8

MENZIE’S INVENTION

JUSTICE GOES SOLO

At school, Justice sits by himself eating his lunch. Jared Knutz and his crew walk past.

‘There’s Justice Joner, the poor little loner,’ sings Jared.

‘More like Jared Nutz, with a head like a butt,’ Justice mutters under his breath.

‘What did you say, loser?’ Jared growls, his fist clenched.

‘Um … I said I’d rather be at Pizza Hut,’ replies Justice.

Jared glares and walks off with his mates. Justice giggles and takes a bite of his sandwich. He walks around the schoolyard with nothing to do. Outside the principal’s office, there’s a long line of students who look like they’re in trouble. Mr Woolley calls each kid into his office one at a time. Every kid comes out carrying a rubber glove and a plastic rubbish bag. Justice gets nosey and asks a grade-five boy what’s going on. The kid says that he got into an argument about Deadly D. He told one of his classmates that Deadly D would come back to the Broncos. The other kid disagreed and they started throwing pencils and stuff at each other.

Justice works his way down the line. Next are a bunch of boys who got into a fight on the oval. They were arguing about the hardest hitter in the NRL. Is it Deadly D or David Klemmer from the Bulldogs? It turns out, all the kids in trouble had been arguing about Deadly D. If they all get rubbish duty, the school will be as clean as a whistle.

Justice heads over to Science Club, thinking about the craziness that Deadly D’s disappearance has caused. When he gets there, it’s in full swing. Through the window, he can see kids looking through microscopes and burning chemicals. One boy is dissecting a toad. Its stomach has been pulled to one side while the boy cuts open its heart. Its tongue hangs out of its mouth, all pink and spotty. At the front of the room, the teacher is helping students mix a bubbling liquid that turns from blue to green.

Justice spots Menzie Ten. He’s in the back corner, wearing a white lab coat and large red rubber gloves. Menzie’s in deep concentration, peering through thick plastic goggles. He pours white powder from a test tube into a tiny capsule the size of a pill. The tablet begins to glow, then flashes and …

‘EVERYBODY DOWN!’ Menzie screams.

His science experiment hits the floor. The massive blast blows the windows out of the classroom. Justice picks himself off the ground and runs into the lab. His eyes start to water. The smell from the explosion is gut-wrenchingly foul and putrid.

‘Menzie Ten! Are you okay, bro?’ yells Justice through the smoke.

Menzie is laughing and coughing at the same time. The kid who’d been operating on the toad is now wearing it on his face. Down the front, the teacher and students climb out from under their desks.

‘You just blew up the science lab, man!’

Menzie can’t stop laughing. His lab coat is covered in holes, his safety goggles are cracked and his eyebrows are singed. Menzie looks like one crazy professor.

‘What were you working on?’ asks Justice, his ears still ringing. ‘It stinks like bum gases!’

Menzie picks a tiny capsule off a tray on the bench. He holds it delicately between the fingers of his glove. ‘That’s because it is,’ he says proudly. ‘Justice, this little pill is the world’s strongest fart bomb, or, as I like to call it, the “Bumzooka”.’

Justice inspects the tiny white capsule. It has a little red ‘B’ printed on it. Before he can say, ‘that’s sweet as cuzzie’, Menzie thrusts the Bumzooka pill into his hand. ‘Keep this secret. Keep it safe. Now get out of here, before I get kicked out of Science Club.’

‘But won’t I smell like farts?’ asks Justice, popping the pill safely into his pants pocket.

‘Only if you drop it,’ says Menzie. ‘Now go!’