CHAPTER 9:
Surly Proposes an Alliance
‘She loves me… she loves me not. She loves me… she loves me not.’ Tucker sat out the front of C block at interval, pulling petals off a daisy he’d pulled from the grass in front.
‘What the hell are you doing, Tucker?’ Joseph Ashley, a sinewy Maori youth sat down beside him, along with Colin Hewes.
Colin snickered. ‘Sheesh Tucker, that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re ten years old. No wonder they threatened to make you repeat Year 11. No redundancy pay for you.
‘…she loves me… she loves me not… she loves me…’ He came to the final petal. ‘She… Will you guys shut up, I’m trying to concentrate. There’s an art to doing this, and you have to do it carefully if you want to done right. Pull the petals the wrong way and it gives you the wrong result…’ He plucked off the final petal. ‘She loves me! UBBA! She loves me, guys!’
‘Who Myrtle the Turtle?’ asked Joseph. ‘We already know that.’
‘Yeah, Tucker. No need to fantasize about it.’
Tucker glared up at them with contempt. ‘Not Myrtle the Turtle!’
‘But wait a minute. You were up to she loves me not. So, she doesn’t love you at all, whoever she is.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, you were!’ growled Joseph.
‘I was not! It was up to she loves me!’
‘Don’t bullshit us, Tucker, we all heard it,’ Colin sniggered.
‘Well it doesn’t matter! You guys broke the rhythm anyway, so that messed it up. I’m gonna have to start another one.’ He reached for another daisy sitting in a pile on the bench next to him. Six plucked stems lay in a separate pile next to them. ‘Best out of seven. Guys, this is it. I met the girl of my dreams this morning, and fate says we’re going to be together.’
‘Don’t you mean fat, Bro?’ Joseph chuckled.
‘Yeah.’ Colin smirked. ‘And it’s the fat inside your head that really messes with reality.’
Tucker’s two associates continued to laugh.
‘So, who is it this time, Tucks?’ Joseph asked. Everyone referred to him as Ash. He was a rugged, slim Maori, who took no nonsense. Tucker had come to rely on him a great deal to keep the bullies off his back. He, along with Colin – or Hew as they preferred to call him had been firm friends of his for almost a year now. Almost nobody dared mess with them.
‘Her name’s Vanessa.’ Tucker released a lovesick sigh. ‘I think she’s been sent by God himself to be my future wife.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t conjure this babe up in your dreams?’ Hew asked.
‘Babe? Babe?’ Tucker glared at the slightly overweight but burly teen. ‘She is no mere babe, you ubbhead. She is so much more than that. You’re not even worthy to stand in her shadow. She is a goddess amongst goddesses.’
‘Yep.’ Hew chuckled, pushing his untidy brown hair back over his ears. ‘He dreamt her up.’
A smirk appeared on Ash’s large lips. ‘I could have told you that, Bro. What happened Tucker? Did you get much sleep last night? You fell asleep as soon as you got to school this morning?’
‘Go on, keep on mocking me!’
Hew’s hazel eyes gleamed. ‘We fully intend to, we don’t need an invitation.’
‘So, this so-called goddess,’ Ash said. ‘I take it you’ve already scored a date with her then?’
‘Of course!’ Tucker declared, ‘She jumped at the chance to go out with me. We’re off to the movies this Friday night.’
‘Ah, the great movie theatre of Tucker’s mind.’ Hew winked at Ash.
Ash snickered. ‘Now why the hell would a goddess amongst goddesses want to go out with an egg like you?’
‘Urrrrrrrbbarrrrrrr! Watch it, Ash!’ Tucker glared at him in frustration. It was typical of his friends not taking him seriously. ‘You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face when you see her, just you wait and see.’
‘So, where is she then, huh?’ Ash scanned the area. ‘Is she over there?’ He turned his head in the opposite direction. ‘Or over there maybe? Oh wait, maybe she’s up in the sky.’ He gazed upwards. ‘Helloooooo… Tucker’s imaginary girlfriend. Where arrrrrrre you?’
‘Wrong direction.’ Hew’s stomach wobbled a little as he laughed. ‘Any girl who would go out with Tucker must come from down below.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Ash laughed. ‘Tucker, I think you got your facts mixed up. She’s no goddess, she’s something from the pits of hell.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Tucker said in a challenging tone of voice as he noticed the object of his infatuation coming their way.
‘Oh yeah!’ assured Ash.
‘Well then look who’s coming this way now.’ His eyes rolled to the left and his two pals, turned to look. When they saw what was walking towards them, their jaws dropped. The gorgeous figure of Vanessa sauntered across. ‘Hey, Vanessa!’ Tucker called out, before she could pass by.
Vanessa stopped and turned her eyes to him. ‘Oh, hi… Vince McMahon, right?’
‘That’s me! Great to see you again, Nessa.’
‘Bye, Tucker.’ She continued to walk.
‘I’ll see you later!’
‘Not if I see you first,’ she called back in a pleasant voice. In seconds, she had gone from sight.
Tucker smiled broadly and turned toward his two pals. He felt very pleased to see the expressions on their faces. They were still staring, with their mouths agape at the corner of the building Vanessa had disappeared. ‘So,’ he said. ‘What do you think? Is she a goddess or what?’
‘Wh… who was that?’ Hew stammered.
‘That’s Vanessa. My gal.’
‘Uh uh.’ Ash shook his head. ‘There’s no way she’s your girl.’
‘I told you she was real, didn’t I?’ Tucker smirked. ‘And you ubbheads didn’t believe me. She even knew my name, so how about that? Huh? Huh?’
‘She called you Vince McMahon to begin with,’ scoffed Hew. ‘If you did get a date with her, and that’s a really huge, gigantic, jurassic sized if, then you must have fed her a load of crap.’
Tucker delivered his friends a smug smile. ‘Oh, ye of little faith. You have no idea of the true powers of a Pyles. You have only just begun to see my skills in action.’
‘That’s just it.’ Ash smirked. ‘We’ve seen no skills in action, bro. In fact, it seemed to me, she had no interest in you at all.’
‘But man. Tucker was right. She sure is a goddess.’ Hew shook his head in disbelief.
‘That’s true,’ Ash agreed. ‘Wow, she is really something.’
‘And she’s all mine, boys,’ Tucker assured them.
Before his friends could argue further, someone else arrived on the scene, this time a male. Tucker wasn’t very impressed to see Luke Shirley, someone he wasn’t much of a fan of. But then again, Luke didn’t much like him either.
‘Surly.’ Tucker felt bold, with his two beefy pals with him. ‘What the hell do you want, ubbhead?’
He expected to get some sharp words from Surly, but his reply was quite friendly. ‘Hey Tucker. I wanna talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I need your help.’
‘Why would I want to help you?’
‘Because we could both benefit from a temporary alliance.’
‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘I’m serious,’ assured Surly. ‘We both want the same thing, dude.’
Tucker’s face darkened. ‘Hey, she’s my girl, let’s get that straight right now!’
‘Who?’
‘Vanessa.’
‘What? The new girl?’
‘Yes!’
Surly snorted and tried to hold back a laugh, but couldn’t. ‘Ok, ok.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m not talking about her. There’s something else we both want and that’s to rid this school of Rex Cassidy. Am I right about that?’
Ash and Hew’s eyebrows rose. Tucker stared at Surly, taking him very seriously now. ‘Get rid of Cassidy? How?’
‘Well th
at’s what we need to discuss. I have some ideas, but I need some help. You hate Cassidy probably more than anyone else in this school. So how about it? Are you in?’
‘I…’ Tucker wasn’t quite sure what to say. If Luke had approached him six months ago, he would have jumped at the chance to teach Rex a lesson, but he had very little trouble with Rex in the last few months of the previous year. In fact, Rex had actually been ok to him. He had let him come on that rafting trip down the Mokau River with his friends. He had even come to visit him, when he wallowed in a jail cell for two days, when Tucker was accused of killing Mr Upton Rex believed he was innocent. If it wasn’t for Rex, he might have been there longer.
‘Come on!’ Luke glared. ‘I’ve heard all about the stuff he’s done to you. You’ve told me in the past how much you hate him.’
‘I do!’ Tucker scowled. ‘He’s humiliated me so much.’ He thought back to earlier that day, when the junior Shawn Michaels reminded him of those past atrocities of Rex’s. Then he remembered the conversation between his fellow workmates at the gym. They said Rex had got him that job. Tucker wanted to think he had been doing him a favour, but the more he thought about it over the last day or so, the more humiliated he felt about it. It took Rex to get him that job. His mortal enemy, his nemesis, his Lex Luther. Had it all been some sick plan to humiliate him further? And then there was Glorious Gloria the police officer, who never seemed to want Tucker around, but yet, she was always talking to Rex when he was at the gym. It wasn’t fair.
He felt his blood boiling just thinking about it. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m in.’
Ash and Hew reeled.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ Ash asked. ‘Rex let you come on that rafting trip of his and you want to get back at him?’
‘He just took me along so his friends could poke fun at me,’ Tucker growled, thinking it could have been the only possible reason.
‘He got you out of jail!’ Hew added. ‘He found out who the real murderer was and got you off!’
‘The cops would have found that out themselves. He only helped me out so that I’d be back at school so he could start humiliating me again.’
‘But he hasn’t, you egg,’ said Ash.
‘The year’s only just begun. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘Tucker,’ Hew said. ‘Last year, after you got accused of killing Mr Upton, you changed. You quit being a jerk and behaved yourself. You stayed out of trouble. You stopped bullying others. Rex never bothered you once.’
‘For one month!’ Tucker sneered. ‘He gave me a break for one month. I gaurantee you, he’ll be on my case again now.’
‘Yeah, especially if you’re going to bully juniors again.’ Ash scowled.
‘I want to be the top dog in this school again and the only way I’m gonna be able to do that is to get rid of Cassidy.’ He turned his eyes back to Luke. ‘Ok, Shirly. What do you have in mind?’