THE SHORTS FROM HELL

Pretty much everyone in Shark’s Bay was drop-dead gorgeous.

I found myself heading for the beach with Bradley and Belinda and their friends from last night, the ones who looked like they’d fallen right out of an Australian tourism ad. And then there was me, the poster boy for Awkwardsville.

To make matters worse, my online fame had spread faster than the bubonic plague. In the ten minutes it took to walk to the beach, three kids recognized me from completefails.com.

Just as we reached Bloodspurt Beach (I’m not kidding, that’s what it’s called), we passed some kids sitting in the shade of a tree who looked like they were in the wrong movie. For a start, none of them was particularly tall, particularly athletic, or particularly blond. They wore clothes that weren’t surf cool, and they all looked like they’d just sucked on a slice of lemon.

I liked them immediately.

“Look at those sad sacks cluttering up the beach,” Belinda said. “Total drongos.”

I didn’t know what a drongo was, but it sounded bad.

I was probably a drongo.

“The Outsiders,” Bradley said. He growled at one of the boys in the group under the tree, who jumped back nervously. Bradley and his friends burst out laughing.

A dark-haired girl wearing black-rimmed glasses scowled at me.

I made a gesture that was meant to say, Hey, sorry about all that, but I’m not really one of these cool surf types at all. I’m more of an artsy, TrollQuest-playing sort of guy, and I’m sure we could be friends if you’d only give it a shot. But it’s hard to get all that into one movement. I ended up looking like I was practicing the best way to crack open a coconut.

I wanted to hang with the Outsiders. They seemed much cooler than Bradley and Belinda’s stupid buddies. They also had a cool name, even if they hadn’t picked it for themselves. But from the icy expression on the dark-haired girl’s face, it was clear that any “friend” of Bradley and Belinda’s was most definitely not a friend of theirs. They hated me.

And my shorts.

Coincidentally, I should probably explain the shorts. Remember how Aussie Airways lost our bags? That meant I had to borrow a pair of swim trunks from Bradley. And Bradley gave me these monstrosities. He must have been keeping them as a practical joke.

For starters, they were about six sizes too big. More longs than shorts. They could have doubled as a tent. If the wind picked up to anything above a gentle breeze, I would be hoisted into the air like an empty plastic bag. My winter-pale Hills Village legs poked out from the bottom of them like a couple of bendy straws. And they had the nastiest pattern ever produced by humans—psychedelic Day-Glo butterflies, rainbows, hearts, and more puky stuff like that. These shorts were so bright you could probably see them from space.

I guess it could’ve been worse. I wasn’t planning on going into the water, anyway.

With a sigh, I turned away from the Outsiders and trudged after the pod people toward Bloodspurt Beach. And it was only downhill from there.