Mum was always that obvious. ‘Subtle as a sledgehammer,’ Nanna Brenn used to say back when she was alive. Like I didn’t see her whisper to Dad in the pool right before Dad asked me to go with him to pick up the pizzas, as if he’d just thought of it.
I knew what was going on. She was pretending to send us to Great White Pizza, which didn’t deliver, because their capriccioso was better and Toby liked the jaws on the front door. The real reason was that Laura Fieldman worked there most Friday nights and I had a crush on her. I guess Mum thought she was doing me a favour.
Laura Fieldman had noticed me all right. Just enough to work out I was into her. Me, Jarrah Brennan, nerd. Her, top of the year ten pack of long-legged, long-haired, long-on-confidence girls who existed in another universe. Just two weeks back I’d walked past them in the quad and a snorting laugh had rung out from one of Laura Fieldman’s friends. My face burned. The kind of burn that comes back in the dark and makes you roll over and drag the covers over your head and wish you were dead.
My hunch was confirmed when we pulled into the car park and Dad turned off the engine and tossed his wallet in my lap. ‘Can you boys handle it?’
He’d watched me once before trying to stammer out a pizza order to Laura. I guess he didn’t want to get in the way. Or it was too embarrassing, watching me make an idiot of myself. I was pretty nervous, so I started mucking around with Toby. I teased him for a moment, standing outside his door pretending I wasn’t going to open it. When he started to screw up his face I threw it open. ‘Tricked you!’
I’d timed it right. He laughed. I wrestled him out of the seatbelt, picked him up, dumped him on the ground. ‘Ready to face the shark?’
Toby looked over at the yawning jaws wrapping the door in a tunnel of teeth, and shivered. He reached up with his arms. ‘Jawwa.’
I picked him up and headed in that direction, taking little steps to build the anticipation. He clung on tighter and tighter as we approached, half afraid, half thrilled.
‘Feeling brave?’ I whispered in his ear.
I took a tighter hold of him and ran, roaring, right into the shark’s jaws. Pushed the door open and staggered inside, Toby squealing in my arms, the bell on the door clanking above our heads. Straightened up, laughing.
‘Look, here’s Little Mummy.’
I hadn’t seen them from outside. Five of them, watching us from the window booth. I froze.
‘How’s your baby going?’
There’s always one who leads it. His name was Dave, I was pretty sure. A year above me at school. I’d felt his eyes on me in the playground and known he was trouble. I’d been avoiding him, and now I was cornered.
‘Mumma?’ Toby asked, confused.
The five of them laughed. Toby laughed too, joining in, and I had to get him away from them. Laura Fieldman was standing behind the counter, her face blank. Hard to know which was the worse option.
‘Go on, Little Mummy, go get your pizza.’
Toby squirmed to be put down, arching his back and kicking out. I let him slide to the floor, but grabbed his hand, praying he wouldn’t have a tantrum. I tugged him towards the counter, sensing their eyes on my back and the mutter as they tried out some new insults among themselves.
‘Can I help you?’ Surely Laura had heard them, but she showed no sign.
My voice was an insect squeak. ‘Ah, hi. Takeaway? Brennan?’
She checked the docket on top of two boxes. ‘Large Hawaiian? Large capriccioso?’
Toby looked up at her. ‘Haw-wan?’
Her face lit up in a smile and he grinned back, all toothy charm without even trying. It was an opening, kind of.
‘That’s us.’ I scooped Toby up so she had to look at my actual face as well as his. Toby kept smiling at her as I prised out Dad’s credit card with one hand, trying to think of something to say. ‘Rotten maths test, eh?’
A snort from the booth near the door. ‘Rotten maths test, eh?’ in a high-pitched voice.
Laura Fieldman dragged her gaze from Toby to me. There was a pause long enough for me to absorb the highlights in her dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, and the precise brown of her eyes, before she said, ‘Wasn’t too bad.’
She looked back at Toby and I typed in Dad’s PIN. A hundred years later the machine ground out a receipt, which she spiked, and a second one that she slapped on top of the pizza boxes. I hesitated, too gutless to face the booth boys.
‘Say goodbye, Toby,’ I instructed.
‘Ba ba!’ Toby grinned again and Laura’s smile widened.
The door opened, the bell clanged, and another family stamped inside, spilling kids in every direction and giving me cover. I shoved Toby to my hip, snatched up the boxes with my free hand, turned. Did a bit of ducking and weaving to keep the family in between me and the boys. Not that it helped.
‘Bye bye, Toby. Bye bye, Little Mummy.’
‘Ba ba,’ Toby said. Then: ‘Dadda.’
A moment away from escape, we were stopped by Dad coming in the door. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I want some garlic bread.’
‘Too late. Pizza’ll be cold. And Toby’s had enough.’ I shoved Toby into Dad’s arms and pushed past him. I heard Dave call out, ‘Bye, boys!’ behind me, in the kind of smarmy voice guys like him used when your parents could hear.
I slouched in the front seat while Dad buckled Toby in the back. Across the car park, I could see them laughing at me through the window. Go, go, go.
Dad got in beside me, started the engine, pulled out slowly. ‘Friends from school?’
Did he know? ‘Not really,’ I said.
‘What about the girl? Isn’t she in your class?’
‘One or two subjects.’
‘She looks nice.’
‘Mm,’ I said, in a conversation-closing way. Sure she looked nice, Dad, if you weren’t some speck on the hide of year ten. If you hadn’t just been called Little Mummy in front of her.
I switched on the radio and cranked up the volume. Nineteen-eighties rock filled the car: Dad’s favourite station. I didn’t bother asking for mine. Just wound the window all the way down and pushed my face into the wind to watch the streets whizzing past as we headed home. It was getting dark. The pizza burned my legs through the box.
I’d been called a fag plenty of times. Anyone who didn’t fit in was a fag. I was used to it. But this was different. They’d seen me with Toby and somehow they knew.