“It’s nothing, Mom,” I muttered. I didn’t want her to worry.
“It’s not NOTHING!” Wills shouted, slamming his fist down on the table. “He thinks I’m a loony and he wishes I was dead.”
A shocked silence echoed around the room.
“I don’t,” I protested. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“You’ve got it all wrong if you think I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Wills shouted again.
“I’m not thinking anything,” I shouted back. “I just want to go and do my homework.”
“Stop it you two, stop it now!” cried Mom.
“Don’t blame me,” said Wills. “He started it.”
“Started what?” Mom demanded.
“Started writing nasty things about me, started wishing I was dead.”
“I don’t,” I protested again. “It’s just a story.”
“Yeah, about me,” sneered Wills. “Don’t deny it.”
I couldn’t deny it, but it wasn’t meant to do any harm. Wills wasn’t supposed to know anything about it.
“Makes me sound like an idiot,” Wills spat.
“That’s enough, Wills,” ordered Mom. “What is it, this story, Chris?”
“Just something I was writing for a competition. Nothing important.”
“He just wants to tell the whole world a load of lies about me, that’s all,” said Wills.
“I wasn’t going to send it in anyway,” I said.
“Where is the story?” Mom asked.
I looked at Wills and he stared back at me. “I’ve torn it up,” I said, holding his gaze.
“Best thing for it,” Wills pronounced.
“If he’s torn it up, what’s all the fuss about?” Mom looked genuinely puzzled.
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t write it in the first place,” Wills said. “Doesn’t mean he isn’t still thinking it. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want me to jump off a cliff.”
“I’ve had enough,” I almost shouted. “I’m going to do my homework.”
I tore out of the kitchen and up into my bedroom as fast as I could, slamming the bedroom door behind me. Wills was doing my head in going around and around in circles like that. I scrubbed the accusing letters from my mirror, then began to pick up the numberless pieces of paper, screwing them into a ball as I went in the hope of destroying their ability to blame me. Mom came in when I was halfway through. She sat on the bed and said that whatever I had written had really upset Wills.
“He’s always upsetting me,” I retorted. “Every minute of every day he upsets me. But that doesn’t matter because I’m supposed to be able to cope. Anyway, Wills is exaggerating everything as usual.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to write about,” Mom said quietly.
“It was the best thing for me,” I argued, “and Wills wasn’t supposed to see it.”
“Well, the damage is done now,” Mom sighed. “Look, I’m not blaming you, Chris, it’s just a pity Wills had to find it.”
“Then he should keep out of my room like I keep out of his,” I growled, and bit my tongue right away because I’d been digging up guilty secrets in Wills’s room as well.
Mom sat for a moment lost in thought, before asking me gently, “What was the competition anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I muttered.
Later on, I heard Wills go into his room. After a few moments, I got up from my bed and knocked on his door.
“Wills,” I said. No answer.
“Wills,” I tried again.
“Don’t want to speak to you.”
I opened the door and hovered in the doorway. “It’s just a story. I didn’t mean any harm by it. I’m sorry, all right?”
“It’s about me and how horrible it is living with me,” he snarled.
“You shouldn’t have gone into my room. You don’t like it if I go into your room,” I said, trying to be patient.
“There’s nothing to hide in my room,” he said smugly.
“Isn’t there? What about under your mattress?” I blurted out.
Wills went very silent. At last, without looking at me, he said, “You’ve been watching too many little-boy films.”
“There’s an envelope under your mattress and it’s got money in it, lots of it,” I hissed.
“Is there?” said Wills. “Golly, what I could do with some money.”
He jumped off the bed, lifted the mattress up as high as he could, and peered underneath.
“Like I said,” he grinned. “You’ve been watching too many films.”
“There was an envelope there and you know it,” I said savagely.
I didn’t wait for him to deny it. There was no point in arguing. The envelope was gone. No knife. No envelope. No story.
Chapter Fifteen
I started to get not-very-nice messages on my cell phone after that. Mostly it was rude names and stupid stuff like that. Those were from Wills. But there were others, more threatening, which came from numbers I didn’t recognize and which told me in graphic detail what would happen to me if I tried to get Wills into trouble. I know they were from Wills’s friends, and that he must have given them my number, but I couldn’t believe he knew what they were writing.
I wasn’t really scared, but you wouldn’t like it if your cell phone told you you had a message and you kept finding it was something you didn’t want to read, especially if you knew that the person who sent it was having a good laugh thinking about the effect it was having on you. I began to leave my phone switched off, and sometimes I didn’t even take it with me when I went out, because when one of those messages came it put me in a bad mood. That meant that I missed important messages, like when Jack wanted me to meet him at the scrap yard to help him practice soccer skills, because he had a chance of being soccer captain. And when Mom asked me to pick up some chicken for dinner because she had forgotten and didn’t have time, so we ended up eating potatoes and broccoli and carrots with scrambled egg. And when Dad sent me a “What did you think of football last night?” message and got all huffy, because he thought I was mad at him and hadn’t bothered to reply, which
