Read Online My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall) by Stuart David - Free Book Online

“I’m glad you’re starting to take things seriously. There’s not long now.”
    â€œYes,” I say. Just like the bampot. And this time I get it right. She can’t think of anything else to say.
    I take a few more chips, and she tells me that’s enough.
    â€œI thought Dad already made your dinner,” she says.
    â€œHe did,” I tell her. “But it wasn’t very good.”
    â€œWhat did he give you?”
    â€œCold pizza and boiled-up peas. I’ve got a blister on my tongue.”
    At that moment Dad wanders into the kitchen, looking quite pleased with himself.
    â€œI thought I told you to make Jack a proper dinner,” Mum says.
    â€œI did,” Dad replies.
    â€œWhat did you make him?”
    â€œPizza and peas.”
    â€œBut that’s not even a thing,” Mum tells him.
    â€œIt is now,” he chuckles, and goes over to the fridge to take out another beer.
    â€œBe serious,” Mum says. “You can’t just feed him rubbish, Andy. He’s growing. When I say make him a proper dinner, I mean make him a proper dinner.”
    â€œHere we go,” Dad says, and I slip out of the kitchen and head upstairs to my kid room, as the Regular Madness gets going all over again.
    I lie on my bed and listen to it for a while, quite enjoying the normality. It seems preferable to living in a house where it wouldn’t be unusual for me to paint both of them in the nude. I listen until they get onto the topic of my job prospects again, then filter it out and start thinking about Operation Yatesy’s Stand-In.
    I lied when I told Yatesy I had a few possible randoms lined up to take the blame for him. I didn’t want to give him any reason to believe it was going to be easy for me. I want to have him thinking that it’s going to take everything I’ve got, just to make sure he thinks it’s a fair trade. Over the next few days, I might even make up some stories to tell him about how hard it’s turning out to be. But the thing is, in reality, I know exactly who I’m going to ask. It’s all under control.

9
    All the time I had spent looking at Drew’s and Yatesy’s profiles earlier in the evening gave me a little mini-idea later on, once the Regular Madness had settled down and I was getting ready to put myself into hibernation mode. It occurred to me that if I could deal with Elsie Green online, especially when it came to working on Objective-C, I might be able to avoid her altogether in the real world and narrowly escape ending up in an insane asylum. So I got out of bed again and searched about for her crazy profile, then zoomed off a friend request. Elsie wasn’t anything like Drew, though. I checked for the red sign a few times before I fell asleep, and I checked it once or twice before I went to school in the morning, I even kept an eye out using my phone in between lessons, but each time there was nothing. I didn’t see her anywhere at school, either, and the longer it all went on the more my mind began to play tricks on me. I started to imagine that she’d found out about Drew being Yatesy’s sister’s boyfriend and she’d done something drastic. Swallowed one of those lover’s draughts I’m always hearing about in English or something. It seemed like the typical thing to happen just when I had everything sweetly lined up and ready to go. The perfect way for my big idea to go up in smoke.
    The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized I was probably just winding myself up. And I decided she probably just had a cold or something.
    But guess who I did see! Or rather, guess who saw me. I was making my way from geography to English, just getting ready to send a text to my potential stand-in for Yatesy, when somebody tapped me on the shoulder and nearly knocked the phone out of my hands. I turned round completely off guard, and Drew Thornton was standing there.
    â€œHi,