Louis Beside Himself (2 page)

In my opinion, those small yellow notebooks with the spiral binding are your best buy. They're cheap and portable. You can keep one in your pocket without anyone knowing, and use it to jot down any interesting words you hear. Beware of people with secrets, though. Secretive people don't like being watched, they think you're spying on them. So just say you have to go to the bathroom or something.

You can build up your word bank account simply by keeping a record of all the new words you collect each day, and writing down what they mean. That last bit is important because otherwise you can find yourself spending words extravagantly and even quite mistakenly. Take the other day, for example, when I was dying to use this new word called
L
IVID
, which actually means angry or furious, and the nice old lady who lives next door asked me about my holiday. ‘It was actually very livid,' I promptly replied, and she said ‘What?' looking at me all
B
EWILDERED
, which means confused and a bit panicky. She hobbled back inside then and shut the door, and I felt bad because she's old and worried about her hearing and obviously didn't like to ask me to repeat the strange word, which wasn't really a good word for a holiday, I admit and confess.

So what I'm saying is: open a word bank account, get rich by all means, but use your power
S
AGACIOUSLY
, that is, wisely. If I'd communicated properly with Mrs Next Door about the word livid, she would have understood me and maybe even smiled. I know she gets livid too when the cat from up the road comes into her yard and wees on her mat, making it stink. So see, we could have
shared
livid.

If you want, you can look up my
L
OUIS
M
ONTGOMERY
W
ORD
B
ANK
at the back of this book. See, I think the more words you collect, the more chance you get to choose exactly the right one, and the more powerful a communicator you will be. That's what my primary school principal, Mr Mainprize said. ‘Life is all about communicating,' he said. ‘Life is a never-ending emergency. You must say what you mean to the people you care about in the short time you have allotted. And you, Bobby Thornton, should learn to use your words instead of your fists!'

Last year I would have lent Bobby Thornton my notebook, or even purchased him one, if I thought it would have helped. But some people are just incapable of hearing what you have to say. At least that's what I used to think, before this summer – before everything changed, and the world turned upside down and inside out like Bobby's eyelids when he folds them back almost up to his eyebrows like The Undertaker.

Of course just saying whatever comes into your mind all the time, even if there are impressive words involved, is not good communicating. Mr Mainprize would agree for sure. ‘It's always possible to tell the truth,' he says, ‘if you tell it with kindness and consideration.'

And don't be one of those people who uses the art of communicating to sell shonky stuff to other people who don't need it. When my dad decided he ought to remarry so we kids could have a mother, he bought a full hair-regrowth product that set him back a hundred dollars and it never even worked and made him feel even worse about being bald. No, what I like about words is that if you use them well, you can tell people about yourself and what you're interested in so that they can understand you. Have you ever done that? Do you like it when people
do
get you? And you get them?

My dad would agree with all this improving your communication skills business if I really pressed the point. But he'd do it reluctantly, without putting any
O
OMPH
into it. (‘Oomph' is not really a word, it's an old-fashioned expression meaning
energy
or
enthusiasm
.) Dad would nod wearily, and sigh at me sadly over his glasses, as if I'd just lost an Indian arm-wrestle.

We wrestle practically every night after dinner. He's often disappointed by my performance but tries to be encouraging, even if I lose within the first five seconds and my arm drops to the table like a dead magpie. He wants to build up my self-confidence, as well as my muscles.

‘But look how well-built my vocabulary is!' I say, flexing a few well-chosen adjectives. And he replies, ‘That's good, Louis,' but he gets that sad expression on his face, which is rather long and
L
UGUBRIOUS
anyway, like mine. We both look like depressed giraffes, my sister Rosie says. Well, she looks like a panda, especially on Sunday mornings when she's forgotten to take off her mascara the night before.

No, Dad might
say
he agrees about the communicating thing but really he's more interested in teaching me to perform the right wrestling move in case someone suddenly gets me in a stranglehold. He tries to provide me with a variety of moves like The Tombstone, but really, The Walls of Jericho is his specialty, made famous by the wrestler Chris Jericho. It's a simple but forceful submission move, originally called The Boston Crab, probably because the victim ends up looking like a confused crustacean caught in a net. Dad likes this move as it involves the full-body flip and is just the sort of thing a serial killer or a robber won't be suspecting. Which actually brings me to what happened this summer.

But before we go there, you need to know some more stuff about my family and my friends, who all happened to be near but far at what felt like the most
P
ERILOUS
event of my life.

2
THE DEMON

If I tell you something, you don't have to feel sorry for me or anything. But the reason my father is so obsessed with wrestling is that I don't have a mother. Of course, I had a mother originally – it's not as if I'm some weird glow-in-the-dark alien born without a belly button or something.

My mother died when I was just eight months old, so I don't remember her at all. The way I see it, when you grow up
without
something, then you don't know what it's like to be
with
it. At least, you can't miss something you never had. You can feel sorry for my sister Rosie if you like, because it definitely must have been worse for her. She was four, and she remembers our mother's hugs, which smelled of banana cake. There are photos of our mum, and you can't smell the banana cake but you can see how she was built for hugging. Rosie says she used to push her face all the way into the pillows on mum's chest and breathe her in. But now Rosie is seventeen and in Year 11, so she has pillows of her own.

Maybe it was worst for Dad. I don't know. You can't really compare other people's sadnesses, even with words. I mean, if someone says they're sad, do they mean lonely or despondent? Or just a bit empty, like that feeling before lunch? The thing is, my sister and me, we still have our whole lives to live and find someone to marry and share our words with, whereas Dad already did that and he hasn't found anyone he likes enough to marry since. Sometimes, late at night, he keeps the television on ‘just for company'. When I think about that I get sad in the despondent way, and I have to think about something else.

To understand about the wrestling thing, you need to know a bit about Dad. I bet you'd be astounded to discover that
his
dad was a professional wrestler, like his father before him. To look at our dad, who is comfortably overweight on the bottom half and thin on the top half, with a shy, pale philosopher's beard framing his lugubrious face, you'd never know he was brought up in a house full of professional wrestlers. My dad grew up to be an accountant, which means he helps people to organise their money and pay their tax on time, and he doesn't have any gangsters or wrestlers as clients – well, only one old wrestler, and that one doesn't really count on account of his being retired now. No, my father just advises mild people like Mrs Next Door, who say he is the best, most considerate accountant they've ever had.

Sometimes I think Dad wishes he'd chosen wrestling, just like his father. Whenever he's about to demonstrate a new wrestling move, his face goes all wistful as if he's just heard about a great TV program that he missed. But when I asked him why didn't he do wrestling for a job if he loves it so much, he said, ‘Well, Louis, I just never had that killer streak in me.' He doesn't mean it
L
ITERALLY
. His father never killed anyone. Wrestlers are all great showmen, actually, who plan their moves together with the same care and precision as dancers in a ballet (although the wrestlers look more like serial killers).

No, what Dad meant was that, even if you are not literally a killer, you need to be incredibly ambitious and competitive to be a professional. You have to put wrestling above everything else. You need to be strong as an elephant, agile as a monkey, so you have to train like mad and plan your whole life around it.

Dad was never that focussed. He likes to potter. But that's not all of it. He reckons he was never
encouraged
to be a wrestler. In fact, he was actively
dis
couraged. His father, the professional wrestler, was always telling him to use his words instead of his fists and to get a good education and to look after his long lugubrious face rather than get it all smashed up. But he probably didn't use the word lugubrious. Not many people do.

So why is Dad obsessed with wrestling? Maybe it's because he didn't do it back then and he regrets it now. I don't know. I can only
S
URMISE
, which means guess and wonder.

I do know of one giant regret looming over Dad. And it involves wrestling, that's for sure. Something happened with his father when Dad was thirteen, something huge, as big as the longest word you've ever heard.

He tried to talk to me about it once. ‘You know, Louis,' he said, ‘your grandfather was a champion, one of the greats in wrestling circles. He was called The Demon – he could jump from the ropes clear across to the other side of the ring! But when I was thirteen – my first year of high school – The Demon quit wrestling forever. He planned to travel, go to Spain to see the bullfights. And that's when . . . well, this thing happened . . . oh, if only I'd been able to . . .' Dad's voice thickened, and stopped. He peered off into the distance, frowning, as if gazing into the great blank mist of history.

Maybe the thing that happened to my dad was so awful it burned into his heart and stayed there. Maybe it was like being branded with a red hot poker, only from the inside. I get an ache in my abdominals whenever I think of it.

ABOUT
a year ago, Dad came home all excited one night because he'd just had a visit from his new client, a famous old wrestler called The End. The End was about to retire and he'd asked Dad to manage his millions. But Dad wasn't excited because he saw dollar signs glowing up there like neon lights. Oh no, he was
E
CSTATIC
and
E
BULLIENT
because The End had shown him how to do the Discus Leg Drop.

‘Look at this!' Dad cried. He jumped in the air, spun three hundred and sixty degrees and shot out his leg, which was supposed to land on some poor guy's chest. Instead, his leg hit the kitchen chair, which stabbed into the wall leaving a big dark mark and a golf-ball-sized dent.

‘Well, needs a bit of practice,' he panted. ‘If you want to be good at anything, Louis, if you want to be
best
at something, you've got to practise. The End was just telling me about it. ‘Mate,' he said, ‘success is ninety-nine per cent perspiration, one per cent inspiration.' He sat down and rubbed his knee.

‘Do you want a nice cup of tea?' I asked, going over to the kettle.

‘Love one,' he said, picking up his newspaper. ‘You need to know how to do the Discus Leg Drop, Louis. Really, everyone does. Hopefully you won't ever have to use it to defend yourself, but you never know. Look at this headline, for instance – a teenage party in Melbourne last night – two hundred gatecrashers, a fight. Oh, it's enough to give you nightmares. They say if you have a party these days you have to hire security, and register with police . . .
gatecrashers
, what is the world coming to? That reminds me, have you started on
our
gate? I showed you how to fix the screws in the latch, remember? A boy needs to know how to get his hands dirty, Louis, I'm always telling you . . .'

I brought the tea over and casually glanced at the book I'd been reading (about a pirate who hated weevilly bread and longed for a soft bed and a good story) but I nodded at Dad and smiled to show him I was listening. I wished sometimes people would do the same for me.

Dad took just one sip of his tea before he leapt up and started in again. ‘Okay, take up your position opposite me. Get a spin on you before you swing your leg.'

Half-heartedly, I twirled around a couple of times.