'It wasn't me!' Jerome Sanders screamed over his shoulder at his father as he was marched up the corridor to his bedroom. His brother, Nathan, took the opportunity to make faces at him behind their father's back.
'You arsehole!' he tried to jerk from his father's grasp on his pyjamas. He wanted to smash Nathan's laughing face.
'Nathan. Get to bloody bed now.' Jerome's father opened his bedroom door, 'And you. Get in your room.'
Jerome threw himself on his bed, hot tears of rage welling despite his best efforts to force them away.
'It wasn't me, Dad. It was fucking Nathan.'
'You will not speak like that in this house, Jerome. Your little sister can hear you. I don't care who did it. You're both going to bed. We can talk about this in the morning.'
'It's not fair! You said I could watchSouth Park. I didn't do anything.' The tears were now falling down Jerome's twelve-year-old cheeks.
His father pulled his door closed.
'It's not fair,' Jerome sobbed into his pillow. 'I hate all of them.'
Tonight's fight had started when Nathan had grabbed the remote control and changed the TV from the news toThe Simpsons. Normally that would be great, and Jerome would be all for it, but tonight his best mate's brother was going to be on the sport segment of the news. Nathan knew it.
By the time his dad had changed the channel back again, the sport was over.
Jerome made their sister, Abby, cry when he flew at Nathan, knocking her over in the process, but it was Nathan who'd pushed him into the china cabinet, smashing the curved glass panel.
His dad didn't even listen to him. Nathan got away with everything.
Jerome was sick of it. He'd missed Logan's brother on TV and he was going to missSouth Park again.
Suddenly he had an idea.
He slid open his bedroom window and popped the flyscreen soundlessly out, letting it fall into the garden bed below. He then took his pyjamas off and pulled on the shorts and T-shirt he'd been wearing after school. He put his Vans sneakers on without socks.
Logan's parents are so much cooler than mine, thought Jerome, perching on the windowsill above his bed. It's only 7.45. They're not gonna care if I come over for a while. Still, he thought, looking out into his shadowy backyard, it's going to take me twenty minutes to get there, and it'll be pretty dark by then.
Jerome listened to the sounds in his home. He could hear his mum and dad talking in the kitchen and the low murmuring of the television in the lounge room down the hall. Nathan was still watching TV!
He turned away from his bedroom and dropped down from the window ledge into the garden.
'Shit!' he exclaimed, landing awkwardly in the azalea bush below the window. He looked up at the light from his bedroom window. Would they have heard him? He crept closer to the house, favouring his ankle.
There was no movement in the window above. Jerome straightened up and brushed some leaves off his skinned knee. He limped quietly past the clothesline and the above-ground pool they'd got for Christmas last year. Logan's family had an in-ground pool with a wooden deck and an outdoor spa. Maybe they'd be able to go for a swim tonight. Manoeuvring around the lemon tree at the bottom of the garden, he let himself out through their back gate. He would ring his mum from Logan's and ask to stay the night. His dad would be pissed, but they'd have to say yes in the end. He laughed, imagining Nathan's face when the phone rang.
Cicadas screamed at Jerome as he trod gingerly along the newly mown grass behind his neighbours' houses.