My Big Mouth

by Steven Camden

  He started walking, already gesticulating wildly as he described dance moves he’d heard about from Miss Grego, who led the after school dance club. I let him get a few steps ahead, then followed, feeling like me and my best friend were two trains on very different tracks.

  The rest of that first week flew by.

  I made up more stories each day. The map on my wall was starting to fill up.

  Dominic threw himself into Full Force preparations for the talent show and Danny Jones was busy researching Tokyo for Dad.

  Home started to feel more like an empty train station.

  Mum was doing more shifts at the hospital, which meant that most of the time she was home she was sleeping. By the time I got back from school she was either already out, or her bedroom door was closed, which meant Do Not Disturb.

  Donna was supposed to be ‘watching’ me while Mum worked, but most days she was out with her friends until dinner time, and then, when she was home, she only ever seemed to be in the shower or shut in her room with her music. That meant most of the time it was just me and Gus, which would maybe have felt more lonely if I hadn’t had new stories to revise and remember every night before I went to sleep.

  I don’t know the exact numbers, but by Thursday night of that first week I already had to juggle more than twenty different made-up stories and their details in my head. Now, whether you think that’s a good idea or not, you have to admit, it’s kind of impressive.

  Could you do it?

  WEEK 1. Thursday. PE Lesson.

  The Pitch:

  ‘Mutant Me’

  Paul Benton was talking about the X-Men in the playground.

  He was saying how Wolverine’s body can regenerate from any injury and how cool it would be to have a genetic mutation that gave you a power. Everyone started arguing about what would be the best power to have. I knew that saying I had an actual full-on power would be too much, but an idea popped into my head and I went with it.

  Here’s what I said. As an experiment, try reading this next bit out loud, following the directions as you go, so you do exactly what I did, and see how it feels.

  ‘You know I was born with six fingers on my left hand? Well, five fingers and a thumb.’ Hold out your left hand and stroke the base of your little finger. Don’t stop talking though. ‘Up until I was two I had nine fingers and two thumbs, then when I was two I had an operation to have it taken off. Mum said it was for the best because people might tease me. Dad said I should’ve kept it and learned the piano. I could’ve been like some kind of classical maestro or something.’ Hold your hand out further for people to try and see, but keep a finger in the way and maintain eye contact. ‘Yeah, if you look closely, you can still see a scar.’ Put your hand back down and shrug.

  ‘No way!’ they’ll say.

  Just nod.

  ‘Is that true?’ they’ll ask.

  Nod again and say: ‘Crazy, right?’

  They believed me.

  Would they believe you?

  It is amazing what people will believe if you say it like you mean it.

  On Friday morning when everyone was hanging up their coats, Danny Jones came over holding a brown card folder. The beam of pride on his face practically gave off heat. I looked at the cover. In tall handwritten letters it said:

  ‘I think it’s good,’ he said, smiling. I took the file and opened the first page:

  Behind the first pages there were more pages, with drawings of bullet trains, graphs about the population breakdown and diagrams about money and food. It was really impressive. I nodded and closed the file.

  ‘Good work,’ I said.

  Danny grinned. ‘I hope he likes it.’

  And as I looked at him, just for half a second, I felt something on my shoulder. The briefest tap from a tiny finger of guilt. I looked down and it went away.

  At lunchtime Danny asked me to play football with him and some of the others. I felt like a gazelle running around with lions. Dean McPike and Jordan Sancho from the other Year 6 class kept kicking me, letting me know they weren’t keen on me being in the game but, whenever I got fouled, Danny would charge over and square up to whoever kicked me and they’d back down. It was like I had my own bodyguard enforcer.

  At one point I went in goal and as the game carried on I looked up at the staffroom window and saw Mr Bukowski looking down. I was about to wave, then the ball crashed into the fence next to my head, starting cheers for the goal, and when I looked up again, the window was empty.

  When the bell went for the end of the day, a little part of me was glad I would have the weekend to recharge. It had only been a week, but my late-night revision sessions already had me feeling more tired than usual.

  Homework was just spelling, so at least that was one less thing to have to think about.

  As we packed our bags, Dominic handed me another piece of paper with a handwritten timetable on it:

  ‘Four weeks, Jay. Gonna be tight.’

  His face was deadly serious. Full Force was really a thing to him. It felt like there was a gap between us. Like Dom was on one pavement and I was across the road.

  ‘This seems like a lot, Dom,’ I said, hoping he would read between the lines and see that I wasn’t keen at all. He didn’t, of course. Like I said, ideas are powerful, and Dominic’s vision of us winning the talent show was playing in full HD in his mind.

  ‘You want to come to mine tonight?’ he said as we left the classroom. ‘Noah’s got some old James Brown TV performance recorded. We can make notes.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, without even thinking. ‘We’re going out for dinner.’

  We weren’t. Mum was still on nights.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow then,’ he said. ‘Oh, and Mum said to let you know we’re not doing a party for my birthday this year. Just a little get-together at ours and –’ he paused for dramatic effect – ‘a cake-eating contest!’

  He grinned and rubbed his stomach, waiting for me to get excited.

  Then Danny Jones caught us up, holding something. It was his file.

  ‘You forgot this!’

  He held it out like the Olympic torch. I must’ve left it on my desk. I smacked my forehead with my palm to show how stupid I was. Dominic looked everywhere else but at Danny. I took the folder, hours of his work that I’d forgotten all about.

  ‘Silly me. Lot on my mind. Thanks, Danny.’

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t forget his new letter on Monday though, OK?’

  Dom looked at me. I avoided his eyes and stayed on Danny. ‘Course not. I’ll have it. Promise.’

  We exchanged nods and Danny jogged off to catch up with Dean and the others.

  Dominic looked at Danny’s file. I stuck it into my bag and said nothing, then me and my oldest friend walked home pretty much in silence, a thick cloud of what we weren’t saying out loud following us all the way.

  A room full of people.

  Mum, Donna, me, Dominic, Nana, Grandad, Uncle Michael, Aunt Marie, all the cousins and second cousins, Mr Bukowski, Gus, Bob Marley, Bruce Lee, Einstein. There’s music playing. It’s James Brown, ‘Cold Sweat’. In fact, James Brown is there, with Wolverine and Diego Maradona, Mickey Mouse, Santa, the Queen, Marcia Brown & Lucy Cheung. Danny Jones, Dean and Jordan, loads of little reception and Year 1 kids are there too and, in the corner, in his chair, Dad.

  Everyone is mingling and chatting, eating little buffet snacks, but Dad is just sitting there, in his chair, staring at me through the crowd.

  I’m smiling and nodding along with people. It’s my party. In our house. I recognize the wallpaper, but it’s bigger. Like our living room has grown into a hall. And now I’m moving. Not walking, but kind of floating, between people, towards Dad.

  It’s like he’s pulling me towards him in some kind of invisible tractor beam. People are moving to let me through, and I’m getting closer and closer, and Dad’s just staring at me. Closer and closer, and I’m warm. In my stomach. Like I’ve just eaten a big bowl of chicken soup. A
nd I’m floating to him. Close enough so I’m almost reaching him. Santa is the last person between us. His big red and white body starts to move, and for a second Dad disappears behind him, then as Santa steps to the side, Dad is gone. Disappeared. And it’s just his chair.

  Empty.

  I woke up with a headache.

  The house was early-morning quiet. I rolled on to my side and saw Gus sleeping under my radiator. ‘Morning,’ I said. Gus sneezed.

  I lay back and stared up at my wall. There were black circles around several different cities and scribbled notes in the Pacific Ocean. I tried to remember the last place I had pointed to for Dad to make up a story about before he’d left, but I couldn’t. I stretched out my arm and pointed my finger towards Africa, then South America, Antarctica. Looking for a memory.

  ‘Where are you, Dad?’

  My finger hovered, wandering like one of those sticks they use to find water, then it stopped. I got up, following the line of my point and touched the map.

  Dear Jason,

  Things are going well. It is hectic, but the information in your report on Tokyo really helped. Please thank your friend Danny for me. I am leaving to go to Borneo at the end of the week. Any details you can find out would be a big help.

  Speak soon.

  Dad

  Week Two

  Danny read the letter all the way through, twice, in front of me, and I watched the lights come on in the top floor of his brain.

  ‘It’s an island, right?’ he said.

  ‘I think so, yeah?’

  ‘Cool.’

  We were in the cloakroom before first bell. Dominic had made his excuses and headed for class as soon as Danny approached us. I watched Danny tuck the letter into his bag like it was a priceless artefact and we headed to class.

  Dom was already in his seat when we walked in. Marcia Brown & Lucy Cheung were talking about a gymnastics competition they’d won at the weekend and Dom was listening keenly like a news reporter.

  I sat down in my seat just as Mr Bukowski came in.

  Dom pointed towards Marcia & Lucy.

  ‘They’re gonna be our main competition,’ he said.

  I had to stop myself rolling my eyes. I’d spent the whole of Saturday afternoon with him, watching Noah’s old James Brown video over and over, and biting my tongue while he tried to copy the moves in his living room. I’m not saying it was a painful experience, but let’s just say I wasn’t inspired with confidence at our chances.

  ‘Dom, I think we need to get real.’

  Dom nodded. ‘Exactly. Hard work, hard work and more hard work. That’s our reality if we really want this.’

  That wasn’t what I meant. At all. But before I could say that, Mr Bukowski stood up and said, ‘Dinosaurs are alive! And they live amongst us!’

  Week 2. Monday. First Lesson.

  Classroom:

  ‘Hunting Morris’

  We were learning about reptiles.

  How some of them have been around since the last dinosaurs roamed the earth. At the end of the lesson, everyone was talking about which was more scary, a crocodile or a cobra.

  We’d learned how fast a crocodile can be on land and how if one is chasing you, you should run in a zigzag pattern as they struggle to change direction and it confuses them. When Jonathan Davies told everyone he’d seen an adder in the woods when he’d visited his grandad in Devon, people seemed impressed. I seized the moment and told everyone that my Uncle Tony had a pet boa constrictor called Morris, and that one time we went to stay with Uncle Tony and the first night we were there, Morris went missing. We spent the whole weekend looking for Morris, worried about what he could get up to in the neighbourhood, then when we finally found him, curled up under next door’s shed, Morris had a smile on his face and lump in his stomach roughly the same size and shape as next door’s cat.

  ‘Eurgh! Is that true?’ they said.

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘That’s so gross!’ they said.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  They believed me.

  The days started to fall into a pattern. I was making up on average roughly ten or eleven stories a day. Some of them were small and throwaway. Little exaggerations thrown out into someone else’s conversation that wouldn’t need much afterthought.

  Example: ‘Oh yeah, my sister does kung fu as well. One time she forearm-chopped a shoplifter in Sainsbury’s and got a certificate from the police.’

  Nobody would ask about that one again, but it still had to be logged.

  Like I said: meticulous.

  Others were bigger, closer to the main one about Dad, and needed more thought and effort.

  By Wednesday of that second week, I was spending nearly an hour and a half checking my wall before bed, pacing up and down, speaking the stories out loud to Gus to fix them into my memory. Planting fake flowers amongst the real ones in the garden of my mind.

  I dodged Full Force sessions when I could, making up excuses to Dom that always revolved around Donna or Mum needing me for something at home, but on Wednesday I couldn’t think of something quickly enough so I had to go round.

  Dom’s house was way bigger than ours. Fatter. His dad, James, designs office buildings, and his mum, Frances, is a science professor at the university. I’m not quite sure how it’s possible for a ten-year-old boy and a forty-three-year-old woman to look like twins, but Dom and his mum kind of did. Same mousey hair, same wide eyes and crooked smile. It was kind of amazing.

  Their living room was twice the size of ours and if you sat fully back in their big green leather sofa, your feet didn’t even reach the floor.

  I’m not sure how many sleepovers I had there, but it was enough to feel completely fine with going to the fridge by myself to get a drink.

  That Wednesday, when we got to his, he took me to their garage. Inside he’d cleared a space and put down a big square of old carpet for us to dance on. Noah’s chunky silver boombox was sitting on a plastic crate and there were two hand towels folded next to it. Dom had set up our own personal dance studio.

  ‘Right,’ he said, clapping his hands together like a PE teacher. ‘I think we should start with some basic footwork. Is that what you’re wearing?’

  I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt. ‘What else would I wear?’

  Dom tutted, annoyed. ‘We’ll get to costumes later. That’ll have to do for today. Take your trainers off at least, though.’

  He pressed PLAY on the tape and started doing leg stretches like an athlete as the horns of ‘Cold Sweat’ began to play. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘It’s not funny, Jay. I want this.’

  ‘I know you do,’ I said, half-heartedly copying his warm-up.

  To this day, I’m grateful that nobody was filming the next two hours. Or the couple of other ‘rehearsal’ sessions I actually showed up for over the next couple of weeks. That footage would be prime blackmail material for sure.

  Later on, sitting at their big dining table eating thick sausages and mashed potatoes with James and Frances, it struck me how long it had been since me, Mum and Donna had eaten a meal all together. Mum hadn’t cooked for ages because of work and Donna just threw oven pizzas in and told me to sort myself out. We used to eat together whenever we could when Dad was around. Things in my life had really changed since half-term, and sitting here with Dom’s regular family made me think about just how much.

  ‘So how’s your mum doing?’ asked James. I saw Frances give him a sharp look as if to warn him off the subject, so I helped him out with a quick answer.

  ‘She’s OK. Working a lot of shifts at the hospital,’ I said, scooping potatoes.

  ‘That’s good, I suppose,’ said James. ‘Keeping busy.’ Frances cut him an even sharper look and there was an awkward pause. I looked at Dom. He could see I needed help, but he had a mouthful of sausage.

  I forced a smile and carried on eating.

  ‘I did try and call her,’ said Frances, giving me the sympathy eyes
. ‘You’re welcome over here any time you like, Jason. You know that, right?’

  I nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  James pointed at me with his fork. ‘Yep. They can be messy things sometimes, families.’

  I didn’t know where to look. Adults have this annoying way of making you feel like they know stuff you don’t at the best of times, but when the subject is your own dad leaving, it’s twenty times worse. What did they know? Had Mum spoken to Frances? Did she know more than me? Frances coughed as though some potato had gone down the wrong way. Dom had emptied his mouth, but for once in his life he couldn’t think of something to say. I didn’t want to deal with this at all. I’d been doing a pretty good job of not thinking about Dad, keeping busy with my stories, but James wasn’t finished.

  ‘Who knows why people do what they do, eh? Not me. Leaving your family, I mean—’

  Before he could say any more, Frances shot out of her chair. ‘Dancing!’ she said, pointing at me and Dom. ‘You boys are working on something special for the talent show, I hear?’

  Dom brilliantly followed her lead and started explaining Full Force.

  James looked slightly confused at the change of subject, but went back to eating. Frances sat back down, smiling awkwardly, and listened intently to Dom.

  I was just glad the attention was off me and, as I cut into a sausage, I made a mental note not to come for dinner at Dom’s again any time soon.

  How are you doing?

  A lot of words, aren’t they, books?

  If you’ve made it this far, you’ve read approximately 15,000 words. If each one of those words was an apple, that’d be a pretty big pile of apples, right? Too many to eat. That would probably be enough apples to fill a swimming pool and dive in. Maybe that would be painful. Yeah, I don’t think diving into a swimming pool of apples is a great idea.