Weird

by Jeremy Strong

  She disappeared. Josh slowly removed his shirt and shoes and lay face down on the bed. It felt odd, shoving his face in the hole. He wasn’t sure where to put his arms. Should he cross them above his head or have them by his sides? He was still fretting when Fizz returned. Josh’s jaw dropped. She was wearing one of her mother’s white uniforms. Fizz stood there grinning. She held her arms out to either side and gave a twirl.

  ‘Do I look the part?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Good. OK, lie flat, arms by your sides, and relax.’

  Fizz tipped some oil on to her palm and rubbed her hands together. She got to work, kneading carefully and steadily at Josh’s muscles. His back seemed so long and strong, and there was an archipelago of freckles across his shoulder blades. Fizz had freckles too, and she’d never liked them, until now.

  ‘How’s that?’

  There was no answer. Maybe he was asleep. Fizz had got into the rhythm, running the heels of her hand up each side of his spine. Josh let out a long, low sigh. Fizz gazed down at her patient, heart in mouth. Surely he could feel the waves of love she was sending him?

  There was a bright flash and Fizz spun towards the door. Another flash. Lauren stood there with a camera. She beamed at them both.

  ‘Mum and Dad are going to love this!’ she said.

  Fizz

  I’m going to kill Lauren. I think I might strangle her with her bikini top. That’d serve her right. She waited until Josh had slid off home (very quietly, I might add, with his collar up, like a thief in the night) and when Mum and Dad got in she showed them the photos. And what did they do? They laughed.

  ‘Oh, Fizz, darling, you look so cute,’ sniggered Mum.

  ‘Quite the thing,’ added Dad. ‘So what were you two up to? I see you’ve got Josh down to his trousers.’

  ‘He’s so weedy,’ observed Lauren, peering between them. ‘Don’t you think he looks weedy? His chest is all puny.’

  ‘He is NOT puny!’ I shouted.

  ‘He’s fourteen, Lauren, what do you expect?’ asked Mum. ‘Don’t be cruel.’

  ‘Anyway, he doesn’t fancy Fizz,’ Lauren said tartly. ‘He fancies me because he’s a perv.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with liking older women, Lauren.’ This was Dad’s contribution and it put a scowl on Mum’s face.

  ‘Thank you, darling.’

  ‘I don’t mean you. It’s a generalization. Some men go for older women. Besides, I don’t suppose that Josh, being only fourteen, has any idea what kind of woman he goes for at all. Fizz, you may think you have successfully avoided my question so I shall repeat it – what were you two up to?’

  ‘She was giving him a massage,’ said Lauren.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. Mum does it all the time,’ I burst.

  ‘To other women,’ Lauren pointed out.

  I couldn’t think of an immediate answer to that. Mum studied me carefully. ‘This is the boy you like, isn’t it, Fizz?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘And we come home and find him with his shirt off and you giving him a massage, all dressed up in one of my work uniforms. It is a bit suspicious, don’t you think? What might have happened if Lauren hadn’t come back when she did?’

  That was easy to answer.

  ‘I would have finished the massage – I was only doing his back and shoulders – he had a sports injury – and then he would have put his shirt on and I would have changed back and he would have gone home and nobody would have known anything about it and guess what?’

  Everyone looked at me. I delivered the punchline. ‘I wouldn’t even have been pregnant.’

  That stopped them for at least ten seconds.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Mum began.

  ‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it? I think it is, you know, because that’s what your grubby minds are thinking. For God’s sake, I was attending an injured patient.’

  Howls of hysterical laughter. OK, maybe I’d overdone it a little. However, it was all to my advantage because they never really recovered from that. They were too doubled-up to speak coherently. Dad managed to murmur something about his mind not being a bit grubby and Mum said it was sometimes but that was OK with her and I whizzed upstairs and locked myself in my bedroom. I rang Josh and told him what had happened.

  ‘Lauren actually showed them?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. That’s how perfect she is, you see?’ Silence. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They laughed.’

  ‘Laughed?’

  ‘Yes. Ha ha ha, you know? They thought it was funny. I mean, they mocked us, Josh.’

  ‘Not good,’ he muttered.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Mockery is so cheap. And they said stuff too.’ Another silence. ‘Don’t you want to know what they said?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘They thought we might have been going to, you know…’ I couldn’t help giggling.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, you know. I mean, you did have your shirt off and you were just lying there and I suppose it might have looked a bit suspicious.’

  ‘So what did you say? Did you explain?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. And I told them I wasn’t pregnant so it’s OK.’

  There was a groan from the other end. ‘Oh, that’s great.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you think it’s great,’ I said. ‘It sounds like you’re pulling the cross and fed-up face you’ve been making all day, the one you make when you think I’m stupid.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘I’m not arguing with you, Fizz. I don’t.’

  ‘You are arguing with me.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘See? That’s contradiction, which is much the same as argument, so you are.’

  He hung up. There’s no talking to some people. I shall never understand boys. Or parents. Definitely not parents. I don’t think they’ll ever understand me either. I mean, on the one hand they want me to act like an adult, and on the other they try and stop me from doing the things adults do. Still, who cares? That was the best ten minutes I’ve had for ages. Josh is so, so hunky. How could Lauren possibly call him weedy, not to mention puny? I could feel his muscles rippling under my hands. Mmm. How could Lauren say that? She must be blind. Or stupid. Or both. Unless… unless SHE SECRETLY FANCIES HIM HERSELF!!!!!!!!

  I rang Evie and told her what had happened. That made her squeal.

  ‘You gave Goat a massage! Oh my God! I can’t believe it! Was he in the nuddy?’

  ‘No, of course not. You’re a sex maniac, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I only asked, Fizz. Anyhow, you’re the one that bangs on about him being hunky-funky.’

  ‘That’s aesthetic appreciation, Evie, which has nothing to do with sex. I am simply admiring the human form.’

  ‘The male human form.’

  ‘Yes, well there’s not much point in admiring the female human form, is there? I see that every day. Stop all this crud-talk because I have had a nightmare thought.’

  ‘Not Mrs Taylor and her salsa tutor?’

  ‘No, that’s just horrible, nowhere near nightmare territory. I think Josh has got a secret admirer.’

  ‘Never! Who?’

  ‘Lauren.’

  There was silence for a few moments at the other end and then I heard a strange whiffling kind of noise. ‘Hang on,’ squeaked a tiny voice and there was a clunk as if the phone had been put down on a hard surface and the whiffling noise got louder until eventually I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Evie was laughing. She had both hands stuck over her mouth and she was trying to stifle a major snigger attack. I’d seen her do it many times at school, but I’d never been a longdistance witness, as I was now.

  ‘Evie, pick up the phone. Evie? EVIE! PICK UP THE PHONE! DO YOU HEAR ME?’

  ‘Hi, sorry, had to blow my nose.’


  ‘You were laughing.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Evie, you were.’

  ‘Only a bit. It was funny. I mean, Lauren? Come on, Fizz, she’s got the entire male senior school drooling over her. She could have the pick of any hunk in the school. Why on earth would she want to choose Goat?’

  ‘Are you saying Josh isn’t a hunk?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Compared to the senior school, you have to admit he’s kind of a small hunk.’

  ‘Small? SMALL? What about Charlie then? If Josh is small, then Charlie is like a, like a teeny-tiny stringy beany thingy-thing.’

  ‘Yeah, well Goat is…’ ‘G’night, Evie.’

  I hung up. The trouble with Evie is that she’s blinded by love.

  Joss

  She dobbed us in. Lauren dobbed us in. How could she? We hadn’t even done anything. At least I hadn’t. All I’d done was lie there. And I can’t believe Fizz told her parents she wasn’t pregnant. She is beyond weird. That whole family is weird. Why did they think we were funny?

  Still, cosmic massage. I hope she does it again, although I don’t suppose I’ll be allowed anywhere near her house after what Lauren did, which is a shame because it was nice there – not a single animal hair in sight – not a single animal in sight, which was even better. The only hairs I saw were long blonde ones on the back of an armchair. That would have been Lauren. Damn her eyes! How could she? Damn all of her, not just her eyes, everything, her mouth and… why does she have to be so beautiful? She doesn’t deserve it.

  Fizz is better than she is, and that’s saying something. Strange creature. She’s not as bad as she looks really. If she had a different head she’d be pretty hot. Unfortunately she talks nonsense most of the time. I guess she’s quite funny – on occasion – but she never knows when to shut up. Plus, she seems to think I’m some kind of Mr Grumpy, which I don’t think I am. I know I complain sometimes but I only complain when there are things to complain about, which in my house is quite often, I admit. But that’s not me, that’s Mum.

  Like yesterday, when I got back from Fizz’s, Mum was in a panic because she’d lost Milligan.

  ‘What is Milligan?’ I asked, knowing full well it wasn’t going to be human.

  ‘A chameleon.’

  ‘How big is he?’ I wanted to know, running my eyes round the room.

  ‘As long as my hand.’

  ‘I thought chameleons were bigger than that?’

  ‘Not the small ones,’ Mum answered, with a weak smile.

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Your great-grandmother used to keep tiny ones as pets. You know she was brought up in Africa? I remember her telling me she had one that used to sit on her finger. She’d point it at a fly and its eyes would swivel forward and a moment later the tongue would shoot out and hey presto! Fly gone.’

  ‘Neat.’

  ‘Their eyes swivel independently – very clever. It means one eye can look behind them while the other is looking ahead, or above, or just somewhere else. Your great-gran did an experiment once to see if it would explode.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No. She was only eight or nine. A lot of her school friends had pet chameleons and everyone believed that if you put one on something red it would explode because chameleons can turn most colours, but not red.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes. So one day, when she was at home and nobody was about, she took one of her little chameleons because she wanted to know – she had to find out – and she went outside and she put it on a bright red poinsettia leaf.’ Mum looked at me, eyes wide.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It didn’t. It didn’t explode. It turned a sort of muddy-brown colour. She was very relieved and a bit ashamed. She would have been mortified if it had exploded.’

  I glanced round the room again. ‘So we are looking for a small iguana-type creature that can camouflage itself? That should make finding it a lot easier.’

  ‘Mmm. Sorry.’

  We couldn’t track it down. It was probably right under our noses all the time. Mum was worried about it wandering outside and I told her that if she left doors shut instead of wide open there was a better chance of keeping it in one room. She ignored me, of course, and we didn’t find it. I spent the rest of the evening working on Escape IV. It was almost ready. I only had to set the fins and wire up launch control. Space beckoned. As I worked on the fins I felt my fingers twitch. I was nervous, but of what? Was it the fast-approaching launch of Escape IV after months of work? Was it knowing I was involved up to my neck in the breakout from Marigolds? Or was it thinking about Fizz? Maybe it was all three. I was going into serious stress overload.

  Marigolds was strange, jumpy. I bumped into the Major or Matron so often I wondered if they were stalking me. They are so creepy. The prunes were behaving oddly too. I had a strange encounter with Mrs Ogweyo, who told me Freddie was trapped on top of her wardrobe and could I get him down. For a brief moment I couldn’t remember who Freddie was and had visions of some man lying curled up on top of Mrs Ogweyo’s wardrobe.

  ‘Freddie?’

  ‘My cat.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t allowed pets?’

  ‘Sssh. It’s a secret. I keep him in my room. Nobody must know. It’s a secret. He’s up there. If you stand on this armchair you should be able to reach him.’

  I pulled it across to the wardrobe. All this trouble for an imaginary cat! The seat was soft but it just about took my weight. I could barely see over the top and had to grab the rim above the wardrobe door, cling on to that and hoist myself up a bit. That was when the soft seat gave way. My feet plunged through the elasticated straps supporting the cushion. I was so surprised that as I fell back I still clung to the wardrobe and pulled that with me. The end result was that I crashed to the floor with my lower legs still caught in the armchair, while the wardrobe toppled forward, pivoted over the back of the armchair and finally crashed down on top of me with such force that my bent knees, locked into position as they were by the armchair, splintered the door. I was pinned to the ground, mugged by a wardrobe. That must be a first.

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Mrs Ogweyo, sitting down on her bed and shaking her head.

  The noise brought Matron in a jiffy. What a surprise. She’d probably been hiding round the corner, waiting to pounce.

  ‘What’s been going on?’ she bellowed. I was silent and hoped Mrs Ogweyo would think of something. I couldn’t mention secret Freddie. I wasn’t going to dob her in. Matron lifted the end of the wardrobe with one hand, which was scary, and I struggled out from beneath the wreckage. I had half of Mrs Ogweyo’s dresses wrapped around my legs. I looked across hopefully at the old lady.

  Mrs Ogweyo’s eyes bulged and she raised her hands in despair. ‘What is the world coming to, Matron?’ she asked, shaking her grey head. ‘The boy said there was something on top of the wardrobe and the next thing – crash, bang – he’s pulled it all down. Look at my dresses! I don’t understand the youth of today. Is it a protest, do you think?’

  I stayed silent. I knew it would be better that way. Just shut up and take whatever comes. Matron would have it in for me, no matter where the truth lay. First of all I had to clear out the smashed wardrobe. Then I had to move a new one from a vacant room into Mrs Ogweyo’s room. Then I had to put all her clothes on hangers and hang them up. Finally Matron told me I was confined to washing-up duty for the rest of the day and she went steaming off.

  As I went to the door Mrs Ogweyo called sadly after me. ‘I think Freddie ran out when you made all that noise. He was so scared.’ Yes. I knew it would all be my fault. That’s the last time I try to help an old lady.

  The only break came in the afternoon when Mrs Kowalski surprised me at the sink, creeping up on me in her usual furtive manner. I asked her what she was doing down in the kitchen.

  ‘I came to thank you for the spade. It’s making things so much easier. We
’ve made terrific progress. We should achieve breakthrough tomorrow.’ Her eyes shone.

  ‘That’s fantastic!’

  ‘Yes, and it’s all thanks to you and Fizz. The Escape Committee can’t tell you how grateful we are.’

  ‘I’d love to see the tunnel – it must be amazing.’

  ‘Tomorrow. It’s too dangerous to take you there in broad daylight. Besides, one of us is down there at present. If you stand very still and listen you might just be able to hear them. The tunnel isn’t all that far from where we’re standing.’ She put a hand on my arm and we stood, listening. ‘Do you hear a faint scratching?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think so.’

  ‘There!’

  ‘Yes! I heard that. Is that coming from the tunnel?’

  ‘Oh yes. Now then, tomorrow, I wonder if you can bring me a local map.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Mrs Kowalski let out a little breath. ‘I don’t suppose I shall sleep much tonight. I’m so excited, you see. Freedom tomorrow. I can almost smell the fresh air! Jack said there was nothing like the feeling of freedom after being shut away for such a long time.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you, what was it like, flying Spitfires?’

  ‘Not only Spitfires, but Hurricanes, Mosquitoes, all sorts. There were quite a few of us, you know. We’d collect the planes at the factory and deliver them to bases all over Britain. The Spits and the Hurricanes were the best: the engine throb, the power, the elegance and, between you and me, Josh, they were rather sexy. It’s true. It was dangerous too, and that’s how I met Jack. I was flying a Hurricane when it developed a fault.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Smoke in the cockpit – big danger signal, so I knew I had to land as soon as possible. We had no flight maps, in case they fell into enemy hands, so I hunted for somewhere, a field, a road, anything. Miracle of miracles, I saw an airbase. By this time there were flames outside from the engine and I could feel the heat on my legs. I was too low to eject. I made a very bouncy landing, at which point the cockpit burst into flames and the cover jammed. I thought, this is it, I’m dead. Bummer. There was a dreadful banging and shaking. The cover was smashed off and I was hauled out by a young American airman.’