The Donut Diaries (16 page)

‘Well, Crow, I think I can help you earn a little extra money.’

‘Really? How?’

And I told him.

IT ALL WENT
down in the late afternoon. It had been planned like a military operation, but with many fewer tanks and ground-attack aircraft. So, I suppose if it really was a military operation it would have been rubbish – definitely in the bottom one per cent, although not as bad as invading Russia, which always ends in disaster. In fact, the best advice my dad has ever given me is never to invade Russia, because, as he pointed out, you only end up retreating through the
Horror
of the Russian Winter, which is just about the worst kind of retreat there is, apparently.

Anyway, the drop was arranged for the path by the canal bridge. We chose that spot because it was right under a street lamp and we needed the light. Me, Corky, Renfrew and Spam were hiding behind the wall. Jim was standing on the bridge, doing natural boy-type things, such as whistling, spitting into the water, throwing stones at the ducks, etc. etc. He also had his mobile phone in his hand. Not that he was talking to anyone. That wasn’t the plan. Plus, he had no credit left.

He was ready to film!

Crow was waiting on the path. In his pocket he had my dad’s dictaphone. In his hand he held a plastic carrier bag. In the plastic carrier bag was something very unpleasant indeed.

You remember
Whose Poohs
? Remember the prize? Remember who won it? Well, I’d been storing my ‘winnings’ inside a Tupperware container in the freezer. I thought I might get something for it on eBay … Little did I know when I stored it there that the celebrity poo was one day going to save my bacon.

It was pretty tense behind the wall.

Would he turn up?

Would he take the merchandise?

Would Jim manage to film it?

Or would we all freeze to death before anything interesting happened?

I passed out the emergency rations – there was half a donut each, except for me. I got a whole donut on the grounds that I needed the energy for all the major thinking I was doing, plus I’d bought them anyway, and if anyone
wanted
to complain then they should have bought their own donuts – or, for that matter, any other snacks they felt like, e.g. crisps, nuts, sausage rolls, Scotch eggs—

‘I hear something,’ whispered Renfrew.

I swallowed what was left of my donut and peeked over the wall. And there, just coming into the circle of light cast by the street lamp, was the Floppy-Haired Kid himself.

Well, who else were you expecting – the Prisoner of Azkaban?

The tension was so thick you could have cut it with a knife and spread it on bread, maybe with some jam or honey – although personally I’m not a big fan of bee puke, which is what honey basically is.

The two figures nodded to each other.

‘Hey, Steerforth,’ said Crow, as arranged
beforehand
. It was vital to get the Brown Phantom’s real name on tape.

‘I said no names, you freak!’

‘Chill out, man. You want the stuff or not?’

‘You got it?’

‘I got it. You got the money?’

The FHK reached into his pocket and took out some notes and held them out. They made the exchange. The FHK looked suspiciously at the bag.

‘This definitely the same stuff?’

‘I saw it come out of Samson with my own eyes. He was reading the newspaper and whistling
Dixie
. Check it if you want.’

The FHK began to open the bag, but then thought better of it.

‘OK, I trust you.’

‘So what are you using this stuff for, anyway?’

‘I’ve already told you – that’s my business.’

‘Look, I just need to know that it’s legal. That you’re not doing anything against the law with it. Otherwise I’d be an accessory, and I could be staring down the barrel of a long stretch in the pen.’

‘Hey, it’s not against the law to leave poo lying around on the floor at school—’

This was what I was waiting for. The FHK was about to condemn himself by means of his own evil mouth. But just then a terrifying scream rent the evening air.

‘NOOOOOOOOOOOO! IT’S A TRAP!’

I saw the huge, lumbering form of Ludmilla Pfumpf come pounding into view. I also saw the look on the FHK’s face. It was a horror-and-bewilderment sandwich, smeared over with the mayonnaise of disgust.

‘Right, boys, let’s move,’ I said.

We jumped over the wall. (OK, so I had a bit
of
help from Spam, but no one ever said that jumping over walls was my speciality.)

The FHK now looked even more surprised. But he was one cool customer, and soon his face was back under control and he appeared as bored with the world as ever, as though getting caught with a load of fake chimpanzee poo that you were going to use to frame the local fat kid in revenge for his earlier triumph over you was a regular occurrence.

‘Ah, if it isn’t Humpty Dumpty falling off his wall. Oh, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men as well. What a bunch of losers.’

While he was speaking, Ludmilla charged up and gave the fragile Crow one heck of a shove. Luckily, she pushed him against the wall and not into the canal, or else it would have been the end for Crow as it’s well known that Goths can’t swim.
Then
Ludmilla stood between the rest of us and the FHK, bared her teeth and gave us a snarl.

‘The game’s up,’ I said, talking to the FHK rather than Ludmilla, who didn’t seem to be in the mood for calm discussions. ‘We know everything, and we’ve got it all on tape. Crow was wearing a wire, and Jim up on the bridge over there was filming it all. YOU ARE THE BROWN PHANTOM! And you’re going down.’

The FHK tried to maintain his cool, but you could see the edges melting.

‘You’ve got nothing,’ he said, and hurled the bag of celebrity poo into the canal, where it floated for a moment before sinking into the murky depths. An angler was in for a nasty shock one day. That was one brown trout you wouldn’t want to fry.

‘You still getting this on film, Jim?’ I called up to the bridge.

‘Everything,’ Jim replied, and gave me the thumbs-up.

‘Think how it looks …’ I said in a reasonable tone. I was enjoying this and was quite happy to string it out for a bit. I also didn’t want to antagonize Ludmilla in case she threw
me
in the canal.

‘You’re gonna get expelled for sure,’ chipped in Renfrew.

‘F-f-f-f-for sure,’ echoed Corky.

I was expecting more backchat from the oily swine, and for a second it really looked like that’s what he was planning. He glanced from face to face, still sneering his sneery sneer.

But the truth is, he couldn’t keep it up. His mouth opened and shut a couple of times, as if he was expecting a sarky remark to come out all by itself. But nothing emerged. It was like when
you
massively puke your guts up, and there’s nothing left to come out, not even the brown watery stuff. Not even a burp.

And so the once proud Floppy-Haired Kid sank to his knees on the dirty canal footpath, put his face in his hands and cried. I’d say he cried like a girl, but given that Ludmilla was there, looming over us all like a deadly war mammoth,
¹
it doesn’t seem appropriate, and is, in fact, rather sexist.

And watching him there on his knees weeping like the world’s biggest baby, my feelings changed. I’d been hating him really rather a lot since I’d discovered that he was behind the poo plot. But now I just felt sorry for him.

‘Please don’t tell the school,’ he begged.
‘If
I get expelled my dad’ll never forgive me, and then my mum and dad will get divorced, and my grandmother’s ill, and she’ll probably die, and if you don’t tell I’ll give you a hundred pounds.’

‘Oh, shut up, will you,’ I said, suddenly irritated by him again. ‘I don’t believe a word of it, and anyway it would serve you right. Well, not the bit about your granny dying, because that would be a shame for her, and it’s not as if
she’s
the Brown Phantom.’

‘Each?’ said Corky, which obviously wasn’t one of his stammering words.

‘What?’ said me and the FHK together.

‘Corky means the hundred pounds,’ said Renfrew. ‘Do we get a hundred pounds each or altogether?’

‘I think each would be better,’ said Spam.

‘Definitely,’ added Jim, who’d come and joined us by now.

‘No!’ I said firmly. ‘We’re not going to stoop to blackmail – that would make us as bad as him.’

‘Technically,’ said Spam, ‘this is more bribery than blackmail …’

‘It doesn’t really matter if it’s bribery or blackmail,’ said Renfrew. ‘We can’t take it, because the whole point is that unless Donut finds out the true identity of the Phantom and tells the school, then he’ll get the blame for it. So we’ve got to turn Steerforth in, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Noooooo!’ wailed Ludmilla, who we’d forgotten about for a while – as had you, I expect.

I looked at Ludmilla, and felt another one of those troubling pangs of sympathy for her, even
though
she’d totally betrayed me to my mortal enemy. Love is a cruel master, and those who are enslaved to it often do stupid, annoying and treacherous things. And it was then that the idea came to me. Again, I suppose my subconscious mind must have been chewing it over, because by the time it reached the front of my head it was fully formed and, if I say so myself, rather beautiful.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell the school that you are the Brown Phantom.’

This was followed by groans and tuts from the gang.

‘You’re mad,’ said Jim. ‘You can’t take the rap for this twerp.’

The FHK looked up at me, his eyes suddenly dry. He couldn’t stop that sly little smile coming back on his face, which was a mistake.

‘But,’ I continued, ‘there is a price …’

‘So you
will
accept the hundred pounds?’ said the FHK, showing his meanness of spirit and smallness of mind yet again.

‘Oh no. Money isn’t everything. My price is that you have to go out with Ludmilla, like you promised her.’

Well, that wiped the smile off his face.

‘WHAT?’

‘You heard. And you’d better be a decent boyfriend, which means doing whatever she wants you to do, whether it’s snogging, going to McDonald’s, or just generally hanging out.’

I once read about some theory that says that the amount of happiness and unhappiness in the world are exactly balanced. That seems a bit unlikely – it would mean, say, me finding a donut every time someone else stubbed their
toe
, and the two things are totally unlinked, so how could it happen? But even if it isn’t true in the cosmic sense, it was true on that footpath beside the canal. Just as the FHK’s mood fell into despair, so Ludmilla’s feelings soared skywards until they reached heaven.

‘So, do you agree or not, then?’ I asked.

The FHK made a kind of mumbling noise.

‘Was that a yes or a no?’

Another mumble.

‘WHAT?’

And then, in the quietest possible voice that was still detectible by the human ear, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’