by James Roy
So, anyway, Dad said, ‘I don’t know what to do with you any more, but I am going to think of something.’ I was quite anxious about what it was going to be, especially since he was still wearing his Army Reserve stuff, and that uniform can look very convincing when someone’s trying to scare you.
22 NERDSTROM CALLS
That Monday I got a very strange phone call. It was Nerdstrom, so getting a call from him was a bit weird to begin with. I mean, despite what he said, I think he was very frightened of me, and the only reason he didn’t quiver and shake in the library when he was supposed to be helping me with my maths was because he knew that the librarian was there to protect him. So it was a bit of a surprise when he rang.
Of course, it would have to be Cameron who took the call. He was practically gloating when he came into my room with the phone and said, ‘Hey, guess who it is? It’s that loser T’riffic Triffin Nerdstrom.’
I whispered, ‘Cameron, at least stick your hand over the phone. He can hear you!’
But Cameron just shrugged, which is kind of his default response.
I took the phone, but Nerdstom didn’t say anything about hearing what Cameron had said. He just went, ‘Hey, I’ve been thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘About the maths thing.’
‘Let me guess. You don’t want to do it anymore.’
He almost laughed, right there on the phone, and said, ‘I never wanted to do it. Our parents worked it out together, remember? I’m just doing it to keep Ulrika happy, not because I’m enjoying it one bit.’
‘Not even a tiny bit?’ After all, most of the time he just lounged around with his book, telling me not to disturb him.
‘No, not one single bit. I’m not enjoying it, but I’m not scared by it either. I’m just doing it.’
‘So what did you ring me for?’ I tried to sound like I thought he was out of line calling me at home in the first place.
‘I think we should try to meet somewhere else, instead of doing the tutoring at school.’
‘Why?’
‘Because people are going to start talking.’
‘So what’s the problem with that? I’m the one that everyone thinks is stupid.’
He didn’t say anything for a while, for so long in fact that I had to say, ‘Are you still there, Nerdstrom?’
I heard him sigh. ‘That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, Max. When you call me Nerdstrom you’re making fun of me because I’m smart. You think it’s tough being stupid? Try being this person that everyone thinks is a walking brain, which I’m not. It’s just that I get some stuff, like maths and science. Besides, I don’t think you’re as stupid as you think you are.’
‘I don’t think I’m stupid,’ I said. ‘It’s just that other people do because some guy in my own class is teaching me maths twice a week.’
‘Exactly. Which is why we should do this out of school. During our weekend visit things, maybe.’
And that was when it got weird, because I suddenly had this problem. See, I still hated Nerdstrom, even after I knew that he wasn’t getting much fun out of this tutoring thing. Why did I hate him? Because if it hadn’t been for him taking the whole cake factory incident so personally, none of this stuff would have been happening. So I had this decision to make. If we kept doing the tutoring in the library at school, who would suffer more – him or me? Who would get more embarrassed – me being the dummy, or him being the nerdy brainhead?
I decided that I’d do what I thought was the right thing. After all, there was my reputation to think of. If anyone decided to pick on me, I’d just remind them of that and they’d probably stop. But what did Nerdstrom have? A weird name and an unhealthy interest in fat, geeky, wizard books. That, and a term of sneaking out of the library for fear of being called The Professor.
‘I don’t think we should mix business and pleasure,’ I said. ‘We’ll keep doing it at school.’
23 LOYAL CASEY
That Tuesday I had a meat pie for lunch and it was nice. It was especially nice because of the way I got it.
The thing is, I lost my lunch money again. Cameron goes to Red Hill High and they have this awesome school canteen, and I think that sometimes he pinches my lunch money out of my bag so he can buy more stuff. I haven’t been able to prove it, but there might be some way I could set up some kind of surveillance thing to watch my bag. That would require a video camera of some kind, which we have, but Dad won’t let me use it anymore. I mean, you’d think that masking tape would be strong enough to hold a video camera on a radio-controlled monster-truck, but Mum had bought the masking tape from one of those junky bargain-bin shops that are filled to the ceiling with photo frames, plastic kitchen stuff and cheap batteries. So the masking tape cost only a dollar a roll and it wouldn’t grip onto the camera very well. After that Dad wouldn’t let me use the new video camera either, which he kept locked in the filing cabinet in his office.
Anyway, when the time came for me to go to the tuckshop to buy my lunch, there was no money to spend. I thought about asking Jared for some of his lunch, but he likes his food too much and he never would have agreed. He might have given me a bite of his muesli bar or something, but that’s not going to fill up a growing boy like me.
Then I saw Casey, and decided it was time to make him earn his recruit stripes. I mean, it’d been heaps of fun up until then, with the tipping over of the drinks and the flicking up of girls’ skirts with rulers and all the other funny stuff we made him do, but the time was right to make him really earn them. There were three or four other Year Ones following Casey around, which was kind of cool, the way he’d made his own little posse, and I was actually quite proud to see how well he was using the leadership skills I was teaching him.
I called him over and he came straightaway, because he was always good like that. I said, ‘Hi, Casey, I’ve got a job for you. But you’ve got to get rid of these others.’
So Casey turned to his posse and said, ‘I’ve got to talk to Max Quigley.’
The little kids were looking up at me and Jared all awestruck, but they didn’t move, so Jared had to step in and say, ‘Go on, get lost, you little slobberers.’
The little slobberers took off, and Casey said, ‘Why did they have to go, Max?’
‘Because I’ve got a job for you,’ I said again. ‘And I don’t want them all dobbing on you. You’ve got to do this mission alone.’
Casey looked a bit excited and a bit scared, both at once. But I knew he’d be fine, because he’s a brave little kid. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.
‘You know Mr French?’ I said, and Casey nodded and looked a little bit more scared.
‘Yeah, I know him,’ Casey said. ‘He’s the one who’s a shouting teacher.’
‘That’s the guy’ I said. ‘And every lunchtime Mr French goes and buys a pie from the tuckshop.’
Casey didn’t say anything. He was still listening to me, which was one of the things I liked about him.
‘And when he gets his pie, he goes back to his classroom and puts it on his desk. Then he goes over to the staffroom and gets a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Then he goes back to his classroom to read the paper and eat his lunch. You keeping up with me?’
‘Yeah, I’m keeping up,’ Casey said.
‘Good. So when he comes past, I want you to follow him. Then when he puts his pie on the desk and goes over to the staffroom, I want you to grab the pie.’
For a minute it seemed like Casey totally wasn’t going to do it. He just looked around a bit, as if he was making sure that no one had heard what we were saying. Then he said, ‘But that’s stealing, Max.’
Me and Jared didn’t say anything. I thought about telling him that it wasn’t stealing, but I thought that if I said that, I’d find it really hard to say what it was instead. So I didn’t say anything at all.
‘It’s stealing,’ Casey repeated.
‘Yeah, and Max is hungry’Jared said. ‘So you’ll do it, all
right?’
Then Casey said something that was a bit stupid but very brave. He said to me, ‘Hey, Max, if you’re so hungry, why don’t you steal his pie?’
And that was when Jared leaned down and put his face close to Casey’s and said, ‘Because if Max gets caught, he gets a detention, and maybe even gets suspended. But if you get caught, you just get some teacher telling you that stealing is wrong. And you can just go, “Sorry, I didn’t know it was stealing”. OK? Because you’re in Year One, OK?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Plus, I’ll give you a Redskin if you do it.’
‘Really?’ said Casey.
‘Yup. I’ve got a pocketful of them.’
Casey’s eyes were huge. ‘Where do you get Redskins from? They don’t sell lollies at the tuckshop.’
As if I didn’t know that! ‘I buy them on the way to school,’ I said. ‘Here comes Mr French now, so off you go. If you’re quick, you won’t get caught anyway. But you’ll have to be quick, because the staffroom is right next to his classroom. He’s only gone for a couple of minutes.’
Casey looked over at Mr French, who was walking towards us. Me and Jared turned our backs as he got closer, because if Casey did get caught we didn’t want Mr French to automatically assume we were involved just because he’d seen us talking to Casey.
‘Go on,’ I whispered. ‘And good luck.’
Casey did exactly the right thing. He didn’t argue anymore or anything. He just followed Mr French around the end of the building, walking a safe distance behind.
A couple of minutes later he was back, carrying a brown paper bag. He looked sort of triumphant, like he’d just convinced his parents to let him have ice-cream for breakfast every day for the rest of the year. He handed me the bag. ‘There you go, Max. There’s your pie.’
‘Good on you,’ I said, checking in the bag. Yes, it was a pie. I took it out and handed Casey the empty bag. ‘Get rid of that for me,’ I said, and just like always, Casey did exactly what I said, walking to the nearest rubbish bin and dropping it in.
Then he was back, standing there and looking up at me like a puppy waiting for a treat. ‘What now?’ I said.
‘You said you’d give me something.’
‘Yeah, a smack if you don’t get lost,’ Jared said, but that wasn’t it at all.
I put my hand in my pocket and took out a Redskin. ‘There you go,’I said, handing it to Casey.
‘Cool! Thanks Max!’ Casey said. Then he turned and scampered off.
‘Where’s mine?’ asked Jared, in a whiny kind of voice. ‘You give that little weed a Redskin, but what about me, your best mate?’
I shook my head. ‘You didn’t get me a pie, did you?’
‘But I would have, if you’d asked,’ he said.
‘Nah, I doubt it,’ I replied, and I started eating the pie. It was delicious.
24 NERDSTROM HAS A THEORY
That Wednesday me and Nerdstrom went for our usual maths session in the library. We’d only done it a couple of times, but it was starting to get a bit easier, and every time I asked him a maths question it didn’t feel like I had to persuade him to help me, and there wasn’t all that weirdness about asking someone my own age for help. It was a bit strange, but so was Nerdstrom.
He’d finished reading his big fat fantasy book and had started another one. I said, ‘When did you finish that other one?’ and he just shrugged.
‘The other day. I read heaps of books. I like them.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Why do you like picking on people?’ he asked me.
I waited, in case it was a rhetorical question, and if it was, he’d tell me the answer. But it wasn’t, so he didn’t. So finally I had to answer his question. I said, ‘I don’t.’
Nerdstrom totally laughed at me, which I couldn’t remember him doing before. He said, ‘Yes, you do. You do it all the time.’
‘Like when?’ I said.
Nerdstrom thought for a minute. ‘What about the time you took that kid’s basketball and threw it over the fence into the dam?’
That was easy. ‘He was bouncing it near me, and I told him not to, heaps of times,’ I said. ‘So it was his fault anyway. He could have walked away.’
‘What about when you tipped all the books out of Wendy Fowler’s bag at the bus stop?’
‘She poked her tongue out at me,’ I said. ‘And anyway, that was last year, so that doesn’t count.”
‘What about when you locked me out of the cake factory?’
That was easy too. ‘Your fault,’ I said.
He looked confused. ‘How was that my fault?’
‘You were dobbing about how much of the free food me and Jared ate,’ I said. You got what you deserved. Anyway, that door had a big red warning sign on it. Totally your fault.’
And Nerdstrom said, Yes, but you pushed me out.’
‘You could have shouted,’ I said.
He looked a bit disappointed that I’d thought of an answer. Yeah, I guess I could have shouted,’ he said, sounding kind of deflated. ‘But you know what? It wasn’t me who dobbed.’
‘Who was it then?’ I asked. You were talking to Sigsy just before he got stuck into us about going back more than once.’
‘I was asking him which cake was his favourite,’ said Nerdstrom. ‘That’s all. I think he said he liked the ginger cheesecake best.’
Just then Mrs Lalor came over, and she was looking a bit mean and cranky, which is nothing new. ‘Are you boys here to work or to talk?’
I thought about saying, ‘To talk, actually’, but something stopped me. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was the EXIT sign above the library door, but I don’t know why that would have made me stop. Whatever the reason, I just said, ‘Sorry, Mrs Lalor. We’re here to do work.’
Then she said, still grumpy for some reason, ‘So get on with it, will you?’, which was quite rude really.
When the bell rang for the end of school, Nerdstrom and I stood up. ‘It’s all right, I’ll go first,’ he said, sighing, and he started towards the door. I thought about following after him so we could leave the library together, but there were already a lot of the Year Six kids out the front of the library, so I let him go. There was a new magazine on the rack that I wanted to look at anyway.
Then Jared came in. ‘How did your lesson go?’ he asked, and I gave him a filthy look.
I said, ‘You’re lucky that you’re not in here with the Prof as well. He’s so awful, and he’s like “Keep working or I’ll tell Sigsy how stupid you are” and all that stuff. Can you believe he calls him Sigsy? That’s totally our thing.’ I jammed the magazine back into the rack. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Jared pulled the magazine back out and read the front cover. ‘You don’t like bushwalking.’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I heard about this guy who got his arm trapped under a rock and had to cut it off,’ I said.
And Jared went, ‘His own arm? No way! Really?’
‘Totally’ I said. ‘Right off, with a pocket knife.’
‘That’s so cool.’
We went out the front of the library. There were kids all over the place, mostly little ones running and chasing each other and trying to carry bags and projects and craft as they headed for the buses and cars.
‘Hey, Max,’ said this weedy little voice. It was Casey, with his posse. ‘Guess what, Max?’
‘What?’
‘I’m having tennis lessons. I started yesterday.’
‘So what?’ said Jared.
‘Cool,’ I said.
But Casey wasn’t finished. ‘Yeah, and guess who my tennis teacher is? It’s Mrs Sigsworth. You know, Sigsy’s wife! Cool, hey!’
I heard Jared grunt. Then he said, sort of under his breath, ‘Sigsy, huh? Our thing, huh? Yeah, right.’
I looked at Jared. ‘What’s your problem?’ I asked.
But he just said, ‘There’s no problem, dude, no problem a
t all. I’ll see you tomorrow, Max.’
25 JARED GETS SICK AND TIRED
That Friday Jared wasn’t at school. It was kind of lonely, I guess, but I’d never tell him that. I’m pretty sure that he thinks I mope around all pathetic and sad when he’s not there, but I don’t. I mean, I like having my best mate around, but it’s not like my world comes all crashing down when he’s not there.
I rang him up as soon as I got home. He sounded heaps sick, and all croaky.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.
He said, ‘Do I sound all right?’
I suppose he didn’t. ‘So when are you coming back to school?’ I asked him.
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Mum thinks I’ll be OK for Monday, so we’ll see.’
‘So what did you do all day?’ I asked. ‘How many DVDs did you watch?’
He didn’t answer for a bit, because he was coughing so hard I thought he might launch one of his lungs down the phone line at me. When he’d stopped coughing, he said, ‘I didn’t watch any movies at all. I was just sleeping, mostly.’
‘That sucks,’ I said. The way I saw it, being away from school but not able to watch movies was a wasted opportunity.
Then Jared said, ‘Did you have maths stuff with Nerdstrom today?’
And I didn’t really want to talk about it, so I just said, ‘Yeah, and it was fine. But something else happened that was totally awesome. Casey did this thing —’
‘Who?’ Jared said. ‘Oh, yeah, him. What did the Boy Wonder do this time? Save you from certain death? Steal a sports car for you to drive home in? Find you a —’ But he didn’t finish that sentence because he was coughing again.
‘No, nothing like that,’ I said. ‘Mrs Ween went to sleep in the library when she was supposed to be watching all the Year Ones doing computer stuff, and me and Nerdstrom were in there doing our maths, and we dared Casey to climb under the desk and tie her shoelaces together. Because you know how she wears those big clumpy shoes —’