When Mr. Dog Bites (8 page)

 
Separate my socks from their little balls (’cause “our washing machine doesn’t bloody separate socks”)

 
Pick up the orange seeds that are scattered over my bedroom floor after they pop-pop-popped out of my fingers
(
brill game to play when I’m feeling anxious and annoyed with myself or the world)

 
Dust the windowsill and tops of the radiators (my top tip is to do this with a stinky sock; the sock will get washed, and I’ve killed two birds with the one stone!)

 
Change my sheets and pillowcases (Mom said I had to do this once a week now that I was a big teenager. She didn’t know that I knew what she meant, but I didn’t want to tell her that I wasn’t that type of teenager, ’cause I tried to avoid redneck conversations)

These sheets hadn’t been changed for two months. I didn’t like sleeping on new bedsheets. The front door slammed as though a ten-ton ax had battered it. I heard Mom chugging up the stairs, heavy footstep on each stair.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

My heart was doing laps around my body, and I went into tic-tastic mode. I hadn’t done any chores; I hadn’t even managed to get to level five. The brick was coming fast.

Then another door crashed shut. Mom’s bedroom. Banging’s not good for me or my haywire potential.

“BASTARD DOOR! SLAM FUCKING DOOR! BITCH SLAMMED FUCKING DOOR! FAT FUCKING DOOR BITCH! BIG DOOR ARSE BITCH!”

Shut the beep up, Dylan
, the man in my head shouted.
S­­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h, for the love of God.

I flung my face deep into my pillow so that the sound was muffled, but it was hard to breathe. I had to make a Great Escape from the voice. It must have been a tough boot camp. I licked Green.

“Go to sleep, Dylan,” she shouted across the landing.

I stayed quiet as the quietest mouse in a wee quiet town. I played statues with myself.

“Did you hear me?” Mom shouted.

I was like a master POW.

“Dylan, I know you can hear me.”

I was the David statue from the Italian Renaissance, which was what we were doing in our history class. But David isn’t really real, because he’s got a big giant muscular body and a wee tiny willy. The class was really boring, though. Maybe I’d show my teacher my stiff David moves.

“Dylan, answer me.”

I didn’t.

“Dylan, stop playing games. I know you’re there.”

I stopped being stiff David and shook my head from side to side and blinked as fast as possible for forty-three seconds. A new and improved record: one hundred and sixteen blinks. My head hurt.

“Dylan, I know you were playing computer games.”

Shit, bum, bugger, arse. How did she know?

“But it’s okay, son, it’s okay. I don’t mind.” Her voice sounded all blubbering woman again. It was much softer. My favorite. Like velvet and chocolate in a blender. Tender to make me feel safe and snug.

“You mean it?” I said.

“What?” There was a big giant pause. “I can’t hear you.”

“YOU MEAN IT?”

“Mean what?”

“THAT IT WAS OKAY TO PLAY COMPUTER GAMES?”

“Yes, it’s okay.”

“Ta.”

“What?”

“TA.”

“Did you do your chores?”

“YES . . . NO . . . YES . . . NO . . . NO . . . NO . . . NO . . . YES . . . FUCK CHORES.”

“Dylan, did you or didn’t you do your chores?”

“NO.” I put my ear toward Mom’s room and listened for the silence, but all I could hear was Mom saying things under her breath, like wee rats having a good old-fashioned chinwag. “EVERYTHING OKAY, MOM?”

“Everything’s okay, Dylan. Go to sleep now.”

Sleep was miles away.

“How was boot camp?”

“What?”

“HOW WAS BOOT CAMP?”

“Boot camp?”

“YES.”

“It was the same as it always is.”

“TOUGH?”

“Yes, Dylan, boot camp was tough. Very tough.”

“IS THAT WHY YOU’RE TIRED AND ANGRY?”

“Yes, Dylan, boot camp makes me tired and bloody angry.” Actually, she said, “BLOODY ANGRY” with lots of “!!!!!!!” at the end.

“I’M SORRY FOR NOT DOING MY CHORES.”

“You can do them tomorrow.”

“Okey-dokey.”

“What?”

“OKEY-DOKEY.”

“Right. Night, then.”

“I didn’t have time because I was writing a letter to Dad.”

“What?”

“I DIDN’T HAVE TIME BECAUSE I WAS WRITING A LETTER TO DAD.”

“Go to sleep, Dylan.”

“IT TOOK ME AGES TO WRITE IT; THAT’S WHY I DIDN’T DO MY CHORES.”

“Time for sleep now.”

“WILL HE GET TO READ MY LETTER?”

“Dylan, for the love of God, will you just GO TO SLEEP?”

The silence came again, and so did the wee rats. It was as if Mom were waiting for me to say something. But I was waiting for her to say something. Waiting kills me. I hate being in that place where I don’t know what I should be doing or how I should be acting or what I should be saying. Confusion world.

I did what I normally do: I tucked my ears inside themselves and twiddled Green between my fingers. Wow! They were so cold; the sensation was sensational. This was an a-mayonnaise-ing moment. My eyes were shut so tight that they made tiny white dots. I was laughing dead hard on the inside, though, because of Dad’s brilliant word. Then
pop
! Out came my ears.

“Are you sleeping, Dylan?” Mom asked.

“COW, BITCH.”

“Dylan.”

“SH . . . SH . . . SHOUTER SL . . . SL . . . SLUT.” I held my breath. I wanted it to stop. Tears. Bloody tears. Big boys don’t cry, but big boys who go to Drumhill Special School cry all the time.

“It’s okay, Dylan. It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

“THANKS.”

“I won’t let any of this affect you.”

“LOVE YOU TOO, BITCH.”

“Night-night.”

“NIGHT,” I shouted, and pretended to wait for a bus.

I waited for ages but no bus arrived. Nothing arrived. I waited until the rats had all gone to sleep.

The stars on my bedroom ceiling were losing their glowing power. I’d have to buy new ones. Amir said his cousin could get ones that never, ever lost their power. He said they were made from bits of real stars, but there was no way on this God’s earth that I believed him. Sometimes he spoke pure gobbledygook. I always thought about Amir when I was lying in bed at night (not in
that
way). I thought of some of the mad things he’d done that day or some of the eejit things he’d said. And there were usually loads, because he went on and on about stuff, like cricket, whether I was interested or not. I thought Amir could be Scotland’s biggest Pakistani stand-up comedian if he put his mind to it. He told two jokes at the
Drumhill’s Got Talent
afternoon, but nobody laughed. Doughnut shouted “That’s pure shite” after the first one, which made Amir’s second one bomb big-time. To make things worse for the poor wee fella, Doughnut’s comment got a bigger laugh. Amir was raging, but I told him that Doughnut was a prick-licker and he’d get his one day.

I didn’t say this to Amir’s face, but

Who invented knock-knock?

Two wee chaps

was a shite joke.

The thing was, he had mega ones too, like:

What’s the difference between light and hard?

You can sleep with a light on
.

That cracked me up. Mr. McGrain, the headmaster, would’ve kicked him on his bahookie if he’d told that one, however. Maybe I could be Amir’s manager/agent. Then we’d be best buds forever
and
earn some quality cashino along the way.

Aren’t you forgetting something, Dylan?
that little nutty bastard reminded me. I slapped myself on the head.

It must have been tough for Mom, watching her only son, her only child, deteriorate before her very eyes. She was ultra-brave. George Cross brave. Usually she’d come into my room to give me some soggy pecks and a mega hug and tell me how much she loved me. And the nights when she’d been on one of her booze cruises she’d slobber all over my face like a big St. Bernard dog who’d just discovered me in some manky crevasse deep in Swiss mountain territory. This was just Mom’s way of showing me that she loved me like a crazy woman, and had nothing to do with the fact that the whopping amounts of booze guzzled that evening had shattered and scattered her emotional inhibitions. (We were doing the Alcohol module in social and health education.) Booze cruise or no booze cruise, she was
Blackhawk Down
,
saying she’d protect me from all this palaver and won’t let it affect me. It made me feel Mr. Guilty, as I was the one who should be doing the protecting. Moms are the best things in the world. I often wondered what it would be like being a mom. I don’t have boobs, so it isn’t ever going to happen. Although I think it does in America.

When I looked at my dimmed stars, I began to think more and more about Michelle Malloy and how I could get her to do the jiggy. Having a top chat would be a start. Women like talking about stuff and all that. She was sooooooooo beautiful. By far the coolest, grooviest, hippest, sexiest chick at Drumhill. I was sure that if Michelle Malloy went to a proper school, she’d be the coolest, grooviest, hippest, sexiest chick there too .
.
. 

The next morning I had to cut my own banana slices and plonk them in the oatmeal before putting it in the microwave. Mom was still in her kip. I was a raging bull because Mom knew how much I hated taking anything out of the microwave.

“MICROWAVE PRICK.”

The microwaves can jump on your brain and kill you stone dead right there and then. Zoom! There have been cases in America, Bulgaria, and Ecuador. But it didn’t matter anymore, so I took the oatmeal out myself. Nothing happened, so I munched the oatmeal.

1
2

Match

I always loved it when September came along. Not because the sweltering summer sun had finally buggered off to somewhere else. That was me being “
ironic
,” as I live in Scotland, which is not Papua New Guinea or Torremolinos. A hee-hee moment! No, I loved September because it was the time of the year that men became men and all the girls did arts and crafts. September was when THE SOCCER SEASON started in school. And I, Dylan Mint, was a first-on-the-team-sheet key member of the Drumhill School Soccer Team.

First game: local rivals Shawhead.

Bring it on.

If you didn’t want to do arts and crafts or pretend-reading in the library, students could watch the game and cheer like maddies for the Drumhill boys. It was that silly bugger Amir who egged me on to ask Michelle Malloy if she wanted to watch me playing the game.

“It’s perfect,” Amir said.

“Not sure, amigo—the whole soccer thing wasn’t part of my master plan.”

“‘
Put my master plan into action
,’ you said, so time to get them out.” Amir wiggled his fingers, all ten of them, in front of my face, like he was planting his thoughts in my brain.

“Amir, she’ll see my legs.”

“So?”

“So there’s no hair on them.”

“That’s ’cause you’re a white boy.”

“She’ll think I’m, like, twelve or something.”

“Twelve isn’t so bad—you know what they say about twelve-year-olds .
.
.” Amir winked and smiled.

“No, what?”

“Erm .
.
. I do-do-don’t know, really.”

“You’re not helping, Amir. It’s okay for you—your legs are like an orangutan’s; girls like seeing those, not two baldy wee twigs like mine.”

*

And then, without any strategy or an Action Jackson plan, the chance came.

Location: outside the Senior Toilets.

Activity: I’d just done my biz
(
pee). Michelle Malloy was just going (hopefully for a number one. The image of Michelle Malloy doing a number two was mega distressing and a potential deal-breaker).

Heart condition: my heart didn’t have much time to think about it, but torpedoed into action as soon as I spied her.

Hands: moist.

Hair: okay. I fixed it in the bogs’ mirror, pulling it over my eyes. I was trying to get it cooler, like some of the dudes at the normal school. Twitching shifted my hair away from my eyes. No hands! One–nil Tourette’s.

She came toward me without any warning. Like an angel out of the mist.

“Hi, Michelle.”

“What are you up to, Mint?”

“Erm .
.
. noth—”