“Accidents happen,” said Mom quietly. “It was a kind thought.”
“I’ll fetch the dustpan and brush,” said Wills. He walked straight over the sugar. “It’s all crunchy.” he grinned.
“I’ll do it.” Mom tried to reach the dustpan and brush first, but Wills snatched them from her.
“I spilled it,” he said. “I must clean it up.”
He started to sweep painstakingly carefully, but he couldn’t keep it up. He began brushing the sugar past the pan, then brushing it back the other way and missing again. Sugar flew around the kitchen.
“Leave it,” ordered Mom.
“S’not finished,” said Wills.
“I said leave it!” Mom shouted. “Just leave it and do as you’re told for once.”
Wills dropped the brush and pan. He stood up looking shocked. “Jeez, Mom,” he said, “there’s no need to shout.”
“There is a need. There’s every need!” she shouted again. She was shaking. I’d never seen her so angry. Wills just sort of drifted away into the living room without saying another word. Silenced.
Mom bent down and started brushing furiously.
“Can I do anything, Mom?” I murmured.
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I said.
“It’s not your fault.” Suddenly she sounded exhausted.
It was the quietest evening on record after that. We ate our dinner without saying very much, except, “Don’t slurp your spaghetti” and “Doh, I always spill tomato sauce on myself,” and “You’re the best cook in the world, Mom.” Mom left me and Wills to wash up the pans, while she went to buy some more milk. I was expecting the usual fight, but Wills just got on with the job. I began to think that Mom should shout at him more often, because it seemed to work, but I didn’t like her shouting because she sounded like somebody else’s mom.
We went to watch the television when we’d finished. Mom came back and sat down on the couch. Wills tried to nuzzle up to her like a soppy dog, but Mom pulled away and told him to go back to his chair. I almost felt sorry for Wills because he looked as if he’d been punched in the face. He went upstairs to his room and stayed there, and I guessed he was working on his fossils. Mom didn’t even say goodnight to him like she usually does with big hugs and big warnings about staying in bed. She just called, “Sleep tight,” through the closed door. Wills didn’t answer.
I heard Wills’s door open in the middle of the night. The stairs creaked as he crept down them. I thought he was going into the kitchen on his usual midnight-snack hunt, but the noises were different. I was sure I heard the front door click open. I saw the security light go on through my curtains, but it did that quite often because of all the cats that prowled around outside. I got out of bed and peeped through the window. I couldn’t see anything, but there was that clicking noise again, followed by the normal kitchen noises of cupboard doors banging and knives clattering. Wills making himself a sandwich.
Knives. Was the knife still in the trash can? Was that what Wills had been doing?
Soon after that he came back upstairs and into his room. Did he have the knife with him? Where was he going to hide it? What was he going to do with it? I fell asleep with the questions buzzing around and around inside my head, like a fly that can’t get out of a window because it’s closed, but bashes against it endlessly.
Chapter Ten
Clingon announced the team that weekend. I wasn’t on it, surprise, surprise. I was a reserve, but so was nearly everyone else who wasn’t on the actual team. When Wills heard his name called, he went berserk. He galloped right around the outside of the court, whooping and shrieking and hollering like a baboon with a dart in its bottom. Clingon waited until he had come back, then grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulled him forward so that they were eyeball to eyeball, and growled, “Any more nonsense like that, William Jennings, and your brother will play instead of you. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Mr. Columbine, sir,” said Wills. “Thank you for choosing me for the team.”
“I hope I don’t live to regret it.” Clingon let Wills go. “You may be talented,” he said sharply, “but you’re also a pain in the butt.”
“Yes, sir,” said Wills. “I know.”
Clingon stared hard at Wills as if he thought that Wills might have been mocking him, but he wasn’t sure.
Wills said quickly, “I promise not to let you down, sir.”
Clingon went on to talk about the tournament he had entered us for, how his teams had always done well in the past, and how he had high hopes for us. The tournament was to take place in three weeks’ time, and we would all have a chance to play, even the reserves. I was pleased and alarmed at the same time when he said that. I was sure the good players wouldn’t want me coming in, even if I wasn’t the worst one there, which I don’t think I was. I knew Wills wouldn’t want me coming in, and he said so when Clingon dismissed us for the day.
“I think it’s stupid letting the reserves have a go,” he aimed at me. “If they’re reserves it’s because they’re not good enough, and if they’re not good enough and they play then we’ll lose. Stands to reason.”
“You’re not that much better,” I argued without much conviction. “If the reserves have to be there, it’s only fair they get a chance.”
“Best they stay at home, then.”
“I don’t want to play anyway,” I said. “Especially not if you’re playing. You never pass to me.”
That’s because you’re bad,” said Wills triumphantly.
Dad arrived at that moment, thank goodness. Wills galloped over to him, threw his arms around him in a bear hug, and swung him around in a circle.
“Guess what, Daddy-waddy,” he cried. “There’s this big tournament coming up and I’m on the team and Chris is only a reserve.”
He galloped away, picked up a basketball, ran the length of the court, and dunked it effortlessly into the basket.
“Someone’s excited,” grimaced Dad. “Let’s hope he can contain it. Well done, Chris. Reserve’s good. When you grow a bit you could easily make the team.”
“I’ll get to play,” I said. “Clingon said so.”
“Even better.” Dad smiled. “I’ll have two superstars to watch.”
“Are you going to watch, then?”
“Did you say you’re going to watch me, Dad?” asked Wills, who had had the ball snatched from him by Clingon and been told to go home or else.
“Of course I’ll watch,” said Dad. “As long as you behave.”
“Of course I’ll behave,” snorted Wills.
He didn’t stop talking all the way back to Dad’s—about how many baskets he was going to score, and how he was going to make Dad proud, and how he hoped Mom might come and watch as well and how he hoped Clingon wouldn’t let me play for too long because it wouldn’t be fair to me, because I wasn’t quite up to it even though I had improved (thanks for the compliment!). Dad told him off for saying I wasn’t up to it, but I began to pray I would be ill on the day of the tournament so that I wouldn’t have to play at all, because I would be bound to make a fool of myself and let Dad and Mom down as well as everyone else.
When we got back to the apartment, Wills was like a kangaroo on a trampoline. He bounced from one room to the other, picking things up and throwing them into the air, throwing them at me, throwing them at Dad. He bounced outside on to the courtyard and slammed and dunked our soccer ball, yelling, “Great dunk, Wills! What a shot!” “You’re dunking good, you are!” even though there was nothing to dunk it into except a trash can. “What a load of garbage!” he shrieked as he dunked the ball in that. “Not!”
At last, a window above crashed open and a red face shouted, “For Chrissakes will you shut up before I dunk you in the canal.”
I thought Wills was going to throw the ball up in an attempt to dunk it through the man’s window, but thank goodness he thought better of it and stuck his tongue out instead. Dad dragged h
im back inside and gave him a piece of his mind, but nothing dampened Wills’s spirits. By the end of the afternoon Dad was going nuts. He loaded us into the car and drove us home at such a speed that even Wills shut up. We screeched to a halt outside our house. Wills tried to hug Dad goodbye, but Dad wasn’t having any of it and told him to get out before he threw him out. He just nodded goodbye to me, which made me all resentful because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then he drove off again at high speed.
“Dad’s in a bit of a mood, isn’t he?” said Wills. I couldn’t be bothered to answer. I prepared myself to give Mom a quick hug then dash up to my bedroom before Wills started his kangaroo act with her.
Luckily, he seemed to have bounced himself out and, once he had bragged about being on the team, bad-mouthed me, made sure that Mom would come and watch, he flopped in front of the television. I went up to my room anyway after dinner. I disappeared inside a book to the comforting sound of Muffin on his wheel. Mom came in to check that I was all right about being a reserve, and to ask if Wills had behaved himself. Then she asked if Dad was all right.
“Wills went a bit loopy about being on the team and Dad lost it with him,” I said, hoping I wasn’t being disloyal to Dad.
“I wondered why he went off in such a rush,” Mom sighed.
“He couldn’t wait to get rid of us,” I muttered. And it was true. He couldn’t wait to get rid of us.
In the middle of the night, Wills came into my room and woke me and Muffin up.
“Go away,” I snapped. “Can’t you even give me some peace at night?”
“What if I mess up?” he whispered urgently.
“What do you mean?” I growled.
“Basketball,” he hissed. “What if I mess up?”
I scratched my head, still not sure what he meant by “mess up.”
“It’s all right for you,” he said. “Nobody’s expecting anything from you, but they are from me.”
“Thanks.”
“But what if I play like crap and we lose?” he persisted, and I realized how anxious he was.
“You know what Clingon says, that it’s a team game and everybody’s responsible,” I said.
“Yeah, but nobody else has, well you know what I mean, nobody else gets all sort of excited like I do, and I don’t want to be crap and mess it all up in front of Mom and Dad. I want to make them proud of me, and then they might get back together and we can be a normal family again.”
Sometimes I wondered who was older, me or Wills. When Wills said all that, I wanted to tell him that a game of basketball wasn’t going to make any difference. Even I knew things weren’t going to change in an afternoon, even if we did win and Mom and Dad sat next to each other and cheered.
“If you just do what Clingon tells you, you’ll be fine.” I tried to encourage him. “You’re the best player on the team.”
“Am I?” He looked at me with absolute amazement.” You’re not just saying that.”
“No, I mean it,” I assured him.
“You’re not that bad either, bro,” he grinned.”Except at crossover dribbling. You’re bad at that.”
“Can we go to sleep now?” I said.
“I don’t know how you can sleep with the racket that Muffin makes,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
Wills missed school the next day. He went off on his bike as usual, racing ahead of me like a lunatic as usual, but I saw him stop and talk with his horrible friends, and then I saw them go off together in a different direction from school. I called after Wills. He turned for a moment but then continued on. One of his friends turned and made a rude gesture at me. It made me feel so pathetic and insignificant that I wanted to make the same gesture back, but I knew that would make me look even more pathetic, and anyway the three of them were too far away. Let Wills get on with it, then. Why should I care if he wanted to be a loser for the rest of his stupid life? I just hoped that none of the teachers at school would ask me where he was, because if they did I would say I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
Nobody did ask me, thank goodness. On the way home that afternoon, I stopped in at the library to do my homework. I didn’t want to go straight home in case Wills was there and Mom wasn’t back from work. Penny was busy with a customer when I walked in but she grinned and did a question mark thumbs-up at me. I did a thumbs-down because I felt in a thumbs-down sort of mood. When she did come over she was waving a flyer.
“Cheer up, young man,” she smiled. “Here’s something for you to get your teeth into.”
“Flyers don’t agree with me,” I joked.
“Funny ha ha,” she said. “Look, it’s a national competition for story writing. Why don’t you give it a try?”
“What, you mean everyone in the country can enter?”
“Everyone under the age of fourteen. There’ll be winners in two age groups—nine to eleven and twelve to fourteen.”
“I wouldn’t stand a chance. And I wouldn’t have a clue what to write about.”
I couldn’t believe Penny was even suggesting it.
“You’ve as much chance as anyone else,” she persisted. “You told me yourself that your teacher says you’ve got a good imagination, so finding something to write about shouldn’t be a problem.”
“That’s different,” I argued. “That’s just in our school. This is in the whole country.”
“Take the flyer home with you and think about it,” Penny said, thrusting it at me. “I’ll help you if you decide to give it a try.”
I took it sort of grudgingly but I was intrigued as well, though I didn’t let her see that.
“Anyway,” she said, “why the long face when you came in?”
“Wills played hooky today.”
“Ah, I might have guessed Wills would have something to do with it. It’s not your problem though, is it?” Penny looked hard at me.
“I saw him going off with these two friends of his that are a lot older than him and not very nice.”
“It’s still not your problem, Chris,” she said. “That’s for the school and your parents to sort out.”
I took a deep breath. “He came home with a knife the other day.”
“A knife?”
“One of those fold-up ones. He said that he’d found it and he threw it in the trash can when I was with him, but I think he might have taken it out again,” I explained.
“What would he want a knife for?” Penny asked.
“Probably just because when he finds things he likes to keep them,” I said, unconvinced.
“But you’re worried that he’s got it,” Penny said.
“A bit,” I answered. “When Wills is with these friends he thinks it’s cool to do what they do.”
“Perhaps you ought to tell your parents, then?”
“How can I when I don’t even know if Wills has still got the knife? If he has, I don’t know where it is. I might be stirring things up when there’s nothing to stir up. And I’m sure if he has got it it’s just to go in his collection.”
I was trying so hard to believe it, because then I could push it to the back of my mind and not have to worry about it again.
“Perhaps you could look in his room, just to put your mind at rest,” Penny suggested.
I nodded and wondered if that’s what I should do. Then, if I found the knife I could throw it away.
“If you’re really concerned though, Chris,” said Penny, “then you must tell your parents.”
I nodded again, but I knew I didn’t want to tell Mom because it would worry her too much, and I didn’t want to tell Dad because he would flip out, and there might not be anything for them to worry or get angry over.
When I left, Penny came over and pointed to the flyer sticking out of my backpack.
“Forget about what Wills may or may not be up to if you can,” she said, “and think about that story.”
“I’ll try,” I replied.
It was really quiet when I got home, like there was nobody in. I found
Mom in the kitchen turning the pages of a magazine. There was no sign of Wills. Mom didn’t say hello. She looked at me and asked, “Did you know Wills didn’t go into school today?”
I did the blush thing. “He didn’t go the right way, but I wasn’t sure.”
“You should have called me, Chris.”
“I wasn’t sure,” I said again. “Not until I didn’t see him at lunchtime. And then I wasn’t sure, because sometimes he doesn’t have his lunch.”
“Why doesn’t he have his lunch?” Mom fired.
“I don’t know, do I? He just doesn’t.”
“It’s important that I know these things,” said Mom. “If Wills doesn’t eat properly it makes him worse.”
“I can’t look out for him all the time, Mom,” I said angrily. “I’ve got my own life to lead.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’ve been worried sick, but I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“Where is he now?” I hardly dared ask.
“He’s in his room, refusing to come out because he says I don’t trust him,” Mom sighed.
“What happened?”
“The school called me at work and wanted to know why Wills wasn’t in. I called him on his cell phone to find out where he was, but it was turned off. Wills maintains that he came back here because he didn’t feel well and that he’s been here all day asleep.”
That’s a good one, I thought to myself. “He really expects you to believe that?” I said.
“I don’t believe it,” snorted Mom, “because I came home at lunchtime and he wasn’t here. He said he’d gone out for some fresh air to make himself feel better. He must think I was born yesterday.”
“I did see him with two boys just before school,” I ventured, “but I don’t know if he stayed with them.”
“What boys?” Mom asked.
“These two morons he hangs around with. They’re not very nice.”
I felt that I was betraying Wills, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t keep covering up for him, and anyway Mom needed to know, if she didn’t know already, that Wills was up to no good.
Hurricane Wills Page 7
