Screw Loose

by Chris Wheat

  All afternoon he’d been daydreaming about this rendezvous, and in Maths his teacher had threatened him with watering pot plants after school. Of course Matilda had also asked about Arnold, his dog. Hopefully she wasn’t more interested in his dog than she was in him. But either way, he was lucky. Matilda Grey, Australia’s most famous teenage girl – a girl who’d been found living in the desert among dingoes – was hot for him.

  Craig smiled to himself and whistled very quietly as he sauntered across the oval towards the river, his bag over one shoulder, his basketball under his arm. They were going to make a film about Matilda, and there was already a book – and in Japan, a series of mangas. In the pet food aisle of the supermarket where he worked there was a shelf with hundreds of identical pictures of Matilda smiling from the labels of Dingoes’ Dinner. Her bright blue eyes sparkled cheekily from the label, and a bubble-caption rose from her mouth: Yum! It was one of the leading pet foods in Australia, and Matilda got royalties.

  He liked her a lot. She was very fit from years spent sprinting after cats and cars. Her voice was lower than most girls’, but it was quite soft and sexy; her hair was usually messy, but she was a natural blonde, so who cared about combs; her knees were scarred from crawling about in the desert with her mates, but she usually wore pants. A scarred, messy little blonde athlete – his kind of babe.

  He could see her in the distance as he wandered down one of the tracks that wound through the old gums to the riverbank. It was a lovely winter afternoon. She was lying in the sun on a little patch of grass, her school bag beside her and her eyes closed. It wasn’t that close to mating season, but he’d been invited to the river by a girl who maybe wanted to mate with him, alone, down here in the sun. Perfecto!

  She opened her eyes as he approached, then hoisted herself up on one elbow and turned her face to him, squinting into the light.

  ‘Howdy,’ he said. He wanted to kiss her but thought better of it.

  ‘Craig,’ she said, smiling at him. Then she flopped back and closed her eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Nice day for it.’

  She scratched herself. ‘Craig,’ she said. ‘You want to rub my stomach?’

  As soon as he’d arrived! This girl was obsessed with stomach rubbing. But hey, he could cope! He shouldn’t really do it. Matilda’s mother had warned him not to, even if she begged him. But her mum wasn’t around. Then he remembered his old man warning him that he’d have Craig’s gonads for breakfast if he didn’t respect Matilda. He wasn’t scared of his old man, but he listened to him.

  Matilda looked at him with one eye and smiled as he dropped down on his knees. The grass was thick and green and he could smell it as his knees crushed the stalks. He looked at her. On her forearm she’d drawn a little heart, and in it she’d written in her very bad handwriting: Rex 4eva. It didn’t worry him. He wasn’t the jealous kind.

  She grabbed his hand. ‘Put it there.’

  If that was what she wanted – and he did like the feel of her stomach. It was quite hard, but soft on the surface. He began to rub fairly gently, watching her face as he did so. She closed her eyes and lay back with a blissful look, her mouth a little open. He wouldn’t really admit it to anyone, but he found this a pretty big turn-on.

  Craig was a good skateboarder and not bad at basketball, but he had a few freckles and he was never sure whether girls actually liked freckles. Some girls seemed to, though; Chelsea Dean, for instance, and this one especially. He wasn’t that good at school stuff, but neither was Matilda – she was actually about the worst in Year 11. She could catch rabbits, though; and he could shoot baskets – they were pretty compatible.

  ‘Is that good?’ he asked, and his voice, he noticed, had become a little huskier.

  She made a noise in her throat which he knew was contentment and which was, he had to admit to himself, a bit like a growl. He liked those tiny growls. She was holding her hands up in the air, too, and they were now flopping at the wrist, which was quite attractive in its own way.

  ‘You know why I like you, Craig?’ She still had her eyes closed.

  He was starting to go all shaky and his heart was racing.

  ‘Rub in circles.’

  Sweat was forming on his forehead. ‘I don’t know. Why do you like me, Matilda?’

  ‘Because of how kind you are to Arnold. That’s one thing. And I like the way you go after the ball when you play basketball.’

  He felt a little embarrassed. Not many people ever told him he was good at stuff. ‘Whatever,’ he said and rubbed more vigorously.

  She laughed. ‘Sorry. I have to tell the truth. Now scratch just behind my ears at the same time.’

  What the heck. So he was a natural masseur. Get over it, Dad. Get over it, Mrs Grey. It was looking as if it might turn into quite a hot afternoon. Yeah. And anyway, if you didn’t jump into the water, you’d never learn to swim. He stopped rubbing her stomach.

  ‘No! Keep going. Both together: stomach and ears!’

  How to scratch behind her ear and rub her stomach simultaneously? That was like one of those things primary school teachers asked you to do to fill in time before the bell went. She was demanding. He leant over, hand behind the left ear, the other one on the stomach. She growled sweetly.

  ‘Craig, would you like to have babies?’

  His skin went tight. He wanted to say, Yes, baby, and see what happened next. And he also wanted to get the hell out of there.

  ‘Umm!’ he said, wondering what the smart thing to say was. Probably yes. But he didn’t. She was pretty weird. He needed to be careful here. ‘No way!’ he said firmly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m too young. We’re too young.’

  ‘Your sperms are high-speed when you’re young.’

  He stopped rubbing. Girls shouldn’t say words like sperms. It wasn’t nice. ‘You’re crazy, Matilda.’

  ‘I’d like to have about eight,’ she said, squinting up at the sky.

  Perhaps he should kiss her and shut her up. He leant down. ‘Craig,’ she said tenderly. ‘Stick your tongue in my ear.’

  Hell!

  ‘Go on!’

  He leant down and very gently licked her ear.

  She wriggled. ‘More!’

  He did it again. This was so mature. This was man’s work. Rub the stomach. Lick the ear. Rub the stomach. Lick the ear. If only the guys on the basketball team could see this! Or his best mate, Khiem – he’d be spewing.

  Suddenly a rustle in the trees behind them caused him to freeze with his tongue in her ear. A snake? He sat up fast. But it was winter. They’d be asleep.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked in a whisper.

  Matilda sat up, too. She was very still. Alert. She sniffed the air.

  ‘Something,’ she whispered. ‘Smells like female.’

  There was a snap and a crash and Craig jumped. A familiar voice exploded through the leaves. ‘Craig? Matilda! What in the world…?’

  Bloody Chelsea Dean! She emerged from the trees. The queen of the school. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked angrily. ‘Snooping as usual?’

  ‘Snoopity bitch!’ Matilda yelled.

  Chelsea looked mean. ‘I should throw a bucket of water over both of you!’ she announced.

  ‘What’s wrong with being down here? Why are you down here spying on us, anyway?’ He and Chelsea had a kind of love–hate relationship.

  ‘I’m surveying the bank to find a place for a boat ramp!’

  No way was Chelsea going to wreck his perfect afternoon. ‘Crap, Chelsea! Nick off, will you!’

  She looked around. ‘I’m starting a rowing club and we’ll need a boat ramp, won’t we.’ She gave Craig a major greasy and spoke quietly. ‘And what, pray tell, are you two doing?’

  ‘Just enjoying the sunshine,’ he said.

  Chelsea screamed with laughter. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  Matilda was starting to bare her teeth.

  �
��Matilda Grey, Craig is not your boyfriend and never will be.

  Why don’t you go home now. Scram, girl!’ Chelsea clapped her hands. Then she turned her eyes on him. She was a bit scary when she was mad. ‘Craig, you realise Matilda is carrying all sorts of diseases? And right now she’s almost certainly on heat.’

  Matilda growled, and Craig grabbed her.

  Chelsea stepped back against a tree, looking a little alarmed. ‘Matilda,’ she said quietly, ‘why don’t you just find something more appropriate to your real interests – what about a fox terrier?’

  Matilda stood up and growled again, more deeply this time. This was going to be one heck of a bitch fight.

  Realising that Matilda was about to attack, Chelsea started to back slowly away up the path, smiling uneasily at them both. She stumbled, and Matilda lunged. Craig grabbed for her. She struggled, but he had her around the waist.

  Chelsea screamed and fled.

  BAKLAVA

  ATTACK

  ZEYNEP YARKAN HAD finally convinced her mother to let her do all the family washing and ironing. With an angry shriek of defeat, her mother had declared: ‘You do all the washing forever, girl!’ and hurled a heap of sheets at Zeynep, leaving her daughter the smiling victor. Zeynep was overjoyed. At last the laundry belonged to her and all the washing, drying and ironing was hers forever.

  She loved the laundry dearly. It was the centre of her life now. She found it so much more satisfying to do her homework in there, although her brother, Mehmet, had stopped her moving the computer in. She’d asked her parents if she could move her bed in, but they had threatened to send her to Turkey to live with her grandmother if she made any more crazy requests. Right now, she could hear the washing machine sloshing joyfully as her backpack rolled and plunged on the delicate cycle – a wise decision made after Mehmet’s backpack had disintegrated last week during a heavy-duty wash.

  In taking over the laundry, Zeynep had another agenda. It wasn’t just that as an obsessive-compulsive she had a need to clean and straighten the world; she also needed a place to hide her boyfriend, Angelo Tarano, from her boy-hating parents. In fact, she was waiting for him now. She intended to spend this wet Sunday afternoon with him.

  The doorbell rang and she rushed to answer it. There he was – Angelo. The cockatoo on his shirt stood out impressively. He was very proud of his football team and his success, and she was proud of him, too. Angelo was a catch. And they would be all alone with the washing for several hours before her parents returned.

  She grabbed his hand, carefully avoiding the little finger, and pulled him through the door. Angelo moved to kiss her, but she moved back and led him into the house.

  ‘Not the laundry,’ he pleaded. ‘Please not the laundry again.’ ‘Why not?’

  ‘Zey…’

  ‘What’s wrong with a laundry?’

  ‘Can’t we try something a bit more comfortable?’

  She knew what he wanted: the bedroom. ‘You can kiss me in the laundry but not in any other room.’

  He sighed, but she could tell he didn’t mind that much. Chelsea said Angelo was a pushover, and he was.

  ‘How about, like, adding a few other places: what about kissing you at school?’

  ‘No way,’ she said firmly, dragging him through the door.

  ‘You can kiss me in the laundry anytime, night or day, but not in the street, not at school, not on the bus, and not at Doctor Donut.’

  She opened the door to her laundry. He followed her and pounced. He was a bit of a pouncer.

  He was holding her tightly and it was nice. He wasn’t rough or too pushy, even though he was almost a football legend. Aussie rules, of course. Not her father’s preference. Her father and Mehmet followed SBS soccer – so Angelo was not on her father’s radar at all. Mehmet knew Angelo from school but said he was just a wanker. Little did Mehmet know that Angelo, the wanker, regularly pegged out his jocks! If her parents knew who he was they might be proud, but if they knew she hid him in the house and that their tongues had once accidentally touched, they would kill him.

  She felt herself go a little bit weak now as his lips nibbled at her cheek. Her lips quivered. He began to squeeze her harder and his lips rubbed hers, gently. Combined with the symphonic sound of the spin cycle, it caused her resistance to weaken.

  ‘Baklava?’ she said, drawing away with a gasp. Chelsea said it was best to offer a guy food when he got a bit too frisky, because that suppressed their hormones.

  Angelo looked frustrated as he stared into her eyes. ‘No baklava,’ he murmured. But she knew he had trouble choosing between a cake and a kiss. She stared back.

  ‘Sure,’ he said finally. She grabbed his hand to lead him down to the kitchen. It was Mehmet’s baklava, and he would curse when he found out it was missing. But it had to be done.

  ‘And can we kiss properly afterwards?’ he asked in his soft little-boy’s voice. She knew what properly meant: it meant the open-door policy. Not going there, boyfriend.

  ‘Mum’s baklava,’ Zeynep said as they entered the kitchen, ‘for your shoelaces. A fair exchange.’

  ‘What? You’re doing something weird again.’

  ‘I just want to boil them,’ she said in her pretty-please voice, which he usually couldn’t resist. ‘They harbour germs.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘No baklava, then.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw someone move in the drive. Her mother!

  Panic. ‘Quick! Out! Get to the laundry!’ she whispered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mum. The cupboard.’

  ‘Not again.’

  ‘Now, Angelo!’ she whispered aggressively. He obeyed. There was a breathing hole in the door of the cupboard so he wouldn’t die. He’d once had to stand in it for twenty minutes and was late for training.

  Her mother flung open the door and bustled into the kitchen. She banged the CD player on. Turkish music exploded into the room. ‘Where is my wallet?’ she demanded. ‘I forget the wallet. You find it quick, quick, quick. Your father is waiting.’ Her mother began pulling open drawers.

  Zeynep saw it nestled on the dish rack and handed it to her mother.

  ‘Goodbye!’ Her mother left and Zeynep turned off the CD. Her heart was beating hard. Her father was waiting in the taxi in the drive. She watched them reverse, then grabbed a plate and put the biggest piece of baklava neatly in the centre before rushing down the hall.

  ‘Jeepers!’ Angelo said, stepping out of the cupboard and blinking.

  ‘Sorry, Mum forgot her wallet.’

  She handed him the baklava and he dropped the whole thing into his mouth. Then he threw his arms around her. ‘Payback!’

  ‘Your mouth is full of nuts.’

  He started to chew fast.

  ‘Now you have to drink something.’

  She escaped his arms, turned and ran down the hall to get him a glass of water. He followed her. She was torn by competing desires. She wanted to kiss him of course, mouth firmly closed, but this morning while her parents were out she also wanted to introduce house-wide infection control: starting with the shoelaces.

  She turned on the tap and filled up a glass. He pressed into her back and put his arms around her, chewing in her ear. His desires, which always seemed to rise when he was in the cupboard, had risen to dangerous levels. He turned her around, grabbed the water and drank it all at once, then snuggled against her and suddenly moved into overdrive. His breath smelt like honey and his lips were sticky and wet.

  She had to move him on. ‘Angelo, can I have your shoelaces now?’ she whispered.

  She’d read about infection control on Careers.com and had immediately switched her career path. Infection controllers had responsibility for entire hospitals. This morning she had decided that when her brother and parents were out she would try to disinfect the whole house while entertaining her boyfriend. This was called multi-tasking, and girls were famous for it. If she
could eliminate every germ lurking inside their house and keep Angelo from breaking loose, she could handle infection control in a large hospital and have a happy married life. Go, girl.

  Her family, she was ashamed to admit, were just not clean enough, and lately she’d become aware that they never cleaned their shoelaces. This was a serious oversight.

  ‘Just pull out your shoelaces,’ she said seductively – at least she hoped it sounded seductive.

  He sighed deeply. ‘Zey, please no! I’m going.’

  ‘No! You can help,’ she cried. She wasn’t being seductive enough.

  ‘My shoelaces are not dirty!’ He stood back. He sounded cross.

  ‘Hidden grime,’ she shot back – but gently – and ran her hand down his T-shirt then poked the squawking cocky in the beak. ‘Cockatoo,’ she whispered and smiled up at him. That was seductive. The best way to a man’s heart was through his football team.

  She felt his body relax. It had worked. Chelsea Dean would be proud of her – she was being a femme fatale.

  ‘Shoelaces,’ she said, stepping away.

  ‘Okay,’ he responded in a weak voice, kneeling. He was in her power now.

  ‘We need to boil,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m getting all Mehmet’s laces as well.’

  He was sitting on the floor with his runners off, unthreading the laces. The big cocky face on his T-shirt was looking up at her. ‘No one does this, Zey!’

  ‘If they did, there would be less illness,’ she answered and bent over to kiss him on the top of the head. ‘Trust me.’

  He handed his laces up without a fuss, and she filled the saucepan with water and turned the gas onto high, then dropped them in. ‘Done!’ she said as they swirled about like seaweed. ‘That was easy.’ Angelo made a soft moan as he stood up.

  ‘Mehmet’s and Dad’s next,’ she said and raced off. He followed her, shuffling now in his open runners. Mehmet’s room was such a mess, but he’d banned her from cleaning it. She had, however, washed all his shoes and taken out the laces earlier. She scooped them up and, with Angelo still following, ran down the hall to her parents’ room and scooped up her father’s laces, too.