Darren Shan: Lord Loss

Double history on a Wednesday afternoon—total nightmare! A few minutes ago, I would have said I couldn’t imagine anything worse. But when there’s a knock at the door, and it opens, and I spot my mum outside, I realise—life can always get worse.

When a parent turns up at school, unexpected, it means one of two things. Either somebody close to you has been seriously injured or died, or you’re in trouble.

My immediate reaction—please don’t let anybody be dead! I think of Dad, Gret, uncles, aunts, cousins. It could be any of them. Alive and kicking this morning. Now stiff and cold, tongue sticking out, a slab of dead meat just waiting to be buried. I remember Gran’s funeral. The open coffin. Her shining flesh, having to kiss her forehead, the pain, the tears. Please don’t let anyone be dead! Please! Please! Please! Ple—

Then I see Mum’s face, white with rage, and I know she’s here to punish, not comfort.

I groan, roll my eyes and mutter under my breath, “Bring on the corpses!”

The head’s office. Me, Mum and Mr. Donnellan. Mum’s ranting and raving about cigarettes. I’ve been seen smoking behind the bike shed (the oldest cliché in the book!). She wants to know if the head’s aware of this, of what the pupils in his school are getting up to.

I feel a bit sorry for Mr. Donnellan. He has to sit there, looking like a schoolboy himself, shuffling his feet and saying he didn’t know this was going on and he’ll launch an investigation and put a quick end to it. Liar! Of course he knew. Every school has a smoking area. That’s life. Teachers don’t approve, but they turn a blind eye most of the time. Certain kids smoke—fact. Safer to have them smoking at school than sneaking off the grounds during breaks and at lunch.

Mum knows that too. She must! She was young once, like she’s always reminding me. Kids were no different in Mum’s time. If she stopped for a minute and thought back, she’d see what a bloody embarrassment she’s being, I wouldn’t mind her having a go at me at home, but you don’t march into school and start laying down the law in the headmaster’s office. She’s out of order—big time.

But it’s not like I can tell her, is it? I can’t pipe up with, “Oi! Mother! You’re disgracing us both, so shut yer trap!”

I smirk at the thought, and of course that’s when Mum pauses for the briefest of moments and catches me. “What are you grinning at?” she roars, and then she’s off again—I’m smoking myself into an early grave, the school’s responsible, what sort of a freak show is Mr. Donnellan running, la-di-la-di-la-di-bloody-la!

BAW ring!

Her rant at school’s nothing compared to the one I get at home. Screaming at the top of her lungs, blue bloody murder. She’s going to send me off to boarding school—no, military school! See how I like that, having to get up at dawn each morning and do a hundred press-ups before breakfast. How does that sound?

“Is breakfast a fry-up or some cereally, yoghurty crap?” is my response, and I know the second it’s out of my mouth that it’s the wrong thing to say. This isn’t the time for the famed Grubbs Grady brand of cutting-edge humour.

Cue the enraged Mum fireworks. Who do I think I am? Do I know how much they spend on me? What if I get kicked out of school? Then the clincher, the one mums all over the world love pulling out of the hat—“Just wait till your father gets home!”

Dad’s not as freaked out as Mum, but he’s not happy. He tells me how disappointed he is. They’ve warned me so many times about the dangers of smoking, how it destroys people’s lungs and gives them cancer.

“Smoking’s dumb,” he says. We’re in the kitchen (I haven’t been out of it since Mum dragged me home from school early, except to go to the toilet). “It’s disgusting, antisocial and lethal. Why do it, Grubbs? I thought you had more sense.”

I shrug wordlessly. What’s there to say? They’re being unfair. Of course smoking’s dumb. Of course it gives you cancer. Of course I shouldn’t be doing it. But my friends smoke. It’s cool. You get to hang out with cool people at lunch and talk about cool things. But only if you smoke. You can’t be in if you’re out. And they know that. Yet here they stand, acting all Gestapo, asking me to account for my actions.

“How long has he been smoking? That’s what I want to know!” Mum’s started referring to me in the third person since Dad arrived. I’m beneath direct mention.

“Yes,” Dad says. “How long, Grubbs?”

“I dunno.”

“Weeks? Months? Longer?”

“A few months maybe. But only a couple a day.”

“If he says a couple, he means at least five or six,” Mum snorts.

“No, I don’t!” I shout. “I mean a couple!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me!” Mum roars back.

“Easy,” Dad begins, but Mum goes on as if he isn’t there.

“Do you think it’s clever? Filling your lungs with rubbish, killing yourself? We didn’t bring you up to watch you give yourself cancer! We don’t need this, certainly not at this time, not when—”

“Enough!” Dad shouts, and we both jump. Dad almost never shouts. He usually gets very quiet when he’s angry. Now his face is red and he’s glaring—but at both of us, not just me.

Mum coughs, as if she’s embarrassed. She sits, brushes her hair back off her face and looks at me with wounded eyes. I hate when she pulls a face like this. It’s impossible to look at her straight or argue.

“I want you to stop, Grubbs,” Dad says, back in control now. “We’re not going to punish you—” Mum starts to object, but Dad silences her with a curt wave of his hand “—but I want your word that you’ll stop. I know it won’t be easy. I know your friends will give you a hard time. But this is important. Some things matter more than looking cool. Will you promise, Grubbs?” He pauses. “Of course, that’s if you’re able to quit…

“Of course I’m able,” I mutter. “I’m not addicted or anything.”

“Then will you? For your sake—not ours?”

I shrug, trying to act like it’s no big thing, like I was planning to stop anyway. “Sure, if you’re going to make that much of a fuss about it,” I yawn.

Dad smiles. Mum smiles. I smile.

Then Gret walks in the back door and she’s smiling too—but it’s an evil, big-sister-superior smile. “Have we sorted all our little problems out yet?” she asks, voice high and fake-innocent.

And I know instantly—Gret grassed me up to Mum! She found out I was smoking and she told. The cow!