Love Story 9

Jealousy was an accidental sin. Like stabbing your mum in the eye with a fork, while explaining something which you’d forgotten to mention, but she must have heard about Ali coming for dinner, while also mentioning needing money for the school trip.

My mum scrambled out of the kitchen chair and rushed to the toilet mirror to check. ‘Jeez, that was sore.’ She used understatement in the way some neighbours used mascara as a face filler to make their jaws seem longer and their faces thinner and have more interesting lives.

I wasn’t really jealous of Joe Cromwell. With his dark hair, height and good looks, he shouldn’t have existed in real life. He even played centre forward in our school team that scored so many goals in one game they ran out of superlatives and stopped counting. The type of all-American boy that Lassie barked at in corny movies to warn him there was a grizzly bear standing behind him. The type of boy that didn’t guzzle his lunch before the school bus left for Calder Park Zoo. All except the black banana.

The black banana was considered a war-time treat by men of my da’s generation. He liked to smuggle it into closed food packets and think that in the thirty-odd years since the war hand ended I wouldn’t notice.

Milk couldn’t go out of date until the cow had died of old age and given birth to three generations of free milk givers. Any free school milk I didn’t finish I was to bring home and sit on the windowsill. He’d finish it later and smack his lip asking for more.

Mashed potatoes were made easier to cook when they’d shrivelled into themselves like prunes. Prunes, of course, were neither fruit nor veg, fish or fowl. They had no sell-by-date. Mum, of course, was accused of thinking we were made of money and lacking the common sense that god—up above watching what was tossed into the bin—gave us.  

I was wedged in beside Ali. She got the window seat and Joe was sitting across from us. I’d got into a stupid argument with Joe about blasphemy and Herbie the talking car that toot-tooted onscreen to show it was happy. I can’t remember what I’d said, but could remember the way he’d laughed and thought it was hilarious. I was funny.

God was working in mysterious ways. He talked and bantered in a normal voice—and I’d become overly attuned to how people spoke—and not some stinkpot he’d found stuck to the sole of his Adidas trainers. I was on a roll, even though the bus hadn’t moved and the grumpy driver had been stuck outside smoking and narrowing his eyes while waiting for stragglers.

‘Why is it always Calder Park Zoo,’ I said, my voice rising to levels of garish indecency so I had to tuck my chin in. ‘Why not Timbuktu or Oz?’

‘Stop showing aff,’ Ali said, shoving my knee. ‘She glanced at Joe and smiled to attract his attention.

‘Why not Timbuktu?’ Joe said, laughing. ‘Calderpark Zoo is so-oh boring. All it’s got is fucking daft animals.’

‘It’s no the animals that are daft. It’s us. It’s like we’re like spying on super dangerous animal, but nothing ever happens. We want it to be like in a Tarzan movie. We’re mere snack food for lions and tigers. And when a poor black man with a spear falls into the water, all a crocodile has to do is worry about how it’ll clean his teeth afterwards.’

I turned towards Ali as the bus jolted forward, with the jeers from the boys in the back seats indicating that we were off. ‘I’d put you down for a ready-meal! The animals lining up two by two as if they were in Noah’s zoo.’

Ali nudged me with her elbow to get more room, and took her head off the cool of the window to remind me, ‘That’s no funny.’

But I was intoxicated with Joe nodding and smiling. ‘Nobody dreams about themselves, or why did they invent the cat flap?’

Joe blinked as he thought about it and stared out the window as we passed the church, making sure he avoided my gaze.

Mrs Hone tapped the back of each seat as she passed, bracing against the movement of the bus, as she whispered to herself making a headcount. She glanced at me a few seats down, upsetting her calculation. ‘Sit down, Adam Shirley. And stop that childish shrieking laughter, or I’ll give you something to think about.’

‘I’ve already told him that twice Miss,’ Ali sat straighter, raising her neck and peering over the top of the seats with a smirk on her face. ‘But he doesnae ever listen.’

‘Good for you,’ Mrs Hone told her, before she started tapping again.

‘I think I feel sick,’ my eyes glassy-eyed as I lifted my heavy head and slapped a hand over my mouth.

‘Yeh, better no,’ Ali huffed. She moved quicker than I thought she could out of the window seat and into the corridor.

She shouted, ‘Miss! Miss!’

My head below the seats. A half empty bottle of Limeade rolled towards me as I boaked up.

I heard Ali’s muffled voice above me saying, ‘I warned him about overeating before we left.’

I couldn’t raise my head to challenge the lie. She ate mostly everything.

Mrs Hone was sympathetic with her, but also irked. ‘We’ll need to stop the bus and we’ve just left.’

Ali was quick to reassure her. ‘It’s alright. He’s always spewing up. He’s a bit of a pansy.’

‘If you’re sure, we can clean it up later.’ Mrs Hone’s matter-of-fact voice changed to a shriek. ‘Oh, my God, stop the bus! Phone an ambulance. He’s retched up a kidney or something.’

Ali giggled. ‘No, he brought that wae him for his play-piece. That’s a black banana. He’s weird that way. Yeh should see the way he slurps his tomato soup.’