The Ice-cream Man (6 page)

6

Marty glanced at Rick. They had the detention room to themselves, which was practically unheard of.

‘School ends in a couple of weeks,’ he said, flinging a sultana into the air and catching it in his mouth. Most of the contents of the box littered the floor around him. ‘Doing anything for Christmas?’

Rick balanced on the back legs of his chair and stuffed a handful of chips into his mouth. ‘Nah.’

‘My mother will probably make us go to my aunt’s house, like she always does. Man, that is so boring. Last year –’ Marty stopped talking as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Mr Gunner stood in the doorway watching them. As his eyes met Marty’s he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. ‘That chair has four legs for a reason, mister. I’ll thank you to sit on it the way its maker intended,’ he snapped at Rick.

The chair crashed to the floor and Rick thumped his elbows onto the desk.

‘And I’ll thank you both to put that food away. This is detention, not a social luncheon.’

Marty grinned. Luncheon? Geez, what century did this guy come from?

Mr Gunner flicked an imaginary speck off his shirt and opened the folder he carried. He withdrew two sheets of paper and placed one before each boy.

‘Now, I want these completed by the end of lunch, otherwise you’ll both be back here every day until they are.’

Rick glanced at Marty then down at the paper on the desk before him. ‘Equations? You’ve gotta be kidding. Nobody does maths in detention.’

Mr Gunner smoothed a hand over his neatly parted hair and smiled. ‘They do now, mister.’

‘But there must be twenty sums here. We have to do all of them?’ Marty said.

‘Sure do, buckaroo, and you only have –’ Mr Gunner consulted his flashy gold watch, ‘fifty-five minutes and seven seconds in which to do them.’ He leaned against the desk in front of Marty and folded his arms.

When both boys had their heads down, the teacher moved to the front of the room and sat down to eat his lunch.

The next forty minutes dragged by. Marty scrawled a line of numbers down the page. He’d get them all wrong for sure and would have to spend the last weeks of school inside this room. Maths had always been his weakest subject. Mr Gunner’s words echoed in his mind:
I want these completed by the end of lunch, otherwise you’ll both be back here every day until they are
.

Marty grinned. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pack and started writing.

‘Pssst.’

Rick turned his head in Marty’s direction. Marty held the folded note out to him under the desk. Rick glanced towards the front of the room before reaching for it. A slow smile spread across his face as he read. He gave Marty a thumbs-up and put his head down.

‘Time is up,’ Mr Gunner said. He snapped his lunch box shut then moved towards the boys and snatched up their papers.

Rick got to his feet and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

‘Not so fast, mister.’ Mr Gunner scanned Rick’s paper. ‘Just as I thought.’ He picked up Marty’s.

‘Looks like we three have another date tomorrow,’

he said, smiling hugely.

‘Why is that, sir?’ Marty said. ‘As you see we’ve both finished the paper.’

‘Yes, that may be so, but you’ve got every one of these equations wrong, Martin.’ Mr Gunner shook the papers triumphantly.

‘Yes, but, sir,’ Marty continued, speaking slowly.

‘You didn’t say we had to get them right, did you? You only said we had to finish them by the end of lunch.’

‘That’s right, you did, sir,’ Rick said.

Mr Gunner looked from one boy to the other, his mouth ajar. Then he looked back at the papers in his upraised hand. The hand trembled. Mr Gunner’s pockmarked face flushed crimson.

Marty didn’t dare look at Rick for fear he’d start laughing. He bit the inside of his lip and forced his face to remain impassive.

Mr Gunner seemed to be having a hard time getting his emotions under control. His hand shook so much it was a wonder he didn’t drop the papers on the floor. After several long seconds he took a deep breath and bared his teeth in what Marty figured was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like a grimace of pain. ‘Ah-ha, very clever, mister, very clever indeed. It seems you would have me there, wouldn’t it? Oh, yes indeedy.’ Mr Gunner tapped the side of his nose with an index finger and then stuffed the papers inside his folder. ‘Oh-ho, yes indeedy. Well, I can’t argue with your logic, so I suppose you are both off the hook, as it were.’

Marty gave the teacher a curt nod and pointed his chair towards the door.

‘But remember this,’ Mr Gunner continued, and Marty felt the teacher’s breath, hot on the back of his neck, ‘I will be keeping a very close eye on you two, mark my words. A very close eye.’

All in all Marty was having a good day. He’d outsmarted a teacher, not an easy feat, Alana Newton had actually flirted with him in art – either that or she really was after his science notes and everyone knew he sucked at science – and that afternoon his dad was bringing home a brand new mobile phone.

When the school day was over, he expertly wove his way through the crowd. Rick had cleared off as soon as the siren rang to get his mother some stuff at the supermarket, and Aaron had done a disappearing act. No matter, Marty would catch up with them later.

With a burst of energy he careered around a group of gum-snapping girls and through the school gates. He eyed the hazy sky, which was cloudless but for a few wisps on the horizon, as he waited to cross the road. If only it would rain, even a shower would cool things down for a while. After making sure there weren’t any cars coming out of the teachers’ car park, Marty crossed the road. As he neared the opposite curb, someone brushed past him. Irritated and ready to give the kid a mouthful, he looked up and swallowed the insult just in time. It wasn’t a kid. It was Mr Gunner, marching towards Turner Street like he had a wasps’ nest up his butt. Marty’s good mood soured.

When he spotted his father’s Ford in the driveway, Mr Gunner vanished from his mind. Marty swung through the gate, smelling rubber as his wheel connected with the brick letterbox. Flicking sweat out of his eyes with a toss of his head, he rolled into the house. ‘I hope you got one with the built-in camera,’ he called, wheeling down the hallway and swinging into the lounge room.

His father was stretched out on the couch with a can of beer in one hand and the TV guide in the other. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘Geez, can’t blame me for wishing, can you?’ Marty spotted the box on the coffee table and moved towards it. ‘Doesn’t matter, as long as I can make calls on it.’

‘Maybe I should’ve got you two tin cans and a piece of string then,’ his dad said with a smirk.

Ripping the box open, Marty rummaged through the packaging. ‘Dad, it’s not here.’

‘It’s there, on the sideboard. Your mother activated and charged it for you. Number’s in the box. You might want to keep it somewhere safe or you’ll forget it.’

Marty retrieved the phone. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘No worries. How was school?’

‘Me and Rick spent lunch in detention. This uptight relief teacher gave us a page of maths to do. Can you believe that? And then –’

‘About this detention,’ Marty’s mother said, walking through from the kitchen. ‘When I spoke to –’

‘It’s nothing, Mum.’

‘It most certainly is not nothing,’ she said.

Marty sighed and stared at the ceiling. Was there anything his mother wouldn’t make a big deal out of ?

His father put his beer on the coffee table and sat up. ‘I have to agree with your mother, son.’

‘Teachers don’t hand out detentions willy-nilly, Martin. You did something to deserve it, didn’t you?

Marty turned the phone over in his hands. ‘Look, it really was nothing. I just made fun of Mr Gunner’s name and Rick laughed, so we got detention. End of story.’ He put his new phone into the zippered pouch under his chair and turned to go.

‘Just a minute, son,’ his father said. ‘Poking fun at someone’s name isn’t funny. And as for it being a teacher, well –’

‘Look, I didn’t say anything rude and all Rick did was laugh.’

‘I told you that Langton boy was a bad influence,’ Marty’s mother said, folding her arms over her chest.

Marty tightened his grip on his wheel rims. ‘This isn’t about Rick. It’s about some stupid teacher who hasn’t got a sense of humour.’

His father frowned. ‘You really ought to respect your teachers, Marty. If this friend of yours –’

‘Leave Rick out of this.’

‘Don’t you dare speak until your father has finished what he’s saying.’

‘Sorry, Dad, but honest, it’s nothing. All right?’

‘Respect is not nothing,’ his father said.

‘Geez!’

‘There’s no need to raise your voice, Martin. You never used to raise your voice before you became friends with that Langton boy,’ his mother said.

Marty threw up his arms. ‘I don’t know why you two bother asking me anything. You never listen.’

‘I know Rick Langton’s type,’ she went on, ‘and they always end up in some sort of trouble, every single one of them. You don’t want to end up in trouble too, do you, Martin?’ She sucked in a breath, lips pursed.

More than anything Marty wanted to scream. He knew if he did he would never stop. He fixed his eyes on his father and said as calmly as he could, ‘Dad, Rick is okay. He’s not in any sort of trouble, honest.’

‘I’ve heard the family has problems,’ Marty’s mother said. ‘The boy always looks so unkempt and I’m sure his mother doesn’t feed him properly. He’s so thin.’

‘Will you just leave Rick alone!’ Marty yelled at her.

His mother took a step back. ‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, Martin. Rob, don’t just sit there, say something.’

‘Listen to your mother, Marty.’

‘I don’t believe this bull –’

‘Martin!’ his parents said in unison.

He wheeled away from them and into the hall. The walls were closing in and he couldn’t breathe. He had to get out of the house before his head exploded.

Marty didn’t know where he was going until he got there. He stopped at the top of the ramp and looked out over the bush, sweat trickling into his eyes, chest heaving. The sounds of splashing water and kids’ voices coming from the lagoon did little to crowd out the angry voices inside his head. Why did his parents have to treat him like a baby? They were always so worried something bad would happen to him, always so sure he couldn’t cope. He would turn sixteen after Christmas, the same age his father was when he’d left school and started his first job.

Marty stared at the ramp. It would serve his parents right if something did happen to him. Maybe that’s what they wanted. Bad things happened to normal kids all the time: they fell off bikes, got bruised on footy fields – even got detention. His parents never treated him like a normal kid, but maybe they would if he acted more like one. He swiped at his eyes. Now there were tears mixed with the sweat running down his hot cheeks.
Normal
. God how he hated that word! It was almost as bad as
special
.

His mother certainly never let him forget exactly how much trouble there was lurking around every corner, just waiting to find him. He didn’t need Rick to lead him into trouble; it already had his number, didn’t it? It’d found him before he was even born and had thrown this crippling muscle disease at him. Oh yes, Marty and trouble were old mates.

Marty’s eyes focused on the ramp again. Maybe if he could make it to the bottom without falling out of his chair, he’d feel better. That would be a pretty cool stunt. Controlling his speed was the thing. The slope was steeper than any of the others he regularly wheeled down. The last time he’d tried to get to the bottom of the ramp he’d slowed down too much, too soon. He could go down at walking pace, of course, but there was no fun in that. What he had to do was swallow the fear that he might hurt himself and just go for it.

Marty rolled onto the ramp, his fingers going slack on the wheel rims. Already he could hear his mother’s words:
I told you to be careful, Martin. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I . . .
?

He’d show her how normal he was. He’d make it to the bottom of the ramp – might even try to finish with a wheel-stand. That’d show her.

The wheelchair shot forward and for a few breathtaking seconds Marty was free, flying unencumbered, soaring like an eagle. The feeling was so exhilarating he forgot all about braking. Moments later he found himself face down on the hot bitumen path, tasting tears and blood and pain

– lots of pain.

‘Geez, mate, whatta ya tryin’ to do, kill yourself ?’ Someone rolled Marty over. He groaned and squinted into the sun. Raising a hand to shield his eyes, he bumped his skinned forehead causing a gasp to escape him. ‘What? Who?’

‘Great, you’ve gone and scrambled your brains. Just what I don’t need.’

Rough hands tried to pull Marty into a sitting position, but thanks to his bent legs, this didn’t work. Marty propped himself up on his elbows – both of which were grazed – and groaned as fresh pain ripped through his right leg.

‘Marty, look at your friggin’ knee.’

Marty blinked. He knew that voice. That face.