Jodie marched over to where I was sitting and grabbed me by the ear. “Garden. Now,” she yelled, then she yanked me off the sofa with one painful tug.
Out in the garden, we could still hear the muffled sounds of everyone arguing inside. Jodie wagged an angry finger at me. “Joke’s over, Beaky. Enough’s enough. Go back to normal – or whatever passed for normal for you, at least.”
“I keep telling you, I can’t,” I protested. Why couldn’t she understand? “Do you think I’d be behaving like this on purpose? Do you think I want to be grounded for the rest of my life?”
“Yes,” Jodie said. She deflated a little. “Maybe. I mean … I don’t know.”
“I’m not making it up. The machine really did work,” I said, slumping down on to the back step and clutching my head in my hands. “Whoever Madame Shirley was, whatever her box did to me, I can’t lie. And that’s the truth.”
“Then just keep your mouth shut,” Jodie said, sighing. “Don’t say anything and maybe we’ll get through the weekend without—”
“I’ve tried that!” I yelped, leaping to my feet. “I didn’t mean to say any of that stuff in there, but my lips wouldn’t stop moving!”
“Well, then, go to bed or something,” Jodie said. “But you’re sleeping on the floor tonight,” she added quickly.
She put her hand on the door handle and took a deep breath. Silence had fallen in the house. Who knew what awaited us inside?
“Here goes,” Jodie said, and she opened the door.
When we returned to the living room, Aunt Jas and her family were nowhere to be seen. Dad was sitting at the dining table, scoring through the pages of his notebook with a red pen. Mum, meanwhile, was fluffing up the sofa cushions with a level of violence usually reserved for professional boxing matches.
“Where is everyone?” Jodie asked.
“Bed,” said Mum, not looking at us.
“It’s barely nine o’clock,” I said, but Mum just shot me a glare. “I mean … I think I’ll go to bed now, too.”
“You’re not in Jodie’s room tonight,” said Mum, her voice clipped and hard. “You’re back in your own room.”
“That’s great!” I said, more cheerfully than was probably good for me.
“With Steve, Sophie and Max,” Mum added.
I felt my face fall. “What?”
“Jas is going in with Jodie tonight, so you’re with Steve and your cousins.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Jodie dug an elbow into my ribs. “Goodnight, Beaky,” she said, in a voice that was almost a growl.
I looked at Jodie. I looked at Mum. I looked at the door leading out into the hall. There was no point fighting it.
“Goodnight, everyone,” I mumbled, and I trudged towards the door. Before I could reach it though, Mum stopped me.
“What were you thinking, Dylan?” she snapped. “Saying all that horrible stuff about everyone?”
“I couldn’t help it,” I said. “Besides, it’s not like everyone else hasn’t said it before, is it?”
“But not to their faces!” Dad said in a loud whisper.
I frowned. “How is that better?” I asked.
The room fell silent. Mum and Dad exchanged a glance, then shifted uncomfortably.
“Go to bed, Dylan,” said Mum, and I was relieved to do just that.
The good news was that I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. The bad news was, I barely slept at all.
For the first few hours I lay on my top bunk, listening to Max playing on Steve’s phone and talking non-stop about the many ways to die in whatever game he was playing.
Eventually they all fell asleep, and the bleeping was replaced by the sounds of Steve rolling about and muttering in his sleep in the bunk below. He’s not the chattiest guy in the world when he’s awake, but when he’s sleeping he doesn’t shut up!
Max and Sophie were in sleeping bags on the floor, and Max spent the night farting. Seriously, I was sure the room was slowly filling up with a green haze as he trumped and parped the whole night through.
At one point I looked over the side of the bed and saw Sophie lying on her back, staring up at me. At first, I thought she was wide awake, but soon realized she was sleeping with her eyes open, like some sort of demon vampire child.
Add to the muttering, wind-breaking and creepy staring the fact that the overhead light was on because Max couldn’t sleep in the dark, and it made for what was probably the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had.
As soon as the sun popped its head over the horizon, I quietly clambered down the ladder and tiptoed past my sleeping cousins.
Out in the hall, I drew in a few deep breaths, clearing my lungs of Max’s toxic gas, then headed downstairs for an early breakfast. Having a bit of time before the rest of the family got up would give me a chance to test if my ability to lie had come back. If it hadn’t, I’d also have time to cry uncontrollably for a good hour or so before anyone else woke up.
Or so I thought.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, gently closing the living-room door behind me.
Jodie looked up from the table at the far end of the room and swallowed a mouthful of cornflakes. “Eating breakfast. What does it look like?”
What it looked like was some kind of ghostly apparition. Jodie’s hair was a tangled rat’s nest and her face was as pale as the milk in her bowl. Her eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles round them.
I cleared my throat. Now was my chance to lie. I’d tell her how good she looked and – boom! – Beaky Malone would be back in the game.
“You look like a zombie panda,” I said.
Clearly not back in the game yet, then…
“Is it any wonder?” Jodie snapped. “I was stuck sleeping on the floor again.”
“I bet you slept better than I did,” I muttered, grabbing a bowl and taking a seat across from her.
Under the table, Destructo gave a grunt, licked my foot once, then went back to sleep.
I tipped some cereal into the bowl, then sloshed on some milk. “How were Mum and Dad after I went to bed?” I asked.
“Not happy.”
I crunched on the cornflakes. “How not happy?”
“Very not happy.”
“Grounded not happy?”
“Grounded for a month not happy.”
I swallowed the cereal. “But it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it,” I protested. “We have to make them believe us about the machine.”
Jodie shook her head. “They weren’t buying it. I tried, Beaky, but we’re on our own.”
“We should go and look for the shop today,” I suggested. “I can’t go through school tomorrow telling the truth all the time. I’ll be killed.”
Jodie swirled her cereal with her spoon. “We could do that. We definitely could do that, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or we could just enjoy it for a bit.”
I gaped at her. “Enjoy it? How can I enjoy it? It’s torture.”
“Oh no, I don’t mean for you to enjoy it,” Jodie grinned. She leaned closer to me across the table. “I mean me. Lying awake all night gives you plenty of time to think, and what I thought was, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to embarrass Beaky as much as he’s embarrassed me over the years?’”
She leaned back again, but her grin stayed fixed in place. “Like the time you announced on the radio that I liked to eat from the bins. Or the time you phoned the school and told the office to put out an announcement that I had to go home and collect my incontinence pants.”
Despite everything, I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yeah, that was good.”
“Not for me, it wasn’t,” Jodie scowled. “So, like I say, I think we should take some time to enjoy this new direction of yours.”
She reached across the table to where Dad had abandoned his notebook and pen, then flipped to a new page.
“Now, where shall we start?” she wondered out loud. “Any embarrassing secrets, Beaky?”
I
fought against it, but the word forced its way out. “Loads.”
Jodie’s eyes lit up. “Aha!” She clicked the button that made the point of the pen pop out. “Begin.”
“N-no,” I stammered, but I could already tell I was fighting a losing battle.
I tried to get up from the table, but Jodie clamped a hand on my arm. She stared at me, the pen hovering over the empty page. My jaw ached from trying to keep my mouth shut. I felt the words well up inside me like a bubble.
“I’m terrified of kittens, I’m the one who made that big dent in the car last month, and I quite fancy Miss Gavistock the dinner lady.”
Jodie guffawed with laughter. “Excellent. Anything else?”
My tongue wrestled with the word, trying to pin it down, but the need to tell the truth was too great. “Yes!”
“Great! Go on, then…”
Before I could reply, there was a sound from the front door. We both looked round in time to see the letterbox opening and the end of a rolled-up newspaper being shoved through. It was a Sunday paper and the thick supplements made the whole thing get jammed halfway through the slot.
“Paperboy,” I said, then I felt my pulse quicken. The paperboy! Yes! This could be my escape.
Leaping up from the table, I raced to the door and yanked it open. A lanky teenage boy drew back in surprise at the sight of me smiling broadly at him in my pyjamas.
“Uh, hi,” he muttered.
“Hello!” I beamed, turning just in time to see Jodie throw herself to the floor behind the sofa. “It’s Adam, isn’t it?” I said.
Adam nodded. “That’s right. You’re Jodie’s brother, Beaky, aren’t you?”
“Bingo! Got it in one,” I said. I raised my voice, making sure Jodie heard. “Did you know that my sister has a massive crush on you?”
From behind the sofa, I heard Jodie give a sharp intake of breath.
“Uh, no. I didn’t know that,” Adam said.
“Oh, well, she very much does,” I said. “She has a top-five list of boys she likes, and you, Adam, are in a very respectable third place. She’s even written your name and hers together in a big heart and coloured it in. It’s in her homework diary. It’s really quite artistic.”
Adam didn’t seem to know what to do with this information. He blushed slightly and smiled at the same time. “Um, that’s cool.”
“Would you like to know who else is on the list?” I asked, before Jodie slammed into me at high speed, knocking me to the ground.
I squirmed and struggled, but Jodie was on top of me, pinning me down with one hand while clamping the other over my mouth. With her crazy hair and bloodshot eyes she looked like some sort of wild jungle woman. Adam’s jaw dropped as he caught sight of her.
“Ignore him,” Jodie said to Adam, then she glanced down at her pyjamas, remembering the state she was in. She hooked the door with her foot. “I’m not looking my best,” she said, then she slammed the door in Adam’s face.
A moment later, the newspaper plopped on to the mat. Jodie waited until she heard the gate close, then turned to me, eyes blazing.
“You read my diary,” she growled.
“I didn’t,” I said, in all honesty. That took her by surprise. She searched my face. “You’re lying.”
“I can’t lie, remember?” I said. “I technically have not read a single page of your diary, I promise.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, technically?”
“I photocopied it,” I explained. “And then I read that. Twice.”
I braced myself, waiting for her to slap, punch, twist, nip or gouge at some part of me. Instead, she just stared at me in horror, then jumped up and ran out of the room. A moment later, I heard the bathroom door slam shut upstairs.
Standing, I dusted myself down, then went back to the dining table to finish my breakfast. “That showed her,” I said, stuffing cereal into my mouth.
Jodie completely deserved her humiliation. She had been gathering ammunition to do even worse to me. So why did I feel so bad? Had she just hit me, that would have been fine, but she’d seemed more upset than angry as she’d legged it out of the room.
Swallowing the cereal, I pushed the bowl away and went to check on her. Climbing the stairs, I tapped gently on the bathroom door. “Jodie? Are you OK?”
“Go away, Beaky,” came her voice from the other side of the door.
“I’m worried about you,” I said, then added, “also, I’d like you to get out of the bathroom so I can have a quick poo before anyone else wakes up.”
“What’s going on?” asked Aunt Jas, appearing on the landing behind me.
Drat. So much for my poo plan.
“It’s Jodie. She’s locked herself in the bathroom,” I explained.
Aunt Jas scratched her head. Only one of her eyes seemed to be working. I guessed she wasn’t used to 6 a.m. wake-up calls. “Why has she done that?”
“Because Beaky has ruined my life,” said Jodie through the door.
“She’s exaggerating,” I said. “All I did was tell a boy that she has a crush on him and four other boys in school, then reveal that I photocopied her diary and read it all twice. She’s completely overreacting.”
Mum staggered out of her bedroom. “What’s going on? What time is it?”
“Jodie’s locked herself in the bathroom,” Aunt Jas said. “Dylan’s ruined her life, apparently.”
“And he dented the car last month,” added the voice from the bathroom.
“He did what?”
“Morning, Mum,” I said cheerfully. “Sleep well?”
It was clear from the way Mum glared at me that she still wasn’t happy. She pushed past me and tried the bathroom door handle. “OK, Jodie, open up,” she said. “I need to use the bathroom.”
“He made me look like an idiot in front of Adam,” Jodie said.
Mum turned to me. “Which one’s Adam?” she asked.
“The paperboy.”
Mum rolled her eyes. “Not the skinny one with the teeth?” she whispered. “Oh, who cares what he thinks, sweetheart?” she said, raising her voice. “There are plenty more fish in the sea.”
“You’ve got at least four of them on your list,” I added, trying to be helpful.
The door flew open and Jodie dived at me. I yelped and dodged out of her path, then made a run for my bedroom.
“Get back here, Beaky,” Jodie shouted, grabbing at me. “I’m going to kill you!”
Reaching my room, I pulled open the door, only to find Sophie standing on the other side, staring. The sound that escaped my lips was a high-pitched squeal of shock, but it soon turned into a cry of pain as Jodie slammed into me for the second time that day, pinning me to the floor.
Aunt Jas and Mum watched as Jodie pinched, nipped and jabbed at me.
“Should we help him?” Jas asked.
Mum yawned and shrugged. “Nah. They do this a lot.”
They watched us for a little while longer. “Fair enough,” said Jas, as Jodie pulled my ear with one hand while twisting my nose with the other. “In that case, I’ll stick the kettle on.”
Theo looked at Jodie. He looked at me. He looked back at Jodie again.
“Sorry, I’m still not getting it,” he said, shaking his head. “What happened?”
Jodie sighed. We were halfway up a tall flight of wooden steps at the high-wire adventure centre, waiting for our turn. You could see the car park from up here. I could just make out Destructo in the back seat of our car. Aunt Jas had refused to let him into hers again, and we didn’t dare risk leaving him in the house by himself, so we’d had to take both cars to stop him eating the telly.
The rest of the family were playing it safe on the kid-friendly course, leaving Jodie and me to tackle the big one.
Under orders from Jodie, I’d texted Theo before we’d left home and told him to meet us at the centre. After what had happened with Adam, Jodie wanted me back to normal fast, and she thought Theo might be able to help.
&nbs
p; She explained everything again, from Madame Shirley’s shop right up to the present (although she did miss out the bit with Adam, I noticed). The more she spoke, the more Theo’s frown deepened.
“So … what are you saying?” Theo asked, when Jodie had finished. “That Beaky can’t tell a lie?”
“Good grief,” Jodie sighed. “Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“I told you that by text yesterday,” I reminded him. “You called me a weirdo!”
The queue moved up a step and we all did the same. Theo looked me up and down. “Nah,” he said.
“It’s true!” Jodie protested. “Ask him a question. Anything. Ask him anything.”
Theo thought. “What’s seven times four?” he said.
Jodie rolled her eyes. “Not that sort of question!”
“You said ask him anything,” Theo grumbled.
The queue moved again. There were only six people between us and the top now.
“Ask him about something he’s done or, I don’t know, a secret or something. Not the times table.”
Theo thought again, more carefully this time. He glanced nervously at Jodie before asking his question. “Were you really asked to go to the North Pole?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Does jam really make dogs explode?”
“No.”
“Do you really fancy Miss Gavistock from the canteen?”
“Yes,” I confessed. “That woman’s an angel.”
Jodie smiled triumphantly. “Is that evidence enough?”
“Well, no, not really,” Theo said. “You could both still be winding me up. But I can’t think of anything else to ask, so I’ll take your word for it.”
World's Greatest Liar Page 6