by Andrew Daddo
She gave my back a rub, which was nice. Mum or Dad hadn’t done that in ages. It’s like I was too old or they were too busy or too scared or some other excuse. ‘Friends again?’ she asked.
I grunted. It meant nothing.
‘Hey, um, listen,’ she said. ‘I’m not really good at this, but, um, I got your clothes from the heap you left on the bathroom floor again.’
‘Mm-hmm,’ I went, trying to sound properly asleep because I wasn’t up for another lecture tonight. I was out of sorrys. Actually, I was out of everything. I just wanted to sleep.
‘Look, your dad should really talk to you about this, but he’s not here. So, ah, I think that maybe when you, um, when you bop it, you should go easy on yourself. Or maybe not do it so much.’ This was new. ‘I’ve put some lotion here on your desk for you. I think you should use it. It’s got aloe in it, which is soothing, so that should help heal the damage you’ve done to yourself. It smells nice. It might even have coconut in it.’
She was talking in short, sharp bursts, as if it hurt. ‘After it’s better, you can keep using it, I suppose, or maybe you should use another lubricant? Vasso, or something? Do you know what I’m talking about? Lubricants and lotions?’
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I wanted to be very dead at this exact moment. If I was a computer, I’d be whacking my own delete button.
‘Dylan,’ said Mum, rubbing my back again. ‘Can you hear me?’ She shook me. ‘I know you’re awake. You can’t fiddle with yourself so much. Your willy needs a rest.’
‘Mum. Oh my God. What are you talking about?’
‘Stroking it, you know? What do you call it? Spanking the monkey? Choking the chicken. Masturbating.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I found blood in your underpants, Dylan. I looked it up online because I didn’t know what it was from or what to do. It says boys get blood in their undies from masturbating too much or too hard. It’s either that or a tumour or you’ve shaved your pubies and have cuts there. I just figured you pull yourself too much. You haven’t shaved your pubies, have you?’
‘Goodnight, Mum.’
‘Will you use the lotion?’
‘Get out, Mum.’
‘They’re my Nutri-Grains,’ squealed Ronnie as she sat on the stool next to me at the kitchen bench. ‘For me, not for you.’
‘They’re everyone’s Nutri-Grains,’ I said. There were about four little holey cricket-bat shapes floating in a sea of milk at the bottom of my bowl. I was spewing – I’d almost managed to finish them before she saw I’d had any. We’re a Corn Flakes and Vita Brits family, so to have Nutri-Grain in the house was a bit of a rarity.
‘Mum said they’re mine,’ smarted Ronnie. ‘We’ve got our sports today, and I need the energy.’
I hung my head. It was the second bowl I’d smashed this morning and Hayley had been at them as well, so technically we were both guilty for the near-empty packet. In theory, it wasn’t possible for the start of today to be any worse than the end of yesterday. Ronnie got a bowl out of the dishwasher and I shook the pack, relieved there was something left in it. Disaster averted, the day was back on track.
Mum came into the kitchen looking very all-over-the-place and gave me a hug from behind. ‘Sorry about last night,’ she whispered right into my ear. Her mouth was so close it was hard to understand what she was saying, her hot breath tickled so much I had to pull my head away. Mum kept me in the hug and whispered, ‘I was so cross. You have to look out for your sister. Both of them, you know? You’re the older brother, it’s your job.’ I slurped milk from my spoon. It wasn’t really my job.
‘Sorry, too,’ I said.
‘Pals?’ said Mum, giving me a squeeze before letting go.
‘Pals,’ I said, smiling. I felt better, lingering in the good books.
‘Mmmmm, coconut,’ she said, sniffing the air. ‘I wouldn’t really call one night a rest, but whatevs, right?’ If Mum was trying to be funny, this was an epic fail. The worst part was, she probably could smell coconut because I had used her lotion, but not for wanking. When I got up this morning, I checked out the tube she’d given me and saw it was good for burns and infections and stuff like that. It was the aloe vera, which I already knew was good gear because we used to have a plant in the backyard, and when we were kids Mum would rub it all over our sunburn. So I squeezed some of the lotion onto my hand and slathered it into the wedgie burn in my butt crack. It actually felt good, like the tube said it would. Soothing and cool, and okay, yes – I had a pull as well, but only because I had to use the leftover cream on something.
She moved to the other side of the bench, smiled and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. ‘You want a ’nana in your lunch today?’ As she said it, she dropped the banana onto the bench. ‘Oh, slippery,’ she said. ‘And coconutty.’
‘And I’m gone,’ I said.
‘Just jokes, Dyl!’ Mum’s words chased me out of the kitchen. I heard Ronnie ask what’s so funny about a slippery banana because everyone knows that bananas are slippery. As I thumped up the stairs I could hear Mum yelling after me, ‘I’m just kidding, Dylan. We’ve got to laugh, right? If we don’t laugh we’re all going to cry, where’s the fun in that?’
The slam of the bathroom door mercifully stopped Mum’s bleatings. She had a gift for being able to embarrass herself and me at the same time. I sat on the toilet and tried to figure the best way to get out of the house without seeing her again. There was the window, but it was a long drop to the ground, or I could just cool my jets and wait until she was upstairs in her bedroom, then I could get downstairs and out the door before she’d have a chance to chide me further.
A quick zit check gave no respite. Somehow, without knowing it, I’d had my face dragged down a cheese grater while I slept. Were they that bad? Yes, they were that bad. I had a second crack at the antiseptic face wash Mum had bought and pocketed some fresh band-aids for my neck. Mum would have to go past soon. There were a couple of copies of New Weekly by the toilet, a magazine that’s almost as depressing as my family. Everyone’s too thin, too fat, arse too big or not big enough. Divorced, in love, baby bumps and mystery dads. Who reads this shit?
‘Dylan?’ Mum knocked on the bathroom door. ‘Can I come in, Dylan?’
‘No.’
‘Dylan.’ It was a drawn out, whingey Dylaaaaaaan. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I really was joking. I can see it wasn’t that PC now. You know what I’m like, I can barely take anything seriously. I just don’t really know what to say about that sort of stuff, and I worry about you, you know?’
‘What stuff?’ It was Hayley, jazzed up for once because there was something she didn’t know. I don’t remember being like that when I was thirteen.
I heard Mum go, ‘Shhhh.’
Hayley whispered to Mum, ‘Dylan?’ I could imagine her, pointing at the door with her hand covering her giggling mouth.
Mum went, ‘Shuddup!’
My family was relentlessly depressing. I knew exactly what they’d be doing on the other side of the door, whispering or making sign language at each other. Mum’d be doing the universal wanking sign. Hayley’d be saying, ‘What’s that?’ Or maybe she wouldn’t. They’d probably think I was in the bathroom wanking now. It’s ridiculous. I’m reading about the size of Kim Kardashian’s arse! Who’d wank over that?
‘Are you okay?’ said Mum again.
‘Fine,’ I said, putting a gob of toothpaste onto my toothbrush. ‘Really, I’m fine.’
Anything else she said was lost in the sound of the running water and the violent assault I was making on my teeth with the toothbrush. I brushed longer than usual. It was a matter of making time to steel myself for another weird, humiliating talk from Mum. She was definitely getting harder to talk to, and no matter how I thought a conversation might go, she always managed to drag it somewhere into strangeland.
After a deep breath, I was ready. I could barge past and say nothing. Or take them on, finger out, pistol style. I went back to the mirror
and had a couple of tries at it. After the third or fourth go, I had it down. It felt good. I went back to the door, gently turned the key and took one final deep breath with my hand on the doorknob.
I’ll show them who the wanker is.
But they’d gone.
‘Lucky,’ I said to the clear space, my shoulders broad and back wide. It was my very best gangster voice. ‘Youse two are ferkin’ lucky.’ I blew on the tip of my finger and holstered my hand. What a letdown.
On the way to the bus stop I got a text from Mum.
Nothing was ever funny when you had to explain it.
Then I added:
Okay, so sometimes she is funny. I felt better. Much better, actually. The bus ride wasn’t such an effort and it wasn’t until I got nearer to school that the day ahead worked its way into my consciousness. One day I’ll understand why it is I get a boner thirty seconds before I have to get off the bus. If I had a decent phone I could ask Siri, that’d be funny. Ryan once told me when he was little, his mum used to put a cold spoon on his dick when he got a hard on, and that seemed to make it go away. Weird, though. I wonder how he felt when he was setting the table and putting the spoons out.
Gracie Chilcott was marching down the hall. I’d watched her from way up the other end and had to change tack a bit to get close enough to say anything. It’s not like I’d yell ‘hey’ across the whole hallway. It had to be a bit cooler, give her the chance to say ‘hey’ back and we could pull over to the lockers and take up where we left off yesterday. Or not. Or we could. We would, for sure. ‘Do you wanna . . .?’
Something had happened and it was going to happen again.
I’ve never gone straight up and said hi to someone like Gracie. Of course I’ve said ‘hey,’ before, but this time I just came straight out with it. I kind of caught her eye when she was level with Mr Stainer’s classroom and I was back near the tech room.
She saw me, I think, but then someone got in the way. By the time she got closer, she had her phone out and was half looking at it and half looking where she was headed. She got to within spitting distance, that’s when I just said, ‘hey’ as normal as you like, as if it happens all the time. Like I was in that groove and we were ‘hey’ kind of people.
I don’t think she heard me. Either that, or she had a really important thing going on with her phone and she wasn’t able to look up at that moment, because when she was right there – just in front of me but a bit to the right – this dark cloud crossed her face and her eyebrows tied themselves into a knot and she jabbed her fingers at her phone as if she was making the most emphatic point ever.
‘Hey,’ I said again, before she got past me. It was louder this time, harder to miss. Attention grabbing. Forthright, even.
‘Oh,’ she said, glancing up from her phone. ‘Hey.’
I stopped.
‘Gotta go, soz.’ She pointed at her phone. ‘It’s, like, an emergency.’ Then Gracie Chilcott did the impossible: she made a really ugly face. She pulled the corners of her mouth way down and raised her eyebrows, making her eyes wide. It was a weird, clownish sort of anti-smile smile. It must be her ‘sorry, would love to chat but really don’t have time’ face.
Then, as if the wind had changed and her face was stuck like that, she looked back to her phone and hurried off.
I was marooned in the middle of the corridor watching her go, waiting to see if she’d turn around. She didn’t. At least, she hadn’t until the moment that Hamish Banning and Lurch came from behind and whacked me in the back of my knees. So, of course I collapsed in a heap in the middle of the corridor and everyone who saw it started laughing. Through the forest of legs I saw Gracie turn, crane, see that it was me, giggle and exit the hallway.
The wind hadn’t changed, her face was back to normal.
Sampson was missing his lunch, again.
It’d been going on for a while; some days his lunch would disappear from his lunch box, some days it’d be there. He couldn’t work out whether he forgot to bring it or his mum hadn’t put it in his bag or what.
But lately, it had become pretty obvious someone was flogging his lunch.
I don’t know what his parents had been thinking when they named him, but if they were hoping he’d grow up to be his namesake – some huge, muscular, supernaturally powered, God-like dude – they must be disappointed. He was more like Mr Bean’s love child. And because he’s Sampson with a ‘p’, his nickname was Sampie, which had morphed into Swampie.
He’s got a lisp, too, making him Thampthon, but not everyone gives him shit about that, it’s not really his fault.
He told me his lunch was missing again so I gave him one of my jam sambos. ‘Who do you reckon’s taking your lunch?’ I said to him as he gave my sandwich the once over.
‘It has to be Banning or Lurch or one of those tools. I don’t know when they take it, but. I’ve tried hiding it in different parts of my bag, putting it in a different bag altogether. I’ve even put my lunch in my locker, but it still goes. So, someone’s onto me.’ Tho, thomeone’th onto me is how it sounded.
‘Have you talked to the Year Adviser?’
‘Do I look like I want to get my head punched in?’
‘We’ll just have to watch your gear then, find out who it is and fix them.’ How that would happen was another Year Nine mystery, but there had to be a way to do it. ‘It’s not as if we can do a stake out or anything, but maybe we could set up a camera?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sampson. ‘Put a GoPro on top of the lockers, or in the opposite classroom. That’d work. Wouldn’t it?’
‘I s’pose,’ I said. ‘Why not? Have you thought about bringing money to school instead?’
‘Good one, Dylan. Why didn’t I think of that? Mum’d be into that, too.’
‘Sorry. Fair enough. Secret camera it is.’ It sounded like fun, anyway. Set up a sting to catch the bad guys stealing stuff from the good guys. And maybe it was Banning and maybe I’d like to get back at him. ‘Just don’t tell anyone, okay?’ I warned. ‘The less people who know about this, the better.’
‘Sweet,’ said Sampson. ‘Have you got a GoPro?’
I grunted. ‘So maybe we tell whoever’s got a GoPro, but that’s it.’
It felt stupid, but I spent the rest of lunch trying to find a way to bump into Gracie Chilcott. She had to be alone, though, because there was no way I was going to barge into that group of girls and stand there like I had something to talk about.
I could see them in their usual spot on the other side of the Quad, doing their usual, not much of anything. Heads bent over phones, giggling, laughing and talking, then more heads in phones. Don’t they ever get up and run around? Their fingers were constantly jabbing or swiping, opening or pinching, and then they’d show each other their screens and fall about laughing or start swooning and gushing.
Gracie was between Isabella and Hannah. I’m not sure where Madison was. If she was with them, maybe I could go up and say hey, but only if I got the vibe it was okay to talk to her at school and not just at the dog park when no one else was around.
It would have been cool if she’d been at the bus stop this morning so I could have told her about ‘losing’ Ronnie last night and Mum fritzing out, but then maybe it wouldn’t be so cool if she knew that sort of stuff. She might think I come from some kind of loser family if she knew my mum hid my sister to teach me a lesson. That’s not normal. Or maybe, she might understand. That’d give us some other stuff to talk about because, as far as I can tell, pretty much no one gets their parents. Except for Ryan, but he’s Ryan.
Without Madison around, I concentrated on Gracie. She’d have to bin something eventually. She’d have to get up and go somewhere – to the toilet or the taps, somewhere on her own so I could pick up from yesterday morning. I pretended to be writing. I was up the other end of the Quad, sitting on a bench, leaning against the brick wall. Pencil in hand, but a thoughtless head, just looking around pensively at what might get the lead moving. It seemed prett
y obvious that this was what she’d be looking to see, given she was so interested in ‘Me, Tree’, that story I’d written for class. It’s not like she’d have forgotten already, so I figured if she could see what I look like when I write, if she could see the process and the thought and the intenseness of getting words to the page, she’d be even more into what I was doing. It just made sense to me at that moment, so that’s what I did.
There was just me and a notepad and my empty brain.
I watched everyone, but especially Gracie, Hannah and Isabella. They laughed hard, forcing the air out of themselves in great, breezy gusts, trying to out-hilarious each other. I wanted to be in it, to know what they were laughing at. Who were they watching on their phones? Who were they texting? I checked my phone, it obviously wasn’t me. Were they Snapchatting or Instagramming or Facebooking? It looked fun and funny. How good would it be to laugh really hard like that?
There were games of handball going on, bad losers and worse winners. ‘It’s on the line.’ ‘Double Bounce.’ ‘You’re out!’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘You’re out!’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘Out! Out! Out!’ ‘Not! Not! Not!’ The usual sort of stuff because there’s always been someone not wanting to go out and someone else wanting to come in. Always. Everywhere.
Sampson came back and sat down heavily next to me, checking if I’d seen anyone eating his lunch yet. He didn’t actually know what was in it, so it would have been almost impossible to spot the person who’d taken it. ‘Just keep an eye out for anyone with two lunches, you know?’ he said. Yes, I knew. ‘I’ve got the use of a GoPro, too. It’s cost me, but we’ll find out who it is, and when we do, I’m going to get him.’
‘That was quick.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘Desperate times and all that.’
Ryan sat down, too. ‘Taken any good photos lately?’ he said across Sampson. With his head at a shifty angle, he looked like a deviant. I felt an embarrassed flush spread through the top of my chest. ‘Anything interesting? Anything strange? Any funky stuff, Dyl?’
