The Donut Diaries (15 page)

‘But that’s just silly.’

The look she gave me discouraged further discussion. If I’d been communicating via banana, the banana would have said, ‘No wonder you were unlucky in love: you’re horrible and slightly mad.’

I walked away, waited a minute, and then crawled across the floor, commando-style, past her room. On the way, a teacher called Mrs Akimbo stepped over me without pausing, probably thinking that I’d fainted and that someone else would deal with me sooner or later.

I reached Mr Steele’s door and got to my feet. Commando-style crawling is actually quite tiring, so I waited a minute to get my breath back. I could see the shape of the headmaster through the frosted glass.

I knew that, at any moment, Miss Bush or even Mr Whale might see me, and then I’d never get the chance to put my case to the Head. So I took a last deep breath, knocked and, without waiting for an answer, barged straight in.

Mr Steele seemed to be stabbing himself in the nose with a pair of scissors. Then I realized that he must be trimming his nose hair. Odd that he should be vain about his hairy nose but not his hairy ears. Anyway, his eyes opened
wide
in astonishment, and he pulled the scissors out of his nose and flung them in his desk drawer.

‘I never touched the woman. Or the money. It was a simple misunderstanding. My finger became caught in the fabric, and— Oh, are you a whatsit, pupil?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not connected to the police or security services in any way?’

‘No, sir.’

I couldn’t help but notice that Mr Steele’s shirt was buttoned up all wrong and his tie was twisted round to one side. Despite his great age, he looked more like a scruffy schoolboy than a teacher.

‘How did you get in here?’ he said in a baffled way. ‘I left instructions that I’d only see
people
in my absence …’

‘Miss Bush said to come right in.’

‘Bush … in … right …’ Mr Steele seemed to be having difficulty grasping the meaning of my words.

‘Sir, your open door … You spoke about it. Said we could come to you if we had any problems.’

‘Precisely. My door is always, ah,
agape
. So long as I don’t have to be on the other side of it. Burdens of office … uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, many a mickle makes a muckle, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.’

Mr Steele gazed into the distance, haunted, perhaps, by the idea of infinity he had just invoked.

I didn’t know how to begin, so I waited a
moment
. He focused on me again, and looked a little startled.

‘So what is it I’m supposed to do for you? Come on, boy, haven’t got all day. A rolling stone waits for no man.’

‘Right, sir. It’s about the Phantom.’

‘The what?’

‘The Brown Phantom, sir.’

‘The who?’

‘The poo, sir.’

‘What poo?’

‘The poo that’s been left lying around.’

‘There’s poo left lying around? Why was I not told of this? It is an outrage. We had toilet facilities installed so that such things would never happen again, not in my life time. We all remember the Great Stink of 1972. Well, I vowed that I’d make history a thing of the past.’

‘I think you were, sir. Told about it, I mean.’

‘Then I shouldn’t have been. I am not the sort of Head to become bogged down in such matters. I have higher policy … the curriculum. The … the …’

‘Sir, I just wanted to say that I think I know who’s behind it—’

‘Behind? No, that’s not how it works at all. You have to be in front of it. If you’re behind it, you’ve probably already stepped in it, and that, I can tell you, is no way to start a picnic.’

I ploughed on, determined to drive that particular image out of my head.

‘But I need another few days, sir, to finish my investigation.’

‘A couple of days? Fine. Rome wasn’t burned in a day. Or a couple of days. And when in Rome, do as you would be done by. Although
I
wouldn’t advise turning the other cheek. Not in Rome. Especially in those alleyways around the …’ A shudder passed through the Head.

‘Right, sir. So you’ll let him know?’

‘
Him?
Who? This Brown Phantom of yours? They seek him here, they seek him there …’

‘No, sir. Mr Whale.’

‘What? Mr Whale has been leaving dirty doo-doos around the school? Well, I’m disappointed but I cannot say that I’m surprised …’

‘No, sir. Mr Whale isn’t the Phantom. You have to tell Mr Whale to let me have a few more days so that I can find out who the Phantom really is.’

‘Ah, I see. Yes, I’ll send him a memo. Not quite sure what a memo is, but I’ll send him one. Do please send Miss Bush in as you leave. She’ll know what a memo is.’

As I left, Mr Steele reached again for the scissors and went back to work trimming his nose hairs.

1
I believe that Mr Steele got the idea for this from a book called
Catch 22
, rather than thinking it up for himself, which is actually quite lazy and probably counts as plagiarism.

I SUPPOSE IT
had to happen. Ella had her Goth boyfriend, so Ruby had to counter-attack by finding someone stupid enough to want to go out with her. He’s called Brandon and he wears a hoodie and his acne is so bad, even his spots have spots. Ruby only went out with him to annoy Ella, which is fair enough, I suppose. My mum and dad like him even less than Crow. Brandon is basically a Chav, but we’re not allowed to say Chav any more because it’s racist or sexist or something.

I came in today and they were in the middle of a brilliant row.

It seems that Mum had banned Brandon from wearing his hoodie in the house. He said he could wear what he wanted, so my mum banned
him
from the house as well as his hoodie. I think that’s probably for the best as there’s a good chance one of his zits would burst and break a window, or hit someone in the eye and blind them.

Anyway, while Mum was telling Brandon that he was banned from the house, Ella and Crow were sort of hiding in the corner of the room, because everyone knows that Goths are frightened of kids like Brandon, on account of Goths being so easily broken because of their skinny legs and long fingers.

Well, the Goths may have been frightened of Brandon, but
everyone’s
frightened of my mum,
so
Brandon decided to take it out on someone else. Crow was the obvious target.

‘What are you grinning at, you *** *****?’ he yelled. ‘You should stay in the ***** zoo where you belong.’

Then my dad came out of the toilet and literally threw Brandon out, saying stuff about never showing his face round here again, while Ruby lay on the floor and wailed. And if she’d had a harpoon and some whales, she would probably have whaled as well.

All in all, it was about the best fun I’ve had in … well, almost the best fun I’ve ever had, despite the profound depth of human misery on display. But, as I’ve always said, there’s hardly any situation in life that isn’t made slightly better by the sight of your sisters being upset.

Anyway, about ten minutes later it sort of sank
in
, the odd thing that Brandon had yelled at Crow. I think some deep and clever part of my brain must have been working on it in the meantime.

By this time, Ella and Crow had gone down to the bottom of the garden, past the smouldering pile of leaves that my dad kept burning for most of the year to annoy the neighbours. I think they went down there to snog and talk about which
Twilight
book was the best and where to get hold of good cheap eyeliner – that sort of Goth junk.

I didn’t want to get too close, in case they were actually snogging. That would undoubtedly have made me splash my donuts on the fire, and roast donut sick is not, I’m guessing, a smell you really want to have in your nostrils.

So, staying on the other side of the smouldering leaf pile, I shouted out:

‘Hey, Crow!’

His spidery form, wreathed in smoke, appeared out of the bushes. He moved his ridiculous index finger to indicate that he was listening.

‘That idiot, Brandon, said something about you going back to the zoo. What did he mean?’

Crow considered briefly how he could convey his meaning with nothing but further finger gestures, but then gave up and spoke using his actual vocal cords. He sounded surprisingly like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. That was obviously the reason he communicated mainly by finger, ’cos you would, wouldn’t you, if you sounded like Shaggy.

‘Ice cream. I, like, convey it to the public. At Chimpsters Zoo. Or rather, I did …’

I was now quite excited. You know that feeling you get sometimes when you’re playing cricket,
and
even before the bowler has bowled, you absolutely know in an almost supernatural and quite spooky way that the batsman (or batsgirl, if you’re being forced to play with your stupid sisters on the beach) is going to hit a catch straight at you? And, armed with that knowledge, you can dive out of the way of it, because frankly only a madman (or madgirl if you’re playing with your sisters) gets in the way of a cricket ball.

‘What do you mean, you
did
?’

‘I have been dismissed from their, ah,
employ
…’

‘What for?’

‘The circumstances were a little …
compromising
…’

‘Don’t talk to him,’ hissed a voice from the bushes. ‘He’s an evil imp. An evil, fat imp.’

‘Shut up, you,’ I replied wittily. ‘Anyway, how
can
you get a fat imp? Imps are little. And they don’t even exist. So your insult has absolutely no logic to it. And if he doesn’t tell me, then I’m going to tell Mum and Dad that you’ve been snogging in the bushes.’

‘You do that, you filthy beast, and I’ll tell Mum all about your secret donut stash.’

‘If you do that, I’ll—’

‘Hey, chill out, you two,’ Crow said. ‘’Cos it is most seriously uncool what you’re doing right now. I’ll tell the little round dude what he wants to know. The thing is, some kid came up to me at the ice-cream stand. And, like, most kids want a 99 or a double cone with syrup and nuts and whatever, but this kid asks me if I can get hold of some stuff which is, like, the opposite of ice cream. And I said, “No way, kid,” and he sort of flicks his fringe out of his eyes and he says,
“Name
your price,” so I say, “A hundred quid,” thinking he’ll just get lost and I can get back to scooping. But he doesn’t bat an eyelid. He opens his wallet and peels out two twenties and a ten, and says I’ll get the second fifty on delivery.’

‘Hang on, just let me get this straight – he’s asking you for poo, right?’

‘Poo, yeah … How did you …? But that’s not the word he used.’

‘And would the animal poo he wanted by any chance be from our nearest relation?’

‘Your sister? No way. That would gross me out, dude. There’s a line in the sand …’

Turns out Crow was that interesting subspecies,
Gothus stupidus
.

‘I was thinking of the chimpanzee.’

‘Hey, yeah, that’s exactly, like,
it
.’

‘And you got the chimp poo for him?’

‘It wasn’t easy, man. I had to slip a twenty to the guy who cleans out the cage.’

‘And the kid, he came back for more?’

‘He did. And the cage-cleaning guy said he wouldn’t do it again, because, like, it was more than his job was worth as there are these laws about the things you can do with exotic animal, er, dung, and selling it to schoolkids is totally not one of those things.’

‘So, let me guess, you tried to go in and get it yourself?’

‘Yeah, that’s it. I borrowed the overalls that the, er, dung guys wear, and I followed the team in. I managed to get a bucketful. But then the supervisor sussed me, and that was it. I got the sack, no second chance, nothing. All over a bucket of chimp dung. You know, if it was lion, then fair enough. But chimp – I feel like the punishment
and
the crime were most definitely not in synch.’

Then Crow came a little closer, looking back nervously over his shoulder. He continued in a confiding whisper, ‘I really needed that ice-cream job, dude. Your sister, well, she’s got expensive tastes.
Really
expensive. She likes to go to the movies and stuff … All my other girlfriends, well, they were just happy to lurk around looking gloomy, and you can do that for
nothing
, man.’