Mixed.
Definitely mixed.
My feelings about going to school that day.
As well as the usual bad things about Mondays (the arse-kicking, the nipple-squeezing, the triple math in room G2 where the windows didn’t open and your brains boiled like offal in a pan, just the very fact of being at school and a full week of it ahead of you), I now had a whole new thing to dread: the public enjoyment of my sexual humiliation, not to mention the general appreciation of the fact that I was now known to be the kind of person who
talks
to
his
brain
tumor.
And maybe worst of all, the whole betrayal-of-Smurf thing, which combined so many bad things: me feeling like a jerk, me actually being a jerk, and then me being treated like a jerk by the few friends I had. Of course, all that was assuming that Uma would blab and, well, who could blame her if she did? I mean, you’d need to be pretty special, in the keeping-of-secrets line, not to spread a story as juicy as that. And it wasn’t as if she owed me anything. I, or rather Jack, had felt her up, and then felt her down again. After she had said to stop. Not good. Not good at all.
HOW WAS I TO KNOW? SOMEONE TOLD ME EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY.
Welcome back. Where’ve you been hiding?
NOWHERE SPECIAL. JUST KEEPING MY OWN COUNSEL FOR A WHILE. AND DON’T FORGET, WE NEED TO STOP OFF FOR OUR MUNITIONS.
I haven’t forgotten.
The good bit of the mixed feeling (the diamond in the ash? the walnut in the whip? the carrot in the sick?) had everything to do with Amanda, and I kept switching to her channel whenever the other material was getting me down.
The trouble was that the two things couldn’t be kept separate. Nice Amanda thoughts were contaminated by bad Uma thoughts, because when the Uma bomb exploded, shrapnel was going to land everywhere.
Despite having to stop off on the way, I got in early. The ginormous willy still hadn’t been cleaned off, a fact which I found comforting, even if it was fading, sinking slowly back into the wall. It had become a kind of totem for me, and as long as those elegant lines were there, however faintly, hope remained.
Because it was early there were no monstrous sentinels on the gate, and the only person I knew in the playground was Flaherty, who came scampering up.
“Hey, Mr. Lover-Man. Saw you, saw you.”
My heart sank.
“Saw me where?”
“In the street.”
“Big deal.”
“Not alone.”
“Some of us have got mates.”
“Not a boy friend.”
He’d seen me with . . . which one? Uma or Amanda? God, but it was hard being a stud. (I’m being ironic.)
“Did you then?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you snog her?”
“Snog who?”
“Fanny Smith.”
Mrs. Smith was a tiny ancient sewing teacher, called “Fanny” because it was widely accepted that she didn’t have one. (Flaherty was being sarcastic, which is much less cool than being ironic.)
“I can honestly say that I’ve never snogged Fanny Smith. Have you?”
“Yeah. She tastes of dog meat. She must eat it, and it gets stuck in her dentures. So you did then?”
“You’ve lost me, Flaherty. I wish I could do the same for you. Please go away.”
“Hey, Gonad, Hector Brunty snogged Uma Upshaw. Probably had her too, dirty monkey.”
Well, at least that answered the “who” question. For now.
I turned around. Gonad had just arrived, his bag over his shoulder, his small ears all a-flicker. His mouth fell open at the news.
“Snogged . . . I thought you were sick?”
Big groan. From me. There was no way I was going to be able to control this.
“Look, it’s a long story. Nothing happened. I just went down to get some chips, and she was there, working, and she had to go out, and we were walking in the same direction and . . .”
It wasn’t sounding convincing, even to me.
“I saw them, I saw them,” said Flaherty, doing one of his stupid little jigs. “They weren’t just walking in the same direction. They were on a love cruise. Heading for the cemetery. And we all know what happens there.”
“THE GRAVE’S A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE, BUT NONE I THINK DO THERE EMBRACE.”
“You what?” said Gonad, looking puzzled. Flaherty had stopped his jigging as well. I must have spoken the words. Bloody Jack T.
“Love poetry, that’s what that was,” said Flaherty, the irritating little jerk. “He’s got it bad if it’s come to love poetry. He’ll be gazing at flowers and sighing next. Aaahh, nature.”
“I’m off to registration,” I said, stumped for anything better. “I’ve got to give in my sick note for last week.”
Flaherty followed me in his flitting, scampering, dancing, mosquito way, and Gonad trudged along as well, looking vaguely annoyed. Snogging girls like Uma Upshaw wasn’t playing by the rules. It was cheating. It was unnatural.
It was entirely without historical precedent.
Shouty Mrs. Conlon, who used to be nice Miss Walsh, decided to mix and match by becoming nice Mrs. Conlon, for the morning at least. She asked if I was okay and how I felt, and that sort of thing, and she asked if Mr. Mordred had really slipped and fallen arse-first into the pool of puke (she used different words), and you could see her trying not to laugh when I told her that he had, and the kids who were there all laughed because nothing was stopping them, certainly not nice Mrs. Conlon.
But that was about as good as it got that day.