When Mr. Dog Bites Read online

  The Voice Levels at school only go to four, but if I had some voice-recording equipment with me on the couch I’m sure Mom’s level would have been about Level Seventeen when she came in from the kitchen.

  “Can you stop fucking talking about this, Dylan? Can’t you see I’m at the end of my tether here? Jesus Christ! I don’t need this shit right now.” Then the phone rang, and Mom said, “Saved by the bloody bell.”

  When I went into the kitchen to check on my soup, Mom was in the hall talking on the phone in Hush Voice. An adult voice. She turned her back on me as though she didn’t want me to see her, but I could tell that her peepers were raw red. I stirred the soup two times clockwise and three times counterclockwise, but something had pressed my curious brain button, so I turned off the soup and did the glass-to-ear-to-door thing that kiddie spies do.

  “. . . Hmm . . . Hmm . . . I don’t know how to even approach this . . . Hmm . . . See, that’s the thing, isn’t it? . . . Hmm . . . I should’ve told him about this situation long before now . . . Hmm . . . I wish I’d done that . . .”

  The glass slipped from my ear, but I caught it in my hand. It was hard not to head bang the door ten or twenty-six times.

  “. . . I know. I know . . . He’s always been my little baby, my little Dylan . . . Hmm . . . Hmm . . . It’s not fair to land this on him now . . . I’m terrified for him . . .” Then the tears again and again and again.

  I couldn’t remember her hanging up the phone. I screamed. The sound hurt my ears. Then everything became black.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  “Dylan?”

  Nine.

  Ten.

  One.

  Two.

  “Dylan?”

  Three.

  Four.

  “Dylan?”

  Five.

  “Dylan, I’m sorry.”

  Six.

  “I didn’t mean to shout.”

  Seven.

  “I love you.”

  Eight.

  “It’s been a crazy week.”

  Nine.

  “I’m sorry, Dylan.”

  Ten.

  “Mom loves you.”

  One.

  “Open your eyes.”

  Two.

  “Open your eyes, love.”

  Three.

  “Your soup’s ready.”

  Four.

  “Mom’s sorry, Dylan.”

  Five.

  “Mom loves you more than anything else.”

  Six.

  “More than anyone else.”

  Seven.

  “Come on, sweetheart.”

  Eight.

  “Your soup will get cold.”

  Nine.

  “Open your eyes, Dylan.”

  Ten.

  “That’s better, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry for shouting, love. Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s A-okay.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring in your soup.”

  “Thanks.”

  I sat up and waited for Mom to bring me my chicken soup and tomato sauce.

  9

  Plans

  When I was a pup, like, super wee, I thought that after you cacked it you simply jumped on a bus and traveled up to heaven, munched on a huge ice cream with a gigantic cherry on top, and chilled out with the other cackees. Everyone would be sitting on big fluffy white clouds singing songs, telling funnies, and just enjoying the day. If you wanted to, you could play soccer, watch films, muck about on video games, have a hairdo, or cut your toenails. It would be up to you to choose. Everything would be whiter than snowflakes. A magic place.

  But now that I was more grown-up, every time I thought of the land of the cacked I didn’t see white stuff anymore; everything now was much darker, and the cackees were sweaty and dirty and some had cuts on their faces. Nobody was having fun; instead everyone was digging, shoveling, or hacking at something. The sound, too, was brutal; it was like being in the shittiest disco in the afterworld. That place terrified me. When I thought of it, I had to tuck both ears into my head, which was hard, so my technique was to lie on my left side with one ear pressed hard to the mattress and use a pillow to force down the right ear. When I did this, all the disco noise flew away, and in came the white clouds again.

  In that first week back at school I found it hard to clamp my gob closed. I didn’t have that oh-I-so-need-to-get-this-off-my-chest-or-I’ll-end-up-setting-myself-on-fire desire, but I really wanted to have a man-to-man with my bff, my Phone-a-Friend.

  Amir didn’t Adam and Eve me at first. In fact, he was downright RudeTube about it.

  “Don’t ta-ta-talk poo piss, Dylan.”

  “I’m not joking, Amir. Honestly I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You bl-bl-bloody are, and if you keep going on about it, I’ll be forced to speak to Miss Flynn and tell her you’re off your rocker.”

  Miss Flynn was the counselor at Drumhill; you only went to see her if you had been super-duper mad loopy, or if you wanted to slit your wrists, or slice open your arms or thighs, or wanted to rape someone, or someone wanted to rape you, or if a dirty old man showed you his willy on the Internet. Even though we all had her cell number (only to be used in school hours, not for fun texts) in case we needed to speak to her in a super hurry, I hardly ever went to see Miss Flynn. It was weird that we didn’t go to see her more often, because we thought she was the real-deal Sssseeexxx on Lllleeegggsss. And she wore red lipstick.

  “Well, I’ll just tell her that you made the whole thing up and I haven’t a Jimmy Choo what you’re blabbing on about, and then she’ll think you’re off your rocker and she’ll phone your mom and dad, and then your dad will play human pinball with you when you get home.”

  Amir said nothing. He scrunched up his face. He does this when I’ve done him like a smelly kipper. Amir has that dead-famous Greek guy’s heel, which is threatening him with his dad. I hated doing it, but sometimes it had to be whipped out of the bag. I only did it on special occasions, which this was. A very special occasion.

  “This isn’t easy for me, Amir. I’m telling you because you’re my best bud, and at times like this a man needs a best bud . . . Are you still my best bud, Amir?”

  There was, like, this four-hour-long pause. Amir put his finger in his ear and shuffled it around a bit.

  “Of course I am, you stupid bloody idiot.”

  “Coolio, Daddio,” I said.

  “Spunkalicious.” When Amir said this, I knew the band was back together.

  “So, as I was saying, this new doc was going on about all this mad stuff.”

  “Mine does that all the time. I haven’t the foggiest idea what he’s saying half the time.”

  “Tell me about it, Amir.”

  “The problem is, neither do Mom or Dad.”

  “Ditto, amigo, ditto.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Thankfully I was there to break it all down in my head.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “It was all mad shit, though.”

  “Like what?”

  “He said, ‘I think what’s best now is for you to prepare yourself and Dylan for what’s going to happen.’”

  “Really? He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “So . . . erm . . . what is going to happen then?”

  “What do you think?”

  Amir’s toe stubbed the ground.

  “Get this. He also said, ‘You need to keep your spirits up and prepare for life afterward.’”

  Amir let it swirl around his head like a school of steaming fishes. “Holy Moly, Dylan, that does sound bad.”

  “You bet your bottom dollar it sounds bad.”

  “I’m trying to.” Sometimes talking to Amir was like asking a foreign pe
rson on holiday in Spain if they liked watching Scottish soccer.

  “Do you know what ‘in . . . contro . . . ver . . . tible’ means?”

  “I think so.” Not on your nelly did he know what this meant.

  “The doc said that too.”

  “W-w-wow!”

  “I think he was maybe saying we should get a car when the illness gets worse.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Like, for the days I can’t walk.”

  “Yeah, a car would be the best bet, sure enough.” Amir looked at the ground and booted a few stones. Then he whooped in a really high-pitched voice. “WHOOP!”

  “But it’s okay, Amir, ’cause it’s not happening until March.”

  “March?”

  “The doc said, ‘It’s safest to assume no later than the beginning of March.’”

  “Great balls of fire. WHOOP!”

  “I know.”

  “That sounds mad, Dylan.”

  “Bottom dollar, Amir, bottom bloody dollar.”

  “So what’s wrong, then?” Amir said AGAIN, all confused dot com.

  “Well, I don’t know exactamundo, because the doc was ultraconfusing.”

  “Oh . . . okay.”

  “All I do know is that I’m going to cack it. But Mom doesn’t want to talk about it, and I’m not allowed to ask questions.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing you can say, Amir. Sometimes best buds don’t have to say anything. They have this sick sense between them.”

  “Sixth.”

  “What?”

  “Sixth sense.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not really, because—”

  “Whatever, Amir . . . Maybe I should be sad.”

  “That wouldn’t do any good.”

  “But I am sad,” I said. Then it was my turn to look at the ground and rattle some stones across the yard. My face twitched a couple of times.

  “Me too. I’m sadder than the saddest guy in the saddest town in the world, but it’s no good being all Dot-Cotton-faced about it, Dylan. It’s going to happen, so we have to live with it. WHOOP!”

  “Suppose,” I muttered, and scuffed a stone away.

  “That’s funny,” Amir said, but I don’t think he meant hold-on-to-your-belly funny. He scuffed away some stones too and smacked his lips together.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Me saying ‘we have to live with it.’”

  “So?”

  “So, ‘live with it.’ It’s funny.”

  Then I got the joke. Amir was always making jokes that took ages to understand, which meant they weren’t funny anymore. Not that most of them were funny in the first place. I think it’s his not-understanding-boundaries thing.

  “I see what you’ve done there. I think that’s called irony, Amir.”

  “I know; I meant it.”

  “See?”

  “What?”

  “How easy it is to forget about what’s going to happen and have a great big laugh?”

  “Suppose,” Amir said. He was acting all gloomy-two-shoes, as if he were the one about to big-style cop it.

  “But remember: you should never, ever laugh at dying people, Amir.”

  “It’s not fair,” Amir said, tut-tut-tutting as he said it.

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “Who-who-who’s going to be my new best bud?”

  “Don’t worry about that; we’ll sort something out.” I was a pubic hair away from telling Amir about my Cool Things to Do Before I Cack It idea. Number two: Make Amir a happy chappy again instead of a miserable c***! That one was for me to worry about.

  “B-b-but you’re my only bud, Dylan.”

  “Not true. There’s . . .” And then I couldn’t think of anyone, so I said a dafty thing. “. . . Miss Flynn.”

  Amir swore like a pished sailor in his head. I could tell he wanted to belt out rubbish things to me, but he didn’t, ’cause I was going to be seeing the Grim Reaper soon and he didn’t want to be Insensitive Boy.

  “No one else likes me,” he said.

  I twiddled Green in my pocket through my Sweaty Betty fingers.

  “I know.”

  “Nobody wants to hang about with a Paki.”

  “I know.”

  “Especially a spazzie Paki who goes to a spazzie school and can’t sp-sp-speak pro-pro-properly.”

  “It’s shite, isn’t it?”

  “What am I going to do? WHOOP!”

  “Honestly, Amir, don’t worry. We’ll sort something out.”

  “WHOOP!”

  “And you’re not a spazzie.”

  “I-I-I am.”

  “You’re a wee bit autistic.”

  “So? WHOOP!”

  “There’s a difference.”

  “No, there’s not. I’m a spazzie Paki.”

  “You’re not a spazzie, Amir.”

  “WHOOP! What am I, then?”

  “I don’t know.” I hated these types of questions, especially when I didn’t know the stinking answers, like that numbers puzzle on Countdown. A real head-wrecker, that.

  “Eh? What am I?”

  “Erm . . .Maybe you’re a bit retarded. But not mad retarded, just a wee bit, and sometimes you have a wee stutter, but only when you’re sad inside.”

  “You’re some best fu-fu-fucking bud, you are.”

  “You asked.” This was just one example of people being weird but not wonderful.

  “I know, but it was a historical question,” Amir said.

  Then he lost me. We kicked stones around for a while in silence, which was Daddy Cool, because the one thing that’s different between best buds and stupid acquaintances is that it’s fine and dandy to boot stones around in silence with your best bud, but with acquaintances you have to think of rubbish things to say all the time in case they think you’re dead boring, or a mongo. My new shoes were all scuffed and scuzzy as well. I didn’t care, though, because I was happy as a pig in piss that two best buds were kicking some stones around in silence. That’s what life’s all about.

  Silence.

  Kicking.

  Silence.

  Kicking.

  More silence.

  More kicking.

  Even more silence.

  Then some more kicking.

  I wanted to hug Amir—not in a sword-fencing-our-willies huggy way, but just, well, just because.

  The silence went on for yonks and yonks, making me a bit uncomfortable. Occasionally I glanced at Amir, but his eyes were always on the stones, doing his mad-staring thing. When we had booted all the stones away we made noises with our mouths, like puffing out air and tick-tocking with our tongues. Then I had enough of Amir being my mad weirdo pal.

  “Do you want to hear about my plan?”

  “What plan?”

  “I made a plan. A list of stuff I want to do before . . . you know . . . before.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . before you . . . eh . . . before you . . . eh . . . yeah, what’s the plan to do stuff?”

  “Do you want to hear it?”

  “Defo. What kind of stuff?”

  “Mad stuff. Shit stuff. Mad shit stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, think of the maddest shit that I could do before . . . you-know-what happens.”

  Amir went into Thinking Incredibly Hard Mode. His eyes got mega wide when he was in Thinking Incredibly Hard Mode.

  “Got it!”

  “What?”

  “You could do a sk-sk-skydive from, like, the highest height you could ever imagine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, like, from miles and miles way up there.”

  We both looked up to the gray clouds.

  “That is high.”

  “That would be pure animal.”

  “You think?”

  “It would be as mad as anything.”

  “Really?”

  “Mad as, man.”

  I looked at him a
nd shook my head, because I was the brains of this operation.

  “Don’t be a twit-twat, Amir.”

  “What?”

  “Well, first of all, how the hell am I going to get up there?”

  “In a plane.”

  “I don’t have a plane.”

  “A helicopter, then.”

  “Rubbish. How else?”

  “I du-du-dunno.”

  “Exactly. It’s a crap idea.”

  “Well, you tell me a better one, then.”

  “I will, and it’s a stonker.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I am going to get it on with Michelle Malloy.”

  “Michelle Malloy?”

  “Michelle Malloy.”

  “Get off with her?”

  “Get it on with her.”

  “Michelle Malloy?”

  “Are you deaf, Amir?”

  “So you’re telling me that you’re going to get off with Michelle Malloy?”

  “No, I’m not going to GET OFF with Michelle Malloy, I’m going to GET IT ON with her.”

  “What’s the difference?” Amir asked.

  So I did that dirty thing of placing my right index finger through a tiny hole I’d made between the index finger and thumb of my left hand. I put the index finger in and out eight times. Amir’s eyes got really wide again.

  “NO WAY.”

  “Way.”

  Amir looked around to see if anyone was listening to us. “You mean you’re going to sh-sh-shag Michelle Malloy?” Amir whispered the word “shag.” Mom did the same when she didn’t want me to hear the word she was saying. The funny thing was, the word sounded louder when she whispered it. Sometimes she even spelled out words because she thought I wouldn’t understand them, but what Mom didn’t know was that spelling was one of my strong points at school. Mrs. Seed made me Spelling Master the first week back at school. I even spelled the word “discombobulate” correctly.

  “You, Dylan Mint, are going to shag Michelle Malloy?”

  “Hard as.”

  “But-but-but can she actually do it?”

  “What do you mean, can she actually do it?”

  “Well, with her club foot and all?”

  “It doesn’t affect her punany, Amir.”

  “Jeezo, Dylan.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, Jeezo.”

  “Mad shit, isn’t it?”

  “Does she know? I mean, is she okay about it?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, but she will be.”