“Come on, Dad,” he said. “I’m the one you should be playing against if you want a challenge.”
“You said you’ve got better things to do,” I protested.
“They can wait,” said Wills.
“It’s nice to know that it’s my company you can’t do without,” grimaced Dad. “I’d hate to think I was less of a draw than a computer game.”
“Don’t you worry, Dad,” smirked Wills. “The computer game is far more of a draw.”
“Does that mean you’re coming, then?” asked Dad.
“It sure does, Daddy-O,” said Wills. “I’ll just get my stuff.”
I think Dad could tell from the look on my face that I was disappointed. “Perhaps we could go out together one evening, just you and me,” he said.
I nodded, but I thought it was just one of those things that Dad says sometimes but forgets about. Wills came charging back down the stairs, pushed past me, and bagged the front seat of the car, as usual.
“Come on, you two,” he yelled from the window, then he started sending text messages on his cell phone, and I wondered if any of them were to me. Just as we reached Dad’s, a message came through to him and when he read it he became very agitated. He sent another message back, then threw his phone onto the floor of the car when the response came.
“Girlfriend?” chuckled Dad.
“Funny ha ha,” scowled Wills. “I wish I hadn’t come now.”
“I can always take you back,” said Dad.
I wish you would, I thought. I could see it was going to be a lousy weekend.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”Wills challenged Dad. “And you,” he aimed at me.
“For goodness sake, Wills, stop twisting things,” said Dad. “I thought we were all going to have a fun weekend together.”
“It’s not fun being with you,” growled Wills. “You treat me like I’m some sort of idiot.”
“What are you talking about, Wills?” Dad protested. “What have I done?”
“You left home because of me, that’s what you’ve done,” Wills cried. “And Mr. Goody-goody here is always trying to get me into trouble.”
“Of course he’s not,” argued Dad, “and I didn’t leave home because of you. I left home because of me. Because of me, Wills. Because I was making things worse. Because I’m not good at being a dad.”
“You are a good dad,” I jumped in with, stung by Wills’s accusations.
“It’s because of you I can’t see my friends when I want to,” shouted Wills.
“If you want to see your friends, I’ll take you to see your friends.” Dad’s voice was getting louder too.
“It’s too late now,” Wills said sulkily.
“I’m not forcing you to come and stay with me. I’d like you to stay with me, but if you’d rather be with your friends then I understand.”
“They won’t want me now, because I said I was coming with you instead of seeing them, and they think I’m a girl because I didn’t refuse.”
“Nice friends,” muttered Dad.
“At least they respect me,” Wills challenged.
“Sounds like it,” said Dad.
“What would you know?”
Dad wiped the sweat from his forehead. I felt sorry for him. He had been dragged into a confrontation he hadn’t expected and didn’t understand. I understood. I’d seen Wills’s friends in action. I knew what they were like and I guessed that they would give Wills a hard time if he didn’t do what they wanted. Not that Wills would ever believe that, because he wouldn’t want to believe it.
Dad took a deep breath. “Wills,” he began, “can we start this weekend again? Let’s order some pizzas and get on that computer so that you can thrash the pants off me, and then we’ll watch the big game. What do you say, Chris?” I saw Dad’s look of desperation.
“Yeah, come on Wills, you can thrash the pants off me as well,” I said without much enthusiasm.
“Too easy,” grumbled Wills, but he got out of the car and ran to the front door, pushed through it, and knocked loudly on the door of Dad’s apartment as though he was expecting someone to answer it.
“There’s no one in,” said Dad.
“Typical,” scoffed Wills. “I give up seeing my friends to come and stay with my dad, and he’s not even here.”
“Just a minute,” said Dad. He pushed past Wills, unlocked the door, went inside, and closed it behind him.
“Now knock,” he yelled. Wills knocked. Dad opened the door.
“Wills! Chris!” he exclaimed. “How wonderful to see you! Come in, come in.”
“Wonderful to see you too, Daddy-waddy,” said Wills. “What’s to eat?”
“Shall we order some pizzas?” asked Dad.
“Yeah, pizzas,” said Wills.
“And garlic bread,” I added.
“And Coke,” said Wills.
“All right,” said Dad. “Coke as well. I’ll call them now.”
I wished it could always be like that, the being friends and the being silly, instead of the shouting and the angry words. It used to be like that more often when Dad was at home, even if the Volcano versus the Hurricane was devastating when it happened. At least everyone seemed to be happier in between. Now we all seemed to spend our days upsetting each other, even when we didn’t mean to. I wished Dad could see that it was better before, and that Wills had got worse since he left. Or was it Wills’s horrible friends who had made him worse?
That night, after Wills had beaten me and Dad at the new computer game, and after we had gone crazy watching football, and after we had played pool at the pub around the corner, and when I was trying to go to sleep in the bedroom (Dad didn’t want me steeping on the couch), and Wills was tossing and turning like a bundle of sheets in a tumble dryer, Wills suddenly said:
“What would you do if you had to do something because you were sort of expected to do it, and you might get into trouble if you didn’t do it, but you didn’t really want to do it anymore, and perhaps you never wanted to do it in the first place, but you got sort of persuaded?”
“What?” I replied. I hadn’t got a clue what he was talking about.
“Well, say, for example, you were supposed to go somewhere to do something and you didn’t want to go, but you would get into trouble if you didn’t go, what would you do?”
“Depends what it was and what sort of trouble I would get into, I suppose,” I said.
I looked across the darkened room at him. I could just make out his shape. He was lying on his back in bed, one hand up behind his head, the other twisting a corner of his sheet into a knot.
“You’re not talking about not wanting to come here, are you?” I asked. “Because Dad’s already said you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“Course not,” muttered Wills.
“Are you still worried about the tournament, then?” I tried.
“Who says I’m talking about me?” said Wills. “Anyway, why wouldn’t I want to play in the tournament?”
I was dumbfounded by how easily Wills could forget things, or just push them out of his mind.
“I just thought you might be worrying about your—well, you know, like you said, about how you get a bit carried away sometimes and not wanting to let Mom and Dad down and all that,” I said nervously.
“You mean my ‘Acts Dumb and Dumber,’ as you so nicely put it,” Wills hissed.
I shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Wills. “I expect the person I’m talking about will sort it out himself.”
He went quiet, but he began to toss around in his bed again, and I was wide awake lying there listening to him. I knew he was wide awake too because there were no hippo snorts.
“Wills,” I said.
“What now?” he replied.
“You know those friends of yours—the ginger one and the dark-haired one?”
There was a silence before he said, “What about them?”
; “Are they all right with you?” I ventured.
“What do you mean ‘all right with me’?”
“Well, they are nice to you, aren’t they?”
“That’s a stupid question, isn’t it?” said Wills sharply. “Course they’re all right with me, they’re my friends, aren’t they?”
“They don’t seem very friendly to me,” I said.
“Well, they’re not your friends, are they?” Wills chuckled. “They look out for me though.”
“Aren’t they a bit old for you?”
“You sound like Mom. That’s the sort of thing she would say. Anyway, all the kids my age are scaredy cat babies—especially the ones at school—and they don’t like me because I’m not in the same year as them.”
“Don’t your friends boss you around cuz they’re older?” I wanted to know.
“Nobody bosses Wills around,” said Wills, talking like he had just come out of a Western film. “Anyway, what do you care?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t really,” I said. “I just wondered.”‘
“I do what I want to do, and if I don’t want to do it, I don’t do it. Now shut up and go to sleep, will you.”
Wills turned away from me to terminate the conversation, and I was left to wonder about what he had gone on about in the first place.
Chapter Sixteen
I went to the library during the week. I wanted to talk to Penny about how I was feeling about playing in the tournament. The final practice had been awesome. Clingon had said lots of things to me about how I was now his first choice of reserve and that I had a good attitude and how, miraculously, one of my two left feet had turned out all right. The more he praised me, the more I wanted to play, but I still wasn’t comfortable being on the court when Wills was on the team, and Wills had knuckled under and was behaving himself, so he was never going to be dropped. Anyway, he was easily the best and I didn’t want him to be dropped.
“There’s no point in worrying about it,” Penny said. “If you want to play, you’ll have to leave it to your coach to decide when he puts you in, and if Wills is there at the same time you’ll have to make the most of it.”
I knew she was right. The only way I could avoid playing with Wills was if I didn’t play at all, and I wasn’t going to drop out now.
“Surely it can’t be that bad,” Penny continued. “He can’t do much with your coach watching. From what you’ve said, your coach won’t take any nonsense from him.”
“He makes me feel as if I’m bad.”
“But you know you’re not bad,” said Penny. “You’ve just told me.”
“He doesn’t pass to me unless he has to.” It sounded a bit pathetic.
“Everyone else will pass to you.”
Perhaps it was all in my mind. Perhaps I just felt overshadowed by Wills because he was so good.
“You’ll be fine,” smiled Penny, “if I know anything about anything.”
I sat down to do my math and English homework, while Penny went off to catalog a pile of new books. I started with math to get it out of the way. The first five questions were easy, but I was stuck on question six when I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned in the direction of the windows. I couldn’t see anything through them, because the lower halves had that sort of frosted glass you see in bathrooms. I stared back down at my work, but another movement made me look around again. There was nothing there.
And then a hand popped up above the frosted glass and waggled its fingers, before disappearing. I waited. A few seconds later it happened again. Jack, I thought, playing silly games. I stood up and was about to walk over to the window, when four hands popped up and waggled their fingers.
Jack and a friend? He knew I didn’t want him to tell anyone else about my hiding place. I would be livid with him if he had. The hands disappeared again. Perhaps it wasn’t Jack at all. It was probably just kids messing around. I sat down once more and tried to concentrate on question six.
A few moments passed before I was aware of another movement, but this time it was at the library door. I looked up, half expecting to see Jack after all, and ready to tell him off if he was with somebody else.
It wasn’t Jack. It was Wills’s friends. They were sneaking in and heading around the shelves in my direction, while Penny was out back unaware that anything was going on.
I thrust my math book in front of my face, praying that they hadn’t seen me. Of course they had. That’s why they were there. They sat down on the other side of the table and the ginger one pulled the book away from my face.
“Well, if it isn’t Big Willy’s little brother,” he grinned.
“Did you like our puppet show?” smirked the dark-haired one.
“Better than math homework,” said the ginger one.
I looked beyond them in the hope that Penny would appear.
“Where is Big Willy today, anyway?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “How should I know?” I muttered.
“Bit of a liability, your brother, isn’t he?” the dark-haired one smirked.
“Bit of a nut,” added the other.
“Cracks us up though,” they both cackled.
If they thought I was going to agree with them, they’d have to wait a very long time.
“Let us down badly last weekend, he did,” said the ginger one. “Had it all set up to give him a good time and what happens? He doesn’t show.”
“Maybe he had better things to do,” I muttered.
“Better than being with his friends when they’ve got such big plans for him?”
“I’m trying to work,” I said.
“Yeah, Big Willy says you’re a bit of a nerd.”
Just then Penny came out from the back room and glanced over in my direction. Wills’s friends looked at her and she came toward us.
“Friends of yours, Chris?” she said. “New customers for me?”
I didn’t know what to say, but one of Wills’s friends looked her up and down and said, “I wouldn’t mind checking books out from you, darling.”
The smile on Penny’s face snapped shut. She looked questioningly at me and I dropped my eyes in embarrassment.
“Would you like to leave my library now?” she ordered.
“We haven’t finished here yet.”
“We need to find a book on the mating habits of sea lions.”
“Yeah. No blubbering, Chris.”
They started laughing as if they had cracked the greatest joke in the world. I wanted to smack the silly grins off their faces; instead I sat there feeling useless.
“I asked you to leave,” said Penny calmly.
“What if we don’t want to?”
“Then I will call the police.”
“But we ain’t done nothing.”
“I’m not arguing,” said Penny. “Are you going to leave, or am I going to have you thrown out?”
Just then a man walked in carrying a bundle of books under his arm. He looked across at us and waved at Penny.
“Good afternoon, Penny,” he said and pointed to the books. “I’ll leave them on the counter, okay, while I choose something else?”
“Of course, Mr. Clayton,” she replied. “I’ll be with you right away.”
“Nice to see some youngsters in here,” he said. “Catch the reading habit early.”
“Nice to see some seniors in here,” smirked the ginger one. “Keep them off the streets.”
They howled with laughter again. Penny was furious. She turned in the direction of the telephone and was about to pick it up, when they both stood up.
“Nice to meet you, Penny,” the dark-haired one said. “We’ve taken up enough of your time.”
And then, as they approached the door, he continued, “Don’t worry though, we’ll be back.”
They turned and skipped out, leaping up to waggle their fingers above the frosted glass as they went. I breathed a sigh of relief, but my chest was still pounding.
“Are you all ri
ght?” Penny asked. I nodded.
“Who were they?”
“Wills’s friends.”
“I thought so,” said Penny. “Nice choice.”
She went off to serve Mr. Clayton, who observed that they weren’t her usual sort of customer, and to make a cup of tea. While she was away, I realized that my hiding place had been discovered, that I had become a problem for Penny, and that I would never be able to go there again. However much Penny reassured me that she would deal with it if Wills’s friends ever came back, I would never be able to relax, and neither would she.
Chapter Seventeen
The rest of the week was agony before the Saturday of the tournament arrived. I wandered the streets after school, rather than go home and risk being stuck on my own with Wills. I didn’t want to see him. He might not have been in the library that day, but what had happened was still his fault. They were his friends. Wills didn’t say anything about it, but I was sure his friends would have enjoyed telling him that they had found me studying IN THE LIBRARY and what a complete dork that made me. Mom kept asking me what was wrong and why was I so grumpy, but I just shrugged my shoulders and said it was nothing, so she gave up in the end.
The only way I could do my homework was if I shut myself up in my room and turned on my music. Even then I could still hear Mom arguing with Wills about not doing his work, about complaints from school, about staying out, about swearing, about having the television on too loud, about dribbling and slamming and dunking anything he could lay his hands on. You’d think I would be used to it, but you try blocking out a hurricane, especially if you’re worried someone is getting hurt in it, or if you’re expecting your door to come crashing in at any moment.
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