My Life and Other Massive Mistakes (11 page)

‘I think they were Pop's. Maybe they need a bit of oil,' I say.

‘Yeah.'

I go to the kitchen, bring back the canola oil spray and I spritz the pliers in the bathroom sink. I open and close them a few times and bright orange rust drips onto the white porcelain basin.

‘What are we waiting for?' Jack says. ‘Open up.'

Before I saw the pliers right up close, I
suspected they were old. But now I can see that the pincers are kind of jagged. They look like they must be pre-war. I'm not sure which war but it may have been one that was in the Bible.

‘I wonder…'

‘You wonder what?'

‘I wonder if we could just wiggle them out instead?' I suggest.

‘That'll take forever!'

‘You want to go first?' I grab the brutal, rust-crusted implement and hold it up to Jack's face like I'm ready to operate.

His eyes widen and he steps back, almost falling into the bath. ‘Maybe let's try the wiggling and see how we go.'

So Jack and I each find our loosest tooth and wiggle like crazy. We wiggle all afternoon, then we say goodbye and we wiggle all night. I stay at Nan's for the night, like we planned, but teeth are harder to pull out than I thought.
It takes me three whole days to work the first tooth free, with very little blood loss. I wake up Tuesday morning to five big bucks sitting on my bedside table next to an empty glass of water. The best part is that Mum can't take it off me no matter how lazy I am. What kind of a mother would steal tooth-fairy money?

I lie back on my bed, wondering if Jack and I could franchise our tooth-mining idea and sell it to kids all over the world. I use my tongue to poke the smooth space where my tooth once was. It tickles when I flick at the loose threads of gum there.

At school Jack tells me he lost his tooth, too. We are loaded, so we buy iceblocks and milkshakes from the canteen at lunchtime. We even buy lollies for other kids and everyone is nice to us. We're finally getting the respect we deserve. Life is pretty good.

We start working on our next teeth right away. Over the next month, we each remove
three more teeth. It's like my face is an ATM. I press a few buttons and boom! Cash slides out from between my lips. I even time one of the teeth to ‘fall out' at Nan's so that I get that tenner. With all these teeth missing, I'm starting to look like a jack-o'-lantern, which is cool because Halloween is next Friday.

The problem is, when money starts flowing that easily, you can get greedy. You really can. The teeth get harder to pull. And that's where Jack and I mess up.

I'm working on my next tooth for about four weeks and I'm getting worried. Jack is suddenly a tooth ahead of me and our cashflow has started to dry up.

‘We've saved nothing for our dreams,' Jack says on the bus one morning. ‘We've got nothing for the future. We've got to start putting some away.'

‘Don't panic,' I tell him.

‘I'm not panicking. But if you're just going to spend everything we make…'

‘Yeah? How much have
you
got?'

‘Four bucks!' Jack says. ‘You?'

‘This tooth is nearly out,' I tell him. ‘I'll have money soon.'

‘You'd better, because I'm going to be a billionaire, and you're either coming with me or you're not.'

‘Oh, I'm coming,' I tell him. ‘I'll have the money by tomorrow. Our first savings. We'll start a bank account.'

‘That's more like it,' he says. We seal the deal with a fist bump.

That day, it's Me v. Tooth. I wiggle it in class. I wiggle it on the way home. I wiggle it at soccer training. I wiggle it doing homework. I wiggle it in the shower. I wiggle it in bed and, finally, as sleep starts to take me, the tooth pops out. I nearly swallow it. I sit up, spit it into my palm and scream, ‘Mum! I lost a tooth!'

She comes into my room, flicks on the lamp and says, ‘Another one? Let me see.'

I show her. There's a bunch of blood and it feels like I have a Grand-Canyon-sized hole in my mouth. It hurts, but it's out and I suddenly have more money than Jack, and that is an unbelievable feeling.

‘You've been losing so many teeth,' she says.

‘I know. I wish it'd stop.' I hold my cheek like I'm in pain.

‘Well, we'd better leave this out for the tooth fairy, I suppose. If you keep losing teeth I'll have to get a second job.'

I laugh and blood dribbles down my chin.

Mum plucks a tissue out of her sleeve and mops it up.

She looks at the tooth, turns it over in her palm, then stands and holds it up to the lamp light, inspecting it closely.

‘Thomas?' she says, turning the tooth over in her hand.

This worries me. I'm pretty sure my mother is, secretly, a spy. Sometimes she knows that I've done something wrong before I even do it.

‘Yes, Mum?' I say.

‘I smell a rat.'

‘Maybe it's Rarnalda,' I say, making a joke about my pet rat.

‘Tilt your head back.'

‘But I –'

‘Open your mouth!' she snaps, sticking two fingers in my gob and prying my jaw wide.

‘How many teeth have you lost in the last couple of months?' she asks.

‘Ot any,' I say, by which I mean ‘not many', but it's kind of hard to speak when someone's fingers are jammed in your mouth.

‘Tom?'

‘Um … fee?' I say. By which I mean ‘three'.

‘Five!' Mum says. ‘I can see the gaps.' She pulls out her fingers and wipes them on my pyjamas. ‘This is the fifth tooth in two months. Why is that, Tom?'

‘Just unlucky?' I suggest, shrugging. ‘Kids grow up before you know it.'

‘Jack's mum said he'd lost a few teeth lately, too. Is that true?'

‘Not sure,' I say, trying to yawn. ‘I'm really tired. I might –'

‘I don't think this is a baby tooth,' Mum says. ‘This is an adult tooth.'

She holds it up to me. It does seem kind of big.

‘You've lost an adult tooth, Tom. Did you
pull
this tooth out?'

‘Um.'

‘Honestly, Tom. Was this about money?' She stands and looks down at me. ‘I hope you saved a lot. Replacing adult teeth is a very expensive business.'

She snaps off my lamp. ‘We'll talk in the morning.' She leaves my room and closes my door a little too firmly. I sit alone in the dark. The gap where the tooth was now howls with pain. I feel stupid and greedy and sad that my promising mining career is over already. I'm also worried that Jack is going to end up a billionaire and I won't.

‘Mum, does this mean the tooth fairy's not coming? … Mum?'

It's 4.37, Tuesday afternoon. Jack and I are standing in the doorway of Bunder's Fish Shop, staring at Brent Bunder, who is behind the counter chopping chips. Brent's the biggest, meanest kid in our school. He stops chopping, looks up at us, shakes his head and says, ‘Idiots.'

Jack and I smile and head inside. The word ‘idiots' is like a handwritten invitation from Brent.

‘What do youse want?' he asks. But he knows. And he knows that we know he knows. So Jack and I are grinning like madmen.

‘Just some chips,' Jack says. ‘Five bucks' or ten bucks' worth?' Brent asks.

‘Why not ten?' Jack says, which is crazy because we've never even
seen
ten dollars' worth of chips before. We stand at the counter, grinning at Brent, who holds the big chip-chopping knife. It doesn't scare us, though. Brent Bunder doesn't need a chip-chopping knife to scare me and Jack. He could injure us with his pinkie or his big toe if he wanted to.

‘Give me your money,' Brent says.

‘Well, that's the thing,' Jack says. ‘We don't exactly –'

‘Get lost then,' Brent grunts and goes back to chopping.

Jack and I keep smiling. It's all part of the routine. Every Tuesday afternoon when Brent's mum does Pilates and his dad sneaks out to bet on horses, Brent works in the chip shop and we come in and ask for hot chips. Brent asks us for cash. We tell him we don't have any. He tells us to get lost. Then we ask him if he needs any work done around the shop.

‘You need any work done around the shop?' Jack asks.

Brent slams down the chip-chopping knife, leaving it sticking out of the big wooden chopping block.

‘Matter of fact,' he says, ‘I've got something better for you today.'

‘What?' I ask, dreading what he'll make us do this time. Once he made us go to the damp, dark potato storage room downstairs and haul nine massive bags of potatoes up the
stairs in exchange for about 80 cents' worth of chips. Another time we had to fish all the crusty bits of batter and dim sim out of the deep-fryer for a dollar fifty's worth.

But Bunder's chips are so good you'd do just about anything for a handful of them. At Bunder's, they don't just take a plastic bag of chips from who knows where out of the freezer and pour them into the deep-fryer. No way. The Bunders are chip professionals. They chop chips from potatoes –
actual
potatoes that grew on a farm somewhere, at some stage, within a few thousand kilometres of here. Sometimes you even get a bit of dirt on your chip which, for hot chipologists like me and Jack, is gold.

It's these little touches that make Bunder's the best hot chip restaurant in the world. (Restaurant is probably taking it a bit far. There's only one seat and it's broken IKEA plastic. It sits in front of the old Space
Invaders arcade game that's been there since about 1932. Jack and I fight over the seat every time we go in there. In fact, I think we might have broken it in the first place.)

‘I want each of you to eat a chip that's been dipped in my sore,' Brent says.

I swallow hard and I'm just about to say, ‘What sore?' when Jack jumps in and says, ‘Done!' He holds out his hand to shake with Brent Bunder.

Brent goes to grab Jack's hand with one of his bone-crushing shakes, but I rip Jack's hand back just in time.

‘Show us your sore,' I say. ‘Don't listen to him,' Jack says. ‘We'll do it.' And he holds out his hand again.

This time Brent grabs it and I can hear bones in Jack's hand breaking.

The deal is done.

‘We haven't even seen the sore!' I snap at Jack.

‘Doesn't matter,' Jack says. ‘It's ten dollars' worth of chips. That'll feed us for the rest of our lives. How bad could the sore be?'

We look at Brent and he smiles. Brent doesn't often smile. In fact, I don't know if I've ever seen him smile, but he's smiling now. This worries me. Jack puts on a brave face but I can tell that it worries him, too.

A cockroach scuttles up the white-tiled wall and a blowfly buzzes around Brent's head, landing on his face. He swats at it but misses and slaps himself across the cheek.

I don't feel that hungry anymore when I
think about eating a chip dipped in Brent's sore. And I don't like the word ‘dipped', either. I mean, how deep is this thing if you can actually
dip
a chip into it? I can imagine
wiping
a chip on a sore or
scraping
the surface, but
dipping
makes it sound so … deep.

‘You want to see it now?' Brent asks. ‘Or you want to wait till the chips are cooked?'

‘Now!' I say.

‘We'll wait!' Jack says.

I growl at Jack. He growls back.

‘All right, we'll wait,' I grunt.

So Brent goes to work. He scoops up the mother lode of chips and throws them into the basket, lowering it into the oil with one of his enormous hands.

Jack and I sit on the broken seat, one bum-cheek each.

‘That's heaps more than he usually gives us,' I whisper to Jack nervously.

‘I know. It's awesome,' Jack says.

‘Doesn't it worry you?' I ask.

‘Why would I worry about eating more chips?'

‘Because the bigger the job we do, the more chips he gives us. That's double the amount we got for cleaning the oil, and that took us two hours.'

‘So?' Jack asks dumbly.

‘So, if all we've got to do is eat a chip that's been dipped in a sore…' I say.

He thinks about it for a bit then says, ‘What?'

‘It must be a pretty bad sore!' I hiss, loud enough for Brent to hear me over the crackle and spit of the fryer. He turns and looks at us. I smile to suggest to Brent that everything's hunky-dory.

‘He doesn't even look like he's got a sore,' Jack whispers. ‘He's probably bluffing. Maybe he just likes us now. Maybe he admires us for being brave enough to just show up and ask
him for free chips. What other kids in our year would be stupid enough to do that?'

‘I s'pose.'

‘And maybe he thinks we're his friends? I mean, what other friends has that big freak got?' Jack whispers.

I try to think who Brent's friends are but I can't think of any. He just wanders around the playground scaring people. When he walks across the oval it's like Moses parting the Red Sea. Kids scatter. No one even wants to go
near
Brent in case he decides to clobber them. This sort of makes me sad.

I watch Brent, who has his back to us, bending over at the deep-fryer. His gigantic ears stick out from his head like satellite dishes scanning other galaxies for potential friends, and I feel really sorry for him.

‘True,' I say. ‘We're probably his only buddies.'

Brent heaves the chip basket out of the
fryer and clips it to the rim, allowing the oil to drip off. I can smell them now. Freshly chopped, freshly fried.

‘There are so
many
of them,' Jack says.

‘Crazy,' I say.

‘Now are you happy I did the deal?'

We move up to the counter. Brent grins at us. I grin back. He turns the chips out of the basket onto fresh greaseproof paper. It's an
Everest
of chips. It looks more like
20
dollars' worth. Jack and I watch, eyes wide, as Brent shakes salt all over them. Jack laughs in disbelief. Saliva spills down my chin and I wipe it off with the cuff of my school jumper.

Brent wraps the chips up into a cone, leaving the top open for easy access. He pours what looks like a litre of vinegar into the cone and my eyes start to water from the smell of the vinegar and salt and all the steam and the feeling of warmth from knowing that we have a friend who works in the best chip shop in Kings Bay, and that he gives us chips even when he doesn't really have a sore to dip them in.

Brent holds them out to us. Jack and I reach for the package. Just as my fingertips scrape that beautiful, hot, vinegar-soaked paper and my stomach lets out a Jurassic groan, Brent pulls back the chips and says, ‘Oh. That's right.'

Jack and I look at him.

‘The sore,' he says.

Jack laughs and points at Brent. ‘You don't really have a sore, do you?'

Brent laughs and points back at Jack. Then I laugh.

Brent sets the chips aside, out of reach. Jack and I watch them, like my dog Bando watches his bowl when I make him sit for a few seconds before he has dinner.

Brent starts rolling up the left sleeve of his school jumper. There doesn't seem to be a scab on his arm at all. There are a few really ugly moles and more hair than most fully grown men have on their entire bodies, but no scab. I look at Brent, knowing that he's kidding us. But he keeps rolling up that sleeve till it's pulled tight around his brick of a bicep, revealing a bandaged elbow.

‘What happened?' I ask.

‘Footy,' he says. ‘On the weekend.' He flicks open the elastic and metal clip on the
bandage and starts to unravel it. He carefully unspools the bandage, letting it fall to the chopping board, right next to the freshly chopped chips. This seems like a health hazard to me, but I decide not to mention it.

As the layers unravel, I see that there's an area of bandage right on the point of the elbow that seems to be stained yellow. As each layer falls to the chopping board, the area becomes yellower and yellower until just the sight of it makes my stomach turn.

I have never seen anything that yellow. Ever. Butter is not that yellow. Small ducks are not that yellow. The sun is not that yellow. Then the final layer falls away and I see something yellower still.

Brent Bunder's sore.

The fluoro lights flicker. The buzzing fly lands on the sore and Brent swats it, squishing the fly into the yellow moistness, then flicking it off.

I turn away. ‘That looks really … deep,' I say, covering my mouth.

‘Yeah,' Brent says, laughing a bit. ‘It hurts. Their second-rower's stud sank right in. You could see through to the bone, eh.'

‘Right,' I say, trying not to be sick, which is what I usually do when I hear about human bones being visible through flesh.