by Stuart David
I decide he probably means somebody who paints his mum and dad naked without thinking it’s weird, and then I pretend I’d known what it meant all along but I’d just forgotten.
“That,” I say. “He thinks that’s an insult?”
Yatesy nods.
“I’ll find a way round him,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Good luck,” he says, and he draws some grass round about the calculator. Then he rubs it out again.
“So how about Saturday?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he says. “I need to wait till your cousin’s been to Bailey. That’s just how it is, Jackdaw.”
I can see I’m not going to get any further. I know when I’m wasting my time. I stand watching him drawing for a bit longer, then wander off and leave him to it.
After that, it’s Sergeant Monahan for the rest of the morning. There’s a bright spot when he calls Wendy Gillis out to the front of the class to elevate the book, and she refuses to do it.
“My brother says there’s a European directive against it,” she tells him. “You can’t make us do that anymore.”
The tops of Monahan’s ears go red, and he stands pressing his hands down on his desk. He caught Wendy watching a clip of a moron eating a spider on her phone, when we were supposed to be listening to his analog upload about the first plane to drop a bomb or something, and he’s not happy.
“Perhaps we should go and ask the headmaster if your brother’s right, then,” the Sergeant says. “He’s bound to know all about it.”
He walks over to the door and opens it, holding it for Wendy to go first. She stands without moving by the side of her desk, where she’s been since the Sergeant shouted, “On your feet!” at the start of the proceedings.
“Shall we?” the Sergeant asks. “I’m sure the rest of the class is keen to know if Mr. Bailey would agree with your brother too.”
Wendy still doesn’t move, and the Sergeant lets the door fall shut. He goes to his shelf and brings down the weighty volume, then puts it on his desk. Wendy looks at one of her mad friends for a while, then at another one. They both pretend they don’t really know her, and she sighs and stomps out to the front of the class, where she picks the book up and gets started on the usual business with it.
The rest of the lesson is a gigasnore. Monahan continues to Bluetooth his nonsense about bombs and planes and general destruction, and the lack of sleep from the night before starts to catch up with me. A couple of times I see the big orange shape and hear the dream voices, and I have to take serious measures to make sure I don’t pass out. I sneak my phone from my pocket and switch it on underneath the desk, to see if anything has come in from my dad. Being caught using my phone would probably get me a longer stint with the book than falling asleep in class, but I have more control over whether Monahan catches me with the phone or not, and I know the sense of danger will keep me awake. I watch Monahan now as if I’m listening to every word he says, and just glance at the phone when I’m absolutely sure his attention is engaged elsewhere.
The phone vibrates almost immediately, but it’s a good five minutes before I get the chance to look at what’s come in. When I do, I’m pleased to see my dad’s taking the whole situation relatively calmly.
“That arse-biscuit!” his text says. “I’ll kill him. If your mum doesn’t kill me first.”
I do all I can not to laugh, and then I go back to staring at the Sergeant.
A few minutes later, the phone vibrates again and a new text comes in. This time it’s almost fifteen minutes before I can even glance at it. Monahan appears to have picked me out as his star pupil for this lesson, probably because I’m the only person who’s actually looking at him, and he starts delivering most of his pitch exclusively to me. It’s only when Grant Fraser’s earphone jack slips out of the socket on his phone, and the tiny speaker starts blasting out the crappy music he’s been listening to, that Monahan finally turns his attention to other matters and I’m free to read my dad’s latest missive.
“I need one of your schemes, pal,” it says. “Help me out here. What can I do to fix things with your mum?”
Luckily, the Sergeant is going all out on this Grant Fraser thing, and I even have time to reply. Wendy gets sent back to her seat, still muttering about the European Parliament, and Grant steps into the spotlight.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I write, then send it and turn the phone off. I don’t have the heart to tell him that even my formidable talents can’t help him out of this one. What could he possibly say to fix it with Mum?
“I slipped on a patch of spilt whiskey and fell into arranging the interview”?
Or, “I pressed the wrong button when I was trying to set up a meeting for him at university”?
He’s dug his own grave this time. Plus, all my RAM is given over to working on what I’m going to say to Cyrus. I don’t have anything left to spare.
By the time the Sergeant resumes business again, I’m wide awake. With the phone switched off, I don’t need to be looking at him anymore, and I soon manage to zone out his stream of data about Spitfires and doodlebugs and mushroom clouds and get down to thinking about what really matters: letting that wave of good luck carry me on to a victory with Cyrus.
20
When I arrive at the games hall, Cyrus is already waiting for me, just him on his own. He’s eating something soggy out of a paper bag, and he holds it up to me as I approach.
I peer inside the bag. It looks awful.
“What’s that?” I ask him.
“Macaroni and cheese,” he says. “Made it in hospitality.”
He asks me if I want any, but I tell him I’m not hungry, even though I’m really starving.
“Why’s it in a bag?” I ask him.
“Forgot my Tupperware,” he says. “Benson wouldn’t lend me a tub. Silly old cow.”
We sit down on the grass, over by the fence, and he pushes another handful of the yellow stuff into his face. It smells terrible. I didn’t know it was possible to feel sick and starving at the same time, until now.
“So how do we get Yatesy?” Cyrus says. Straight in. “This better be good. I’m missing Boodle for this.”
“What’s Boodle?” I ask him, and instantly wish I hadn’t. It turns out Boodle is the stupid phone game he’s always playing, and he launches into a long description of all its pathetic rules and a list of his scores. Then, just when I think I’m about to pass out, he tells me I’m wasting too much of his time, and that he’s only here to talk about my plan.
“So what is it?” he says. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make you tell Bailey you fought Harry, rather than Yatesy,” I think to myself. “I’m not sure how I’m going to do it yet, but it’ll happen.”
I just need the right bit of information.
“Here’s what worries me,” I tell him then. “I’m scared the plan I’ve got at the moment might let Yatesy off too lightly. I have to make sure I get him as badly as he got you.”
And I ask him exactly what Yatesy did to him.
“He ruined my life,” Cyrus says. “Totally.”
It’s not exactly the windfall I’m looking for.
“I thought you just got a three-day suspension,” I say, and he nods.
“I did,” he says, “but that was only the start of it.”
And he begins unleashing the good stuff. It turns out his parents have really gone to town on him. He’s been grounded since then until the exams are over, and he’s not allowed to do anything he wants to do, even at home. His dad drops him off at the gate in the morning and picks him up again as soon as the bell rings for the end of the day. They’ve even banned him from going online except for homework, and his dad confiscated his Xbox away in the garage.
“I want Yatesy to pay for all of that,” Cyrus says. “And . . . some other stuff. Plus, he’s a bohemian.”
“I hate bohemians,” I assure him. “They freak me out.”
“They’
re disgusting,” Cyrus says. “They undermine the whole fabric of society.”
I decide I should have looked into this whole bohemian thing a bit more. I’m starting to get out of my depth, so I turn the conversation back to the matter in hand.
“I’ve got a new idea forming,” I tell Cyrus, and he looks at me eagerly. “What was that you said about some other things, though? What things were they?”
He pokes about in his bag for a minute. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. The bag is starting to tear, down near the bottom, where it’s all wet. Bits of it are staying stuck to the food now too, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“I have to know the whole story,” I tell him. “We have to get Yatesy for everything. We can’t let him get anything over on you.”
Cyrus sighs. He tears the top part of the bag away, and he’s left with just a horrible mushy mess of paper and yellow gunk in his hands. He keeps on eating it, though.
“My parents won’t let me go to the school dance,” he says quietly, and keeps his eyes on the gunk.
“You want to go to that?” I ask him. “Really?”
He nods, still looking down. “I’m meant to go with Amy Gilchrist,” he says. “She said she’d go with me weeks ago. But now she’s going with Yinka instead if I can’t make it.”
I almost just blurt out what I’m thinking. “Amy Gilchrist? Really? You want to go to the school dance with her?” Amy Gilchrist only comes second on the weirdo scale to Elsie Green. She has this strange kind of smile, and she’s always making this weird noise in class when everything’s quiet. It just seems to come out on its own. But then I remember Cyrus is pretty much in that same category of weird himself, and I stop myself saying any of it just in time.
“That’s harsh,” I say instead, and the wheels start to turn. “How long have you been after Amy for?”
“Forever,” Cyrus says. “I wish I could kill Yatesy. I really do.”
Something is starting to happen. My fingers are tingling, and my synapses are firing. All my binary data is starting to flow. I sit quietly for a minute and let it happen, trying not to watch Cyrus licking the last of the gunk off his fingers, then rubbing his hands on the grass, then licking his fingers again.
I feel as if I’m probably doing Amy Gilchrist a disservice by trying to get her together with Cyrus, but I put that to one side and go out on a limb.
“We need to get you to that dance,” I say. “Getting Yatesy back is important, but no matter how badly we hurt him you’ll still have lost Amy. Nothing we can do to him will change that. You’ve got to get to that dance, Cyrus.”
He nods sadly. “It can’t be done, though,” he says. “You don’t know my parents. It could never happen in a million years.”
“What if I told you I could make it happen?” I say. “This is what I do, Cyrus. I’m an ideas man. I think I can get you there.”
He looks at me with a kind of disbelief in his eyes. “If you could do that,” he says, “if you could, Jack . . .”
“Call me Jackdaw,” I tell him, and he nods.
“Jackdaw . . .” he says, and I trust to the wave of good fortune that’s carrying me along, and I strike while the iron’s hot.
“Remember my cousin Harry?” I say, and Cyrus nods. “He wants to go to university, but his dad won’t let him. His dad’s kind of a bohemian, and he wants Harry to be a bohemian too. But Harry wants to be just like . . . society. That’s why I’m trying to help him.”
“I hate parents,” Cyrus says. “All of them.”
“How about this, then,” I say. “I’ll come up with a plan that really sticks it to Yatesy good and proper, and another one to make sure you get to the school dance. I can do that. No problem. But you’ll have to do something for me in return.”
“Anything,” Cyrus says, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
“Help Harry out,” I say. “Let him go to Bailey and take the rap for being in that fight with you. Say he was the guy if Bailey asks you anything about it. That’s all. That’s all I’m asking.”
It’s quite clear that when he said “anything,” this wasn’t in the list of things he was thinking about. He probably thought I was after his Xbox or something. But he thinks it over. He sits looking toward the games hall, and he stays like that for a while.
“But then Yatesy doesn’t get punished for the fight,” he says at last. “How can that be right, Jackdaw?”
“I admit it’s not ideal,” I tell him. “But you have to remember we’ll hit him with something bigger, later on. Think of how smug he’ll feel thinking he’s off the hook, then think of the shock he’ll get when we hit him with the real thing.”
Cyrus continues to sit silently, and then he slowly begins to nod. He gets up into a crouch and starts rubbing his hands. Then he stands right up.
“That could work,” he says. “What kind of thing would you do?”
“Nothing at all,” I think to myself. “As soon as you’ve done the business with Bailey that’s the end of the matter.” The thing is, Chris Yates seems okay to me, and Cyrus is so unpleasant, with his bizarre dislike of bohemians for no apparent reason, that it’ll be a bonus to get one up on him.
“Something big,” I say. “Something that’ll ruin his life. I’ll probably do something to make him fail his art exam, so he can’t go to art school. If he got expelled for this fight, he could probably still get in somewhere else and do his art exam there. But if I make sure he can’t pass it, no matter how many times he tries, that’ll be worth its weight in gold.”
“You’re an evil genius,” Cyrus says, and he smiles.
“So I’ll tell Harry he can go to Bailey?” I say, and Cyrus nods enthusiastically.
“Totally,” he says. “I’ll even go with him. And I’ll erase that recording off my phone, too. Just as soon as I’m back on for going to the dance.”
“How about letting Harry go to Bailey this afternoon?” I say. “And how about erasing that message right now?”
“Not a chance,” Cyrus says, and I can tell this is as far as the wave is going to carry me for today. I have another couple of shots at him, but my efforts lead nowhere. So in the end I give it up and reach out to shake his hand, forgetting all about the gunk and the licking until it’s too late. We shake hands in that old-fashioned way, just to seal the deal, then I hurry off to the toilets and scrub and scrub all the way up to the elbow, to avoid contracting some kind of weird macaroni disease.
So I’m almost there. All my dominoes are back in place. Chris Yates will get his pardon, Harry will get to go to university, and Elsie Green will have her perverted desires for Drew Thornton fulfilled. All I have to do is make sure Cyrus gets to that stupid school dance. That’s all.
How the hell am I going to manage that?
21
When I get home from school, after another hard afternoon at the coalface of boredom, I see the sign which means the Regular Madness will move up a few notches to the Special Occasion Madness later tonight: a packed suitcase sitting in the hallway. I didn’t manage to come up with anything for my dad. There was a point in geography when I thought something was stirring, something about him owning up to Mum that he’d been in a brawl with Uncle Ray the other night, and then telling her it was only a work-experience place I’d been coming in to see about. But it didn’t really form into anything solid. My circuits were still a bit overheated from my session with Cyrus, and I think part of my operating system had already gone to work on coming up with something to get Cyrus to the school dance. So, in the end, I just sent Dad a text that said I was still thinking and that I hadn’t come up with anything yet. And that’s how things stayed.
I notice the suitcase just as Mum comes out of the kitchen with her face all angry looking, probably because she thinks it’s my dad that’s just come through the door. When she sees it’s me, she looks kind of disappointed, but more friendly at the same time too.
“Didn’t you go to work?” I ask her, and she tells me she didn’t.
“I had a few things to catch up on here,” she says. “I just worked at home this afternoon.”
Perhaps you’re thinking the packed suitcase standing at the bottom of the stairs is hers. It isn’t. You might even be thinking it’s my dad’s; that Mum’s thrown a few of his essentials in there, and she’ll hand it to him as soon as he walks through the door and tell him to get out. But that’s not how it works during the Special Occasion Madness. The suitcase is mine, and it’s me who’ll be getting the elbow pretty soon.
“Uncle Ray’s coming round in about twenty minutes,” Mum tells me. “You’ll be staying with him for the next couple of nights, just while your dad and I work things out. It’ll be easier for you there.”
I’m surprised she still thinks she even needs to explain this stuff to me anymore.
“Can’t I go somewhere else, though?” I ask her. “It’s insane at Uncle Ray’s. He’s a crazy man.”
“The only other place is Grandpa’s,” she says, but I know that isn’t really an option. I tried that once before, and it ended up with Mum and Dad having to come and collect me from the police station. Everything went okay for the first couple of days. Then, on the third morning, I was crashing about in the kitchen trying to work out how to use Grandpa’s ancient hardware, when he threw the kitchen door open, still wearing his pajamas, and picked up a big bread knife that was lying on the table.
“All right, sonny boy!” he shouted at me. “Get yourself into the living room.”
I thought it was a joke to begin with, and I started laughing, but he didn’t like that.
“Find this funny, do you?” he said. “I’ll show you funny if you don’t get moving. I’ve dealt with your kind before. Come on, get in there.”
I got quite scared then and just did as he told me. When we were in the living room, he kept the knife pointing at me and picked up the phone to call the police.
“It’s me, Grandpa,” I kept saying to him. “Jack. The Jackdaw.”
But he kept telling me he knew all about my sort and that this was a victory for the little man, and within five minutes the police arrived and drove me to the station, thinking I was a burglar. Then Mum and Dad had to come down to confirm I was who I said I was, and to take me home.