When Mr. Dog Bites Read online

  Bonkerinos!

  I could do a job like that.

  *

  Mom was lying on the couch with two cucumber slices covering her eyes. I could have eaten a scabby dog, because playing a high-energized performance sport does that to the body. What I needed was carbs. Or some Cup Noodles. But I could have quite easily dived on Mom and eaten her cucumber eyes, I was so Hank Marvin. I wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or not. She didn’t move a muscle. Her belly went up and down, so I knew she wasn’t dead.

  Phew!

  The TV was on. Some guy was making a pasta dish with eggs and bacon. My belly rumbled, making a noise like a little embarrassed fart.

  “There’s soup in the pot,” Mom said, without even looking up or removing her cucumbers. She must have heard my belly fart. I didn’t want soup.

  “Mom, why do you have cucumbers on your eyes?”

  “I was tired, Dylan.”

  “Did you sleep with cucumbers on your eyes?”

  “My eyes are tired. Cucumber helps.”

  “Does it soothe them?”

  “Yes.” It was ultraweird talking to Mom while she was like this. It was what I imagined Martians to be like. “I really need some sleep, Dylan. You can heat up the soup and have that for your dinner. It’s tomato. There’s some bread in the cupboard.” At least it was tom-tom soup.

  “Did the school phone?” I asked.

  “They might have, but I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why would the school be phoning?”

  “Erm, just . . .”

  “Have you been in trouble?”

  “No.”

  “You better not have been.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I’ve got enough to worry about.”

  “I wasn’t in trouble, Mom.”

  “Okay, so go and have your soup and let me sleep.”

  “Do you want me to bring you fresh cucumbers?” I asked. I felt guilty about lying.

  “No, it’s fine, Dylan, but if you have tea don’t throw the tea bags away.”

  “No problem, Mrs. Mint.”

  I saw her belly make a wee shudder, like a chuckle. Tom-tom soup is class. No other word for it.

  Class.

  Well, you could say fandabbydozie.

  Amir wasn’t allowed to have anything out of a can; his mom made everything from scratch and used all-fresh produce that you could only get in special supermarkets, which ponged like a super skunk that had pished itself. He didn’t know what he was missing, though. Nor did Mrs. Manzoor. Scooby-Doo would have been proud of me, the way I licked and licked the bowl. Crystal clean. If Mom had been there, I would have told her not to bother putting it in the dishwasher. Then the phone rang, making me jump out of my hickory dickories.

  “Hello, 426258 . . . Hello?”

  The person on the other end didn’t say hello back. Rude. Maybe they were deaf as a post.

  “Hello, 426258.”

  Still nothing. So I said nothing for a bit as well.

  “Dylan Mint speaking . . . Hello?”

  I waited.

  Zilcho.

  I put the phone down because I had made a jumbo blunder. I had only gone and told the person on the other end my name. My full name. If this person on the other end was a murderer or someone who wanted to ride teenage boys, they knew how to get hold of me now. What an eejit. I went back to the kitchen. Then it rang again. My heart went thump, thump, scud, scud. I didn’t want to wake Mom. And I certainly didn’t want to get murdered or ridden. I couldn’t work out which was worse.

  It kept ringing.

  Flippin’ heck.

  I slapped my head before I picked it up.

  “Hello.”

  No voice arrived.

  “Hello. Who is this please?”

  I could hear breathing. Not pervert breathing—normal breathing.

  “State your desire. I know you’re there. This number can now be traced, my friend. The CIA will be all over this. My dad has this phone tapped.”

  Still no reply.

  “CHILD FUCKER,” I screamed in my other voice—but I didn’t mean it to be so loud—before slamming the phone down.

  “Dylan!” Mom shouted. “Was that the phone?”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you mean, you think so? Was it the phone or not?”

  “Suppose so.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was it?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Who didn’t say?”

  “They didn’t say anything.”

  “Who?”

  “The person on the other end.”

  “What person on the other end?”

  “They only breathed a wee bit.”

  “Breathed?”

  “No words, just breathing.”

  “Did you not ask who was speaking?”

  “I did, but they didn’t reply.”

  I could hear Mom muttering to herself. Not like a mad mentalist; more like she was raging bull about something.

  “Go and get me some used tea bags, Dylan.”

  13

  Date

  I had to spring into action. No Coke or chocolate injection would do for this dude, no siree. October’s leaves were yellowy red and scattered all over the ground, making my front yard look like one massive pizza.

  I was lying in my scratcher staring at the ceiling and thinking that Michelle Malloy was one funny bunny. One funny minx of a bunny. The chat outside the toilet was good for several reasons:

  1. She cracked a joke.

  2. She didn’t hit me.

  3. She said the word “wank,” which is capital letter CRAZY, as she’s a girl—but not just any girl!

  It was time for this knight to spring into action and slay that dragon once and for all. Eminem sprang me into action. It was time to tackle the Cool Things to Do Before I Cack It list. And, as Fräulein Maria says, let’s go to the very beginning . . . or something like that.

  Number one: Have real sexual intercourse with a girl. (Preferably Michelle Malloy, and definitely not on a train or any other mode of transport. If possible, the intercoursing will be at her house.)

  I couldn’t drink booze or smoke the wacky baccy, so it was up to Eminem to give me some Dutch courage. I don’t know why they use this phrase, because I haven’t met any courageous Dutch people yet. I bopped around my room to the song “Business.” It was tough trying to sing along, though. Scottish people singing rap is a bit like black American bagpipe players. Totally weird as! I only rapped the odd word here or there. Mom hated the rap music I listened to; she said it polluted the brain cells and would turn me into an NED (a Non-Educated Delinquent) or a G-man. (Mom didn’t actually say G-man.) When it was blaring, I had to pretend to be a loopy Tourette’s guy so I could sing along to all the swear words.

  “Turn that bloody racket off, Dylan,” Mom shouted, banging on the wall between our rooms.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said, but I wasn’t that sorry.

  “Don’t be sorry, just turn it down—or, preferably, off. I’ve told you what that stuff can do.”

  “Okay.”

  I put in my earphones instead and blasted “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” into my lugs. I rapped for a wee bit, but at the end of the day Eminem wasn’t working for me; I think he was too close to my brain cells. In its place I searched for the perfect song that would brilliantly capture this momentous moment, something that could sum everything up in a three-minute tune. I flicked through billions of songs on my iPod until I found it: “This Is the One” by the Stone Roses. If you lob away the verses of the song, this was what I was feeling in my head. Also in my head was the dreaded fear, and when the dreaded fear enters the old napper, that’s when the tics and the howling start too. And sometimes the hitting. And the more I try to rid my head of the dreaded fear, the more it builds and builds and builds, like a giant snowman being made from a tiny snowball. But I sort of knew that t
hat’s what would happen. There’s not really much I can do about it when it gets to that stage. It was something I had to find “coping mechanisms” for, as Miss Flynn kept telling me. My coping mechanism was my pal.

  When the day came to slay Michelle Malloy, Amir said he would be a best bud and meet me before we got to school in order to help me calm the jets or cool my beans. I suspected this was in case Doughnut tried to jump him at the school gates and nothing to do with me.

  “WANK, AMIR . . . Shit, sorry, Amir. PRICK-FACE . . . Shit . . . Sorry . . . DICK-BAWZ.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “You’ll be grand-a-mundo.”

  “Hope so.”

  “Just walk tall, and Michelle Malloy will be glue in your hands, man.”

  “Putty.”

  “What?”

  “Putty in your . . . Oh, never mind, Amir.”

  “Have you gone over your sp-sp-spiel?”

  “Until I’m bloomin’ blue in the face. SLUT DOG . . . Don’t laugh, Amir, it’s not funny. I’m shitting it here. I need help.”

  “I’m not laughing at you, Dylan—there’s no way I’d do that.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just the thought of your first words to Michelle Malloy being ‘Sl-Sl-Slut dog.’” He had a point. I did a pained laugh.

  “I’m buggered, Amir. What am I going to do?”

  “You don’t need to talk to her today, you know.”

  “I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “If I don’t make my move now, someone else will get there before me and cut my blinkin’ grass.”

  “What, to have it o-o-off with her?”

  “No, not to have it off with her . . . Good Golly, Miss Molly, Amir, sometimes I think that’s all you think about.”

  “I think of other things too.”

  “This might be my last chance to ask her if she wants to go to the Halloween disco with me.”

  “You’d better not screw it up, then.”

  “Aw, cheers.”

  “No, I mean you need to make a big giant effort.”

  “But what if I’m ticcing all over the place?”

  Amir took this on and thought really hard about it. “She’ll think you’re a suicide bomber.” He giggled like a wee devil on my shoulder. I could have punched him full force on the arm. “I’m only j-joking, Dylan.”

  “Well, don’t!”

  “Okay, okay. Allah on a bike!”

  “What? Who’s Alan?”

  “Allah, not Alan. You’re allowed to say ‘Christ on a bike,’ so I’m allowed to say ‘Allah on a bike.’”

  “This is no time for any shit, Amir. This is a super-duper crisis.”

  “Sorry, Dylan, I was just trying to take your mind off things.”

  “But what if I do?”

  “Do what?”

  “Tic all over the joint?”

  “What about it? She knows what you are and what you have.”

  “I suppose she does.” I hadn’t thought about it like that.

  “And you also know what’s wrong with her, so what’s the big problem?”

  Already I felt better. Amir was stepping up to the plate. Which is a baseball analogy. It would be a-mayonnaise-ing if I could do a cricket one in Amir’s honor. Amir put his arm around my shoulder, which was very nice of him. He was the tops. I’d sure as hell miss the fellow.

  “Just be yourself, and her pants will fall down around her a-a-ankles,” Amir said.

  I sniggered. “You mean her knickers will drop?”

  “Knickers . . . pants . . . same thing.”

  “Pants are more like boys’ knickers.”

  “Well, whatever. You know what I mean.”

  The school bus rattled past. On the backseat with his face mashed up against the back window was Doughnut.

  “There’s that fool, Doughnut,” Amir said.

  It was the first time we’d seen Doughnut since the soccer match. He got suspended for trying to kung fu the shite out of the whole Shawhead team and the coach. Doughnut put his right index finger through a hole he’d made with his left hand, like a car piston, as if to suggest that Amir and I were having it off gay-boy style. He must have clocked Amir’s arm around my shoulder. Then he stopped doing the having-sex motion and turned both his middle fingers up toward us.

  I smiled and waved.

  Amir didn’t; he put up his left hand and slapped the back of it and started shouting “spazzie, spazzie, spazzie” in a mentalist tone so that it sounded like a real spazzie’s voice. It was the same voice the people who go to the proper school use for us. I was just shocked that Doughnut had decided to ride the spazzie bus. He was a tube.

  “I hate that stupid kiddie wanker,” Amir said.

  “You can’t say that, Amir.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because he could take you to court for slander.”

  “So? I don’t have any money.”

  “No, but your dad is minted.”

  “Well, Doughnut should keep his crap to himself.”

  “Don’t let him worry you.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Dylan. You’re not the Pa-Pa-Paki that everyone pure slags all the time.” I couldn’t disagree with the bold Amir. In a way I was grateful to Doughnut for taking my mind off Michelle Malloy. “This is why I get a lift every day, to avoid tits like Doughnut. I’m sick of people calling me “coon” or “black bastard.” I mean, I’m not black, and my dad still lives at home with us.”

  “Well, I’m Man United delighted you’re here, Amir. That’s what best buds do.”

  “Cheers.”

  “So that makes you, like, the best of the best buds.”

  Amir shrugged.

  I sang “This Is the One” by the Stone Roses in my head. I wanted to psych myself up before the big event. I’d seen all those soccer players psych themselves up by listening to music while getting off the team bus, and they had gladiator looks about them. Dad used to say they were overpaid twats who couldn’t string a sentence together between them if their life depended on it and that a good stint in the army was what most of them needed. He said he’d like to see them with no food, water, or sleep in the jungles of Sierra Leone for five days and see how fucking cool they looked then. That wasn’t part of a conversation me and Dad were having—that was just Dad being Dad. I preferred to watch soccer alone in my room.

  “What are you going to say to her, then?” Amir asked.

  “I dunno; ask her out straight, I suppose.”

  “Bad move.”

  “What do you mean, bad move?”

  “That wouldn’t be the approach I’d take.”

  “Tell me then, Valentino, what would you do?”

  Amir gave me one of the looks he gives when he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, which is loads of times. I know that Amir look like the back of my hand.

  “Who’s Va-Va-Valentino?”

  “Some ancient guy from Italy, I think, who did it with heaps and heaps of cracking-looking women.”

  “Over ten?”

  “I think so.”

  “Wow, he must have had some size of tinkle.”

  “I’ll say.” You could see that Amir enjoyed being in the same sentence as Valentino. “So what’s your advice?”

  “Well, if I were you, I’d try to make some small talk before diving right in.”

  “Small talk about what?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Talk about bands or shoes or films. Films are a good one to talk about.”

  “Could be,” I agreed.

  “What’s your fave film?”

  “Easy. The Sound of Music.”

  “Maybe don’t talk about films, then. Talk about Britain’s Got Talent and all the pure mad mental crap people who go on it.”

  “That’s a shite idea, Amir. No, I’m going with Plan A.”

  “Which is?”

  “Just be myself.”

  “Are you sure?”

>   “Yes.”

  “Fair doos.”

  From miles away I saw Michelle Malloy’s cool red Adidas sneakers and her dinky Converse bag. The sneakers looked all duffed up, and the bag was decorated with all this graffiti stuff. If my new bag and giant shoes had been in this state, Mom totally would have gone crackpot and probably scudded me around the dome and forced me to take a plastic bag to school as a punishment and screamed at me something like, “Do you think money grows on trees, Dylan? Well, do you?” And I’d have stood shaking my head and trying not to swear at her. It’s IMPOSSIBLE for dosh to grow on trees, as dosh is a nonliving thing and therefore CAN’T grow anywhere, never mind trees. Parents always ask these weird, stupid questions. “Do you want the back of my hand on your jaw, Dylan?” “No, Dad, I don’t.” Silly billy! Michelle Malloy’s mom must have been chillaxed out of her nut about these things.

  My heart was beating so fast it was as if it were trying to escape from my body, or like some tiny person inside me was using it for trampoline practice. Amir whooped, but I couldn’t decide if it was an Amir whoop or just a whoop of delight. In any case it made me want to shout something really bold boy bad at him. So bold boy bad that I couldn’t even say it out loud. Mr. Dog was trying to make me howl “SLAPPER” and “BUCKET CUNT” to Michelle Malloy. AAAARRRRHHHH! It was Torture with a capital T trying to keep it all in. My head twitched from side to side. I flicked at my ears, tucked them in. Rubbed Green till my palm became sauna hand.

  I wanted to Usain Bolt.

  I wanted to cry.

  I wanted to be normal.

  I wanted to go to the other school.

  I wanted to chat with girls without screaming “SLUT,” “COW,” or “WHORE” into their face before I’d even said “howdy.”

  I wanted Mom to start loving and snuggling me again.

  I wanted Dad to come home and be a family man once more.