My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall) (12 page)

He drove like a maniac until we had to stop at a set of traffic lights, and then he rolled the window down and stuck his head outside, shouting, “You're a madman, Ray. You're totally insane.”

Given that we were about three streets away by then, I doubted if Uncle Ray could hear him, but I didn't say anything about that to my dad.

When the lights turned green again, he started slamming the steering wheel with the palms of his hands as he drove away.

“That bampot!” he said through gritted teeth, and then he turned to me. “Sorry, Jack,” he said. “That was just . . .” and then he made a kind of roaring sound. “I'm okay,” he said, “I'm okay. Calm down, Andy. Get a grip on it.” He wiped his nose with the back of a hand and then looked down to see all the blood there. “Buggeration,” he said, and he started doing that thing to the steering wheel again for a little while.

We were almost all the way home before he'd calmed down enough to stop being mental. He pulled over at the side of the road on the street before our own, and he took some deep breaths, saying, “I'm okay,” over and over again. He tipped his seat back a bit, stretching out on it, and he started rolling up one of his little cigarettes.

“I can't believe that idiot,” he said, while he spread the tobacco out on the little piece of paper. “He's out of his mind. He seems to think we're still about ten years old. Fighting! Two grown men!”

He licked the bit of cigarette paper to make it sticky, and rolled it up tight.

“Not a word about any of this to your mum,” he said. “She'd go through the roof.”

“What were you fighting about, anyway?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I told him that black eye was his own fault for refusing to stop singing. Something like that. He told me his singing brings joy to millions, lights up people's lives. So I asked him why he had the black eye if that was the case. Then he asked me if I wanted to ‘go at it.' Go at it! Heavenly Christ. He's like a big stupid kid. He's a bampot.”

“Does that mean we won't be seeing him again?” I asked, and my dad hunted around in his pockets for his lighter.

“It'll all blow over in a couple of days,” he said. He lit up his cigarette and started smoking it, rolling the window down slightly. “Ray's probably forgotten about it already.”

We sat there without saying anything else until the cigarette was almost gone, and my dad dropped it out the window. Then he fixed his seat back up and drove round the corner to our own place.

“Not a word,” he said when we pulled into the driveway. “Agreed?”

You know the rest . . .

Upstairs, I lie on my bed for a while, staring at the ceiling with a brain that feels burnt and tight after all the thinking it's done over the weekend. It occurs to me I should go and look to see if Cyrus McCormack has a profile online, and just as I have that thought I also remember I could check for Elsie's red rectangle while I'm there. I imagine myself getting up off the bed to do it, but in reality I just keep lying there. I hear my dad coming upstairs and going into the bathroom. Then I hear him unzipping his jacket and the tap being turned on hard. I listen to him splashing about noisily and just keep staring up at the ceiling.

Eventually, though, I manage to drag myself off the bed and over to the computer. It isn't really worth the effort. There's still no red rectangle from Elsie, and Cyrus doesn't seem to have a profile. If he does, I certainly can't find it. And on top of all that, I have another message from Drew Thornton to contend with.

“Hi, Jackdaw,” it says. “Hope you had a good weekend. What did you get up to? I went to the Warcraft fair at Forbidden Planet. See you tomorrow. Drew.”

I let my finger hover over the mouse for a while, with the cursor sitting on the button to delete Drew as a friend. I don't have the heart to go through with it, though. Instead, I open up a reply box and start typing.

“Hey, Drew,” I write. “The Warcraft fair sounds awesome. I just did the usual stuff. Got attacked by an old witch man while I was trying to work out whether Elsie Green had killed herself or not, and consigned myself to a life of sticking labels onto whiskey bottles for the next fifty-odd years. I scammed my cousin's iPad back from Gary Crawford and single-handedly saved the school trip by convincing my cousin to stand in for Chris Yates. Then my dad had a punch-up with his brother about a punch-up his brother had had with someone else. Just the usual boring stuff. Take it easy, Jack.”

I don't have any intention of sending it, but I sit staring at it for a while, trying to take it all in. I find myself starting to wish I could just pay attention in class and study properly for the exams. Life would be a lot simpler. I add in another bit after the bit about Elsie killing herself that says “over her love for you,” and then I backspace most of it away and write a proper reply.

“Hey, Drew,” it says. “Hope you enjoyed that Warcraft fair. My weekend was good. Mostly just vegging out at my cousin's. Beat him at chess. School tomorrow—bad news. Jackdaw.”

I check it over and click on send, and just as it disappears there's a knock on my door. I get up from my desk and it's my dad with Harry's suit.

“You left this in the car,” he says, and he comes into the room and closes the door behind him. “Everything good?” he asks, and I tell him it is, even though I'm not sure what he's talking about. He's changed his shirt, and his hair is back to normal now. There are no signs of blood left around his nose.

“Good,” he says, then puts a hand in his back pocket. “I forgot to give you this earlier,” he tells me, and holds out a piece of paper. I take it and try to work out what it is. It doesn't make any sense to me.

“Is it a form?” I ask him.

“An application form,” he says. “For the job. Fill it in and I'll come and get it before I go to bed. I'll hand it in at the office in the morning.”

I look the thing over. “It asks about qualifications and experience and stuff,” I say. “What will I put there?”

“Don't worry about it,” he tells me. “It's just so they know who you are. Regulations. Just put in whatever you think. Make sure it's neat.”

He disappears and leaves me to it, and I put the form on my desk and go back to sit on my bed. I look from the form to the suit, and then from the suit back to the form again. It doesn't make me feel good, and I don't see a particularly restful night ahead.

For the first time in my life, I get to school as early as I possibly can and stand near the gate, waiting for Cyrus McCormack to come in. I see Drew Thornton quite early on and hide behind a bin before he sees me. I watch carefully as he wanders down to the playground and disappears into the crowd, lost in a world of his own, probably still dreaming about his Warcraft fair. Then I decide to stay behind the bin for the time being. There are quite a few people I'd rather not have to talk to, and I tick them off as they come in: Gary Crawford, my cousin Harry, Chris Yates. All the dominoes from the middle of my sequence. But by the time the bell rings for registration, there's still no sign of Cyrus, the domino that will set the whole thing in motion, and there's no sign of the one it's all leading up to: Elsie Green. I give it a few more minutes, watching latecomers and strays hurrying through the gate with their bed hair still on, then decide Cyrus and Elsie must have arrived at school before I got there, and head for my class.

After registration, it's a double boredom of history, with Sergeant Monahan. The first bit zips by in quite a spritely fashion because it turns out we had homework, and I've forgotten to do it. Monahan powers up the proceedings by choosing randoms in no particular order and getting them to read out what they've written for the benefit of the whole class. Waiting on my name to be shouted gets my adrenaline pumping quite sufficiently, and the time seems to pass at a rate of knots. I'm only saved by Eric Beadle's name getting called before mine, and he very clearly hasn't applied himself over the weekend either. He makes an admirable attempt at putting something together while he talks, but Monahan sees through it and hauls Eric along the corridor to see Bailey, the headmaster, leaving me free to copy Elaine Cochrane's work while he's gone, and to mix it up with some of what I've already heard while I wait for my name to come out of the hat.

From here on in, though, the time drags like a week at my aunt Margaret's place. Monahan uploads terabytes of data about an ancient guy who was found in a muddy bog, perfectly preserved. It all sounds quite gruesome, from what I manage to catch. Something about seeds he'd eaten being found in his stomach, and something about a rope tied around his neck. Something about him being over a thousand years old. Not the sort of thing you want to be thinking about first thing in the morning. Monahan even shows us a picture at one point, but I don't look at it. I think there's probably some charity or organization I could contact to get him put on a list of some kind, for attempting to psychologically damage minors.

I spend a good part of the rest of the lesson thinking about that, and it helps the time to pass less painfully.

During break time, I run all over the school trying to track Cyrus down. I come across people who tell me they've seen him but can't remember when, and others who tell me exactly where he is, and then he turns out not to be there. When the break ends, I'm beginning to get frantic, and I move amongst the crowds in the corridors, hoping desperately to catch a glimpse of him.

I don't.

As the corridors start to empty I realize I'm so far away from Baldy Baine's class I'm going to have to sprint to make it in time, so I don't go to Baldy Baine's class at all. Instead I spend the next double wandering from classroom to classroom, peeking into each one through the little pane of glass in the door, trying to see if Cyrus is in there.

I had no idea that there were so many classrooms in the school before. There must be, like, a thousand or something. But I don't see Cyrus in any of them. Or Elsie Green. I see Drew Thornton, Gary Crawford, my cousin Harry, and Chris Yates. And quite a few randoms see me, and most of them give me the finger. But there are areas down the left-hand side and along the back wall in each class that I can't see, so I assume Cyrus and Elsie must be in one of those spots.

By the time the lunch bell rings, I've already got a new strategy up and running. I'm standing at the door to the dining hall, knowing Cyrus and Elsie aren't already in there, ready to grab them as soon as they pass. The thing is, though, that's when the hunger hits me. I skipped breakfast to get into school as early as I did, and all the miles I've covered between then and now have used up so many calories, I suddenly feel as if I'm about to pass out. I'd even be willing to share the bog man's stomach seeds with him, given half a chance, and all I can do is run into the dining hall on a pair of rubber legs and start eating things off my tray before I've even found a table. It's not until Sandy Hammil comes and sits down beside me, and I'm bolting the last few spoonfuls of my raspberry-flavored jelly water, that I start to feel human again.

I grab a few chips off Sandy's plate and look up to find the room has finally stopped spinning. I take a deep breath and sit back in my seat, exhausted. Then I close my eyes.

“Were you off this morning?” Sandy asks, and I shake my head. “But you weren't in Baine's class,” he says.

I wonder if he thinks this is news to me. Maybe he thinks I pay so little attention in school, I was sitting somewhere else entirely, thinking I was in Baine's class.

“I had some things to take care of,” I tell him, finally opening my eyes. “This Elsie Green thing is killing me.”

“You should have been in class,” Sandy says. “Everything we're getting now is going to be in the exams.”

I grab a few more chips off his plate and tell him the exams are dead to me.

“My dad's set up an interview for me first thing in the morning,” I say. “If I can't make this app work, I'll be sticking labels on bottles before the exams even start.”

He looks shocked. “I told you that would happen,” he says. “I kept telling you to start paying attention in class.”

But I tell him that paying attention isn't all it's cracked up to be. “You should've heard what Monahan was spouting this morning,” I say. “Paying attention to that kind of stuff could seriously damage your health.”

“What kind of stuff?” he asks.

“I don't know. I wasn't listening. But it had something to do with a dead guy who was all wrinkled up and buried in wet clay.”

“You're a maniac,” Sandy says. “Anyway, where were you at the weekend? I thought you said you were coming round.”

I have no memory of saying that, but I suppose I must have, so I apologize.

“I had to deal with the Elsie complications,” I say. “I spent all weekend convincing my cousin Harry to take the rap for that fight Chris Yates was in. And ever since then I've been trying to find Cyrus McCormack, to square the story with him.”

Sandy forks a piece of beef, considers it for a moment, then decides against it.

“Cyrus's sitting behind you,” he says, and I spin round in my seat.

“Where?” I ask.

“Over at the windows. Next to John Walker.”

I check it out, and Sandy's absolutely right. Cyrus is sitting there quite happily, shoveling food into his mouth, and banging away to John Walker about something that seems to be boring John rigid.

“I'll be back in five minutes,” I tell Sandy, getting up from my chair. But the truth is, I'm not going anywhere. Before I can even get properly to my feet, someone else sits down at our table, in the chair directly opposite mine. There's no “Hello,” or “Is anyone else sitting here?” or anything like that. Not even a friendly nod. All they say is, “I need to talk to you, Jack. Right now.”