The Donut Diaries (6 page)

The sporty kids are all in Newman. They all look like the Incredible Hulk, except for being green. I mean,
not
being green.
¹

And then there’s us, Burton. We get everyone who’s not outstandingly brainy, not very cool, and not very good at sport. We have plenty of nerds, though.

Or, as Renfrew put it: ‘Basically, we’re Hufflepuff.’

Dinner tonight was baked potatoes with low-fat cottage cheese. It was edible, in the sense that your own snot is edible if there’s nothing better to do with it.

I told Mum and Dad about my new friend, and that cheered them up. Dad agreed that Renfrew was actually a funny name, but he didn’t know why either, although he thought it might have something to do with Count Dracula. My dad knows all kinds of stuff, not all of it useless.

Had a bit of a relapse later with the donuts. The trouble is that Mr Alexis is having a ‘Donuts of the World’ promotion at the bakery.
There
were donuts there that
might never be seen again
!!!!

So I sampled:

• the Canadian maple syrup
  
• the Belgian chocolate
  
• the Chinese cherry blossom
  
• and the Bavarian sausage flavour.
  

Good eating, one and all!

DONUT COUNT:

1
I suppose, if you looked like the Incredible Hulk and were also green, then you would, in fact,
be
the Incredible Hulk.

Thursday 14 September

WELL, THAT WAS
unexpected: made another new friend today. It’s official: I now have a gang! I think it was because of having Renfrew to hang around with. One kid on his own just looks like a loser. Two kids together, on the other hand, look like a party about to happen, even if they are a couple of drongoloids like me and Renfrew and the party is likely to be one of the worst in the history of partying.

The first kid to be drawn into our gang
was
basically a lamppost doing an impression of a human being. His name is Simon Palmer and he’s not only the tallest kid in the year, but practically the tallest in the school. Tallest and skinniest, so I don’t think he’d be much use in a fight, unless you used him as a sort of a lance.

And because he’s miles taller than anyone else, you spend all your time looking right up his nose, and he’s got these really complicated nostrils, with all kinds of funny flaps and lumps that you don’t expect.

Everyone calls him Spam. Spam talks in this really, really deep voice, like Treebeard off
The Lord of the Rings
.

‘You sound like Treebeard off
The Lord of the Rings
,’ I said, and after a few seconds he laughed, which is when I knew we’d be friends. I had to explain the joke to Renfrew because he hadn’t
read
the book or seen the film, which is pretty freaky. Although he usually sounds like Treebeard, Spam’s voice sometimes goes all high and squeaky, like a chipmunk. It’s quite funny when that happens.

Together, me, Renfrew and Spam look like an illustration in a textbook, showing the different types of human boy: the fat one, the midget, the beanpole.

DONUT COUNT:

Friday 15 September

NOW THERE’S A
fourth member of our gang. I thought that we already had most of the weird bases covered, but it turns out there was one missing: the square base. This kid, you see, is made out of squares. Or, more accurately, cubes. His head is a cube. His body is a cube. Even the different bits of his legs are made out of cubes. He looks exactly like one of those pictures of a robot they used to draw in the olden days, before they thought of fluid metal cyborgs and robots
with
realistic skin and hair and stuff.

Normally, looking like a really out-of-date robot would be the weirdest thing about a person, but with this kid it was only the
second
weirdest.

‘Corky’s got a problem,’ said Renfrew.

We were sitting in the dining hall. In front of us were trays piled with misery, the name of which was toad-in-the-hole. Toad-in-the-hole is supposed to be made from sausages (the ‘toad’) and Yorkshire pudding batter (the ‘hole’). But this one seemed to have been made out of real toads and the hole part was the hole at the back of a rhino, through which it slopped out its claggy poo.

‘We’ve all got a problem,’ I said, jabbing at a toad with my fork. It hopped out of the way.

‘He’s got something called Tourette’s syndrome,’ Renfrew continued.

‘I’ve heard,’ said Spam in his low-down voice, ‘of that,’ he added with a squeak.

‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s when you can’t stop yourself from blurting out bad words and other things you shouldn’t say …’ Renfrew explained.

‘Yeah, I can see that that
is
a problem.’

‘No, you don’t get it. He also has a really bad stammer.’

It didn’t properly sink in until Corky started to speak. Well,
speak
maybe isn’t the right word.

His square face went purple. He opened and closed his eyes. His ears began to wiggle. But all that came out of his mouth was:

‘
F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f
.’

Then a pause, followed by:

‘
K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k
.’

I looked at Renfrew.

‘Philip Cork,’ he said. ‘It’s his name.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

It was kind of fascinating to watch, in a car-crash kind of way. Which was probably why half the kids in the dining hall were staring at us. The ‘us’ included four other nerds. They weren’t nerds like us, i.e. blatantly obvious, screaming, flagrant nerds. They were more the quiet, semi-invisible kind of nerds that nobody really notices or cares about. A couple of them already had zits, which you’d have thought would have had the
decency
to wait until puberty came along. It was so unfair – like having rotten teeth even though you never ate any sweets. Some of them
had
rotten teeth too, crossed over or gappy or green. And they all had seriously terrible haircuts, as if a flock of mutant birds had come down and nested on their heads.

I felt kind of embarrassed to be on the same table as these guys, but I also felt grateful that I had some people to sit with. I looked around. The FHK was on a table with his cronies. I also saw Tamara Bello sitting with a gang of girls. And she saw me. She looked at me, then looked at the other freaks on my table, then shook her head. If we were flies she’d definitely have pulled our wings off by now. I couldn’t quite decide who I hated most, her or the FHK.

Actually, I’ve just realized. That’s it – I’ve survived my first week at St Michael’s. The worst is over.

The worst
has
to be over. Celebrated with three donuts, although I am determined to keep it down to two or less from now on.

DONUT COUNT:

Saturday 16 September

FUNNY, THIS WHOLE
keeping a diary thing. I’m not saying I
like
it, but I actually don’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Kind of gives me a way to get my head in order. It makes me think about things. Some of these things aren’t very nice to think about, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do it. Like brushing your teeth, I suppose. I mean, no one really
likes
brushing their teeth, do they? But you do it because you don’t want to have green teeth.

And one of the things it made me think about is being fat. Like I said, being a bit porky at junior school was OK. I had Jim and my other mates. They took the mickey a bit, but only the way you do with your friends. But now it was different. I’m in a new place with new friends. And new enemies. So maybe it’s not just the fear of Camp Fatso that makes me want to cut down on the donuts.

I called Jim on his mobile (I haven’t got one as Mum says they give you brain cancer, and anyway you’re not allowed to have them at St Michael’s). He sounded a bit down, which sort of cheered me up. He’s coming over tomorrow.

I think Mum and Dad knew it had been a hard week, and everyone was vaguely nice to me today. Even Ruby and Ella. Well, not
that
nice. They just ignored me, but not in the usual
‘I
hate you’ ignoring way. Just ordinary ignoring, without any hate in it.

For dinner, Mum cooked loads of nice things. It was even arranged as a starter, main course and dessert, just like in a posh restaurant. We had smoked salmon for the starter, which I quite like even though someone once told me it’s not even the remotest bit cooked, but completely RAW. And then we had grilled chicken, despite it not being a Sunday. And for pudding we had something called sorbet, which is like an ice lolly without a stick, and which didn’t totally suck.

DONUT COUNT: