My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall) (21 page)

After that, all hell breaks loose. Uncle Ray starts blasting the horn and I totally jump out of my seat, wondering what's going on. At first I think it's got something to do with Cyrus giving me the finger, but it hasn't. He's blasting the horn at Cyrus's dad and waving insanely at him, while Cyrus's dad gives a strained little smile and then tries to get on with his life. Uncle Ray's not having any of that, though. He rolls his window down and sticks the top half of his body outside. “What's up, man?” he shouts. “How are things?”

The lights change to green, and cars behind us start beeping their horns. I haul Uncle Ray back inside, and he's got a big lunatic grin on his face.

“That's the guy I was telling you about,” he says, shouting over the opera that's still blasting out of the stereo. “The mad bastard I told you about the other day.”

“The one with the tinfoil hat?” I ask.

Uncle Ray nods. “Not that one,” he says. “The other one. The one I told you about the other day.”

He eases away from the lights and rolls his window back up again. Over the last couple of days, he's told me about so many mad passengers he's had in his taxi, I don't really know which one he's talking about.

“The one who collects old shoes and turns them into plant pots?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “The one that went fishing in the thunderstorm?”

“Not that one,” he says impatiently. “The other one. The one I told you about the other day. Remember? The totally bampot one?”

And then he tells me which one he's talking about, and when he does . . . the whole world changes.

“Stop the car!” I shout. “Stop the car, Uncle Ray!”

He looks at me as if I've gone mental, and asks me what I'm talking about.

“Just pull over,” I say. “We're getting too far away. Stop here. Anywhere.”

There are some advantages to being “the man.” Uncle Ray keeps looking at me kind of funny, but he slows the car down and pulls over. Then he turns to me as if he wants an explanation. He doesn't seem annoyed or anything, just curious, but I've already got my door open and I'm struggling to unfasten my seat belt.

“Come on,” I tell him. “I'll explain the plan on the way.”

I hit the ground running, and it's a good few seconds before I hear Uncle Ray's door slamming shut behind me. I have to slow down for a minute to let him catch up, but then he's huffing and puffing beside me and I pick up the pace again.

“Remember my scheme?” I say. “The one where I'm trying to get my friend to the school dance?”

Uncle Ray nods, but he's already too out of breath to speak.

“That's him we just saw,” I explain. “The crazy man from your taxi is his dad.”

I lay the whole plan out for him while we're running, and he seems over the moon. Once he's got it, I get back up to full speed, and he starts to fall behind again.

“This is the life, Jackdaw,” he shouts, thumping along the pavement and breathing so hard, I can still hear him up where I am. “This is the life. What a day.
What
a day!”

But when I get back to where Cyrus and his dad were earlier, I can't see them anywhere. I look up and down the street, then from shop window to shop window, looking inside to see if they're there. They've totally vanished. I stand and watch Uncle Ray struggling up the pavement, his face turning purple and his hair all wet and sweaty. Then I look across the road, and there they are. I point toward them for Uncle Ray's benefit and start weaving in and out of the traffic, being careful not to lose sight of them again.

“Cyrus!” I shout. “Cyrus! Hang on a minute! Wait there!”

They're just approaching a parked car, and Cyrus puts his hand on the door, getting ready to climb inside. I give him the extra-friendly wave again, in case he thinks this is anything to do with him giving me the finger, and I wish I could go back in time and not make up that thing about everybody hating him, in the dining hall. He stands looking at me, and I do the friendly wave again. He still doesn't wave back, but he doesn't give me the finger, either, and I take that as a good sign. Then I catch up with him. His dad is standing on the same side of the car as he is, just straightening up after throwing something onto the back seat, and I hunch over and grip the top of my knees for a few seconds, trying to get my breath back.

“What is it?” Cyrus says in a nonplussed way. I get the feeling that he'd say something a bit stronger if his dad wasn't there. “We're in a rush. What do you want, Jack?”

I pull myself into an upright position and put one hand on Cyrus's shoulder to try and steady myself. His dad's looking at me curiously, and Cyrus tries to brush my hand away.

“Call me The Jackdaw,” I say, breathing heavily. “Remember? Call me The Jackdaw.”

“What do you want?” he says again, having another go at removing my hand, but I'm holding on tight.

“I've cracked it,” I tell him. “Everything's going to be all right. You're going to the dance, Cyrus. I can get you there after all.”

He frowns while he's looking at me, then turns to look at his dad, as if he might know something about this.

“I'm afraid not,” his dad says. “Cyrus has been grounded for two months. He won't be attending the dance.”

I give Cyrus a big smile and look across the road. Uncle Ray has just started crossing toward us, holding his hand up to stop the traffic as he comes. He looks like the craziest thing I've ever seen, with his big purple face and his black eye, the sweat dripping out of his hair and that big swollen gash on his chin. But he's grinning like he's never had so much fun in his life, and then he bursts into a few lines from one of his opera things, throwing his hands out in front of him like a maniac.

“That's my uncle Ray,” I say to Cyrus's dad. “He wants to talk to you about Cyrus's situation.”

Cyrus's dad suddenly looks as if the roof has caved in, and I can tell he's realized his life has just taken a major turn for the worse. I pull Cyrus off to one side and leave Uncle Ray to do his thing.

“See my uncle Ray's black eye?” I say quietly to Cyrus while the adults are conducting their reunion over by the car.

“Hard to miss,” Cyrus whispers. It's like Uncle Ray is a magnet for Cyrus's eyes, and he can't look away from him.

I pause to savor the moment, and then I hit him with it.

“Your dad did that,” I say. “Your dad gave him that beauty.”

And the spell is broken. All at once, Cyrus only has eyes for me, and he seems pretty angry.

“No he didn't,” he says. “My dad's a pacifist.”

I shake my head. “Your mum's a pacifist,” I tell him. “Your dad's a brawler. And that's why you're going to the dance.”

The anger becomes confusion, and Cyrus looks over at his dad and Uncle Ray again with this expression on his face like I think I must get in French sometimes, when Mrs. Peterson is asking me a question. His dad and Uncle Ray are chatting away over there, Uncle Ray big and jolly, Cyrus's dad all punctured and defeated. Cyrus is finding it impossible to comprehend what's going on.

“Your dad was in my uncle Ray's taxi the other night,” I tell him. “They got into an argument about Uncle Ray's opera singing, and your dad asked him outside for a fight. Your dad gave him that black eye and the big cut on his chin. Now my uncle Ray is telling your dad if he doesn't make sure you get to the dance, he'll come round and tell your mum all about the fight. How would she react to that?”

The light starts to dawn in Cyrus's eyes. He starts nodding, slowly at first, then faster. “She'd go through the roof,” he says. “She'd never forgive him.”

“And we don't even need Uncle Ray now,” I say. “You can tell your mum yourself if you need to. Uncle Ray just lends the whole thing a bit of authority.”

He grabs my hand and starts shaking it, then does this strange little skipping thing. “I'm going to the dance,” he says. “I'm going. With Amy. I can't believe it. You're a legend, Jackdaw.”

I struggle to get my hand back.

“So we're on?” I ask him. “You'll back up Harry's story? He can go to Bailey now?”

“Definitely,” Cyrus says. “I'll even go with him. Whatever you want, I'll do it.”

I step a bit closer to him and lower my voice. “Just don't tell anyone about that ladder idea from earlier,” I say. “Keep that to yourself, Cyrus. I've got a reputation to maintain.”

“Understood,” he says, and I tell him not to say anything about the whole Bailey thing in front of Uncle Ray either.

“He's Harry's dad,” I explain. “It's him we're scamming to get Harry into university.”

He tells me his lips are sealed, and then he takes his phone out and makes a show of erasing the recording he made of me in the playground, the first time I spoke to him.

“No need for that anymore,” he says, and I thank him. Then we stand together watching our dupes for a while. They're doing some kind of weird bear-hug thing, mostly at Uncle Ray's insistence by the look of it. Cyrus's dad squirms and writhes, trying to get free of the thing, and when it's finally over Uncle Ray gives him a big kiss on the cheek and slaps his bum.

“You're all set, son,” he shouts to Cyrus, and Cyrus gives me the thumbs-up and runs off.

I watch Uncle Ray messing up Cyrus's hair and generally abusing his human rights while Cyrus looks half terrified and half elated. Then I decide it's time to finally bite the bullet and see if Sandy has replied to my text yet.

He has.

It takes me forever to work up the courage to open it. I stare at the little symbol for what seems like eons, hardly even remembering to breathe. When I finally pop it open, though, he's only sent me one word. It takes me a good few seconds to realize it's the only word that matters.

“No.”

I feel my whole body relaxing as the oxygen rushes back in, and then I hear Uncle Ray speaking to me. I've no idea how he came to be standing beside me without me noticing.

“That's the most fun I've had in years,” he says. “What a privilege to be part of one of your schemes, Jack. You're something else altogether. You're a one-off.”

He puts an arm round my shoulder, and we watch as Cyrus and his dad drive away. Cyrus is giving us a big friendly wave, but his dad looks inconsolable.

“Poor guy,” I say, and give Cyrus the finger, just for fun.

“So how about that celebration?” Uncle Ray asks. “Next stop Billy's public house?”

And the funny thing is, I don't even say no.

So all my dominoes fell, one by one, until Operation Naked Drew was back on again after all. Cyrus kept his promise to back up Harry's claims, Harry took his story to Bailey, and Bailey bought it, wholesale, leaving Yatesy free and clear and with no other option but to keep his promise to me. Not that he appeared to have any intention of trying to back out of it. The whole thing seemed to be right up his street. So we set it up for the weekend. Yatesy took care of arranging it with Drew, and I settled the details with Elsie, online, so's I wouldn't have to put up with any of her madness. Then it was just a case of waiting it out.

I spent the next few days wandering around the school feeling the love. Cyrus couldn't get enough of me, Harry gave me the iPad back and told me I could do whatever I wanted with it, and even Drew came up to me at one point and thanked me for the idea.

“What idea?” I asked him.

“The idea about doing a painting,” he said. “For my girlfriend.”

I almost had a stroke at first, wondering how he could possibly know it was my idea, and thinking it had all gone wrong somehow. But it turned out he'd been getting apprehensive about going through with the commission, so Yatesy had told him the idea was mine.

“No one's going to pass on a scheme when they know you're behind it, Jackdaw,” Yatesy said. “When I told him it was one of yours, all his doubts evaporated.”

Such is life.

“We're doing it on Saturday,” Drew told me. “Wish me luck, Jackdaw.”

“You won't need it,” I said. “Just make sure you look your best. Spruce yourself up like there's no tomorrow, and make sure your hair's on top form.”

I even managed to make things up with Sandy Hammil, over and above everything else. We met up reluctantly to go over our stories in case our names made their way to Bailey in connection with the fight, and before we knew it we were laughing away again. I think Uncle Ray was right. I think the fight has made us get on even better together. A bit like my mum and dad after some Special Occasion Madness. Without the kissing.

Speaking of which: It's over! After one more night of insanity at Uncle Ray's, the text message arrives while I'm sitting in geography: “You can come home now, Jack. Mum x.”

The Special Occasion Madness has run its course! That afternoon, I go back straight after school, and I feel quite nervous when I'm unlocking the front door. The bonkers dream is still haunting me, I think, and I'm kind of expecting to find the place all desolate and empty inside, all broken up. Everything looks normal when I come in, though. There's a crack in the bit of wood above the living room door that wasn't there before, but that's about it. All the walls are still standing, and the roof is still where the roof's supposed to be. Only my mum is in the house, though. She comes out of the living room while I'm hanging my coat up, and for a minute she just stands there looking at me. She seems kind of unhappy, and quite quiet.

“Have you lost any weight?” she asks me eventually. “You look like you might've lost a little bit.”

“I don't really know,” I tell her, and she just looks at me some more for a while.

“Uncle Ray brought your suitcase back this afternoon,” she says. “We'll have dinner in about an hour.”