What I Did (8 page)

— You don't need to take . . .

But I do! She can't fool me! I am already there, undressed. And now that I am naked I can show her my spectacular wounds!

Butterfly looks at me. She sucks some air in over her teeth when I point at the wall bite on the inside of my leg, and she's also impressed by my other bruises, like the stairs one on my back, and some of the red bits, too, I think, because she looks hard at all of them, like you might if you saw an amazing painting of an otter perhaps. I don't say anything. I just point. The wall scrape wins I think: it's gone bright dark purple-red all around but there's still some blood in it.

— Is that from this morning? she asks.

— I don't want to tell you.

— Why?

— Because it wasn't my fault.

— Don't worry, Billy. I know that.

— No. It was Dad's fault instead.

— How exactly?

— He got me by a wall.

— He did what?

— I was running away from him and he was chasing me, and then he was about to catch me by a wall, and because he was about to catch me and I was trying to escape, the wall bit me.

— The wall bit you?

— Yes, because of him.

— Because of him?

— They used the railings from the wall to kill people with in the war. He told me that ages ago. Did you know that there's a banister on the stairs you can hit people with if you like?

— Right. A banister. No. Has somebody hit you with a banister?

— No, I say. — But if they did I'd run away.

— Have you ever done that? Run away?

— Oh yes but he caught up with me, like today. He always does.

— I see. What are these marks here, on the backs of your legs?

— I don't know. It might be because of always getting hurt on the stairs.

— You get hurt on the stairs. How?

— There's not enough friction in them. I could push you down them easily. Anybody could. And when you get pushed down them it hurts! Did you know a wolf's jaw muscles are strong enough to bite your thighbone in half?

— I . . . no. I didn't. But Billy, how did you get these bruises here?

— They don't hurt. They're just normal bruises.

— And these ones on your back here?

— Normal.

— I see, she says, handing me my T-shirt. — Thank you. Good boy. Thank you.

— I am a good boy, I say, getting dressed. — I hardly ever retaliate.

 

There are three boys at school who do ganging-up. Mostly it's against me but I don't mind and only two of them are in my class. The other one isn't but he is in my playground at break time. They are called Rufus and Joe and Eddy and they live in a close which is actually quite far away which they don't realize is a joke. Eddy is not in my class. He is the ringmaster and he has curly hair. He sends the others in to hit me first. Sometimes they will say something first like, — Hey you idiot you are a wildlife freak, but mostly they won't say anything at all. They just run up and push me over and that will be the first thing I know about it.

Retaliation is very interesting because mostly it's wrong, except when it's right, and then it can actually be your duty to stand up for yourself and let them have it, Son: don't let anyone push you around. Duty is called compulsory. But at other times it is very important that you don't fight back at all and instead use Jesus's weapon of choice which was his cheek, which he kept turning, which wasn't at all pathetic. Luke Skywalker has a light saver.

School is the place where the rules are very easy. Everyone knows them. You mustn't hit anyone or do aggression. Absolutely not! Not even rough-and-tumbling. If you kids must fight why not join the judo club? The teachers are in charge at school so you do have to do what they say, although this can be extremely tricky because sometimes they aren't looking and at the end of the day you have to stand up for yourself, Son, or bullies will keep doing it for ever.

Did you know that there is an extra sense some animals have for checking whether prey is in fear? I think Eddy is one of those animals. There's Billy sitting playing with his Tiddlos, just let me check whether he's in fear. No. Well he should be. Attack!

When it last happened I jumped up very fast and the nearest one was Joe so I grabbed him very noisily to show that I was up and he was down because he was. I tripped him over very easily using judo. But Eddy and Rufus got me from the back and I realized that they were working as a pack. I made a tremendous roaring racket to show I wasn't afraid and it wasn't camouflage, I really wasn't. It was quite good fun actually. I spun around but one of them had a finger in my ear and that hurt so I sat down on him and there was a crunchy feeling of the gravel through him. Then something hit me on the cheek but I don't know what it was. I didn't see it. All I saw was the playground, very close, very miniature, but no worm-casts, just sandy concrete. Next my neck felt nasty and then I realized what was going on and tried to wriggle out of it but I couldn't. The zip was done up. Of my coat. They were pulling me across the playground by my hood.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has a hood but nobody would drag him anywhere by it because he would defeat them if they did. If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Feel the Force, Billy.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to use my Force because Miss Hart used hers first. She saw me being dragged across the playground by my hood and she retaliated at the predators. — Stop that! she said, and they did. Her weapon of choice is taking away your gold stars.

 

Butterfly's weapon would definitely be her folder, probably. Get back, get back, or I'll jeans-folder you. She is filling it up with words now. If it was a rifle this would be called loading it with ammo. I want a catapult. — What about a dogapult, Son? Dad said when I told him, which was annoying and not funny because dogapults don't really exist. One day I'll be allowed a catapult but not yet because they are like sticks and the God they had before Jesus. He didn't exist either but he did make some laws and the main one was that you had to poke out other people's eyes if they poked yours out first. Careful there! If you wave that stick in my face I'll take one of your eyes out with my catapult.

— No, I normally don't retaliate, I tell Butterfly again.

She looks up from her jeans and tries another smile but it's a weak one and suddenly I think she might either be confused or upset which is bad because it means she's even less likely to go home.

— It means poking somebody else's eye out, I explain. — But don't worry because I won't do it unless I have to. How long are you staying?

— Does that happen often, Billy? Do you try to fight back?

— Sometimes retaliation is the only option, I say.

— Really. Did you retaliate today?

— No. I promise I didn't. It's half-term. Will you go away now, please?

She closes her folder like Mr. Kneele closes the Bible when he finishes reading bits of it to us at school. Slowly. It's a great book, the Bible, full of tremendous stories. Bedpost of Western civilization, Son. Just don't take it as gospel. That's a joke. I still don't understand it. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked Butterfly to go away.

— Sorry, I add, looking at the dead TV. — But I'd like to be on my own now please.

She straightens my trousers because I've sort of pulled them up half facing the wrong way, which is nice of her. Then she tells me some stuff about how sensible it would be if she arranged for somebody to check my bruises to make sure they weren't still painful tomorrow or the next day and I do some nodding in time with her butterfly which flaps a bit as she stands up, because yes, it looks like my nodding is helping the butterfly to drag her away. Some eagles can lift up whole lambs but this butterfly isn't really doing the lifting at all. Its an octopus allusion. Still, off you go butterfly. Take your woman. Open the kitchen door. Get Mum. Bye bye.

 

Mum comes back into the front room straightaway and turns the television on again. Hooray. There's the little cheetah cub, still at it, dipping its bloody head in and out. Mum immediately fast-forwards the DVD to the gray wolves and goes right back to the kitchen again, shutting the door to say more things to Butterfly and leaving me to watch the whole of the pack hunting the caribou from the start of the chase to the exhaustion bit at the end in the deep snow, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes!

Actually the end bit is sad. Red snow.

 

Another sad thing happened in Tesco with Mum a few days ago. Shall I tell you what it was? Okay. I had my Tiddlos with me. Do you know what they are? They are small plastic things that you can have which are very small, smaller than thumbs, and they are made out of the oil which comes from the middle of planet Earth which is where you get plastic. Each Tiddlo is very different actually. Some look like an animal and others look more like a robot and some of them look like people and some of them look like nothing but you can still tell they are Tiddlos. Father Christmas made me mine but Andrew told me most of them come in packets of three from a shop. Andrew has thirty-nine Tiddlos which I believe in. Louisa says she has a million, which is not true.

I have three Tiddlos.

If you count to a million you will die. Yes, before you reach a million, you will become extinct.

The Triassic area was two hundred million years ago and this explains why the dinosaurs that roamed the earth then are all gone.

One of my Tiddlos is green and has a face like a saber-tooth without its teeth, but not just an ordinary cat. He is Saber.

Another of my Tiddlos is orange and hasn't got a face at all. He looks a bit like a tiny spade. I call him Sandy.

And the other one of my Tiddlos is pink which at first I didn't like until Dad said he liked its robot armor shell because it probably made that Tiddlo more invincible than the others. He is called Vince because that is what Dad called him.

Dad says Tiddlos are amazing. — No doubt some bloke's got himself a kidney-shaped swimming pool by churning out these gobs of pointlessness, he said. — Amazing.

Anyway, Tesco is very boring always, apart from the day I'm telling you about, because of the freezers which have very bright white lights to buzz above them a bit like the light in
Star Wars
. And I had an idea. I held Vince and Sandy up to one of these lights to check whether Vince was actually totally pink or perhaps a bit orangey like Sandy, and that is what I was doing when Mum saw me.

— Hang on to those little tiddlers, she said.

— They are called Tiddlos.

— Yes, hang on to them.

— I am hanging on.

— Because you'll be sad if you lose one.

— But I won't lose one anyway.

— Put them in your pocket. They'll be safe there.

— This is an experiment. I'm checking to see the—

— Yes and the result will be sadness if the experiment goes wrong. Put them in your pocket.

— I won't drop them, I'm just checking the—

And that is when it happened. Just when I saw that even in the brilliant light-saver light Vince was totally pink, and just as I was having a feeling like getting out of the bath when the bathroom is cold, a sad shivery feeling, just exactly
then
, Vince fiddled out of my fingertips and dropped down into the freezer and I could actually see him bounce off a packet of something and skiddle between two things and disappear.

Mum put her hands on her hips.

She looked at me.

Then she looked in the freezer.

She moved some boxes.

She leaned right over into the freezer, toward the bottom.

Her coat went up and I could see a bit of her back between her pants and her jumper, and as I stood there looking at her skin which is prawny pinkish but not as pink as Vince I could tell that . . . that was that.

My Tiddlo Vince was gone.

And I could feel it coming up, a hotness in my throat which went up, up, up behind my eyes. And my mouth was opening because it had to help with the breathing. I couldn't hear myself yet but I knew I would soon, when I got enough breath. I breathed in.

Then the crying shouted out.

In and out, and in and out, loud to soft as the crying part ran away into the distance.

Finally I stopped.

And I was thinking why did it have to happen? And is it her fault for saying it might? And if it did why did it have to happen to Vince, my Tiddlo Vince, which Dad liked, and which was pink, which made me not like it as much as the others, which made me feel better when I thought of it, but then immediately worse.

— Oh love, said Mum. — Oh love.

— Don't . . . tell . . . him, I managed to say. — Vince is . . . gone for . . . ever. He will be . . . very . . . very angry.

— Who will?

— Dad.

— Dad? Don't be daft. It was just a little thing.

— Father Christmas brought it!

— Of course. But I'm sure the shops have copied Santa's idea by now. They copy all of his ideas. I'm sure we can replace it in time.

— But please . . . please don't tell . . . Dad about it.

— Why? Her scarf smelled nice, like under the hot-air thing in a café.

— Because . . . Vince was . . . his favorite . . . and he'll . . . think I . . . did it on purpose.

It's hard talking when you're cry-breathing and much easier if you put your head into her chest and don't talk or even try not to cry.

 

And then later when I was watching
Insect Hunters
, Dad got home. I heard the door go. There was a change in the house. It got smaller all of a sudden, like the pupil of an eye when you shine a light into it. Cats have slit pupils. I don't know why exactly. Actually it's because of car headlights.

And I heard him come in and felt the house-pupil going narrow and then I remembered Vince who I had forgotten about, but I didn't remember him immediately, or even Tiddlos, I just had a feeling which is hard to explain but I will try. It went something like an empty noise and a hot pillow when your legs are tangled and it still being dark when you open your eyes. The darkness became a Tiddlo-shaped hole and then there was Vince, or not Vince: there was Vince not being there.