by Stuart David
I always forget which house is his at first as well—they all look exactly the same. But I finally find it and ring the bell, and it’s the lunatic who comes to the door: my uncle Ray.
“Jackdaw!” he shouts as soon as he sees me. “Get in, get in. I’m just burning some toast in the kitchen.”
He looks a bit like a bull, my uncle Ray. A bull with a big, bushy mustache. I don’t know if you get bulls with mustaches. Probably not. It’s not a good look. He has two new additions to his appearance since I last saw him, though. A massive black eye that’s all badly swollen and oozy, and a big chunk missing out of the middle of his chin. He hurries me into the kitchen, where he really is burning some toast. The place smells like it’s on fire, and smoke pours out of the toaster where two charcoal-black pieces of toast sit smoldering. Uncle Ray takes hold of them and throws them into the bin. Then he opens a cupboard door and clatters about amongst some glasses.
“Sit down,” he tells me. “Are you drinking yet? Will you have a beer?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
“You’re still not drinking? Come on, Jack. What age are you now? Fifteen?”
I nod.
“I won’t say a word to your dad,” he tells me. “Scout’s honor. Half a bottle?”
I shake my head. “I don’t like beer,” I tell him. “It muddles my thinking. I need to keep my head clear in case a new idea pops up.”
He nods sagely. “Understood,” he says. “Forget I asked. What’s the latest scheme, then? Have you got anything on the go?”
“I’ve got a few things bubbling,” I tell him.
He sits down at the table, pouring beer from a bottle into his own glass. “Let’s have a little preview, then,” he says. “What’s the inside lowdown?”
Inside lowdown?
“It’s quite complicated,” I tell him. “I’m working on an online thing, but I have to try and trick a few people into helping me with it.”
“You’ll go all the way,” he tells me. “You’re like me—you’ve got the spunk. Have you noticed my eye, by the way?”
I try to pretend I haven’t.
“Belter, isn’t it?” he says. “Hurts like a bastard.” He touches it lightly with his finger and winces. “How about the chin?” he asks, pushing it out toward me as if I wouldn’t be able to see it otherwise.
“What happened?” I ask him.
“Dissatisfied customer,” he says. “Some turnip asked me to stop singing while I was driving. Me! ‘That’s what I do,’ I told him. ‘You don’t get in my taxi if you’re not going to appreciate it. Everybody knows the deal.’ Not this guy. Told me it was giving him a headache. A headache! He told me to quit it or he’d make me quit it. So I stopped the cab, right there. I told him to get out, and he said he’d get out if I got out with him, if we could take it onto the street. So I got out.” He touches his eye and winces again. “Mind you,” he says, “you should see the state of him.”
“Is he bad?” I ask.
“Well . . .” he says, “mainly psychological damage, I suppose. Badly scarred emotionally.” He laughs. “Anyway, all’s well that ends well. We both got back into the cab when the thing was over, and he gave me a nice enough tip when I dropped him off. Even joined in with the singing for a wee while. Told me I wasn’t really all that bad. Cheeky bastard. Not all that bad! I could’ve been the next Pavarotti.”
He’s always saying that. I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t really know who Pavarotti is. Maybe he could have been, if Pavarotti is someone who can’t really sing.
“So what brings you to this corner of paradise?” he asks me. “Come to see your cousin?”
I nod. “I couldn’t find him in school,” I say.
Uncle Ray drains most of the beer out of his glass, slurping and burping. Then he wipes his mustache. “He should be back soon,” he says. “Mind you, I say that, but Christ knows where he is. We’re not talking at the minute. I’ve had it with him, to be honest. I should speak to your dad, see if he’ll do a swap. How come I wind up with the idiot? You should come and live here, Jack. We’d have a laugh together.”
He reaches across the table and rubs my hair, more or less ruining the perfect sweep I had going on. He sort of embarrasses and terrifies me at the same time, my uncle Ray.
“Me and The Jackdaw!” he says. “What a team!”
A few minutes later, the front door opens, and Uncle Ray puts a finger up to his lips. I hear Harry clumping along the hallway and then dumping his bag at the bottom of the stairs. He takes his coat off, and I hear that going up on the rack, and then he carries on into the kitchen. You can tell he isn’t expecting anyone to be here, and he jumps a bit when he sees us. He looks kind of startled, and when he realizes I’m here he turns round and walks back out again. We hear him stomping up the stairs and then going into his room.
“Must be Tampon Time,” Uncle Ray says. “He didn’t look too happy to see you, either.”
“We fell out a couple of weeks ago,” I tell him. “Just a misunderstanding. I’ve come to sort it out.”
“Good luck with that,” Uncle Ray says, and he takes his glass across to the sink and rinses it out. Then he puts another couple of pieces of bread into the still-smoking toaster. I get up from the table and push my chair in.
“See you later, Uncle Ray,” I say, and then I make my way up to Harry’s room and knock lightly on his door.
10
My cousin Harry’s room is just like mine, a kid room. He still has a poster of a dragon above his bed, and over on the other wall he has a chart for this game he plays on the computer. He even still has a few toys lying about that he’s never bothered to throw out. Sad. His room really makes me want to fix up mine.
While I stand at the door looking around at all this stuff, Harry sits at his desk glaring at me. He didn’t answer my knock on the door, so I just came in, but it’s clear he’s not too happy about it.
“Beat it!” he tells me. “I haven’t got anything to say to you.”
“Maybe I’ve got something to say to you, though,” I reply. “Maybe I’ve come to apologize.”
“Did you bring my iPad?” he asks me, and I shake my head. “Beat it, then. I’m not interested.”
I close the door and come a bit farther into the room. Harry turns away from me and hunches over the books that are lying open on his desk, pretending he’s getting to work on something. I go over and sit down on his kid bed.
“I’ve brought you something to make up for the iPad,” I say. “I’m still trying to get that back, but I’ve brought you something better in the meantime.”
That gets his attention. He abandons the books and spins his swivel chair, then looks over at me.
“Let’s see it,” he says, and he wheels the chair halfway over toward me.
I get up off the bed. “It’s not something you can see,” I tell him, turning my back to him and studying some of the sad debris he’s got on his shelves. “It’s an opportunity.”
I hear the chair rolling back toward the desk again. “Forget it,” he says. “I’m not interested in your schemes, Dawson.”
“Call me The Jackdaw,” I say.
“How about I call you The Jackass?” he replies.
“Okay,” I say. “Dawson’s fine. Whatever.”
“How about I call you a cab?” Harry continues. “I want you out of here, Jackass. I’ll give you thirty seconds, then I’m shouting on mad Ray to give you a lift home. Opera all the way.”
“That’s quite a black eye he’s wearing,” I say, but Harry doesn’t reply. So I tell him I’m sorry about the iPad. For about the five hundredth time. “It was a misunderstanding,” I tell him. “That’s all.”
He turns round with his face red. “I gave you a loan of my iPad and you sold it. Where’s the misunderstanding?”
“I didn’t sell it,” I say. “How many times do I have to tell you that? I lost it in a bet. And the misunderstanding is, I thought you’d given me it to keep.”
; “No you didn’t,” Harry shouts. “You asked me if you could borrow it, and I told you not to break it. How can that possibly imply I was giving you it to keep?”
“That’s not what happened,” I tell him. “You know it’s not.”
He sighs very loudly and then slams his books about on the desk, making out as if this is him finally settling down to work. I walk toward the door and open it a bit.
“I’ll see you later,” I say. “I had the perfect plan to get you to university, but if you’d rather have the iPad, it’s your loss.”
I open the door a little more, but I can already hear him stirring behind me. The chair creaks as it turns, even though he’s trying his best to keep it quiet. I open the door a bit farther and step out into the hall, then start closing the door behind me.
“Hang on,” Harry says quietly. “Come back a minute. Maybe I am interested.”
“Make your mind up,” I say.
“Let’s hear it,” he says. “I’m listening. The iPad can wait. Come back in and tell me the scheme.”
I hover with the doorknob in my hand for a while, just to keep him in suspense, and then I pretend I’m quite exasperated by the whole business, and I come back into the room.
Harry doesn’t know anything about the trouble Yatesy is in. He remembers the fight, particularly the part where Yatesy jumped up and down asking what was happening, but he doesn’t know anything about the threat to the school trip or about Bailey’s ultimatum. His year isn’t affected by it, and Harry isn’t the most in-touch person anyway, so I have to fill him in a bit.
“What’s any of this got to do with me, though?” he says, quite early on. “This is starting to look like a scam to make me forget about the iPad.”
“Relax,” I say. “I’m giving you a gift. I thought all that mattered to you was getting to university?”
He shakes his head. “That’s finished,” he says. “Ray says I can forget it. He says I’m already enough of an embarrassment as it is, and there’s no way he’s letting me study catering. He says he wants to see proof I’m a man. He’s trying to force me to finish with school right now and start working on the taxis.”
“That’s why this is perfect for you,” I say. “This is exactly what you’re looking for. Yatesy’s about to be expelled. If he doesn’t step up and admit he was in that fight, somebody else will spill the beans to save the school trip. The only thing that can keep both sides happy is a stand-in. Now, if you were to come forward . . .”
“I’d get expelled.”
I shake my head. “Yatesy’s on a final warning,” I say. “That’s the only reason he’d get expelled. How many warnings have you ever had? Apart from being warned you might burst your brains from studying too much? You’d only get suspended.”
At first he doesn’t respond. He gets up out of his chair and paces round the room a bit.
“Just imagine how proud your dad will be,” I say. “Not only have you been in a proper fight for the first time in your life, you’ve been suspended from school for it as well. Imagine him being able to tell his taxi pals about that. Imagine him being able to hammer on about it down at the bowling club. Suddenly you’re a man. He’ll be all over you. And then you can talk him into letting you do whatever you want at university.”
He keeps pacing.
“Besides—” I say, and he tells me to shut up.
“Let me think for a minute,” he says. “Stop talking.” So I stop talking and let him think. I pick up this sort of dinosaur thing he’s got on his chest of drawers and start playing with it.
“I hate your schemes,” he says suddenly. “They’re moronic. They always make me feel sick. But this one . . .”
I keep playing with the dinosaur and ignore the insult. I can tell something’s starting to happen.
“What if somebody comes forward and tells Bailey I wasn’t in the fight? What then?”
“Who would do that?” I say. “Who would risk getting their head kicked in when the school trip’s already been saved? It doesn’t make any sense.”
I put the dinosaur down and turn to look at him. There’s a slight smile making his mouth twitch at the corners.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“You will?”
He nods. “I will. On one condition.”
I feel a bit stunned.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“I’ll do it as soon as you get my iPad back,” he says. “The minute I’ve got that in my hand, I’ll march into Bailey’s office and tell him it was me who fought Cyrus McCormack.”
“No,” I say. “No. That’s not what’s happening here, Harry. I’m giving you this to make up for the iPad. You’re the one who benefits from this.”
“So you say.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m on to you,” he says. “I know there’s something in this for you. I can feel it. I’m your cousin—I know how your mind works.”
“What?” I say. “That’s not even a thing. Since when do cousins know how each other’s minds work?”
“Since now,” he says. “Since whenever. I know how your mind works—that’s all that matters. I know there’s something in this for you. What do you care about Yatesy? You don’t even go on school trips. You’ve got it set up so Yatesy has to give you something if you find a stand-in for him.”
“No I haven’t.”
“Okay, then,” Harry says. “Fair enough. But I don’t think I’ll do it. It might not work anyway. Ray probably still won’t let me go to university, and I might end up getting expelled.”
“No you won’t,” I say. “I promise. You’ve got to try it, Harry.”
He grins at me. It’s not a pretty picture. “Why do you care?” he asks. “What does it matter to you if I end up being a chef or a taxi driver? Don’t act it.”
He’s got me. I hunt around in the back bit of my brain for something to help me out, but it’s completely empty. I give myself a little bump back there and try to knock an idea forward, but nothing happens.
“So what’s he going to give you?” Harry asks.
I sigh. “He’s going to get somebody to help me with some programming, for this idea I’ve got.”
“Bingo,” Harry says. “I knew it. I knew you weren’t doing this to help me.”
“I came to you first, though,” I tell him. “There are plenty of other randoms I could’ve gone to. I’m offering it to you to help you out of a jam.”
“I appreciate that,” Harry says. “And I’m willing to do it. It might even work. But I’m only doing it if you agree to my condition. Take it or leave it.”
I know I’m going to have to take it, but I try one more line of attack. “It’s a time-sensitive operation, though,” I explain. “Somebody could come forward and tell Bailey it was Yatesy who was fighting at any minute. Then we’ve both had it. You’re back to square one with your dad, and I’ve got nobody to help me with my idea.”
“Exactly,” Harry says. “So you’d better get a move on.”
“But surely it’s safer if you go to Bailey straightaway and I get the iPad back as soon as I can?”
Harry shakes his head. “This is Friday,” he says. “Who’s going to go to Bailey over the weekend? That gives you two days to get the iPad back. Then I can go to Bailey first thing on Monday morning.”
“What if someone gets there before you?”
“I’ll turn up at school before it opens. I’ll be waiting outside Bailey’s door when he arrives. It’s your choice, Jack.”
I hold his gaze. I think of what it all means. If I get him his iPad, he’ll get Yatesy off the hook. Once Yatesy’s off the hook, he’ll get Drew Thornton in the buff for me. Once Elsie Green’s seen Drew in the buff, she’ll program the Objective-C for me, and once she’s programmed the Objective-C I’ll be a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. It seems like a small price to pay, so I finally agree to his terms.
“It has to be my iPad,
though,” he says. “There’s stuff on there I need. Don’t go thinking you can just steal somebody else’s, or buy me one from somewhere.”
“All right,” I say. “It’s a deal. I’ll be round with it on Sunday night. At the latest.” He looks at me as if he believes me, and I find it quite hard to keep eyeballing him. The truth is, I’m not entirely sure I believe it myself.
Uncle Ray offers to drive me home, but I tell him I’m just going a few doors down to see another friend. I can’t face the singing, not after the brain drain I’ve been through with Harry. I need some time on my own to clear my head, and to let the ideas start forming about how I’m going to get that iPad back.
“Tell your dad I said hello,” Uncle Ray says, and he punches me, quite hard, on the top of the arm. “Tell him he’s a lucky bastard to have a boy like you.”
“I will,” I say, then start walking home. I check my phone to see if Elsie Green has accepted my friend request yet, but the red rectangle is still nowhere to be seen.
11
So here I am, lying on the couch with a major brain freeze on, when my dad sneaks into the room like an animal trapper and taps me on the shoulder. It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’ve been working on a solution to the iPad fiasco all weekend, but I’ve drawn a complete blank. I’ve been using all my best methods to occupy the front bit of my brain, mind mapping, free writing, rearranging the furniture in my room. I even tried falling asleep, in the hope that I would wake up with a solution. Nothing.
“Where’s your mum?” Dad whispers as I lie here staring up at him.
“At the shops,” I say.
“Good,” he whispers, and he signals me to follow him by moving his index finger, as if we’re both in a midnight jungle, hunting down tigers using night vision.
“What is it?” I ask him.
He just does the finger thing again and goes over to the dining table at the far end of the room, the one we never use unless my grandpa is visiting.
