I lay on the hard hospital bed, my right leg in a cast to halfway up my thigh, my chest strapped because I’d broken three ribs, and stitches underneath a wad of bandage on my other leg where I’d gashed it.
“You won’t be playing soccer for a while, then,” observed Jack.
“I could beat you one-legged, no problem,” I said.
“In your dreams,” he retorted. “I got picked for captain even though my best friend didn’t help me practice.”
“Shows you didn’t need me, then,” I shrugged.
“It’s only your cookies I’m after,” he laughed, and grabbed one from a packet on my bedside table. “Still no chocolate ones, I see. Speaking of which, has that Penny been in to see you?”
I nodded. “She’s the one who brought the cookies.”
“How’s her friend?” Jack asked.
“She’s going to be all right.”
“Lucky for Wills, eh?”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said quickly, and for the hundredth time. “They told him all he had to do was keep an eye on the caretaker out back. He thought they were just going to scare her and see if she had any money. I know that’s bad enough, but he didn’t know they were going to use a knife. He didn’t know they were going to trash the place.”
“It’s been in the newspaper,” said Jack, “about thugs causing fifty thousand dollars’ worth of damage and threatening the librarian with a knife.”
“Did it mention Wills?”
Jack shook his head. “But there was another piece about brothers William and Christopher Jennings creeping around in a dangerous building, and Christopher falling through the floor.”
I groaned. Mom and Dad would have hated that. I hated that.
“Wills went to get help, even though he was terrified those thugs would get him for running away,” I said.
“So Wills is a hero now,” Jack smirked.
“Course he’s not,” I said, “but at least he tried to do something to make things right.”
“So he should, after what he did to you.”
“Wills is the one who got hurt the most,” I murmured.
“You’re the one who got hurt the most,” argued Jack.
“Only my body,” I said. “Not my head.”
I knew as I said it that it was more than that. We had all been hurt. Mom and Dad were tearing themselves and each other apart trying to work out where they had gone wrong, what they could have done better, why they hadn’t taken enough notice of the warning signs that Wills was running off the rails. They kept saying sorry to me that they hadn’t protected me more. I kept saying sorry to them that I hadn’t told them more about Wills’s horrible friends and the knife and the money under the bed, money that his horrible friends had given him for distracting onlookers while they used the knife to frighten store owners into opening their registers. Wills kept running around like a headless chicken saying sorry to everyone, but it didn’t stop him from having to spend hours down at the police station explaining exactly what he had been up to over the past few months.
“Wouldn’t make any difference to Wills’s head,” sniggered Jack. “He’s a nut anyway.”
“Only I’m allowed to say that,” I said sharply. “Anyway, he’s not a nut. He’s just—Wills, that’s all.”
“You can say what you like,” said Jack. “I’m glad he’s not my brother.”
I’d had enough then. I wanted Jack to go away. It was all a joke for him, a bit of entertainment. It wasn’t for me, and it wasn’t for Wills. Mom had told me that Wills was in serious trouble. He might not have been the one to threaten the librarian, but he was an accessory, whatever that was, and he admitted that he had been looking after the knife for his friends. He admitted, too, that he had been shoplifting with them.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Jack asked.
“Don’t know,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to go to sleep now.”
I did know. Mom had told me that the police had cautioned Wills, and that if he got into trouble again he could expect the consequences to be serious. He was going to have to change schools, because our school wouldn’t have him back after what he had done. They said they had done their best for him, but that perhaps it was time for him to make a fresh start somewhere else.
“Wills will hate that,” I said. “He hates going anywhere where he has to meet new people who don’t know about his Acts Dumb and Dumber.”
“Don’t call it that,” Mom said sharply. “You’re not to call it that. Anyway, he doesn’t have a lot of choices. And we’ve got you to consider as well.” She began to get tearful “You said yourself that you’re fed up with being relied on and want to do normal boy things. I should have understood more what you were going through. Now it’s time to put you first.”
That made me really upset. It was like Wills was being sent to a new school because of me, even if he would have had to go anyway. I should have been happy that at least for part of my days I would be living in a hurricane-free zone where no one could lump me together with him. But I couldn’t be happy because I was sad for Wills, even when Mom told me that the school was much smaller, and had teachers who could look after Wills better.
Wills came to see me every day. At first he was very subdued and I spent the whole time trying to cheer him up. He kept saying sorry, until I wanted to shove a sock in his mouth to stop him. Mom said that he had gone berserk when they told him about changing schools. He said he would rather run away than have to put up with a new load of donkeys. Then he got all clingy and said he would superglue himself to Mom. When he told me they had basketball, and had an enormous swimming pool, and a floodlit soccer field, I said he must be crazy if he didn’t want to go there.
One afternoon, Wills came bouncing in and leapt on my bed.
“Careful, you fool!” I yelped. “You nearly broke my other leg.”
“Sorry, bro,” he said. “Just thought you’d like to know that you’re talking to a genuine brainiac.”
“Oh, yeah, who says?”
“I’ve done the tests, haven’t I? You know, like the ones I had to do when I was younger, but these were a lot, lot harder. Those psychologist types made me do them to see if I had a screw loose, but I haven’t. Dad couldn’t believe it,” he guffawed. “You can kiss my feet if you like.”
“You can kiss my butt,” I flung back. “Doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid.”
“I could become the president,” he said airily.
“Pigs might fly,” I snorted.
“You’ll miss me when you can’t see me every day at school.”
“Like a hole in the head.”
Wills went around the ward, chatting loudly to the other patients and nurses and anyone else he could find. He picked up patients’ notes and pretended to be a surgeon about to perform an operation on each one of them in turn, until one of the nurses shooed him away. I pulled the pillow over my head and wanted to die of embarrassment, but I was glad that Wills was happier, even if it was at my expense.
He came back and bounced on the bed again. “I bet you’re jealous that I’m going to a better school than you?” he asked.
“Who says it’s better?”
“Stands to reason if it’s got a floodlit soccer field and a swimming pool and basketball,” he said.
“I don’t like swimming, and I’m not good at basketball, and the soccer field at our school is OK, plus I won’t be playing sports for a while, plus my friends are there,” I replied.
“They’re all donkeys at that school,” scoffed Wills. “I don’t know how you’ll put up with them once I’ve gone.”
“I’ll be all right, thanks for your concern.”
Wills went all thoughtful, before saying quietly, “I’m scared, bro. What if nobody likes me at the new school? What if they get fed up with me like they did at the old school?”
I didn’t really know how to answer that, because it was true that all the other kids got fed up with Wills, and you couldn’t blame them.
“What if I mess up again?” he carried on. “I mean, if I mess up again the police or those psychologist types might say I have to be sent away.”
“No one’s going to send you away, Wills,” I said, trying to reassure him.
“But they will if I do like I did before.”
“You won’t though, will you?” I said. “You won’t be seeing your horrible friends again, and Mom and Dad and your new teachers are going to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”
“But I can’t help getting into trouble.” His leg was jerking up and down wildly and he was biting his nails.
“Nobody expects you never to get into trouble again,” I grinned.
“Don’t they?” He sounded surprised.
“Course not,” I laughed. “That would take a miracle.”
“Miracles happen,” Wills retorted snottily. “You just wait and see.”