On that Tuesday, when our teacher Miss Lee said that we were all to bring something old to school and talk about it, Shane stood up and said that he’d bring something totally amazing. The class laughed and said, ‘Oh, yeah?’
And he said, ‘Sure. Just you wait.’
So everyone laughed again. Well, everyone except me. That was because Shane was my best mate. He lived at the end of my road with his gran, Big Ella, who painted big splashy paintings in mad colours. She said Ireland needed sunshiny colours on account of all the grey rain.
Shane’s clothes were way too small for him because he was a bit of a roly-poly, addicted to jammy donuts, squishy marshmallows and crisps. And yes, he did munch them all together.
Whenever anyone sniggered at his wobbly tummy, he’d just say that his chest had slipped a bit – like Obelix in my dad’s old Asterix comics that Shane and I shared.
Nobody could make Shane angry. If his dark skin was pointed at by some idiot, he’d say he was ‘well done’ and not a ‘half-baked porridge-face’. Everything was a laugh. Except if anyone made fun of his gran. That’s when he’d roar like a bull and flatten them and then sit on them until they screamed. If they were smaller than him, that is.
Big Ella was the sort of person who made you feel glad to be with her. She was fun too, and I liked to visit her house because she was always either baking brilliant African lime cakes or painting big pictures, which she exhibited in the local art gallery.
Nobody knew what the pictures were about, not even if you looked sideways or stood on your head. So she didn’t sell many, except maybe to someone who wanted to hide a damp wall or scare away intruders.
Sometimes Big Ella and Shane went away for days when she’d get a notion to paint some foggy mountain or windy lake. So, when they disappeared after the taking-something-old-to-school day, people just said what a nutter she was to take a young lad away from school. Nobody was worried. Except me. You see, I knew. And I was really scared.