Geekhood (10 page)

“Don’t want to go home smelling of fish,” one advises as I’m jostled between them.

In real time, the scrubbing is over in seconds and the squad of dinner monitors return to serving starving students. In Archie Time
^TM
, the ordeal lasts for hours, but as they move off in slow motion, I see before me Sarah, standing with her arm outstretched, clutching a paper napkin, concern etched into her beautiful face.

IM:
Heads up!

I twist my malformed features into something that might pass for a smile, feeling uglier than ever before, and take the napkin.

Sarah smiles. “You’ve got some on your head.”

IM:
Which one?

“Thanks,” I nod, and go at the prawn in my hair.

IM:
Salmon, actually.

“It’s a good look,” Sarah giggles. “It suits you.”

“Everyone’ll be wearing it by tomorrow,” I say with a tired smile.

Sarah blesses me with another laugh.

IM:
Way to go!

“You are funny, Archie.”

“Yeah. It’s a gift I’ve got.”

More giggles, before a girl in her class comes to whisk her away to do something more important. But, as she goes, she does something that relights the Fires of Hope in my stomach: she looks over her shoulder, smiles and does one of those waves that girls do where all their fingers waggle.

When Ron Weasley looked in the Mirror of Erised, he saw himself as Head Boy…

IM:
…
When you looked in it, it cracked.

OK, I know I’m no Orlando Bloom, but there must be something I can do to boost my chances.

IM:
Time to get thinking, Prawn Boy.

NINE

I’ve never asked to have a haircut before; usually I’ve just been told that it’s happening and have grumbled accordingly. But, pursued by the new found awareness of my physical shortcomings, I come to the conclusion on the walk home that, barring plastic surgery, I’ll just have to work with what I’ve got – which is hair.

The problem is that I’ve somehow got to plant the idea in Mum’s head that I need a haircut, without it looking like I want one because Sarah’s coming round on Friday. And that’s the other problem: Sarah’s coming round on Friday. Where am I going to find the time to squeeze in a cut in the next forty-eight hours? At least forty-seven of them are pretty much spoken for. There is a slight chance that if Mum thinks I need a trim badly enough, she might ring Jean, the lady who comes to the house to do her hair.

IM:
It’s a long shot, but it just might work…

I sneak into the house through the front door and head straight for the downstairs toilet. The mirror confirms all I need to know – my hair probably looked better with the Ocean Pie in it. A flash of inspiration and I’m wetting my hands under the taps and then running
them through my fringe, which starts to droop over my eyes. Perfect. I then sneak back out of the front door, to come back in with my customary cry.

“Hello-o!”

“We’re in the kitchen!” Mum’s voice comes back at me.

Great! “We’re” suggests that Tony is around. My shields go up and I can feel my IM whirring in anticipation, but I’m going to see this one through. I step into the kitchen; Mum’s got her back to me and Tony is sat reading at the kitchen table, beneath a small,
smoke-filled
cumulonimbus.

I try again. “Hello?”

“Cup of tea, love?”

“Yes, please…
pffft
,”– I blow at my fringe, as though it’s irritating me. “
Pffft
.”

With a tinkle of spoon against mug, Mum turns round, tea in hand. She stops and frowns.

“Is it raining?”

I groan inwardly; surely it’s obvious that my hair is bothering me? However, my EM is already up and running – I respond with well-practised confusion.

“No. Why?
Pffft
.”

The expression that Mum wears as she comes over to me is one that takes me back about seven years. It’s analytical and determined. Seven years ago it would
have been the precursor to having my cheek scrubbed with a handkerchief. This sense-memory is obviously stored in the Emergency Files of my EM and I instinctively flinch on her approach.

“Keep still…”

Mum runs her hand through my fringe with one hand and gives me my tea with the other. There’s multitasking for you.

“Archie, what’s this?” She sniffs her fingers. “You’re hair’s wet. And you smell of fish.”

IM:
Curse her powers of observation!

“Is it? Do I?” I affect a surprised exploration of my own head. “Oh, yeah. Accident with an Ocean Pie at lunch.”

IM:
…and the nomination for worst performance under pressure goes to…

Mum looks at me again, trying to work out what her halfwit son is up to. As if to confirm her suspicions, my EM guides me to take a sip of tea and grin gormlessly.

IM:
Genius.

Something like recognition flickers in Mum’s eyes and she chucks a quick glance at Tony, but he’s still engrossed in his book and cigarette. The flicker of recognition turns into something more playful.

“Take your jacket off, it needs a wash. Go and have a look in your room.”

It’s my turn to look quizzical.

“Go on.”

I trudge upstairs carrying my tea – half damning myself for the failure of Operation Haircut and half excited by whatever’s in my room. I open the door and there on the bed is a new pair of jeans, a cool shirt and a pair of trainers. I hold the jeans up – they’re skinny and black, just the way I like them. The shirt’s pretty good too. It’s short-sleeved with a faded red-check design. While it might have a whiff of
Glee
about it, I figure I can balance out its emo-appeal by wearing it over one of my old T-shirts.

The trainers are ones I’ve had my eye on for a while: proof that my mum does listen to me. Grey Converse. I try them on. Cool.

Mum’s trademark knock at the door announces her arrival. Her face is a portrait of nervous anticipation.

“Everything OK?”

“Thanks, Mum. It’s all great.”

“You checked your bedside table?”

In response, I turn away from her and pull open the drawer. There, resting inside, is a small bottle of aftershave. I don’t know the label, but with an unconscious “cool!”, I open it and have a sniff.

IM:
Sarah will be powerless to resist…

“Thanks, Mum.” I give her a hug.

“That’s all right,” she giggles over my shoulder. “You need to thank Tony as well; the aftershave was his idea.”

For a fleeting second, I feel strangely betrayed that Tony and Mum have been discussing my love life. But then I realize that there’s not actually any love life to discuss, so I swallow my pride and get on with it.

“Sure. I’ll come down now.”

“Your hair’s fine, by the way,” Mum grins, ruffling my mop.

I look at her as though I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I suspect that even James Bond would have a hard time keeping a secret from my mum.

The cumulonimbus in the kitchen has been joined by a cirrostratus. Ordinarily, I’d perform a pointed cough on entry to such a haze, but the circumstances dictate a ceasefire in the anti-smoking campaign.

“Hey, Tony. Thanks for the aftershave.”

Tony unpeels himself from his book and rolls back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the crooked grin on my face from slipping.

IM:
Tosser.

“Not a problem, mate. Glad to help. You’ve got to make an effort when there’s a lady coming round.”

Fearing a Tourette’s-style outburst, I quickly override my EM’s autopilot settings and opt for manual control;
in those three sentences, Tony’s broken the Golden Rule of Non-Specific Conversation: You NEVER refer to the heart of the matter. I know he knows what all the clothes and aftershave are for and he knows I know that he knows what it’s for – but you NEVER refer to it. Mum knows the score; we’ve had our earlier discussions and she’s made her feelings on the matter clear, but after that point, she is honour-bound never to refer to the matter specifically. It’s like talking to someone who wears an obvious wig – you know they’re wearing it; they know you know they’re wearing it, but you are both
honour-bound
not to mention it. Much as I hate to liken Sarah to a hairpiece, Tony, Tosser-like, is effectively announcing my baldness to all and sundry. I decide to opt for diversionary tactics.

“Yeah, I guess so. I was wondering if I could borrow a few of your books for a couple of days?”

“Sure. What’re you looking for?”

“I’ve got a couple of bits of homework,” I lie easily. “I’ve got to research natural wonders of the world, classic authors from history and…” I do a mental scan on things that girls might like “…butterflies. Have you got anything in those departments?”

“Let’s go and have a look.” Tony heaves himself from his perch and puffs his way to his study.

Mum’s obviously been hard at work here because
most of his books are on the shelves. The one thing I will say for Tony is that his reading habits are wide and varied. His study is like a small version of what I imagine the British Library must be like and I briefly consider asking him whether I could hold the Game in here. The overflowing ashtrays and the general sense of disarray bring me to my senses. Despite his eagerness to avoid anything resembling hard work, Tony’s computer has been unpacked and assembled, ready to go. I know him well enough by now to understand that this is a no-touch item. Whatever dark secrets it harbours, I’ll never know about them; it’s his Holy Grail, his Jewel in the Crown and his Retreat from Family Life.

While Tony stretches and inspects, I make a brief appraisal: there are some shelves that make uncomfortable reading. Not because there’s anything untoward up there, but because they’re not dissimilar to my own. There are plenty of pulp sci-fi books, such as
The Stainless Steel Rat
series and some obscure titles that look as if they’re from the fifties or sixties. Dress it up how you want, it’s escapist nonsense.

IM:
Just like all the swords and sorcery that line your bookshelves.

The other thing is that there are loads of books here I’d love to own: huge, glossy photo-books of space, books about wildlife and even a few about UFOs.

IM:
Is Tony a secret Geek?

Or, more to the point, is this what happens to Geeks when they get older? Me and my mates – are we destined to become overweight Tossers with no real insight into the people around us, for ever making conversational blunders and surrounded by people we don’t really know how to talk to? I shudder at the thought and something like sympathy for my stepfather stirs in a long-forgotten part of my soul; are Tony and I more alike than I’m prepared to admit?

“Here you go, Arch, try these.”

Tony shoves a pile of weighty tomes into my arms and I give them a quick scan: there’s one on the Grand Canyon, a few classic novels – including
Nineteen Eighty-Four
and
Catch-22,
a David Attenborough book with some cool pictures of butterflies in and, right at the bottom, a small, dog-eared book about witchcraft in medieval England. I look up to see Tony grinning at me conspiratorially.

“She’ll like that one, mate. Maybe you can weave some magic of your own…”

IM:
Shut up, you idiot!

“Right.” I try and smile back, but the hot flush that’s spreading through my body corrupts the necessary file and I’m sure it looks like I’m gritting my teeth. Which I am. “Thanks.”

After tea, I take the books up to my Lair and arrange them on my shelves. While they do make my room look a bit more impressive, I can’t help but feel slightly tainted by Tony’s involvement in my plans. It’s like everyone knows what I’m up to – except me.

After rejigging my shelves to create a more worldly-wise aspect, I survey the rest of my Lair. It’s a mess. So I tidy it. Not one of those cursory tidy-ups that I occasionally undertake to appease my mum, and not like the tidy-up I was more or less blackmailed into when Tony was coming round to the house for the first time. No, this tidy-up is in earnest. Powered by the desire to make things Just Right, I pull clothes off the floor and hang them in my wardrobe, unpack the remaining boxes, hide annuals, old action figures and the damning evidence of a Next catalogue under my bed and surreptitiously dispense with certain CDs. This bedroom now belongs to a Dude.

Next up is to finish the work on Nox Noctis. With the base colours on, I give each section of the figure a colour-wash. This is much the same as the black wash, but I use deeper tones of each base colour. What you want is for the wash to run gently into the recesses of the model, leaving just enough pigment behind it to act
as shading. For the flesh, I mix a reddy-brown and a deeper purple for her clothing. While the wash dries, I turn my attentions to the Gargoyle. Having drybrushed him, I now give him a colour-wash to tone down the highlights. I mix a dark grey and drop in some ochre and green to give a weathered effect.

Ordinarily, I’d leave the witch for a few hours, but time is against me, so I go against everything I believe in and give her a once-over with the hairdryer. Next up, I decide to employ a self-developed highlighting technique I’ve christened “blobbing”. Blobbing involves creating a slightly thicker version of a wash, but in a colour lighter than your base colour. With one brush, you apply a blob of the watered-down pigment to the most raised areas of your figurine. Then, using a dry brush, you gently draw the edges of the blob across the surface, so that it blends with the shading. The result is that you get a gradation of colour from the deep shadows of your lowlight, blending into the base colour and then lightening into the highlight colour. If you get it right, it looks pretty good. However, because it involves a lot of watered-down paint, there is always the potential for the colour to run and screw everything up. It’s the Geek equivalent of white-water rafting.