Stuff

by Jeremy Strong

  I nodded rapidly, unable to speak.

  ‘Now, then, how is that other little matter with your rather gorgeous sister coming on?’ He let go of my throat at last.

  I coughed and gasped. ‘Not my sister … stepsister.’

  ‘My dear piece of slobbersnot, I don’t care if she’s your grandfather. What did she say?’

  I pulled Tasha’s note from my pocket and handed it over.

  Darcy read it through, very slowly. ‘What does that say?’ he asked.

  ‘ “Moronic baboons”,’ I said miserably.

  I could see the anger building up inside him. It was like watching air go into a tyre and you know it’s certain to burst but you don’t know exactly when and you don’t know exactly where. Darcy read the letter over and over.

  ‘What does it say?’ Delfine asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ muttered her brother. ‘You’d better go to your class, Deify. I’ll see to your boyfriend.’

  Darcy looked at me like he was calculating how many different ways he could find to kill me. He only needed one. All I felt was the blow. It was as unexpected as a steam train thundering out of a fireplace – a steam train wearing knuckledusters. (Very big knuckledusters obviously specially adapted for trains.) I collapsed in a heap. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t cry. I had no breath left. I doubled up on the floor, holding myself, fighting for air. Darcy pinned me down with one foot on my side.

  ‘I’m not an idiot,’ he declared. ‘Your sister would never have written this. You did it. Did you think you could get the better of me? I’m afraid not. You’ll have to try a lot, lot harder. You give that letter I wrote to your sister.’ Darcy bent down and put his mouth close to my face. ‘I think it would be best if you do as I ask. You don’t want to put your family in the gruesome position of trying to identify your mangled remains. I really don’t know what my little sister sees in you. I really don’t.’

  He lifted his foot, but only so he could kick me.

  17

  Decision Time

  I lay there until I saw him turn the corner. I sat up, aching all over. This was crazy. I don’t mind getting into trouble when I’ve done something wrong, but I was innocent! I wished Sky would come back along the corridor and find me slumped, injured, bleeding. She’d crouch down and cradle my head against her chest. Hmmm, hold that thought, I thought.

  Pete says men think about sex every six seconds. That’s OK by me, though it does make me wonder what we think about for the other five. Or if, in fact, we think for the other five seconds at all. Pete reckons he’s special and says he thinks about it every four seconds.

  ‘How do you know?’ I asked.

  I counted.’

  ‘Yeah, but all you’d have to do is look at your watch and make yourself think about it every four seconds.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t have to make myself – that’s the point. I just do, naturally’

  ‘I could think about it every two seconds if I wanted.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ he challenged.

  Ten seconds later. ‘There. Told you.’

  ‘How do I know what you were thinking? Prove it.’

  ‘No. You prove you think about it every four seconds.’

  Pete burst out laughing. ‘Idiot! We’ve been talking about nothing else for the last three minutes!’

  Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes, nestling against Sky’s chest, my head against her … I can’t say the word. You know. My heart’s thumping. I tried touching Delfine there once. She asked me what I was doing.

  ‘Touching you,’ I said, because I was.

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  So that was that. I had learned nothing. How was I supposed to grow up and expand my education if knowledge was denied me? But Sky wouldn’t be like that. She’d stroke my hair and speak softly and say nice things and KISS ME BETTER! Oh yes. Best bit. I wonder if she’d like lip-nibbling? Maybe she’d read that book. Maybe I should ask again. Maybe she would go out with me. Shame about the boyfriend.

  And here we go, back to square one, and Problemo Numero Uno. Delfine. I was coming to the inescapable conclusion that I would have to break up with Delfine. And, if I dumped Delfine, then Darcy the Destroyer would slaughter me.

  Brainwave! Darcy was going to kill me anyway because he thought that note hadn’t come from Tasha, and it had, so he was bound to take it out on me because I couldn’t deliver it again. So, if Darcy was going to kill me for that, he couldn’t kill me for dumping Delfine, because I’d already be dead. There – saved! Well, saved for my coffin at any rate. Maybe Sky would weep at my funeral. She’d stand beside my grave, tears rolling down her elfin cheeks, while she chucked spadeloads of earth on to the coffin lid and declared her undying love.

  Only problem was: she loved someone else.

  ‘What are you doing down there?’ It was Pete.

  ‘Thinking. Dreaming. Dying.’ I stood up and told him about my brush with Death.

  ‘That’s a bit of a mess,’ said Pete, and he actually looked quite knocked back. ‘Darcy fancies Natasha, then?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What does she think of him?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘She’s not going out with him, then?’

  ‘No, but he’s not going to just give up and go away, is he? You know what Darcy’s like. And another thing, did you know Sky’s got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Really? Who?’

  I shrugged. ‘Haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘Bummer.’ Pete stared into space for a bit. He wasn’t his usual chirpy self at all.

  ‘Let’s face it, Pete, there’s nothing here for us any more. I reckon it’s time to hit the road.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right.’

  I told him about The Grange and the stockpile I was building up. He thought it sounded great.

  ‘We could have everything ready by the end of the week.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We could make our break then.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What about Friday morning? First thing Friday morning. It’d have to be early, before anyone else is up and about. We don’t want people asking questions. I reckon we should meet up about, say, five a.m., at The Grange.’

  Pete nodded slowly. ‘Five a.m., Friday’

  I smiled. This time it was for real, and I had Pete with me. Things would be so much better with Pete around. I’d have him to talk to, for a start, and I hate to admit it, but he was so much more grown up than me. He knew loads. He’d kissed a girl with tongues! (I don’t mean she had more than one tongue – you know what I mean!)

  ‘See what else you can get that could be useful,’ I said as we parted.

  ‘Yeah, OK. So Natasha doesn’t like Darcy, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What kind of person does she like?’

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Why?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pete. ‘Just think she’s a bit weird.’

  I drew a deep breath and let out all the air in my lungs slowly. Suddenly I felt very grown up and deep myself. I clapped a hand on Pete’s shoulder. ‘All women are weird,’ I said.

  Pete’s Tongue Experience

  This happened one time when Pete was in America. His parents took him to a barbecue party. There were loads of people there and lots of kids. He took up with a girl called Prairie. They found a quiet place and sat down and talked for a bit and Prairie said she really liked his English accent and it made her shiver with delight. So he pretended he was James Bond. I said James Bond was played by Sean Connery and he was Scottish, but Pete said Prairie was American and couldn’t tell the difference, so it didn’t matter and I’d better shut up or he wouldn’t tell me the rest of the story. Anyhow, Prairie got all overcome by his accent and they started kissing and she stuck her tongue in his mouth. I asked him what it was like.

  ‘Liver,’ he said. It felt like there was a big bit of liver in my mouth, only without the onions.’

  That’s revolting!’
r />   ‘No, not really. It was quite nice liver Pete thought for a bit ‘I didn’t chew,’ he added apologetically.

  End of the Tongue Experience

  18

  Egg whisks vs Burglars

  Natasha wanted to know how things had gone with Darcy, so I told her. I exaggerated a little (I said he’d killed me), because I wanted her to understand the full horror of what I had been through. She listened in stony silence.

  ‘So, what am I supposed to do?’ she asked crossly. So much for expecting sympathy.

  ‘Don’t ask me. Maybe you should tell your mum.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It will only make matters worse, stupid. Would you tell your dad?’ One look at my face gave her the answer. ‘No, I thought not. It’s down to me, then.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I mean, come on, what would you have done? I’d already been thumped once. I couldn’t do any more. It was between Tasha and Darcy. I left her to it. I had a sophisticated escape plan to attend to.

  I spent the next few days manically collecting equipment. This meant doing a lot of my snitching in the deep of night, when everyone was asleep. I kept my alarm under my pillow, set for 2 a.m. Then I’d get up and do my snitching runs. It made waking up in the morning hard. I was constantly tired.

  The biggest problem was trying to avoid Pankhurst. That rabbit was a maniac. One night, just after 2 a.m., I was padding around the kitchen, and I opened the cupboard door and there was Pankhurst practically staring me in the face. How on earth did she get up there, for God’s sake? She was four shelves up from the floor!

  She hurled herself upon me and I staggered back with a giant white rabbit stuck to my head like some kind of exploding wig. I crashed into the sink, which was painful for me, but at least it had the effect of dislodging Pankhurst from my head. She fell straight into the sink and I quickly got the washing-up bowl, shoved it over her and she was trapped.

  Everything went quiet. I wondered if rabbits were like budgies. Obviously they’re not like budgies to look at, but budgies go to sleep if you put a cover over their cage. The washing-up bowl seemed to be having the same effect on Pankhurst. I crept back to bed as quickly as I could and had just reached safety when all hell broke loose downstairs. You wouldn’t have thought a rabbit could make that much noise – not even a giant angora. Not even a radical feminist giant angora.

  Dad was awake in a flash and he went charging down, closely followed by Tracey. They were not happy bunnies, and neither was Pankhurst. Ha ha.

  At least my stockpile was growing quickly. I now had a frying pan, an assortment of knives, forks and kitchen utensils, the camping stove, a sleeping bag, two pillows and a pile of batteries I had carefully removed from various bits of equipment. (So the TV remote was dead.) Apart from the rabbit, I’d had no problems at all – until I ran into Natasha. That was a bit of a surprise.

  It was about half past three at night and I was in the process of removing the egg whisk from the kitchen as silently as I could manage. There was a scuffling noise from the hall, which I put down to the assassin rabbit, and I carried on. I had just managed to get the whisk out of the drawer without disturbing everything else, when I heard a sharp intake of breath. I froze and looked up.

  It was Tasha. She stood there in her little shorts and T-top, staring at me open-mouthed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ we said in chorus.

  ‘Getting a glass of water,’ Tasha answered. Her eyes flicked down to the egg whisk. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  ‘With an egg whisk? Why are you holding an egg whisk?’

  ‘I heard you coming.’

  ‘What were you planning to do? Scramble me?’

  ‘Obviously I didn’t know it was you,’ I said icily. ‘I thought you were a burglar.’

  ‘You were going to make the burglar into an omelette? Very brave. Totally stupid, but very brave. Trap his tongue in the beaters and whisk really hard. Brings tears to the eyes.’ She stood at the sink, filling her glass.

  ‘Have you spoken to Darcy?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.

  ‘I sent him a note. I said I’d think about it.’

  ‘You’re not really?’

  ‘Of course I’m not. The guy’s a creep. It’s called playing for time.’

  ‘So what will you do, eventually?’

  ‘As if you care.’

  ‘I’m … interested.’

  Tasha went out to the hall and headed for the stairs. ‘I have a plan,’ she murmured over her shoulder.

  ‘Will it work?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’ll work all right.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  Tasha was going up the stairs ahead of me. ‘Yes – absolutely bloody brilliant,’ she said, shutting her bedroom door behind her.

  Then, in the morning I almost got rumbled by Sherry Trifle. She was hunting around the kitchen. ‘I’ll swear the small pan was here yesterday,’ she said. Ha ha – wrong there, for a start, because I’d whipped it three days ago. La Trifle was obviously blind as well as stupid.

  ‘Have any of you had it?’

  ‘What for?’I asked.

  ‘I don’t know!’ snapped Sherry. ‘And where’s the cheese grater? I’ve got a craving for cheese. I think it’s the pregnancy. I need cheese. I need the grater.’

  Just for once I didn’t have a clue. Maybe Pankhurst had eaten it. But, come to think of it, I would need a cheese grater. I almost jumped up and said, ‘Thank you! Good idea! I’ll take it now!’ Except, of course, it had been mislaid. Anyway, it would have been a bit of a giveaway. Plus the fact that I was never, ever going to thank Sherry Trifle for anything at all, except maybe for bringing misery, calamity and chaos into my life. Not to mention Natasha.

  ‘Somebody must have seen the cheese grater. Tasha?’

  ‘I’m not a cheese-grater person,’ she said, which almost made me laugh. Almost. ‘Perhaps you should look for the egg whisk,’ she added, giving me a little smirk.

  Bat’s buttocks! Surely Tasha didn’t know? I’d seen her back to her bedroom. She can’t have known I’d returned to the kitchen half an hour later and snaffled the whisk after all.

  La Trifle huffed and puffed. ‘Don’t be stupid, Tasha. You can’t grate cheese with an egg whisk. Do grow up.’

  Tasha threw such a look at her mother and swept out of the kitchen.

  La Trifle sighed. ‘No pan, no grater. And the bread knife vanished yesterday’

  ‘Really?’ I said, as casually as I could manage.

  ‘Yes, really,’ snapped La Trifle. ‘This place is turning into a Bermuda Triangle for kitchenware. It’s impossible to cook – there’s nothing to cook with.’ And she actually did that stampy thing. I’d always thought it was one of those things you only see on TV – you know, where the woman gets all cross and stamps her feet, waves her fists, shakes her hair, grits her teeth and goes ‘Grrrrrrr!’ But La Trifle actually did the full stampy-wavy-shaky-gritty-growly thing. Impressively silly it was too.

  ‘I expect they’ll turn up,’ I said helpfully, and went upstairs. First thing I did was take the bread knife from beneath my pillow and put it in the rucksack. That was going to have to be moved tonight to The Grange, along with the whisk and the rolling pin – another item I reckoned would be useful.

  I rang Pete and told him I’d nearly been discovered. ‘How’s it going at your end?’ I asked. ‘I’ve got so much stuff, Sherry Trifle reckons our kitchen’s turned into the Bermuda Triangle.’

  ‘Awesome! If she’s right, you could have all sorts of junk in there. Tell her to be very careful. You might discover Flight 19, that squadron of missing planes.’

  ‘We have. They’re in the cupboard under the sink.’

  ‘Double awesome! Keep the door shut! Those pilots think it’s 1943. The war’s still on. If you open the cupboard they’ll come whizzing out and bomb the lot of you.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,�
�� I laughed. ‘Listen, where’s all your gear? I haven’t seen anything at The Grange yet.’

  ‘It’s all here,’ he answered. ‘Big pile.’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Er, sleeping bag, clothes, shoes, um, tin of beans, bicycle pump –’

  ‘What?’

  Pete laughed. ‘Joke. Haven’t really got a bicycle pump. Haven’t really got a bicycle. Did you see Natasha? What’s she doing about Darcy?’

  ‘She says she’s got a plan that will work.’

  ‘She’s not going to go out with him?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Right.’

  I told him how Tasha and I had met in the kitchen in the middle of the night.

  ‘What – in her pyjamas?’

  ‘Of course, Pete, it was night-time – not that she wears pyjamas.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Shorts and T.’

  There was a pause at the other end. ‘That was a bit close,’ he said at last. ‘Her finding you like that.’

  ‘I know. My heart was banging, I can tell you. So, are you on for tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s Friday – the Great Escape.’

  ‘Absolutely’.

  ‘Meet me at The Grange about five o’clock.’

  ‘Bit early. Are you sure you want to go tomorrow?’

  ‘There’s nothing here. We’ve got to go.’

  ‘Right. Does she always wear shorts and T?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tasha.’

  ‘Not at school, no. What planet are you on? See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Right – and don’t open that cupboard door.’

  19

  Running Away – Third Attemp

  It was done. We were going to go. It was impossible to sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable, which was hardly surprising. I had the toaster stuck under my pillow. I’d decided to take it after all. I tossed and turned and kept looking at the clock. My head was full of stuff about my dad, my mum, my stepmother, my stepsister, Darcy, Delfine … Delfine! I hadn’t said anything to her about going!