Itch

by Simon Mayo

  ‘It seems last night’s bang has affected your ears as well as your eyebrows,’ Jude said.

  Chloe sniggered. Itch shot her a ‘thanks for nothing’ glance.

  ‘OK, fair enough. I agree,’ he said, slightly too quickly. Such was his relief that he then gave the game away completely by trying to give his mother a kiss on the cheek. She was unprepared for this and moved her head away so that Itch ended up half kissing the air where his mother had been. Displays of affection when their father wasn’t there were rare in the Lofte house, and this attempt at one left both mother and son slightly embarrassed and feeling awkward.

  Jude covered the difficult silence by putting on the radio. The kettle boiled and she made another mug of tea. She sat down at the table and blew on it. Itch was about to explain how pointless that was and how it would never lower the temperature of the tea unless she blew continuously for twenty minutes, when again he checked himself and said nothing. Chloe continued to eat her breakfast. Jude sipped her still very hot tea and looked up at her son.

  ‘Please, Itch – nothing dangerous. You got away with it this time. Just stick to rocks that don’t blow up, OK?’ She sounded genuinely concerned.

  Itch, taken aback, agreed. ‘OK, just the safe stuff, Mum – promise.’

  She managed a half-smile and started to clear the dishes.

  It was then that Itch remembered the arsenic.

  2

  THIS WASN’T A good start for the new ‘nothing dangerous’ regime. Itch’s arsenic was contained in a recently acquired piece of green leaf-patterned wallpaper. The guy who sold it to him had explained that in the nineteenth century arsenic had been used as a dye; it had been called ‘Paris Green’ and was considered the best green pigment it was possible to buy.

  After breakfast Itch went back to his room to get his school rucksack – somehow it had survived the explosion of the night before. He blew some ash from the strap and dusted off the rest. When he returned from school he would begin the transfer of his collection, his ‘kit’ and his books to the shed, but in the meantime he had to decide what to do with his more dangerous items. Personally Itch didn’t think they were dangerous at all, as long as you didn’t try to eat them or set fire to them, but he knew his mum would not agree.

  Under the new closer-inspection regime, these items might not survive. He had always kept the riskiest elements of his collection out of sight. In his bedroom ceiling was a small recessed square of wood which, when pushed up, gave access to the loft and the water tanks. One of the first things he had done after they moved into this house was to write ITCH’S LOFT! in biro on its white paint. It had made his father laugh, and he was still proud of the joke. Standing on a chair, he eased the plywood cover back into the darkness. His hands quickly found the packages he was looking for and he eased them out. They were dusty, damp and, Itch thought, smelled of garlic. One was a large A3 envelope, which he folded in half; one was a jiffy bag and the other was a small, tightly wound plastic bag with a rubber band round it. He placed them all at the bottom of his rucksack, his school books going on top. For the moment they’d be safer with him.

  Itch was now walking the mile to school with Chloe, an envelope stuffed with the arsenic wallpaper, a matchbox with a teaspoon of gunpowder in it, and two radioactive clock hands in a jiffy bag. These hands had apparently been painted with radium in order to make them luminous. Itch had bought them from a mineral seller he had first met at a Surfers Against Sewage fair in St Austell that Jack had taken him to.

  The mineral seller had said his name was Cake. Just Cake – no first name. Or was that his first name? Itch wasn’t sure. He had wanted the gunpowder because it had sulphur in it and he hadn’t collected any of that yet. And gunpowder sounded cool. The clock hands looked dull, but the fact that they were painted with radium made them his first radioactive acquisition. The arsenic wall paper was, apparently, rare, and Itch had been told that he should buy some while he could. The whole lot had cost him sixty pounds in total, which was all his savings.

  As they walked down the hill towards the golf course and the sea, Chloe said, ‘You know that people will notice your face.’

  ‘Your friends might, but the kids in my class won’t,’ said Itch. ‘Boys don’t look at eyebrows very much.’

  ‘But your face looks all weird now; of course they’ll notice,’ Chloe replied. ‘Any fool would notice.’

  ‘Not the fools in my class, Chloe, trust me. Unless Potts, Paul and Campbell spot it, of course – in which case I won’t hear the end of it.’

  James Potts, Bruno Paul and Darcy Campbell were the main Itch-baiters in the school. They thought that Itch’s dislike of sport was proof of his weirdness. Of course, they were the sportiest pupils in the school and liked everyone to know it. It seemed to infuriate them that Itch had no desire to be like them, and for that reason alone they had decided to make his life difficult. Chloe was included in this just for being his sister, and even their cousin Jack, who was in Itch’s class, got some stick. It had been Darcy who had first used the ‘Itchy and Scratchy’ line that was now in common usage across the school. Even Mrs Tooley in Year Seven English had been heard to use it. Other nicknames had come and gone; ‘Snitch’ and ‘Lofty’ had lasted longest. Eventually they petered out; most of the pupils just ignored Itch, so they had no reason to call him anything at all.

  The golf course sat in the middle of the town, with most of the houses further up the hill to the north. If they were early enough, Itch and Chloe could get across the course without being shouted at. Walking around it added another fifteen minutes, and they were cutting it fine as it was. The almost new Cornwall Academy lay at the southern end of the town, beyond the shops.

  It had previously been called Pitcowenn Secondary – which was generally declared to be rubbish – and had now been turned into a swanky academy. Clearly a lot of money had been spent: all the buildings were new and full of top-of-the-range equipment. Only the main hall of the old school had been deemed good enough to survive the upgrade. The school had been designated a ‘Science Academy’ and attracted many sponsors: charities, eminent scientists and a global oil company. The academy logo proclaimed: Together. Inspired. No one seemed quite sure what it meant.

  Chloe and Itch turned off the golf course and headed down the high street. Most of the shops were still shut, with only the newsagent’s and two cafés open. Many of the tourist shops hadn’t bothered opening since last October, but with summer only a few weeks away they were showing signs of life, with coats of paint and new surfing-gear displays.

  ‘What was that bang last night anyway?’ asked Chloe. ‘I thought you’d blown yourself up.’

  ‘Only a little phosphorus. Well, a little too much phosphorus actually,’ said Itch, rubbing the place where his eyebrows had been.

  Chloe looked up at her brother. Like all Loftes, she was tall for her age, but she was still nine inches shorter than Itch. She had short pixie-like brown hair but the same blue-green eyes as him.

  ‘You could borrow some mascara.’ She started rummaging in her bag, but Itch stopped her.

  ‘That’s the most stupid thing you’ve ever said. I might get away with no eyebrows – but painted ones? Are you mad? And since when did you wear mascara?’

  Chloe shrugged and stopped looking. ‘You’re going to have to stop drawing attention to yourself at home, you know,’ she said.

  Itch sighed. ‘I know, I know. I need to only do the quiet stuff for a while. At least I’m in the shed now. Mum will forget I even exist.’

  Chloe laughed. He had a point. Their mum’s work as a solicitor kept her out of the house till late most nights, and if Itch spent the weekend in the shed, he would, to all intents and purposes, disappear completely from her life.

  Chloe ran off as they entered the school reception area, and Itch made his way down the corridor. It was the week before the May half term and much of the academy seemed to be in a frenzy of exam preparation. There were timetables everywhere,
with last-minute revision sessions advertised on every notice board. None of this affected Itch yet, of course – he was a year away from his first GCSEs – but he sensed the tension that kicks in with the dreaded exam season. He peered into Chloe’s classroom as he went past and saw that she was chatting happily to a group of friends. Chloe found the friends thing a whole lot easier than Itch did, but he was pleased she had settled in at the academy in her first year. He walked on past the other form rooms, turned the corner by the science block, with its familiar aromas of gas, floor cleaner and the unquantifiable smell of a thousand different experiments. He turned left again and came to his form room. He paused, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He always had a shot of nerves before he walked into the classroom, but today was worse. He opened his eyes, pulled some hair forward to where his eyebrows had been and went in.

  ‘Hey, Itch, come and have a look at this.’

  He relaxed. It was his cousin Jack, the best thing that had happened to him in all his time at the academy. Jack was short for Jacqueline, and she was tall, like all the Loftes, with short, straight jet-black hair cut with a fringe. She had lived in Cornwall all her life as her parents ran a couple of guest houses. She sat with Itch when classes allowed. They had barely known each other till Itch’s family had moved down from London, but now she was his constant companion.

  Itch had loved the fact that Jack seemed to accept him as he was and didn’t expect or want him to change. For her part, Jack had always wanted a brother or sister and couldn’t believe her luck when the ‘slightly odd cousin’ she had heard about but barely met, turned out to be a whole lot more interesting than most of her school friends. She was happy to have an almost-brother round the corner. Her father, Jon, and mother, Zoe, had helped them all move into their new house and then shown Itch, Chloe and their elder brother, Gabriel, around the town.

  With Jack in the same class, Itch could stop trying to make friends. In his first weeks at the academy he had really made an effort. He’d laughed at everyone’s jokes, joined the science club and hung around after school. But the only person who was ever pleased to see him was Jack. She realized that Itch was a little different, but she was happy to tolerate that. When Itch started to tell her about the chemical composition of her Twix or why her apple was turning brown, she would just flick his ear or poke him with a pencil.

  ‘Don’t be boring, Itch, or I’ll tell you more about Hollyoaks.’ This mention of Jack’s favourite TV show was usually enough to stop him in his tracks.

  Itch went over to Jack’s desk, and was about to throw his bag down when he remembered what was in it and placed it rather more carefully on a chair.

  Jack waved a magazine at him; it was a surfing publication called UP. ‘Latest one,’ she told him. ‘It’s got the new suits in. Check out the O’Neill Psychofreak. It says it’s their warmest and most flexible wetsuit ever.’

  Itch looked at the windswept and tanned male model who was showing off the Psychofreak. ‘Looks great, but the price doesn’t.’ At £290 it was so out of his price range Itch didn’t really want to read about how brilliant it was. Surfing was more Jack and Chloe’s thing anyway. ‘I’ll make do with Gabriel’s old one for another year, I suppose. No one’s expecting me to be the best-dressed guy on the beach, are they?’ His brother’s wetsuit had been his for two years now; it had once been ridiculously big, but was now eye-wateringly tight. He’d like a new one, of course, but all his money was going on element hunting. There was also the small matter of not being very good at surfing. Try as he might – and Jack was always attempting to give him lessons – when a wave came, he could be relied upon to miss it.

  ‘Time for a surf after school?’ asked Jack. ‘Surf’s about right at four.’

  ‘Thanks, Jack, but Mum’s told me I’ve got to move all my rocks and stuff out of my room. Had – erm … a little accident last night.’

  ‘Did it by any chance involve a flash big enough for you to lose your eyebrows?’ She smiled and turned away to speak to some other classmates.

  So Chloe was right, Itch thought – it was noticeable, but he still reckoned the boys would have no idea.

  By now most of the class were in, the last two arrivals being Tom Westgate and James Potts. Tom tolerated Itch, but James Potts most definitely did not. Shorter than most of the class, he was nevertheless faster and stronger. He wore trainers with everything and boasted that he had an illegal tattoo ‘somewhere really exotic’, though no one had ever seen it and many doubted it existed at all. His fellow sports geeks and Lofte-baiters, Darcy Campbell and Bruno Paul, were in the other Year Nine class. Two or three times a day they were in the same classroom with Itch, and unless there was some big sports event to discuss, their attention would normally turn to making Itch’s life as difficult as possible.

  Their form teacher, John Watkins, hurried in, bags, books and files piled precariously in front of him and a briefcase somehow hooked around his fingers. As usual, he looked as though he had dressed in the dark – orange trousers and a green shirt with permanent sweat stains under the arms. The smell of tobacco suggested that he had enjoyed one last hasty fag before entering the fray of another day as form teacher of 9W at the Cornwall Academy.

  He let everything topple out of his arms and onto his desk, where the bags, books and files formed an unsteady pile. Mr Watkins glanced at it long enough to make sure it wasn’t about to slide off onto the floor, then turned and smiled at his class. ‘Morning, boys – let’s begin.’

  Form 9W had given up pointing out that the class was more than fifty per cent girls and just accepted that by ‘boys’ he meant everyone. Mr Watkins had come from an all-boys school in Edinburgh five years ago, and he was clearly not about to change the way he spoke to a class. He was overweight, permanently sweating and always bustling everywhere at full speed. He was head of geography and geology at the academy and one of the most popular teachers they had. His stories were legendary, and many a class would begin or end with a thrilling tale of flooding, earthquakes or riots.

  ‘All present? Excellent! A good weekend, I trust? Splendid! Who wants to get me a tea? Sam, be a love – one sugar, thanks.’

  Sam Jennings, who usually sat near the front of every class, rose wearily from her seat to perform the ritual that was a normal part of every morning with Mr Watkins. He always had his own kettle and weird tea bags at the front of the class.

  ‘A reminder from our new friend, Dr Flowerdew, and our colleagues in the science department that biology today is in the greenhouse – you may take bottles of water with you. Some clowns last year thought they wouldn’t need any and fainted on a cactus or something unpleasant. It’s hot and steamy in there – you can get some water at lunch. Ah, Sam! A lovely brew, thank you.’

  Sam Jennings shrugged and sat down again while Mr Watkins took registration with his usual speed.

  The first two periods for Itch were history and English, which he drifted through without having to concentrate much. More Tudors, more Animal Farm.

  Itch struggled in most subjects and only really engaged with any lessons when it came to science. The biology session in the greenhouse was intriguing; they hadn’t had any lessons there before. But first he had double maths and lunch to endure. Lunch would be tough today because Jack was busy with friends and Chloe had a choir rehearsal. Whenever this happened, he ate on his own and then went somewhere the Itch-baiters wouldn’t find him – usually the library.

  He met Jack just before biology. His cousin already had two bottles of water with her; she handed him one.

  ‘Thought you might forget,’ she said as they started to walk round the outside of the school, between the playing fields and the language labs and then past the old school hall. The greenhouse had been part of the rebuilding when the school became an academy, and it featured prominently on the website. The school was very proud of their greenhouse. ‘Didn’t see you at lunch,’ Jack continued. ‘My mates had to go early – roped into sorting out tickets for some s
chool-band concert after half term – so I looked for you.’

  ‘Reading,’ said Itch.

  ‘With anyone?’

  ‘Well, there were other people there but I wasn’t with them, no.’

  Itch and Jack had got as far as the old hall when they heard the familiar cry of: ‘Weirdo cousins.’ It came from a trio of voices – Potts, Paul and Campbell. They had set the words to an R&B song that was all over the radio and TV, but singing wasn’t their strong point and it ended up sounding like a rowdy football chant. However, they were clearly enjoying themselves and continued the refrain all the way to the greenhouse. Itch and Jack walked on in silence, Itch with his head bowed and Jack looking away.

  During his first months at the CA, Itch had answered back, shouted back and rude-gestured back, but when he hooked up with Jack, she suggested ignoring them in the hope that they would get bored and pick on someone else. But it had just seemed to irritate them all the more. However, until a new strategy could be dreamed up, the ‘take no notice’ policy remained in place.

  As it turned out, Itch and Jack, Potts, Paul and Campbell and most of the rest of the Year Nine biology class all arrived at the greenhouse at the same time. It was an impressive structure, fully thirty metres long, ten metres wide and ten metres tall. The wood was painted white, and from a distance you could see assorted plants filling the interior, though up close the condensation made inspection difficult. A few cracked panes of glass remained from last year’s earthquake; the broken ones had been replaced. Small earthquakes were not uncommon in Cornwall, but Mr Watkins had told them that at 3.8 on the Richter Scale, it had been bigger than most.