One Step

by Andrew Daddo

  I stood on the bus, even though there were stacks of seats.

  The house was fantastically quiet. No sisters, no Mum clomping about and no Dad bawling me out, telling me to stop doing what I want to do and get on with what I’m meant to.

  I swear it must have been shit for him growing up without COD and Minecraft and a flatscreen TV. He’s such a relic. My dad’s got no idea. You can’t actually study all the time. It doesn’t work. The information doesn’t go in, it just hits the wall of your face and bounces off after about half an hour – we learnt that in PDHPE. The more I tell him that, the less he believes me and we always end up in some kind of face off where he’s the only one who thinks he’s won.

  But Dad wouldn’t be home until much later. The day was pretty much mine until Mum got home with Ronnie.

  Fridge first, then pantry.

  Fed and watered, I headed for the bathroom to see what I could see. If I lined up the mirrors the right way I could see pretty much anything behind or to the side of me – I’d be able to get a reasonable look at what Banning had done to my backside, which seemed to burn more than anything else.

  My pants didn’t have to come down terribly far to see the problem. There was a purplish kind of welt extending up from the line of my crack. It was pretty nasty to the line of my underpants, and sort of smudged its way a bit further up. It looked surprisingly like a skid mark, and made me laugh, because skid marks are meant to be in your undies, not climbing up your back. It must have been the friction of my jocks being worked up and down my skin. When I gently pulled my cheeks apart, I could see that it was worse inside than up above. The welt became quite dark, and I could see where my underpants had broken the skin as well, which explained the bleeding. It’s not as if I could get a band-aid down there, so I wasn’t really sure what to do about it. It’s not like you can bandage the inside of your arse crack.

  Ice and cold water had to be the answer, because that’s what Mum put on our burns. It was always the same: ‘Run it under cold water, and when it doesn’t hurt any more, do it for another five minutes. Then ice it. Then run it under the water again.’

  But I couldn’t figure out how I’d manage that with my rear end, especially in the kitchen sink, which is where all burns seemed to get dealt with. It would be pretty funny, though.

  Imagine if Mum came home and there was me, naked from the waist down with my butt in the kitchen sink like I’m taking a crap in there, and the cold water running over it. Mum’d go, ‘Dylan, why have you got your bum in the sink?’

  And I’d be, like, ‘Well, the strangest thing happened. Remember that cock who pushed me into the water and drowned my phone? Well, today in gym class, he gave me a wedgie of nuclear proportions that actually burnt the inside of my bum crack. It’s literally burnt in there, like the skin is broken, Mum. It’s like someone’s held a lighter to my anus, you know? So I’m keeping it cool by running it under cold water – the same as you tell us to do if we burn our fingers on something.’

  And she’d be, like, ‘Oh, okay. Good thinking. What’s with that Banning kid, anyway?’

  And I’d be, like, ‘Who knows?’

  Could that be worse than that guy in American Pie having sex with a warm apple pie in his kitchen and being busted by his dad? Possibly. Probably, actually, because that was a film and this would be real life. But I’m not that stupid. Having said that, I did try and photograph my own bum in the school change room. I was struck by another wave of ‘you idiot-ness’ and headed back to the kitchen for an ice pack from the freezer and something else to eat. It’d be fine, eventually.

  My mind lingered on the problem of Hamish Banning. There had to be more to his meltdown than English class. He saw Gracie Chilcott at my locker, but why should that bother him? She’s hardly in his league of self-professed awesomeness. Something else must be going on. Maybe Mum or Dad rang the school about my phone. They could have dobbed on him. That could be it.

  Or he just hates me. Maybe it’s my year to be his bunny.

  There had to be a way to get him back. It might take a while, but it’d get done eventually.

  I left my school clothes in a pile in the bathroom, had a shower where I could take my time because there was no threat of interruption, and decided to work off any remaining tension by killing as many people as I could in COD. I warmed up by myself, and then had a hit out with some randoms who ended up killing me and motoring on themselves. Wankers.

  By two in the afternoon I was bored witless. I couldn’t get past this one level of COD without help, and Minecraft had started to do my head in because it’s not fast enough. I’ve never really got that game.

  In the end, and to my surprise, I did homework. Dad’d be so proud. I’d have to remember to tell him tonight. He’d probably look at me and nod and wrap me up in a wrestling kind of cuddle. Or not. It’s been ages since he’s done anything like that.

  We had three different assignments due, so I chipped away at them long enough to realise how much work I had to do to get them finished. In the end it was all too much, so I did other stuff.

  I shot eleven points in a row in my sisters’ netball ring. Then I worked out that the back left wheel of my skateboard spins the longest, followed by the front left; the right-hand wheels were pretty crappy and nothing – not spit or WD-40 or engine oil – would make them spin any better. I learnt that it was almost impossible to drill through an empty glass stubby without smashing it. The dropsaw I was banned from using because it’s too dangerous wasn’t that dangerous at all, but does make a mess which was a punish to clean up. Our Staffordshire Terrier, Fat Buster, could sleep on the couch for an entire day without getting up for a piss. There wasn’t one single aerosol can in our house that wouldn’t send out a fantastic flame when you lit the stuff coming out of the nozel – WD-40 was best, but spray paint wasn’t far behind it. It was possible to light your farts – I watched that on YouTube and wanted to do it but not with the way my bum was. To be honest, I was worried enough about taking a crap.

  By the time Mum and Ronnie got home I was glad to see them. Mum made some biscuits while I smashed Ronnie at Master. She’s a good shooter in netball, but I’d been practising.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said Mum when she came into the backyard. ‘You don’t look sick.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. And it wasn’t a lie, I really felt okay. Now. A little bashed up, but that was about it.

  ‘So why’d you come home?’ Mum had her arms crossed against her chest and her head to one side. She looked ready to not believe me, whatever I said.

  ‘I just wasn’t feeling good, and you say if you’re not feeling good, you’re not feeling good, right?’

  ‘I say well not good.’

  ‘Whatevs. That’s what you say to Hayley. It’s okay for her to not feel well, so I’m working on the assumption it’s okay for me to not feel well, as well. Or too. Too many wells. Lots of holes in the ground. Punny.’

  Mum gave her head a little shake, as if something was rattling around in there. ‘You’re right, I do say that to Hayley, but that’s when she has her period. You don’t get periods. It could be great if you did. Can you imagine? It’d be worth millions! You’d be on all the current affairs shows.’ She was laughing at her own joke now.

  ‘Good one, Mum. Funny-ish.’

  ‘I’ve still got it!’

  When Mum was in uni, she’d tried out being a stand-up comedian but it was an epic fail. Dad says she was terrible, but that’s what he liked about her. She kept trying, and she kept failing and then she’d try again.

  In the end she followed Grandpop’s advice and did something sensible. Mum got a job in the least funny place in the world, a bank, a job she said was sucking the life and the laughs out of her. But she still fronted, every day. It would have been good to know her when she was funny. From time to time she’d run these ranty comedy things by us that were never that funny, but they made her laugh.

  Right now she was just coming across as odd – and
meddling.

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘You’re okay.’

  ‘I’m fine, really,’ I grunted.

  ‘Good. Why don’t you guys take Fat Buster for a walk then? He needs it as much as you do.’

  ‘I got homework and –’

  ‘Go and spend some time with your sister, will you? Be nice to her. Find out what she’s doing, who she’s hanging out with. She’s eight, for God’s sake. You’re her older brother, she loves you, and she never gets to spend time with just you.’

  With my shoulders angled at the ground, I went. I had Ronnie in one hand and the dog lead in the other. Ronnie had a ball, which we’d tried to get Fat Buster to chase in the past but he’d never worked it out. If we’d brought one of Mum’s fancy work shoes for him to chase, it might have been a different story.

  It was good Mum sent us for a walk.

  There was water pissing out of something up the street and it set up the perfect gutter flood to race sticks in. The trick was finding the right sized boat so it was small enough to get dragged along without hitting the gutter below, but big enough to see easily. It was so fun. Ronnie hadn’t played before and she thought it was a cack. She cheated, of course, lobbing her boat further down the gutter than mine, but I didn’t really care. It was just good to do something different. By the time we got to the dog park our feet were sopping and I’d completely forgotten about my sore arse.

  I wasn’t expecting to see Madison Ansey there.

  She was way over the other side with her something-doodle. I noticed the dog first, and knew it was hers. It’s big and brown and curly and doodley, and it couldn’t seem to work out if it wanted to run in circles or jump vertically, so it did both at the same time. If I’d had a monkey and a saddle I reckon I could have created a new sport with that dog.

  I let Fat Buster off the lead and held the ball in front of his nose. ‘Ball,’ I said. ‘Get the ball, okay? Get the ball.’

  Ronnie laughed. ‘He never gets the ball.’

  I tried rubbing some of Buster’s slobber from the side of his mouth onto the ball so he’d know it was his. ‘Watch this.’ I did a short throw. ‘Get the ball, Fat Buster. Get ya slobbery ball.’

  He took about three steps forward, sniffed a bit and lowered his back half to the ground for a polite piss.

  ‘He’s not getting the ball,’ said Ronnie. ‘He’s never going to get it.’ Then she disappeared into a backbend that turned into another and another until she was about ten metres away. Ronnie’s gymnastics classes were definitely working out.

  Madison Ansey was getting closer.

  She was out of her school uniform, which was great: shorty shorts, thongs and T-shirt. She was something else without trying.

  Her shorty shorts weren’t so short, the T-shirt looked big enough to be her dad’s, but she was still smoking hot. It’s like I could see stuff happening under there without seeing anything at all.

  When Ronnie or Hayley play Taylor Swift songs that are all about breaking up and hooking up, Madison Ansey is what I see. She’s the girl and I’m the boy and one day, maybe one day . . . How’s that song go? Something about remembering what you wore on that first day and I thought, ‘hey!’

  Madison Ansey always had me feeling more than ‘hey’.

  If she’d seen me across the park, she’d done a good job of hiding it. I grabbed the ball and tried again to excite Fat Buster with it. He was hard to fire up with anything but food, which made me think we should cover the ball in gravy or bolognaise sauce so he could chase something he actually wanted.

  After bouncing the ball a couple of times in Buster’s face, I threw it in the direction of Madison. Not at her, it’s not like I lined her up and took a shot, but just in her general direction.

  Of course, I knew the dog wouldn’t chase it, so I’d have to go and get it and she’d be there and I’d say ‘hey’ and she’d say ‘hey’ back and that’d be the launching pad to just about anywhere.

  After about three steps in her direction I realised there was a major flaw in my plan – I had nothing to say. My mind was as clear as the perfect summer sky. It was barren, desert empty. Nada.

  ‘Hey,’ she said across the distance as I stutter-stepped and began to turn away. ‘Where were you today?

  ‘Huh?’ She walked to within touching distance. She must have been eating a finger bun or a donut with pink icing because there were a couple of flecks hanging there on her top lip.

  ‘Today. At school. What happened? You were there and then you weren’t. Are you sick? Is it your neck? Is it that bad?’

  What the hell was she talking about? My neck? What’s wrong with my neck? There’s nothing but a few zits and, holy shit, of course. My neck. I rubbed it once the penny dropped and was happy to find the band-aid still in place.

  ‘It didn’t look that bad, but if you had to go home, then it must have been, right?’

  ‘My neck’s fine. I just wasn’t feeling well.’ I nodded after I said that. ‘But better now, you know? Much better. What’s your dog called?’

  ‘Molly,’ said Madison, grabbing her dog and attaching the lead to her collar. Molly instantly fought against it. ‘She’s out of control. She’s just a puppy so she’s meant to, like, get better.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ I said, moving in to give her a pat on the head. My hand was only halfway there when the dog nipped me. It didn’t hurt or anything, but because I wasn’t expecting it, I quickly pulled my hand away which seemed to frighten all of us.

  ‘Molly! Bad girl!’ Madison gave the lead a rip, bringing the doodle to order. ‘Sorry. She only seems to do it to people she likes, so that’s kind of good.’ Her face went eek!

  ‘I’ll bite her back when you’re not looking and we’ll call it even.’

  ‘LOL. Hey, I heard about the supersonic wedgie that Hamish Banning gave you.’

  When she said it, Madison was rubbing her dog’s ears with both hands, so she was bending forward. I could see stuff down the top of her T-shirt I probably wasn’t meant to be seeing. She had a bra on, so it’s not like I could see her boobs or anything, but it was still awesome enough to make me deaf.

  I knew she’d said something but couldn’t work out whether it was a question or a statement so I gave my default reaction which was somewhere between a grunt and a laugh.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, still working away at Molly’s ears. ‘I heard it was pretty bad, like it was funny but it wasn’t actually that funny. You know? Like it wasn’t that cool.’

  She had great boobs. I’d stopped looking, but then stole another glance and that was the moment she looked up at me.

  ‘Yeah, well, yea-yea-you know. It w-was, you know. Not that cool.’

  I didn’t think she’d caught me.

  A little smile tickled the corners of her mouth as she looked back to Molly.

  She’d caught me. But she was cool enough not to say, ‘Stop staring at my tits, you freak.’

  ‘Someone said you didn’t go to gym after, and that’s when you went home. Is that why you left?’

  I wasn’t sure if this was a set up.

  ‘Well,’ I started. There had to be a right answer to this question. She’s friends with the group that’s friends with Hamish, so she could be searching for information or just asking a concerned question. She didn’t seem the type to try and stitch me up, but then, who knows what anyone’s like at high school. ‘How do you mean?’

  She stood up. ‘I dunno. Did you leave because he gave you that wedgie? I heard it was pretty heavy.’

  My head was swimming with what all this meant – it was like a text without emoticons, I needed the funny little faces to tell me exactly how to read what was being said because I couldn’t pick them up from Madison’s tone. She just sounded like she was asking a normal question.

  I was going mad.

  Did she know anything about me and Gracie Chilcott? She’d have to. She’s definitely tight with her, so if there was something going on with Gracie and me, Madison would know.
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  ‘Yeah. No. You know. It hurt but it was pretty funny, I s’pose. You know what he’s like. He does that stuff all the time.’

  ‘He’s a dick,’ she said.

  He’s a dick? Of course he is a dick, I thought. Thank God she thought so, too. There were other guys who thought he was a world-class cock, but everyone was too scared to say anything out loud. This was great.

  Unless this was a test. I hate tests. And I hate feeling like this, which is basically living in fear of an opinion. ‘He is what he is, isn’t he.’

  ‘And that’s?’

  ‘I want to go home.’ It was Ronnie. ‘Carm on. Let’s go. I’m hungry.’

  ‘Hang on, Ronnie. I’m talking.’ I sounded like my dad.

  ‘Ronnie?’ said Madison. ‘Really? Like, you’re so big. How old are you now?’

  ‘Eight,’ she said, flashing a gap-toothed smile. ‘Nearly nine. Let’s go. Fat Buster’s bored.’ The dog had flattened himself on the ground – front legs out the front, back legs way out the back. He was panting heavily, his tongue a reservoir for slag that hung in long, bubbly lines before breaking off and landing between his front paws.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘See if you can do ten cartwheels in a row, then we’ll go.’

  ‘Bet you can’t,’ said Madison.

  ‘Bet I can,’ she said before whirling off.

  ‘So you’re fine now. Your neck’s good. You feel better. And Hamish Banning is a dickhead.’

  ‘Mmmmmm, yep. If you say so.’

  ‘Just about everyone says so,’ said Madison. ‘Except Hamish.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Ronnie. She was halfway between us and the dog-park gate. Her head stuck out on her little neck as if it was leading her. ‘I’m starving!’

  ‘Did you do ten?’