The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group (13 page)

‘I don’t know. For the booze, perhaps?’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Just tell me the truth, Toby.’

‘I
told
you the truth! Jeez!’

‘You were really visiting your girlfriend?’

‘
Yes!
’

‘Was there booze at
her
house? Were you drinking together?’

By now I was seriously annoyed. It’s funny; even though I was lying, I was also furious that she wouldn’t believe me.

That’s why I folded my arms and sulked.

‘Is this something to do with what happened on Monday night?’ she pressed. Upon receiving no answer, she kept needling and needling. ‘Toby? Look at me. Were you with Nina on Monday? Have you been trying to protect her? Has she been giving you drugs?’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ I was almost alarmed. ‘She doesn’t do drugs!’

‘Then why won’t you talk about her?’

‘Because I don’t
want
to!’ God, I was mad, suddenly. I was also scared, and tired, and really confused. ‘Why do we always have to
talk
about everything?’ I raged. ‘Just because you’re a speech therapist, you think talking is the best thing in the whole world! Well, it’s not! Okay? I don’t wanna talk! I want you to
leave me alone
, for once!’

The instant I stopped shouting, I realised that Mum wasn’t the only one listening to me. Some guy in the Duffys’ front yard had turned to stare in my direction.

Mum must have realised this too, because she immediately pulled out from the kerb.

‘All right, then,’ she said crisply, as we headed home, ‘why don’t you call her right now?’

‘Huh?’

‘If you don’t want to talk to
me
, that’s fine. But you must want to talk to Nina.’

I didn’t, of course. So I said, ‘Why should I?’

‘Because I need confirmation.’ Mum wasn’t beating around the bush. She wasn’t trying to wheedle and coax. She’d decided to lay her cards on the table. ‘I need to know what you were doing tonight.’

‘Because you don’t trust me!’

‘Because you were found unconscious in a dingo pen on Monday morning, Toby!
That’s
why!’ She pounded on the steering wheel. ‘I want to know what’s going on! I’m your mother, I’m not just some dumb old idiot who has to be kept in the dark!’

‘Oh, don’t gimme that . . .’

‘How
can
I believe you when you tell me one thing and do something else?’

‘Fine.’ I yanked out my phone and started to search for Reuben’s number. By that time, I just wanted to prove her wrong. I wanted to
prove
that I had a girlfriend called Nina – even though I didn’t. I wanted to demonstrate how mean and nosy and unfair my mother was.

‘
Hello?
’

To my surprise, it wasn’t Reuben who answered my call. The voice at the other end of the line was a girl’s voice.

I’d been hoping that Reuben might still be at Dr Plackett’s house, discussing me with his support group. If he’d gone home, I was in trouble.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked, praying that it wasn’t Reuben’s girlfriend.

‘
It’s Nina
.
Who’s that?
’

‘It’s Toby.’

‘
Toby?
’ She seemed even more surprised than I was. ‘
What’s wrong?
’

‘Oh – uh – nothing . . .’

‘
Do you want to talk to Reuben? Only he’s driving, you see. He’s giving me a lift.
’

‘No, no. It’s okay. I wanted to talk to you.’ I cleared my throat, glancing across at Mum. She was squinting into a trail of approaching headlights. ‘My mother’s here right now,’ I continued, ‘and she doesn’t believe you’re my girlfriend.’

After a loaded pause, Nina murmured, ‘
I see
. . .’

‘She doesn’t believe I was with you tonight. In Surry Hills. So I thought maybe you could put her straight on that.’

‘
Um
. . .’ Another pause. ‘
Okay.
’

‘I told her we were just playing with your Wii, but she – ow!’ Mum had snatched the phone from my hand. ‘What’s
your
problem?’ I protested.

She didn’t answer me. Instead she swerved into the nearest gutter and stomped on the brake.

‘Hello?’ she barked, addressing my phone. ‘Who’s that?’ The reply took longer than I’d anticipated; I can’t imagine what Nina was telling her. ‘Well, Nina,’ Mum finally said, ‘I’m Toby’s mother, and I’d really like to know how you two spent this evening. Now that I’m actually aware of your existence.’ During the interval that followed, she raised her eyebrows and nodded. ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And where did this happen?’ She pursed her lips as I cringed. ‘Oh really? Because Amin said you had a home theatre. With surround sound.’

‘Amin’s always making things up,’ I began, but she raised her hand and glared.

‘Shhh!’ she hissed. ‘I’m having a conversation!’

‘Mum—’

‘No, no. It’s just Toby. What was that?’ Turning away, she covered one ear. ‘Mm-hmm. I see. Well, that’s very interesting. I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that at our house, but maybe next time you could come over here. So I could meet you.’

‘
Mum!
’

‘Can I ask how old you are, Nina? Uh-huh. And would you mind telling me how you and Toby met?’

I was stuffed. I knew it. As she listened to whatever rubbish Nina was spouting, I hid my face by pressing my forehead against the window.

‘Oh – all right. If your grandmother wants you, then I guess you’d better go,’ Mum said sweetly. ‘Nice to talk to you. Yes, I will. Goodbye, Nina. Sorry to bother you at this late hour.’

Beep
. She broke the connection. Then she tossed the phone into my lap, flicked on her indicator, and pulled out into the traffic.

‘As of tomorrow, you’re grounded,’ she said.

I
had terrible
dreams that night. After lying awake for hours, I finally dropped off at around three in the morning. But I didn’t sleep well; I remember sitting bolt upright at half-past four, gasping and sweating because I thought I’d been trapped in the dark with something that was closing in – something that I couldn’t see, though I could smell its rank odour and hear its rough, heavy breathing. And the worst thing is, I kept having the same nightmare over and over again. I must have had it at least six times.

I didn’t drag myself out of bed until ten o’clock. By then, of course, my mother had already left for work, despite the fact that she doesn’t usually work on Saturdays. We’d discussed this the night before. Thanks to the way my problems had messed up her schedule, she’d agreed to take a weekend shift for another speech therapist.

‘But that doesn’t mean you’re not grounded,’ she’d warned me. ‘I’ll know if you leave this house, because I’ll be speaking to Mrs Savvides before I go. I’ll ask her to keep an eye on you.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘We’re not going to talk about this now, Toby. It’s much too late. And I don’t expect we’ll have a lot of time tomorrow morning, either. But I’ll be home in the afternoon, and that’s when I’ll want an explanation.’

Ouch.

‘Incidentally, I don’t want to hear that Nina or Amin or Fergus have been visiting. Is that clear? I want you to have some time alone, so you can think about what’s been going on.’

Most kids would probably have told her where she could shove it. Either that or they would have ignored her. Most kids wouldn’t have shuffled off to bed without a word of protest, the way I did.

I guess the sad truth is that I
wanted
some time alone. I
wanted
to think about what had happened. But even after several hours of thinking, followed by a broken night’s sleep, I still hadn’t fully absorbed the terrible possibility that I might actually be a werewolf. A
werewolf.
I kept stumbling over that word; it made no sense to me. How could I be a werewolf? Werewolves didn’t exist. I could grapple with genetic conditions, all right. I could face the fact that Reuben and I seemed to share certain characteristics. I could even accept that the human body might react to the phases of the moon (like with menstruation, for instance). But every time I started to put everything together in my head, I’d hit that word again.
Werewolf
. And the whole, carefully built argument would come tumbling down.

I could hardly eat breakfast. My stomach seemed to be screwed up into a tight little knot. What was I going to tell Mum? I couldn’t just launch into a no-holds-barred account of my meeting with Reuben’s friends. If I did, she’d blow her top. And then she would complain to the police. And then all hell would break loose.

I didn’t want that to happen. It would be a disaster. Even if Reuben was deluded about everything, it would still be a disaster. The papers would have a field day. ‘Dingo Boy’ would become ‘Werewolf Boy’, and the kids at school would eat me alive.

I was still moping about when the phone rang at ten-thirty. Needless to say, I didn’t answer it. I let our machine pick up the call. Upon hearing Fergus’s voice, however, I began to feel worried. And as soon as he announced that he wanted to meet up ‘and discuss some werewolf ideas’, I hurled myself at the receiver.

‘We can’t meet up,’ I warned him, without even saying ‘hello’. ‘I’m grounded.’

‘
Toby?
’ he said. ‘
Is that you?
’

‘I can’t talk. I can’t go anywhere. I’m grounded.’

‘
Then I’ll come over there
.’

‘No! Fergus!’ I didn’t want him anywhere
near
my house. ‘Mrs Savvides is spying on me! I’m not meant to be seeing anyone!’

‘
So? I’ll just get in through the back.
’

‘No!’

‘
It’ll be fine. Mrs Savvides is the one across the road, isn’t she?
’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘
She won’t be able to see me from her place. Not if I come over your back fence.
’

‘But someone might think you’re trying to rob us!’

Fergus actually laughed. ‘
Are you kidding?
’ he scoffed. ‘
The only person who’s got a chance of spotting me is that shut-in who lives behind you, and she’s always so drunk she must be used to seeing things in her garden. Like fairies and aliens.
’

‘Fergus, I don’t want you to come here. Okay? Are you listening? I don’t want to get in trouble.’

‘
You won’t. Swear to God
.’

‘Fergus—’

‘
See you in a minute!
’

And that was that. He hung up on me. I called him back, of course, but his mobile was either turned off or out of range. As for his home number, I didn’t even consider dialling it; if you use that line, you often end up talking to Liam. So I tried Amin’s phone, which was engaged. No luck there.

By this time I was getting angry. Why the hell couldn’t Fergus ever just
take a hint
? I didn’t want to see him! Was that so hard to understand? I moved to the kitchen window – which faces the back garden – and tried to work out if any of our neighbours would be able to spot him coming over the fence. Probably not, I decided. The neighbours to our right were always at work on Saturday mornings, while the neighbours to our left were completely concealed by the enormous hedge they’d planted. As for the woman who lived behind us, her blinds were perpetually drawn . . .

Suddenly I had an idea. It was one of those brilliant flashes that you get sometimes when you need a bit of distraction from your troubles. I went to the pantry cupboard, where I collected some vital ingredients: flour, honey, jelly crystals, maple-flavoured syrup. Then I added a few more items to the pile because they appealed to me: a can of whipped cream, a jar of hand lotion, a bottle of rose-scented hair conditioner. Working quickly, I combined all this stuff in a mixing bowl. My next stop was the recycling bin, where I discovered an empty plastic ice-cream container with a flip-top lid. This ice cream container was a lucky find; it was way better than a water balloon, though I had to stick it over the laundry door with thumb-tacks while it was still empty. After that, I tied a long piece of string through the lid –
before
inserting my glutinous formula. (There was a little bit of leakage, but it wasn’t too bad, because the stuff was more like scrambled egg than liquid soap.) As a final step, I fastened the other end of my string to the doorhandle.

Once that was done, I had nothing to do but sit back and wait.

I have to admit, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. A booby-trap, for me, was the perfect antidote to anxiety and depression; I was so busy imagining Fergus in a rage that I almost forgot the whole werewolf business, which was thrust to the back of my mind as I placed a chair opposite the doorway leading from the kitchen to the laundry. From that chair, I had a perfect ringside seat. I sat there spraying dollops of whipped cream into my mouth, poised for action, until I heard footsteps on the patio outside.

There were two sets of footsteps – and two voices as well. Fergus had brought Amin along.

The doorhandle turned.

‘Hello?’ said Amin. It was such a shame. Fergus had been my target, but Amin was in the wrong place at the wrong time (as usual). When he pushed open the door, my sticky-bomb descended like a giant clump of bird poo.
Splat!
I’ve never seen anything so perfect.

There was a moment’s stunned silence, followed by gales of laughter. Fergus, who was just behind Amin, had seen everything.

I sprang to my feet as Amin stood gasping, his head streaked with gunk.

‘Oh, oh, oh – that is so
good
!’ Fergus doubled over, heaving and snorting. It was the ideal moment. I lunged forward, armed with my can of whipped cream, and let him have it straight between the eyes.

Dodging me, Amin slipped in a pool of goo.

‘Aargh!’ cried Fergus. He took a blind swipe at the can, but I was too quick for him. I sprayed more cream –
ssst! –
and would have beaten a hasty retreat if it hadn’t been for Amin. He was down on the floor, wallowing around in my evil formula. Every time he tried to stand up, his feet would slide out from under him.

I’d forgotten he was there until I sidestepped Fergus. That was when I fell over Amin’s outstretched leg.

It was a fatal mistake. Fergus might be small, but he knows how to take advantage of a tactical error. He reached for my can. I held on tight. I fought him off. He scooped up a handful of goo and rubbed it into my mouth. Then he bolted for the kitchen, shedding gobs of whipped cream.

I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account of the next five minutes. Everything happened so quickly that the sequence of events is hard to remember. Let’s just say that bottles of ketchup and mustard were squirted, cans of soft drink were shaken up, and an egg was thrown. The egg soon put an end to things, because eggs are like nuclear warheads. They’re on a whole different level from honey or whipped cream; even Fergus understands that. As soon as the egg hit the window, all three of us calmed down.

‘
You
threw the egg,’ I told Fergus, panting. ‘You can clean it up.’

‘You started it.’ He was scraping mustard off his hair. ‘Why should we clean up if you started it?’

‘Because I told you not to come here and you did anyway. Which means it’s your
fault.’

Fergus disagreed, but offered to lend a hand ‘out of friendship’. Amin was already looking for a mop. Luckily, we’d confined ourselves to the kitchen and laundry, so cleaning up wasn’t as hard as it could have been. The floors are all tiled in those rooms, and the windows are hung with venetian blinds. Even the tablecloth is made of plastic. With a bucket, a mop and a couple of sponges, we managed to wipe up most of the mess. After rearranging some shelves, and replacing the old tea-towels with fresh ones, I was pretty sure that Mum wouldn’t figure out what had happened.

Not unless she saw our clothes.

‘We’re gunna have to change,’ I said. ‘You can borrow some of my stuff, and we’ll wash all these dirty things before Mum gets back.’

‘Why don’t you let
her
wash ’em?’ Fergus wanted to know. And I shot him a withering glance.

‘Because she’ll freak,’ I rejoined, as I began to search through the laundry cupboard. That was when I found the chlorine bleach – much to Fergus’s delight. He pounced on it with a squawk of excitement.

‘Hey, great!’ he said. ‘And we’ve got whipped cream too!’

‘So?’

‘So we can make a
bomb
!’ Seeing my crinkled forehead, he continued impatiently, ‘There’s a nitrous oxide bulb inside that whipped cream! It’s the perfect combo!’

‘You reckon?’

‘I’ve tried it before.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Let’s go to the park. We can explode it there.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Amin?’

‘In the shower.’

‘Aw, jeez,’ he complained. Then he stomped off towards the bathroom, yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Amin! Hurry up! We’re going to Nurragingy!’

At first I wasn’t too keen, because I’d been told to stay put. Mrs Savvides was keeping an eye on me. And what if Mum decided to come back early, just to make sure that I was still under house arrest?

Gradually, however, Fergus got me all worked up about finding a suitable bomb-casing; he wanted a cigar tube, but finally settled for the length of copper pipe that I’d hidden away. Then I had to look for matches, because our gas gun wasn’t good enough. (We needed sulphur, he said, not an open flame.) And when I told him that he should take the fire extinguisher, he laughed scornfully.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m not dragging a fire extinguisher over the back fence!’

‘But it’s really dry, Fergus. It’s the middle of summer. You don’t wanna start a fire.’

‘I won’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The bomb won’t be big enough.’

‘That’s what you always say.’

‘I can’t take a bloody
fire extinguisher
into Nurragingy!’ he growled. ‘I’ll get arrested!’

‘You can put it in a bag,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not that big.’

‘You can put it in
your
bag,’ he corrected. ‘Because
I’m
not carrying it. No way.’

‘Amin can carry it,’ I said. Amin, however, shook his head.

‘I’m carrying the clothes,’ he reminded me. By this time we’d agreed that we wouldn’t try to do a load of washing after all, because we didn’t know very much about stain removal. Instead, Amin had offered to smuggle the garments into his own house.

According to Amin, his mother dealt with so much dirty laundry that she wouldn’t even notice a few extra pieces of it.

‘But I
can’t
take the fire extinguisher! I’m not even going!’ I don’t know how many times I’d already said this. ‘I’m grounded, remember? I can’t go.’

‘Course you can.’ Fergus dismissed my scruples with a careless wave. ‘Just go through the back yard. No one’ll see you.’