Brain Freeze

by Oliver Phommavanh

  ‘When have you ever seen him here in the library?’ I asked. ‘We’ve known Jake for five years now and he has never touched a book. Ever.’

  Jane sighed. ‘Stop being so jelly,’ she said.

  I flared up. ‘I’m not jealous.’

  ‘Yeah, you are. You’ve wanted to be a famous reporter since you were in kindy and now Jake is famous and you’re not.’ Jane poked my stomach. ‘See, even your belly is wobbling like jelly.’

  I growled at her. ‘I’ll show you. I’ll show everyone!’

  Anyway, I can’t believe that the whole school is buying the fact that Jake Kola is an author. I know what he’s like. There’s no way he wrote all those stories. I just have to find out who did.

  Melissa’s Roving Report

  Jake does nothing in class, again

  Monday, 28 June, Wide Bay Primary School

  By Melissa Phu

  Monday mornings are usually a bustling time for all Year Six classes, and 6R is no exception. Mrs Russo is a wonderful teacher who leads her class well – except for one student, the so-called ‘author’ Jake Kola.

  Melissa Phu, aspiring reporter, who has sat behind him all year, can reveal that the only thing Jake writes is his autograph for his Boonana books. ‘Oh, he also draws pictures of himself skateboarding,’ Melissa added. ‘I snuck a look.’

  Mrs Russo doesn’t seem to mind that Jake hasn’t answered any of the comprehension questions. She just keeps asking him if he is writing more Boonana books.

  Jake flicks his side fringe. ‘Oh, I’ve nearly finished Book 4,’ he says. ‘It’s called Ghost Riders.’

  Mrs Russo claps like a seal who’s just been fed a fish. ‘That’s amazing. Where do you get your ideas from?’

  Jake cracks his knuckles. ‘They just come to me.’

  He goes back to doing nothing, like usual. An angry Melissa Phu is determined to get to the bottom of his secret. ‘I will find out who is writing his books,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘I’m a million times better at writing than him. I’m so clever, I write my own reports and put myself in them.’

  You can’t argue with a genius reporter like that.

  Special LIVE Blog

  Jake Kola investigation, Day 5

  Tuesday, 29 June

  By Melissa Phu

  Wide Bay Primary School, 3.20pm

  All reporters need to go on assignments and suss things out. I need evidence for my exposé on Jake. I’m here to see what Jake Kola does after school, and I’ll be live-blogging the experience on my mobile phone for my readers. Okay, so it’ll just be for me to read back later as notes. Anyway, I’ve got my scooter and I’ll be on his trail. Stay tuned!

  Chickalicious shop, 3.30pm

  Jake gets a bag of hot chips. I think there’s chicken salt on them, but no vinegar. How’s that for controversy?

  Wide Bay Skate Park, 3.45pm

  Jake rides his skateboard, eating hot chips all the way to the skate park on his own. He starts doing tricks up and down the ramps.

  4.15pm

  He finishes off the hot chips in-between riding around the skate park.

  4.45pm

  He’s still here.

  I wish I had my own bag of hot chips. I hope Jake doesn’t hear my stomach growl from behind this tree.

  5.00pm

  The sun is beginning to dip below the trees so I have to wrap this blog up, even though there’s been no progress on my information gathering. But as I’m zipping up my jacket, Jake’s pocket starts to glow neon green.

  He takes out a little diamond-shaped box and quietly talks into it. He quickly puts it back in his pocket, gets on his board and starts to ride away.

  My head is spinning. I’ve never seen a device like that before.

  Wow! This story just got started.

  5.05pm

  I promised my parents I’d be back before sunset. But I’m sure Mum and Dad will understand why I need to follow Jake home. This could be the biggest scoop of the year. Besides, they can read this blog as proof that I was doing something more important than homework.

  Jake’s house, 5.15pm

  (Address withheld for privacy reasons even though I am kind of invading his privacy by being on his front lawn, but I have journalistic powers, so there.)

  I’ve trailed Jake all the way to his house. It’s a good thing he never looks back when he rides. I watch him go inside and see him appear in a bedroom on the left side. I sneak up to his window. Jake seems to be on the phone, so I listen hard.

  ‘Yes, my publisher wants the fourth Boonana finished by next month,’ he says. ‘I’ll need 30,000 words.’

  Sound recorders are a reporter’s best friend. I’d already started recording on my phone and now I hold it closer to the window to get concrete evidence. My heart’s doing more extreme stunts than Jake did on his skateboard.

  Jake keeps talking. ‘Yes, yes, I did tell the publisher that we want to have seven Ghoul Kid books. She said that it depends on the . . .

  RING RING

  Mum’s face pops up on my screen. Yikes!

  6.30pm

  Back in my own bedroom, I don’t even know where to begin. I know this was supposed to be a live blog but, for a second, I thought I was going to be a dead blogger.

  My parents didn’t tell me off too much because I told them that I was doing a homework project with Jake. Anyway, let’s get back to the action.

  After my phone went off, I tried to muffle it with my jacket.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Jake called. ‘Show yourself. I know karate.’

  I swallowed my laugh. This guy can’t stop lying. I quickly got up and ran to my scooter, which was hiding in one of Jake’s hedges. I was about to step on it, when I checked the left-back pocket of my pants.

  My notepad! I left it outside his bedroom window.

  I went back to get it and bumped straight into Jake’s chest. I stepped into the porch light to see his sweaty, pale face. He was holding a mop like it was a bo staff.

  ‘What are you going to do, mop me up?’ I asked.

  ‘It was all I could find,’ he said, putting down the mop. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m the one asking the questions here, Kola,’ I said, pointing my finger at him. ‘Who were you talking to on the phone before?’

  Jake turned as pale as Boonana, his ghost detective. ‘No-one.’

  I took out my phone. ‘I have proof.’

  Jake snatched the phone out of my hands. ‘Not anymore.’

  He ran into his house and I chased him inside. Some reporters have to put their lives on the line and enter dangerous places like war zones and boys’ bedrooms.

  ‘The gig is up,’ I said, borrowing a line from those police detective movies. I’ve decided reporters can say it too. ‘I’m going to expose you as a fraud.’

  ‘People will say it’s fake news,’ Jake snapped back.

  ‘The only fake thing here is you!’

  ‘You’re just jelly!’ Jake said. ‘Ever since I stole your writing dream.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  BOOOOOOOO!

  We both jumped. The sound had come from Jake’s pile of dirty clothes, which had begun to glow green. Mum warned me that dirty laundry was toxic, but this was something else.

  Jake dived into the pile of clothes. ‘The glophone!’ He fished out a glowing green cube – the same one I’d seen at the skate park. ‘Oops, sorry, Boonana.’

  ‘Boonana?’

  A ghost boy sprung out of the cube, glowing bright green like he’d swallowed a traffic light stuck on go.

  Now, as a reporter, you need to keep an open mind. But when I saw this ghost for the first time, I started to crack up.

  ‘Nice special effects,’ I said. ‘Where did you get this toy from?’

  ‘I am not a toy,’ Boonana said. ‘I’m a ghost.’

  I stick my hand through Boonana’s shoulder. ‘Wow, this is just like a hologram.’

  ‘That’s because I am a hologram,’ Boonana said.
‘Ghosts can’t cross over into your world.’

  ‘Wow, I’m going to write up a storm,’ I said.

  ‘Hang on.’ Boonana tilted his head sideways. ‘You’re a writer too?’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m better than this bonehead, Jake, over here,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have any good ideas for a book?’ Boonana asked.

  Jake mouthed ‘no’ to me, which translates to a ‘yes’ to me.

  ‘Yeah, I have tons,’ I said.

  ‘Excellent,’ Boonana said, rubbing his hands. ‘Meet me here, around the same time tomorrow.’ He flashed Jake a sly look and got sucked back into the cube, like there was a vacuum inside.

  Jake threw his hands in the air. ‘What have you done? Now you’re going to get us into more trouble.’

  ‘This coming from a guy who speaks to ghosts,’ I said. ‘Just wait until I tell the world about this.’

  ‘You might want to hold back on that,’ Jake said in a strange voice. Well, it was strange to me because I’ve never heard him sound so serious. ‘Come back tomorrow and you’ll find out.’

  So it looks like this blog post will be in draft mode for now. Even if Jake is trying to spook me out, I’m still keen to know more about the real Boonana.

  Exclusive Interview

  Will the real Boonana please stand up (or float, or whatever, I guess)

  Wednesday, 30 June, 5.15pm

  By Melissa Phu

  Forget the Australian cricket captain or the Prime Minister, the most interesting person in Australia right now is not actually a person, but a ghost named Boonana. Yes that’s right, the same one who is in Jake Kola’s books.

  MELISSA: Where do you live, Boonana?

  BOONANA: In a house.

  MELISSA: Yeah, but what’s the place called where you live?

  BOONANA: Ghostopia.

  MELISSA: How did you meet Jake?

  BOONANA: The fleshy kid found the glophone in the river one day. He thought it was a toy until he pressed a button and I popped out. You should have seen the look on his face.

  JAKE: Hey, you looked quite scared too.

  MELISSA: I’m only interviewing Boonana at the moment. You wait your turn, Fake Jake.

  JAKE: Stop calling me Fake Jake!

  MELISSA: Well, stop interrupting my interview! Anyway, Boonana, where did you get the idea for the Boonana books?

  BOONANA: I just copied them, word for word, from my collection of ghost detective comics. I don’t think you have those in the flesh world.

  MELISSA: What? Comics? We have those.

  BOONANA: No, ghost detective comics like Ghoul Rogers. I got them from my dad, who works at a Publishing company, SplatterInk.

  MELISSA: So, they publish your Boonana books in Ghostopia too?

  BOONANA: Nah. Nobody wants to read about another boring ghost detective story. They want to hear about JakerSkater.

  MELISSA: JakerSkater?

  BOONANA: Yeah, Jake’s story about being a skateboarding secret agent. I’ll show you.

  At this point, Boonana takes out a book from his satchel.

  MELISSA: You’re writing each other’s books?

  JAKE: I told him about my short story, JakerSkater.

  BOONANA: And I told my dad and he loved the idea. He thinks I have a wild imagination. Ghosts don’t know anything about skateboards, scooters, hamburgers . . . anyway do you want to write for my dad?

  MELISSA: Yeah, sure . . . I have a million ideas.

  Then, seemingly from thin air, Boonana whisks out a glowing white sheet of paper.

  BOONANA: Just sign your name –

  JAKE: This interview is over!

  EXPOSÉ

  How one kid got scammed by a ghost!

  Wednesday, 30 July, 6pm

  By Melissa Phu

  I nearly got scammed by a ghost. It’s true. But Jake Kola saved me from writing my life away. Literally.

  After Jake Kola turned off the glophone and hid it in his closet, he came clean to me about the book scam. Jake opened up his desk drawer and unrolled a sheet that’s as long as ten toilet rolls stuck together. ‘Boonana wants me to write one thousand JakerSkater books,’ he told me. ‘All he gives me back is eight Boonana books.’

  I was shocked. ‘Nobody can write that many books,’ I said.

  Jake swallowed hard. ‘When I won that short story competition, that judge asked me if it could be a book and well . . . I thought maybe Boonana could help me out,’ he said. He opens up his closet. There are stacks of papers on each shelf. ‘I’m already up to JakerSkater No.23,’ Jake said.

  ‘You can’t keep this up forever,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Jake showed me one of his JakerSkater stories. ‘I’m still halfway through no.24. I normally do all the pictures first.’

  I recognise some of the sketches. ‘So that’s what you’ve been doing in class.’

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone about this, otherwise I’ll really be a ghost,’ Jake said. ‘If I don’t complete my ghost contract, then Boonana will call the ghost police, who have special permission to cross over to our world to drag me over into Ghostopia.’

  Poor Jake. As much as I wanted Jake to suffer, I felt compelled to help him.

  ‘Maybe I can help you out. Does your contract say that you have to write them?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Can I borrow some of your written stories to read?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, go for it,’ Jake said.

  Let this be a warning for any kid out there. Don’t be fooled by a ghost kid. In fact, don’t talk to ghosts at all.

  Book Review

  JakerSkater No.19: The Masked Ball

  Wednesday, 30 July

  By Melissa Phu

  Confession time, I hated Jake Kola’s Boonana books, but when I found out he didn’t write them, I was keen to actually read Jake’s original work, JakerSkater. It’s a bit of a weird name but, hey, my teacher has said you can write yourself as a character into your stories, so it’s not wrong.

  I thought I would read a page or two, just to get a feel for the story, but I ended up reading the whole book. JakerSkater is a skater who gets selected to be a special agent and goes on cool missions. In The Masked Ball, JakerSkater goes to Venice, where he has to uncover the bad guys before they blow up the canals. The action is nonstop and it shows that Jake knows a lot about skateboarding.

  Maybe Jake is a writer after all.

  4 out of 5 stars

  Mission Possible Guide

  Getting out of a ghost contract

  Thursday, 31 July

  By Melissa Phu

  Have you ever signed a deal with a ghost that you wanted to get out of? No? Well, in case it ever happens one day, Jake Kola and I have worked out a way to do it. Just follow our guide and it may save your life!

  Step 1: Plan ahead

  Before you confront the ghost, do your research on the ghost and contract, so you can come up with a plan.

  At school, Jake and I spent most of our recess and lunch making notes on Boonana.

  ‘He’s just a kid, like me,’ Jake said.

  ‘Which means he’s gullible,’ I said.

  Jake laughed. ‘You’re not wrong.’

  Step 2: Confuse the ghost

  Ghosts don’t know a lot about the human world, so you can use that to your advantage.

  Case in point, I went to Jake’s house, ready to talk to Boonana. The ghost boy popped out of the glophone.

  ‘Where’s JakerSkater No.24?’ he barked at Jake.

  ‘Forget about JakerSkater,’ I said. ‘I have a better idea.’

  Boonana turned to me. ‘Huh? Go on, tell me.’

  ‘Jake and I have a cool idea called DinoBlitz about human kids who go on exciting adventures in a dinosaur park.’

  ‘What’s a dinosaur?’ Boonana asked.

  ‘Don’t you have dinosaurs in Ghostopia?’ I asked.

  Boonana shook his head. ‘Nah.’

  ‘It’s a gruesom
e, gigantic beast,’ I said. I quickly take out a book about dinosaurs from my backpack. ‘We see them all the time!’

  Jake nodded. ‘Yeah, sometimes if you’re quick enough, you can latch onto their tails and hitch a ride.’

  Boonana’s eyeballs bounce in all directions. ‘Oh, okay . . .’

  Step 3: Scare the ghost

  (it’s easier than you think)

  Once you have confused the ghost, you can kick it up a gear and try to scare them.

  Jake and I keep yelling out our new ideas for books.

  ‘Gluten-free cowboys,’ I said.

  ‘Pretty Wi-fi and her modem friends,’ Jake said.

  ‘The mystery of Algebra,’ I said.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ Boonana threw his hands in the air. ‘Let’s just focus on . . .’

  ‘I haven’t got to my best idea yet,’ I said. ‘Killer Cockroaches.’

  Boonana stops, mid hover. ‘What’s a cockroach?’

  Jake searches for a close-up picture on his phone. ‘They look like this – they’re the size of houses,’ he says.

  ‘They love to eat ghosts and green peppers.’

  ‘Whoa, what?’ Boonana asks. ‘They eat g – g – ghosts?’

  ‘My pet cockroach, Rex, hasn’t had a ghost in ages,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t mind having a bite.’

  ‘Wouldn’t ghosts like to read about being eaten by killer cockroaches and dinosaurs?’ Jake said.

  Boonana’s hands trembled. ‘No way.’

  Step 4: Be firm and TALK BIG.

  Once you have the ghost trembling down to their spirits, go in for the kill – so to speak.

  ‘Then let’s change the contract,’ Jake said. ‘I stop writing books for you or I’ll set Melissa’s killer cockroach on you.’

  ‘I’ll call my dad and the ghost police,’ Boonana said. ‘They’ll find a way to visit you . . .’