Lifesaving for Beginners

mention it again.
    Instead, she says, ‘Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye . . .’ until the line – eventually – goes dead.

 
    I get into a fight with Damo at school. Miss Williams makes me go to Mr Pilkington’s office. She says it in a high, thin voice. Capital letters. MISTER-PILKINGTON’S-OFFICE. I pick up my bag and my library book, The Faceless Ones , which, in my opinion, is the best Skulduggery book so far. I got it from the library yesterday. I had to reserve it, of course. Three weeks it took. I’m on page seventy-two already.
    I walk towards the door. I don’t look at Miss Williams and I definitely don’t look at Damo, who has to sit at the desk right beside Miss Williams’s desk, which is bad but not as bad as being sent to Mr Pilkington’s office.
    Mr Pilkington is not there. His secretary, Denise, tells me to sit on one of the blue wooden chairs outside his office. When you see someone sitting on one of those chairs, you know they’re in for it. Denise is eating a chocolate éclair. She’s always eating chocolate éclairs. She says it’s because she has a baby in her belly and he loves chocolate, especially éclairs. She knows the baby is a boy because she saw a picture of him on the screen at the hospital. She looks over at me a few times before she offers me the rest of her éclair. I say, ‘No thank you,’ but she pushes it into my hand and if I don’t eat it, the chocolate will melt and the cream will squirt between my fingers.
    I say, ‘Thank you.’
    I eat it really quickly. You’re not supposed to be eating when you’re sitting on the blue wooden chairs. Or reading. Or anything fun. You just have to sit there and think about what you’ve done.
    I won’t say Damo started it. I’ll just say Damien and I had a disagreement. If I call Damo ‘Damo’ and say ‘Damo and me’, Mr Pilkington will make me do a hundred lines with the proper grammar. Anyway, I don’t mind saying Damien and I in Mr Pilkington’s office. There’s nobody else in there. Mr Pilkington breathes funny when he walks. As if he’s running. He has hairs growing out of his nose and his ears. He takes ages to get into the chair behind his desk and when he looks at me, he looks sad, like I was the one who started it. He looks like he might say that he’s disappointed in me. That’s what they say when they want you to cry. I sit up straight.
    I’m not going to cry.
    ‘Go on, then,’ he says, like we’re in the middle of a conversation. He holds his head in his hands and his eyes are nearly closed. He looks really bored, like Ant and Adrian do when Faith asks them if they’re going to all their classes and managing their money and eating things like vegetables and being careful.
    I say, ‘Damien and I had a disagreement.’
    Mr Pilkington says, ‘You chipped his front tooth.’ I know that. My knuckles hurt like mad. ‘And you gave him a nosebleed.’
    I say, ‘I didn’t mean to.’ Sometimes that works.
    ‘You said that last week. When you were caught fighting in the yard –’ he leafs through pages in the notebook on his desk ‘– with George Pullman. Last Wednesday, in fact. A week ago today.’
    That could be true. I might have said that. Adults remember stuff like that. Like what people said ages ago. Mr Pilkington sighs. I think he’d prefer if it were Damo in the office instead of me. He’s more used to having Damo in the office.
    Mr Pilkington says, ‘Anyway, I thought Damien Sullivan was your best friend?’
    I say, ‘He is.’
    Mr Pilkington says, ‘Well, that’s a funny way of treating your best friend.’
    I’m missing PE, which happens to be my favourite class of the week. I make sure and do all the exercises properly so my muscles will get bigger. It’s important to have big muscles when you’re a lifesaver. Especially in your arms so you can swim with one arm and lifesave with the other.
    Still, if Mr Pilkington keeps me here much longer, there’s a chance I’ll miss the class after PE. The one I have to go to on a Wednesday. You only have to go to the class if your mam and dad don’t live together anymore. Or if your granny dies. Lots of people go to the class but I’m the only one who goes on Wednesdays. I have to sit there and listen to Mrs Appleby. All her clothes are purple and she has a lisp. She says ‘thadneth’ and ‘loth’. She gives me two Jelly Babies when she’s finished. Like the doctor does when you’re a little kid.
    ‘Teacher’s pet’.