by James Roy
Mum and Dad were pretty much in total agreement with the people at school, which I suppose is predictable. They always take the teachers’ side. Always. I can’t think of a single time when they disagreed with a teacher.
Actually, there was one time, back in Year Four, when Ms Gleeman said that I’d done a heaps good job on my project about India, and my parents disagreed. She tried to argue, until they pulled out my brother Cameron’s Year Four project on India from two years earlier, the one where he got nine out of ten. They showed her how I’d just done a colour photocopy of Cameron’s project and put a new title page on it. So you see, even when they disagree with the teachers, they’re taking someone else’s side instead of mine.
So for the Cheesecake Caper, as me and Jared called it, I was given a pretty harsh range of punishments, considering that no one actually got hurt. They were as follows:
1. Grounded. Predictable, but pretty effective, I think. A standard kind of punishment, favoured by parents of kids who go out a bit or play a lot of sport, especially kids of high school age. I’ll be in high school next year, although Mum says that it’s a bit ‘touch and go’ as to whether I survive that long. Grounding doesn’t really work for kids who have no friends or stay in a lot. For example, Nerdstrom would find being grounded a bit of a wasted experience. But I was missing out on several very important games of baseball, which was highly frustrating. So all in all, a good choice of punishment. It also meant that I couldn’t see Jared. I decided that his parents and mine planned this together.
2. No pocket money. Again, fairly standard. Most kids of my age get between five and fifty dollars a week, depending on how tight their parents are. Mine are moderately tight -they give me twenty bucks a week. That was going to hurt a bit, although being grounded meant that there was nowhere to spend it anyway. I wasn’t sure that they’d thought this one through so well. Oh yeah, except that Mum said I had to buy five cheesecakes at full price out of my own money, which did kind of make it an OK punishment, I guess.
3. No TV, computer or Playstation. I knew this was going to seriously sting. But once again, they hadn’t really done their homework, because I had a Gameboy Advance that they didn’t know I had, which I’d bought off a Year Two kid for two dollars, a can of drink and a broken Hotwheels launcher. It even came with ten games, eight of which were actually OK. Under the covers late at night, I know they wouldn’t have a clue.
4. No telephone. Hmm. Tough, but not the end of the world. Jared and I would still be able to see each other at school, especially in lunchtime detention, which was a separate but related form of punishment devised by the school, independently of my parents.
5. Dishes, every night. Stupid punishment, when you consider that we have a perfectly good dishwasher tucked under the kitchen bench. And yet this was how I would be expected to use my empty and TV-free evenings for the next month.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
7 DAD UPS THE ANTE
Then, that Sunday, without any warning, and just as I thought that I had my head around the punishments devised by my sadistic parents, they figured right out of the blue that all the previously listed punishments were still not enough. They decided to ‘up the ante’, as Dad calls it. He said that six years of being a bully was enough, and I’d have agreed with him, except technically I’m not actually a bully. Bullies wait behind lunch sheds and steal kids’ Twisties. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. Bullies beat people up. I’ve never punched anyone in my entire life, unless you count Jared, and that was because he leaned forward as I pretended to swing at him, and I accidentally knocked him down and split his lip. That was different. Just like all those times I got into fights with Cameron. He’s my brother, and that doesn’t count.
The other things bullies do is hurt people. And I don’t mean just a flick on the ear or a Chinese burn or a horsebite on the leg. I mean hurt people, hurt them until they cry or have to go to hospital. And as far as I know, I’ve never caused anyone to get taken to hospital. Or cry. Except for my brother, but we’ve been over that.
I’ve never even made Nerdstrom cry, and he’s about the cryingest-looking person I’ve ever seen. He always seems like he’s about to burst into tears, especially when he has to present to the class. He’s got a heaps quiet voice anyway, but once he has to stand up in front of people and talk, his face goes pale, like he’s going to pass out, then it goes red and he mumbles whatever he has to say and scurries back to his seat as soon as he’s finished, sometimes even before he’s finished.
Anyway, even though I’ve never made anyone cry, Dad reckoned that I was in fact a bully, and that being grounded and not having access to the computer or the telephone and not having any pocket money and having to wash a gazillion dishes every night was not enough of a punishment. Which is why that Sunday we went over to Nerdstrom’s house. By we I mean Mum, Dad and me, while Cameron got to stay home playing Playstation with his annoying mate Adam. I wasn’t at all happy about this, but I decided that with the level of punishment now being handed out I wasn’t in a position to disagree.
On the way there, Mum and Dad made me practise what I was going to say, which felt very strange, apologising to an invisible person. But I did it.
Nerdstrom and his mum live in a pretty weird house. It’s kind of right out in the bush, out along this rough dirt road, and there are all these birds that chatter and carry on constantly. If it wasn’t for the birds making a racket, there’d be no sound at all except for the windchimes on their porch, tinkling and clanging and stuff. To be completely honest, all that noise would drive me a bit crazy, but as we pulled up and got out, Mum said, ‘Wow, Steve, isn’t this gorgeous!’
Dad went ‘Mm-hm’, which is kind of what he does when his mind is on other things. I think that on this occasion he was thinking about what he was going to say, which is pretty dumb, since going out there was his idea, and you’d think he’d get himself better prepared.
Anyway, we rang the doorbell, which was a cowbell hanging beside the big heavy door, and a minute later the door opened and Nerdstrom’s mum was standing there. Man, was she a surprise packet! She was wearing loose-fitting bright purple pants and this thing that looked like an old person’s blanket with a hole in the top, which she’d stuck her head through. And she wasn’t wearing any shoes at all, and she had rings on some of her toes. Plus there were her bright red glasses. And she said, in this really bizarre accent, ‘Hello. I’m Ulrika. I’m so glad you came.’
Dad went ‘Mm-hm’ again, and Mum said, ‘It was a good idea. I think it will be good for the boys to talk about it.’ Which is when I suddenly understood that this wasn’t Dad’s idea after all, but Nerdstrom’s mum’s idea. And this made me heaps cross, right off. So I took a bit of a step backwards, but Dad put his arm around my back and pulled me forward a tiny bit, just enough so I knew that I had to stay and that he was going to be there as well. Which made me feel a bit better about Dad, to be honest.
It was funny, though, how when I looked around at all that bush I started wondering how long I could live as a bushranger before I ran out of food.
Nerdstrom’s mum took us into their house and said we could sit on their couch, which had these rugs and cushions all over it. I have to admit that it was quite a nice house, even though it was very small and smelled a bit strange. It was heaps more colourful than our house, with rugs on the floor and pictures on the wooden walls and all that kind of stuff. Plus there were some weird statuey kind of things sitting around the place.
Mrs Nordstrom asked us if we wanted tea, and my parents said ‘Yes please’, and then she asked me if I’d like a juice or something, and I said OK. She got up and went into the kitchen, which was just off the room where we were, and while she was getting the drinks she called out to Nerdstrom, ‘Triffin, dear, our guests are here.’ When she called out, her accent was even stronger, especially the way she said Triffin. It was kind of like ‘Treefern’. And then I started to think that if we ever got into trouble for calling him N
erdstrom, we could start calling him Treefern instead. Which isn’t quite as funny, but opens up a lot of different possibilities for jokes and things.
Then Mrs Nordstrom stuck her head around the corner from the kitchen. ‘I hope chai tea is all right,’ she said, and Mum and Dad said that was fine, even though I know for sure that Dad only drinks really strong black coffee or beer. Plus that muddy-looking stuff in a wooden bowl they gave him and Mum that time we went to Fiji for a holiday, but that was a special occasion, I guess.
A couple of minutes later she came back out carrying a tray with cups and a teapot on it, as well as two tall glasses full of crazy-looking green juice. ‘There you go, Max,’ she said, as she handed me one of the glasses. ‘I hope you like it. It’s wheatgrass, celery and dew-melon.’ Then she listed all these illnesses that I’ll never get that that kind of juice is good for, like high blood pressure and tumours and nervousness. I must have made a face of some kind, though, because she laughed and said that it wasn’t as bad as all that, and Dad gave me a pretty cranky kind of look.
Then Nerdstrom came in. He looked heaps nervous, I have to say, which is understandable in one sense, but really dumb in another, since it was his house and his mum had just given me a large glass of evil juice that was probably going to kill me within minutes of taking my first sip anyway.
‘Say hello to the Quigleys, dear,’ Nerdstrom’s mum said, and Nerdstrom kind of looked pale and vomity again and said hello. And of course my parents were sickeningly sweet in reply, gushing on about how lucky he was to live in such a wonderful environment.
Mrs Nordstrom then said, ‘And say hello to Max, dear,’ and he looked at me and sort of coughed and said, ‘Hi.’ So of course I said ‘Hi’ back, because that’s polite.
‘So I think we all need to talk about what happened on Friday,’ said Mrs Nordstrom.
‘Yeeees,’ said my mum.
Dad just nodded, and Nerdstrom blinked and looked at the floor, and I didn’t know what to say or do, since it felt like everyone was looking at me, even though they actually weren’t.
Then Mum said, ‘Max, do you have something to say to Triffin and his mum?’
So I said the stuff we’d practised in the car. I said, ‘I’m sorry about what we did, and that you got left behind at the factory.’
‘And …’ said my mum.
I said, ‘And what?’
‘Was there anything else?’
‘And I’m sorry that Mrs Nordstrom had to go and pick him up from the factory.’
Mum said, ‘To her, Max, not to me.’
So I looked at Nerdstrom’s mum and said, ‘I’m sorry that you had to go and pick Nerd … Triffin up from the factory, Mrs Nordstrom.’
‘Please, call me Ulrika, and thank you for the apology.’
‘Remember what else we talked about?’ Dad reminded me.
And I did remember, so I said, ‘I’m sorry that it made you worried.’
Mrs Nordstrom had taken off her mad red glasses and was wiping her eyes with a tissue. ‘Thank you, Max, it was very worrying indeed,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anyone else in my life, you see, and Triffin is everything to me, so to think that something might have happened to him …’
‘Can I say something now?’ Nerdstrom asked. His mum looked surprised. She sniffed and put her glasses back on.
‘Of course, dear,’ she said.
Nerdstrom stood up and stared at me and said, ‘I don’t know why you came here today.’ I could tell that he was pretty cross, from the way his nostrils were sort of getting bigger and smaller, and his hands were all clenched up so that his knuckles were white. I noticed that his wrists were really thin, too.
‘Triffin! Max came here to apologise,’ his mum said, but Nerdstrom wasn’t finished.
‘I don’t care if he says sorry a million times and buys me stuff and does anything else you can think of, because I know he doesn’t mean it, and I know that when we get back to school on Monday it’s not going to be the same.’
His mum said, ‘That’s right, dear, it’s not.’
But Nerdstrom still wasn’t finished, and now his face was starting to go really red, as usual when there’s an audience. ‘No, it’s not going to be the same, Ulrika, because it’s going to be worse, and I know you thought that making him come here into our house was the right thing to do, but it was the stupidest thing you could have done, because he’ll be looking around here at all our stuff and he’s going to make fun of it and tell everyone what weirdos we are, because we are, and I hate you, Ulrika, and I hate you as well, Max, but I don’t hate you two, Mr and Mrs Quigley, because I don’t know you very well, but I don’t think I like you very much, if that is the kind of son you made. And one more thing,’ he said, looking at me. ‘I meant what I said the other day. I’m not afraid of you. I just don’t like you, you … you idiot jerk.’
And then he turned and walked out and slammed the door, and all the little beads that were hanging in the doorway sort of jingled and rattled for a bit. Which is when I decided that he’d made a couple of good points in his little speech, and started looking around at all their things, making a mental list of crazy hippy stuff that I needed to tell Jared about.
Mrs Nerdstrom looked quite embarrassed, which I was pretty glad about, because her son had just proved what a weird and troubled young man he is. Especially when you consider that we were good enough to come all the way out into the bush to apologise for something that wasn’t that big a deal in the first place.
I didn’t say any of this in the car on the way home, though, because Mum and Dad weren’t saying much, and I figured that it was a good idea to lie low for a bit and say nothing.
When we got home, Dad turned off the engine in the driveway and turned around in his seat to face me. ‘So, what did you think of that?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean, what did I think?’
‘Did you think that was a valuable thing to do?’
‘No, not really,’ I replied.
‘Why not?’ Mum asked.
‘Because all he did was tell us how much he hates us, and have this huge tantrum.’
Then Dad said (to Mum, I think), ‘U-huh,’ which I think is his way of saying ‘See?’
‘What did you think?’ I asked, but Mum just turned around and looked at me for a couple of really long seconds. That’s how they felt, anyway.
Then she said, ‘Maybe the way he reacted simply shows us how hurt he’s been by all the horrible things you’ve done to him.’ Which is rubbish, I reckon. Like I said before, most of the things that have happened to Nerdstrom when I’ve been around have been either completely his own fault or just jokes that have gone a little bit wrong.
So that was Sunday. I wondered if Nerdstrom was going to be at school the next day. Probably.
Would I be nice to him? Of course.
Would I be taking back my apology, since it was met with such bad grace? I expected so.
Was he going to apologise for what he said to me, even though ‘idiot jerk’ is a pretty odd kind of name to call someone? You betcha he was.
8 DOING TIME
That Monday I had a pie for lunch and it was nice. Or at least it would have been nice if I hadn’t had to eat it in the detention room, which isn’t some special room just for holding detention in but the classroom of whichever teacher is supervising detention for that day. And that day the supervisor was Mrs Beech, who is one of the Year Two teachers. She has red hair and brown freckles and pale skin and always seems to have a cold, which means she’s constantly sneezing and blowing her nose. So not only is her hair red, but so are her eyes and the end of her nose.
I was pretty sure that Mrs Beech didn’t like me very much. She reckoned that she was ready for me that day. She looked up as I arrived at the door of the classroom and said, ‘Ah, Max Quigley. I’ve been expecting you.’
‘And I’ve been expecting to be here,’ I said, which made her frown and sneeze.
‘Just sit down and say nothing. Did
you bring your lunch?’ I held up my pie and popper-juice. ‘And did you bring something to do?’ I held up my wrestling magazine. ‘Try again,’ she said, and when I shrugged she sighed and handed me a maths worksheet. ‘Now sit,’ she said, as if I was a dog or something. I thought briefly about sitting on the floor right where I was, but I decided against it when I saw her red eyes get narrow and slitty.
There were three kids in detention, besides me. There was Mitchell Lackey, who is in Year Five and likes to hurt birds and lizards and kindies and other small animals he manages to catch. He’s seriously peculiar. Sitting behind him was Justin McElvoy. They’re best friends. I guessed that they were there over the same incident, since they seem to do practically everything together. All the natural fauna within a square kilometre of the school were probably breathing a sigh of relief that those two were in detention for the day.
The other kid there was Katie Hardcastle. She was almost certainly there because she’d been super-cheeky to one of the teachers. I’ve met a few cheeky kids in my years at Church Street Public, but Katie Hardcastle would definitely have to be the worst. I’ve seen teachers argue with her for half an hour just because it doesn’t matter what they say to her, she has something to say in reply, every single time. She’s fantastic like that. Once in Year Four Mr Clancy told her in front of the whole class that she had a serious problem with needing to have the last word.
‘No I don’t,’ she said.
Mr Clancy blinked and said, ‘Actually, you do, Katie.’
But she said, ‘I really don’t.’
‘Fine, you don’t then. Just sit down.’
‘Well, maybe you’re right, but I doubt it,’ she replied, and he started to get really cranky then.