by Alex Wheatle
First published in 2021 in Great Britain by
Barrington Stoke Ltd
18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP
This ebook edition first published in 2021
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Text © 2021 Alex Wheatle
The moral right of Alex Wheatle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request
ISBN: 978-1-80090-029-5
For all those comic writers of The Beano, Whizzer and Chips, The Dandy and Shoot! who kept this young boy’s spirits up when it was most needed
CONTENTS
1 The Worst Day in the History of Everything
2 School
3 The Boys’ Toilets
4 50p for an Insult
5 Metalwork
6 Detention
7 The Football Game
8 The Big Announcement
9 The Rhino with the Stinkin’ Armpit
10 The Secret Note
11 Basketball Trial
12 Dad
13 The Big Reveal
14 An Unexpected Meeting
15 A Gift
16 The Game
17 The Date
Chapter 1
The Worst Day in the History
of Everything
It was one of those days when everything went madly wrong. One of those unlucky days when the forecast was for Tornado Bad Luck to come your way with hailstones the size of basketballs.
It all started in the morning. I woke up and found my mobile phone had died. It refused to charge. No matter what buttons I pressed, it wouldn’t switch on. Not even a flicker. Not even a small white dot in the middle of the screen. I took out the SIM card and put it back fifteen times. Sweet diddly nothing.
I should’ve taken that as a sign that my day wasn’t gonna be blessed. I should’ve faked a brain-ache and stayed in bed. But, oh no, I didn’t do that. I swung my toes out of bed and planted them on the floor.
I dragged myself to the kitchen. Ever since I’d started secondary school, I had to make my own breakfast. I had my regular two slices of toast and a glass of mango juice. Then I grabbed a fistful of peanuts from a bag I’d bought the evening before. Mum was going on about her boyfriend visiting later on. I didn’t give her twittering too much attention.
At the breakfast table I tried switching my phone on again and … nothing. Not even a slight vibration. How was I going to text the great love of my life, Carmella McKenzie? Even worse, how was she gonna text me? It’d taken me four months to build up the courage to chat to her. I’m talking about the kind of bravery like Luke Skywalker stepping out in front of Kylo Ren’s space fleet with just his lightsaber.
Carmella was one of the most delicious-looking females in the school. No, delete that. She was the A-plus, top-rated girl in the school. Skin the colour of caramel, deep brown chestnut eyes, cute gold stud in her nose and a smile wider than the Millennium Falcon.
After school yesterday, I don’t know what got into me. There Carmella was at the bus stop. Alone. She had her headphones on. She was bobbing her head to her music. There weren’t any of her friends in sight to boy-block me. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I took a deep breath. This is the moment, I told myself.
I took in a lungful of air and stepped up to her, Jedi-style. I slowed down when I was about ten paces away. Now was the time to deliver my cool walk. I’d been practising it on the balcony of our block of flats. There was a kind of bounce and a dip to the walk. My body leaned to the right. I hadn’t worked out exactly what to do with my arms, so I decided to swing them with my left shoulder higher than the other. The movement strained my neck and my side, but it was for a most important cause.
“Hi, Carmella,” I said.
“Hi, Blakey,” she replied. I normally didn’t love being called Blakey, but Carmella could get away with it because she was super-pretty. “What’s happening?”
I tried to look as cool as possible. I put on my best pose. It hurt my back, but it had to be done.
“You all right, Welton?” she asked. She looked proper worried, like a really sweet nurse caring for a cancer patient who only had three minutes to live. I couldn’t believe she’d called me Welton.
“Do you …” I started. “There … There’s this film. Yes, there’s this film that’s showing in the cinema. You know, the one in the Orchard shopping centre … the cinema there. Films show there. In the afternoon and evenings.”
“I know where the cinema is, Welton. I was born in these ends.”
There was this tiny percentage of a smile starting at the corners of Carmella’s mouth. Mr Mountjoy, my hairy Maths teacher, would call it about 2 per cent. At that moment I rated my chances of going to the movies with Carmella McKenzie at less than 0.011 per cent. By now, my back was really hurting from my pose.
“Can … can I take you to see a film?”
My legs turned to pasta as I waited for Carmella’s answer. I started to sweat like a Sumo wrestler in a sauna. My heart started to sprint like a Jamaican relay-runner.
“Yeah, all right,” she said. “Call me to tell me what day, what time the film starts and where to link.”
“I … yes, of course I’ll call you. Thanks so much … I haven’t got your number. I need your number to call you. You know. Otherwise I can’t call you. This is soooo wicked! Thanks so much for saying yes.”
She smiled. This time it was about 30 per cent. My heart stopped vibrating inside my throat. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. My palm couldn’t have been wetter if I’d dipped it in a lake during a monsoon.
We swapped numbers. My brain was rushed with pictures. Sydney Harbour as the clock ticked to 12.01 a.m. on New Year’s Day. The Olympics closing ceremony. The whole of Middle Earth bowing to four hobbits. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca receiving their gongs from Princess Leia in Episode IV.
I had got over one of my worst fears and asked a girl out. But now, a day later, my phone had deleted itself. How am I gonna link with Carmella and set a time for our date? It was the worst crisis I had ever had in my life. Well, maybe not the worst. Dad leaving home for another woman might have topped it. I could still remember finding Mum in the early hours of the morning curled up in a corner of the kitchen. She’d been crying lakes. It’d taken me the length of a Star Wars boxset to persuade Mum to go to her bed.
But I couldn’t log on to my parents’ issues right now. I had to use my Jedi powers to clear away Carmella’s boy-blocking friends, step up to her and tell her my plans for our date.
Chapter 2
School
As I headed out, Mum said that I should get home on time so that I didn’t miss the breaking news she had to tell me. I wasn’t really listening. After every twenty words that Mum said, I replied all right or OK. In between those words I nodded. If I kept to that, she wouldn’t pull me around to face her and ask, Are you listening to me, Welton? It was one of those dumb questions that parents asked. I mean, I was never going to say no.
I reached school, Monks Orchard High, about five minutes before lessons started. I searched for Carmella. Couldn’t find her. The peanuts I had eaten earlier were causing my insides some grief, but there was no time to think about that before my first lesson – Maths.
My Maths teacher, Mr Mountjoy, was simply the hairiest man in the history of the galaxy. He was like a walking jungle. One time he stopped to look at my work and pressed his h
and on my exercise book. I swear there were fungi, toadstools, Amazonian bushes, apple orchards and banana leaves growing out of his skin. And the stench coming from his armpits wasn’t exactly fresh. His nose hair was gross. I wouldn’t be kidding if I said that Tarzan and his pet chimp could have swung on those things.
I took a desk by the window that overlooked the playground. I glanced through the glass every now and again to see if Carmella might be arriving late. What would happen if she was sick and out of action for the coming week? Would our date still be on?
Maybe she’d got ill on purpose? Maybe she’d had second thoughts. That must be it. After she’d said yes, she must’ve gone home and had a long think about the situation. I said yes to go to the movies with Welton Blake? Are you sick, Carmella? she would’ve asked herself. And now she couldn’t come to school because the thought of it made her ill.
I was trying to work out what b and d were, and wondering what’s the point of algebra, when I glanced out of the window again and spotted Carmella. She had this casual stride. Her hair was in a ponytail. Her caramel skin was glowing with pure niceness in the morning sun. She seemed to be happy about something.
Without realising it, I was smiling. Man! She was the main reason why school was bearable. If everything went to plan, I could soon be sitting next to Carmella with my arm around her watching a movie.
But wait! Carmella was walking across the playground with someone. She was with another bruv. I had never seen him before. He looked ripped enough to join the cast of Fast & Furious. I hated him instantly. I felt my heartbeat in my throat. The inside of my head was bubbling like my mum’s casserole. Carmella and Muscle Freak stopped. She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. I wanted to scream like Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Something was starting to move about in my chest. I hoped I wasn’t about to give birth like that poor guy in the first Alien film.
“Welton Blake!” Mr Mountjoy yelled at me. “Is your exercise book stuck to the window?”
“No, sir,” I replied.
“Then turn around and pay attention to the book on your desk!”
He started walking towards me.
Oh no.
Mr Mountjoy knelt down so his head was the same height as mine. He was wearing a white shirt and a yellow tie. His dandruff was as thick as the falling snow in Christmas movies. My stomach wanted my legs to run away.
“Do you understand what I have been telling you?” Mountjoy asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Then get on with it!”
He walked away. Thank the Jedi stars for that.
But suddenly I felt sick. Something horrible was moving around in my throat. Mashed peanuts. Up and down it went. Down and up. Up and down. The combination of seeing Carmella hugging and kissing another guy together with Mountjoy’s stench proved too much. Something surged within me.
Past experience told me that when you felt sick you made sure that you didn’t get any of it over you when it came. So I stood up, leaned forward and puked over the girl sitting in front of me. Karen Francis. She had this lovely long ginger hair … or she did have lovely long ginger hair. Her blouse and blazer were always spotless … until now.
Karen got up from her chair all stiff, like a zombie in a bad horror film. Her blazer, collar and lovely mane of ginger hair were decorated with partly digested peanuts, bits of toast and last night’s dinner – cheese and bacon flan, cabbage and potato salad. Her face slowly changed from one of disbelief into one of rage, Terminator-style. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t run like a rebel spacecraft being chased by Darth Vader’s imperial fleet.
“WELTON BLAKE!” Karen screamed.
She launched herself at me, punching and kicking me until I fell off my chair. Mr Mountjoy didn’t save me until after Karen had taken off her blazer and rubbed my face in it.
I got to my feet groggily. Bits of my own sick were on my tongue, in my nostrils and all over my face. It was the most dreadful thing I had ever tasted – even worse than the soggy cardboard I’d eaten for a dare the year before. Laughter was all around me. Karen Francis stormed out of the classroom swearing some words I’d never heard of.
“Get yourself cleaned up!” Mr Mountjoy shouted at me.
Roars of laughter filled my ears. These weren’t chuckles or giggles. This was the kind of laughing that made people cry, lose control of their legs and wet themselves.
Chapter 3
The Boys’ Toilets
I walked out of the classroom, my feet slapping the floor. It was just my luck that there weren’t any toilets on this floor. I had to fly downstairs. I leapt down four steps at a time. Landing on the ground floor, I twisted my ankle. “Arrrggghhhh!”
I collapsed to the ground, took off my shoe and rubbed my ankle. Pure agonies went all the way up my right leg. I sensed a presence. I looked up and standing over me was the second most beautiful girl in my school – Alice Stanbury. She had long black hair, cute dimples and nice big eyes like a Japanese cartoon. I think her mum was Chinese and her dad was half Jamaican or something. Her skin shade was somewhere between milky coffee and that toffee sweet in the Quality Street tin. At this moment I felt the bits of sick on my cheeks, lips and forehead. I touched my chin and noticed I was bleeding.
“Oh, er … hi, Alice.”
Alice said nothing. She looked at me as if I had fallen into a really deep volcano that was erupting with gorilla crap. Her face sort of scrunched up before she half-screamed, “Eeeewwwww!”
I got up and limped the rest of the way to the boys’ toilets. I didn’t look back, but I guessed Alice Stanbury was watching me with 99.9 per cent disgust.
I put my right ankle under the cold tap and waited for five minutes, hoping the water would numb my pain. The floor was damp with urine, as it always was. A toxic stench polluted the air from the last cubicle. I looked into the mirror and asked myself, “How did it all go sooooo wrong?” And, “Why, why, why did I get out of bed this morning?”
Who was this guy with Carmella? Why didn’t she tell me she had a boyfriend? How many times has he kissed Carmella? I wished for his crusty body to be pulped into a bloody nothingness by Optimus Prime or some other Transformer. I imagined Carmella and Mr Muscles getting married on on some live TV dating show.
I cleaned myself up with paper towels and decided to take a low profile for the rest of the school day. My breath still stank of sick and I had vomit stains all over my blazer and shirt. My ankle throbbed and I had this worm-shaped cut on my chin. There was no way I could face Carmella.
I remained in the boys’ toilets during break time. I tried to put weight on my ankle. “Arrrggghhhh!”
My common sense told me to go and see the nurse so she could send me home. But because I was hurt, I knew she wouldn’t let me go home on my own. She would have to inform Mum. No way was Mum coming to the school to pick me up! Even if the mighty Chewbacca ate my ankle with salt and pepper on top, I still wouldn’t ask for Mum to collect me. I just couldn’t risk Carmella seeing me being helped by my mum out of the school. That would be a humiliation too far.
Chapter 4
50p for an Insult
At lunchtime I hobbled to the school library. None of the cool people went there, only the friendless, the book folk, the really bored and the five-star students who did their homework on time. I just wanted to be left alone.
“Blakey!”
Man! I hated my nickname. I looked up. It was Nicholas Fumbold. A kid in my year who always hung around with the cool kids but wasn’t cool himself.
What did he want? Nicholas liked to argue. We had a row for over a week when he claimed The Phantom Menace was better than The Empire Strikes Back. Was he insane? My mum told me there were blasphemous things in the bible, but nothing in there could compare to what Fumbold said. I told him he should beat himself with a really hot lightsaber a million and one times.
“What you doing up here?” he asked. “Been looking for you all dinner time … What’s that smell?
”
“What do you want, Fumbold?”
“I want to buy an insult.”
I haven’t mentioned yet that I made a few pennies by selling cusses and insults at school. I was picked on during the first year of secondary and I discovered that if I was funny, the bad boys would sometimes leave me alone.
It dawned on me now that if there was still a very slight chance that I would be taking Carmella McKenzie out to the movies, I needed funds. Since Dad had left home my budget wasn’t as pretty as it used to be. And I couldn’t let Carmella buy her own popcorn or hot dogs. Noooo way! I reckoned she was the kind of girl who liked Minstrels or Maltesers. Not sure why.
“What kind of insult do you want?” I asked Fumbold.
“A mother one,” Fumbold replied. “This girl in a lower year said something about my mum and everyone cracked up.”
“Fifty pence,” I demanded.
“Fifty pence? It was thirty pence last week.”
“Do you wanna be cussed out by a girl in a younger year or do you want lyrics to fire back?” I asked.
Fumbold thought about it. His humiliation must’ve been tragic otherwise he wouldn’t have been looking for me.
“All right,” he said. His right hand searched for the jingles in his trouser pocket. “This better be top ranking!”
I took the cash from him and placed it in my own trouser pocket. “All right,” I said, “tell her this: her mum is so ugly that when she was born, the doctor made a mistake and slapped the afterbirth.”
“What?” Fumbold asked, looking as if I’d just spoken about A-level Physics. “What’s an afterbirth?”
“It’s the …” I began, then shook my head. What a mud-brain! It was no surprise he thought The Phantom Menace was better than The Empire Strikes Back. No wonder this girl could cuss him out.
“When a baby is born, the baby comes out, right?” I explained. “And also, this other bit comes out. It’s all gooey, sticky, slimy and fleshy, like the inside of a big uncooked chicken. Haven’t you ever seen your mum clean a chicken?”