This book won’t make you
feel better about yourself, it won’t explain the meaning of life, and it
certainly won’t help you ‘find’ yourself. If Mommy and Daddy don’t like it when
you read books with explicit language do one of the following right now:
Chuck the damn book
away.
Kindly request the
bookshop where you bought the book to exchange it for one of those
transform-your-life-into-something-precious-and-beautiful-in-ten-easy-steps-books.
If you nicked the book
from a bookshop, return it in the same fashion and instead nick one of those transform-your-life-into-something-precious-and-beautiful-in-ten-easy-steps-books.
You can tear out the
pages and use them to smoke a little something.
You can secretly read
the book in the loo where Mommy and Daddy will (hopefully) not disturb
you.
If you still have the
book in your hands, you probably want to continue reading it. Then, my bru, you’re
in for a hell of a ride, but be warned: this book is going to mess with your
mind and it may just leave you even more fucked-up than you already are.
press play to
begin . . .
Track
1: The things we won’t do for money
It was Friday night. I
sent an SMS to Kerbs:
2night, 12 bells. bring ur
tools. i’l open the hate.
‘Open the hate, what
hate?’ grunted Kerbs while slipping through the gate. The rain poured down and
shined on his jacket.
‘Hate?’
‘The SMS, dude’
‘The gate, Kerbs!’
‘You really should learn
how to fucking spell, Burns.’
‘Yeah, the day you find
a job.’
It had been a year now
since Kerbs finished school, and he was still unemployed. I always reckoned
that anyone who even considered giving him a job would be totally off their
rocker.
‘Yeah, right,’ said
Kerbs.
Back to business:
Everything was organised. I nicked three of my mom’s sleeping pills earlier
that night. One for the mutt. (He’d chowed down hard on that Vienna and by now
he was in doggy dreamland.) One for the old man. (He knocked back the whiskey
and should be hanging around alcoholic heaven roundabout now.) Last but not
least, one for my mom – in her coffee. I think she had already popped one by
herself as well, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. (She was probably so
wired that we would only see her later the following afternoon.) Kelly missed
the drug party. (She was with her boyfriend again.)
‘Come on, I’m getting
soaked,’ I said to Kerbs.
He walked up to my mom’s
brand new BMW in the driveway. ‘Is the alarm off?’
I pressed the button on
the remote. The car’s lights flashed and the doors jumped open, but we couldn’t
take the easy road. It would look too suspicious.
It was the perfect night
to put our plan into action: Mom forgot to park the car in the garage. She’d
intended going to the gym but it had probably slipped her mind. The rain also
helped; the neighbours would be sound asleep. And nobody
would show their faces to investigate strange noises.
Kerbs stood ready with a
brick in his hand. His gaze met mine. I nodded. With great force he hurled the
brick through the car’s passenger window. The glass shattered, shooting away
like stars and falling on the wet paving. Only then did he open the door.
‘Do you know what you’re
doing?’ I asked.
‘Sort of.’
He got into the car and
wedged a screwdriver between the Kenwood front loader CD player and the
dashboard. It wasn’t easy, but he didn’t take any shit. I could hear the
dashboard cracking. With the tip of the screwdriver lodged behind the CD
player, he pressed it forward. Hard! The mounting snapped. One forceful jerk
and the player popped from the dashboard like a new born baby from his mom’s
tummy. Hurriedly Kerbs cut the wires.
‘Don’t just stand there
watching me, you should check to make sure nobody’s coming,’ he said.
But I couldn’t help it;
one ought to learn how to do this kind of thing. You never know when you might
need the knowledge and skills. (Outcomes based education turning around to bite
the community in the ass.)
Kerbs started on the
speakers. After a while he said, ‘No, shit, I’m not going to hassle with this,
it’ll take a lifetime.’
‘Okay.’ I shrugged. ‘O
yeah, check out the cubby-hole. The sunglasses . . .’
Kerbs removed my mom’s
Police sunglasses and stuffed them in his pocket.
‘I also planted her cell
phone in there.My mom sometimes forgets it in the car. She’ll never know it was
me.’
It was a Nokia. Small
technological wonder: GPS system, WAP enabled (unlike its user) and it could
take photos, record sound, you name it. She uses it to phone people.
‘Okay, do you have
everything?’
‘Yes.’ Kerbs stuffed the
loot into a black gym bag.
‘Alright then, you have
to go now.’
‘See you later, bru.’
Kerbs gave me a pat on the back. ‘Open the gate.’
Again, he slipped
through the gate. The rain came down even harder now. I watched the raindrops
run down the BMW’s leather seats. So much for the new car smell.
Kerbs’ car pulled away
in the street. It backfired once, sounding like a gunshot.
I entered the house.
Everything was dark, but I knew the way to my room. Hey, I must have done it a
million times, after long, drunk nights on the street.
The sudden voice from
the living room startled me.
‘Chris.’
‘Dad?’ I asked when I
saw his silhouette moving against the curtains with the patio light on in the
background.
My heart started racing.
‘Why didn’t you tell us
you were going out?’
Two things he said
totally confused me.
Numba one: who were the ‘us’
he was referring to? Was it him and my mother? They haven’t been much of an ‘us’
for a long time now.
Numba two: did he really
think I went out? Did or didn’t he know?
What could he have
heard? What could he have seen?
Silently I rewound the
night’s events in my mind.
Noises: the click of the
opening gate; our voices in the driveway; the brick sending the car’s window to
hell; the cracking of the dashboard; the click of the gate opening up a second
time; Kerbs’ car backfiring.
See: fuck all from the
house – there were way too many plants. Except if he came out of the house. Kerbs was right, I shouldn’t have checked him out, I should have kept an eye
out for nosy onlookers.
Fast forward to where we
were last.
I realised that it was
one of those soapie moments where the silence lasts a lifetime and one of the
actors simply tilts his head to the side until it becomes time for an ad break.
Where was my ad break?
Okay, time to decide.
He didn’t know – ride
the wave.
‘I was only out for a
while. I didn’t think you would mind.’
Want to read more? Check
out the book at your local bookshop, or Amazon.
