My Big Mouth

by Steven Camden

  But Dom wasn’t there.

  I checked my watch. 8.45 a.m. Same time as always. Same time every morning since they started letting us walk to school by ourselves.

  I looked back down the road. Nothing.

  I checked my watch again. 8.46. 8.47.

  A cool breeze whipped around me. 8.48. Where was he?

  I waited until 8.55 before I left.

  By the time I got to school, the bell had long gone. I walked into reception and made up a story about taking the bin out, locking myself out and having to wait for my mum.

  When I walked into class, Dominic was there. Sitting in his seat, normal as you like.

  I waited for him to look my way, but he didn’t.

  ‘Nice of you to join us,’ said Mr Bukowski in his crazily calm voice. Danny Jones smiled at me from his seat, no doubt already hours into his New York research assignment.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ I said, and my voice felt small.

  I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I walked to my chair.

  Everyone’s, that is, except my oldest friend.

  The rest of the week passed by in a kind of daze.

  More stories.

  More late nights.

  More tiredness.

  I walked into school and back home by myself. Dominic was avoiding me like I had the plague and I’d started to notice something. A feeling. At the back of my mind. Almost like a noise. Like one long constant violin note, playing the whole time, making it almost impossible to relax.

  It’s a weird thing, being seen as cool. Being popular. In a way it’s almost like a job. You have to work to keep it going. Do the things you’re supposed to do, say the things you’re supposed to say. It’s like you’re spending your whole day carrying a pretend version of yourself that you can’t put down until you get home, and when you do put it down, instead of getting to actually enjoy all the attention, all you want to do is pass out.

  My head was full. My wall was full. Everything was full. So full that, to be honest – and this might sound crazy – I wasn’t even thinking about Dad.

  There really wasn’t room.

  That Friday afternoon, as we packed our bags at the end of the day, I had this moment. Holding Danny Jones’s New York report in my hands, I looked around the room. Everything felt so different. It was like I was wearing a costume that looked exactly like me, but felt somehow detached.

  I looked at Danny’s hand-drawn picture of the Empire State Building on the cover:

  I looked over at Danny as he was zipping up his pencil case, and a thought hit me.

  The old Danny Jones, class bully, who’d filled us with so much dread, was gone. A whole character erased from the story of our lives and replaced with a new one. A busy, excited reporter, learning about the world and helping a travelling writer write the best story ever. A friend.

  I looked at Dom as he neatly folded up his jacket and slid it into his bag. He felt far away, let down by me: his failed dance partner, forgetter of his birthday, busy in my own world. As we started to leave, I almost said his name. I felt it in my throat but, just as I stepped out of the room, Mr Bukowski asked to speak to me.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he said, and his crazily calm voice felt weird in the empty classroom.

  Out through the window I could see crowds of people crossing the playground. Everybody was heading off for the weekend.

  I sat down in the chair next to his desk. Mr Bukowski just sat across from me, a wide smile on his shaven-bear face. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to say something. It seemed like he was waiting for me to.

  ‘Sir?’

  He just kept smiling. And the ticking in my stomach felt like it had back on the first day after half-term, when everything started. With the book report. I was nervous.

  Mr Bukowski leaned forward on his desk. ‘How are you?’

  And it was like his voice passed right through me. Like I could feel it in my bones.

  I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat.

  ‘Me? I’m fine, sir. Yeah. Fine. Why?’

  ‘Fine?’ said Mr Bukowski, nodding slowly. ‘I see.’

  What was going on? It somehow felt like an interrogation without any actual interrogating. My hands were shaking. I sat on them to keep them still.

  Mr Bukowski stood up and walked to the window.

  ‘One week left,’ he said, staring out on to the playground. ‘Then it’s all over.’

  All over? That felt ominous. What did he mean? School? Everything?

  It felt a bit like a scene from a film. A scene where something important is revealed.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to Dominic,’ he said, turning to face me, and I felt myself starting to sweat. Dominic? What had Dominic said? Had Dominic told him what I was doing? Had Dominic told him the truth?

  ‘Dominic, sir?’ I faked confusion.

  Mr Bukowski walked back to his desk and sat on the edge, hands in his lap, eyes on me.

  ‘Yes. We couldn’t help but notice how popular you’ve become recently.’

  I was really squirming now. He knew. I knew he knew, but his face wasn’t revealing anything.

  ‘Particularly with Danny Jones,’ he said, allowing one eyebrow to rise slightly. My nervous mouth went into overdrive.

  ‘Danny, sir? No, not really. I mean, we’ve been working on something together. It’s a kind of . . . project, sir. Danny’s been helping me, yeah, a story project. You’re going to love it, sir. It’s really something, but, no . . . I mean, everything’s fine, yeah, totally fine.’

  My heart was kicking inside my chest like an angry bull trapped in a garden shed. I did my best to hold eye contact and seem natural.

  Mr Bukowski didn’t move. The air in the room felt like it was getting thinner. Like someone was sucking out the oxygen. Then he nodded.

  ‘Stories, eh?’

  He stroked the bottom of his beard. ‘Well, as long as you know what you’re doing.’ He leaned forward until he was so close he could have reached me if he’d wanted to.

  ‘You know what you’re doing, right?’

  I forced my bone-dry throat to swallow. ‘Yes, sir.’

  A pause. Him sitting still on the edge of his desk; me caught in the tractor beam of his stare. Then he clapped his hands.

  ‘Have a good weekend then,’ he said, and started tidying up his desk.

  I waited for a moment, to compose myself, then stood up. And left.

  Walking home by myself, I couldn’t get his words out of my head.

  As long as you know what you’re doing . . . As long as you know what you’re doing.

  It was like a line from a song that wouldn’t leave my skull.

  As long as you know what you’re doing.

  Of course I knew what I was doing. I was doing what Dad did. I was making up stories. I was being cool. Yes, I was tired, but that was the sacrifice I had to make. Yes, my oldest friend was upset with me, but you can’t build something important without making sacrifices.

  Mr Bukowski wouldn’t understand that, like Dominic didn’t, but that wasn’t my fault.

  Like most important things, cool comes at a cost. I said the words out loud: ‘Cool comes at a cost. Just ask Dad.’

  Those words surprised me.

  I caught my reflection in the glass of the empty bus stop and stopped walking. I tried to picture Dad there, standing behind me. Two cool people, who understand how things work. But I couldn’t. All I saw was me.

  I still looked like me, no matter how different things felt.

  ‘I know what I’m doing.’ I watched my reflection mouth the words as I said them again: ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  And I did. I knew.

  Deep down in my stomach. I knew all too well.

  Next morning was Saturday and I was ready for a lie-in. A morning cut off from the world, curled up safely under my duvet, was exactly what I needed.

  When Mum walked into my room at half past eight that morning, it was clear that she had other ideas.

&
nbsp; ‘Come on!’ she said, leaning in through my open doorway. ‘I need your help.’

  I burrowed down further under my covers, hoping it might make me invisible. If it worked, then Mum must’ve had X-ray vision.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart. I need a big strong boy to help me carry.’

  I felt her weight as she sat down on the end of my bed.

  ‘I’m still asleep,’ I said, in my best still-asleep voice.

  ‘Wow!’ said Mum. ‘You’ve been busy.’

  I threw off my duvet and sat up. She was staring at the map. My wall covered in fragments of lies stories. I felt exposed.

  ‘OK, I’m up,’ I said, jumping out of bed. Gus was still asleep under my radiator. ‘Where are we going?’

  I started helping Mum up and walking her out of my room. Her eyes were still on my wall.

  ‘Shopping,’ she said. ‘I thought you could help me cook.’

  ‘Sounds great.’ I eased her out of the door. ‘Just give me a minute to get dressed. Can I smell toast? Mmm, I’d love some toast. Can you make me some toast please, Mum? For strength, right?’

  Mum had this kind of dazed look on her face, like she was half lost in a memory. I touched her shoulder to snap her out of it.

  ‘Mum? Toast? Strength? Shopping?’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah. Toast. Strength. Good. I’ll do it now.’

  It took us fifteen minutes to finally find a space in the supermarket car park. A big, black van was wedged into the space on my side. My door banged it as I tried to get out.

  ‘Whoops. I don’t think I can fit, Mum . . . Mum?’

  Mum was just staring out through the windscreen. An old man, carrying an orange shopping bag in each hand, shuffled past the front of the car. ‘Mum? We’re here.’

  ‘It’s all stories,’ she said, in a soft, nurse-like voice.

  I pulled my door closed. ‘What?’

  ‘He used to say, “It’s all stories, Ange. We just follow where they lead us.”’

  Her expression seemed trapped between two places. I knew she meant Dad. And it felt like she could see him right there. Then she looked at me.

  ‘He could be so full of it sometimes. He really could.’

  The whole time since he’d left, this was the first negative thing I’d heard her say about him. And I liked it. It felt like a completely new flavour after weeks of the same taste. And she wasn’t finished.

  ‘We don’t have to live your dad’s story, Jay,’ she said, touching my shoulder. ‘You understand me? We get to write our own.’

  And it was genuinely the coolest line I’d ever heard. I felt myself smiling at her. Mum smiled back.

  ‘Come on. You can get out my side.’

  The supermarket was like an old people’s carnival. I steered the trolley as Mum checked her list. The plan was to make curry for two. Donna was staying at her friend Lucy’s.

  At the bottom of the vegetable aisle, we bumped into Frances, Dom’s mum. I hadn’t seen her since the awkward dinner, but I knew she must know I’d forgotten Dom’s birthday. I felt so embarrassed as she gave me a sympathetic look.

  ‘Look who it is!’ she said, putting on a voice like a game-show host.

  I felt Mum freeze up a little bit at the possibility of having to talk about Dad, but then Frances touched Mum’s arm and smiled and the cold between them seemed to melt. They clicked into old-friend-conversation mode, which, as I’m sure you know, between mums in the supermarket takes AGES. I was left standing there like a pointless statue. I picked up a pumpkin and held it like a shot-put, just for something to do.

  ‘Dominic’s here somewhere,’ said Frances, breaking out of their conversation for a second. ‘I think he’s over there looking at comics.’

  I looked at Mum, who nodded and waved me off in the general direction of the magazines.

  Dominic was sitting on the floor cross-legged, reading an Amazing Spider-Man like he was in his own living room or something, and didn’t see me approaching. I took some heavy breaths to prep myself as I got closer. Outside of school felt like neutral ground for an apology and, right now, sitting quietly with him and reading a comic felt like the best idea ever.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, looking down at him.

  Dominic looked up, and his face went all cold. He didn’t say anything back and I just stood there, in a puddle of awkward.

  ‘What you reading?’ I asked. Dom tilted the comic so I could see. Spider-Man was battling the Sinister Six.

  ‘Cool.’

  Still nothing back. A woman moved past us pushing a trolley full of bulging bags and two little crying girls. I waited till she was out of earshot, then I pointed. ‘You think they had a two-for-one sale on crying babies?’

  I forced a laugh, hoping Dom would join me. He didn’t. The tension between us was clear.

  ‘Not hanging out with your best friend then?’ he said eventually, looking past me for someone.

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Danny Jones.’ His voice was all sharp. Aiming to poke me.

  ‘Danny Jones is not my best friend,’ I said.

  Dom screwed up his face. ‘You could’ve fooled me.’

  And even though I knew why he was annoyed, my defences kicked in and I couldn’t stop myself biting back.

  ‘Well, fooling you’s not very hard to do, is it?’

  Dom closed his comic and stood up. The two of us stood arm’s length apart like we were about to fight.

  ‘Well, maybe I’m the only one you haven’t fooled, Mr Liar.’

  I felt the word hit me in the stomach like a punch, my weight rocking back on my heels.

  Mr Liar?

  ‘I’m not a liar.’

  ‘Yes you are. Mr Liar.’

  Pain in my ribs.

  ‘Yeah, well, why don’t you just go and cry to Mr Bukowski?’ I spat the words at him.

  Dom looked confused. ‘I didn’t cry to Mr Bukowski.’

  ‘You may as well have done. Snitch.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re just jealous.’

  ‘Of what? Being a liar?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘No, you shut up!’ He stepped forward as he said it, and I honestly thought he was going to punch me. He didn’t, of course. Dominic Clarke didn’t punch people. Dominic Clarke was too good.

  For a split second I felt the urge to just grab him and hug. To try and squeeze out all of the bad stuff that was making him angry with me. But I didn’t.

  Instead, for some reason, I pushed it further. ‘No, Dom. You shut up. Still planning your little dance routine?’ I mimed my worst octopus-arms dance move and put on a whiny voice. ‘Full Force!’

  That rocked him. He stepped back, clearly upset.

  ‘Shut up!’ he said, cracks in his voice. ‘I’m gonna win that talent show, just you watch, and you’re gonna wish you were up on stage with me!’

  I felt a storm cloud in my stomach. Something dark brewing, and moving up into my throat, and I tried to stop myself. I swear I did, but I was too late, it just came out. I looked my oldest friend in the eye and said, ‘The only thing you’re winning is the biggest loser competition, idiot. You can’t dance!’

  Pause.

  I will never forget the look on his face right then.

  It was like someone had just taken out his batteries. His whole body seemed to slump. The noise of the supermarket fell quiet. Dom stumbled backwards a couple of steps, and then crumpled back into sitting on the floor.

  And I felt awful.

  If guilt has a colour, right then somebody dropped a dustbin full of it over me like paint.

  I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. I looked down at my oldest friend, battered by the meanness of the words that just came out of my big mouth.

  The car journey home was like the quiet after an explosion. Mum was talking about the curry recipe, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. My ears, in fact my whole body, were still ringing with guilt, and there, underneath the ringing, two words, covere
d in spikes: MR LIAR.

  When we got home, I ran straight upstairs and crashed on to my bed. Mr Liar. Mr Liar. The words were crawling over my skin like bugs. I felt rotten from the inside out. I don’t know if you get travel sick on long car journeys or those baking-hot coach rides on school trips, but that’s what I felt like. Like any second, I was going to puke.

  I got up and opened my window, praying for fresh air to save me. Gus murmured something down by my feet. I looked at him, curled up like a horseshoe toilet brush. He looked so happy, I wished we could swap lives, just for a little while. He could be me in all this sick-feeling mess, and I could be him, peacefully snoozing under the radiator without a care in the world. Mr Liar. Mr Liar. I could hear the words on the breeze.

  I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at my wall. The map had so many of my scribbled words on it now, it was hard to even make out where the countries were.

  Mr Liar.

  I held my stomach and closed my eyes, trying to steady myself. Mr Liar. Mr Liar.

  ‘Stop it!’

  Gus lifted his head and looked at me. Into me. His warm, friendly eyes full of love.

  ‘I’m not a liar, am I, Gus?’

  Mr Liar.

  I took a deep breath. ‘You’ve known me all my life, right? Am I a liar?’

  Gus tilted his head and . . .

  OK, look. What I’m going to tell you now, I know how crazy it’s going to sound. I don’t expect you to believe me. There’s a part of me that still doesn’t even believe it myself. But it’s what I remember, so I’m just going to tell you.

  Gus tilted his head and, in his gruff, doggy voice, barked, ‘Yep.’

  There was a pause for maybe three seconds when the pair of us just sat staring at each other, then Gus curled back up and closed his eyes

  And right then, the only thing I could manage to do was copy him. Still feeling sick, Mr Liar still crawling over my skin, I curled up on my bed, pulled my duvet up over my head, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.