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Mick Mundy, sometimes Mickey, never Michael, is fourteen years old.
He turned fourteen three months ago. He told his mum that he was too old for fairy bread. She made it for him anyways, like she always did for his birthday. Secretly, he was glad that she still did.
He didn’t have a birthday party.
Mick didn’t mind that too much, though. He stopped having birthday parties when he was eight, because no one ever came to them anyways. He stopped being invited to other kids parties when he was seven, but he hadn’t minded that too much either. They were too loud, and even back when the other kids didn’t know he was so strange and actually tried to be nice to him, the way they tried to play wasn’t very fun. It just hurt, mostly.
It still hurts, actually, but Mick is pretty sure they’re mostly doing it on purpose now.
He told his parents that the other kids aren’t ganging up on him so much anymore. Really, he’s pretty sure that they’re pushing him around more than ever, but he’s gotten better at hiding from them, or climbing up higher than they can be bothered to chase, so he’s coming home with fewer bruises, if nothing else, and he hasn’t broken a bone in almost a year.
The last time he did, he told his mum it was from falling out of a tree. He’s not sure if she believed him, but he doesn’t want her to worry.
His mum worries too much. Mostly, she worries about him.
That’s why his dad is whittling under a tree a few meters away, while Mick reloads his rifle. Because his mum worries about him, and doesn’t like him handling guns without supervision, even though his dad started teaching him how to shoot over a year ago, when he hadn’t even turned thirteen yet, and even though he’s already fourteen now, and they even gave him his very own rifle for his birthday. His mum still worries about him getting hurt, so she makes his dad promise to watch him. Because “you know he’s a bit delicate, dear”.
That’s the word she always uses. Delicate. Like he’s a teacup or something. Mick hates it, and his dad hates it too, but the word he uses is hardly better. He always says that Mick is “just different”, and Mick knows by now that when people say “different” in that tone of voice, it’s not a good kind of different.
But “different” is definitely better than “delicate”.
Mick usually just called himself “weird”, though. His parents didn’t like him saying that about himself, but he likes “weird” more than “different”, and he likes it a lot more than “delicate”, so he keeps saying it, because whatever is wrong with him needs a name, and “weird” is a pretty accurate one.
It would be better, Mick thinks, if whatever was wrong with him had a real name. Some kind of medical name, probably. Because something is definitely wrong with him. He hates when his mum says he’s delicate, but she’s not wrong, is the thing. He bruises and breaks way too easy, and always has. And he keeps getting taller, but he isn’t getting any broader to match. He’s not a normal fourteen year old. And he wasn’t a normal thirteen year old, or a normal ten year old, or a normal six year old, and he’s willing to bet that he wasn’t even normal as a baby.
But there must not be a name for what’s wrong with him. Because if there was, he’s sure that someone would’ve figured it out by now and told his parents, and then his parents would have told him, and then at least he’d know why he was like this.
There must just not be a name. He must just be the only one.
So, Mick has decided to stick with “weird”, because that’s the only word that feels true that doesn’t also feel shitty.
Mick breathes out slowly to steady himself, and starts lining up his next shot.
His dad is supposed to be watching him. He’s supposed to be, but he isn’t, really. There’s not much to watch. Mick is just shooting at targets. He’s pretty good at it, but it can’t be that interesting, and his dad made it pretty clear that he was just humoring his mum by coming out with him. He thinks Mick can handle the rifle by himself. Mick thinks so too. He’s not a kid anymore. He’s fourteen. He might not be able to do all of the things a normal fourteen year old can, but he’s not completely useless.
Just as Mick is about to squeeze the trigger, he pauses - something is moving, right at the edge of his scope. He slides his finger off of the trigger and turns a little, just enough to bring it into sight, and sees a dingo scratching itself behind the ear.
It doesn’t look like it’s getting up to anything at the moment, but he knows they bother the sheep and the dogs. That’s why his dad had a gun in the first place, to shoot them or scare them off.
Mick lines up his shot. He thinks about just telling his dad, then decides against it. He can do this. He can’t do much, but he can shoot a gun.
Mick lets out a slow breath, squeezes the trigger, and watches through his scope as his bullet flies clean through the center of the dingo’s head. It flops to the ground unceremoniously, dead the moment Mick’s bullet connected with its brain. Blood starts to pool under its body, soaking into the dry earth.
Mick stares at it through his scope. He’s not totally sure how much time passes before he finally lowers his rifle, but it’s enough that the blood pool seemed like it was done getting bigger.
“Dad,” he finally calls, unsure what else to do. His father looks up from the piece of wood he was carving.
“Yeah?”
“I uh…there was a dingo. So I killed it.”
“What, just now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good job. C’mere a sec.”
Mick does what he’s told, and his dad pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to him. He takes it, confused.
“S’hard to get a good grip when the teeth are still wet,” he explains. “This’ll help. Might still have’ta wiggle it a little, but a good yank ought to do the job.”
Mick stares, first at the handkerchief, then at his dad.
“It’s…teeth?”, he finally asks, dumbfounded. His dad can’t possibly mean for him to take a trophy. This hardly counted.
“You killed it,” his dad says simply.
“I shot it,” he counters. Shooting doesn’t count. You only take a trophy when a kill means something. When it’s your first time, or it was particularly difficult or impressive, or it was on a special occasion. This wasn’t anything like that. About half the kids in his class have shown off their first tooth or claw over the last couple years, and their stories are all the same; they killed it with their bare hands. Maybe a knife. But definitely not a gun, not from so far away you need a lens to see what you’re doing.
“Is it dead?” his dad asks patiently. Mick nods.
“Yeah.”
“And if you didn’t shoot it, would it still be alive?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s your first kill. I only heard one shot, Mick. How hard have you worked at this to get good enough to take a dingo down on your first try? Go take your trophy. Then go inside and show your mum. A boy old enough to take a tooth out a dingo’s head ought to be old enough not to need his old man babysitting him.”
What that, his dad goes back to carving his little block of wood, and Mick starts walking towards the dingo, smiling.
It takes a lot of wiggling to yank out its tooth, but he gets a good one, a long, sharp canine. His dad was right. The handkerchief helped.
His mum worries over him a little, which he isn’t thrilled about, the way she assumes he must have gotten hurt, but Mick also figures that mums are kind of all like that, even the ones with normal kids. Mums worry. His mum just worries a little more.
Once she’s satisfied that none of the blood belongs to her son, she makes him wash his hands, which is fair, he thinks, because they do have kind of a lot of dingo blood on them. Then she makes him wash the tooth off in the sink too, which is also fair, because it also has some dingo blood on it. Shooting something in the head and then yanking something out of that head makes a big mess, apparently.
Then, finally, his mum helps him take a length of leather cord and turn the tooth into a necklace. She agrees that he’s proven himself to be responsible enough to practice without his dad, and gets all misty eyed and goes on about how her little Mickey is growing up.
Mick wears the tooth under his shirt. No one notices at school, which is probably for the best.
He’s still proud of it.