“You’ve been teaching us to fight and kill, Dad,” said Wills.
“We’re not animals,” said Dad. “We don’t need to kill to survive.”
“Only if we hate someone,” sniggered Wills.
Dad smacked him lightly on the head.
“What about in war, Dad?” I asked. “We kill people then to survive.”
“War should only be a last resort, if everything else has failed,” said Dad.
“I’d like to be in the army,” said Wills. “It’d be cool shooting at the enemy—POW, POW, POW, GOT YOU, YOU’RE DEAD.”
“Unless they shoot you first,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t like it.”
“I think you’ve been playing too many video games,” Dad said to Wills. “War is never ‘cool,’ as you put it.”
“I want to play a game now.” Wills jumped up. “Where’s the computer, Dad?”
Dad looked uncomfortable for a moment, then barked, “No computer, I’m afraid. Can’t afford another one.”
“But what are we supposed to do all the time we’re here?” Wills was beginning to blow again.
“The same sort of thing as I used to do when I was your age,” Dad replied shortly. “Your mom’s given me some books, and I’ve bought some board games and jigsaw puzzles.”
“Boring, boring, boring.” Wills thumped the arm of the couch as he said it.
I thought Dad must have fallen off his rocker if he believed that Wills would read a book or settle down quietly to do a jigsaw puzzle, just because we were in his house.
“And tomorrow I thought I’d take you to play basketball at the community center.”
That stopped Wills in his tracks, and me too, if I’m honest. Dad had never done anything like that with us when he was living at home. Mom’s home. He felt he was doing his bit by kicking a ball around in the yard on the weekend, and coming to watch me play in a game on the odd occasion when I was picked. Wills is never picked for any of the school teams because he’s too excitable and unreliable, even though he’s a far better sportsman than me, and would be amazingly good if only he could concentrate and make an effort and control himself. Dad says I’m a hard worker and that’s why I get picked, even if I’m not the most skillful. I feel sorry for Wills when it comes to sports, because he gets really frustrated with himself and wishes he didn’t have Acts Dumb and Dumber.
Anyway, he leapt around the room like an overgrown lamb when he heard what Dad said, which meant that he fell on top of us again because the room was so tiny. He made Dad promise that we would go, and Dad said he would only promise if Wills promised to behave himself that evening. Wills promised, scout’s honor and all that. Dad and I both knew that it wasn’t within his power to keep the promise, but it did reduce the hurricane to a gale-force wind and even, for a while, to a gentle bluster.
I didn’t get much sleep that night. Everything was strange: the room, the bed, the thumps and creaks from the apartment above, the random noises from outside. The random noises from inside, the worst of which was Wills snoring alongside me like a hippopotamus. At four o’clock, he woke up and fell across my bed on the way to the toilet, then came back to tell me, with great hoots of laughter. He then went to raid the kitchen and came back with a packet of cookies.
“Hungry, bro?” he asked, hurling two cookies at me, both of them hitting my head. “You’re supposed to dodge them,” he sniggered.
“Funny ha ha,” I hissed. “Go back to sleep.”
“Can’t,” said Wills. “What do you think of this place, then?”
“Bit small, but it’s all right,” I yawned.
“Bit small!” he scoffed, blowing crumbs over my bed. “This room’s like a matchbox.”
“Dad can’t afford anything bigger.” I turned my back on him, hoping that he would get the message that I didn’t want to talk.
“He should have stayed at home, then, shouldn’t he?” Wills persisted. “It’s because of him we’ve got to sleep in a matchbox and listen to people at it all night long.”
“If you were asleep, it wouldn’t matter. Anyway, Dad says that’s the central heating we can hear.”
“I’ve never heard it called that before,” Wills sniggered again.
I turned back around. “Look, Wills, Dad’s doing what he thinks is best, even if we don’t like it, and at least he’s trying to make things right or he wouldn’t be taking us to basketball tomorrow.”
“Bet I’ll be better than you,” bragged Wills.
He began to leap around the room and threw a cookie into the lampshade. “What a shot,” he cried. “And another, and another.”
“What in the world is going on? It’s the middle of the night.”
Dad was at the door, bowling-pin belly hanging over his pajama trousers, hair sticking out sideways, sounding angry but looking like a circus clown.
“Sorry, Dad,” said Wills. “We couldn’t sleep, could we Chris? We’re all excited about basketball.”
“There won’t be any basketball if I hear another peep. God knows what the neighbors must be thinking.”
“But—” Wills began.
“Shut up,” I snapped at him. “Just go to sleep.”
The hippopotamus came back soon afterward, but at least it stayed under the covers.
Chapter Five
When we signed in for the basketball session the following morning, the man in charge, Mr. Columbine—”call me Clingon”—looked at Wills and said, to Dad, “Is this one under fourteen? The under-eighteens train at a different time.”
Dad confirmed that Wills was only thirteen. Clingon whistled and said, “Well, we can certainly use him up front.”
He looked at me then, and I could see that he thought I would be useless. I nudged Dad and whispered, “Can’t I just watch?”
“Get on with you,” Dad whispered back. “You’ll be all right. The exercise will do you good.”
“I’m too small for basketball,” I argued. Everyone there was taller than me.
“You’ll grow soon,” said Dad, as
