Tom Mitchell - How to Rob a Bank

I told him I was off to see a girl. That shut him up.

‘Good for you,’ said Mum, who was at the dining table, holding a dog-eared magazine in one hand and a chipped wine glass in the other.

‘Yes,’ said Dad, waving a hand to silence Mum. ‘Live a little.’

Dad was being ironic. It was something else he did – watching films and being ironic. That was Dad. Also – snoring.

I went to my room, closed the door, and ignored the smell of sweat that rose like shimmering heat waves from my stained duvet. I fell to my knees and ran my hands underneath the bed. My fingers passed over crisp packets and sticky patches that I’d worry about later. Finally I found the package I’d been searching for. It had been hiding here since Monday when Brian, our seven-foot-tall German postman, had stood at our front door and had said:

‘Parcel for you. Ist party time?’

And he’d smiled a smile so bright that to look directly into his mouth would blind you.

TBH, I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced a Nepalese scented candle would impress my friend Beth. But I’d cornered myself when Harry, a drippy guy in the year below, had asked what I’d got Beth for her birthday.

Beth lets Harry follow her around because their mums are members of the same yoga club or something. He thinks they’re best friends but they’re so not.

I didn’t even know she had a birthday. I mean, I know everyone has a birthday but …

‘I’m a teenager,’ I said. ‘I don’t buy friends birthday presents. I don’t even write on their Facebook walls.’

‘I bought her a necklace,’ said Harry. ‘It’s silver.’

Round Beth’s neck was this pretty thing with tiny dolphins that I’d not noticed until now.

‘Honestly,’ said Beth, ‘I don’t care about presents.’

I confess: I panicked.

‘A Nepalese scented candle,’ I said. ‘That’s what I got you.’

And I said this because only the day before, Dad had watched me order Mum a Nepalese scented candle on the internet. It was her birthday soon and he thought it would be good for me to get her something that smelt nice.

‘A Nepalese scented candle?’ Beth said on the swings in the rec, swinging as only teenage girls can swing. ‘That sounds cool.’

‘It sounds lame,’ said Harry.

I didn’t take any notice of Harry because he said everything was lame.

So, days later, in my room, kneeling at my bed like I was praying to the god of smelly things you buy the women in your life, I thought, Yeah, Dad, I will take a risk. I’ll give Beth a Nepalese scented candle.

Beth lived in a home built by her angry builder dad to resemble a miniature version of the White House and she looked exactly like Emma Stone. Like exactly. Like getting stopped in the street by old men exactly like Emma Stone. Google Emma Stone. That’s what Beth looked like. Really.

Even though her home was a baby version of the White House, it was actually massive compared to everyone else’s and especially mine. It even had its own cinema room, although the screen had yet to be installed. Her mum used the space to hang washing and it smelt of damp and regret.

I’d not told Dad about the cinema room. It might send him into a spiral of depression, whatever that means.

Forty minutes after retrieving the package, I was sitting on Beth’s bed and telling her to shut the door. If I acted assertively, I might forget I was in a girl’s bedroom and all the associated confusing feelings like wanting to run but also to stay here forever. The curtains were still drawn from the night, but this was good. I nodded at the poster of Andrew Garfield. He was looking at a horse. I wondered how it would feel to fall asleep looking at Andrew Garfield looking at a horse. I wouldn’t like it.

‘I’d have tidied if I’d known you were coming,’ she said, kicking clothes out of the way. I think I saw knickers.

Before anything, I asked, ‘Where’s Harry?’

‘Coming,’ she said. ‘You know … he’s either here or … he’s coming here.’

I pulled the package out of my jeans. The padded envelope was bent and twisted. Lionel Messi looked down from alongside Andrew Garfield and I couldn’t help thinking he stared at me as if I were an idiot. Still, he wasn’t as good as he used to be.

‘Happy birthday,’ I said.

Beth joined me. The mattress sighed. I could feel her body radiating warmth. I handed over the package.

‘Nice wrapping,’ she said, studying the battered envelope.

She pulled the top off. Inside were strips of newspaper. She shook these out.

(What if there was nothing else inside and I ended up looking like an idiot? Again.)

The candle plopped to the floor like a calf from a cow. It was squat and circular like a stack of digestive biscuits. There was a shiny metal rim round the soapy-looking wax. In the centre, a black wick drooped.

‘Thanks,’ said Beth, her Emma Stone lips forming a smile.

Was it an impressed smile or a laughing-at-Dylan smile?

‘A candle,’ I said, picking it up.

‘Nepalese scented?’ she replied. ‘You know, Mum sometimes runs a bath and lights these when she’s had enough of Dad.’

‘They’re supposed to be therapeutic,’ I said, guessing.

‘You saying I’m stressed?’

‘We’re all stressed,’ I said in a quiet voice.

I hoped she couldn’t see my tell-tale heart quaking beneath the Crystal Palace replica shirt.

‘Let’s light it!’ she said, bouncing up from the bed.

She crossed to her desk and pulled open the top drawer. There was a rush of pens and paper. Finally she found what she’d been looking for – a lighter. Did she smoke? She didn’t smoke. She was Beth.

The lighter, cheap and plastic, turned cartwheels as it flew through the air and hit me squarely on the forehead. Beth laughed. I rubbed my head and asked if we were lighting it.

‘Why not?’

‘Your mum?’

‘What about my mum?’

‘She might think, you know, that we’ve been smoking or something?’

Now it wasn’t only Messi who looked at me as if I were an idiot. I held the lighter and inspected the candle. What if it smelt horrible? What if the scent had hallucinogenic properties and made us go crazy? People jump out of windows and all sorts.

I took the candle to Beth’s desk and pushed away a pile of revision workbooks to make space. I flicked the lighter. It didn’t catch. I flicked again. An orange flame erupted. I held it to the wick. It caught. A smell blossomed. A combination of wet dog and herbs.

I coughed, my shoulders jumping. The scent of the Nepalese scented candle was a real throat-tickler.

And, at this point, the heavy feet of Beth’s mum began pounding towards us from the corridor.

‘Mum!’ hissed Beth. ‘It stinks! Put it out! Get rid of it! It’s not Nepalese!’

Now coughing too, she forced her back against the door and pointed desperately to the wastebin overflowing with Coke cans and crisps that sat under the window.

I licked my fingers and pinched at the flame. I felt needle-sharp pain and, despite myself, let out a tiny yelp.

Beth’s eyes almost exploded from their sockets.

I grabbed the still-smoking candle and threw it at the bin. Such was the horror of monster mother’s footsteps getting louder, I didn’t register the amazing shot. Bull’s-eye. Next to go was the lighter. This hit the brim of the bin and fell behind, unseen. By now Beth’s mum was knocking at the door. I yanked open the window and flapped my hands while scanning the room for deodorant to spray to cover the stink.