The Donut Diaries (5 page)

‘I’m really proud of you for this,’ she said. ‘It takes guts to do what you’re doing.’

I had a quick look around. No one was there to see, except Badwig, and I guessed he’d seen it all before.

‘Yeah, well,’ I said, patting my ample stomach, ‘got plenty of those.’

Another squeeze, and then I escaped. I trudged through the gates carrying my bag, which was so heavy I wondered for a moment if my mum hadn’t somehow managed to sneak herself into it.

‘Right, Milligan,’ said Badwig as soon as my mum was out of sight. ‘You’re in for a wonderful time. But let’s get off on the right foot, shall we? So stand up straight, and quick march.’

‘March?’

‘That’s right. Swing your arms, one-two, one-two.’

This was not a good start. I mean – marching . . .?

And my first sighting of the inside of Camp Fatso wasn’t very promising either.

I could see a number of long wooden huts and various other buildings. The tower I had seen from the road was one of four, each placed at a corner of a high perimeter fence. I couldn’t see any machine guns up there, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Back on ground level, there was a sports field, marked with various mysterious white lines. Clusters of overweight kids were doing various equally mysterious things around the field, overseen by more adults in black. The kids were wearing bright orange tracksuits.

Orange is not a good colour for fat people. Take a kid who is more or less round, and dress
him
(or her, if it’s a female fatty) in orange, and what you have, basically, is an orange. A similar effect can be had by taking tall, slightly curved kids and dressing them in yellow.

Badwig marched me into one of the buildings. There were a couple of muscle-bound adults in there, lounging around and drinking those protein shakes that bodybuilders slurp all day. They looked me up and down and then one whispered to the other, and they both burst out laughing. In my experience, anything that begins with being laughed at doesn’t usually end very well.

‘This is Milligan,’ said Badwig, and the final tiny bit of friendliness had gone out of his voice. Then he added, ominously, ‘The last of them . . .’

Then he opened up a counter and moved behind it. This involved stepping over something
on
the floor. For a second I thought it was a large stain; then I saw that it was alive, and I briefly contemplated the possibility that it might be a new species of giant weasel. Then I realized that it wasn’t a large or giant version of a small thing, but a small version of a big thing. A dog. A sausage dog, to be precise.

I’ve never liked sausage dogs. They look sly and evil to me, but the main thing is that they
take
themselves sooooo seriously, and don’t realize how fundamentally silly they are. Taking yourself seriously is perfectly OK if you’re the Prime Minister or a professor of philosophy, but there’s absolutely no excuse for it if you’re a dog and you look like a sausage.

And I know that the real name for a sausage dog is a datchhund, dachunte, doushhound or dachshund, but I can never remember how to spell it, so I prefer to stick with sausage dog.

Oh yes, and the other thing about sausage dogs is that they really hate me. I can’t say which came first, the me-hating-them or the them-hating-me. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. But all you have to remember is that me and sausage dogs don’t get on.

But I thought I could at least make an effort, so I tried to stroke the dog. He snapped at me as
if
he’d been waiting all day for the chance to eat some poor fat kid’s fingers.

‘Meet Gustav,’ said Badwig. ‘He’s Boss Skinner’s dog, so you’d best watch him.’

‘Boss Skinner . . . who’s he?’

Badwig and the others laughed.

‘Oh, you’ll find out soon enough. Right, put your bag up here.’

‘My bag? Er, OK.’

Not really knowing what to expect, I heaved the bag up onto the counter. Then, to my amazement, Badwig unzipped it, and had a good old root through it, like we were in airport security.

‘You can’t do that,’ I said. ‘It’s private!’

I heard more harsh laughter from behind me.

‘Got something to hide, have you, Milligan?’ said Badwig.

‘No, but I . . .’

‘And what have we here?’ he continued.

I knew what we had here.

‘Is it a treat for Gustav? Oh yes, I think it is.’

He held up a paper bag with four donuts in it.

‘Naughty, naughty,’ he said, and I felt myself blushing.

‘They were just . . .’ Just what? They were just donuts, and they weren’t allowed.

‘Well, you won’t be needing those in Camp Fatso,’ said Badwig.

Then, right before my eyes, he started feeding my donuts to the horrible dog. I honestly wouldn’t have minded sacrificing my donuts to help starving children in Africa, or even to feed quite hungry donkeys abandoned by their owners in, er, wherever donkeys live. But giving them to a SAUSAGE DOG! It was sacrilege.

‘And you can’t take these into Camp Fatso either,’ he said, taking my laptop and phone out of my bag.

I’d anticipated this, and I had an argument ready.

‘My nutritionist says I have to keep a daily diary of what I eat, so—’

‘Tough. There are no sockets in the dorms or anywhere else to charge electronic devices, so it won’t be of any use to you.’

That was seriously bad news. The laptop was loaded up with games and movies.

Badwig put a neatly folded set of orange clothing on the counter.

‘Get changed into these,’ he ordered.

‘Er, where?’

‘Just in the corner over there.’

Now, I don’t know about you, but one of my
pet
hates is taking off my clothes in public, so I didn’t exactly leap to it.

‘Get on with it,’ said Badwig. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not looking, are we, Gustav?’

Gustav didn’t reply – he was too busy eating my donuts.

And so I did. Stupid, I know. I should have told them to get stuffed and called my mum, and got the heck out of there, but somehow I’d been institutionalized already, and found it impossible not to obey orders.

And of course, halfway through getting changed I found myself under attack by the sausage dog of doom, who’d finished my donuts and decided on a bit of sport to work off the calories. He yapped and nipped at my ankles while I flapped at him with my trousers.

Finally Badwig came round the counter
and
picked up Gustav.

‘That’s a good boy,’ he said.

By that stage I’d managed to change into the shiny orange tracksuit. You can imagine how ridiculous I looked. If you can’t imagine, then I’ll tell you: I looked
extremely
ridiculous.

‘Right,’ said Badwig. ‘Now you’re kitted out, you can get along to your hut. It’s number four. Turn left outside. You’ve missed lunch and you’re too late for afternoon PE, so just hang around until the others come in.’

I went to grab my bag.

‘Oh no,’ said Badwig. ‘This goes in the store room with all the others.’

‘But my things . . . my toothbrush . . .’

Badwig pulled out my wash bag. ‘You can take this. Off you go now. The latrines and showers are in the blue building on the way.’

So, giving my bag a last lingering look, I left the office. Gustav had another snap at me, and I hurried down the steps to get out of range, already planning an elaborate revenge.

The hut was easy to find. I walked slowly along the gravel path, passing Huts One, Two and Three. They were brightly painted in rainbow colours, but that couldn’t hide the fact that they were pretty run-down and shabby.

I reached Hut Four and walked up the wooden steps. Inside there were six bunk beds, a rough table and an iron stove. It was both cold and stuffy. There was a strong and unpleasant odour of boy: that mix of methane, armpit-juice and foot-cheese. Of course there was no telly, so that’s when I decided to write up the first part of the day.

But of course I had nothing to write on. By then I needed a wee so I found the latrine hut. It was draughty and cold and miserable, and the toilet paper was that painfully hard and unabsorbent stuff they used to have in World War Two.

But at least I’d found something to write on. Now I’m wondering if this is the first ever journal written on toilet paper?

I await the arrival of my hut mates . . .

¹
Throughout history, many of the greatest atrocities have been committed by people who thought they were doing something good, like the Spanish Inquisition and the man who invented cauliflower cheese.

Monday 2 April

8 p.m.

YOU KNOW THOSE
books and movies where the hero goes to sleep and wakes up in an alternative reality that turns out to be a demon dimension, or maybe even hell itself? Well, I think I might be in one of those.

I didn’t have to wait long in the hut before the others began to turn up. I was expecting it to be mainly fatties. However, it really was a
parade
of all shapes and sizes that came trudging through the door into the hut.

The first to come in was a black kid, who looked pretty tough. Or at least as tough as you can look when you’re wearing dirty orange pyjamas.

Next came a conventional fatty, like me, but drawn by a cartoonist so that everything was even rounder. His face was lost in flab, so it looked like someone had thrown a lump of dough at his head, where it had stuck. He glanced nervously at me, and then down at the ground, mumbling something to himself, as the others stomped in behind him.

The next was a giant kid – not so much fat as generally huge. His head clanged on the iron lightshade dangling from the ceiling. He had hands like the bucket scoop on a digger.
Irregular
clumps of hair were arranged randomly over his scalp, separated by areas of scabby, stubbly skin. It was not a good advert for cutting your own hair with a set of blunt gardening shears. All in all, he looked very much like an ogre, which made me think again of what my mum had said about the place being like something from a fairy tale.

Next came a weedy, grey-faced specimen, with constellations of boils and spots sprayed over his face. Yep, I could make out the Great Bear, Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper, all done in zit-form. He wasn’t fat at all, just vaguely unhealthy-looking, as if he’d spent his entire life locked in the school toilet. He had the sort of furtive, slightly ratty look to him that’s gone completely out of fashion. Except among rats.

After him, a big fat Chinese kid waddled in, looking like a juvenile sumo wrestler. I wondered if he was a black belt in some kind of ninja stuff, like throwing those little death-star thingies or whacking people with two sticks joined by a chain. Then I realized that it was probably racist to assume that anyone of Chinese or Japanese descent is good at throwing ninja death stars, so I decided to stop thinking like that, and just assume
that
he was a simple fatty, like the rest of us.

‘Hi,’ I said, as they all gathered around me. I thought they were being friendly until I noticed their faces. They each stared blankly at me, as if I’d already managed to do something to make them hate me.