Screw Loose

By Chris Wheat

A brilliant black comedy, Screw Loose casts a humorous absurdist lens on a group of ordinary 16-year-olds with ordinary problems—kind of As a motley group of teenagers try to navigate the school year, it becomes clear that everyone has problems and no one knows quite how to solve them. Chelsea talks to Barbies and fantasizes about ruling the world. Angelo can’t choose between his control-freak soccer club and his clean-freak girlfriend. Zeynep gets sent to live with the goats, Craig likes Matilda but Matilda prefers his dog, Joshua learns to love guinea pigs—and on it goes. This quirky, chaotic, laugh-out-loud novel is about first love and new love, and dolls and dogs and soccer and baklava, and a fantastic big, fun, crazy party at the end. It's the perfect book for people who never quite go about things the right way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen Unwin
• Release date: Jul 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781741764338

Book preview

First published in 2008

Copyright © Text, Chris Wheat 2008

Copyright © illustrations on ♣ and ♦, Heath McKenzie 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

ALLEN & UNWIN

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Wheat, Chris, 1949-

Screw loose / author, Chris Wheat.

ISBN 978 1 74175 495 7 (pbk.)

A823.3

Cover and text design by Bruno Herfst

Set in 10/14 pt Bohemia by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Photo by Kerensa Low and Raffaele Ammirati

Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Contents

NOT COCKIES STYLE

NUTBUSH

STICK YOUR TONGUE IN MY EAR

BAKLAVA ATTACK

HOW GAY IS ROWING?

CRUEL BUT DELICIOUS

FIFTY MILLION SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRLS

RATHER KEEN ON ELTON JOHN

A SILVER LINING

IS THIS ABOUT YOU? OR IS IT ABOUT ME

A BIT OF A PROBLEM AT BARBECUES

JUST LIKE THE PERSON SITTING NEXT TO YOU

PLAN B

FOR THE LADIES

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

SPEED DATING

START UP THE MIRROR BALL, BABE

HAVE BABIES WITH ME!

MYSTERIOUS GIRL

STR8 GUYS DON’T TIPTOE

FRUITLOOPS ATTRACT

EMO ATTACK

ARE YOU A LEMON?

HIS IMMACULATE HANDBALLING SKILLS

RULES FOR HARMONIOUS LIVING

ON THE STREETS

EIGHTY-TWO BEDROOMS

PORNO

NEARLY DOMESTICATED

A SIMPLE BUSINESS MATTER

I ♥ GUINEA PIGS

AN ETIQUETTE LESSON

SCREW LOOSE

TRÈS CHIC

OUR BODIES BETWEEN OUR KNEES

CALL IN A HANDWRITING EXPERT

GUINEA PIG COUNTER STRIKE

OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONES

THE FORTYFIVE CENTIMETRE RULE WAS BREACHED!

SHE CAR - SURFED

Start the day in an interesting way

MY TWO HUSBANDS

YOU ARE IN CANADA!

TRUTH OR DARE

SUBTLY, EVERY AEROPLANE IS DIFFERENT

A WHOLE LOT WEIRDER

STRETCHEDLIMO

ROCKERS AND ROLLERS

BIZARRO CHOICES

AN UTTER DUPER SUPER STAR

A GREAT MOMENT

AIR KISSES TO EVERYONE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NOT

COCKIES

STYLE

WHAT’S IT LIKE to be drafted into an Aflteam when you’re seventeen and then break your little finger in the first five minutes of your first match? To find your photo on the front page of the paper on Monday, holding up your broken finger, your girlfriend beside you hiding under your jumper?

Angelo re-read the caption: Schoolboy Angelo Tarano, impressive draft for the AFL’s newby team the Hobart Cockatoos, shows off his broken finger while girlfriend Candibelle Brown hides under his Cockies guernsey. Angelo is a Year 11 student at Vistaview Secondary College and one of this year’s most sought-after recruits.

He swore softly to himself. She’d called herself Candibelle Brown. As if. He was crazy about her.

His phone twinkled and he checked the screen. It was the assistant manager, Paul Vasilevski, ringing from Hobart.

‘Angelo! Paul here. Seen the newspaper?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re not too happy down here, old chum. Not too happy to see you on the front page without our permission. Who’s this Candibelle?’

‘Um, my girlfriend.’

‘I can read. What kind of a name is Candibelle Brown? She’s not a lap dancer, is she?’

He laughed. ‘No!’

‘What’s with the club-guernsey-over-the-head caper?’

‘She’s shy.’

‘Shy?’

Angelo paced his bedroom. He glanced at himself in the mirror, then his eyes returned to the picture spread out on his doona. At least he looked pretty good. If the Cockies thing went pear-shaped he could probably become a male model. He smiled at himself in the mirror, the way you do.

‘It’s bloody strange, isn’t it?’ Paul went on. ‘Club guernsey over the head? Makes you look like a bit of an idiot having a girlfriend who does that.’

‘I guess.’ He was starting to feel a bit irritated. This joker was way too pushy. And why wasn’t he asking about the finger?

‘It’s not Cockies style, Angelo.’

Still, he had to stay sweet with them. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, sounding a bit sarcastic without intending to.

‘You two a major item?’

‘Major. She’s fantastic.’

‘Well, the club isn’t happy, mate. This Candibelle doesn’t fit the image we’re trying to create for you – young schoolboy star. She’s right out of left field, Angelo. We want you young players to have girlfriends, but she’s not family-friendly, if you get my drift. And we like them normal, Angelo. That’s what life’s about. She looks as if she’s got kangaroos loose in the top paddock.’

He was angry now. You want to play Afl, you shut your trap and put up with them taking over your life, that’s what his dad and his nonno told him. But Vasilevski taking over his lovelife? No way! ‘She’s just shy!’

Paul changed his tone. ‘Okay buddy, back off … Next time there’s a photographer on the loose, just make sure you don’t let your girlfriend start this guernsey-over-the-head business again. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Paul hung up abruptly without saying goodbye. Angelo grunted, threw his phone on the bed, and was about to punch the wall when he remembered that good players use their heads not their emotions. This was the pressure they’d warned him about. The club was going to pay him heaps, and he owed them one hundred per cent loyalty, one hundred per cent of his time, one hundred per cent of his life.

Life was going to get tough – they’d all told him that – but one day he would be a Cocky icon, maybe an Aflicon. They were putting him in the New Drafts calendar: The Boys Come Out To Play. That was an honour. He thought of all the articles in his parents’ scrapbook: Tarano’s Stunning Debut; Cockies Snare Tarano in National Draft; Angelo’s Got the X-factor; Cocky Angelo Champs at the Bit. He’d become famous before he’d even played a game. And extra famous after yesterday’s little-finger-five-minutes-into-the-first-game effort. Kind of.

The phone twinkled again. It was Paul.

‘Angelo! Forgot to ask. You wearing your boxers at the moment?’

‘Yep!’

He wasn’t.

‘Good. We expect players to wear them at all times. We do surprise checks. If you’re going to be caught with your pants down, particularly in airport security, we want good publicity. And think about what I said with regards to Candibelle. If she’s got her claws into you, mate, the club could find you a new girlfriend, you know. We’ve got spares. You just have to register.’

‘No thanks, Paul.’ He was surprised how firm he sounded.

‘Well, think about it. And another thing – we’ve put you in the players’ review: Cinderella. You’re going to be Cinderella.’ He hung up.

Angelo threw the phone on the bed and it bounced against the wall. He began a bit of vicious shadow boxing. He’d love to bop Vasilevski, show him where to get off. He flopped onto the floor for a few push-ups. It was going to be hard flying down to Hobart regularly for training, hard obeying all their little rules, hard to even remember them, but he was starting to see that the hardest thing would be trying to explain his girlfriend to these people. He sighed.

Angelo had no trouble with Zeynep being a Muslim, and it wasn’t her fault that her parents were nuts. He didn’t even mind that she was obsessive-compulsive – hey, he was a bit phobic himself. But now that he was famous, things had changed. If only she was a bit more normal, it would be heaps easier. What if he wanted to take her to the Brownlow at the end of the year? Would she want to wear a headscarf or a veil so her parents didn’t recognise her on national TV? Would she start cleaning the toilets during an ad break? She was the only kid in the school who did voluntary yard duty, every day.

Perhaps he should go back to Georgia. Well, perhaps not. She was Zeynep’s best mate, after all. No, he’d stick with the one he really cared about. He was hooked on Zeynep: he thought about her all the time. Why? The eyes, the skin, the hair, the sweet little body, the voice. He was gone for her. Oh, man, no way would he give her up.

Chelsea Dean had told him life gets easier when you’re famous. Well, it hadn’t. Dump your girlfriend. Cinderella! What was that all about? Some sort of punishment? And his broken finger meant he’d probably miss seven games. This morning, life had got heaps harder. He decided to ring Joshua. Josh always had the answers – gay guys always did.

NUTBUSH

CHELSEA DEAN OPENED the front door to her parents’ substantial riverside residence and was assaulted by booming reception-centre music. Surely her mother wasn’t at home this early? She stood in the hall, her school bag suspended above the marble floor, and listened. The music vibrated through her whole body. Suddenly a man began shouting. It was not her father’s voice.

Her bag slapped to the marble as she stepped into the living room. There was her mother, a can of beer in one hand, doing the Nutbush! The man wore overalls and sported a greying ponytail. Her mother was dancing with a tradesperson.

As Chelsea stared, her mother and the man simultaneously jumped ninety degrees, legs wide apart, to face her. Three pairs of eyes locked and a stupid grin fell from her mother’s face.

‘Chelsea!’ Her mother quickly tippy-toed over to the Bang and Olufsen and fired the remote.

Silence.

‘Home from school so soon, sweetheart?’

The tradesperson was dabbing his forehead with a dirty handkerchief.

‘What’s this? A wedding reception?’ Chelsea’s voice was as flat and hard as a frozen sea. Her parents were exceptionally difficult people.

‘Darling! I’ve always wanted to learn the Nutbush,’ her mother slurred as she slid about the parquet floor in search of her shoes.

‘Mother, you’re drunk in the afternoon!’

‘This is Mr Ryan … the sauna repairman.’ Her mother waved her hand airily.

Mr Ryan wiped his hand on his overalls and winked at Chelsea.

Chelsea screwed up her eyes and stared back. She wondered if Brenda, their housekeeper, had witnessed this awful behaviour.

‘Mr Ryan fixed the sauna in a flash, so he had time to teach me the Nutbush.’ Her mother repeated a few silent Nutbush steps and mumbled, ‘…city limits.’

Chelsea clamped her teeth together. Her silly mother had her hands on her hips and was waving her bottom about.

‘Mother, only people who go to McDonald’s in their pyjamas do the Nutbush.’

In Year 8, Chelsea had walked into a classroom one lunchtime to find every girl in her homeroom group doing the Nutbush – and they hadn’t asked her! She had refused to learn that dreadful dance after that, despite their pleas. And she had vowed never to be seen doing such a ridiculous dance. Ever!

Her mother shrieked with laughter. ‘Don’t be such a snob, Chelsea. I don’t know how you turned out to be so la-di-da. You didn’t get it from me.’ She smiled drunkenly at Mr Ryan and nudged him with her forehead. ‘I love the Nutbush.’ She waved her hands in the air again: ‘…city limits.’

‘Don’t like McDonald’s; don’t wear pyjamas!’ Mr Ryan said to her mother, who shrieked again, then staggered towards the sofa and flopped like a slack-stringed puppet into the cushions.

‘Mother!’

What was going on? Surely her mother wasn’t conducting an affair?

‘You’re a mate of my son’s,’ Mr Ryan said. ‘Craig Ryan.’

Chelsea tried not to react. ‘Really? I doubt it.’

Please no. Not Craig’s father. This was truly ugly. She had been trying to civilise Craig because, in his own unwashed way, he was very attractive and could be useful. She was, after all, born to rule others, as a teacher had once rather sarcastically snapped at her during a nasty little dispute that had ended in tears (the teacher’s).

Chelsea stomped up the stairs, leaving her mother curled up on the sofa giggling into one of the tapestry cushions. Craig Ryan’s father was facing the window, his shoulders bouncing.

She slammed her bedroom door, hard. Was her mother losing her mind? Her poor darling father was, this very minute, in Sydney working hard for them both. Sure, her parents did fight, but she had never dreamt that her mother would cheat on her father. There was simply too much to lose: the new Mercedes, the Port Douglas apartment, Brenda, the trips to Corfu and Africa. Her mother’s stupid antics were putting their lifestyle at risk.

Chelsea threw herself on her bed and screamed into her pillows. This wasn’t happening. She rolled over and swore, then looked up at the happy Barbies arrayed one tier above the other to the ceiling.

The Barbies were her consolation and her investment. Being without siblings she had, quite early in her life, begun seeking their advice. Now, after a decade of serious collecting, she had well over three hundred of them – and the picnic van. And most of them could be relied on to give sensible advice in a crisis. Some people had security blankets; Chelsea had security Barbies.

For instance, they had helped her through her expulsion from Mary Magdalene, and her two-week crush on football hero Angelo Tarano. And they’d known just how to persuade her father to take her to Daydream Island, and just how to get him to install a mirror ball above the spa. However, in the little matter of installing a lift in the house, their strategy – Just break your legs when you go skiing, and they’ll have no choice – was an example of the Barbies, in this case Surgeon Barbie, offering rather silly advice.

Just two days earlier, Chelsea had discussed with them the man in the living room’s son – Craig Ryan. She was having a lot of trouble taming Craig, who’d continued to insist on showing interest in the most thoroughly bizarre creature in the entire school, Matilda Grey. The Barbies had been clear about Matilda – she was a threat to public health. As for Craig, Stewardess Barbie had advised the obvious – fight to get him, and fight dirty.

Chelsea got down Student Teacher Barbie, who was usually very perceptive, and sat her on her pillow beside Rapunzel Barbie – her current favourite, but a bit of a bitch. She stroked Rapunzel Barbie’s hair and asked them both for help.

Student Teacher Barbie never spoke immediately – she waited until she could hear a pin drop – but she was quick off the mark today. She suggested an action plan.

One of Chelsea’s most impressive characteristics, a characteristic that one day, she was sure, would help her become the CEO of a major company, was that she always went straight for an action solution. No sitting around moping. Student Teacher Barbie had taught her that.

‘If this man, Craig Ryan’s father, is going to endanger your holidays and stop you being dropped off at the school gates each morning in the Merc, then he must be taken out!’ Student Teacher Barbie barked now.

‘Yes, sabotage the brakes on his maintenance van,’ Rapunzel Barbie ordered. Now that she was lying back on her pillow, Chelsea could see the awful van, with its awful slogan, from her window. Just call Ryan and don’t blame us for tryan. No wonder the son couldn’t speak properly. But she knew nothing about brakes, and the only person she knew who did, Craig Ryan, was hardly likely to sabotage his own father’s car.

‘Cut off that hair!’ shrieked Hairdresser Barbie from the third shelf. ‘Say no to ponytails on men!’

‘Yes! Great idea! I’m not competitive,’ shouted Rapunzel Barbie, ‘but I hate men with ponytails.’

‘So do I!’ Chelsea said aloud.

‘Then take the bastard out!’ screamed Rapunzel Barbie.

‘Get a hit man,’ said Student Teacher Barbie.

‘Khiem Dao,’ Rapunzel Barbie suggested triumphantly, referring to one of Vistaview Secondary College’s major criminals and charity cases.

Chelsea shook her head and put both the overexcited Barbies back. She lay on her waterbed. Her mother was cheating on her father. This was unacceptable, but murder wasn’t the answer.

‘Attention the lot of you,’ Police Chief Barbie called from the top shelf.

The room fell silent.

‘Just tell your mother you’re pregnant and you don’t know how it happened. Mothers always drop everything when they hear that – including their boyfriends.’

Of course. Who needed a school counsellor or a psychiatrist when you had the opinions of three hundred Barbies to choose from? She would tell her mother as soon as the childish creature sobered up. That would bring an end to Mr Ryan.

STICK

YOUR TONGUE

IN MY EAR

CRAIG RYAN WAS RAPT. Matilda Grey had invited him down to the riverbank after school. He’d accepted, of course – everyone knew what an invitation to the riverbank meant. Although it was possible that Matilda did not. They’d been kind of going out with one another all year, but going out with Matilda was a strange experience often involving races in the park and disagreements about whether they should jump into the pond together.

All afternoon he’d been daydreaming about this rendezvous, and in Maths his teacher had threatened him with watering pot plants after school. Of course Matilda had also asked about Arnold, his dog. Hopefully she wasn’t more interested in his dog than she was in him. But either way, he was lucky. Matilda Grey, Australia’s most famous teenage girl – a girl who’d been found living in the desert among dingoes – was hot for him.

Craig smiled to himself and whistled very quietly as he sauntered across the oval towards the river, his bag over one shoulder, his basketball under his arm. They were going to make a film about Matilda, and there was already a book – and in Japan, a series of mangas. In the pet food aisle of the supermarket where he worked there was a shelf with hundreds of identical pictures of Matilda smiling from the labels of Dingoes’ Dinner. Her bright blue eyes sparkled cheekily from the label, and a bubble-caption rose from her mouth: Yum! It was one of the leading pet foods in Australia, and Matilda got royalties.

He liked her a lot. She was very fit from years spent sprinting after cats and cars. Her voice was lower than most girls’, but it was quite soft and sexy; her hair was usually messy, but she was a natural blonde, so who cared about combs; her knees were scarred from crawling about in the desert with her mates, but she usually wore pants. A scarred, messy little blonde athlete – his kind of babe.

He could see her in the distance as he wandered down one of the tracks that wound through the old gums to the riverbank. It was a lovely winter afternoon. She was lying in the sun on a little patch of grass, her school bag beside her and her eyes closed. It wasn’t that close to mating season, but he’d been invited to the river by a girl who maybe wanted to mate with him, alone, down here in the sun. Perfecto!

She opened her eyes as he approached, then hoisted herself up on one elbow and turned her face to him, squinting into the light.

‘Howdy,’ he said. He wanted to kiss her but thought better of it.

‘Craig,’ she said, smiling at him. Then she flopped back and closed her eyes.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Nice day for it.’

She scratched herself. ‘Craig,’ she said. ‘You want to rub my stomach?’

As soon as he’d arrived! This girl was obsessed with stomach rubbing. But hey, he could cope! He shouldn’t really do it. Matilda’s mother had warned him not to, even if she begged him. But her mum wasn’t around. Then he remembered his old man warning him that he’d have Craig’s gonads for breakfast if he didn’t respect Matilda. He wasn’t scared of his old man, but he listened to him.

Matilda looked at him with one eye and smiled as he dropped down on his knees. The grass was thick and green and he could smell it as his knees crushed the stalks. He looked at her. On her forearm she’d drawn a little heart, and in it she’d written in her very bad handwriting: Rex 4eva. It didn’t worry him. He wasn’t the jealous kind.

She grabbed his hand. ‘Put it there.’

If that was what she wanted – and he did like the feel of her stomach. It was quite hard, but soft on the surface. He began to rub fairly gently, watching her face as he did so. She closed her eyes and lay back with a blissful look, her mouth a little open. He wouldn’t really admit it to anyone, but he found this a pretty big turn-on.

Craig was a good skateboarder and not bad at basketball, but he had a few freckles and he was never sure whether girls actually liked freckles. Some girls seemed to, though; Chelsea Dean, for instance, and this one especially. He wasn’t that good at school stuff, but neither was Matilda – she was actually about the worst in Year 11. She could catch rabbits, though; and he could shoot baskets – they were pretty compatible.

‘Is that good?’ he asked, and his voice, he noticed, had become a little huskier.

She made a noise in her throat which he knew was contentment and which was, he had to admit to himself, a bit like a growl. He liked those tiny growls.

Reviews for Screw Loose

[peterwilliams_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the funniest books I have read. The dilemmas couples that the various go through are wonderful. Jock, Fashionista, Dingo-girl, Gay, Asian...and others. A great group who show how funny life can be.