The Donut Diaries (5 page)

Crow made a small movement with his right index finger. It was as long as a pencil and tipped with a black nail, sharpened to a point. Crow’s black hair came down to his shoulders and looked like it had been varnished. For a second I thought he was wearing a cloak, but it was just a long black coat.

At that moment I heard a tremendous flush from the toilet, and a second later Dad emerged from the downstairs loo. His shirt was out, his hair was ruffled and he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He stared at Crow and Crow stared back at him. It was like two completely different species of animal coming across each other in the jungle.

‘Me and Crow are just going to listen to some music,’ said Ella.

‘Not in your bedroom you’re not,’ said Mum,
emerging
from her trance. ‘You can come in here and I’ll make a pot of tea.’

‘I’m not staying in here with a bunch of stupid goths,’ said Ruby, and flounced out, pinkly.

I stayed on, and witnessed what was probably the most embarrassing half-hour in the history of the world. Mum and Dad sat on the sofa. Crow sat on a chair while Ella perched on the arm. She held onto one of his ridiculously long fingers.

Actually, come to think of it, only his index finger was abnormal. It reminds me of something … can’t think what … No, wait, it’s that freaky little creature – hang on – just going to look it up on the internet …

Right, back again – it’s called an aye-aye, and it has just one scary long finger that it uses to
pull
grubs out of holes in trees. And it says this about it on Wiki:

The aye-aye is often viewed as a harbinger of evil and killed on sight. Others believe that if it points its narrow middle finger at someone, they are condemned to death. Some say the appearance of an aye-aye in a village predicts the death of a villager, and the only way to prevent this is to kill it. The Sakalava people go so far as to claim that aye-ayes sneak into houses through their thatched roofs and murder the sleeping occupants by using their middle finger to puncture the victim’s aorta
.

All
very
significant, I think you’ll agree.

Anyway, Mum kept asking Crow questions like ‘Milk and sugar?’ and ‘What GCSEs are you
doing
?’ and ‘What would you like to do when you grow up?’

Crow would only answer by moving that huge finger – side to side for ‘no’, up and down for ‘yes’, and some complex system of wiggles for ‘Chemistry, Physics, English, Maths’ or ‘chief henchman for Nosferatu, Lord of the Undead’.

You could see Mum getting more and more annoyed. Dad just looked like he wanted to get back to his toilet, but was hanging on for the Good of the Family.

In the end I couldn’t take any more of it and went to read my chemistry textbook in bed.

Yeah, that’s how bad it was.

When I woke up on Sunday morning I checked for puncture marks on my jugular. Nothing so far, but Crow could just be playing a clever game.

A struggle, but I managed it. Maybe I have conquered the demon?

WELL, THAT WAS
definitely one weird day.

Where to begin?

In the school toilets, I suppose.

So, what was I doing in the school toilets at 10.15 a.m., right in the middle of the Battle of Hastings?
¹

Well, there were two reasons for that. The
first
was to do with the new high-fibre diet I’d been put on by my mum in alliance with my nutritionist, the dastardly Dr Morlock. I was putting away a lot of Shredded Wheat, baked beans, brown bread, carrots, cabbage, the occasional wholemeal donut and, of course, bananas. And all that fibre eventually turns into a lot of wind. Which would have been fine, normally. A well-timed classroom fart can get you major brownie points e.g. just as the teacher stands up or sits down, or in the silence after they’ve asked a particularly tricky question. The key is to make it loud enough for your mates to hear, but just below the level at which it becomes audible to the teacher.

Of course, I wasn’t the best farter in the class. That accolade went to Corky, who could literally make his farts talk. But I was a reliable
guy
to have around when Corky’s bomb-bay was empty.

But that was no use now because of the new seating arrangements. I just couldn’t freely pump one out when I was forced to sit next to Tamara Bello. It simply wouldn’t be right. It would be like farting on the Queen. And then there was the Ludmilla Pfumpf issue on the other side. What if she took it as some kind of secret message? A gaseous serenade, following up my banana love letter?

We weren’t allowed to go to the bog during lessons, so I put my hand up and told Mr Wells that I’d left my asthma inhaler in my coat pocket, and that I needed it now because I was having an attack. Like all the best lies, it had an element of truth in it. My asthma inhaler
was
in my coat pocket. But I wasn’t having an attack. Or not
an
attack of asthma, anyway, just wind, which I suppose is the opposite of asthma. Asthma is when you can’t
get
air in, and farting is when you can’t
keep
it in.

Mr Wells tutted but said yes – on the grounds of not wanting to get sued if I died, I expect.

I didn’t go to the cloakroom but to the toilet, thinking that was a more civilized place to break wind. Of course, as soon as I got there I didn’t need to fart any more, which is the
perfect
definition of irony. Still, I thought I’d better hang around in case the urge came back.

And that’s why I was sitting in the cubicle reading the graffiti on the wall.

If you believe in
time travel, meet me here
last Thursday
.

Yeah, very funny.

I’d given up on the fart when I heard the door to the loos creak open. It was a curiously stealthy sound, not at all like the usual CRASH you get when a kid bursts in. That made me think it must be a teacher on the lookout for skivers.

I’ll admit I panicked a bit. I suppose I could have said that I’d just popped into the toilet on my way back from the cloakroom, but it wouldn’t have looked good. So I pulled my legs up to hide them from whoever was out there.

I heard some light steps and then a soft noise, a bit like the sound you get in the dining hall when the dinner lady flops a dollop of disgusting mashed potato on your plate. Then more steps, and the door opening and closing again.

I waited a minute then came out of the cubicle. There was something on the floor. It took me a moment to realize what it was.

A poo.

Yep. A genuine glistening brown poo.

I shook my head in disbelief. Someone had actually come into the toilet and pooped on the floor.

I wondered if I should clean it up, but that was just too gross. Anyway, he who did the crime should do the time. I also thought about reporting the incident. But then I’d have to explain why I was in there. So I stepped over the offending object and ran back to class.

I went back to check out the crime scene when the bell rang for lunch. There was quite a commotion. The door was blocked by a piece of tape, and a couple of prefects were standing guard. A little crowd had gathered. I asked a kid called Spinks, who I sort of know, what was going on.

‘Someone dumped on the floor. Then a prefect stepped in it. He’s had to go to hospital.’

‘Just for stepping in some …?’

‘He slipped. Broke his ankle, apparently.’

‘Which one?’

‘His right one.’

‘No, I mean which prefect?’

‘Oh. Ivan the Terrible.’

‘Good.’

At that moment, the door opened and the school caretaker, Mr Aziz, came out carrying
a
yellow plastic bag with
DANGEROUS WASTE MATERIALS
written on it. He looked like he was carrying an unexploded bomb.

‘This is not my job,’ he grumbled as he went past.

I told the guys about it over lunch (it was fishcakes, although you couldn’t find any actual fish in them – just a fishy flavour, as if a haddock had burped on some potatoes).

‘Maybe someone just couldn’t make it to the can,’ said Spam, who usually tried to see the best in people.

‘Nah – it wasn’t like that. This person
crept
in – they weren’t dashing.’

‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Corky.

‘So it was just some kind of gross-out stunt, then?’ said Renfrew, shaking his head.

‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Corky.

‘Yeah, guess so,’ I said. ‘It’s just that …’

‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Corky.

‘Or a message of some kind?’ asked Renfrew.

‘Funny way to leave a message,’ I said.

‘Like writing on a banana?’ Renfrew smiled.

‘Shut up,’ I said, and slapped the back of his head.

‘Sh-sh-shocking,’ said Corky.

Easy!

1
It wasn’t, of course, the real Battle of Hastings, but the Battle of Hastings as taught by Mr Wells, who is our history teacher as well as our form teacher.

THE BANANA INCIDENT
still haunts me. Haunts me in the sense of biting me on the bum and not letting go, which I admit is a non-standard way of getting haunted.

It was there on my desk this morning.

Six inches long and gently curved.

No, not another poo, but a banana. On it someone had written: