“Right. Fine,” I say, trying to hide my annoyance as I go back in, grab the bottle, and fill it. “Anything else?” I yell.
“Nope!” he says.
I lock the door again and hand him the bottle with a forced smile.
He stares at it then says brightly, “I can’t do zip.”
“OK, yep,” I say, grabbing his bag, unzipping it, and shoving the bottle in. I grip his hand. “Right, let’s go!”
“My reading book!” he squeals.
“Argh! Noah, we don’t have time—you’ll have to go without it!”
His face begins to scrunch up, and I know I have to get the damn book because otherwise we’ll be stuck here while he has a massive meltdown.
“OK, OK!” I say, and I’m back in the house and grabbing the book and stepping outside and locking the door again, and all with a false grin plastered on my face so he doesn’t get upset.
I try to speed-walk him to his school’s breakfast club, but as always Noah’s pace works on a reverse sliding scale in relation to mine. The quicker I want to move, the slower he does.
“Come on, Noah!” I try to say in a breezy tone as I yank him along the pavement. But he senses the urgency in my voice and stops dead.
“Why are you angry?” he says.
“I’m not angry!” I say in what I had intended to be a jolly voice, but actually comes out as slightly hysterical and strangulated. And I know I’ve got about two seconds before the boy explodes. “Just…in a bit of a rush,” I add in a “funny voice” that masks my frustration about as well as putting a hat on a dog to disguise it as a human.
“Why?”
“Because we’re late, that’s all. C’mon.”
I rub his back and give him a smile, which seems to stop any impending explosions, only now he thinks playtime can resume. I try to grab his hand again, but he raises both his arms out in front of him and lets out a loud groan as he takes a painfully slow step forward.
“Noah, now what are you doing?”
“I’m…a…zombie…” he moans.
“Brilliant. Could you be a quick zombie?”
“Zombies…aren’t…quick…”
“Well, what if you’d eaten the brain of a really fast runner? Then you’d be a quick zombie.”
“It…doesn’t…work…like…that.”
“Could it work like that today though?”
“No.”
I bend down toward him, look him in the eye, and try to talk in a steady, patient voice, like Mum would, but it just comes out fierce.
“Noah. This is stupid. We need to walk quicker. We are going to be SO late. Now come on!”
His bottom lip starts to quiver. Oh God, here we go.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m not angry, see—happy face!” and I force my lips into a grin, which is way more sinister than jolly.
He lets out a loud cry as he sits heavily down on the grass by the pavement.
“I KNEW you were angry!” he wails.
“Well, I AM NOW!” I spit as I turn away, my fists clenched in frustration. And I want to scream. I want to grab his little hand and drag him along the ground if necessary, all the way to school.
I mean, seriously—people go on about how cute and innocent little kids are, but they can also test the patience and understanding of a frickin’ saint. Surely even Mother Teresa would find it hard not to lose it big-time with this kind of dumb-crappery.
Ready to burst forth with a massive rant, I turn and look down into his little pink face, all screwed up and wet with tears. His big, sad brown eyes look up at me. And immediately my anger fades and my heart melts and I just want him to be happy again. So I scrunch my eyes up tight for a moment, gathering any patience I have left in me, and sit on the grass next to him.
“I’m sorry,” I say as his sobs continue. “What if we play I-spy?”
“No.”
“What if we…pretend to be trains?”
“No.”
“What if…I give you a chocolate bar after school?”
He sniffs. “A Milkybar?”
“Yeah, OK, a Milkybar.”
“Pinkie promise?” he says, extending a little finger.
“Pinkie promise,” I say, curling my little finger around his.
“OK,” he says, before springing up and carrying on the journey like nothing’s happened.
And I feel bad because Mum says we have to cut down his sugar intake. But Milkybars are made out of milk, right? And cows make milk. And cows eat grass. And grass is basically a vegetable so, if you think it through, it’s basically one of his five-a-day. Basically.
After dropping him off at his school, I start to run the rest of the way to mine, until my boobs hurt and then I just power walk the rest of the way. And by “power walk” I mean balling up my hands into fists and then walking slightly faster than I do normally. In truth, it’s less a “power walk” and more a “determined stroll.”
So of course I get to school late.
As I walk into my homeroom, my fringe sticking to my forehead with sweat, my teacher’s just about to finish attendance, so at least I don’t have to make the walk of shame to the office to sign in.
“Late again, Haylah?” bawls Mrs. Perkins, pointing her sharp nose and severe cheekbones in my direction. If I have a body made up of circles, hers is made up of triangles and straight lines. She’s like the Eiffel Tower in a cardigan. Though, for all her thin, upright boniness, she somehow has a voice louder than gunfire.
“Sorry, miss,” I pant. “I did try but…”
“It’s OK,” she says with a patronizing, teeth-sucking grin. “Just try and make it the last time this week or I’ll have to make a note of it.”
I nod. And I’m grateful to the woman for letting me off, but I also kind of wish she wouldn’t. She might as well write on the whiteboard and get everyone to copy down that “Haylah Swinton is just a loser from a needy, broken family who couldn’t possibly be expected to function on the same level as normal folk.”
I make my way to the back of the classroom where Kas and Chloe are sitting, as always. The three of us have been BFFs since primary school, when the only deciding factor for choosing your best friends was who lived nearest to you and who shared your love of My Little Ponies and friendship bracelets. Now we’ve been together so long we’re like an old married couple; we might be better off and happier without each other, but it’s just not an option anymore: we can no longer function without each other. Or perhaps, because there’s three of us, we’re more like an old married couple and their faithful old, fat dog.
Which would obviously be me.
As I walk past some of the boys, Dylan, a big loudmouth guy, who never misses an opportunity to make fun of me for a laugh, wolf-whistles ironically. His friends snigger. So I turn to them and do a curtsy. Which makes everyone laugh. My insides swell with excitement. This might turn out to be a good day after all.
There’s no better feeling than getting a laugh. Nothing beats it. I mean, I’ve heard a rumor that kissing feels pretty good, but I can’t imagine it would make my brain light up nearly as much. Plus, when you make someone else laugh, you don’t have to swallow their spit.