The Donut Diaries (9 page)

But the fun was about to stop.

I was lining up outside the geography room, adding a few final flourishes to my essay (‘the Ecuadorians of Ecuador mainly eat llamas, except for Dalai llamas, which are held to be sacred throughout Latin America, Mongolia, Tibet, etc., and only eaten during religious ceremonies or on Good Friday, whichever comes first, when eating normal llamas is banned,’ and so on).

I noticed a weird sort of silence, but I had my head buried in my book so I didn’t see what had caused it. And then I felt a grip like the bite of a sabre-toothed tiger.
¹

Only one thing grips like that (apart from
sabre-toothed
tigers, which aren’t, of course, around any more to do any gripping, biting, etc.).

I looked up into the tight, mean, brittle face of Mr Whale, our Head of Year.

Apart from Mr Fricker, Mr Whale is the most feared teacher in the school. And at least Mr Fricker has the excuse of being insane to account for his behaviour. Mr Whale isn’t mad at all. He is just really,
really
unkind.

Oh, and he’s bald. Being bald is one of those things that changes its meaning depending on circumstances. If someone is especially nice, then them being bald becomes part of their niceness. My Uncle Geoff is a bit like that. He always gives us loads of money and is always saying nice but non-creepy things to me, such as, ‘Hello, Dermot, here’s ten pounds.’ So
his
baldy head actually looks nice and friendly and generous.

But Mr Whale’s is one of the evil baldy heads. If Mr Whale’s baldy head was an animal it would be a box jellyfish, which is the deadliest creature in the oceans – except, of course, for Man, who is the deadliest creature pretty much everywhere, if you assume that the Alien and the Predator are just made up. And, frankly, if you don’t assume that, you’re a simpleton.

What’s worse is that Mr Whale is the acting Deputy Head of the whole school while Mrs Vishnu is off having her baby.

‘Follow me, boy,’ said Mr Whale. He actually did that beckoning thing with his finger.

I looked at the guys in the line. Spam gulped. Renfrew looked like he was trying not to weep.
Corky
had his eyes closed, probably in an attempt not to break wind, which was always a fatal mistake when Mr Whale was around. Even Tamara looked sympathetic.

Four and a half minutes later, I was facing Mr Whale as he arranged himself behind his office desk. It was the size of an aircraft carrier,
which
was probably meant to make Mr Whale seem important, but actually made him look like a midget.

Finally he was ready, and he fixed me with his famous stare. His eyes were the colour of dirty dishwater and he had no eyebrows. People with no eyebrows always look like Evil Babies. Especially when they are also baldy-heads. I suppose it’s probably the same the other way round, and that Evil Babies always look like baldy-headed teachers without eyebrows, although I haven’t made enough observations to prove it scientifically.

‘Do you know why you’re here?’ he said, after a bit more staring.

I
was
actually pretty scared. It was probably the Evil Baby thing. Evil Babies are scary, and anyone who denies it is bluffing, or
has
never been attacked by one.

‘No, sir.’

‘Guess.’

For some reason I thought it might be to do with my geography homework, even though I hadn’t handed it in yet. I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s hard to imagine it unless you’ve experienced The Stare.

‘The llamas, sir …?’

‘What? Llamas? Are you trying to be funny, boy?’

‘No, I—’

‘Where exactly were you today between ten forty-five and eleven fifteen?’

‘Er, oh, I was in my form room, sir.’

‘Doing what exactly?’

‘Llamas … I mean my geography homework, sir.’

‘Who was there with you?’

‘No one, sir. They were all at break.’

‘How
very
convenient.’

‘Not really, sir, I was—’

‘And last Thursday – I understand that you were alone in the gym when the previous incident occurred?’

‘Yes, sir. I was standing on one leg because I’d forgotten—’

‘And before that? The original incident, the one on the floor of the boys’ lavatory?’

‘Then, sir? I was, er …’

Suddenly I could see where this was leading. And it wasn’t to a good place. In fact, it was to one of the worst places you could imagine. Like being strapped right under the engine of a Saturn V rocket with the countdown to blast-off at 5-4-3-2 …

‘Your form teacher, Mr Wells, says that you went to fetch your asthma inhaler, shortly before the first … the first … the initial
happening
. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir, I—’

‘Which means that yet again you had the opportunity.’

‘But I—’

‘Furthermore, I can find no mention in your school record of you having asthma … So if I were to call your father, Dermot, would he confirm, do you think, that you actually have asthma?’

Would he? Would my dad confirm that? I wasn’t sure. My dad wasn’t usually in a position to confirm anything other than the fact that yes, he was sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands.

But then perhaps Mr Whale was bluffing.

‘Yes, sir. Give him a ring. The number’s 77944395. He’s usually at home during the day.’

Mr Whale’s hand hovered over his phone. I looked nonchalant. I didn’t feel nonchalant. I felt like that bit in
Alien
where the little dude bursts out of that guy’s stomach.

Mr Whale’s hand moved away from the phone.

‘I’m prepared to accept for now, Dermot, the
possibility
that this is all just coincidence. The evidence is circumstantial. And there is nothing specific to indicate from your performance at school up until now that you’re the kind of boy who would … who would do
this
sort of thing. I believe that we’re looking for a psychopath. Or at least a sociopath. But I will say this, Dermot. You are still under suspicion.
My
eye is very much
on
you.’

And I felt it, like the burning red eye of the dark Lord Sauron himself.

I’ve decided to build some flexibility into my system to help me deal with these stressful times. So I’m aiming to average one a day, but with a tolerance factor of + or −1. Therefore, two still comes within my target range.

1
For no very good reason, this is now nearly always called the sabre-toothed cat, which sounds about as scary as a sabre-toothed sausage roll. It was probably done to stop giving girls nightmares. I think this is what is sometimes called Political Correctness Gone Mad.

OK, WE’VE HIT
a new low. Or high, given that it registered 11.8 on the Higgenthorpe Badness Scale. To put this into perspective, if I was a zebra, right now not only have I been ambushed by a pride of lions, and not only has the chief badass lioness got me by the throat, but the whole family has also come up and actually started eating me, without doing me the basic courtesy of waiting until I’m dead.

This is what happened.

I slept in. Only by ten minutes, but that set in motion a train of events that led to my downfall. Because I slept in, I was at the back of the queue for the bathroom. Which meant waiting twenty minutes for Ruby to pinkerize herself, and half an hour for Ella to transform herself from a normal human girl into the Queen of the Undead. Then Mum did her thing, which doesn’t take that long because she’s got very good at hiding what she really looks like with the aid of stuff she puts on her face. Then there was Dad, and I don’t even want to think what he does in there, but he always comes out looking older and sadder than before.

By the time I’d finished brushing my teeth and peeling some of the dead skin from between my toes (yep, I’ve got athlete’s foot without having to go to all the bother of being an actual
athlete
), I was already on the Road to Perdition, i.e. there was no way I was getting to school on time. So I began to take it easy, thinking that half an hour late gets you into exactly the same amount of trouble as ten minutes late.

So I had a leisurely breakfast of tea, toast, Weetabix, Shredded Wheat and pizza (I found a slice left over from the other night). I was careful not to write anything potentially embarrassing on my mid-morning snack banana – just giving it the classic shark makeover with an evil, grinning mouth and three vertical gill-slits.

‘You should grow up,’ said Ruby, looking at it like it was chewing-gum on the sole of her shoe. So, naturally, I attacked her with the banana, which was quite satisfying, although that took up even more time and meant that the banana was a bit bruised and battered.

Then I went to the bus stop, getting there just in time to see a bus trundling away. I ran to catch it at the traffic lights and gave the bus driver a pleading look, but he just made a rude gesture, roughly translated as: ‘Get lost, fatty.’

Naturally I made a rude gesture back, roughly translated as: ‘I may be a fatty, but when I grow up I’ll probably get a decent job and have an OK life, whereas you are a bus driver, and a rubbish one at that, plus you stink, so you’ll never get a decent girlfriend, etc. etc.’

Yes, you can do a lot with a gesture, if you put enough effort into it.

So I had to wait another twelve minutes for the next bus. But I didn’t mind because usually when you miss the bus you can guarantee that it will be raining, but right now it wasn’t.

Yay!

Anyway, by the time I got to school the half an hour late had turned into forty-five minutes. I expected to have to walk into the middle of double maths with Mr Kennilworth, who always looks like you’ve caught him out doing
something
embarrassing, even though he’s actually too boring to be properly embarrassing. But I sensed straight away that there was something wrong. You can see into some of the classrooms, and they should have been full of bored-looking kids. But they were as empty as a six-box of donuts five minutes after I’ve opened it.

This could mean only one thing: an Emergency Special Assembly. If I was caught wandering around the school during an Emergency Special Assembly then I’d get massacred.

I hurried along to the hall, hoping to sneak in at the back. Before I reached it, I heard the muffled sounds of Mr Whale’s insidious voice. I read somewhere that the best way to kill someone is to stab them with an icicle. Once the
icicle
has melted, there’s no murder weapon, so the police can’t get you. Mr Whale’s voice is a bit like that icicle. Cold and deadly: killing you without leaving a trace.

There are three ways into the hall. The first is via the big sliding doors at the back. Then there are two smaller doors, one on each side, nearer the front. I decided to try the big back door, hoping that everyone would be facing the front, and that maybe Mr Whale would be too busy being sly and insidious to notice me.

I reached the hall and, to my relief, saw that there was a nice Dermot-sized gap in between the doors. I sneaked up and looked in. Mr Whale was on the stage with a couple of other teachers – Mr Fricker and Miss Choat, who, with her long neck and small head and big eyes and beaky mouth, looked as much like an ostrich as
you
could look whilst still being (more or less) human.