Billy Mack's War (3 page)

Chapter 4 Danny

Danny groaned and rolled over to look at his alarm clock. It was seven o'clock, and he could hear his father rattling around in the kitchen downstairs. For a long moment he couldn't remember what it was that was making him feel so scared. It had been a bad night, full of dreams. And not the good kind, either. Dreams of traps and ambushes, dreams of panic and struggling, dreams of being rescued by kind old women from angry, shouting men. Dreams of walking naked into a café full of Shaun Gilmores who looked strangely like William McAuliffes. And these Shaun Gilmore-McAuliffes were all laughing and pointing, and taunting him with little medals on stubby red ribbons. And behind the counter was a tall, slightly hunched man in a tartan dressing gown, an eye-patch over one eye. He was laughing too, so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.

Now Danny remembered why he was feeling so awful, and it had nothing to do with walking naked into a café. It had everything to do with meeting a man he'd only ever known to be unfriendly, cranky and rather rude. He took a deep breath and sat up on the side of his bed. He was starting to wish he'd never agreed to meet Mr McAuliffe after all. He wanted to phone him and say, ‘I'm sorry, but I've changed my mind. I don't even want to think about the medal any more. I just want to forget about the whole thing. I wish none of it had happened at all.' But he knew that couldn't happen now, no matter how much he wished for it, so he pulled his uniform on and went downstairs.

Dad looked up from his paper as Danny walked into the kitchen. ‘Morning, Dan,' he said. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Of course. Why wouldn't I be?'

‘No reason, except that you look absolutely shattered. Didn't sleep?'

Danny shook his head. ‘Not much.'

‘All ready for this afternoon?'

Danny rolled his eyes and slumped into a chair. ‘I wish I knew what he was going to say.'

‘If you knew that, there'd be no point going, would there?'

‘I wonder if there's any point anyway.'

Dad glanced at his watch. Then he folded his newspaper and put it into his briefcase. ‘There is a point, Dan. There's definitely a point.' He finished the last of his coffee, stood up and kissed Danny on the top of the head. ‘I'll be home a bit early this afternoon. Have a good day, and don't be nervous —'

‘I'm not nervous.'

‘Don't be nervous, and I'll see you later on.'

‘Nervous?' Caleb asked Danny as soon as he saw him.

‘Will everyone stop asking me that?' Danny snapped.

‘Sorry, bud. Just showing this thing called
concern.
You might have heard of it? It's a little like
caring
, only with less hugging.'

Danny shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. It's just that everyone thinks I should be nervous about meeting this guy, and I'm —'

‘Nervous?'

‘No!'

‘Anxious?'

‘No!'

‘Worried?'

‘No!'

‘Perfectly calm?'

Danny sighed. ‘No, not that either. No, I'm absolutely terrified.'

The day dragged. Recess came at last, and thankfully Caleb didn't even mention Danny's appointment with Mr McAuliffe. The word
nervous
wasn't used once.

Double maths was straight after recess, which was fine by Danny. Ordinarily he didn't like maths at all, but wrestling with angles and bisecting lines and isosceles triangles for an hour and a half certainly helped take his mind off his impending appointment with doom.

At lunch he went and played soccer on the top oval while Caleb was seeing Ms Youngblood about some drama project. After lunch was a period of geography, one of history, and forty-five minutes of the Fat Controller to finish the day.

‘A bit of shush, thank you, gentlemen,' Mr Whaley said, peering down through his reading glasses at his textbook. ‘Today we're going to be moving on from mineral deposits and taking a look at the composition of soil in volcanic regions.'

The class made a kind of rustling, murmuring sound: a bit more than a sigh, and not quite a groan.

‘Thank you, gentlemen, I'm well aware that soil is not of the greatest interest to young men of your age, but it is part of the syllabus and therefore I intend to teach it. Besides, I find the make-up of soil quite fascinating, and if you give it a chance it's entirely possible that you might find it interests you as well.'

‘Trust him to like dirt,' Caleb muttered, and Danny stifled a laugh.

‘A problem, gentlemen?' Mr Whaley asked, glaring.

‘No, sir,' Danny and Caleb said together.

Mr Whaley gave them a long
I'm watching you
kind of stare, then went back to his books. ‘Mr Ross, since you seem to have a lot to say this afternoon, I wonder if you would be so kind as to start reading on page one hundred and sixty-three, from the section headed “Soil Composition”.'

It wasn't a question. ‘Yes, sir,' Caleb said. He began to leaf through his textbook.

‘Any time today, Mr Ross.'

‘Sorry, sir,' Caleb replied. ‘Page one-sixty, was it, sir?'

Mr Whaley cast his eyes towards the ceiling, as if praying for help from above. ‘Page one-sixty-
three
, Mr Ross, and
do
hurry, before we all die of boredom.'

It's a bit late for that now, Danny thought.

When the final bell rang, Danny was hit with a sudden rush of terror. All day it had been something to go: five periods and lunch to go, four periods and lunch to go, three more after lunch, two more, last period. Always something between him and his appointment with Mr McAuliffe. Always a block of time to get through before he had to face the tall, angry old man.

But now, as the bell that signalled the end of the science class threatened to vibrate itself off the wall above the door, the realisation struck him with a sinking, vomity feeling just south of his ribcage.

‘Are you coming?' Caleb asked. ‘We're allowed to go, mate.'

Danny looked up. Mr Whaley was wiping the board clean, the last of his class were trailing out the doorway, and a herd of excited Year 8s were charging past the window of the classroom towards the bus bay, bags over their shoulders and mischief on their minds. He and Caleb were the only ones still in the classroom, and Caleb was standing holding his books beside Danny's desk.

‘Oh, right. Yeah, let's head.'

‘Are you coming to the bus?' Caleb asked as they opened their lockers.

‘No, I'm not. Remember? I've got to …' Danny didn't want to have to put it into words. And he didn't want to have to explain. Please, Caleb, don't be smart. Not today, not now, he was thinking. Just know what I'm talking about.

‘Oh yes,
that,'
Caleb replied. He slammed his locker shut and clapped Danny on the shoulder. ‘Well, bud, it was nice knowing you.'

‘Don't!'

Caleb shook his head and grinned. ‘You're such a worry-wart. Call me when you get home, all right? And tell him you want it back. Tell him you won't take no for an answer. Tell him you're not going anywhere until he's given it back.'

Danny allowed himself a slight grin. ‘Yeah, right. See you.' His best friend in the world tossed his bag onto his back and sauntered out of the locker hall, leaving Danny there with a boy whose name he could never remember.

The boy was small and ivory in colour, and that included his hair. The only part of him that wasn't white was his nose, which was constantly red. This was because he was always blowing it into a damp handkerchief, which he kept up the sleeve of his jumper like an old lady.

‘Are you going to the dentist?' the boy asked, as he tried to pick up a wooden chess box, his bag and a case of blank CDs all at the same time.

‘What? The dentist?' Danny replied impatiently.

‘Yes. You must be worried about something.'

‘Why
must
I?'

The boy was still wrestling with his stuff. ‘Because Caleb said you're a worry-wart. And he said that it was good knowing you. People say that when they die. Or when someone they know is going to —'

‘I'm not dying,' Danny interrupted crossly. ‘And I'm not going to the dentist. Excuse me, I've got to go.'

The kid finally had the chess box under control, but as he picked up his bag the flap at the front flopped open. Books, magazines, a hat and a lunch box poured out onto the carpet in an untidy pile. There were a couple of damp, crumply hankies in there as well, and a puffer. The boy bent to pick them up and the lid of the CD case fell off. CDs poured out and scattered everywhere. A couple were setting off down the hall like runaway unicycles.

‘Oh,' said the boy, as if he'd been expecting something like this.

Danny paused in the doorway. He watched the kid struggling with his stuff. A magazine slid out of a folder and landed in a ruffle of bent pages, which caused him to whimper again and clumsily flatten the pages down with his hand. ‘Oh.'

Danny shook his head. He was going to be late, and as appealing as it was to think about leaving Mr McAuliffe waiting out the front, he knew that he couldn't. ‘I've got to go,' he said.

The boy looked up from where he was crouched. ‘Okay, no problem. Bye. Um, before you go, could you …' He pointed at a CD which had rolled past Danny and stopped near his foot.

‘Could I what?'

‘Could you get that for me? Please? Thanks,' he said as Danny handed it to him.

‘See you.'

‘And don't worry about the dentist. My uncle's one, and he says that these days there's no need for people to be frightened any more. They've got this stuff now —'

Danny frowned down at the boy. His voice was curt. He
knew
it was curt. He could hear it and yet he couldn't help it. ‘Look, I've told you already, I'm not going to the dentist, and I'm not dying. Okay? Got that?'

The boy looked cut. ‘Sorry, I thought you said —'

‘Well, I didn't. My friend said “Nice knowing you”, and
you
just decided in your own head that that meant I was going to the dentist. Or dying. Maybe both. But he didn't mean that at all. You just got the whole thing completely wrong, which made you look stupid. And
that's
what happens when you listen in on other people's conversations. I've got to go. Goodbye.'

‘Bye. Sorry.'

But Danny was already half out the door and on his way to the pick-up area.

There were a lot of very shiny, very expensive cars out the front of the school. There always were. Danny was glad that Mr McAuliffe drove something reasonably normal, since it would be quite the opposite of normal outside the front gates of St Lawrence's, and therefore instantly recognisable.

He saw the front of a white Commodore poking out from behind Liam Kwan's mum's black Lexus. He hoisted his bag and walked a little closer. Mr McAuliffe waved to him, but it wasn't an excited
Here I am!
kind of wave. It was just the raising of a couple of fingers from the steering wheel, more like
Yes, I'm here, just as we planned.
Danny swallowed hard. He'd stopped wishing this wasn't going to happen, but now he was starting to wish again.

He opened the passenger-side door and looked in. ‘Hello, Mr McAuliffe,' he said.

Mr McAuliffe turned down the radio, which was playing classical music. ‘Good afternoon, Daniel. Would you like to get in?'

No, thought Daniel. No, I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a sharpened HB pencil. ‘Sure, okay,' he replied. ‘Should I put my bag —'

‘You can just throw it in the back seat if you like. It's unlocked.'

The bag safely stowed beside Mr McAuliffe's briefcase, Danny sat in the front seat. He wasn't sure what he should say, or even where he should look, so he said nothing and looked straight ahead. Mrs Kwan was standing at the open back door of the Lexus shouting at Liam's little brother about something. A passing car honked at her, and she fired a savage look at the driver. Then she went back to yelling at the little kid, while Liam stood embarrassed on the footpath, his violin case at his feet.

‘Now then, where are we going?' Mr McAuliffe asked.

How would I know — you're the one who organised this, Danny thought. ‘I don't know. Wherever you like,' he said, looking at Mr McAuliffe, who seemed almost as nervous as Danny, his lips tight, his smile forced.

‘Where would
you
like to go? I'm paying.'

‘I don't know. A coffee shop or something, I suppose. Somewhere that makes milkshakes.'

‘Okay, that sounds fine. I saw a place just around the corner.' Mr McAuliffe stretched up so he could see himself in the rear-view mirror and flattened down some loose bits of hair on top of his bald head. His hair under control, he started the car.

‘How did you know where I go to school?' Danny asked. ‘I never told you.'

‘I saw it on your bag,' Mr McAuliffe said, his head turned away as he waited for a gap to appear in the slow-moving traffic. ‘When you came to see me the other day, you left your bag behind. Don't you remember? I saw the St Lawrence's crest on it when I handed it back to you.'

‘Oh,' Danny replied. That made sense.

‘So, you see, there really is no conspiracy or strangeness surrounding this afternoon.'

‘I never thought —'

‘But of course you did. I would have done, had it been me. It's all right, Daniel, I'm not going to tell you off or anything. As I said on the telephone, I have something I want to tell you. All right?'

‘Okay,' Danny mumbled.

‘All we're doing is having a milkshake and a chat. You see, things got a little crazy, wouldn't you agree?'

‘I suppose.'

A car slowed down to let them in, and Mr McAuliffe steered out onto the street with a quick wave to the driver. ‘We both said and did things we probably regret, and I couldn't leave it there. I couldn't stay angry, Daniel.'