‘I am lying low, Eggbrain. I’m lying on gravel under this bench, scraping chewing gum off. When it falls, it lands on my face. I can’t get any lower than this!’
Muggeridge ran off.
‘And I didn’t do it!’ I yelled after him.
Not that it mattered whether I’d done it or not. All that mattered was that Darrin Egan thought I had. I put one hand over my biggest bruise. It felt hot like a heater. ‘I think you’re gonna be joined by lots more bigger bruises soon,’ I said to it. I was scared as.
4
At lunchtime the whole school went to swimming sports, except me. I wasn’t allowed to. After I’d eaten my luncheon-sausage sandwiches I wandered around, behind the staff room, past the teachers’ car park, over to the caretaker’s sheds. Behind the sheds a jeep was parked on the bit of grass the little kids usually play on. I recognized it. Stone Face’s Rav 4. I kicked the hubs. Then I noticed one of the shed doors was open. The shed was full of paint. An idea light-bulb lit up in my head.
I borrowed a tin of white paint and the widest brush. I painted Stone Face’s jeep’s windscreen. Then I did the side windows. Last of all I did the side mirrors. Just to finish the thing off with style I rushed back to the classroom, got his so-called whiteboard-pointing cane, which everyone knew was really a stick to threaten kids with. I painted it white, too, so it looked like a blind person’s stick. I propped it against the wheel on the driver’s side. Then I went back to lying under the benches with just the ages-old, rock-hard, chewing-gum lumps for company.
I worked on getting a vertical striped tan on my face from the sun coming through the slats of the benches. And I worked on not being seen, especially by Darrin Egan.
I was still lying there when everyone returned with slick, wet hair and damp T-shirts. They’d forgotten about me. They piled back inside the classrooms, laughing.
After a while, Sis and her friend Melanie came out of their classroom and sat on a bench opposite me. They had books and Sis had a lined refill pad, but they weren’t doing any work. They were giggle-gaggling. Melanie was trying to get a sheet of paper out of the pad. Sis was swaying her knees, moving the pad of paper a bit further away, but not much. She wanted Melanie to get it, sometime.
I knew her feeble tricks. I heard her say, ‘I’ll only show you if you promise—’ then I couldn’t hear anything because around the back of the classroom I could hear this terrible sound. Sis and Melanie looked up. They heard it, too.
It was like Sis playing the violin before she gave it up because it was dangerous to our health. It was like someone scratching the whiteboard with their fingernails. It was agony. Then the noise stopped and a big kid came strolling around the corner of the classroom looking very pleased with himself. It was Bully-Boy Bad-Bum—B4 for short.
‘Did you hear someone strangling kittens around here?’ he asked.
‘What?’ shouted Sis and Melanie. They left their papers and books and ran to the rescue. This simply shows they’ve got brains the size of goose poo. Anyone could tell it was just a B4 trick.
B4 stole the lined refill pad with the thing Sis wasn’t going to show to Melanie, but was dying to show to Melanie, and would have very soon shown to Melanie if it hadn’t been taken.
I wasn’t going to challenge B4. Not when I was already covered in bruises so bad I looked like a heat-sensitive satellite map of Earth from space.
Not when I had to get fit for a fight to the death with Darrin Egan, the best tackler in the known universe.
Not when I had lethal back cramp from lying on gravel and bits of hundred-year-old reject chewing gum all afternoon.
I waited until B4 had disappeared into his classroom, then I crawled out and went after Sis and Melanie.
I got a shock. There really was a kitten. It was lying panting in a small pool of vomit and Sis and Melanie were crying and not doing a thing. B4! I was filled with a torrent of hate for B4. I didn’t care if I got expelled from school. I scooped the kitten up, ran into B4’s classroom and screamed, ‘B4, you stink! You twisted, warped psycho!’
Everyone looked up with their mouths open. Mrs Dring, who couldn’t control a school of fish, let alone a class with B4 in it, said I mustn’t talk to people like that.
I tore off, out of the school grounds and ran all the way to the vet’s.
When I got back to school it was home time. Kids were pouring out of the gates. Getting in was like walking into huge surf with an incoming tide. Suddenly I heard this bellow that was so loud everyone thought it was the fire alarm. Everyone stopped. Stone Face ran around the side of the staff room. His face was so red he looked more like Brick Face now.
‘Where is that creature, that fiend, that—’ I didn’t hear any more because he ran straight past me. What had got him so aggro?
Then I remembered the little trick I’d played on his jeep. Usually I like to watch how my tricks work, but the poor kitten had made me forget.
I hopped into Sis’s classroom where I’d never, ever normally go, but a hiding place was obviously necessary for a while.
Sis and Melanie and the rest of the goose-girl-gaggle were onto me in a microsecond.
‘Have you seen my homework? I left it—’
‘No.’
‘Is the cat all right?’
‘What did the vet say?’
‘He’s looking after the kitten for a day. I have to go back tomorrow.’
I didn’t tell them how I’d had to yell and carry on before the vet would even see the kitten. I didn’t tell them he’d assumed I’d done it. I’d had to yell and carry on about that as well.
I didn’t tell them that at this very moment the kitten was in Mum’s sewing basket in the garage, with a mini-bar of bowls. She had a choice of low-fat milk in a bowl, cream in a bowl, water in a bowl, or tonight’s meat from the fridge in a bowl. The bowls were lined up just outside the sewing box.
I did tell them the kitten was now named ‘Pus’.
‘What? Puss, you mean.’
I explained: ‘Pus, as in yellow, gobby stuff you—’
‘Shut up!’
And I did tell them I’d seen B4 take Sis’s homework. Sis immediately forgot all about the kitten and started running up and down, gushing deep breaths, just like a goose. I wondered if she was about to lay an egg.
‘I will absolutely die on the spot if B4 has that letter,’ she hissed. ‘I will just curl up and—’
‘What was in it?’ asked cunning Melanie, who is brilliant at getting gossip when someone’s defences are down.
‘It was…no, I can’t say. It’s too private. I would totally die if—’
‘Who was it to?’
‘Just Darrin.’
This was news to me. Why would Sis be writing letters to Darrin Egan when she saw him every day at school? Had she gone out of her mind?
‘Was it a school project?’ I asked.
‘Shut up. You wouldn’t understand,’ said Sis.
‘I hope you realize I am a kitten rescuer and the rescuer of Darrin Egan’s kid sister who really would have died—’
The two geese went very quiet. I went quiet. Lots of data processing was done very quickly.
‘So that’s why—’ Melanie said.
‘Yes,’ said Sis. ‘B4 did it to get back at Darrin, because Darrin and me—’
‘Yeee—ah!’ said Melanie with total satisfaction.
I just stood there wondering whether these girls were for real. I mean, did they care about that poor little kid and the kitten, or not? Didn’t sound like it.
‘About his sister, d’you think Darrin realized why—’
‘Bound to, because—’ said Sis with pride, sticking out her chest, fluffing her feathers and doing a little waddle.
I was angry now. I was the rescuer and I wasn’t even in the plot. They were talking in their girl-gabble way, without finishing a single sentence. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
‘What are you going to do?’ wailed Melanie, her voice turning i
nstantly from fascination to horror.
‘About the kitten, you mean?’ I asked.
‘Oh, get lost!’ Melanie spat at me, and put an arm around Sis.
‘I don’t know,’ Sis wailed back to Melanie.
‘What’ll I do-oo-ooo?’ wailed Sis.
That’s when they both turned to me, Sis’s five-day slave.
I ran.
5
I hid in the garage, on the sheep-pellet compost mix, playing scratch-and-tickle with Pus. The roller door flew up and shuddered. The whole garage vibrated. Sis and Melanie were standing in the doorway. Sis yelled, ‘Gotcha!’
Melanie explained that Sis needed my help. Urgently. Desperately.
‘Say hi to Pus,’ I said, playing for time.
‘Oh, hi,’ said Sis, on automatic.
Melanie was a bit more enthusiastic. ‘Cute,’ she said.
Then Sis did a sort of neigh. ‘What am I going to do-oo-oo?’ The garage roof vibrated with the ‘oo-oo-ooo’s’. All the spiders jiggled like crazy.
‘You don’t have to do anything. I’ll feed her.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Can’t you see your sister’s traumatized?’ asked Melanie.
‘I will completely die if B4 shows that letter to anyone,’ Sis moaned.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ they said.
‘You have just won a prize of one fossilized piece of chewing gum for being the one zillionth person to say that to me in my lifetime. Congratulations.’
‘Is he always like this?’ asked Melanie. ‘You poor, poor thing.’
Sis looked as though she was about to faint.
‘What’s the problem with B4 having the letter?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ said Sis, ‘B4 likes me. And he hates Darrin, because Darrin likes me.’
This was very boring.
‘And,’ she gulped, ‘B4’s evil as. He could broadcast that letter worldwide like on Bebo. Or worse—he could photocopy it and pin it up around school!’ She wailed on. I began to get the picture.
‘And,’ she gulped again, ‘B4 didn’t know that I like Darrin. And Darrin doesn’t really know that I like Darrin. And if Darrin knew that I did like him—’
‘What the hell did you write the letter for then?’ I was confused. My mind felt like a beehive someone’s just kicked over.
‘Practice.’
‘What? Like netball practice?’
‘So I could learn how to write that sort of letter. I never meant Darrin to see it. If he saw it, he’d…he’d—’ She was gasping and hissing like a goose again.
‘Well, he just can’t see it. So there,’ said Melanie.
‘I’d just totally die. I can never face anyone at school ever again. I will just—’
‘Get it back from him then,’ I said.
It wasn’t until the words were sitting there, little puffs in the air between us, that I realized I had been very, very stooo-pid.
Both geese stared at me. Silence, except for Pus patting a few sheep pellets around with her front paws.
Then Sis said, very quietly, ‘If you get it back, Monster, if you do—’
I stared at the ceiling. I counted twenty spider webs and five flies stuck in spider webs.
‘Hey, he is your slave,’ said Melanie.
I did not move. Six flies stuck in spider webs, and four borer holes.
‘You are my slave,’ repeated Sis. ‘And Darrin would be real grateful to you as well.’
That could be useful. I was tired of being beaten up by bigger kids.
And I thought: how could a serious sportsman want to mess around with goose-girls? It didn’t make sense. For a moment I thought Sis might be getting seriously unreal. Then I realized she’d always been loopy. This was normal for her.
The crashed-beehive problem in my head was so bad I couldn’t even plan how to get away from Sis.
‘In the letter, I also said that Celine told me that you did the most humungous belch in class today. I thought he’d like that. Everyone’s talking about it, so I thought—’
‘You did what?’ So far Stone Face didn’t know the belcher was me. B4 didn’t know either. If he found out, he could tell Stone Face and then I’d be real dead meat. ‘I might get it back for you.’
‘No “mights”. You have to. Or I’ll go to Mum, and then it’s Aunt Mildew’s for you.’
She meant it. I was seriously dead meat.
They leapt up and left, chattering about renting roller-blades in the weekend. They have absolutely no concentration, those two. I looked around for Pus. I needed something to hold, to steady the shaking in my arms.
‘Pus! Let me introduce you to the spiders.’ No reply. ‘Pus!’
No Pus. He’d disappeared out the open garage door. He’d be in big trouble if he wasn’t found. I rushed off after him.
6
After I’d looked every where in the garden and not found Pus, I went up to the house. Mum and Dad were home. Dad was unpacking the groceries and Mum was fluffing around, starting to make dinner. I buried myself in the biggest chair in the sitting room. I was feeling very bad.
Someone knocked on the door—thundered on the door was more like it. Mum answered it. I heard her say she didn’t know what he was on about. Then the vet strode into the sitting room and yelled, ‘Where is that kitten?’
‘Dunno.’
Mum said she hadn’t seen a kitten around here. Dad said he hadn’t either. He added that he didn’t like them.
‘Your son has been cruelly mistreating your kitten. He brought it to me this morning. I wouldn’t let him keep it, but he took off before I could stop him.’
‘But we don’t have a kitten,’ Mum said again.
The vet was one of those people who don’t listen. ‘Where is that kitten?’ he demanded.
I walked up to him. ‘Dunno.’ I didn’t know. It was the truth.
‘I have to tell you, your child is a liar.’
He was about to storm out of the house when there was another knock on the door. Mum pushed the vet into a comfy chair. Dad opened the door. In walked a policeman. He took out his notebook and read a list of complaints about me: ‘Hanging children, and vandalism to private property in the form of one Rav 4 jeep.’
‘And cruelty to cats,’ said the vet.
‘Monster!’ That was Mum and Dad.
Things were getting a bit too much. All this unfairness all woven together, made me look bad.
‘Monster,’ said Mum, ‘surely, dear, you didn’t hang a child, did you?’
Fancy having to ask me! I was furious. My own mother can’t tell the difference between my tricks and bullying! I refused to answer her.
Bang! Bang! Another knock on the door. Our poor door must have had as many bruises as I had.
Dad opened the door and Stone Face stormed into the sitting room.
‘I think,’ said the policeman, ‘this child needs some tough handling.’
‘Tough handling!’ said Stone Face. ‘My speciality. Leave it to me, Sergeant. I believe in good, old-fashioned punishment.’
He told Mum he believed I’d made an obscene noise in class. He believed I’d wrecked his very expensive vehicle. He believed I was a juvenile delinquent.
‘Not our Monster. Surely,’ said Mum.
Dad coughed and asked the men if they’d all like to stay to dinner, ‘to talk this out’.
Mum said that was a lovely idea.
‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘is as bad as it’s painted.’
Not a good comment, I thought, when I remembered the jeep.
Mum opened the meat drawer in the fridge. No meat.
‘Have you eaten the meat, Monster?’
‘There you are!’ shouted Stone Face. ‘Once a thief, always a thief!’
‘Who said he’s stolen anything?’ asked Dad.
‘I have not eaten the meat.’
‘Liar,’ said the vet.
‘I get hungry. Right. But am I likely to stuff a
hunk of raw meat into my mouth when there’s cake in the tin and a frozen pizza in the freezer? Get real.’
‘I must be getting forgetful,’ said Mum. ‘I was sure I had bought that meat.’
I decided to disappear. To the garage, where Pus’s mini-bar and meat dispenser were now crawling with ants.
I was sitting in the garage on the sheep-pellet compost mix when the roller door whammmmmed up and, horror of horrors, Darrin Egan stood there. He backed me further into the garage, all the time asking me why I had it in for him.
He was like the vet, totally unable to listen to answers. He reckoned I’d planned to drench him under the tree. And he reckoned I’d hung his sister up in her jacket. He told me all this with his nose a cobweb’s width from my nose. Back, back I went, slowly. Then bump, I was in the corner.
‘Don’t you like me seeing your big sister, huh? That it?’ He banged my head against the wall.
I had to get out of the corner. Another bang like that and my head would hit a nail and that’d be it. Brain dead.
‘Eh? Eh?’
‘Careful,’ I said slowly. ‘There’s a ginormous spider in this corner. It’s just above—’
He looked up and raised both fists to his hair.
I ducked and ran. I’m a good runner, but Egan’s bigger than me and he’s the best runner in the school. As I ran to the roller door I spilled the sack of sheep-pellet compost mix. Dried sheep pellets are lethal to run on. They wobble your ankles and make you skid.
Egan was doing one of his faster-than-neutrinos corners, around the side of our car. He skidded. I mean majorly. He would have fallen flat if he hadn’t put his hand out, hit the car’s side window and broken it.
I didn’t wait to see if he’d cut his hand off. I ran up the path, but I could hear him behind me. As I rushed past the rubbish bins I knocked one into his path. I just made it to the back door, shot through it, slammed it and collapsed into the kitchen. Egan’s blood-stained hand smeared the outside of the glass door.
‘What’s that?’ cried Mum. She was just backing out of the oven with eight rounds of cheese-on-toast.
Sis must have heard us and looked out her window. She waggled down the stairs and flung open the door.
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