The Fearless Five

by Bannie McPartlin

  He looked up at me. ‘You’re really sure the Americans can fix her?’ he asked.

  ‘The Americans have been to the moon, Johnny J. They can do anything,’ I said, and he smiled. He reached for my hand and I hauled him up.

  ‘Yeah. That’s true. OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this.’

  When we’d searched everywhere we could think of in Mam’s room, that only left Rich’s room.

  ‘Why would it be here?’ Johnny J said, holding his nose as he entered. It smelled of cheap aftershave, old socks and hair gel.

  ‘Well, it’s not anywhere else,’ I said.

  ‘Who does your sister think she is anyway?’ Johnny J said.

  ‘The Queen of Sheba, according to my dad.’fn2

  ‘I mean what is so important that she needs to lock it away?’

  ‘Her stuff,’ I said. Rachel’s stuff was really important to Rachel. She hated anyone touching it. She lost her mind anytime Rich or I went near her room.

  Johnny J and I riffled through my brother’s room. We found a box of fireworks, including Roman candles, French bombs and whistlers. We also found a packet of damp cigarettes and a bow and arrow! My mam would have hit the roof if she knew – ever since Cyclops Brennan lost his good eye in a slingshot accident, my mam decreed that anything that involved flying weapons through the air was not a suitable plaything and therefore contraband. If I wasn’t planning an armed robbery of Rolands’ Garage I could have blackmailed my brother for a long time.

  We could hear the band from the shed. Rich, aka Spots, Buzz, Fingers and Cap had formed their band ‘Fingers & the Fudge’ six months earlier. None of them played an instrument. Fingers was the lead singer, and the lads all backed him up. Cap sang a lot too, but Fingers was the star of the show. They just sang to karaoke backing tracks, and although Fingers and Cap could both sing in tune, their voices didn’t really work together, and Rich and Buzz were rubbish.

  ‘They’re hard to listen to,’ Johnny J said, nodding toward the window.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said. I was having nightmares. ‘I think Rich wants you to join them. He keeps talking about how good you were in the school hall,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’

  ‘I’d rather put my noodle in a blender,’ he said.

  After that we must have blocked them out because neither of us noticed when they stopped singing.

  ‘Where does your mam put the spare house key?’ Johnny J asked.

  ‘In a plant pot beside the door.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s what my mam does. It’s always close by and obvious,’ he said, and he walked to Rachel’s door. He looked on the floor. There was no plant pot. He looked at the door and he reached up and sitting on the ledge was the key! He held it before my eyes and smiled.

  ‘Nice one,’ I said, and punched him in the arm. It was my way of saying ‘Good job’.

  I was halfway under Rachel’s bed when I heard Rich come thundering up the stairs.

  ‘Numbnutbutt? Hey, Numbnutbutt, you up here?’

  Ah nuts!

  8

  The Band

  Johnny J closed Rachel’s door quietly and quickly and put his finger to his mouth.

  ‘Numbnutbutt! Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ Rich sang out. My heart started to race. If he found us in Rachel’s bedroom, we were done for.

  We could hear him walking in and out of the bedrooms.

  ‘You better not have left this house without telling me.’

  Johnny J and I stayed silent. Neither of us moved and we held our breaths.

  ‘Where are you?’ he called out, and he banged on the wall.

  Johnny J pointed under the bed. He got down on his belly and he crawled under. I followed. It was really dusty under there and I was sure there were spiders. I wanted to sneeze, but I held my nose. I tried to forget I was lying on the floor in a tight and dusty space. My stomach was doing somersaults. Johnny J spotted the box of pepper spray. He pointed vigorously and mouthed, ‘IT’S THE PEPPER SPRAY!’ I nodded furiously and gave him the thumbs up. He grabbed the box and we waited.

  ‘NUMB … NUT … BUTT!’ Rich screamed one last time, and I could tell he was directly outside Rachel’s door. Johnny J and I stared at one another, me holding my nose and him holding on to the box. We were under Rachel’s bed for a minute, but it felt like an hour. Eventually we heard him running down the stairs and the back door closed with a slam. We both scrambled out from under the bed and I sighed a sigh of great relief. Johnny J held out the box of pepper spray so I could open it and take one of the two cans out. I handed it to him.

  ‘This is it,’ I said. There was a cobweb hanging from his ear. It was gross. I pointed to it. ‘Spider house,’ I said. I don’t know why – the fright might have made me forget the word ‘web’. He brushed it off and examined the can intently as we walked onto the landing. I locked Rachel’s door and put the key back up on the ledge.

  ‘Do we even know if it still works?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, does it have an expiry date?’

  ‘Ah no, I don’t know,’ I said. It had been under Rachel’s bed for two years.

  We looked at the tin, but it said nothing about expiration. It was just covered in red Xs and health warnings.

  ‘We should test it,’ I said.

  ‘On who?’ Johnny J said with alarm.

  ‘Let’s see if someone volunteers,’ I said, knowing very well that no one would volunteer, except maybe Charlie because she was nuts. There was no way I was pepper-spraying her in the face, even if she was the most annoying girl on the planet!

  We were halfway down the stairs and Johnny J was tucking the pepper spray into his inside pocket when Rich appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Volunteer for what?’ Rich said, and my heart nearly fell into my stomach.

  ‘Nothing!’ I said.

  ‘Helping with the old folks,’ Johnny J said. Good comeback. I wished I’d thought of it.

  Rich laughed. ‘Yeah, right – old people freak him right out.’fn1 He didn’t believe us. ‘Where were you?’ he said, and he was pointing his finger in my face.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Not lying.’

  ‘I went up there. You weren’t there.’

  ‘Well, I was there and I’m on the stairs now. See?’ I pointed to myself.

  Rich looked confused. ‘But I was up there,’ he said, looking around. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see you either.’

  ‘But?’ Rich said.

  ‘You need us for anything?’ Johnny J said, helpfully moving us off-topic.

  Rich nodded slowly. ‘Come and listen to the band,’ he said.

  ‘No. I’m busy,’ I said.

  ‘Wasn’t talking to you. Johnny J, will you have a listen?’

  We followed Rich down to the shed. Buzz, Fingers and Cap were practising their dancing.fn2

  ‘All right, lads?’ Buzz said.

  ‘Good, thanks,’ Johnny J said, and he leaned against the wall. I just stood there, not quite sure where to put myself. I’d never been allowed in the shed when the lads were practising before. They got in line and they started to sway even before they started singing, then they started clicking their fingers, even Fingers, which looked weird. I was mesmerised. Rich counted them in.

  ‘One, two, three, four …’ And they started to sing. They sounded like the vocal equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

  ‘Well?’ Rich asked Johnny J when they had finished.

  ‘Your harmonies are all over the place – it needs work,’ Johnny J said. I just folded my arms and nodded along. I didn’t know what harmonies were, but I could definitely tell that they were all over the place!

  Cap gave Johnny J a dirty look.

  ‘What does he know, Spots?’ he said to Rich, who had so many spots on his face it looked like he had a chronic case of the measles. Fingers grinned madly. He looked all right except for hi
s missing fingers, and Buzz, well, Buzz was from another planet, wearing pink cords and his mam’s fur jacket. (He thought it looked cool. It did not.) He was really friendly but he freaked me out. I really wanted to get out of there.

  ‘Any chance you’d play with us some time?’ Fingers said to Johnny J.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t.’ He’d rather put his noodle in a blender. HA HA!

  ‘I think we’d sound great together,’ Fingers said. ‘We’re working hard.’

  ‘It’s not that. I’m just busy.’ And he’d rather put his noodle in a blender! HA HA!

  Fingers nodded. ‘Yeah, sorry about your mam.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Johnny J said, and he looked away. He hated when people brought up his sick mother.

  ‘Well, think about it, maybe when you have some time on your hands,’ Rich said. ‘We’d love to have you.’

  Yeah, well, he’d rather put his noodle in a blender! SO BACK OFF! I didn’t say it, I just thought it.

  ‘Sorry, just really busy,’ Johnny J said, and as we walked away, he mumbled, ‘Your brother’s a spacer.’

  He didn’t need to tell me. I already knew. We were halfway up the garden path and laughing at the notion of Johnny J singing with my spacer brother and his spacer friends when Rich stepped out of the shed and called me.

  ‘Jeremy, wait up.’

  Johnny J went into the kitchen and I turned back to my brother.

  ‘What?’

  He walked right up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘You were in Rachel’s room,’ he said, and a little poo escaped.

  ‘No, we weren’t,’ I lied, but my face turned red, then purple, and my eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head.

  Rich grinned and nodded his head while pointing at my tomato face. ‘Yeah, you were, and I’m trying to set up a gig. If I do, Johnny J is going to sing with us.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘So I’ll tell Mam.’

  I could have threatened that I’d tell her about the stash under his bed, but he’d just get rid of it before she got home and I couldn’t risk a war. If Rich told on me I’d be grounded for at least a week, and if I was grounded I couldn’t rob Jim Roland’s granny. All I could do was pray that no one in their right mind would give Fingers & the Fudge a gig before the end of the week. After that it didn’t matter if my mam grounded me for life.

  I relaxed a little – no need to say anything to stress Johnny J out any further. What were the chances?

  9

  The Pepper Spray

  I loved the summer. Every day was a new adventure, some better than others. Most of them were spent in the forest, climbing trees, racing bikes, making swings out of tyres and old ropes, falling off those trees, racing bikes and swings, getting bandaged up in A & E and then returning to spy on unsuspecting teenagers and laughing. There was always lots and lots of laughter.

  Johnny J and I arrived at our patch in the forest with the pepper spray in hand. Sumo was lying on the grass looking up at the sky. It was a sunny warm day and our giant friend seemed content. Walker, by contrast, was walking around in circles, pushing his glasses up his nose and mumbling to himself. He looked at his watch when we reached him.

  ‘It’s nearly 1 p.m.’ He was really angry.

  ‘Sorry, the key took longer to find than we thought,’ Johnny J said.

  I ignored him. Walker was nearly always late, it was no big deal, and anyway where else was he supposed to be? NOWHERE.

  ‘Where’s Charlie?’ Johnny J asked. I really hoped she wasn’t coming.

  Sumo pointed to the sky. Johnny J and I looked up. She was hanging upside down and waving from a tree. Of course Charlie Eastman was hanging upside down from a tree – she couldn’t stay upright and on the ground like a normal person. She started to climb down and Sumo got up. We stood in a circle.

  ‘Well?’ Charlie said.

  Johnny J took the can of pepper spray out of his jacket and held it up.

  ‘It doesn’t look that scary,’ Sumo said.

  ‘Well, it’s a can. Cans don’t look scary,’ Walker said.

  ‘We just have to make sure that anyone who crosses our path understands how scary it is,’ Johnny J said.

  ‘So we think we should test it,’ I said. ‘Any volunteers?’

  For once Charlie remained silent.

  ‘I have asthma. There’s no way,’ Walker said, and to be fair, everyone agreed he couldn’t do it.

  ‘He’s too weak,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not weak. I have a condition,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, a condition that makes you weak,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s just the truth.’ That was probably the first thing Charlie Eastman and I ever agreed on.

  I definitely didn’t want to be the test dummy for the pepper spray, but I felt pressure to volunteer because it was my sister’s pepper spray and it was all my idea. I was just about to put my hand up when Johnny J found his voice.

  ‘It’s for my mam. I’ll do it.’

  I didn’t like the idea of Johnny J getting pepper-sprayed in the face. He had enough going on.

  ‘You sure?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, but I handed the can to Sumo. I just couldn’t bring myself to spray my pal in the face. Sumo was gentle. He’d do it right.

  Except he didn’t do it right. He held the spray out in front of Johnny J with the nozzle facing the wrong way. No one noticed.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked quietly and calmly.

  Johnny J gulped hard, squeezed his eyes shut and gave Sumo the thumbs up.

  ‘Ready,’ he said.

  ‘OK, one, two, three …’

  Sumo pressed the nozzle down. We were all staring at Johnny J, who was braced for pain, but none came.

  ‘Well, that’s not working,’ Walker said just as Sumo let out an agonised scream and fell to his knees. The can hit the ground.

  ‘My eyes, my eyes,’ Sumo said, rubbing his eyes and almost immediately they swelled shut. He jumped up and ran in circles before slamming into a tree.

  ‘Ah my face, my face …’ he screamed, still pawing at his eyes and face. ‘Everything burns.’

  ‘What happened?’ Johnny J asked me while grabbing Sumo and redirecting him away from the trees.

  ‘He’s after spraying himself in the face!’ Walker said.

  ‘I’m blind,’ Sumo cried.fn1 He fell to his knees, still holding on to Johnny J.

  ‘What do we do?’ Johnny J called out to no one in particular.

  Sumo was rubbing his eyes vigorously now. They looked really sore.

  ‘I’m guessing rubbing is not a good thing,’ Walker said.

  Johnny J held Sumo’s arms away from his face. It was hard, Sumo was strong, but Johnny J kept repeating, ‘It’s for your own good.’

  Sumo rolled onto the ground and Johnny J got on the ground with him.

  ‘We need water,’ Johnny J said, and Sumo nodded his head because he couldn’t speak any more. He was deep breathing.

  ‘The public loos are a three-minute walk from here,’ Charlie said.

  ‘So?’ I said, and I felt really bad. Sumo was in an awful way.

  ‘So we could shove his head down the loo,’ she said.

  ‘You want to drown him?’ I said in disbelief.

  ‘No, idiot, the water will cool down his eyes.’

  ‘That’s gross,’ Johnny J said. Those public loos were in a terrible condition.

  ‘It could work,’ Walker said.

  ‘Sumo, do you want us to bring you to the public loos and shove your face down the loo?’ Johnny J said.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Sumo gasped, and it should have been a warning.

  It was a sign. We just ignored it.

  10

  The Public Poo

  It took the four of us to help Sumo to his feet and then steer him toward the public toilets.

  I checked the cubicles. The least I c
ould do was find him the cleanest one. The good news was that it had been cleaned recently.fn1

  ‘In here! This one is the best,’ I said.

  Charlie and Johnny J led a blind and gasping Sumo inside. Walker waited outside.fn2 He couldn’t watch it. I don’t blame him. It was a hard thing to witness.

  Sumo got on his knees. I lifted the toilet seat. He plunged his head down the toilet! He actually did it. I couldn’t believe it. He rose up, drenched to the skin.

  ‘Flush it,’ he said, and he shoved his head back into the loo and Johnny J flushed it over and over again until eventually Sumo re-emerged.

  ‘Enough,’ he said, and he leaned against the wall. His eyes were still burning, but at least he could open them and he could breathe freely, which was a big relief. Walker thought it best that Sumo got fresh air into his lungs.

  Later, we sat around the picnic table staring at Sumo eating a Spam sandwich he kept in his inside pocket for emergencies.

  ‘I think that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,’ Charlie said.

  Everyone was feeling a little low. I needed to do something to regain some control, so I stood up and addressed them: ‘So the good news is the spray works. However, the bad news is we absolutely, definitely cannot and under no circumstances use it on Jim Roland’s granny.’

  They all nodded in agreement.

  ‘So we absolutely, positively will only use it in emergencies and not on anyone over the age of sixty or under the age of ten,’ I said.

  They nodded in agreement again.

  ‘We’re going to have to hope Mrs Roland nods off,’ I said.

  ‘But what if she doesn’t?’ Walker said.

  The public poos had given me an idea. ‘She’ll go to the loo,’ I said. ‘All old people pee a lot. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Fact,’ Walker mumbled.

  ‘So we stake the place out, and when Jim Roland’s granny either goes to the loo or falls asleep, Johnny J and I will take the cash from the till. Charlie, you grab the petty cash from the back. Walker, you’ll stay on lookout, and, Sumo, you’ll stand guard at the door.’