When Mr. Dog Bites

by Brian Conaghan

  Would you Adam and Eve it again? Michelle Malloy was in the distance. A new bag slung over her shoulder. A Converse one. She was soooooooooooo sex on legs. It was unbelievable how sex on legs she was. She oozed sex on legs, even though one leg was longer than the other. She wore one shoe bigger than the other. I think she got them specially made by a special big-shoe-wee-shoe-maker, because I’d never seen them in the shops. I couldn’t give a Friar Tuck, as this dame was nothing but sex on wonky donkey legs.

  I wanted to run up and say, “Hiya, Michelle. How was your summer, babe?” But I was afraid it might come out as: “YOU’RE A SLUT NEW-BAG WHORE PEG-LEG, MICHELLE MALLOY.” With this in mind I kept a super-secure distance for both our safety. Apart from mangled legs, Michelle Malloy had ODD, which means oppositional defiant disorder, which really meant she was a mad-hatter cheeky mare of a chick who always kicked off at the teachers or pupils and called them pure-mad sweary names. Another good reason for keeping my distance. She was ODD, all right. But sex on wonky donkey legs ODD.

  Wowee zowee plus twelve! She had new Adidas high-tops on. Wizard of Oz red ones. How cool was that? Bought for the first day back, no doubt. I dug her black tights and wee black skirt combo too. Michelle Malloy knew her onions when it came to fashion. I bet she’d have given that fashion guy Gok Wan a run for his money. She looked like one of those girls off MTV.

  I peered down at my new sneakers.

  Half shoe, half sneaker.

  Plastic numbers.

  No logo.

  No stripes.

  No name.

  Mom to blame.

  No swoosh.

  No class.

  Pure vile.

  Shite style.

  Painful to the eye.

  Painful to the smile.

  I looked like I had a club foot with these concrete clumpers on. I’d best be careful in case someone tried to tee off with me. That was what they said about Michelle Malloy. If you called her “Pitching Wedge,” she’d boot you a cracking sore one with her big shoe.

  Michelle Malloy walked dead, dead, dead slow, but I cased her until she disappeared into the school building, just under the battered sign that said drumhill school. I took a huge deep breath and went the same way. Check me out, saying things like “dig” and “sex on legs” and “MTV.” Mr. Confident. Amir would kill himself laughing when he heard me saying this stuff. He got a lift to school because his oldies believed that all those people who think Asians are in the wrong country will do something disgusting to him on the special bus the school laid on, which meant I always walked to school on my tod. I walked because there was no danger of me getting on that bus. Dad was embarrassed by the bus. I knew this because he always said I would be a pure redneck if I took it. The only time my neck was red was when I got burned to a cinder when we went to Torremolinos, which is in Spain, on a fun-packed family holiday.

  Oh, sweet Mary Jane! If I’d reached out I could’ve stroked Michelle Malloy’s hair, I was so close to her. She’d probably have punched me full force in the throat or something if I’d dared try, but this was the first day back. A new year. What happened last year stayed last year. We were all more adult people now, so what harm could a good old-fashioned “Hi, Chello. I’m diggin’ the new high-tops” do?

  She stopped suddenly.

  Schweppes!

  I was beside her.

  She looked at me.

  I looked at her.

  My eyes wide like I’d seen a ghost.

  Hers slitty like she wanted to eat a ghost’s spleen.

  Holy squeak bum!

  “Hi, Michelle. How—”

  “Don’t even bother, Mint.”

  “Okay. BIG SHITE SHOE.”

  I bolted and went in search of Amir.

  I sensed that this year at school was going to be different.

  5

  Buds

  When I first realized I wasn’t able to talk too well, it felt as though I’d just swallowed an eight ball (not the drug), and as if my windpipe would explode if I tried to say anything.

  I twiddled Green around in my hands so much that I covered it all over with snot. I didn’t snotter up Green on purpose. After all the gobbing and shouting—lots of SHOUTING—I stiffed up my top lip and thought about my best bud, Amir. I thought to myself, What’s that nut going to do for a best bud now? Then I had to stop thinking about that because my windpipe problems were returning.

  It was happy days when I spied Amir in the distance. We didn’t do any of that Did you have a good holiday? mince. No, we just went straight into best-bud mode.

  “Guess who I clocked?”

  “Don’t care.” Amir says things like this when he really does care.

  “’Course you do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’ll give you a clue.”

  “Don’t want a clue, Dylan.” Amir says this when he really does want a clue.

  “She’s the—”

  “Not listening . . . Not listening,” he said while cupping his hands over his ears, as though a bomb had just gone off in the school. Or in the war. “Not listening.” Then he squealed, high-pitched, like a cat being gang-raped by some dingoes, which are crazy Australian dogs that trick you into thinking they’re house dogs before eating all the children they see. Amir does this loads, but I just ignore him and then he stops.

  “You are listening.”

  “Okay, I am listening, but I’m not interested.”

  “Come on, you are interested.”

  “No, I’m not.” Then he made another one of his sounds. He’s got a load of them floating around in his noggin. This sound was like when vets have their whole arm up a cow’s bum. No thanks to being a cow!

  “Stop being weird, Amir,” I said.

  He stopped the sound in a flash.“You’re fucking weird.”

  “Amir, best buds don’t swear at each other.”

  “So don’t call me weird, then.”

  “I’m just trying to tell you who I saw coming into school.”

  “I’ll probably hate them.”

  I forgot to say that Amir hated school. Not the building—the people inside it. In normal schools everyone is super excited to see each other after the holidays. All the new clothes, exotic holiday stories, and suntans. Not in our school, though. It’s a pain in the bahookie meeting your classmates again. Seven weeks of being normal and doing groovy stuff is shot to shit as soon as you lay eyes on the rest of the school. Drumhill is like the scene from the bar in Star Wars: mentalists cutting about, talking bonkerinos to each other or to themselves. Amir went to Pakistan for six and a half weeks, so I was super psyched to see him again. Even if he was acting all weird.

  “You won’t hate this person,” I said.

  “I hate everyone.”

  “Including me?”

  He looked at me and kind of shrugged. Then his head jerked. “Well, not everyone, I suppose.”

  “You suppose?”

  “Okay, I don’t hate you, Dylan. Happy now?”

  I didn’t say anything. Instead I tried to tuck my ears inside themselves, counted to seventeen über rapido, and twiddled Green in my pocket. I’m not sure if I was happy then. When I got to number fifteen I saw his face change, like he remembered all of a sudden.

  “Best buds, Dylan.” He nudged me.

  I wanted to call him all those names that others call him, but I am NOT a racist head case. The force was strong, however. I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes closed. Amir has seen this face a bunch of times before. He nudged me on the shoulder.

  “Best buds, Dylan.” I guess it takes time to readjust after a summer in Pakistan.

  “You won’t hate them.”

  “It better not be Doughnut.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I hate that fat banana.”

  “It’s not Doughnut, Amir.”

  “If he says anything to me this year, I promise I’m going to—”r />
  “Michelle Malloy.” The very mention of her name stopped Amir in his train tracks. He blinked hard.

  “Michelle Malloy?” Amir said.

  “All of her,” I said.

  “What was she doing?”

  “Walking.”

  “Walking?” Amir said, all confused voice.

  “Walking.” I nodded.

  “Properly?”

  “In the Michelle Malloy way, but with better footwear.”

  “Wow!”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Wow! Two times. Wow! Wow!”

  “She’s changed her style as well,” I told him.

  “Really?”

  “Big-time. She looks like some cool chiquita now.”

  “Three wows in a row. Wow! Wow! Wow!” Amir sounded like a scared puppy. No wonder he went to this school. “What was the kitten wearing?”

  “Adidas high-tops and a wee black skirt. A sexy number.” Amir did an mmmmm in his head. I could tell.

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “It’s Michelle Malloy we’re talking about here, Amir.” I didn’t say anything about our nano-conversation earlier.

  “I forgot she thinks you’re a knob nuzzler.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “That’s what sh-sh-she said.”

  “That was last year, which doesn’t count.”

  “So you’re not a kn-kn-knob nuzzler anymore?”

  “What? No, Amir, I am not a knob nuzzler, nor have I ever been a nuzzler of knobs.”

  “Well, you better tell her that, then.”

  “This is a new year for Michelle Malloy and me.”

  “No chance,” Amir said.

  “What do you mean, no chance?”

  “What I said: no ch-ch-chance.”

  “Every chance. This is a new me we’re talking about this year.”

  “She’s all cool with her new image and woman smell, and look at you,” Amir said.

  “What about me?”

  “Those sneakers for a start.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re like something my dad would wear.”

  What we were doing was called banter. We did this all the time. Some of the time, anyway. Some people call it taking the piss.

  “Your dad wears sandals. He wouldn’t even know how to do up the laces.”

  “At least my dad is—”

  “You’re a dick.”

  “You’re a dick.”

  “No, you’re a dick.”

  “You’re a dick.”

  “You’re Dick Turpin.”

  “You’re Dick Whittington.”

  I was glad the bell rang, because I couldn’t think of any more famous Dicks. Our best-bud banter made both of us feel better about being back in school.

  6

  Lies

  77 Blair Road

  ML5 1QE

  August 12

  Dear Dad,

  Sorry I haven’t written since May—it was the school holidays, and I was really busy hanging and stuff. Then I had to get new clothes for going back to school, which took forever. I guess as I’ve grown up I’ve become fussier about what I wear to school. The new gear isn’t worth talking about, though, so I won’t mention it. Let’s just say I’m having a fashion crisis. That guy from the telly, Gok Wan—do you know him?—well, he tells you to wear one thing, and before you can say “skinny hipsters” the whole town is wearing the same clobber. I prefer to have my own style and be different from everyone else. But it’s hard to be different when you’re a wee bit poor. Well, I am different, I suppose, so that’s one consolation. I was thinking of accessorizing more. That’s one of Gok’s words.

  You could say that my life has been hectic lately, and that’s why it has taken me ages to write. I know you are probably going to tell me to slow down and be careful and take care of myself and look out for number one, but I am. Promise. Mom nags me about all that stuff too. She misses you loads. She cries sometimes. So do I. Not cry loads, but miss you. When do you think they will allow you to come home? Maybe they will say that you can come for a little visit. That would be good, wouldn’t it? Anyway, I have to go ’cause I’ve masses of homework to do for tomorrow.

  Bye-de-bye

  Dylan Mint xxx

  I licked the envelope and gave Mom the letter to post.

  I told a lie to Dad.

  I didn’t have masses of homework.

  7

  Pen

  Drumhill School wasn’t my favorite place in the world, but I did quite like the English class. Learning new words was mega. My top five new words last year in descending (a new word from two years ago) order were:

  5. Paradox

  4. Discombobulate

  3. Degenerative

  2. Circumspect

  1. Proselytize

  It was top-notch when you got to use them in a spoken sentence, but the paradox (ya beauty!) was that most people around here wouldn’t have a clue what big cool words meant, so I was better off talking the hind arms off a brick wall. Except for Michelle Malloy, maybe, because that dame had a quality brain behind all that cheeky bastard syndrome.

  The first “assessment task” in Mrs. Seed’s English class was to write about our school holidays. What we got up to and all that jazz. She called them “assessment tasks,” but we knew, or at least Amir and I did, that they weren’t anything important. Mrs. Seed only pulled out the old “assessment task” gun when she couldn’t be arsed to actually teach; sometimes when she’d had that extra glass of wine the night before. And when she said “assessment task,” she did that thing all teachers enjoy doing: that annoying little inverted commas sign with their two fingers, like they’re flicking V signs. As if we needed to be reminded that we were in a school full of spazzies. Another reason Mrs. Seed played her teacher game was because she was afraid that we were all going to go Billy Bonkers in her class. Although on the first day back Jake McAuley actually took the “assessment task” way too seriously. I knew this because he constantly clawed his nose, rolled it, flattened it, and munched on it. He did that when he got Mad Max ner­­vous. Jake’s breath was rank rotten.

  I did two things.

  First, I did Mrs. Seed’s task. I wrote some drivel about traveling around Europe with Mom and Dad and going to all these groovy places and seeing all these cute chicks cutting about in their sizzling summer getup. I wrote about how Dad bought me my first glass of beer at a bar in Rome, because young people can legally have glasses of beer in Italy. Then I wrote that Dad and me got half-cut, which is when you’re not fully blotto but maybe only 36 percent steamboats. Basically a whole page of pork pies.

  Mega words I used:

  inebriated

  renaissance

  culturally

  risotto

  I ripped that assessment task’s arse out and left it without a name.

  Second, I wrote Cool Things to Do Before I Cack It in the back of my jotter using my new pen, which was actually four different-colored pens cleverly stuffed into a non-transparent plastic tube. Red, green, black, and blue. It was utterly wild, and I loved it. This pen would’ve had the Shark Tank mob fighting like scabby dogs to get their greedy mitts on it. It could have made them gazillions back in the day. This gem pen had soooooooooooooo many possibilities. I then underlined my heading using my new ruler. Twice. In different colors: black and red. I wrote the next line in green.

  Number one: Have real sexual intercourse with a girl. (Preferably Michelle Malloy, and definitely not on a train or any other mode of transport. If possible, the intercoursing will be at her house.)

  What a knockout tiny wish! And I used the grown-up phrase for “shag” too. I put my hands behind my head and leaned back in my chair, like Tony Soprano does when he’s feeling A-okay. My mind played pictures of me doing the real deal with Michelle Malloy. Then the sound came a-blasting, and it was Michelle Malloy doing sexy talk like what the girls do on the Internet. Jeepers creepers, some of t
he things they say.

  Double jeepers creepers! I scanned the class to see if anyone could tell that I was thinking about mucky stuff. Well, they could have—who knows, it could have been one of their things: thought-reading. Maybe someone in my class could have been the next Derren Brown. It might happen. But anyone who I thought could have been the new Derren Brown was “head down, thumbs up.” That was what Mrs. Seed told us to do when it was time for some “reflection on our schoolwork” or our “mental milieu.” Like tiny tots, we put our heads on the desk with our thumbs sticking up. Wee antennae. Apparently it helps concentration and relaxation. Mrs. Seed had some seriously loopy ideas. Sometimes she treated us like a mad shower of window-lickers. This is a phrase I hate. In fact, we all hated it, because it was what we were collectively known as by the lads who went to the “normal schools” in our area. They said windy-lickers, though, which sounded worse and dead threatening when it came out of their mouths. But I could use it in this case because I wasn’t saying it out loud.

  Michelle Malloy didn’t have her head down, thumbs up. No siree. That’s how ODD works sometimes; she just did the opposite of what everyone else was doing. Most of the teachers kept schtum because they wanted an easy life. She was gazing out the window, flying high somewhere in a dream all of her own making. Looking all smashing and lovely.

  Her legs dangled under the desk. I thought about those legs wrapped around my back like a knot, as if we were doing the bare-arse boxing.

  Then I wondered if she would be able to manage a maneuver like that.

  Then I thought about the people who go to the “normal schools” in our area and whether they thought about us at Drumhill; if we thought about the same things that they thought about, like sex, drugs, rock, Internet porn, and Facebook.

  Probably.

  Then I wondered if Michelle Malloy was gazing out the window thinking of intercoursing it dirty style with me.

  Probably not.

  Then I wondered if my willy was the right size to do the deed.

  Probably not.

  Then I wondered if Michelle Malloy ever thought about me in the same way I thought about her.