Cracks (2 page)

Cracks in the ceiling . . . weird voices . . . funny lights. Maybe it’s my mind that’s going.

I’m so freaked out that my teeth clack like falsies and I collapse on the sofa. I’m still sitting there, thinking hard about not thinking, when Des walks into the room, holding a bag
of groceries.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he says.

‘Nothing, just chillaxin,’ I say, really unconvincingly.

Des stares at me like he’s never seen anything so pointless. ‘Well, you can get off your arse and put this shopping away.’

I follow him into the kitchen. You don’t argue with Des. He weighs about seventeen stone and looks like he’s carrying triplets in that belly. He’s bald, like I said, and his
head and neck are about the same width. It’s as though he has one big fat column of flesh with facial features at the top. He smokes and likes his fry-ups and lager. Really, he’s a
heart attack waiting to happen. Sometimes I slip him some of my chips just to speed things up a bit.

I put the milk and cheese into the fridge and Des sparks up a fag. They all smoke in this house. If we had a guinea pig, it’d be on the B&H too, I swear.

I cough, even though I don’t really need to.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, is my evil cigarette bothering you, princess?’ says Des.

He often calls me ‘princess’. That’s the kind of comic genius he is.

I ignore him and start to put the bread away. He walks up to me, smiles, and blows a big gust of smoke right into my face, so close I can smell his eggie lunch. I cough for real then and he
laughs as he leaves the room.

My eyes are streaming and I wipe my face, picturing Des driving off a cliff to make myself feel better. Then I do a dumb squeak and shoot back about three metres because . . .

. . . there’s a massive crack right down the middle of the kitchen table.

It makes a groaning sound as one side keels over, and a box of eggs crashes to the ground.

I almost shout for Des but, remembering what happened in the bogs, I force myself to stop. I close my eyes and open them again and, in that instant, everything is back as it was before. Except
for the eggs, which are lying on the floor in a smushed mess.

Just at that moment, Des strolls back into the room. ‘You useless little sod – did you drop those?’

No, Des, I’m suddenly seeing giant cracks appearing everywhere. And by the way, I’ve knackered your son’s Xbox.

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, you’re paying for them,’ says Des, filling the kettle with water. ‘Eggs don’t grow on trees.’

‘Don’t they?’

I really need to learn to keep my gob shut. For a fat bloke, he can move surprisingly fast. He’s across the room and holding my chin in his meaty fist in a split second. His piggy eyes
narrow so much they almost disappear. He’s so close I can hear the wheeze in his breathing and see all the beardy dots on his chin.

‘Now, you know that I love Tina to pieces, don’t you?’ he says in a dangerously quiet voice.

I nod, or try to. He’s gripping me so hard my bottom lip is folded in half.

‘But you . . . you’re nothing to me. Nothing. You’re nobody. Do you understand? Nobody.’

I nod. He’s really hurting me now.

‘And if you think you can cheek me, you’re going to find your backside kicked into the end of next week. Now clean those eggs and get out of my sight.’ He lets go and carries
on making his brew.

I get the dustpan and start to sweep up the broken eggs, darting glances at the table to check it’s still in one piece.

It’s been a very weird day.

D
es goes off to collect Mum and Pigface from work and I hurry back into Pigface’s room. I pull out cables and put them back in again, giving
the telly a thump, just in case. But it’s no use. This Xbox is a goner.

Some old song comes into my head . . . something about it being the end of the world and feeling fine.

It’s the end of the world all right, but I definitely don’t feel fine. My heart keeps pounding and my vision’s funny. It’s like I’m looking through a weird lens.
The edges of everything feel blurred, distorted. Like none of it’s real. When I come out of the room a few minutes later and hear the sound of the car, my stomach twists and my heart races
even faster. Maybe I could just slip out the back door and never come back?

‘. . . now make sure you leave those boots outside, Ryan, they’re filthy.’

‘Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on,’ says Pigface and I hear Des laugh.

Mum comes through the door, frowning. Des lets Pigface say what he likes to Mum.

‘Stick the kettle on,’ she says by way of hello and flops into a chair to take off her shoes. She flexes her toes and then bends over to rub them, groaning a bit. Des comes in next,
smiling at something his darling boy has said and his smile slides right off his face when he sees me.

‘What are you staring at?’ he says.

I turn away. ‘Nothing.’ I put the kettle on. Mum’s talking about something that happened in the supermarket where she works but I can’t really concentrate. I hear the
unmistakable sound of Pigface lumbering into the kitchen and keep my back turned to him.

‘I’ll have a coffee,’ he says, ‘and make sure you put a decent spoonful in it this time. Last one you made was like gnat’s pee.’

Normally, I would say something like, ‘Make your own,’ or ‘What did your last slave die from?’ but today I just dip my head and spoon coffee into cups.

There’s a change in the air like a drop in pressure. I realise there’s no hope of him not finding out what I’ve done. He may be thick but he’s got these super-senses,
like an animal. I can feel his eyes boring into me but I ignore him as I put the coffees onto the kitchen table. I almost hear the heavy clanking of his brain working as he wonders why I’m
being such a good little slave.

‘Ooh, I need this,’ says Mum, fishing for her fags in the pocket of her blue checked overall and closing her eyes as she lights one.

Des is talking to someone on his mobile phone but picks up the coffee and slurps loudly anyway. He runs a business putting bathrooms in but he’s obviously rubbish at it because he’s
always getting customers ringing up and yelling at him.

‘Yeah, well, I may have said Wednesday but I never said it would be
this
Wednesday, did I?’ he says, walking out of the room.

Pigface is still watching me. I look away but may as well have a neon sign saying,
I’ve messed with your stuff
above my head. He pushes past me to go to his room and I get a strong
whiff of his pits.

I’m thinking about whether I can run when I hear Pigface swear at the top of his voice and I know he’s found the broken Xbox and worked out who did it. He may be big, but I’m
fast. I’m out of my chair and heading for the back door before he comes steaming into the room. Mum says, ‘What’s going —?’ but I don’t hear the rest because
Pigface is screaming, really screaming what he’s going to do to me.

I race round to the front of the house, thinking I’ll have to run away, anywhere . . . and I smack straight into Des’s wobbly belly. He grabs my shoulders and shakes me, hard.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he spits.

‘Let me go! He’s gonna kill me!’

I wrench away from his grip but then Pigface is there, his eyes almost bulging out of his head and bits of spit flying through the air. Time seems to slow down and for a moment, it’s the
weirdest thing, but I can see the whole scene like I’m watching it on widescreen. Each drop of Pigface’s spit is suspended in the air like tiny jewels. The front door’s open and
Mum is a silhouette in a puddle of warm light, watching and slowly smoking a fag like she’s watching all this on telly.

Pigface pulls his fist back, his face twisted with hate. I close my eyes instinctively, bracing myself. And then nothing happens. I open one eye. Pigface’s meaty fist is about a centimetre
from my face. It’s vibrating slightly and he can’t seem to move it. His face is a picture. It’s like there’s a forcefield between us or someone’s holding him back. And
then there’s a whoosh and everything comes back to full speed. Des and Mum are both shouting but it’s not clear at who. Pigface storms back into the house.

I start laughing. I can’t help it.

‘Did you see that?’ I say.

‘You think everything’s a joke, do you?’ snarls Des. ‘Well, next time I’m not holding him back.’

Like he was! He was standing miles away, watching.

‘Yeah, but did you see what —?’

‘Shut up, Cal,’ snaps Mum. ‘I can’t believe you think this is funny. You don’t help yourself, you really don’t.’

‘No, but —’

‘SHUT IT!’ Des slams his fist into the other hand and even Mum flinches. He continues in a low growl. ‘Get to your room and don’t come out.’

I look at Mum but she’s avoiding my eye so I slink off to my bedroom and flump onto the bed, face down. Eventually I take off my clothes and crawl into the bed even though it’s still
early.

My thoughts are going round and round in my head. The cracks in the boys’ bogs and the smashing eggs were enough to cope with. Pigface’s mysterious floating fist is even weirder
still. What’s happening to me? Am I going mad?

I’m certain I don’t fall asleep, really certain. So I can’t explain why the next thing I know it’s morning and I’m in the bathroom in my school
uniform brushing my teeth. It’s like someone jumped a scene ahead on a DVD.

Nobody says very much at breakfast. Pigface acts like I’m not even there. I wonder whether he’s a bit scared of me and this gave me such a buzz I almost laugh out loud. Des is
stomping around with a bit of toast in one hand and a cig hanging out the side of his mouth. He’s speaking into his phone and saying something about ‘problems with the
suppliers’.

It feels like there’s no air in the house so I’m glad when it’s time to walk to school. The sun is shining and the birds are tweeting away. It’s a bit hard to stress
about mystery cracks and the general horror that is my life this morning.

I knock for Amil, who lives on the road behind the school.

Even though he’s my best friend, he doesn’t come to the house. The one time he did, Des took one look at him and could barely bring himself to speak. I reckoned it might have
something to do with Amil’s brown skin and I burned with shame.

I’m always at his, though. I love it there. He lives above the newsagent’s on the high street, which his parents own. There are always loads of people crammed into the tiny, hot
living room upstairs when the shop’s closed. His little brother Janesh zooms around with his trucks, and various aunties are all yabbering away in Hindi and mainlining tea. But however full
on it is, his mum, Asha, always has time for me. She bustles about, bracelets jangling, talking non stop and offering me food. She seems to think I’ll starve to death unless she makes me eat
at least two slices of cake and a handful of sticky, sugary Indian sweets. I’m not arguing. There isn’t much in the way of sweetness at my house, I can tell you. Amil always tries to
steer us straight up to his room and complains about the way she goes on. But I feel like the sun’s beaming right down on me when she fusses and tells me how much I’ve grown and how
handsome I’m getting, even though it’s a bit embarrassing too. Sometimes it feels as though she likes me more than my own mum does.

Anyway, he comes out and we chat about this and that. Although I’m bursting to tell him what’s been happening, I hold back. But as we reach the school gates, I can’t keep it in
any longer.

‘Hey, Am, do something for me, will ya?’

‘Look, man, you still owe me two quid from —’

‘No, no, it’s nothing like that,’ I pause. ‘I know this sounds weird, but I want you to . . . hit me.’

Amil stops and looks at me with an expression I’m seeing a lot lately. ‘What are you on about, freak?’

‘Do it! Go on. I’m testing something out.’

‘If you insist.’ Amil grins and then punches me in the gut. Hard.

I double over, trying to get my breath back. When I regain the power of speech I yell, ‘That really hurt!’

Amil falls about laughing. ‘What did you expect?’ he says. ‘You did ask!’

I swear at him quietly and we walk the rest of the way in silence. Amil shakes his head every now and then.

Me? I’m angry, humiliated and very, very confused.

I’m in history, and Mrs Jennings is droning on about some old rubbish or other. I’m looking out of the window and thinking about cracks and wondering how I am going
to get the money for a new Xbox when . . .

‘ . . . so what’s the answer, Callum?’ says Jennings.

My head snaps round and I hear sniggers. Jennings is glaring at me. I try a winning smile, but she’s immune to my charms.

‘What is the answer to the question I just asked?’ she repeats.

‘Cheese?’ It’s the first thing that comes into my head.

The class erupts and I can’t help dipping my head in a little bow.

‘I’m glad you think that’s funny,’ says Jennings, stony-faced. ‘I hope you enjoy doing an extra essay on the topic for me as much.’

She smiles at me then, evilly. ‘I’d like it for the morning, please,’ she says and turns back to point to the image on the white board.