The Pain, My Mother, Sir Tiffy, Cyber Boy & Me

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  Two figures (Pete and Justin I assumed) were climbing out from the drivers’ seats when Mum joined us at the window.

  ‘What’s going on? And what’s with all the swear … Holy crap!’

  The two figures were wearing silver helmets and silver spacesuits. The one at the front held up a hand to greet us and waved the other one at the DeLoreans. ‘We come in two pieces!’ he called.

  Jeremy chuckled. ‘I’ll pay that,’ he said.

  I turned round and looked at Mum. Her face was starting to crumple up and there was a fat teardrop preparing to roll itself from one of her eyes.

  ‘Another box ticked?’ I said.

  She had to pinch her lips together for a moment and swallow before she could get any words out.

  ‘Yep. Big tick,’ she said. ‘Huge tick.’

  And judging by the ‘OMG I’ve died and gone to geek sci-fi heaven’ look on Jeremy’s face, there wasn’t much doubt that he was giving The Pain some sort of giant galactic mega-tick as well.

  And me? You want to know what I was giving The Pain right then?

  Mentally I was giving him a gobful for managing to find such a painful way to do something good! I mean, why did he have to make me feel like killing him first? Was it really necessary? Was I actually supposed to be impressed by it?

  Okay, okay, okay. All right then … Tick. Satisfied?

  Fine. Have it your way.

  TICK!

  37

  Doing the Cyborg

  If you’re in a hurry and you want to cut to the chase and find out how the graduation dance went that night, then just get yourself a good thesaurus and look up the word BRILLIANT.

  But, if you want a few more details, then read on!

  When we pulled up in the DeLoreans, the big crowd waiting outside the venue went crazy. They went even crazier when the doors flew up and the portable dry-ice machines that Pete and Justin had installed in each of the cars billowed white mist everywhere. Then of course, everyone – teachers and parents included – wanted their photos taken with the cars and Pete and Justin were dragged into a million selfies. Something they didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  The graduation dance itself was even better than I had ever hoped. In a night of many highlights, these were my three favourites.

  The first one was sharing a table with Alison and Naheer.

  Not only did they live up to their reputations of being two of the world’s nicest people, they were also hilarious. Their friend Alice and her partner were good fun too and we all ended up getting on so well. I didn’t even mind sharing Jeremy around as a dancing partner and Jeremy certainly didn’t seem to mind sometimes having to dance with three girls at once! (Although using the word ‘dance’ to describe Jeremy’s crazy, robotic spasms might be a bit of a stretch! Alison christened it ‘doing the Cyborg’.)

  The second highlight was finding that Sister Evangelista was at the dance, and getting to introduce Jeremy to her. Naheer said it was like Yoda meeting C3PO. Sister recognised Jeremy straightaway from our school assemblies. ‘Brains, looks and height,’ she said as she craned her neck to gaze up at him. ‘I could only ever manage two out of three. I’ll let you decide the one I missed out on!’ Then she had some excellent advice plus a warning for him. ‘Now you make sure you look after my Maggie here, young man. If you don’t, you’ll have me to answer to.’ Pretty cool having the Sister-minator as my guardian angel!

  Later on in the night Sister Evangelista and I got the chance to have a quiet chat together. First I had to answer all her questions about Jeremy and how we met, but then I had some questions of my own. Ones I’d been thinking about ever since our last talk.

  ‘Sister. You know that story you told me about Patrice and the nurse and the soldier and how Patrice finally ended up in a convent?’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Well … I was wondering … is the Patrice in the story really … you?’

  Sister Evangelista clapped her hands together like a happy child.

  ‘Oh my, what an imagination you have! No, dear, Patrice in the story is actually … Sister Patrice! So much for protecting the innocent!’

  One question down. One to go.

  ‘And what about the nurse after she married the soldier, Sister? Did that story have a happy ending?’

  The smile on Sister Evangelista’s face grew smaller but still held on.

  ‘A happy ending? Well, like any story I think, that depends a great deal on when you choose to stop telling it, my dear. The nurse and the soldier were together for four mostly happy years. But unfortunately, Maggie, wars have a way of staying with those who fight them, even when they are over. They say soldiers return from a war, but more often than not they return with a war.’

  Sister paused before going on.

  ‘The nurse’s husband was killed one day when the car he was driving hit a tree at high speed. It was the only tree along an isolated stretch of straight road. The police ruled it an accident. They blamed fatigue.’

  ‘Oh god, how awful.’

  Sister Evangelista nodded her head slowly.

  ‘Yes. But in life one thing is always weaving itself into another and even tragedy can find a way to twist its way to joy and beauty. So as soon as Sister Patrice heard of the tragic news she was there every day for the nurse and the two women mourned together, supported each other, organised the funeral and finally stood arm in arm at the grave of the man they both loved. Over time they became as close as any two people could possibly be and eventually there were no secrets of any kind left between them.’

  Sister Evangelista sat in silence beside me. I was the next one to speak.

  ‘That nurse … she eventually became a nun too, didn’t she, Sister? In the same order as Patrice.’

  Sister Evangelista’s eyes shifted my way.

  ‘Why yes; yes she did, my child. How very perceptive of you. And even though her dear friend has now passed way, she still smiles every day because she never loses sight of the beauty in her life – or the beautiful people.’

  She squeezed my hand when she said that last bit and added, ‘There’s your happy ending, Maggie.’

  The third highlight came as a complete surprise. Halfway through the night, Courtney Summers and her partner came over to our table and asked if they could join us. It sure beat the surprises I got at her sleepover! I found out that since that meeting with Principal Chalmers, Chloe and Jazzmin had more or less shut Courtney out of their little friendship group and that at the dance they’d hardly spoken to her all night. ‘Jazzmin and Chloe and I are different people now,’ Courtney told me. She didn’t seem that upset about it.

  I discovered a lot about Courtney Summers over the course of the night, and she discovered some things about me as well. Things I hadn’t told anyone else. Like how my real father was that actor guy Jason Davenport, and how he’d run out on my mum and me four years ago, and how there was a reason behind what happened at her sleepover that night. I asked Courtney to keep those things a secret. When she promised me that she would, I believed her. Maybe Goal 1 wasn’t dead quite dead and buried yet.

  There were heaps of other highlights to the evening of course, and the only lowlight (besides a few boring speeches) was that it all flew by too quickly. Before I knew it we were saying our farewells to everyone and spilling out of the school hall with the rest of the crowd. All that remained of the night was the pick-up and the drive home.

  One of the best nights of my life was almost over.

  Almost.

  There was that word again.

  38

  More muscle than shirt

  There were no shiny time machines for the ride home. Mum was picking us up and dropping Jeremy off. But when I scanned the line of cars parked across from the hall it wasn’t Mum’s I spotted, but a faded yellow station wagon from the 1960s with my mother in the passenger seat.

  I fought to control the panic that threatened to bubble up inside of me. Sunny Boy and The Pain? Here at my gradua
tion dance? Okay. Fine. No problem. I was cool with that. Nothing was going to spoil my night. All Jeremy and I had to do was head down the steps, cross the road, jump into the back seat and let ourselves be driven home.

  Not even The Pain could find a way to ruin that.

  Could he?

  We did just what I said. We made our way down the wide cement steps in front of the hall and across the road to Sunny Boy. That’s when I realised that Mum wasn’t the sole occupant of that passenger seat. Something was curled up on her lap.

  ‘Mum, what the hell? You brought Sir Tiffy with you?’

  ‘No,’ my mother said. ‘Sir Tiffy brought himself. Fast asleep in the back. Didn’t know it until we were halfway here and he started whining and wailing. Guess he wanted to be in on the fun. Dead to the world now though. I think the excitement got to him.’

  Great. Now I had The Pain, Sunny Boy and The Pain’s daemon at my graduation. Bonus! My anxiety levels were rising, but since we’d already made it safely into the back seat of the car and we were about to leave, I managed to remain relatively calm.

  We were almost in the clear.

  The Pain had flicked his indicator on and was preparing to pull away from the kerb, but a mini traffic jam meant we weren’t going anywhere fast. Mum twisted round in her seat. There was a big cheesy grin on her face.

  ‘Sooooo? Tell me all about it. How was it?’

  ‘The best,’ I told her.

  Jeremy smiled and nodded. ‘Awesome.’

  ‘That’s wonderful. Glad to hear it.’

  The Pain exhaled loudly.

  ‘Phew! That’s a weight off my mind. Really sorry about that stuff-up with the car, guys. Of all the nights for Sunny Boy to break down, it had to be this one. And you wouldn’t read about it, now he’s running perfectly again!’

  I looked at his reflection in the rear vision mirror. I couldn’t see much more than his forehead and his eyes. I gave him a half-hearted corpse face look.

  ‘I’m not completely stupid, you know?’

  The Pain frowned back at me.

  ‘You’re not? Wow, that’s a big call. Where’s your proof?’

  Mum gave him a punch on the shoulder. Jeremy chuckled, then put on his serious face and pretended he hadn’t.

  ‘You know what I mean. There wasn’t any “stuff-up”. There’s no way Pete and Justin would have had time to turn up like that, all dressed in spacesuits with the dry ice and everything, if they’d only found out at the last minute. You obviously planned the whole thing.’

  The Pain looked unconvincingly stunned and confused.

  ‘What? Those guys wear spacesuits all the time and they wouldn’t be seen dead without their dry-ice accessories.’

  ‘Right. I believe you. It all just happened by accident. But thanks anyway.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For having such a crappy car that it breaks down just at the right time, so that instead of turning up at the graduation dance in an old, clapped-out bomb, Jeremy and I got to arrive like superheroes in a pair of awesome time machines and make everyone else jealous.’

  The Pain laughed and was about to say something else when his words were drowned out by the deep roar and throb of an engine. A big evil-looking motorcycle had just swung into the narrow space between the hood of our car and the back of the one parked in front of us.

  The Pain pointed at it through the windscreen.

  ‘What’s that clown think he’s doing? He hasn’t left enough room for me to swing out. He’s gone and parked us in!’

  He tooted on the horn.

  The rider on the evil-looking bike glanced our way. We couldn’t see his face because of his dull black helmet. What we could see were his faded and shredded jeans, his heavy boots and his muscle shirt. (More muscle than shirt.) Then he pulled off his gloves and his biceps bulged out like chunks of rock. I noticed letters tattooed on the fingers of his left hand. They spelled out N-E-X-T. I couldn’t make out what was on other hand until he rubbed his chin. Y-O-U-R.

  YOUR NEXT.

  Hmmmmmm. My next what? I wondered.

  They weren’t his only tattoos. In amongst the images of skulls, scantily dressed women, daggers and devils, two in particular caught my eye. One was curled around under his throat and in swirling letters said, TO STRONG TO LOOSE. The other proclaimed proudly from his left forearm, NO REGERTS!

  Was this guy going for the record for the most spelling and grammatical errors inked on a single body? I wondered if anyone had ever pointed them out to him. When he removed his helmet, his roughly shaven head (Taarsheebah Strikes Back?), cold sunken eyes, (badly) chiselled features, random scars, crooked nose and the slightly protruding forehead all suggested to me, ‘Probably not’.

  I must have been gawking a bit too much at motorbike guy because he thrust out his jaw and gave me a What the frig* are you looking at? glare. (* I doubt if he would have actually used the word frig.) But here’s the thing. A few seconds after my gawk met his glare, I knew the answer to that question. I knew exactly what I was looking at.

  Or rather who.

  The evil-looking motorbike guy was … BODENE PRICE.

  You remember him? Bodene Price? Jason Price of the piggie teeshirt’s bigger, big brother? The loose (as opposed to ‘lose’) nuclear warhead? Yep, that’s him.

  I’d only ever seen Bodene a few times before. Once at our school fête and a couple of times when he was picking up Jason from school for some reason. He always managed to cause a bit of a stir and put the teachers on high alert whenever he was around. A bit like a rabid dog turning up at a toddlers’ play group.

  The reason I hadn’t recognised him immediately was that he had considerably less hair and considerably more ink since my last sighting. (Some of which he just might live to REGERT.) He also looked like he’d been on an extensive all-you-can-swallow, steroid, testosterone and high protein diet.

  The Pain tooted the horn again and waved his hands about a bit.

  Bodene showed as much interest in The Pain as he would a mosquito. A dead one. He just got slooooooowly off his bike, placed his helmet on the seat and dropped his gloves into it one at a time. Then, still ignoring us completely, he walked over and leant against a tree beside the road about ten metres away. From there he eyeballed the big crowd of people milling outside the hall, presumably on the lookout for his kid brother.

  I can’t say that he appeared super-thrilled about having to be there, so I guessed that he was probably under orders from Mrs Price (who, rumour had it, was the truly frightening one in the family). I also noticed that there was only one spare helmet on Bodene’s bike, so I was also assuming that Brodie’s parents were taking her straight home. Probably a wise move.

  The Pain threw up his hands and linked them on top of his head.

  ‘Unbelievable!’ he said. Then he moved to unbuckle his seatbelt.

  My heart leapfrogged a couple of beats.

  ‘Wait! What are you doing?’

  The Pain looked at me in the rear vision mirror.

  ‘What am I doing? I’m going to ask this character to move his bike so we’re not trapped here all night. I think that’s reasonable.’

  ‘No. No, you can’t. You don’t get it. That’s not just anyone. That’s Bodene Price. Bodene Price doesn’t do “reasonable”.’

  ‘Who?’ Mum and The Pain said together.

  ‘Bodene Price. Everyone at school knows him. (Beside me Jeremy was agreeing.) He’s Jason Price’s oldest brother. You remember Jason,’ I told The Pain, not wanting to go into too much detail in front of Jeremy, ‘that teeshirt guy that you had the interesting discussion with about pigs and fashion?’

  The Pain frowned.

  ‘This is Pig Boy’s brother?’ he said as he studied Bodene. ‘What a delightful family. Well, whoever he is, it’s ridiculous. He’s only got to move the bike a metre or so. It’s hardly a big ask.’

  The Pain gave another couple of toots. Longer ones this time. Bodene responded to the tooting by glancing
back, spitting deliberately on the ground and turning away. He’d already attracted a lot of attention just leaning against the tree doing nothing, but with all the tooting the mob on the steps were starting to take real notice. Some were pointing our way. Others were calling their friends over. More people were gathering every second. Clearly they could sense some free entertainment was brewing.

  ‘That’s it!’ The Pain growled, clicking open his seatbelt. ‘Time he learnt about consideration for other people.’

  I grabbed at his shoulder.

  ‘No, please, don’t! It’s what he wants. You don’t get it. He’s a professional cage fighter. Jason told me all about him. He’s on posters. He beats people up for a living. And he’s really excellent at it. He’s just won some big match-up. It was on television and everything. If you go out there you’re only going to get into a fight. Everybody’s watching. And you could get yourself killed.’

  I wasn’t sure which of those was worrying me the most.

  ‘Maggie’s right, Danny,’ Mum said. ‘I don’t like the look of him. It’s not worth it. We’re in no hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world. He’ll move eventually. I don’t mind waiting. It’ll give Maggie a chance to tell us more about the dance. Just forget about it. Okay? Relax.’

  The Pain was holding on to his unbuckled seatbelt and staring at me in the rear vision mirror. I remembered something he once said to me. It was my last chance to change his mind.

  ‘Bodene’s a stupid hothead,’ I told him, ‘but it doesn’t mean you have to be one too. It’s been a brilliant night. Please don’t ruin it now.’

  The Pain let his breath out steadily but didn’t take his eyes off mine.

  ‘Bodene Price, eh? Cage-fighter, you say? Big man? Well … we’ll see about that,’ he muttered.

  And before anyone could stop him The Pain had dropped his seatbelt buckle, pushed open his door and climbed out of the car.

  39

  My Year Ten Graduation Dance Horror Story

  The car door slammed shut and Bodene’s head swung round like some giant reptile sensing its prey.