My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall) (8 page)

That gets his attention. He abandons the books and spins his swivel chair, then looks over at me.

“Let's see it,” he says, and he wheels the chair halfway over toward me.

I get up off the bed. “It's not something you can see,” I tell him, turning my back to him and studying some of the sad debris he's got on his shelves. “It's an opportunity.”

I hear the chair rolling back toward the desk again. “Forget it,” he says. “I'm not interested in your schemes, Dawson.”

“Call me The Jackdaw,” I say.

“How about I call you The Jackass?” he replies.

“Okay,” I say. “Dawson's fine. Whatever.”

“How about I call you a cab?” Harry continues. “I want you out of here, Jackass. I'll give you thirty seconds, then I'm shouting on mad Ray to give you a lift home. Opera all the way.”

“That's quite a black eye he's wearing,” I say, but Harry doesn't reply. So I tell him I'm sorry about the iPad. For about the five hundredth time. “It was a misunderstanding,” I tell him. “That's all.”

He turns round with his face red. “I gave you a loan of my iPad and you sold it. Where's the misunderstanding?”

“I didn't sell it,” I say. “How many times do I have to tell you that? I lost it in a bet. And the misunderstanding is, I thought you'd given me it to keep.”

“No you didn't,” Harry shouts. “You asked me if you could borrow it, and I told you not to break it. How can that possibly imply I was giving you it to keep?”

“That's not what happened,” I tell him. “You know it's not.”

He sighs very loudly and then slams his books about on the desk, making out as if this is him finally settling down to work. I walk toward the door and open it a bit.

“I'll see you later,” I say. “I had the perfect plan to get you to university, but if you'd rather have the iPad, it's your loss.”

I open the door a little more, but I can already hear him stirring behind me. The chair creaks as it turns, even though he's trying his best to keep it quiet. I open the door a bit farther and step out into the hall, then start closing the door behind me.

“Hang on,” Harry says quietly. “Come back a minute. Maybe I am interested.”

“Make your mind up,” I say.

“Let's hear it,” he says. “I'm listening. The iPad can wait. Come back in and tell me the scheme.”

I hover with the doorknob in my hand for a while, just to keep him in suspense, and then I pretend I'm quite exasperated by the whole business, and I come back into the room.

Harry doesn't know anything about the trouble Yatesy is in. He remembers the fight, particularly the part where Yatesy jumped up and down asking what was happening, but he doesn't know anything about the threat to the school trip or about Bailey's ultimatum. His year isn't affected by it, and Harry isn't the most in-touch person anyway, so I have to fill him in a bit.

“What's any of this got to do with me, though?” he says, quite early on. “This is starting to look like a scam to make me forget about the iPad.”

“Relax,” I say. “I'm giving you a gift. I thought all that mattered to you was getting to university?”

He shakes his head. “That's finished,” he says. “Ray says I can forget it. He says I'm already enough of an embarrassment as it is, and there's no way he's letting me study catering. He says he wants to see proof I'm a man. He's trying to force me to finish with school right now and start working on the taxis.”

“That's why this is perfect for you,” I say. “This is exactly what you're looking for. Yatesy's about to be expelled. If he doesn't step up and admit he was in that fight, somebody else will spill the beans to save the school trip. The only thing that can keep both sides happy is a stand-in. Now, if you were to come forward . . .”

“I'd get expelled.”

I shake my head. “Yatesy's on a final warning,” I say. “That's the only reason he'd get expelled. How many warnings have you ever had? Apart from being warned you might burst your brains from studying too much? You'd only get suspended.”

At first he doesn't respond. He gets up out of his chair and paces round the room a bit.

“Just imagine how proud your dad will be,” I say. “Not only have you been in a proper fight for the first time in your life, you've been suspended from school for it as well. Imagine him being able to tell his taxi pals about that. Imagine him being able to hammer on about it down at the bowling club. Suddenly you're a man. He'll be all over you. And then you can talk him into letting you do whatever you want at university.”

He keeps pacing.

“Besides—” I say, and he tells me to shut up.

“Let me think for a minute,” he says. “Stop talking.” So I stop talking and let him think. I pick up this sort of dinosaur thing he's got on his chest of drawers and start playing with it.

“I hate your schemes,” he says suddenly. “They're moronic. They always make me feel sick. But this one . . .”

I keep playing with the dinosaur and ignore the insult. I can tell something's starting to happen.

“What if somebody comes forward and tells Bailey I wasn't in the fight? What then?”

“Who would do that?” I say. “Who would risk getting their head kicked in when the school trip's already been saved? It doesn't make any sense.”

I put the dinosaur down and turn to look at him. There's a slight smile making his mouth twitch at the corners.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I'll do it.”

“You will?”

He nods. “I will. On one condition.”

I feel a bit stunned.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“I'll do it as soon as you get my iPad back,” he says. “The minute I've got that in my hand, I'll march into Bailey's office and tell him it was me who fought Cyrus McCormack.”

“No,” I say. “No. That's not what's happening here, Harry. I'm giving you this to make up for the iPad. You're the one who benefits from this.”

“So you say.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I'm on to you,” he says. “I know there's something in this for you. I can feel it. I'm your cousin—I know how your mind works.”

“What?”
I say. “That's not even a thing. Since when do
cousins
know how each other's minds work?”

“Since now,” he says. “Since whenever. I know how
your
mind works—that's all that matters. I know there's something in this for you. What do you care about Yatesy? You don't even go on school trips. You've got it set up so Yatesy has to give you something if you find a stand-in for him.”

“No I haven't.”

“Okay, then,” Harry says. “Fair enough. But I don't think I'll do it. It might not work anyway. Ray probably still won't let me go to university, and I might end up getting expelled.”

“No you won't,” I say. “I promise. You've got to try it, Harry.”

He grins at me. It's not a pretty picture. “Why do you care?” he asks. “What does it matter to you if I end up being a chef or a taxi driver? Don't act it.”

He's got me. I hunt around in the back bit of my brain for something to help me out, but it's completely empty. I give myself a little bump back there and try to knock an idea forward, but nothing happens.

“So what's he going to give you?” Harry asks.

I sigh. “He's going to get somebody to help me with some programming, for this idea I've got.”

“Bingo,” Harry says. “I knew it. I knew you weren't doing this to help me.”

“I came to you first, though,” I tell him. “There are plenty of other randoms I could've gone to. I'm offering it to you to help you out of a jam.”

“I appreciate that,” Harry says. “And I'm willing to do it. It might even work. But I'm only doing it if you agree to my condition. Take it or leave it.”

I know I'm going to have to take it, but I try one more line of attack. “It's a time-sensitive operation, though,” I explain. “Somebody could come forward and tell Bailey it was Yatesy who was fighting at any minute. Then we've both had it. You're back to square one with your dad, and I've got nobody to help me with my idea.”

“Exactly,” Harry says. “So you'd better get a move on.”

“But surely it's safer if you go to Bailey straightaway and I get the iPad back as soon as I can?”

Harry shakes his head. “This is Friday,” he says. “Who's going to go to Bailey over the weekend? That gives you two days to get the iPad back. Then I can go to Bailey first thing on Monday morning.”

“What if someone gets there before you?”

“I'll turn up at school before it opens. I'll be waiting outside Bailey's door when he arrives. It's your choice, Jack.”

I hold his gaze. I think of what it all means. If I get him his iPad, he'll get Yatesy off the hook. Once Yatesy's off the hook, he'll get Drew Thornton in the buff for me. Once Elsie Green's seen Drew in the buff, she'll program the Objective-C for me, and once she's programmed the Objective-C I'll be a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. It seems like a small price to pay, so I finally agree to his terms.

“It has to be
my
iPad, though,” he says. “There's stuff on there I need. Don't go thinking you can just steal somebody else's, or buy me one from somewhere.”

“All right,” I say. “It's a deal. I'll be round with it on Sunday night. At the latest.” He looks at me as if he believes me, and I find it quite hard to keep eyeballing him. The truth is, I'm not entirely sure I believe it myself.

Uncle Ray offers to drive me home, but I tell him I'm just going a few doors down to see another friend. I can't face the singing, not after the brain drain I've been through with Harry. I need some time on my own to clear my head, and to let the ideas start forming about how I'm going to get that iPad back.

“Tell your dad I said hello,” Uncle Ray says, and he punches me, quite hard, on the top of the arm. “Tell him he's a lucky bastard to have a boy like you.”

“I will,” I say, then start walking home. I check my phone to see if Elsie Green has accepted my friend request yet, but the red rectangle is still nowhere to be seen.

So here I am, lying on the couch with a major brain freeze on, when my dad sneaks into the room like an animal trapper and taps me on the shoulder. It's Sunday afternoon, and I've been working on a solution to the iPad fiasco all weekend, but I've drawn a complete blank. I've been using all my best methods to occupy the front bit of my brain, mind mapping, free writing, rearranging the furniture in my room. I even tried falling asleep, in the hope that I would wake up with a solution. Nothing.

“Where's your mum?” Dad whispers as I lie here staring up at him.

“At the shops,” I say.

“Good,” he whispers, and he signals me to follow him by moving his index finger, as if we're both in a midnight jungle, hunting down tigers using night vision.

“What is it?” I ask him.

He just does the finger thing again and goes over to the dining table at the far end of the room, the one we never use unless my grandpa is visiting.

I struggle into a sitting position and wait for the brain fog to pass, and then I follow him. By the time I sit down, he's taken out this strange mechanical contraption and he's feeding one of his cigarette papers into it, dropping tobacco into the top. He turns a handle and the paper sort of shoots out, all crumpled up. Then the tobacco falls onto the table.

“Crap,” he says, very quietly, and he reaches for a new cigarette paper.

“What are you whispering for?” I ask him, and he pokes around in his tin for another bit of tobacco.

“Am I whispering?” he asks.

I nod.

“Sorry,” he says, but he continues to whisper anyway. “I just don't want your mum to hear this.”

“She's at the shops,” I tell him. “How can she hear you from the shops?”

“I'm not taking any chances,” he says, and has another go at turning his little handle. This time a cigarette drops onto the table. It looks kind of fat, and the tobacco doesn't nearly fill it, but it's still recognizable as a cigarette.

“Ta-da!” Dad whispers. “How about that?”

He puts it in his mouth and lights it, and a huge flame shoots up toward the bit of hair that covers his brow.

“Jesus Christ!” he shouts, loud enough for Mum to hear wherever she is. He drops the cigarette on the table and starts slapping at his head, then picks up his tobacco tin and starts hitting the cigarette with it. Eventually the cigarette goes out, and his hair stops smoldering. He picks up the tin and tries to see his reflection in it. Then he puffs up his cheeks and sets about rolling one of his tight little cigarettes in the normal way and lights it up. His burnt hair smells kind of weird.

“Is that what you wanted to show me?” I ask him when things have calmed down.

He puts the contraption away in his pocket and shakes his head. “That's just something I'm trying out,” he says, whispering again now. “Takes a bit of getting used to.”

He taps some ash off the end of the handmade cigarette, then holds it up and looks at it in a satisfied way.

“All right,” he says. “Now. Back to business. By the way, don't mention any of this to your mum.” He looks about the room, as if I might have been lying to him and she's really hiding behind the door or underneath one of the armchairs.

“The fire?” I ask.

“Not the fire,” he says. “The thing I'm about to tell you. Anyway, it wasn't a fire. Just a minor mishap. Teething problems.” He rubs his hair and puts the pieces of the disaster cigarette in the ashtray, then picks at the mark its flame has left on the table. “Come to think of it,” he says, “don't tell her about the fire, either. She'll kill me if she sees that burn mark.”