Wee Rockets by Gerard Brennan Read Free Book Online Page A

the bathroom cabinet. She was supposed to take one a night but had given them up after finding out he'd been inviting friends back for the night while she lay in her bed, dead to the world. Another black mark against him. Something else to feel shit about. Inside the cabinet, three full blister-packs of eight tablets invited him to party. To just... slip away.
    In his bedroom, he sat on the unmade bed and fanned the little plastic packets like a short-changed poker player. Twenty-four little pills. He didn't know if it was a lethal dosage. Would it just make him sick? Would he sleep for a week and wake up to another kicking for scaring his ma? Was it overkill? Could he afford to leave one of the blister-packs to help his ma get through the week after finding him? What would he look like when she found him? Scary? Peaceful? Lying in a room full of dirty socks and empty Coke tins. Would she smell him first or his dirty socks?
    He'd heard that people who hanged themselves shit their pants before they died. Nobody had ever told him what an overdose did to your boxers. He wondered who wiped dead people's arses. The thought of his ma cleaning him up for his funeral freaked him out until he convinced himself that there were probably specially trained nurses at the mortuary for that sort of thing.
    He popped the first pill out of its little pod.
    The porn! He couldn't leave his dirty magazines under the mattress, waiting to be discovered. The glossy pages would cause a blockage if he tried to flush them down the bog. If he burned them he'd set off the smoke alarm. He could throw them out the window, but someone would find them and only remember the day they found a bag full of free dirt. Not the day Joe Philips...
    No, it wasn't a good time for it. He swallowed one of the pills to see what it was like, but put the others back where he'd found them. His ma would need more time to calm down before he ventured downstairs and begged for forgiveness. He climbed into his bed and lit a cigarette. Smoking calmed him a little. The simple act of inhaling and exhaling the warm, blue smoke, the nicotine fix, whatever; the coffin nail did its job. He waited for the sleeping pill to kick in and let his mind wander. As it often did, it found its way back to the Wee Rockets' first victim.
    Missus McCauley. The French teacher.
    Missus McCauley wasn't from France. She once confessed she'd never even been to a French speaking country. She was from Poleglass. When she was growing up, living that far up the Falls Road had been a mark of affluence. She'd inherited the family home and watched the area's infestation and damnation. Her street gradually lost its good reputation over time and this apparently caused her to wallow in bitterness. Most people subscribed to this theory. Joe thought the old fucker just enjoyed being a bitch. She'd been his form teacher in first year and always had something against him. One day she pushed the wrong buttons at the wrong time.
    "Joseph Philips. Do you have a note for yesterday's absence?"
    "No, Miss."
    "Missus."
    "No, Missus."
    "Why not?"
    "I forgot it, Miss."
    "It's Missus, Joseph. Wake up! How could you forget your note? Surely your mother knows you require one to account for every absence?"
    "She does, Miss... er, Missus."
    "So if your mother knows this, can I assume she was unaware of your absence?"
    "You can if you want."
    "What did you say?"
    "You can assume whatever you want, Missus."
    Liam Greene sniggered in the seat beside him. Joe sensed the rest of the class home in on the confrontation, suddenly snatched from their early morning daydreams. It fuelled his resolve to stick it to the old bitch.
    "I might remember to bring in the note tomorrow, if that's good enough for you, Missus McCauley."
    Some of the other boys laughed. McCauley's lips disappeared; her mouth became a one-inch slit. She looked at Joe as if he'd hopped up on his desk and dropped his drawers.
    "You're a smart-alecky wee boy, Joseph Philips.