My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall)

by Stuart David

  “I think it might be too hot for me,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “It won’t. It’s fine.”

  “But what about in summer? I don’t think I can take that. And the noise. How do you put up with the noise?”

  “What noise?” he asks. “There isn’t any noise.”

  “The noise from the machines,” I say, and he shakes his head.

  “You won’t notice that,” he assures me. “You go deaf after the first week. That’s another plus point. The sooner you get deaf, the sooner you get your compensation payment—it’s a nice bonus on top of your first year’s wages.”

  It might come in handy during conversations like this, too, I think to myself. I have a shot at dealing with some of the pizza and peas. I don’t get very far, but the attempt convinces me that it’s definitely not a thing.

  “So what do you think?” Dad says. “Will I talk to Frank in the morning?”

  “Leave it for a week or two,” I say.

  “I’d better not,” he tells me. “These things can take time. I’d better get it moving. It’s not like you’ve got many other options, is it? You don’t want to end up on the bins.”

  “Well . . .” I say, “I’ve got this thing that I’ve been working on. An idea.”

  “An idea!” he says. He doesn’t exactly laugh when he says it, but it sort of sounds as if he should. It’s a bit like the bookshop bampot’s “Yes.” It’s quite impressive. I file it away for future use. These things can really come in handy. “Ideas are all well and good,” he tells me, “but when it comes right down to it, they don’t put food on the table.”

  I think about saying there hasn’t been any food on the table tonight anyway, but I don’t bother.

  He spends a while telling me a story about a friend he had in school. It goes on a bit, so I use my dinner to try to block it out, and then I use his droning to try to block out the taste of the food. I go back and forward like that till I’ve managed to make quite a reasonable dent in it, and I decide that should be enough to get me through most of the night. I put my knife and fork in the finished position, and Dad’s still talking.

  “Blew his hands clean off,” he says. “Blood everywhere. That’s where ideas get you, as far as I’m concerned. Steer well clear.”

  He picks up both our plates then and scoops the remains of my meal into the bin. I notice with amazement that his is completely empty. As he drops the plates into the sink, he finally turns off the radio.

  Hallelujah.

  “I didn’t realize that was still on,” he says. “Could you hear it?”

  “A bit,” I say, and he sits back down with a bottle of beer from the fridge and starts rolling up a collection of tiny cigarettes.

  “What about tonight?” he asks me. “Any plans?”

  I shake my head. “Just trying to work out how to get a boy from school naked,” I say. Or in your dreams I do, anyway.

  In the actual real world I just say, “Homework.”

  And he nods.

  “Don’t work too hard,” he tells me. “We’ve got you sorted now. Remember, though, this is just between you and me—don’t tell your mum.”

  I get up from the table and thank him for the dinner, and he tells me it was his pleasure. Then I head upstairs to try to work out how to get a boy from school naked.

  Here’s the worst of it: I don’t even know Drew Thornton. In fact, until Greensleeves pointed him out to me in her totally bonkers fashion, I wasn’t even aware he existed. I don’t know what year he’s in or anything. The group of randoms he was sitting with at lunchtime looked as if they might have been in the year below mine, but I couldn’t really tell. I didn’t know any of them. So I lie on my bed for a while, amazed that I’ve managed to get myself into such an idiot situation. Then I go online and look to see if he’s got a profile. Hundreds of Drew Thorntons show up. I try narrowing them down by putting in the name of our school, but nothing shows up, so I have a look at them all one by one. I’m not even sure if I can really remember what he looks like. Elsie said something about cheeks like rose petals. Cascading hair. What does that mean? I trawl through goon after goon, morons holding up beer bottles and hiking up hills. Pictures of cartoon characters and bum cheeks. What if he has one of those avatars?

  Then I think I spot him. He looks kind of spindly, standing beside a monument or something. I click on him and feel myself getting a bit of a buzz while I wait for the page, then the buzz collapses. He’s got his page so locked up, I can’t even see his friends list. Nothing at all, just his name and the photo of him looking spindly, and a message that he might have restricted access to some of his information. Too right he has. No mutual friends show up either, which makes me think this isn’t going to be particularly easy, even in comparison with how hard I already thought it was going to be. I go back to my bed and lie down again, trying to think of a solution that doesn’t involve sending him a friend request.

  Then I decide to send him a friend request.

  I have a good look through my own profile before I send it, getting rid of anything that makes me look as if I might be a mad stalker. Or as if I might be asking to be his boyfriend. I change my picture for one I like in Sandy’s album, where it’s just me standing up against a wall. Sandy took it when we were on a school trip, and my hair is swept nicely. I think I’d just had it cut. And I’m smiling a bit but not too much. In the one I had before, I probably looked a little bit insane. With this one he’s sure to recognize me, and because I call myself the Jackdaw on there he’s sure to know who it’s from, if he knows anything about anything. I change my relationship status too. It was set to “It’s complicated,” but that was just because I wanted to write “Married to my work” and it wouldn’t let me. I change it to “In a relationship,” even though I’m not, just in case he gets the wrong idea. I leave my likes the way they are: “Having ideas, and putting them into practice.” I leave my interests, too: “Making money, not being at school, and daydreaming.” My bio says this: “I am a serial entrepreneur with a series of disasters behind me and a bright future ahead. I am destined to be a legendary ideas man. I like to dress well and I have good hair.” I remove the bit about the clothes and the hair, and then I go through my photo albums, removing the more dodgy pictures from parties that could probably be misinterpreted. After that, I decide everything is probably in order, and I fire off the request.

  I start regretting it almost straightaway.

  For the next hour I sit at my desk reading a business magazine and trying to forget all about it. But I don’t come anywhere close. Every three or four pages, I go back to the computer and look for the little red signal. I try to tell myself that nothing will come in tonight, that it could be days before anything happens, but it turns out I’m wrong. Within half an hour the red signal appears, and then I start to worry that he’s some kind of mad stalker. Maybe he’s never had a friend request before and I’m his first one. And now I’ll never be able to get rid of him. Whatever, I tell myself. At least I’m in, and that’s all I really wanted. I can worry about the rest of it later. I hold my breath and click on his picture and get ready to see what pointers I can find to help my campaign.

  The first thing I notice is 132 friends. Reasonable. Just enough to make sure he’s not some kind of loner who’ll try to attach himself to me, but not enough to suggest he might be a major freakoid. I go through his profile, looking for more clues. Likes: “Football, reading, Xbox.” Interests: “Science, politics, astronomy.” Politics? For his bio he’s written, “I am in the school science club and the school debating club. I live with my mum and dad and my dog, Alfie. He makes me laugh.” He’s listed a few weird books and films that I’ve never heard of, and in his albums it’s just the usual rubbish from birthday parties and summer holidays. There doesn’t appear to be anything I can use at all.

  From his date of birth I work out that I was right about him being in the year below me, but I don’t feel good about having become his friend just
to find that out. And then it gets worse: I realize he’s sent me a message. I think about turning the computer off and pretending none of it ever happened. Then I remember I’ve still got his friends to go through, so I do my best to forget the message and click on the bit to see all 132 members of his sad posse. The first thing I notice is that Elsie Green isn’t in there. The second thing I notice is that I am now. A good proportion of the randoms in there are all called Thornton. I’d say about sixty-five percent. Some of them are quite old, and some are very young. I scan through the rest, and I’m relieved to find out there are three faces I know. Debbie Winter, Chris Yates, and Izzy Goodwin. None of them are friends in my profile, but I know them all a bit. None of them are weirdoes, which gives me a little sliver of hope that Drew might not be a weirdo too. While I’m still in that frame of mind, and before anything else can happen to change it, I quickly click on my inbox to see his message.

  “Hi, Jackdaw,” it says, “I’ve seen you around. Glad to be your friend. What’s up?”

  What’s up? Really? I put the whole thing out of my mind and decide I don’t need to answer just now. Maybe I don’t need to answer at all. I turn my attention back to his three friends that I know and start to give them all some serious consideration.

  Debbie Winter and Izzy Goodwin are both in my history class, with the Sergeant. Debbie even got the book once, and Izzy rides this kind of bright green bike with strange ribbon things on the handlebars. None of that seems like it can help me, and there’s nothing else I can remember about them that can help much either. But Chris Yates . . . He’s in some serious trouble at school just now, with a lot more still to come.

  I go on for a quick look at his profile, and I find it’s wide open. The opposite of Drew’s. I can see his wall and his info, and from his wall I can even get into his albums. He has no security at all. His bio says, “I’m a bohemian and a freethinker. Life is for living.” Maybe that’s why he hasn’t set up any blocks on his page.

  I spend a lot of time going through everything, particularly his albums. He’s got a ton of them. All kinds of stuff. And each one has got a ton of different pictures in it. There are old boats and new cars and lots of foreign cities. Even his party pictures look more interesting than everybody else’s. And then, in about the twentieth album, quite far into it, I find five pictures that change the game, that probably make becoming friends with Drew worth it after all. In my suddenly jazzed state I even write a reply to Drew. “Just chillin’,” I say. “Glad to be your friend too. What’s up with you?”

  Then I instantly regret it.

  I could have sent him a message saying the request was a mistake. I could have told him one of my cousins got into my profile and started sending friend requests out randomly. Now I’ve locked myself into it. I shut the computer down and tell myself to forget about it. Tell myself to focus. There are more important things to think about right now.

  I sit with my eyes closed for a few minutes, just getting my priorities in order. Then everything starts working again and I text Sandy to ask him if he knows where Chris Yates lives. He does. He gives me the address. I look it up on Google Maps and it’s not too far. And without giving myself any time to change my mind, I shout to my dad that I’m going out to the shop, and then I head for Yatesy’s place.

  8

  I was there when Yatesy’s trouble first started. Then again, so was about three-quarters of the whole school. There were a lot of witnesses. I’d been down near the playing fields with Sandy, trying to work out the profit margin on this scheme I was thinking of setting up, when everybody round about us suddenly started running in the same direction, all at once. That could mean only one thing. A fight. Me and Sandy dropped everything and joined the stampede. By the time we got round to the playground in front of the old block the crowd was huge, a massive circle with a space in the middle, like an enormous doughnut. And standing in the space in the middle was this guy called Cyrus McCormack, and he was being hauled all about it by Bailey, the headmaster.

  “Missed it!” Sandy said as we threw ourselves into the scrum and tried to get down to the front.

  “Who else was fighting?” I asked the girl next to me.

  “Chris Yates,” she said.

  And then, off to our right, about the same distance away from the center as we were, Chris Yates suddenly jumped up in the air, propelling himself as high as he could go by pressing his hands on the shoulders of the random in front, and using them as a springboard.

  “Who’s fighting?” he shouted. “What have I missed? Is it finished?”

  It still creases me up in a major way to think about it. His face was bright red, and there was blood running out of his nose and a big scratch across his cheek. His hair was all sticking up on one side, and pressed flat down on the other where he’d tried to put it in shape. As he jumped up and down he kept trying to flatten the other side, but it wasn’t really working.

  “Who’s fighting?” he shouted again, and then quite suddenly someone behind him grabbed hold of his shirt and pulled him down.

  “Wise up,” they told him, and they dragged him down low and wove him back and forward through the crowd until he’d gone.

  Somehow, Bailey didn’t notice him. Maybe everyone else at the front looked like Yatesy too. Maybe they were all scratched and bloody. It looked like it had been a wild one.

  “Silence!” Bailey shouted, and quite miraculously the playground became almost quiet. “Okay,” he said, “I want the other boy involved in this fight to be standing outside my office when I get there. If he’s not, the trouble he’s already in will be multiplied by ten. At least.”

  Then he dragged Cyrus McCormack out through the parting crowd and hauled him across the playground and toward his office in a way that was probably against Cyrus’s human rights.

  Needless to say, Yatesy wasn’t waiting at Bailey’s office when Bailey got there. Yatesy was in the toilets scrubbing his face and trying to put his wild ginger hair back in order. (“Copper” he calls it on his profile.) One of his pals managed to get close enough to Cyrus on his way out through the crowd to whisper, “Tell and you’re dead.”

  And Cyrus took the advice. He told Bailey he couldn’t really see who was hitting him, and although Bailey probably knew it was a cover-up, he couldn’t make Cyrus say anything more. Instead, at the next assembly, he uploaded an ultimatum to our whole year.

  “If the boy who was involved in this incident does not come forward of his own volition, this year’s school trip will be canceled. I will give the boy in question three days to present himself. If he does not, then the rest of the school will be at liberty to inform me of the culprit in order to save the school trip. If I have to find out who the culprit was in this way, the boy in question will be immediately expelled.”

  Yatesy didn’t come forward. In his defense, he had no choice. He was already on a final warning because of various past activities, which meant he’d get expelled if he did. His friends have taken on a rotation schedule to make sure one of them is always standing near the door of Bailey’s office, and word went round the school that if Bailey found out it was Yatesy who had been in the fight, anyone who had visited his office in the previous week would have Yatesy’s crew to answer to. So far everyone appears to care more about the threat than they do about the school trip, and Yatesy is still going about his daily business. But everyone knows that the nearer the trip gets, the more certain it is that somebody will cave.

  Now I’ve realized I can help him, though. I’ve come up with a blinder. And as I stand on his doorstep, waiting for someone to answer the bell, I run through what I’ll be requesting from him in return, and try to make it sound less insane.

  Yatesy’s room isn’t like my room. I’ve never really thought much about my own room before, but after seeing Yatesy’s I realize mine is really still just a kid’s room. I still have a kid bed, kid shelves, a kid desk. Up on the walls I’ve got one big poster of a jackdaw eating a coconut, and one of a map o
f all the different areas of the brain. But that’s all I’ve really done in the way of decoration. My computer sits on my kid desk, and my TV sits on my kid chest of drawers. Piles of clean clothes Mum has brought into my room sit on chairs and things. A lot of junk lies about on the floor. Yatesy’s room makes it look more as if he’s doing a house share with his parents, rather than just living in their house. His bed is down low on the floor, with a sort of rug thing on top of it for a blanket, and it’s a big wide bed. There’s one area where he’s set up his television on a stand, with two proper armchairs and a low table, as if it’s a tiny living room. He’s even got lamps in there. He’s got a sink on one wall, and the rest of the room is arranged like an artist’s studio, with all kinds of things that look as if they’re set out properly. He doesn’t have any posters on his walls. He has proper pictures in proper frames.

  “This is a bit like my room,” I tell him as he shows me inside. He doesn’t respond much. I think of saying it again, but then I don’t bother.

  It wasn’t all that easy to get in there in the first place. His mum answered the door at the beginning, and she looked like she’d have been happier if I wasn’t there. She didn’t really look much like a mum. She looked more like she was Yatesy’s art teacher or something. She asked what I wanted, and I told her I’d come to see Yatesy.

  She kind of sighed.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Jackdaw,” I said.

  “Jack who?” she asked me.

  “Jack Dawson,” I told her.

  She wandered off without saying where she was going or anything, but it was quite clear I wasn’t supposed to come inside, so I stayed on the step. She was gone for quite a while, and I didn’t hear any talking. Then she came back.

  “What do you want to see him about?” she asked.