Jack Tumor

by Anthony McGowan

  And then I took out my weapon, and it wasn’t a knife or a gun, or a rocket-launcher, or a cunning blowpipe with curare-tipped darts.

  It was a packet of Revels.

  Some were plain milk chocolate. And there were others with six different centers: caramel, coffee, orange, raisin, and the malt honeycomb of a Malteser, each wrapped in a chocolate coating, and sold in a neat little pack for thirty-eight pence.

  Six. I said six, and yet I named only five. And the sixth is the one that counts.

  The peanut.

  You might think you could spot the peanut, easily telling it from the others by its irregular ovoidal properties, but you just might make a mistake and, as I’d learned, that was a mistake you really didn’t want to make if peanuts were your nemesis, your kryptonite.

  “What’s that?”

  Tierney was looking at the Revels dangling from my hand. Knife against packet of sweets. Could have been funny. Was funny.

  But both of these could kill.

  “I think you know. Want one?”

  “What’s he on about, Chris?” said Murdo. “What’s he got them for? Have ‘im.”

  “Don’t like ‘em.”

  Tierney’s voice had now lost its sly, wheedling tone. It had been a gamble, but I was right.

  Okay, Jack was right.

  Yes, it was Jack that spotted that Tierney never thieved anything with nuts in it.

  Obvious, really.

  “This scares you, doesn’t it?” I said, waving the packet in front of him. I could sense the interest of the crowd. Some of them were getting it, understanding the line of attack. I made it clear for even the real thickos. “Fancy being afraid of a peanut . . .”

  “It’s you who’s afraid of nuts. We all saw you spaz out when you ate one of them before. Foaming and twitching. You’re the poof here, you’re the freak, the one with the allergies.” Tierney was blustering now.

  “Come on, then,” I said. “Let’s share.”

  I opened the packet, praying my hands wouldn’t betray my nervousness. The rustle and tear was loud against the silence.

  “One for you, one for me.”

  Here it was.

  Everyone knew that I was allergic to nuts, just like Tierney said. But he’d hidden his allergy, thinking it was something to be ashamed of. If he backed out then his sham was exposed and he’d be condemned on his own terms as a freak.

  But if that didn’t happen, then it was going to be a duel.

  Revels Russian roulette.

  And that would show who the coward was.

  The trouble was that Tierney still had the knife and as a defense against a knife a chocolate-coated peanut is, all things considered, inadequate.

  The balance of power was, however, about to change.

  A kid burst through the circle. He was from the year above. Conor O’Neil. Everyone knew him. He’d had an embarrassing encounter with an ice-cream van last year and since then he’d turned into a weirdo. I mean, the kind of weirdo who sees stuff that isn’t there, not just a social misfit. He talked to himself. And his hair was really, really bad. But the weirdness made him a bit scary, and none of the thugs bothered him. Gonad said it was like the Sioux and other warlike tribes, who always respected loonies.

  Anyway, O’Neil just came up and took the knife out of Tierney’s hand, the way you’d take something sharp away from a toddler so they didn’t hurt themselves. It was like Tierney was in some kind of trance—he didn’t resist at all. Everyone stared at O’Neil. O’Neil stared at the knife. I thought he might throw it over the fence the way I had with the stick, consigning it to the depths, and maybe a hand would come up and catch it like Excalibur. But instead he put it in his pocket and wandered off without saying a word to anyone.

  So that just left the Revels.

  “One for me, one for you,” I repeated.

  “What if you cheat? You’ve got the bag, it’s not fair.”

  That was funny—hearing Tierney use the words of the underdog, of the oppressed.

  I looked around, focused on Tierney’s crew. Murdo, No-Name, Johnson. Murdo hated me. No-Name was unpredictable.

  “Come here, Sean,” I said to the hulking Johnson.

  He did as he was told.

  “You hold them. Take one out at a time. Give the first one to me, then the next to Tierney. Then carry on. Until one of us says stop. You cool with that, Tierney?”

  What could he say? It was a fair test of courage.

  Or a stupid, irresponsible, dangerous prank.

  But there was no way he could back out. His gang was all in favor.

  “Go on, Chris.”

  “Show him.”

  “Make him choke.”

  “Me first, then Chris,” I said to Johnson. He emptied the first Revel into my hand, making sure with his grimy fingers that only one emerged.

  Without looking I put it straight in my mouth. The crowd gave a little gasp.

  I bit.

  I chewed.

  I smiled.

  “Orange. A touch sickly sweet for my taste, but not bad. Your turn.”

  Tierney was close enough for me to see the sweat glistening on his upper lip. Johnson shook the packet up, and held it out. Tierney’s hand went to meet it. A chocolate was deposited. Tierney scrutinized it carefully. I could see the strain in his face. He suddenly threw it into his mouth. I thought he was going to spit it out or puke. Then his face lit up.

  “Coffee. I knew it.”

  His mob gave a little cheer. Emphasis on the little. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed his alarm.

  Johnson wriggled another free. Without hesitation I put it in my mouth.

  “Caramel. Better watch out for my fillings.”

  All eyes swung again to Tierney. He was faster this time, a touch feverish, his hand shaking.

  “Malteser,” he said.

  He’d been chewing gingerly, trying to keep everything at the front of his mouth, so some of the crumbs sprayed out as he spoke.

  Again Johnson served me. Now my heart was pounding and my mouth was dry. The previous Revels had formed a hot sticky coating and I didn’t have enough spit to wash it away.

  “What do you know—another Malteser! Well, Chris,” I said, with mock sympathy, “five down, and no nuts. Could be this one. You never know your luck.”

  Johnson was wearing his idiot grin. He freed another Revel. Tierney could barely stand to look at it. He fumbled the sweet and it fell to the wet earth. Johnson picked it up for him.

  I looked around at the crowd. Smurf and Gonad were there. And Stan. He was smiling, which seemed a bit odd, what with the life-and-death struggle being played out before him. There was no sign of Flaherty. But I couldn’t think about him. I had to concentrate.

  “Go on, Chris, what you waiting for?”

  “He’s bottled it,” said someone, didn’t catch who.

  “I haven’t. Give it here.”

  And it was in.

  No!

  It was out again.

  Tierney had tried to chew, but couldn’t. He’d spat the Revel back into his hand. His eyes were watering and thick brown drool was hanging from his mouth. The crowd emitted a sort of snorting jeer. It wasn’t a good performance.

  “It’s not a nut. It’s a raisin. I don’t like raisins.” He sounded pathetic. “Look, I’m eating it.”

  He lapped up the raisin-and-chocolate sludge from his palm.

  “That’s not right,” said someone at the back. “He thought it was a nut one and he spat it, and then when he knew it wasn’t he ate it. That’s cheating.”

  “I can live with it,” I said. “Johnson—another.”

  I was in a frenzy now. I was on a roll. It wouldn’t be a nut, and even if it was, it wouldn’t hurt me. Nothing could hurt me. I was immortal.

  Well, I was dying of cancer.

  Tierney had been looking at me, his face full of hope that I would get a nut: that I would be the one choking; that it would be my throat that would begin to itch; t
hat my trachea would be the one to bubble and flame, closing itself off, leaving the tiniest space for air to squeeze through; that it would be my whole body that would begin to close down, going into anaphylactic shock. Well, it wasn’t, not this time.

  I spoke without a flourish, my face a mask.

  “Orange.”

  The bones in Tierney’s face collapsed inwards. He fell to his knees.

  “Here, your go.”

  Johnson now sounded gruff. He was annoyed, embarrassed by his chief. The gang was losing face. Hell, its face was well and truly gone. Tierney had to pull it back. Johnson shoved the packet at Tierney. Tierney didn’t speak, didn’t do anything. And then we heard the noise—a thin, keening, close-mouthed wail.

  “Take it! Don’t be so soft.”

  “Mmmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnghhhhh,” went Tierney, whimpering, crying. It was a desolate sound, like the cry of a marsh bird.

  “Have it,” said Johnson, screaming now, and when Tierney still refused, he crammed the packet into his face, and pushed him back onto the ground. Some of the crowd came over. Someone spat at Tierney. Murdo. Someone kicked him. No-Name.

  It was over. It was all over. And now my friends were around me, and I felt a soft pressure on my hand, and it was Amanda.

  “That was the best thing I think I’ve ever seen,” said Gonad. “It was like something out of a film. It was like The Seven Samurai crossed with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

  And Stan said quietly in my ear, in a tone that made it uncertain if it was a question or a statement: “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Knew?”

  “About the change?”

  SAGE HERACLITUS

  TRYING TO SPITE US

  SAID ALL IS IN MOTION

  LIKE A RIVER OR OCEAN.

  “Don’t know what change you mean.”

  “To the Revels.”

  Stan was smiling, but watching me closely.

  “They changed them?”

  “Got rid of the peanuts. There was no danger. To either of you, I mean.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Stan,” I said, meeting his smile with a broader one of my own.

  I looked around for Flaherty. I saw him alone on a bench.

  “Gonad, Smurf, this is Amanda. Amanda, be gentle with them. You already know Stan.”

  Smurf blushed, Gonad stammered, Stan smiled.

  “I’m going to have a chat with Flaherty. You lot go ahead and warm up the concrete for me. It’s the least you can do, what with me being at death’s door and all.”

  I walked over and sat down beside Flaherty, leaving the others to overcome their embarrassment. His face was completely blank. Only his sniffing gave anything away.

  “They won’t bother you again,” I said, trying not to sound too heroic.

  Nothing from Flaherty.

  “And thanks, by the way, for this morning. At break. That thing with the bin. God, that was funny. I wish I could have seen his face. But there was a bin on it.”

  A half-smile, perhaps.

  “Did they touch you with it?” I meant the stick.

  “Nah.”

  “Could have been worse then.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re off to eat our sandies now. Wanna come over? Do me a favor, though. Don’t do your thing with Amanda. She’s a bit shy.”

  And Flaherty stood up with me and we went to our usual place, and Amanda was there, and Flaherty, after a quiet beginning, did his thing, but Amanda seemed not to mind.

  The End

  of Days

  I was shivering. I’d been hoping it might be the same technician as before, the one I called Barry Cunliffe. But it wasn’t him. It was someone else. She wasn’t wearing a badge, so I had no idea what she was called and for some reason that made me sad and depressed and lonely. I tried to believe that it might have been her lab coat the other Barry was wearing, and that she was a female Barry, which was short for Barryella, or, um, Barry-eeeeesha. But then why wasn’t she wearing the badge now? Perhaps the other Barry was out robbing a bank and was trying to throw suspicion onto the real Barry so that she would be arrested and he’d get her job, which was one notch further up the nerd pole. Plus he’d have the money from the robbery, say £25,000, which could buy you an awful lot of circuit boards or postage stamps or whatever it was that Barry (the fake Barry) collected.

  Then I thought I’d better stop thinking about the Barrys, and for the rest of the scan I relived the day before, which was, officially, the Best Day of My Life.

  I didn’t want to go to school, because I’d gone out on a high with my triumph over the Forces of Evil. I mean, how was I supposed to follow that up? In a graphic novel, such a triumph would be followed shortly by a reversal. I’d either be taken over by an alien superbeing using, say, mind-control or just old-fashioned blackmail (they’d probably kidnap Amanda for that purpose), and they’d use me to destroy the earth, or my archenemy and nemesis would find a way to rob me of my special powers and crush me underfoot like a worm. Of course, I’d eventually overcome all that but, frankly, there wasn’t time for it now.

  So, early on Wednesday morning, Amanda and I got on the first bus heading out of town. Technically, she was bunking off, but who was going to stand up in court and deny her compassionate leave in these circumstances? The plan was to get off as soon as it looked nice outside in a grass-and-trees kind of way.

  I had some sandwiches in my rucksack, and Amanda had brought an angel food cake she’d baked herself, wrapped up in tin foil. I asked her why she’d baked an angel food cake as opposed to any other of the world’s cakes (for a full list see www.cakesoftheworld.com), and she said that it was because it came first in the book as it began with an A. I thanked my lucky stars that no one had thought of inventing a cake with an aardvark-flavored topping.

  We sat quietly on the upper deck, watching the red-brick neighborhoods give way to posher houses, which thinned until there were flat fields and out-of-town hypermarkets, and then the road became winding and the land swelled and breathed until it felt like a good time to get off. We were on the outskirts of a village, but we turned our backs on it and walked down the road until we found a green sign that said public footpath pointing along the edge of a field that was growing nothing but brown earth. The sky was solid gray, but something about the complete uniform drabness of it suggested that it would not rain, and that was all we asked.

  And talking of asking, I’d begged Jack to let us have this day together, alone. He grumbled a bit, said that he’d get bored back there, that he was entitled to a bit of fun on what just might be his last couple of days. He promised to behave himself, said that he’d learned his lesson, and that he was going to be accentuating the positive from now on. But I was adamant, and in the end he said he had to stay in and wash his hair and, anyway, the countryside was boring and so was I.

  We walked until the field of earth became one of knee-high wheat, green and young, and we looked at each other (that’s me and Amanda, not me and the wheat), but it wasn’t quite right because the ground beneath the wheat was rough and furrowed. And then we came to a little wood about the size of a football pitch, and the path forked and one part went through the wood, and we followed it, and on the far side there was a field of soft grass and the field rose to meet the sky and the wood was at our backs, so it felt like a world that we had all to ourselves.

  AND THEN WE’D WALK DOWN TO THE ORCHARD,

  THROUGH BRAMBLES AND WEEDS TO THE GRASS

  AND EVER SO PERFECTLY TORTURED

  THE DAYS AND THE LIFETIMES WOULD PASS.

  Jack!

  SORRY, SORRY, I’M JUST GOING.

  And we ate the cake first, which turned to perfumed air on my tongue, and then we laughed at the tofu sandwiches, which were actually quite nice. And after that I put my head on Amanda’s lap and she stroked my hair, and we pretended that the sun was beating down, and whenever I said something funny or clever she bent and kissed my mouth, a
nd I was reliving her kisses when the voice of Barryella came through on the intercom and told me that we were through, and that I’d done very well for staying so still for so long.

  I was in a special neurological ward, so most of the other beds were surrounded by monitors going beep and trolleys with wires, which was all pretty interesting. I guessed I’d be plugged in too, after my operation. None of the other patients were much in the mood for chatting, on account of the whole massive brain injury thing that most of them had going on.

  That evening everyone came: Smurf, Gonad, Stan, Amanda, Mum, Clyte. Even Sister Winifred rolled in from her usual ward to say hello and wish me luck. Smurf presented me with one of those huge embarrassing cards from school, signed by lots of people I didn’t know. Everyone was cracking jokes, and even Jack got in on the act. And then the time for visitors ended and my friends left, and then Clyte, and then Amanda, and last of all Mum.

  I felt Jack heavier than ever in my head.

  Hey, Jack, you need to lose a couple of pounds.

  WELL, KID, YOU COULD DO WITH PUTTING A FEW ON.

  Let’s rest now.

  YES, I’M TIRED.

  Goodnight, Jack. I love you.

  The words came out of nowhere.

  My father.

  I’d been thinking about my father.

  Young and handsome in his uniform. And dead.

  I LOVE YOU, TOO.

  This

  Mortal Coil

  They were coming to get me. Monsters. The faces of pigs. Forked tails. Teeth, curving like scimitars. I was running through the corridors, but my pajamas were tangling me and my feet couldn’t grip on the polished floors. And finally there was no more corridor and I turned to face the monsters. They were in the shadows now, coming slowly, and their eyes glowed red, and they were going to tear me apart, they were going to put their snouts into my flesh. But that would only be the beginning, because they were going to take me away to a place where I would be theirs forever and the terror and the pain would never end. And I looked beyond them, because it should have been now that they came to help—the Justice League. Hawkgirl should have been there to spread her wings over me; the Flash should have been a blur of pure energy; Superman, my rock; Batman glowering, clever, indomitable.