just that hand-squeeze safely inside the car.
I’m one of the lucky kids. There’re only about three hundred of us in the world, but I’m guessing, because I’ve never met them. I only know the unlucky ones. Those who develop acute auditory deprivation when their moms scream up the school corridors for them to take their fingers out their noses: “Worms! You’ll get worms if you pick and eat.” Yes, me and fifty-two other guys get to hear this.
“It’s an important day tomorrow. Make sure you get enough sleep and take your vitamins,” Sir says. He points an “I’m talking to you” finger in the direction of the older guys who play in the senior team. Tomorrow we’re playing the boys from Voortrekker High. These guys make gargantuan look like a small word. They’re super-sized. Every one of them is built like he’s pulled an ox-wagon single-handed across Table Mountain. We’re going to get murdered.
“Tell your parents about the tournament so there’s a big turn-out. We’re going to need all the support we can get,” Sir says. This info goes in the ears of half the guys and straight out where it’s dumped in the trash with the other things not to tell your parents. When they come to matches, the dads argue with the ref and the moms run hysterical onto the field when our teeth get kicked in during the tackles.
But I’m not worried about telling Mom about the tournament. If she makes it to the game, she’ll sit calmly in the stands and never dream of causing a scene. Even if I get to play and score a try.
For sure, I can tell Mom anything. And she listens and never judges. Because Mom knows: what Ben tells you in the kitchen stays in the kitchen. It allows me to break the most important rule teenagers know: never tell your mom stuff.
I break this rule all the time. But shoot me now, I should have known. Because I was warned thirteen years ago when I first started crawling and getting into people’s stuff. Sometimes when you break something, it can’t get fixed. Not ever again.
I broke this rule one too many times. And Mom opened her mouth and blabbed. Then I wasn’t Ben, Benno, Ben-dude anymore. I was the rat, the weasel, the sneak. No longer Ben-OK. I was Snitch.
Rule #2: Never let your mom comment on your Facebook status
Terror rips a chunk out of my tracksuit sleeve when I walk through the front door. It’s the way she greets me every day when I get home from school. She’s real affectionate like that.
Terror is Helen’s dog. Helen is three years older than me and has blue dreadlocks. Everyone in my school thinks she’s super-chilled. I do too. I couldn’t have pawned my soul for a cooler sister. She pretends I don’t exist in public, and only ever speaks to me when she wants something. Like, “Hey Smith, buddy, if you give me your lunch money, I’ll let you wash the dishes for me after supper.” See, she’s brilliant.
Helen attends the girls’ school next door to mine. St David’s for me and St Anne’s for her. Our schools are twinned by millions of years of history and tradition. And we share the tennis courts and the chapel. Although the holy grail of most of the guys in my grade, second to being invited to a private twerk show by Miley Cyrus, is to share their saliva with the St Anne’s girls. Any one of them will do.
I only want to share my walks home from school with one St Anne’s girl. Her name’s Elizabeth and I haven’t allowed myself to even dream about the saliva thing yet. Elizabeth lives four blocks down the road from me, and she is a goddess. Most days, she allows me to walk twenty steps behind her. But I sense a softening in her attitude.
Last week she looked back over her shoulder before going into her house. I ran panting to see what she wanted (anything, I’ll do anything). She said, “Oh, it’s only you, Stalker.” I told her she could also call me Ben. Or Benno if she liked. She said she liked Stalker just fine.
Helen’s already home. She rides to school on the motorbike she got on her sixteenth birthday. Mom sometimes manages to pick me up from school if she’s not too busy at work, but most days I tell her I enjoy the fresh air and the exercise. (And the view of the back of Elizabeth’s head.)
“Don’t tease her, she’s not in the mood,” Helen says, clicking her fingers at Terror, who spits out a piece of my tracksuit and attaches her fangs to Helen’s hand, chipping her black nail polish. (She doesn’t quite manage to amputate Helen’s arm at the wrist.)
The thing about Terror is, she’s never in the mood. She’s the most bad-tempered dog ever spawned from Satan’s own loins. She hates everyone except Helen. And she despises me in particular.
Helen got Terror as a birthday present from Uncle Charlie a few years ago. He told Mom, please don’t be cross. “I know it’s a gift you weren’t expecting. But isn’t surprise the true meaning of birthday presents?” And no, he couldn’t take it back to the pet shop.
“A pure-bred Jack Russell,” Uncle Charlie said. But Terror grew impurely, lifting a leg on her certified breeding certificate. She now looks like the sum of all the bits and pieces of the stray dogs we find sniffing on the pavement.
Helen maintains Terror doesn’t like boys. “It’s your smell,” she says. My sister’s right. Mom used to say I smelled like the Angel Gabriel’s own sweet breath. Now she asks if I’m sure I’ve brushed my teeth in the last two weeks.
“And are you showering as regularly as you should, Ben?” I expect it’s a sign of the ageing process. My smell changed when I turned thirteen and got my first armpit hair. I’d morphed into a normal stinking teenager. Hallelujah!
Ten minutes later, Mom gets home with Uncle Charlie in tow. He’s the one who wishes he could squeeze the middle of Mom’s toothpaste tube if she ever figures out Dad’s never coming back. Uncle Charlie pants around the edges of our lives like a dog hoping for a walk in the park. (Not like Terror, who doesn’t like walks, or ball games, or me looking at her.)
Uncle Charlie wears his chinos too high up over his stomach and tells the worst jokes ever. Fine by me, he’s not my dad, so it doesn’t matter. He’s a funny-man by trade, a one-man-show comic act. Jokes are his bread and butter. Most months the bread is dry, like the pecks Mom allows him to give her cheek when she sends him home, his tail between his legs.
“The chances of you dying of botulism if you eat that rubbish are thirty-seven per cent,” Mom says, sniffing at the takeaway spicy chicken wings Uncle Charlie’s clutching to his chest. “They use the oil at least a hundred times. You’ll be taking your life in your hands with just one bite.”
Mom’s a number-cruncher for a big life insurance company. She’s got life-threatening stats at her fingertips. She knows if you swim in the Indian Ocean during summer, there’s a seven per cent chance you’ll have your leg ripped off by a Great White. Chilling on the beach means a twenty-one per cent risk of being christened by a seagull. Not going near a beach and staying out of the sun decreases the odds of getting cancer by eighteen per cent. (If you don’t smoke, hang out in traffic jams in rush hour or guzzle carcinogens.)
Mom likes to live as risk-free as possible. She keeps a strict vegetarian fridge (avoiding all those health-threatening hormones they pump into the meat) and only wears flat heels (defying the fourteen per cent certainty of breaking her neck). The only concession she makes to risk is drinking tap water. Because everyone knows bottled water is a bloody rip-off. See, I said bloody. I’m allowed.
I’m
