Blacky Blasts Back (2 page)

I'd learned something that day.
KISS
. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Yes, creating a bomb out of a chemical reaction might do the trick, but I'm not crash hot at Science. More likely I'd mix up some stuff and discover a cure for cancer. Incinerate Mr Scott's desk with a Bunsen burner? Too time-consuming. Dissect a student? Too messy.

So I decided to throw a beaker full of something nasty-smelling at the wall. A distant wall. I didn't want anyone hurt by flying glass. It was absolutely foolproof. Suspension guaranteed.

It all went according to plan. Up to a point. The teacher's back was turned. My beaker was full of a bright purple liquid and smelled like a dunny at the annual Diarrhoea Sufferers' Convention. I put my right foot behind me to get more power into the throw. But before I could release the beaker, a number of things happened:

A
Mr Scott turned round.

B
I caught my foot on a stool.

C
Tonia Niven, a small and exceptionally clumsy girl, reached over the Bunsen burner to pick up her beaker and set the arm of her dress on fire.

D
I lost my balance.

E
I fell on top of Tonia, my beaker dropping onto the bench where, miraculously, it didn't break or even spill a drop of its contents.

F
Tonia and I rolled on the floor for a few horribly embarrassing seconds and when we got to our feet her sleeve was smoking gently.

There was a stunned silence. Mr Scott rushed up and examined Tonia's arm. Then he turned to me.

‘Marcus. That was the bravest thing I have ever seen.'

‘But sir . . .'

‘No modesty, Marcus. I saw it all. Tonia could have been badly burned. But you didn't hesitate. Just threw yourself onto her and put out the fire. Twenty gold stars, Marcus! And that's just for starters. Miss Dowling will know about your heroism.'

Things couldn't get any worse.

Tonia gazed into my eyes. Hers were shining with a sloppy, gooey sludge of emotions.

‘You're my hero, Marcus,' she breathed through buck teeth. ‘Will you be my boyfriend?'

I was wrong. Things
could
get worse.

It was a depressed Boris the Impaler who trudged home from school that afternoon.

How could it all go so horribly wrong? How could I stuff up so monumentally? My plan had been simple enough. Get a reputation for being a top-notch drongo, a prize-winning dropkick, a grade-A loser. Instead, I was probably going to be made Head Boy and crowned Young Australian of the Year. Obviously I couldn't get anything right. Or do I mean ‘wrong'? Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.

I opened my front door, screamed and fell to the floor clutching my ankle. I didn't get time to rub at the fire raging there, because two hands grabbed my left wrist and gave it a vicious Chinese burn. Now two parts of my anatomy were throbbing.

Rose's face loomed before me. You'd think I'd suffered enough.

‘Try to blind me, would you, Mucus?' she hissed. ‘I'll teach you to try to blind me!'

But she didn't give me the promised lesson in blinding. She simply sawed away with renewed vigour at my wrist, gave my ankle another kick in exactly the same place as before and left me on the floor, writhing in pain.

All in all, it had been a great Monday.

I need to explain.

Let me start with a confession. Nobody calls me Boris the Impaler. My real name is Marcus Hill, a.k.a. Marcus the Sook. I'm just an average Year Seven student and I
never
get in trouble at school. Not even when I try. So you're probably wondering why I went to such lengths to cause trouble. The answer lies in a conversation I'd had the previous Friday with the Principal . . .

‘But Miss Dowling, I want to go!'

The Principal sat behind her desk and cradled her chin on interlaced fingers. She wore a brightly coloured dress and a kind expression.

‘I understand, Marcus,' she said, ‘but this school camp isn't open to everyone. I've already explained that. It's only available to our special boys unit. And it's not really going to be fun, if you want to know the truth. It's all about developing leadership skills, building resilience and taking responsibility for your own actions. There will be hardship involved. Survival techniques. Tough bushwalks. Camping out in harsh conditions.'

She
had
explained this. The special boys unit is composed of six or seven students in my year group who have severe behavioural problems. The kind of boys who act first and think afterwards. A long time afterwards. Sometimes not at all. My mate Dylan is one of them. He was a nightmare at primary school. He's a nightmare in secondary school. But he's also the best friend anyone could have.

I tried the goody-two-shoes sook approach.

‘But Miss Dowling,' I whined. ‘I've never been to Tasmania and I really want to go. How about if I promise to be very, very good?'

‘You're missing the point, Marcus. The boys on this special camp are going precisely because they aren't very, very good.'

‘Okay. I promise to be very, very bad.'

Miss Dowling brushed a speck of dust from the shining surface of her desk and got to her feet. This meeting was drawing to a close.

‘I'm sorry, Marcus. I really am. But the funding for this project – which is provided by the education department – is very specific. Only the special boys group. And you are not part of that.'

I'm average boys group
, I thought. It's not fair. If you're bad you get rewarded. If you're average you get zilch.

And that's when the idea popped into my head. If you had to be a drongo to get on this trip, then a drongo I'd become. It couldn't be too hard. The members of the special boys group found it a cinch. Didn't have to put in any effort at all.

As I left Miss Dowling's office, my mind was made up. I was going to join the ranks of the nightmare kids.

Boris the Impaler was born.

And he died the very next school day.

I dragged his aching body into my bedroom and closed the door. Then I hopped to my bed and examined my swollen ankle. Rose might be the sister from hell and a total loser, but she's a precision ankle-kicker. That was three times today. And all on the same spot. I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. My plan had seemed so foolproof and now it lay in tatters. How was I going to get on the camp?

You see, it wasn't just a question of
wanting
to go. I
had
to be there. I just had to. And time was running out. The ferry trip to Tassie was the coming Thursday. Three days away. I had to do something, and do it now. But the more I thought, the more hopeless it seemed.

A rattle of stones on my window drew me from the start of a doze. I hobbled over to the window and opened it.

Dylan slid in.

I've already mentioned Dyl. My best mate. A small, wiry kid with a serious cola addiction and no discernible fear. Dyl could have knocked on the front door, but he doesn't do anything normal. He just likes throwing stones at breakable things. There was a time when Mum wouldn't let him into the house at all. She regarded Dylan as a small but powerful weapon of mass destruction. But he came with us on holiday last Christmas and since then Mum has taken a shine to him.

Dyl pulled a cola can from his jacket pocket, popped the ring pull and took a deep swig.

‘Wassup, Marc?' he said.

‘Nothing good, mate,' I replied. ‘Nothing good.'

I explained how my day had gone. Dyl isn't in any of my classes. Since we both started at secondary school he spends his days with the other members of the special boys unit in a classroom at the far end of the school, where the screams and sounds of breaking objects can't be heard by the rest of us. I've asked Dyl what they do in there all day, but he can never remember.

I read something once about some subatomic particles existing for only one billionth of a second. They still last longer than Dyl's memory.

Anyway, judging by his teacher's appearance, the main area of the special boys' curriculum involves inducing nervous breakdowns in adults. Mr Crannitch used to be young, dark-haired and energetic. Like us, he joined the school at the start of the academic year. But after one term of dealing with Dyl and the others, he's now a shambling, grey-haired, drooling dude who mutters to himself and twitches constantly.

I didn't spare Dyl any of the hideous experiences I'd been through.

‘Wow,' he said when I was done. ‘So are you going to be Tonia's boyfriend? She's kinda scary, man.'

‘Of course not, ya dill,' I replied. ‘That's not the worst thing to have happened today.'

‘You sure? I can't imagine anything worse.'

‘Dylan,' I said with a sigh. ‘The worst thing is that I can't see any way to get on that school camp with you. Miss Dowling won't hear of it.'

‘Hey,' said Dyl. ‘I've got it! Why don't you just act really badly at school? You know, get into trouble, get transferred to the special boys unit with me.'

I sighed again. When Dyl's your best mate you do a lot of sighing.

‘Don't you ever listen, Dyl? I've just finished explaining that that was what I was trying to achieve today.'

‘Sorry, mate. What did you say? I wasn't listening.'

I sighed.

There's something else I need to explain and I must warn you the next bit is difficult to believe. You see, there was a good reason why I needed to get to Tasmania within the next few days. Possibly you thought I wanted to be with my mate, but that's not the case at all.

Don't get me wrong. I'd do anything for Dylan and he'd do anything for me. But I could live without him for a week, which was how long the camp was lasting. It's not as if we're joined at the hip. Plus, the other kids who were going weren't exactly a barrel of laughs. For example, there was John, a specimen with the build of a basketball player and the personality of a serial killer. His speciality was torture. Other kids if he could get them, but failing that, any passing butterfly would do. Then there was Brodie. He made John look like a candidate for sainthood. And then there was Kyle . . .

This would be like going on holiday with a pack of rabid dogs. Only more dangerous. I could do without it.

But Blacky hadn't given me a choice . . .

I hate to give the impression I'm telling this story backwards, but can we go back to the Thursday before my pointless interview with Miss Dowling? I promise I won't do it again, otherwise we'll be finishing this story with my birth. Although that's a pretty spectacular event from my point of view, I doubt you'd find it fascinating.

Thursday evening. It hadn't been the greatest evening, mainly because Rose had spent dinner repeatedly kicking me under the table. It is Rose's mission in life to make mine miserable and she pursues it with enormous energy and considerable success. You might wonder why I don't simply dob her in to my parents, show them the bruises and gloat while they give her a sound thrashing with a length of lead piping.

Okay. A grounding, at least.