out.

  ‘He knows that too, and he hates himself. Imagine what that’s like. That’s why he gets so angry’

  I took a deep breath. At least by this time the Titanic was completely afloat. I suddenly remembered the note Darcy had sent Tasha, the one with the odd spellings. It made sense now. And getting me to read Tasha’s note back to him. So that was Darcy explained.

  Sky still seemed a long way away. I desperately wanted to help her. She obviously had a problem and maybe there was something I could do. Perhaps I should change the subject.

  ‘You were so cool back there, when you jumped in front of me.’

  ‘You already said that.’

  ‘I know, but it meant a lot to me.’

  ‘Really?’ She suddenly gave a little smile, right at me. Biochemical experiments again. Phew! I had to take a really deep breath.

  ‘I was pretty pleased to see you there.’

  ‘You were?’ That smile again. I struggled to think of something to say, anything, but my head was in a whirl. I was enveloped in her smell, floating in Paradise. I could feel the warmth coming off her body, so close to mine. She was looking right through my eyes and into my heart. She leaned towards me. Could I? Dare I? I closed my eyes.

  Our lips touched. Yes!

  And suddenly she pulled away. No!

  I opened my eyes and there she was, right in front of me, looking very alarmed. She drew back with a little shake of her head.

  ‘Sorry. I couldn’t help it.’

  I touched her face with my hand. When I spoke my voice was a tiny croak, like I was a frog. ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘Everything’s all right.’ And we kissed again, properly.

  AND SHE DID LIP-NIBBLING – JUST LIKE THE BOOK! SNOG OF SNOGS!!

  So there we are. How my life goes. That was so, so good. Eventually we went back into the party and did some dancing and stuff (without falling over), but the snogging was the best bit. I just feel so comfortable with Sky, like we’ve know each other all our lives. And I know that’s daft, but that’s how I feel, and we can talk to each other about anything.

  ‘What about your boyfriend?’ I asked her.

  ‘What boyfriend?’

  ‘When I asked you to go out with me you said you didn’t two-time.’

  ‘You idiot! You were the one who was dating. You were with Delfine!’

  Bouncing baboon’s buttocks! I felt so stupid. I was so stupid. I squeezed her hand and asked her what she thought of my white jeans.

  ‘I noticed as soon as you walked in the room,’ she said. (So Tasha was right after all! Good for her.) ‘And I thought, crap pants but
I love him, so what the hell.’

  That party proved to be quite an event because Pete asked Tasha to go out with him. He’d had a passion for her as long as I’d had for Sky. That time I’d seen them on the playground, he only wanted to ask Sky how he could get into Tasha’s good books.

  Dad didn’t seem the least bit surprised when Sky started coming round instead of Delfine. He just gave me knowing glances. I could almost hear him thinking: Ho ho ho. Now he knows what it feels like. But he didn’t say it and I appreciated that.

  La Trifle – Tracey – didn’t like Sky’s hair, which was a bit rich coming from someone who stuck a giant red cherry on top of her head whenever she went out.

  ‘Ignore her,’ was Tasha’s advice. ‘It’s a girlie thing.’

  So things were cool. Tash and I still argued. We still threw things at each other. Pankhurst sometimes attacked me for no good reason and then the next minute she’d be hatching my feet.

  And every day I saw Sky.

  Miss Kovak was really pleased with the final, finished strip. Art Works had been a huge success. Even some of the parents had come in to get hold of copies. It wasn’t just Sky who was getting asked for autographs – now kids were coming up to me and, guess who? Darcy. He scowled and growled at them, but Sky said that, really, he was chuffed to bits. I examined Darcy’s dark face and asked how she could tell.

  ‘By talking to him,’ she answered simply.

  Even so, it was more than I could bring myself to do. I kept clear of him, just in case.

  Pete and I carried on much the same as before. I couldn’t help liking him despite all the things he did to wind people up and all the stories he told. I did tackle him about those eventually. ‘Tasha reckons you make them up.’

  ‘I do not!’

  ‘Right. So what about the desert story?’

  ‘I went to the desert with my parents,’ Pete insisted.

  ‘And you got lost?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘And you were rescued by a medicine man?’

  ‘Not exactly. But we did go to the desert and it was very big and we might have got lost.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And kissing with tongues?’

  ‘Have I done that?’ asked Pete in surprise.

  ‘So you said. Obviously you haven’t.’

  ‘Hmm. Think I might have remembered if I had.’

  ‘You said it was like eating liver without the onions.’

  ‘Disgusting! Don’t do it, Stuff. Listen to my warning. If it’s like that, you mustn’t do it.’

  I smiled and thought: too late, chum! And it wasn’t liver and onions at all. It was champagne and caviar! And Aunt Polly’s car? Have you ever driven it?’ I went on.

  ‘I sat in the driver’s seat.’

  ‘Did you drive?’

  Pete gave a sheepish grin. ‘I made lots of brrrm-brrrm noises and I did a handbrake turn an imaginary one – but it was a very good imaginary one.’

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re a wozzer.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I refute it, thus.’

  He kicked me. How my life goes.

  Remember I said I might tell you what my first most embarrassing moment was? OK, here it is:

  My First Most Embarrassing Moment

  When I was four I went to a friend’s birthday party. We had loads of fizz to drink and after tea I needed the loo …

  No, I can’t go on. It’s too embarrassing. How my life goes. Even then.