‘Aargh!’ cried Fergus. He took a blind swipe at the can, but I was too quick for him. I sprayed more cream – ssst! – and would have beaten a hasty retreat if it hadn’t been for Amin. He was down on the floor, wallowing around in my evil formula. Every time he tried to stand up, his feet would slide out from under him.
I’d forgotten he was there until I sidestepped Fergus. That was when I fell over Amin’s outstretched leg.
It was a fatal mistake. Fergus might be small, but he knows how to take advantage of a tactical error. He reached for my can. I held on tight. I fought him off. He scooped up a handful of goo and rubbed it into my mouth. Then he bolted for the kitchen, shedding gobs of whipped cream.
I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account of the next five minutes. Everything happened so quickly that the sequence of events is hard to remember. Let’s just say that bottles of ketchup and mustard were squirted, cans of soft drink were shaken up, and an egg was thrown. The egg soon put an end to things, because eggs are like nuclear warheads. They’re on a whole different level from honey or whipped cream; even Fergus understands that. As soon as the egg hit the window, all three of us calmed down.
‘You threw the egg,’ I told Fergus, panting. ‘You can clean it up.’
‘You started it.’ He was scraping mustard off his hair. ‘Why should we clean up if you started it?’
‘Because I told you not to come here and you did anyway. Which means it’s your fault.’
Fergus disagreed, but offered to lend a hand ‘out of friendship’. Amin was already looking for a mop. Luckily, we’d confined ourselves to the kitchen and laundry, so cleaning up wasn’t as hard as it could have been. The floors are all tiled in those rooms, and the windows are hung with venetian blinds. Even the tablecloth is made of plastic. With a bucket, a mop and a couple of sponges, we managed to wipe up most of the mess. After rearranging some shelves, and replacing the old tea-towels with fresh ones, I was pretty sure that Mum wouldn’t figure out what had happened.
Not unless she saw our clothes.
‘We’re gunna have to change,’ I said. ‘You can borrow some of my stuff, and we’ll wash all these dirty things before Mum gets back.’
‘Why don’t you let her wash ’em?’ Fergus wanted to know. And I shot him a withering glance.
‘Because she’ll freak,’ I rejoined, as I began to search through the laundry cupboard. That was when I found the chlorine bleach – much to Fergus’s delight. He pounced on it with a squawk of excitement.
‘Hey, great!’ he said. ‘And we’ve got whipped cream too!’
‘So?’
‘So we can make a bomb!’ Seeing my crinkled forehead, he continued impatiently, ‘There’s a nitrous oxide bulb inside that whipped cream! It’s the perfect combo!’
‘You reckon?’
‘I’ve tried it before.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Let’s go to the park. We can explode it there.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Amin?’
‘In the shower.’
‘Aw, jeez,’ he complained. Then he stomped off towards the bathroom, yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Amin! Hurry up! We’re going to Nurragingy!’
At first I wasn’t too keen, because I’d been told to stay put. Mrs Savvides was keeping an eye on me. And what if Mum decided to come back early, just to make sure that I was still under house arrest?
Gradually, however, Fergus got me all worked up about finding a suitable bomb-casing; he wanted a cigar tube, but finally settled for the length of copper pipe that I’d hidden away. Then I had to look for matches, because our gas gun wasn’t good enough. (We needed sulphur, he said, not an open flame.) And when I told him that he should take the fire extinguisher, he laughed scornfully.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m not dragging a fire extinguisher over the back fence!’
‘But it’s really dry, Fergus. It’s the middle of summer. You don’t wanna start a fire.’
‘I won’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The bomb won’t be big enough.’
‘That’s what you always say.’
‘I can’t take a bloody fire extinguisher into Nurragingy!’ he growled. ‘I’ll get arrested!’
‘You can put it in a bag,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not that big.’
‘You can put it in your bag,’ he corrected. ‘Because I’m not carrying it. No way.’
‘Amin can carry it,’ I said. Amin, however, shook his head.
‘I’m carrying the clothes,’ he reminded me. By this time we’d agreed that we wouldn’t try to do a load of washing after all, because we didn’t know very much about stain removal. Instead, Amin had offered to smuggle the garments into his own house.
According to Amin, his mother dealt with so much dirty laundry that she wouldn’t even notice a few extra pieces of it.
‘But I can’t take the fire extinguisher! I’m not even going!’ I don’t know how many times I’d already said this. ‘I’m grounded, remember? I can’t go.’
‘Course you can.’ Fergus dismissed my scruples with a careless wave. ‘Just go through the back yard. No one’ll see you.’
‘What if Mum calls?’
‘Leave the phone off the hook.’
‘What if Mrs Savvides drops by?’
‘Say you didn’t hear the doorbell. Put on some really loud music before we leave.’ Fergus rolled his eyes in despair. ‘God, you’re such a wuss!’ he complained. ‘So what if your mum finds out? It’s not like she’s gunna beat the crap out of you, is it?’
With arguments like these, he managed to chip away at me until I finally gave in. I suppose the truth is that I really wanted to go, and didn’t need all that much persuading. (What would you rather do: sit around worrying, or explode things?) My only real concern was climbing the back fence; I felt that Fergus and Amin would be pushing their luck if they did it again, though I couldn’t think of an alternative route. Not with Mrs Savvides watching the front of the house.
In the end, however, escaping wasn’t all that difficult. After turning on Mum’s cd player, I took the phone off the hook and slipped out quietly – taking care not to bang any doors. Then, upon reaching the fence, I gave Fergus a leg-up before passing him my bag, which contained the fire extinguisher. Next I helped Amin over the splintery wooden palings, because he’s smaller than me, and not very agile. I was the last one into my neighbour’s garden, where the grass was so high that we didn’t have to worry about being seen. As soon as we dropped to our hands and knees, the grass concealed us. We simply crawled through it like a pack of dogs. The whole thing was a cinch.
There was only one nasty moment; it was when we’d reached the front gate and had to stand up again. I knew that any people who might be passing would probably wonder why three teenagers had suddenly popped into view like a row of jack-in-the-boxes, so I climbed to my feet in a casual sort of way, making a conscious attempt not to look rushed or furtive. I even brushed myself off, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. And while I was doing that, I suddenly saw a car creeping towards us.
It was moving very slowly. For one awful moment, I thought that the driver was going to stop and ask us what on earth we were doing. But he didn’t, thank God. He just rolled on past.
I figured that he must have been searching for somebody’s house.
‘Did you see that?’ said Amin. ‘He was staring at us. So was the guy next to him.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Fergus growled, eyeing poor Amin – who was bursting out of my very baggiest T-shirt, and whose shorts were drenched with tomato sauce. ‘You look like a traffic accident.’
‘And you look like you got shrunk in the wash,’ Amin retorted. It was true. My shorts were as long as knickerbockers on Fergus. ‘Maybe you should have worn your own clothes,’ Amin continued. ‘You couldn’t have looked any worse than you do now. So what if there was honey in your pants? You got most of it out, didn’t you?’
Fergus just g
lared at him. I began to head for Nurragingy, weighed down by a bag full of fire extinguisher. Amin and Fergus followed me, bickering and sniping; it didn’t take us long to reach the park, though we had to skirt around the lake and pass through the picnic grounds before we arrived at our final destination. It was a small clearing surrounded by thick bush. There were no seats or paths or bits of play equipment anywhere nearby, so we decided that we wouldn’t be bothered there. We’d certainly never been bothered there before.
As soon as we stopped, Fergus took charge. He insisted that the bomb was his, because he was the only one who knew how to assemble it. And when I pointed out that I had supplied all the components, he went on and on about his expertise being the most important component of all. At last, however, we got down to business, after tossing a coin to see who would put in the last ingredient.
I won.
Fergus was pretty cross, but he needn’t have been. I never did get a chance to set off that bomb. We’d only just begun to seal up one end of the pipe when a crunching noise disturbed us – and we looked around to see a little kid stumble into the clearing. He was about five years old, with blond hair and very red cheeks.
Much to our dismay, he marched straight towards us, clutching some kind of fancy toy robot.
‘Whatcha doing?’ he squeaked.
Amin and I exchanged despairing glances.
‘Nothing!’ Fergus barked. ‘Piss off!’
The little kid froze. He stuck out his bottom lip.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Go back to your mum.’
I guess I was too gentle, because he immediately perked up.
‘Can I play?’ he asked.
‘No!’ snapped Fergus. ‘Get lost!’
‘We’re not playing a game,’ Amin added. He spoke calmly yet firmly, with the confidence of someone used to dealing with very small brothers. ‘We’re doing something you wouldn’t like. You’re too young.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s dangerous,’ I said, like a fool. Amin scowled at me. The little kid’s whole face lit up.
‘Please?’ he begged.
‘Go away!’ Fergus warned.
‘Is it a rocket?’
‘No!’
‘I can make a rocket!’
‘Just ignore him,’ Amin murmured. ‘He’ll get bored.’
So we tried to ignore the little kid, but it wasn’t easy. He kept shuffling around with his thumb in his mouth, peering at this and poking at that. ‘I made a truck,’ he’d say; or ‘Can I have some sticky tape too?’ He wouldn’t leave Mum’s scissors alone – probably because they were so big and sharp. Every time we put them down, he’d pick them up.
At last Fergus couldn’t take it anymore. He was on the point of dismantling our aerosol can, but when he tried to retrieve the scissors, our unwelcome guest wouldn’t let them go. So Fergus spun around and gave him a face full of whipped cream.
That did the trick, let me tell you. With a piercing scream, the little kid dropped Mum’s scissors and ran. He was in such a panic that he actually bumped into a tree on his way out of the clearing. (It was quite funny to watch, as a matter of fact.)
‘God, Fergus,’ I said. ‘You’re such a bastard.’
‘I know.’ He sounded quite pleased with himself.
‘I’ll have to try that some time,’ Amin commented. ‘Yussy’s such a pain in the arse these days, and he won’t fall for my spider routine anymore.’
‘You just gotta show ’em who’s boss,’ said Fergus. Having opened our aerosol canister, he was fishing around for the nitrous oxide bulb. ‘I don’t blame the children, mind you,’ he went on, speaking so pompously that I had to laugh. ‘It’s the parents’ fault. They just don’t use enough discipline, nowadays.’
‘Hey! Hey you!’ An enormous voice rang out, harsh and deep and menacing. It made us all jump. In perfect unison, we turned our heads to see a big, bald man striding across the grass towards us.
He was holding hands with a familiar little kid, who was crying his eyes out.
‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ the man boomed. ‘And what the hell did you do to my son?’
Fergus and I locked gazes for an instant.
‘Oh, man . . .’ he muttered.
‘What are you up to? Huh?’ the enraged father cried. He was built like a cannonball, and smelled faintly of barbecued lamb. He was also closing in fast, dragging his son behind him. ‘Think you can get away with stuff like this, do ya?’
‘We gave him some whipped cream!’ was the only answer that I could think of. It didn’t impress Baldie, though. He bared his teeth.
‘In the face!’ he spluttered. By this time Amin was shuffling backwards; I could see him out of the corner of my eye.
But I couldn’t see Fergus. He’d ducked down below my field of vision.
‘Whassa matter – you scared?’ Baldie snarled. He was almost on top of us, and I didn’t know what to do. Run? Plead? Argue?
‘It was a joke!’ I protested, as his gaze dropped. Suddenly he froze. His expression changed. He threw up one hand in a futile gesture as – sshhhzz! – a white cloud enveloped him.
Fergus had unleashed the fire-retardant foam.
‘Run!’ he yelled.
I ran. What else could I do? Thanks to Fergus, I had no choice. But I didn’t follow Amin. I wasn’t that stupid. There’s no safety in numbers when you have an enraged parent after you. The best thing is to just split up and hope. And run. Boy, did I run!
I bolted straight into the bush. I knew I’d have the advantage in there because I’m skinny enough to slip through narrow spaces. I also have quick reflexes; I can dodge any tree trunks that might be coming straight for me. And I have long legs too, so I can leap over spiky undergrowth. Poor Amin doesn’t have long legs or quick reflexes, but he’s very good at hiding. That’s what I figured he would do: hide until the coast was clear.
Not me, though. I couldn’t afford to hang about. I had to get home before Mum did. So I crashed through bushes and vaulted across fallen logs. I ducked and dodged and swerved. I darted from one piece of cover to the next – from a shrub to a toilet block to a parked car. After a while I began to slow down, because it didn’t look as if I was being followed. What’s more, I was attracting a lot of attention; I figured that a brisk walk would be less noticeable than a mad dash for the nearest exit.
Checking my watch, I saw that it was lunchtime – and it occurred to me that Mum might have decided to call home. What would happen if she kept getting the engaged signal? She would probably try my mobile number, I decided. The question was, should I answer it? Maybe not. Maybe I should turn it off, I thought, before realising that I couldn’t. Not while I was waiting for Fergus to ring me. I certainly couldn’t call him. The wail of a fire-alarm ringtone was the last thing he’d need if he was crouched behind a rubbish bin somewhere.
By now I had reached the main road, and was waiting nervously for the lights to change. I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting a big, bald dad to come bursting out of the park. But I’d well and truly shaken him off; no one followed me across the road except a little old lady with a walking stick. All the same, I didn’t feel entirely secure until I’d plunged into a comforting tangle of suburban streets, where I was shielded from the park gates by houses and hedges and carports.
It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I remembered our fire extinguisher.
The thought of it hit me like a punch. I froze in mid-stride, my jaw dropping. The fire extinguisher! Goddammit! Mum would kill me if I lost the fire extinguisher! Standing irresolute on the sunbaked footpath, I wondered if I should retrace my steps. It was possible that Fergus might have discarded the extinguisher. He might have tossed it aside before running away, so its weight wouldn’t slow him down. In that case, however, would Baldie have let it lie? Or would he have picked it up as evidence? Could it be in police custody at this very moment?
No, I concluded. If the police had been summoned, they would still be on
their way to the scene. Only a few minutes had elapsed since my encounter with Baldie; that was why I couldn’t call Fergus. There was no guarantee that Fergus had managed to get out of the park. For all I knew, he could still be crawling around in a shrubbery, with Baldie breathing down his neck.
For the time being, at least, there was nothing I could do. I just had to walk on, hoping like hell that Baldie wouldn’t press charges. Would a faceful of chemical foam constitute an assault? Surely a squirt of whipped cream wouldn’t be taken seriously? As I hurried along, I told myself that everything would be okay providing Fergus and Amin didn’t get caught. My bag was still at the scene, but it didn’t have my name on it. Neither did the extinguisher. I was still in possession of my phone and my keys and my wallet. As long as Amin and Fergus were free and clear, and hadn’t dropped anything during their escape, we would be perfectly fine.
By reasoning like this, I was able to keep calm. The trouble was that it took a lot of effort. I was so busy reassuring myself that I nearly made the serious error of walking straight down my own street. Only at the very last minute did I recall Mrs Savvides and her promise to my mother. Mr Grisdale’s roof was already in plain sight when I realised that I was supposed to be climbing over our back fence.
‘Bugger,’ I growled, stopping short. I had to think for a moment. What would be the best plan? Should I retreat to the nearest intersection and take the long way round? Or should I risk advancing a few metres, before turning into the lane that linked my street with the next?
After weighing my options, I decided that Mrs Savvides would be very unlikely to spot me from such a distance. So I took a deep breath and moved forward, keeping my head down and my shoulders hunched. No one passed me as I crossed the street. The lane, when I reached it, was deserted. It was a narrow strip of gravel pinched between two high paling fences. Some of the palings were overgrown with ivy and honeysuckle, while some of them were covered in graffiti. Passing traffic had pushed bits of debris against them like a tidemark; I could see bottles and bones and empty chip packets and an old shopping trolley that had lost its wheels.