Lifesaving for Beginners (12 page)

Brona rushes on.
‘And she’s overweight – well, it’s that gland problem, really, isn’t it?
Then there’s the diabetes.
And the alopecia two years ago.’

I know there’s more so I wait.

‘And psoriasis,’ she adds, after a while.

I’ve never met Lorna but I think I’d be able to pick her out of a crowd at the O2.
Not just because of the various ailments, but also because of the child that she bears in a sling about her person, in spite of the fact that the child is now two – or twenty-four months, as Brona calls it.
Backpain.
There’s another one we can add to the list.
Chronic backpain.

‘It’s not just the age thing,’ I say.
‘There’re lots of reasons I shouldn’t have babies.’

There is a pause and I know for a fact that Brona is thinking about Ed.

‘How did we end up talking about this?’
I say, almost to myself.

‘We were talking about Thomas,’ Brona says and I know she thinks she is being helpful.

I say, ‘Parenthood is an ego trip for men.’

Brona says, ‘Thomas would make a lovely father,’ as if she is thinking aloud.

I say, ‘This is not helping.’

‘Sorry,’ she replies and there is an apology in her tone but I think her sorrow is directed at Thomas.
She loved Thomas.
She met him only twice but she decided she loved him anyway.

A lot of people loved him, I suppose.
He was just that type of bloke.
Easy-going, some people said.
Undemanding.
He didn’t want much.
And I gave him none of it.
That’s the story doing the rounds.

I say, ‘I’d better go.’

Brona says, ‘Don’t forget to watch
The Review Show
tonight.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re discussing post-feminism in Killian Kobain’s novels.’

‘What on earth does Killian Kobain have to do with post-feminism?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘And what the hell is post-feminism anyway?’

‘I’m drawing a blank there too.’

‘They’re crime novels, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I prefer to think of them as thrillers.’

‘Pillocks.’

There’s a pause then before Brona slips in a sly, ‘So, you’ll think about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About the tenth book.
Unveiling Killian Kobain.
You know it’s the right time.’

I say, ‘OK.’

‘OK?’

‘OK.’

‘You’ll really think about it?
You’re not just fobbing me off like before?’

I say, ‘No,’ even though I am just fobbing her off like before.
But I only do it because it works.
She doesn’t mention it again.

Instead, she says, ‘Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye .
.
.’
until the line – eventually – goes dead.

I get into a fight with Damo at school.
Miss Williams makes me go to Mr Pilkington’s office.
She says it in a high, thin voice.
Capital letters.
MISTER-PILKINGTON’S-OFFICE.
I pick up my bag and my library book,
The Faceless Ones
, which, in my opinion, is the best Skulduggery book so far.
I got it from the library yesterday.
I had to reserve it, of course.
Three weeks it took.
I’m on page seventy-two already.

I walk towards the door.
I don’t look at Miss Williams and I definitely don’t look at Damo, who has to sit at the desk right beside Miss Williams’s desk, which is bad but not as bad as being sent to Mr Pilkington’s office.

Mr Pilkington is not there.
His secretary, Denise, tells me to sit on one of the blue wooden chairs outside his office.
When you see someone sitting on one of those chairs, you know they’re in for it.
Denise is eating a chocolate éclair.
She’s always eating chocolate éclairs.
She says it’s because she has a baby in her belly and he loves chocolate, especially éclairs.
She knows the baby is a boy because she saw a picture of him on the screen at the hospital.
She looks over at me a few times before she offers me the rest of her éclair.
I say, ‘No thank you,’ but she pushes it into my hand and if I don’t eat it, the chocolate will melt and the cream will squirt between my fingers.

I say, ‘Thank you.’

I eat it really quickly.
You’re not supposed to be eating when you’re sitting on the blue wooden chairs.
Or reading.
Or anything fun.
You just have to sit there and think about what you’ve done.

I won’t say Damo started it.
I’ll just say Damien and I had a disagreement.
If I call Damo ‘Damo’ and say ‘Damo and me’, Mr Pilkington will make me do a hundred lines with the proper grammar.
Anyway, I don’t mind saying Damien and I in Mr Pilkington’s office.
There’s nobody else in there.
Mr Pilkington breathes funny when he walks.
As if he’s running.
He has hairs growing out of his nose and his ears.
He takes ages to get into the chair behind his desk and when he looks at me, he looks sad, like I was the one who started it.
He looks like he might say that he’s disappointed in me.
That’s what they say when they want you to cry.
I sit up straight.

I’m not going to cry.

‘Go on, then,’ he says, like we’re in the middle of a conversation.
He holds his head in his hands and his eyes are nearly closed.
He looks really bored, like Ant and Adrian do when Faith asks them if they’re going to all their classes and managing their money and eating things like vegetables and being careful.

I say, ‘Damien and I had a disagreement.’

Mr Pilkington says, ‘You chipped his front tooth.’
I know that.
My knuckles hurt like mad.
‘And you gave him a nosebleed.’

I say, ‘I didn’t mean to.’
Sometimes that works.

‘You said that last week.
When you were caught fighting in the yard –’ he leafs through pages in the notebook on his desk ‘– with George Pullman.
Last Wednesday, in fact.
A week ago today.’

That could be true.
I might have said that.
Adults remember stuff like that.
Like what people said ages ago.
Mr Pilkington sighs.
I think he’d prefer if it were Damo in the office instead of me.
He’s more used to having Damo in the office.

Mr Pilkington says, ‘Anyway, I thought Damien Sullivan was your best friend?’

I say, ‘He is.’

Mr Pilkington says, ‘Well, that’s a funny way of treating your best friend.’

I’m missing PE, which happens to be my favourite class of the week.
I make sure and do all the exercises properly so my muscles will get bigger.
It’s important to have big muscles when you’re a lifesaver.
Especially in your arms so you can swim with one arm and lifesave with the other.

Still, if Mr Pilkington keeps me here much longer, there’s a chance I’ll miss the class after PE.
The one I have to go to on a Wednesday.
You only have to go to the class if your mam and dad don’t live together anymore.
Or if your granny dies.
Lots of people go to the class but I’m the only one who goes on Wednesdays.
I have to sit there and listen to Mrs Appleby.
All her clothes are purple and she has a lisp.
She says ‘thadneth’ and ‘loth’.
She gives me two Jelly Babies when she’s finished.
Like the doctor does when you’re a little kid.

‘Teacher’s pet’.
That’s what George Pullman called me last Wednesday when Miss Williams said I didn’t have to do the history homework on account of missing the first bit of the history lesson on account of being at Miss Appleby’s class.
Damo arranged the fight in the yard.
He dragged me over to George and started shouting, ‘FIGHT!
FIGHT!
FIGHT!’
until there was a crowd around us, waiting for it to start.
Damo always wants something to happen.

Mrs Appleby asks a lot of questions about Mam.
She calls her Mum.
Mam would have hated that.
I say everything is fine.
Faith tells me to say everything is fine.
‘The last thing we need is the bloody social breathing down our necks.’

I don’t know what the social is.
I say, ‘Why don’t we need the social breathing down our necks?’

She says, ‘Because if they think I’m doing a rubbish job, they won’t let me mind you, will they?’

So I tell Mrs Appleby that everything is ‘fine’ when she asks how we’re managing.

Everything is fine, mostly.
Everything is the same, really.
Except that I don’t go to the Funky Banana after school anymore.
And I don’t know what dinner I’m going to have when I get home.
And it’s nice having a surprise for your dinner.
Like pizza.
Faith loves pizza.
And chips.
And potato waffles.
She puts a fried egg on the top to make them healthy.

And there are never any apples in the bowl anymore.
Mam says that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Maybe a potato waffle a day keeps the doctor away too because I haven’t been sick for ages.

Mr Pilkington says, ‘I’ve called your sister.
She should be—’

I say, ‘No.
No.
Please, sir.
I won’t do it again, I—’ Faith will kill me if she finds out I was in a fight.
She won’t let me go to lifesaving class.
I know she won’t.
And we’re doing CPR.
Only on dolls, but still.

Mr Pilkington puts up his hand, like he’s stopping traffic.
‘It’s too late, McIntyre.
I’ve already called her.
I had no choice.’

Adults always say they have no choice.
I feel the stinging behind my eyes and my nose.
I blink and blink.
Sometimes that helps.

The thing is, me and Damo never fight.
Yeah, Damo gets into scraps.
He doesn’t ignore people, like his mam tells him to.
He fights them instead.
Even if they’re in year eight.
He doesn’t care.
I mean, he’s big for his age but he’s not that big.
I think that’s pretty brave.
Faith says it’s just stupid.

The fight happens in the classroom.
Miss Williams goes to the staffroom to get our spelling tests.
The last thing she says before she leaves is, ‘Stay in your chairs.’

As soon as she’s gone, Damo gets out of his chair.

He writes ‘I LUV SPURS’ on the whiteboard, even though Miss Williams will know it was him because he’s the only Tottenham Hotspur fan in the class.

Then he puts his hands in his pockets and wanders down to my desk, near the back of the class.

I say, ‘Miss Williams will be back in a minute.’

Damo says, ‘Look at this.’
He takes something out of his pocket and puts it on my English copybook, on the table.

I say, ‘Is that the scab?’

Damo nods.
‘I’m keeping it to show Sully.’
Sully is in Afghanistan.
He’s at the war there, because that’s where Osama Bin Laden was from.
He’s dead now but Sully is still there.
I think there are other people he has to kill before he can come home.

Damo says, ‘Do you want to touch it?’

I say, ‘OK.’
It feels hard and rough and it’s the colour of dried-up blood.
Damo got it when he skateboarded down the hill at the end of our road with his eyes blindfolded.
He asked me to dare him to do it and I wouldn’t but he did it anyway.

Damo says, ‘Do you want to come over after school?
I found a magazine in Sully’s wardrobe.
It’s got pictures of girls with no clothes on.’

I shake my head.
‘I can’t.
Faith says I have to go straight home today.
She wants me to tidy my room.’
That’s not actually true.
Faith never says anything about my room.
But she didn’t go to college today.
And Rob is in London.
And she hasn’t played her violin in ages.

Damo says, ‘You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to.
She’s not your sister anymore.’

‘She is so my sister.’

‘No she’s not.
You said she was adopted.
That means she’s not your sister so you don’t have to do what she tells you.’
Damo puts his scab back into his pocket, careful not to break it.
‘You’re lucky,’ he says.
‘You don’t have a mum to nag you, and Faith can’t boss you around anymore cos she’s not your sister.’

Damo is a lot bigger than me.
When I stand up, I come up to his shoulder.
The one he picked the scab off.
‘Take that back.’
I must have shouted because the classroom goes dead quiet all of a sudden and everyone turns to look at us.

Damo stops smiling.
‘No.
I won’t.
It’s true.
You said so yourself.’

‘Take it back.’

The chant starts at table two.
Flapper starts it, I think.
He turns his chair round so he can see better.
Then everyone joins in.
‘Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.’

Carla says, ‘Shuddup, will ya?
Miss Williams will be back in a minute.’
Nobody pays any attention.

Everyone looks at us and the chant gets louder.

I don’t want to fight.
And it’s not just because Damo’s bigger than me and has a brother who’s in the army and teaches him proper fighting techniques.

I say, ‘Take it back or I’ll hit you.’
Damo looks like he does when Miss Williams gets him to do a sum in his head.
Before she moved us, I used to write the answers down for him.

‘No.
I won’t,’ he says and I see his hands curl themselves into fists.

All round me, the others chant.

‘Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.’

I swing my fist and when it lands, on his front tooth, the pain is as much of a surprise as the noise.
The sharp crack of it.
My knuckle is bleeding and a bit of his tooth is on the floor, beside Horrid Henry’s lunchbox.

‘Milo McIntyre!’
Miss Williams is standing at the door of the classroom, holding our corrected spelling tests in both arms, like a baby.
Mine is on the top of the pile.
I can see it.
Twelve out of twelve, circled in red pen, with a smiley face beside the mark.
My knuckle throbs.
Damo holds his hands against his mouth and curses at me but the curses are muffled so he doesn’t get in trouble.
Miss Williams says, ‘Oh my goodness,’ and then she runs to her desk and puts the papers on it and stands there with her hand cupped around her mouth.
I didn’t mean to chip his tooth.
His mam might ask Faith for money for braces or something.
Braces cost a lot.
When Faith had them, Mam said we couldn’t go on holiday for two years.
But we did.
We went to a caravan in Blackpool and I swam in the sea every day.