Spud - Learning to Fly (31 page)

‘So what’s the plan?’ whispered Fatty after Rambo had stamped out his cigarette butt and thrown it outside into a flowerbed.

Once again Rambo ambled off without an explanation and the rest of us followed.

‘This is more like it,’ hissed Boggo. ‘A good old Crazy Eight mission.’

‘Jeez, it’s freezing!’ gasped Fatty.

‘Yip – a good old Crazy Eight mission,’ repeated Boggo and trotted ahead to walk with Rambo.

We could hear the giggling before we reached the maintenance shed at the building site. The girls must also have heard us approaching because they quickly fell silent and there was a flash of movement at the window. Then the door of the shed creaked open and a girl whispered, ‘Rambo?’

‘Yebo,’ Rambo said and led us through the door into the dark shed. It was impossible to know who was who in the darkness but it felt like there were at least three girls in the shed already.

‘What took you so long?’ whispered a girl in a husky voice.

‘We had to put on our make-up,’ retorted Rambo and the girls giggled.

‘Do you want some pipe?’ asked the husky voice again.

‘Oh, baby,’ said Rambo taking the pipe.

Rambo’s face was illuminated as he sucked on the pipe. The girl with the husky voice was revealed to have spiky hair and a freckled face. I didn’t see the others. Rambo sucked hard on the pipe and the girl kept lighting up the one end. After a short cough Rambo passed the pipe on to Boggo and the girl lit it again.

‘Oh, my God,’ said Boggo after exhaling. ‘What is that?’

‘It’s all good,’ said the girl with the husky voice.

Then it was my turn – the smoke smashed into the back of my throat but I kept inhaling. Heat rose to my face and I instantly felt like I was floating above the ground.

Once everybody had taken a turn, we sat on the hard ground. One of the girls was sitting to my left and our knees were joined together. I had no idea what she looked like or even what her name was but it felt tremendously exciting, sexy and rebellious.

Unfortunately, just as we were settling in for a long night in the shed with three mysterious girls and a pipe, there was a loud clank from outside.

This spooked everyone and the girls quickly hid the pipe and snuck out the shed door.

‘Next Wednesday, same time,’ whispered one of the girls and I felt a light touch on my arm.

Then we sprinted off in the direction of the hockey field but nobody followed us. Cold and deserted.

‘Oh, my God,’ giggled Boggo. ‘How close were we to an orgy?’

Rambo hooted with laughter. ‘Wait till you see those three in daylight – it ain’t pretty.’

‘Typical,’ sulked Boggo. ‘The hot chicks are prudes and all the growlers are goers!’

We made it back safely and I collapsed into bed with a spinning head and a tingle on my arm where the girl had touched me gently in the darkness.

Woke up with a blinding headache and rather sketchy memories of last night. Boggo said we had smoked crack cocaine but Rambo, who refuses to tell us what was in the pipe, laughed and said Boggo had a lot to learn about life.

‘Still, it’s our first Crazy Eight mission of the year,’ said Fatty happily and crashed a rolled up newspaper on another fly’s head.

11:30 ‘Nay! Tis a dark day,’ announced The Guv as he stalked around our English class. ‘The King has been dethroned.’ His eyes fell upon mine. ‘Tis the final nail in the masculine coffin.’ He then shook his head gravely and slowly moved back to his desk.

‘You, woman!’ shouted The Guv brandishing his stick at a terrified Nora Turner in the front row. ‘Who in the hell do you think you are?’ Nora’s mouth was open but no words were coming out. The Guv then let out a great depressed sigh.

‘Herewith your creative essays,’ he said, thumping down a pile of pages. ‘History has been made by the unlikely Nora Turner. Let the truth ring from the chimney tops: Milton has been beaten at last.’ The Guv stared at me grimly before muttering, ‘By quite some distance, I might add.’

The girls applauded the fumbling figure at the front desk, who knocked over her pencil case when trying to acknowledge the crowd behind her. Rambo, Fatty and Boggo were beside themselves with joy and erupted into a chorus of war cries.

After class Mr Owen stopped me in the corridor. ‘Milton,’ she said, ‘you and the simpleton, see me after dinner in my office.’ She then waddled out looking smug.

‘Sex slave!’ hissed Boggo before sniggering and making a lewd gesture.

I spent the afternoon rereading my essay. The Guv’s right – it’s uninspired. I put it down to sharing a confined white cell with Rain Man. It isn’t easy being creative when you have a deluded cretin talking to himself continuously in your ear.

Fatty stopped me in the corridor after dinner. ‘Hey, Spud,’ he said, ‘sorry about losing your essay record.’ I told Fatty I didn’t really care and that my essay was a disaster anyway. He nodded sympathetically and whispered, ‘Listen, I was wondering if we could have a chat about er … stuff?’

‘What stuff?’ I asked.

‘Girl stuff,’ he said. ‘Well, actually … um … Penny stuff.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Thanks, Spuddy, you’re a good man.’ Fatty looked like an old man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Vern refused to follow me to Mr Owen’s office. The cretin seemed to think that I was trying to lure him into some sort of sinister trap and ran away from me when I tried to catch him. Our detention punishment is to straighten the high jump mats during sports day next Wednesday. Hardly the most brutal punishment I’ve ever faced – in fact I’m quite looking forward to it.

On the way back to the house after rehearsal, I asked Rambo how he had organised the smoking shed escapade. He shrugged and said, ‘I didn’t.’

In the old days he would always brag about his plans and successes. Nowadays he pretends to know nothing when he clearly knows everything. He even walks mysteriously, like he could be holding back world changing information.

Had yet another dream about the smoking shed. Suddenly had a thought: what if Wrexham, like Rambo, isn’t revealing the full truth? Perhaps all these well-mannered ladies in white are also carrying dark secrets?

19:00 The anticipated move into the new theatre didn’t materialise. The builders wouldn’t let us in because there were live wires on the stage and somebody was certain to be electrocuted.

‘I have understudies!’ roared the director and threw his arms in the air like the universe was against him.

‘Very poor form,’ agreed The Guv as we made the long walk back up the hill towards the school hall. ‘Dastardly place this, Milton!’ He looked aggrieved. ‘I’ve discovered that I’m not very fond of women.’

‘I know what you mean, sir,’ I told him.

The Guv glanced at me out the corner of his eye and said, ‘If only I’d discovered that before buying three hideously expensive wedding rings.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said and we walked together the rest of the way in a contented silence.

19:00 The new theatre is dark and foreboding, but full of creative energy and reeking of varnish and wood shavings. There still aren’t any chairs in the auditorium but everything else is perfect, ready and waiting. Boggo was pleased to report a number of dark nooks and crannies backstage that he said were perfect places to get down and dirty with VPH. The great crimson velvet curtain that drapes the stage can swing in just about any direction by remote control from the lighting box. Up on the roof, row upon row of specialist lights wait impatiently like cannons on a navy ship to blast their beams in our faces. The stage is made of light coloured wood and feels slippery underfoot. Viking says there will eventually be 300 seats in the auditorium, although it seems smaller than that. Perhaps they’re just very thin seats?

‘This is your one week call, ladies and gentlemen,’ boomed Viking, once we were all seated on the front lip of the stage. ‘We’ve been landed in this terrible predicament by sheer inefficiency and incompetence, but there’s nothing to be done besides clench one’s anus and plunder on!’

Viking prowled around the auditorium searching for his words with his hands clenched at his sides like he was holding two large grapefruit. ‘Now I’ve been around long enough to know that the first run through in the theatre is always an abomination,’ he said, ‘but this is the initiation for this theatre and we shouldn’t forget that tonight we aren’t just actors – we’re pioneers!’ He glared balefully at the cast. ‘Right!’ he shouted, snapping up his clipboard. ‘From the top with gusto! And if we overrun, I’ll make you little bastards do it all again!’ Viking then settled himself down in a large armchair in the middle of the empty auditorium. Beside him on a stool were his cigarettes, a glass of wine, a notepad, and four pens.

‘Houselights!’ he shouted, and then the angry Viking slowly disappeared into the darkness.

‘And … curtain up!’

22:30 The Dream’s running time is down to 2h 35mins. Viking said it was still too slow and blamed it all on Smith’s insufferable egomania. ‘I could have driven a bus through those pauses!’ he shouted as Smith shrank away into the wings and disappeared behind the curtains.

‘Tomorrow I want it down to 120 minutes maximum!’ hollered Viking to nobody in particular. ‘Or we’ll do it again and again and again!’

0:14 Vern was making weird breathing noises in his sleep. I thought he might be on the verge of dying so I stayed awake just to keep an eye on him. Suddenly Vern gasped desperately and his whole body shuddered like he was having a fit. I sat up in bed ready to sound the alarm. But then I heard Rain Man letting out a long and satisfied sigh, followed by a firm sniff. That’s when the grim realisation dawned that I’d just spent the last ten minutes listening to Rain Man yank his chain! I plunged my head under the blankets and waited for the sheer horror to pass. It did eventually, but by then I was wide awake and my brain was racing along like a roller coaster on different intersecting tracks that looped high into the night sky and threatened to launch me into space before plunging me back down to earth again.

6:00 ‘Here’s your tea, Spud!’ said Brenda in an un-necessarily loud voice. I hoped that once she’d plonked down Vern’s hot water on the bedside table, she might have disappeared. Alas, she sat on my bed and continued jabbering on about all the homework she’d completed yesterday.

‘Um … Does Fatty like Penny?’ she then said out of the blue.

‘Don’t know,’ I mumbled, still caught up in my dream.

‘Oh,’ she replied. ‘By the way, there’s a rumour going around that Boggo’s together with Victoria Perez Hamilton.’

‘That’s because Boggo started the rumour,’ I replied, and in that instant I felt myself come back from the edge of dreamland into cold hard reality in white.

6:05 ‘My oath to God I didn’t write it!’ protested Boggo, waving a white envelope in the air.

Fatty saw me emerging from my room and shouted, ‘Hey, Spud. Boggo got fan mail!’

Fatty snatched the envelope from Boggo and handed it to me. ‘Check it out. It was slid under the common room door sometime in the night.’

Inside the envelope was a card with Winnie the Pooh’s grinning face on the cover. Inside the card read:

It definitely wasn’t Boggo’s handwriting, and if he had sent the card to himself it would have been pornographic.

‘It’s somebody from the cast,’ announced Boggo with absolute conviction.

‘It could be anyone,’ reasoned Fatty.

‘I reckon its VPH,’ said Boggo rather confidently. ‘I’ve been sensing an animalistic attraction between us since the first rehearsal.’

‘Between you and VPH?’ said Fatty in disbelief.

‘Trust me,’ said Boggo. ‘She’s sordid.’

Rambo sat back in his chair and smiled smugly, like he was way ahead of the rest of us. Penny fussed about in the kitchen and Brenda was making a lame attempt at cleaning the windows with a small dishcloth.