It was drizzling the first Saturday of the holidays. One of those grey miserable days that make you feel like crying even if you are happy. And, lying on my bed trying not to think about GWF (and failing), I wasn’t particularly happy. Every now and then I’d stop worrying about that and start wondering what I was going to do with my strange new power.
I felt like I could become some kind of superhero, like Batman or the Masked Avenger. Use my special power to save the world. Or at least save a few people. From exactly what I was going to save them, I wasn’t sure.
When the phone rang, and Mum said it was for me, I was surprised. Nobody rang me up. Except Nana One on my birthday. Sometimes Nana Two, when she remembered. But my birthday wasn’t for ages.
It was Ben.
‘I reckon I know how you can get out of the GWF,’ he said in that flat controlled tone of his. ‘I’ve got a plan.’
A weasel out plan.
‘Do you want to come around?’ I asked. ‘The Warriors are playing at Ericsson this afternoon. We could watch, if you like. Daniel’s playing.’
Thirteen-year-old Daniel Taylor went to our school and was the youngest ever player on the Warriors Rugby League team. He’d been on the reserves’ bench for a couple of games, but had not yet run on to the field. Maybe today would be the day.
‘Um, I’d have to ask Mum,’ Ben said, but arrived on a bicycle, in a bright yellow raincoat, about twenty minutes later.
‘Cool posters,’ he said when I showed him my room. I had posters around the walls, mainly of space stuff like a giant close-up photo of the moon on which all the craters were named in small black type, and one of the space shuttle Columbia, inset with photos of the astronauts who died.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You into space?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Since I was ten. I’ve got a really cool poster of Apollo Eleven, the whole rocket, that’s over two metres tall. It stretches from the floor right up to the ceiling.’
‘Wow,’ I said enviously, ‘that’s big.’
We started to talk some more about space stuff, but it all went straight out of the window with a shuffling, scratching noise on the particleboard floor of the hallway, and I braced myself for the onslaught.
Gumbo, the big floppy, sloppy dog, burst into the room like a tornado and headed straight for Ben. Ben actually shrieked a little with fright as Gumbo leapt up on to him, knocking him backwards on to the bed, and slobbering all over him. Which was Gumbo’s way of saying hello.
Once Ben had got used to Gumbo, he seemed to like him. And vice-versa, which was strange. I mean Gumbo liked everyone, but they were such opposites: Ben, the neat precise robot-person with his tidy appearance and clinical movements, and Gumbo the … well … the floppy, sloppy dog.
Ben told me he had always wanted a dog, but his mother wouldn’t allow one in the house. Too smelly. Too messy. Too noisy. I thought those were some of the best things about a dog. But I guess everyone is different.
After all the commotion died down, I said, ‘So how am I going to weasel out of getting my brains scrambled, mashed and fried, by Blocker the Blockhead in the GWF ring?’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have got yourself in this situation in the first place, if you ask me,’ Ben said, straight-faced.
I laughed. We both knew that if I hadn’t got myself into this situation he would be a smear on the toughened glass of the G-Block stairwell by now.
‘Maybe I could change schools,’ I said. ‘I’ve done that plenty of times.’ I wasn’t serious. Even saying those words out loud made a cold, clawing sensation travel the length of my body. I couldn’t go through the whole new school thing again.
Ben shook his head, taking my suggestion seriously. ‘Zoning regulations. Your parents would have to move house.’
‘Unless I got myself expelled,’ I said, semi-seriously.
‘Seems to me you’ve got two choices,’ Ben said. ‘You can fight him …’
‘And get pulverised.’
‘Or you can spend the rest of your years at high school trying to hide from him.’
Neither option sounded viable to me.
I said, ‘So what’s your great plan then?’
‘We break your arm.’
‘What!?’
‘Seriously. If your arm is broken, then you can’t fight him, can you? And by the time your arm is better, he’ll have forgotten all about it.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said sourly. ‘And how do you plan to break my arm anyway?’
‘Well,’ Ben said thoughtfully, ‘you could fall off your bike, but I suppose you might end up doing a lot of other injuries to yourself at the same time, and there’s no guarantee of breaking the bone you want to break.’
‘Hmmm,’ I said doubtfully. ‘What if we just pretended to break my arm?’
Ben shook his head, ‘If your arm wasn’t in a proper cast, Blocker would know you were faking.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Has your dad got a vice?’
‘Yeah, he has a whole workshop set up in the garage.’
When he wasn’t acting, Dad was mending furniture for people; a skill he had picked up somewhere along the way. There was plenty of room in the garage as we didn’t own a car.
‘Well, we could stick your arm in the vice, then I could hit it with a sledgehammer,’ Ben suggested cheerfully.
‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘Be better than getting the pudding punched out of you by Blocker.’
‘But how would we explain it to my parents?’
‘Well, we could say you fell off your bike.’
We spent the next half hour discussing ways to break my arm (my left arm, not my right arm, we decided, so that it wouldn’t interfere with schoolwork). Maybe I was chicken, or maybe I just wasn’t sure that Blocker would drop the whole thing if I couldn’t fight him for a few more weeks. Either way, I couldn’t summon up a whole lot of enthusiasm for the idea. Still, it was nice of Ben to try and help.
A sledgehammer and a vice!?
Mum was out at a cleaning job. Dad was at his agent’s. So April, my obnoxious big sister, was babysitting me again. She was the one who needed babysitting if you asked me, but nobody ever did. We watched the Warriors’ game, which was a waste of time, because Daniel just sat on the bench for the entire game. Gumbo watched with us. He always liked watching rugby or rugby league on TV; although I don’t think he was too hot on the rules. He just lay there and barked occasionally when the crowd were roaring, and farted a lot.
Gumbo, the farty, sporty, floppy, sloppy dog.
By the time the game finished it was six o’clock, so Ben rang his mum and asked if he could stay for dinner.
April had been left in charge of dinner. That turned out to be cheese on toast. April, sixteen-years-old, only knew how to make one meal, and that was cheese on toast. It wasn’t that I didn’t like cheese on toast, but you would have thought she could have used a little more imagination.
Straight after dinner she hopped on the phone to her boyfriend, and I knew she’d be there all night.
‘Where are your mum and dad?’ Ben asked during dinner.
‘Mum’s working and Dad’s gone to his agent’s house for dinner. Dad’s on Crime Time tonight.
Ben looked blank.
‘That TV show where they ask for the public’s help to solve crimes.’
‘What did he do?’ Ben asked, wide-eyed.
I laughed. ‘Nothing! He’s an actor. They’re doing a reconstruction of the robbery last week at the Orewa TAB. Dad’s playing the part of the Hunchback Robber.’
‘Cool!’
I shook my head. ‘You won’t even be able to recognise him, because he’ll be wearing the mask the whole time.’
The Hunchback Robber had been hitting places for months around the upper North Island: TABs, shops, post offices, even a Plunket collection centre. He was a terrifying sight, apparently, in a gruesome Quasimodo mask, wearing a black raincoat, and his back had a huge hump. Each time the police were on the scene within minutes, yet the robber had somehow vanished. Dad had landed the role of playing him on Crime Time. He wasn’t too happy because, while it paid well, it did nothing for his profile as his face would not be seen.
The afternoon’s drizzle had turned into heavy rain by evening; bucketing down against our tin roof.
Ben had brought his digital camera around, and we played with that for a while, then played games on his mobile phone until Crime Time started.
His phone had much better games than my old thing.
Even April watched the programme, although she stayed on the phone to her boyfriend the whole time, discussing the show so loudly with him that we could hardly hear what the presenter was saying.
The presenter was a real cop. Or at least an ex-cop. He wore a police uniform, and they called him Sergeant Wilkinson as if he was still on the force. Sternly, he introduced several minor crimes, showing police photos of the offenders, while building up to the main story about the Hunchback Robber.
Our curtains suddenly lit up as lightning, and then thunder, were added into the recipe of the storm outside. A sudden fuzziness blurted across the TV screen. We had a big flash TV, which did look a bit out of place in our litle house. I explained that Dad needed it for his job. He often had to watch videos of his work, or from some of the acting workshops he went on.
At the moment the screen was filled with the weather-worn face of Sergeant Wilkinson. He might have been a real policeman and probably a good one but, as a presenter, he was useless. He had this dull dry way of talking that made even the most exciting crime sound like a discussion about floral arranging at some old-folks’ tea party.
Ben called him PC Plod, and I thought that was outrageously funny for some reason.
Finally Dad’s item came on the show, and even April stopped talking while she watched, although she didn’t hang up.
There was another flash of lightning outside and the screen went all fuzzy again, but it came back after a couple of seconds.
Sergeant Wilkinson droned on for a few moments, surely the only presenter in the world who could make the terrifying Hunchback Robber sound boring. Then Dad came on the screen, in a black raincoat, the hump above his right shoulder and the Quasimodo mask making him look like a demented clown. He raced into the TAB and started waving a sawn-off shotgun around wildly.
Don’t overdo it Dad, I thought to myself, but said nothing out loud.
Dad – the Hunchback Robber – raced out into the street and, in an unusually arty bit of film work for this kind of show, slowly dissolved into nothing as he ran down the main street of Orewa.
‘And, as usual,’ Sergeant Wilkinson droned, ‘the Hunchback Robber just vanished into thin air.’
Ben and I applauded Dad’s performance, while April just went back to her chatter. My mind was busy, though. Something about the way they had made the robber disappear. As if he was some kind of super-criminal. He wasn’t a super-criminal though, he was just a thug. Now if it had been me … with my special power … hmmm.
‘That lightning is getting closer,’ Ben said as there was another flash. ‘Do you want to come up to the power pylon on Manuka Ridge?’
I stared at him, and April paused and looked at him curiously.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘You’re not going out anywhere,’ April said shortly, and went back to her conversation.
Ben said, ‘It’s the highest thing around for miles. It attracts lightning like a magnet. It’s pretty spectacular.’
‘You’re not going out anywhere in this storm,’ April said again, playing Mother and scarcely breaking into her phone call to do so.
Up till that point, the idea of going out into a raging storm to watch lightning had been the last thing I wanted to do. But once my annoying sister had outlawed it … well, that changed everything.
‘You’re not the boss of me,’ I said angrily.
‘I am while Mum and Dad are out.’
She somehow seemed to be able to carry on two conversations at once.
‘I’m going.’
‘No, you’re not.’
Ben shrugged, and shook his head silently. It’s not worth it, he was saying.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at April. She was blabbering on about some friend of hers at school. It wasn’t fair. She could do whatever she wanted and I always had to do what other people told me to do.
I pictured her brain sitting inside her head. Actually, to be truthful, I pictured it as about the size of a plum, which was probably a little unfair. I’m sure it was at least the size of a grapefruit.
I waited for a gap in her conversation, until she was getting ready to speak. Then I painted in vivid flashes across her (plum-sized) brain.
Let’s get married. Let’s get married. Let’s get married.
‘Let’s get married,’ April said suddenly into the phone. Just as suddenly she turned bright red and nearly dropped the phone. I could just about hear the shocked silence at the other end of the line.
‘Um. I don’t mean.’ It was hilarious; I’d never seen her so flustered. ‘I’m not sure why I said it … No really. I didn’t … I mean … well …’
I left her trying to wriggle out of that and motioned to Ben. She didn’t even notice us as we left.