When Mr. Dog Bites (15 page)

“Or why ‘gay’ means to have it off with another guy and to be dead happy?”

“Exactly, Dylan. Exactly.”

“I mean, how can you be dead happy if another guy is putting his ting-tang in your bu-bu-bumbaleery? Eh? Answer me that, Amir?” There was no answer, as the world was off its rocker.

“I don’t really know, Dylan,” he said.

Sometimes me and Amir would go off on one and say the barmiest things that would never ever enter the minds of normal human beings. “Normal people don’t ask such things,” Mrs. Seed always said to Amir in class when he asked his Whack Attack question.

“No, I don’t know either, I suppose.”

“I do know it’s not normal to hate people just because of their skin,” Amir said.

“I know.”

“I mean, you’d need to be mentally retarded to hate skin.”

“But Skittle and Snot Rag
are
retarded, Amir,” I said.

“Suppose.”

“See? No need to worry.”

I knew we were all retarded, but those two were more retarded because they did extra-retarded things like seeing who could hold their pee in the longest before shooting it out pretending that it was a fireman’s hose, or seeing who could pee the highest in the bog stalls, or seeing who had the smelliest finger after sticking it up their own bum. Me and Amir never did anything as batty as that.

“Yeah .
.
. but .
.
. still.”

“I agree, it’s not right.”

“I think I want to go home,” Amir said.

“Don’t do that, Amir.”

“You did it when Michelle Malloy gave you a massive ru-ru-rubber ear.”

“Aw, cheers.”

“Sorry, but you know what I mean. I’m fed up with it all.”

“Yes, but I got into mega trouble, and I didn’t really do anything when I went home.”

“What did you do?”

“Mainly sat in my room.”

“Doing what?”

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing really, just random stuff.”

“Nude girls?”

“No.”

“Bet you were.”

“Bet I wasn’t.”

“I bet you were all over the Internet.”

“Bet I wasn’t.”

“Bet you were looking at blow jobs and pumping,” he said, looking around before he said the words “
blow jobs”
and “
pumping
,” which he whispered.

“Bet I wasn’t.” This was a proper LOL moment, but I didn’t LOL.

“Bet you were.” I was just about to give Amir a dead arm, in a best-bud way, when out of the corner of my left eye I saw him.

Skittle.

He hobbled into the classroom dragging his wonky legs behind him. Amir put his head on the desk. Charlotte Duffy took her head off her desk and blew me a colossal raspberry and did a man-fiddling-with-himself gesture with her hand, as if to say that I was a masturbator.

I twirled my index fingers around my temples in return.

Touché, Charlotte Duffy!

I walked over to Skittle’s desk. The bell was about to go, and people were streaming and shuffling into the room. I had to make this quick. Darn snaptastic quick. I still had to keep my promise to help my best bud Amir and remember
Cool Things to Do Before I Cack It: Number two: Make Amir a happy chappy again instead of a miserable c***!
This was a perfect moment to prove to him what I was all about, to show him what he’d be missing when I was gone.

“Skittle, I’ve got a wee bone to pick with you,” I said, trying to act all cool and hard like the T-Birds from
Grease
.

“What?”

“What’s with you taking the piss out of Amir all the time?”

“What?”

“You heard, Skittle. You’ve been ripping the piss out of Amir.”

“What are you on about, you mongo?”

“You’d better well pack it in,” I said, putting on my best Hard Man Who Doesn’t Take No Shit from Nobody face, which we learned to do in Mr. Grant’s drama class.

“Or else what?”

“I’m just saying, pack it in, all right?”

“Shut your gub, cock-bawz.”

“If I see you doing it again .
.
.”

Then Skittle stood closer to me and puffed his wee chest out like people do when they want a piece of the action or want to go to town, which we also learned in Mr. Grant’s class. Come to think of it, Mr. Grant’s class was all about standing up for yourself and taking no crap from no one and having a go and duffing up folk.

“.
.
. Or what?” he said.

This was exactly the same as our drama class improvi-sations (which I loved), except this was for real. I could smell the grease off Skittle’s breath.
Oh, sugar of a shitey stick
, I thought.
What now?

“I’m telling you, Skittle .
.
.”

“What are you going to do about it, Dildo, eh?” he said, and moved even closer so that we were touching man boobs.

That was when Skittle made me majorly nervous. I’m not that comfortable with people I hardly know being so close to me. I cleared my throat so aggressively loudly it made him back off a smidgen. When I say cleared my throat, it was more like a wolf pack clearing their throats. When Skittle backed off a smidgen, this told me that I had the upper hand in our tussle, and I remembered that Dad always told me whenever I had the upper hand in tussles: “Never, NEVER back down. Stand your bloody ground and then always, ALWAYS advance.” This was invaluable advice from the military, coming direct from top brass, so it had to be good advice. I took it. Just like Dad did when guys inside and outside the pub “fucked with his karma.” Bad move to do that when military experts are involved.

“I’ll knock your bloody racist block off, that’s what I’ll do,” I said. At the same moment my head started twitching and ticcing.

“Shut up, Tic Tac, and go back to your fucking monkey,” he said, nodding to Amir.

“What did you say?”

“I said .
.
.” He moved closer to me again, meaning my advance was rubbish. “.
.
. Shove it up your mom’s stinking kipper, Tourette’s Boy.”

Wow!

Wait a blinking minute!

Hold the Goddamn press!

Un-be-liev-able.

A comment like this was a red carpet to a bull shopping in a place that sells nothing but mountains of cut-glass crystal.

Always
advance.

“You gammy-legged wee twat.” I cat-pounced and grabbed him so tight around the neck with one hand that I felt his Adam’s apple wobble in my thumb. I squeezed hard until his face went alcoholic-nose red. Then I booted one of his gammy legs below the knee, and that was it. Skittle fell to the floor like a sack of spuds.

Crash!

Bang!

Wallop!

Amir was groaning and whooping up the back. Charlotte Duffy screamed and pulled at her hair, mad excited. Mentalist.

“What do you have to say now, you wee tosspot?” I shouted down at Skittle.

He was curled up in a ball and shaking uncontrollably. I was thinking of taking a penalty, but that would have been taking liberties, and I am not a liberty-taker. In any case, before I could cock back my left foot (that’s my strongest), Mr. Comeford roared, “ENOUGH, DYLAN MINT!” into my face, grabbed me full force by the collar, and huckled me really aggressively out of the room Flash Gordon–style. My shirt collar ripped. And, because I tucked my shirt into my pants, my pants got yanked right up my bum, and my bum and ball-sack hurt like a mofo. I thought of having Mr. Comeford charged with Grievous Bodily Harm and the ripping of private property and the hurting of my bum-hole/ball-sack combo. But damn! Blast! Mom and I didn’t have a brief or the brass to get me any of the top legal minds in Scotland. The upshot was, I didn’t do anything else about the issue of Mr. Comeford’s assault on me. But the more I thought about it, the more I could have had that man’s arse on a plate. I could see the headline:
Teacher Tampers with Terminal Teenager.

Again I was left to stand with my face millimeters from the V in the corner of the wall outside Miss Flynn’s office. All because I tried to help my best bud out of a spot of racist bother.

I did brain gym.

I fiddled with Green in my pocket.

I counted how many clubs had the color green in their soccer strips. I made this harder because I counted from
all
the leagues in Europe. Olympic brain gym.

I didn’t really remember too much about the scrap with Skittle, but I did remember that when I was being led out, Charlotte Duffy twirled her index fingers around her temples at me. That image actually made me laugh, because it was a top-notch touché moment.

Grade A to Charlotte Duffy.

Mentalist.

1
7

Millionaire

Miss Flynn called Mom to see if she could come and pick me up from school. She said I’d gotten myself into “a bit of a pickle.” When she was on the phone, Miss Flynn winked at me. If we’d been at a wicked club or hip bar and I was ten years older and she winked at me in the same way, I’d have sauntered over and bought that chick a half pint of lager. Then she handed me the receiver, and Miss Flynn’s phone ear was touching my ear; it was hot and perfumey, which made me feel gooey down below.

“Look, Dylan, I’m tied up with something. Can you make your own way home?” Mom said.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, sweetheart, I’m not mad, but I have to go.”

“Will we have soup tonight and watch the telly together?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I’ll pimp the soup if you want.”

“Brilliant. Can’t wait. Put Miss Flynn back on.”

“Okay, bye,” I said, and handed the phone to Miss Flynn, who made a date for Mom to come into school for a good old-fashioned chin-wag.

*

I knew most teenagers didn’t like hanging out with the oldies, but doing it some of the time was okay. And it was A-okay when me and Mom ate our soup and watched
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
together. Either I’d shout “IT’S STARTING!” or Mom would if we weren’t both in the living room already.

“What’s in this, che
f
?” She called me “chef” because that was what I was like when I was pimping soup. Mom knew not to come into the kitchen when the heat was on.

“So, tonight we have tomato soup .
.
.”

“Of course.”

“.
.
. with some paprika, black pepper, basil leaves, a tin of mixed beans .
.
.”

“Mmm, it smells delicious, chef.”

“.
.
. oh, and tarragon.”

“Oooooo, tarragon,” Mom said, widening her eyes. “Who’s after a Michelin star, then?”

I laughed, because they only give, like, the world’s best pimpers of food a Michelin star, and it takes donkey’s years to get one, and you have to work all the hours God sends and risk losing your wife and kids because you never get to see them, and then your liver becomes mushy with all the pressure booze you drink. And all for a blinkin’ Michelin star. I didn’t want one, no siree. Maybe I could be a No Michelin Star Chef when I was older. No, wait—I couldn’t, because of you-know-what. Sometimes I have sieve head.

“Taste it,” I said.

Mom slurped the soup. “Oh, Dylan, it’s delicious.”

“Really?”

“Totally love it, chef.”

“Fantastico,” I said, and slurped my first spoonful. It was delicious. “Shizenhowzen!”

“What?”

“I forgot the crusty bread.”

Crusty bread isn’t big red onions, so I couldn’t blame crusty bread for making my peepers stream. No. It was thinking about me and Mom having quality time together that made them waterfall. I had to lob the third slice out as some snot dripped onto it while I was cutting it. In that moment I could see Mom staring at me while I was lying peaceful in my coffin. She was in bits. Screaming and screaming. People had to drag her away from the coffin in case she pulled it down on top of herself. Then I imagined that I rolled out of the coffin and did a massive somersault down the church aisle, and Mom had to go on her hands and knees in order to catch me. I didn’t want Mom to be sad.

“IT’S STARTING!”

“Okay.” I splashed my face and blew my hooter.

The thousand-pound question was a complete doddle for Mom.

Q: The TV series
Sex and the City
is based on a book by which writer?

a) Carrie Bradshaw

b) Candace Bradshaw

c) Candace Bushnell

d) Carrie Bushnell