Well, it all began with the worst haircut in the world and one unbelievable (especially to me) three-point shot. Where it will end, I don’t know – but what I do know, now, is that if someone asks you to dance, you dance. Especially at Madison Square Garden in New York City in the United States of America. You’ll see what I mean.
My mother once said I was blessed with brains but got a little bit lost on the way to the good looks department. Staring in the mirror of Klassicke Kutz Hair Salon, I can’t help but agree. I have a face that reminds me of an uncooked gingerbread man. It’s round and pale and my features are like an assortment of dried fruits. Needless to say, I did not get my scholarship to Tapley Grammar Boarding School for being handsome or talented at sport.
My hairdresser, whose name is Maddylynne, holds up a handful of hair that has grown rather long over the last term. It suits me as I am a logical, scientific, chess-playing, calculator-carrying mathematical type who actually owns a telescope – which I keep carefully hidden under my bed, as the only stars that Tapley Grammar boys generally look at are action-movie heroes who have lots of guns, cars and girlfriends, but not many clothes.
‘This has gotta go, Georgie-boy.’ Without warning, Maddylynne swoops with the clippers, leaving what looks like a narrow dirt road through a crop of wheat on the right side of my head. ‘Your school likes it short.’ Then she turns the narrow dirt road into a superhighway. ‘There. That’s what I’m talking about! This haircut is going to last all summer long.’
She’s not wrong. Half my head looks like a roast potato. The other half looks like the edge of a frayed doormat. And it is at this point that the fire begins behind the curtain leading to the mysterious back room where all the ladies go to get their legs – and other things – waxed.
‘Geez, I’m sorry, George.’ Maddylynne unplugs the clippers and puts them in her apron pocket. ‘But we’d better abandon ship.’
So, with five waxy, partly undressed ladies, I go outside and watch the Klassicke Kutz Hair Salon burn to the ground. Then I walk back to school, knowing that my life at Tapley Grammar is about to get a hundred times tougher because I see the ultra-wealthy and super-talented Chase Landon-Bond playing one-on-two basketball and probably winning. And Chase has seen me.
To be more precise, he has seen my haircut.
Both sides of it.
The basketball game stops. But I continue onwards, a dead man walking on a perfectly raked gravel path taking me to the end of my life as surely as a pirate’s plank.
‘Well, well, well,’ says Chase Landon-Bond, whose family are extremely rich. ‘I don’t know what has inspired this rather . . .’ He spins the ball on a fingertip, ‘space-age hair-do, George Parker, but that’s the most unbelievably cool hairstyle I have ever seen. I am impressed.’ Then he smiles, with blindingly white teeth.
Now, as surely as the square root of one hundred and sixty-nine is thirteen, I know George Parker is not cool. Rather, I’m the quite-bright-but-not-quite-right (according to my Tapley Grammar counsellor) only child of scientist parents who are in a Swiss bunker with a box of moon rocks, theorising about a collision between planet Theia and Earth – and as this collision happened four billion years ago, I wouldn’t think they’ll be reaching any conclusions any time soon, which means I’ll be spending the summer holidays at school, suffering at the hands of the more wealthy students like a mouse in a lab that develops rat poison.
‘Er, thanks, Chase,’ I say, waiting for the trap to spring and steel jaws to crush my neck.
With a flick of his golden wrist, Chase consults his Limited Edition Tag Heuer sports watch. Then he pushes the basketball hard into my chest.
‘Five seconds on the clock, Parker! We’re two points down in the NBA playoffs! It’s a three-pointer or the toilet!’
I don’t really play sport. I’m a first-aid volunteer and a ball monitor who can turn his hand to cone-stacking and be relied upon to successfully close storage cupboards, even if they are full of ill-matched sporting equipment, including polo mallets and jousting lances.
‘Shoot, George! Shoot!’ Chase’s grey eyes sparkle. His blond hair is like a wavy halo. ‘Put it up! Give it air! Do your thang, George!’
I have no choice. Rich boys at Tapley Grammar (and that is most of them) think they can order the poorer boys around, and they’re right, because it’s a school rule. So, from the edge of the court, in sheer desperation, I throw the ball at the orange ring that I can hardly see without my glasses. And up the ball goes, down it comes – straight, unbelievably, through the net.
For a moment, there’s stunned silence. Then Chase Landon-Bond explodes.
‘Parker scores!’ He drags me, stumbling, up the court. ‘It’s a buzzer-beater! It’s extraordinary! Yes, the normally hopeless George Parker wins the game!’ Chase twists my chin as if changing a lightbulb. ‘Talk to the camera, George! You can’t sneak back into your dark soggy box like a sub-normal snail. You’ve gotta speak to your fans!’
I remember something I saw on TV in the waiting room for Mrs Plunk, my orthotic shoe specialist and one-time role model (until she went to jail for car-jacking).
‘Hank,’ I say. ‘Without them other guys, I’d still be back in Pocatello, Idaho, jest raisin’ pumpkins for mah hogs. And I’d like to say how-do to my beautiful wife, Lulu-Rose, and a give a super-loud call-out to mah ’coon dawg, Pancho. Boo yah. Boo yah. We’re, er, bringing it home. Bang. Boom, I mean.’
Chase laughs in my face, at the same time shaking me so hard that my teeth click like castanets.
‘Idaho, George? Your ’coon dog, Pancho? Man, you are the funniest kid in Australia! And I always thought you were – how can I put this? An idiot.’ He slaps me so hard on the back that my asthma inhaler flies out of my pocket. ‘Georgie-boy,’ he adds, ‘this is going to be the summer of your life. Or winter, if we end up in the northern hemisphere. Which is possible, as I have a private jet.’
Chase does have a private jet. Once, it flew so low over our school that it cracked a stained-glass window in the Tapley chapel that showed Jesus giving a beggar his old iPhone 5.
‘You sit with me at tea tonight, George,’ Chase announces. ‘We have plans to make. Big plans.’ He steps back, studying my hair. ‘Man, that style. Edgy? It’s off the damn scale! You have blown me out of the water.’
That makes two of us.
‘Oh,’ I stammer. ‘You know, sometimes I just do crazy things.’ I don’t. I never do. I never have. It is against all Parker family principles.
Chase nods. His friends, Royal Highness Prince Jimahl, and Count Luciano, simply look mystified. Neither has ever spoken to me, although once Prince Jimahl poked me out of the way with his jewelled umbrella.
‘George,’ Chase says seriously. ‘It’s time to stop watching the world from an upstairs window. You’ve got to be a player not a prune. You gotta get involved. See you at dinner.’
I walk away in the sunshine to show I’m not a Factor Fifty–type of person, although I most certainly am. Behind me, I hear Chase’s clear voice.
‘Wow. That Parkster reminds me of that total madman painter, Vincent Van Gogh. He’s one wild dude!’
Vincent Van Gogh was an artist who actually cut half his ear off, not half his hair – but who am I to say what’s crazy and what’s not?
Maybe doing everything carefully is as crazy as doing everything without thinking?
Maybe planning years ahead is as crazy as not planning at all?
Maybe I should put away my telescope and instead reach for the stars?
Maybe this will be a beautiful summer?
Imagine that.
