New Moan Page 4

  Superstar Winona Arizona looked somewhat familiar. ‘Isn’t that Wanda Mensional, only in a wig?’

  ‘What are you talking about? Wanda’s hair is blonde. Winona’s hair is brown.’

  ‘I know, that’s why I said “wig” …?’

  She frowned. ‘Ssh, Heffa, we’re missing it!’

  Condoms are naughty; the Pill is a sin

  Abortion is murder, only one way to win.

  ‘What’s that, Trey?’ Winona simpered.

  ‘It’s simple, Winona—’ Trey beamed, and the rest of the Puritans joined in on the chorus:

  Don’t waste it, chaste it!

  Trey backflipped over a large inflatable penis the chorus line were holding up and continued singing.

  Your hearts might be yearning

  But hellfire’s burning

  You’d better deflate it

  Remember – don’t waste it, chaste it!

  The chorus hurriedly covered the protuberance with a white sheet and twirled their silver rings in the air.

  Crack hos might taste it

  Lesbians turkey-baste it

  But it’s time that you faced it

  Those folks won’t be saved

  So, kids, if you don’t wanna waste it

  (And you don’t wanna waste it)

  Don’t waste it, chaste it!

  Trey McBlande backflipped again, while the chorus made a human pyramid with Winona at its top, waving cheerily. Her wig had slipped, revealing strands of blonde hair. I realized a whole page had passed without anyone paying me any attention, so I glanced over at Chip, who fainted with gratitude.

  ‘Any questions?’ Trey McBlande asked.

  Piper raised her hand. ‘What’s dating?’

  Trey seemed puzzled. ‘Well, you know, when a boy and a girl like each other and spend more time with each other than with the rest of their friends …’

  ‘Like Bobbi and Jack?’ Piper asked.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so—’

  ‘Even though they’re brother and sister?’

  ‘Er,’ Trey frowned. ‘Isn’t there a boy you like in a special way?’

  ‘Oh, I like Chip. But he likes Heffa. All the boys like Heffa. It’s weird, it’s only since she came to town that anyone’s thought about boys and girls, even though we’ve all known each other for ages and are supposed to be seventeen years old.’

  I sighed as Piper glared at me. I couldn’t help it if the boys liked me more than Piper and the other girls; it wasn’t like I was encouraging them, except by being pale and dull and interesting.

  ‘Any other questions?’ Trey asked, slightly desperately.

  Rudy put his hand up. ‘What’s a penis?’

  ‘Okay!’ Trey declared. ‘Looks like our work here is done!’

  He and his team hastily started packing their props away, and the rest of us began to make our way out of the hall.

  ‘That was certainly very stimulating,’ Justin commented, sidling up beside me, and I hurried down the steps away from him.

  At the bottom, I glanced upwards. Teddy was standing on the balcony, glaring down at me. I lost myself momentarily in the shadows of his eyes …

  ‘Heffa, look out!’

  I spun round – the Spunky Puritans were manhandling the prop penis through the theater entrance, and one of them had lost their footing on the stairs. I froze as the giant member thrust forward. There was no way to avoid its tumescence. It fell full onto me, knocking me down. My head struck the cold tarmac, but I felt strangely warm beneath the elongated rubber hardness. Warm and contented – tingly, even—

  There was a pop and a hiss, and Teddy’s face appeared above me. ‘Heffa?’

  ‘You saved my life,’ I murmured, as the penis deflated and was lifted away, leaving me somehow bereft. ‘Wait. Weren’t you on the balcony? How did you get here so fast? Are those fangs?’

  ‘Mo,’ Teddy mumbled, covering his mouth with his hand. ‘And I wasn’t on the balcony. You must have a concussion. Or be seeing things. Or going mad; I hear that can happen to girls in novels, what with all the overwrought emotion.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Hush now, you might be injured,’ Teddy said. ‘I’ll take you to my father. He’ll help.’

  He picked me up easily. His arms were strong, hard, cold … yet I felt safe. I swooned backwards a little and pursed my lips, but he merely barreled through the gaggle of concerned boys crowding around to check I was unharmed and carried me to his car. He set me down gently, and reached over for the seatbelt.

  ‘I can do that myself, you know.’

  ‘Heffa, you can’t walk down the street without almost getting crushed to death by a massive rubber cock. Now be quiet and let me handle things.’

  The contempt in his tone was too much to bear. I was the main character in this book; surely that was his cue to find me as fascinating as everyone else did. ‘If you can’t stand me, why did you save me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘You’d rather see me dead?’

  ‘Yes! No! You’re bad for me, Heffa; I feel strange stirrings in my pants – I mean heart – whenever I’m around you, and I don’t know what they mean!’

  Even his incoherent ranting was beautiful. His lips were clenched together, every inch of him rigid. He drove off without another word, though, and I decided not to provoke another outburst, instead spending the drive eyeing up his manly chest, his talcum-powder-hued skin, the slight tips of his pointed teeth on his lips …

  Chump was waiting for me at the butcher’s. Of course, he had dropped everything to be at my side, how typically inconsiderate of him, wanting to muscle in on my action. He took me away from Teddy and rushed me into the shop.

  ‘Some of your steak and she’ll be fine,’ he told Joseph Kelledy, who was idly licking one of the hanging carcasses.

  ‘Of course, Mr. Lump,’ Joseph Kelledy said, wiping the blood from his perfectly sculpted mouth. ‘So this must be Heffa?’

  ‘God, didn’t you get the memo? Yes, I’m Heffa. Duh.’

  ‘You’re driving my boy wild,’ Joseph said, earnestly. ‘Ever since you arrived, he’s been spending all his time here working on batch after batch of his special sausages.’

  ‘What in the blazes are his “special sausages”?’

  ‘Ah, it’s an old family recipe from England; what you do is take some skin, engorge it with blood, sink your teeth in, suck until you … Anyway, he only makes his special sausages when he’s got something on his mind. I think you may be the most important thing in his life already. We’re so glad you came to Spatula; his moping was getting right on our nerves.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I said. His description seemed at odds with Teddy’s bipolar attitude towards me. ‘I wish I was dead.’

  ‘Well—’ Joseph Kelledy started, but then Chump butted in like he always did.

  ‘Now, Heffa! Joseph could be butchering animals anywhere in the US. We’re very grateful that he brought his expertise and large collection of boning knives to our small town. Be more polite.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Joseph said, absentmindedly reaching for a spare steak after handing Chump the parcel. He started to chew on it, saying round his mouthful, ‘I’m sure Heffa’s just had a long day of specialness and poorly coded sexual frisson, she must be tired.’

  He was right. I went straight to bed when we got home. I’d expected to have trouble sleeping, and as soon as I closed my eyes, I was overwhelmed with memories. Teddy’s face so close to mine, his marble figure tightly thrust against me … but then Stephfordy reminded me that this couldn’t go beyond a PG-13 rating, so I stopped there and fell asleep instead.

  chapter 4

  * * *

  teddy revealed

  I was woken by a shaft of sunlight streaming through my curtains. Even though it had only been a few days since I’d been in Sunnytown, the non-stop gloom of Spatula had already made proper daylight feel like a distant memory. I opened the curtains to check that this w
asn’t another of my dad’s jokes, but it was the sun all right, hanging there in the morning sky.

  The trees opposite seemed as pleased to see the sun as I was; I’d never seen them so proud and rigid. My mood was lighter today, too, and the bruises on my chest looked better already; they’d faded from a shocking purple to a dull yellow. Mr. Kelledy’s steak must have worked. He’d seemed really nice; it was so generous of him to slip me his meat for free.

  What a shame his son wasn’t as pleasant. I remembered how Teddy had looked after he’d saved me by pulling that penis off, his face so full of rage, like he almost wished he’d let it crush me. Still, it was a beautiful day, and I wasn’t going to waste any time thinking about stupid Teddy Kelledy’s bad-tempered behavior the day before.

  In the kitchen, I laid out Chump’s breakfast for him, helpfully sticking Post-its on the milk – ‘put the white stuff ’ – and the bowl of cornflakes – ‘on the yellow things’ – before grabbing his car keys and the money from his wallet and setting out for another day of learning and personal growth at the Academy.

  I was really pleased with my progress already. Look at how kindly I nurtured my unworthy dad; maybe I should ask Miss Shirley to advance me a year.

  The sun was still beating down as I drove, although strangely it did seem a lot closer than usual, like it was hanging directly overhead rather than, like, a few hundred miles away, or whatever. It must have been an optical illusion because of Spatula’s more northerly latitude.

  When I pulled into the Academy’s parking lot, however, the odd closeness of the sun suddenly made sense, because it was floating about a hundred feet in the air, right above the main courtyard. It was puzzling, but I didn’t investigate further as I didn’t want to risk ending up in some sappy TV movie about a beautiful blind genius by staring directly at it.

  Just then, Wanda appeared at the window, grinning inanely. I wound it down to see what was on her mind, but before I could utter a friendly ‘What is it now, you prole?’ she thrust a bundle of clothes at me.

  ‘Hurry up and change into these clothes, Heffa, it’s finally Arabian Nights Day again!’

  She dumped the clothes in my lap. I could see what looked like purple silk pantaloons, and some kind of midriff-baring top with sequins. Great, looked like sunburn had been added to the curriculum for today, but maybe my intriguing bruises would garner me some much-needed attention.

  As I changed into my revealing new clothes, I wondered idly what kind of mid-eastern get-up Teddy Kelledy had been lumbered with; his winsomely pallid complexion was even less suitable for the role of dusky Persian than mine. When he’d grabbed me yesterday, he had seemed quite toned under his shirt, so maybe he could be some kind of bare-chested warrior, muscles oiled and glistening in the harsh Arabian sun. Not that I cared one way or the other about his rippling torso and firm manly grasp. I couldn’t see his car anywhere in the lot, though, even after ten minutes of walking up and down the aisles looking.

  The courtyard had been transformed into a desert scene, complete with palm trees, camels, and rolling dunes of sand (which looks good from a distance, but then it gets in your hair and in your clothes and is really annoying and thoughtless, actually). Miss Shirley was addressing a group of students beneath the shade of a palm tree and I made my way over to join them.

  Miss Shirley’s lecture was coming to an end. ‘… And remember, children, this is the most important lesson of all: if you meet a genie who offers you three wishes, always make sure to wish for lots more wishes, that’s one wish that’s sure to fox ’em!’

  This puzzled me. Didn’t everyone just get what they wanted all the time? What was this stuff about wishing?

  Miss Shirley started to shoo us away. ‘Right then, hurry along to classes. The Sun Machine will be switched on all morning so you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it at recess. Oh, and one last thing, our guest speaker, Ms Scheherazade, is rather absent-minded and does have a tendency to end her lectures before reaching a conclusion, so make sure you attend all 1,001 of her classes to get the full story.’

  As I strolled to class with Wanda and Chip, I casually mentioned the absence of the Kelledy car from the lot. ‘Not that I care or anything, but I noticed that the Kelledys’ car wasn’t here, and they’re usually parked in exactly the same spot every day, over there in space B-12, which I’ve always thought is the best spot in the whole lot, aren’t they clever to have picked it, so why aren’t they here today, it’s not because of me is it, or what happened yesterday with the runaway penis, you don’t think Teddy totally hates me now, do you? Ohgodicouldn’tstanditifhedid!’

  Wanda calmly removed my frantically grasping hands from her shoulders and glanced towards the empty space.

  ‘Hey Chip, she’s right, those Kelledy kids aren’t here. What sort of freaks would miss Arabian Nights Day? It’s one of the only days of the year we get to see the Sun Machine.’

  ‘Yeah, that is weird,’ Chip agreed, ‘and now I think of it, they’re never here when the Sun Machine is on – remember last semester when we had the lesson about sandworms?’

  Wanda winced and turned pale (for her). ‘Who could forget it after what happened to poor Paul and Alia Atreides?’

  Chip nodded grimly, and put his arm around Wanda. He was really getting the hang of this platonic best friend thing.

  We took our seats in English class and Mr. Fallacy handed round copies of our new set text. It was some dumb play called Romeo and Juliet, about a bunch of olden-days people in Venusia, Italy, of all places, as if something like that could have any relevance to my life.

  I sighed in anticipation of yet another disappointing lesson. When was I going to learn something I could use at this crummy Academy? Mr. Fallacy started to read the so-called play, but I didn’t pay much attention. I mostly looked out the window towards the car lot, and doodled in my notebook. The other kids lapped up old Fallacy’s schtick, though; the boys in particular seemed to be taking heaps of notes, and I caught quite a lot of them glancing over at me with weird looks on their faces, as if they’d just had some amazing idea. Jeezly-crow, fellas, I’m trying to draw a picture of Teddy Kelledy’s naked rippling warrior torso here. I’d never get his mighty weapon right if they kept distracting me.

  When the bell rang, I quickly shoved my notebook and the stupid play into my bag and headed for the corridor. Justin Case was hanging around by the door, and I groaned inwardly as he started to follow me down the hall. Here we go.

  ‘Hey, Heffa, er, I was thinking, I was checking you out in class—’ He was looking down at a sheet of notepaper. I decided to hear him out. ‘And you’re pretty sweet, y’know, like a rose? Except you aren’t a rose, you’re Heffa Lump, but that doesn’t matter, you’re still sweet, like a rose. But, different, you follow me?’

  What was with this rose nonsense, did he think I was pretty or not? I had no time for guys who played games; best to let him know that right now. I lashed out tenderly, scratching my nails down his cheek. ‘Justin, all I know about roses is that beneath their pretty heads they have thorns, so you’d better back off before you get a thorn right in your eye, understand?’

  He looked surprised and clutched his hand to his face. As a drop of blood oozed out from between his fingers, he stammered, ‘Well, okay then, Heffa. I guess I’ll see you later on.’

  I waved him a cheery goodbye and headed for Gym.

  Today, we were to play tennis, a game I had adored since I was a little girl. There was something about all the manly lunging that just appealed to me, and the white uniforms totally matched my milky-white skin. Unfortunately, the gym strips at the Spatula Academy of Fictional Excellence were a ghastly combination of orange and green, but in my head I was clad all in white and trotting out onto Centre Court at Wimbledon.

  We were lucky enough to have a visiting professional, Guy Haines, as our tennis coach this semester. Mr. Haines paired me up with Kristina for a doubles match against a couple of the nameless students.

  The game be
gan, and I was pleased with the powerful and confident way I was hitting the ball – there was not a trace of the clumsiness that occasionally stymied my pursuit of athletic success. I could see that Mr. Haines had covered his face with his hands approvingly; he obviously didn’t want to look at anyone else play after seeing my skills. I did think our opponents were being a bit unsporting, though: every time I returned the ball, they were shouting things to distract me, like ‘Oh God, my nose,’ or ‘Mind the umpire!’ or ‘What the effing crap, Heffa, I want to have kids one day, you know!’

  I was about to complain to Mr. Haines about their behavior when the match was forced to a premature and bloody conclusion. I’d returned service with a brilliant overhead stroke, but as I followed through, my racquet slipped out of my hand and smashed into the floor. It all happened so fast! I heard the sound of splintering wood, and glimpsed the shattered remains ricochet off in several directions. After a second, I laughed – how typical of me to manage to break a solid wooden tennis racquet, what a butterfingers.

  My classmates had stopped playing, but weren’t laughing, or even looking at me, actually, despite my demonstration of endearing klutziness. Instead, they were staring at Kristina, who had slumped to the ground with a long and jagged shard of my racquet sticking out of her chest. Her clothes were rapidly turning red as the blood oozed out from what looked like a pretty serious injury.

  The other kids seemed paralyzed with horror, but this sort of thing had happened all the time at my previous school, so I felt qualified to take charge of the situation. ‘Step back, everyone, don’t crowd her, give her some room to breathe. Just carry on with your tennis, she’ll stop gushing blood in a few minutes, one way or the other.’