Read Online What I Did by Christopher Wakling - Free Book Online

among other things my hair feels like a billion tiny spikes sticking into my head.
    Dad leans forward.
    He is feeling something huge, too. It has made his eyes all narrow and watery as they look at me very hard.
    He knows me.
    I can tell this because how else would he know precisely what to do to infect maximum damage on me now? He reaches out and slowly brushes his hand backward through my hair and although it may look like he means it nicely in fact his hand just jabbers the billion spikes.
    It is also two things at once: lovely and agony.
    But before I have a chance to say either sorry or I hate you he’s gone up the rest of the stairs past me three at a time.
    His bedroom-office door shuts.
    Click.
    Â 
    Sometimes when I go to school I say I don’t want to go to school I don’t want to go to school I don’t want to go.
    And in a way I wish I didn’t say it, but it’s exactly the same as when you shut your eyes instead of letting a fly fly into them. You can’t stop them blinking and they can’t stop it happening either, they just see the fly coming and whap, they shut. The word for this is reflux. Fly, whap! reflux. They’re shut.
    Reflux is another instinct from the ancestors, like when salmons swim upstream to get back to where they came from. Or at least they try to incredibly. The journey is fought with difficulties. The salmons may know the way but they don’t know what might happen on the journey. Somebody else may have moved the river into a canal or put a dam in the way. Damn that dam. Damn isn’t a bad word but you can’t say it at school. Even if you get upstream to school, there might be a bear there fishing with its claws.
    Sometimes when I say, — I don’t want to go to school, Dad says, — And I don’t want to work today but hey, off we go, and he says it out of the side of his mouth like it’s all a very annoying joke.
    Or sometimes he sits down next to me and rubs my head like he did just then, and says, — Son, I understand but that’s just the way it is, we don’t have a choice here, you have to go. And the voice he uses then is more like we’re finishing up at the beach and everyone’s disappointed that we have to go home.
    But sometimes his voice will go all bright like the sun you mustn’t look at directly and he’ll say something like, — Well hold on now but they have splendid toys there and there’s so much to do and you love it when you’re playing with . . . all the toys, and all those friends, yes with all your friends, you just love it, I know. And for a little bit we both know that he can’t think of the name of anybody at school until he tries hard and carries on. — There’s Toby, he says, — and Simon, or Nick, which one is it, your other special friend there? You like playing with him, don’t you, I know you do. And his voice is so brightly colored it’s not nice: he’s like a chameleon stuck on orange in a green rain forest when he says that. Bad camouflage.
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    Mum comes out of the kitchen next. She sees me on the stairs and says, — Oh, I thought you were watching—
    â€” It stuck.
    â€” I see. Well, never mind. I’ll put it back on after you’ve had a chat with the lady, Sheila. She’s come especially to see you. You can watch the rest later. That’s a promise. Okay?
    â€” I want to watch the rest first.
    â€” Well, she says, — You can’t. Not just now. Once you’ve had your chat, okay?
    I do a small growl.
    â€” What’s the matter?
    I don’t really know so I don’t say anything. Mum takes my hand. Hers is cool like the other side of the pillow. Mum sits me on the sofa. She turns off the television with the mote control and squats in front of me.
    â€” So Sheila will ask you some questions, and it’s nothing to be worried about, you just have to answer them truthfully, okay?