The Astounding Broccoli Boy

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  ‘I’m not sure about the name Green Knights,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah . . .’ Tommy-Lee considered. ‘You can’t be a knight if you’re a girl.’

  Koko’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’ll be whatever I want to be. Only I think what’s on the card needs to be more obvious. Like if we were selling pizzas, we’d say Dial-a-Pizza.’

  ‘Dial-a-Hero?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The pizza place by us,’ said Tommy-Lee, ‘is called Chicago Pizza Place.’

  ‘That’s not really useful. Because we’re in London.’

  ‘They’re amazing pizzas though. They do one with bacon and egg. The minute I stop having to eat nothing but quinoa, I’m going to go there.’

  ‘The best pizza ever is from a guy who sells just slices of pizza on Tottenham Court Road,’ said Koko. ‘He also sells little cakes with ice cream inside.’

  ‘I feel,’ I said, ‘as though we are getting off the subject.’ I made a few suggestions: Heroes-R-Us, Heroes-4-U, the Hero Helpline and Heroes-At-Your-Service.

  Tommy-Lee said, ‘Doesn’t have to be Chicago. Could be London Heroes.’

  ‘Heroes of London,’ said Koko. ‘That’s it, Karol! Put Heroes of London and make some more. We need to tell the world.’

  I thought he was going to yell at her for calling him Karol, but no. He said, ‘You know what we could do? You could come to ours for pizza and then I could come to you for ice-cream cake.’

  ‘Yeah, because then you could come to Chinatown for braised lamb with pak choi, which is the best thing ever.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The best thing ever is the cheese cake from Dafna’s Cheese Cake Factory. It’s near my cousin’s house. She sends us one in the post on our birthdays.’

  They drew some more business cards. Koko took over the spelling. ‘We’re a team, Tommy-Lee,’ she said. ‘We need to make the most of each other’s skills.’ They carried on talking about food.

  I pointed out that there were more important things to talk about and anyway they weren’t even talking right about food because they had completely forgotten to mention the Ice-Cream Factory – where you can build your own ice-cream fantasy.

  ‘Ice-Cream Factory!’ whooped Tommy-Lee – as though he could already taste the chocolate sprinkles. ‘That’s got to go on the list. What we need to do is draw a map – I’m really good at maps – a map of all the best food and on the day we officially get out of here we can follow the map and eat like Chicago pizza in Handsworth as a starter and then down to London for Chinese food and then – oh! me and Mum stopped at Watford services once and they give you hot chocolate in a tall glass with a flake sticking out of it, so that could go on. And the cheese-cake place . . .’

  ‘That’s in Liverpool,’ said Koko. ‘Near the park.’

  ‘So it could be one big meal, but you have to travel around to eat it. A meal with a map instead of a menu. A Map of Treats.’

  ‘I,’ I said, ‘will keep watch. Someone has to.’ They didn’t even reply. They were one-hundred-per-cent involved in drawing their Map of Treats and putting it on the wall and admiring it.

  Every couple of minutes Nurse Rock came and peered through the window, as if she was trying to catch us out. I could see her and Dr Brightside having some kind of row, but they had their backs to us so I couldn’t lip-read. After a while she pushed in a trolley with a big packet of Snack a Jacks on it, and a plate of fish. The moment she brought the fish in . . . we heard CREAK from the bedsprings and SWISH from the curtains, not to mention FLAP, as the penguin lolloped on to the floor. The nurse didn’t seem to hear any of this. She just went out and carried on rowing with Dr Brightside. In the time that it took the door to close itself, the penguin had hopped up on top of the trolley and shovelled all the sardines off the plate into its mouth. When it finished, it jumped off the trolley on to my bed. The door opened again and Nurse Rock stuck her head around the door. ‘Urine samples . . .’ she said but then stopped. She saw the empty plate. ‘Those fish . . . Where have they . . . ?’

  ‘We were really hungry.’ Koko smiled. ‘Want to see our pictures?’ She was trying to make her look away from my bed, where the penguin was leaning its head right back, stretching its neck, trying to get the fish to go down. Even penguins shouldn’t bolt their food.

  ‘Not just now.’ She went back to her row.

  Doctor Brightside had turned around now. She was talking straight into Nurse Rock’s face. Now I could read her lips. She was giving Nurse Rock a telling-off. ‘I have now spoken to everyone who was in A & E last night and everyone in admissions. No trace of her. No trace. How can that happen?’

  ‘Don’t know, Doctor.’ I’d never heard a grown-up being told off before. Even though Nurse Rock was being polite, I could hear that she was angry underneath. If she couldn’t be angry back at Dr Brightside, she was probably going to be angry at us. She was probably going to be our nemesis.

  ‘You were on duty! What happened? Did she just materialize? Was she beamed down from a spaceship? Do little girls just appear out of nowhere?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  The door banged open. Nurse Rock blew in, grabbed the trolley and pushed it back out of the door. And when the door shut behind her, the penguin was no longer doing throat-stretching exercises on my bed.

  I looked out of the Fish Tank window. She’d left the trolley in the corridor. It was rattling and shaking to itself. There was either a very small earthquake or a penguin had tucked itself underneath the shelf and was squirming around, trying to get comfortable. There was a buzz at the Singing Duck door. Nurse Rock opened it and shoved the trolley out.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ wailed Tommy-Lee. ‘We can’t just let him go. We’ve got to go and rescue him.’

  ‘No, Tommy-Lee, we’re not here to rescue wandering penguins. We’re here to do what it says on your card – right wrongs and fight injustice.’

  ‘It’s wrong for a penguin to be wandering. Tell him, Koko,’ said Tommy-Lee.

  ‘This is a king penguin,’ said Koko. ‘They normally live in the very, very south of South America – where there’s blizzards and snow. London is summer holidays for him.’

  ‘King Penguin? Does that mean we should be calling him King Peter? Maybe he’s offended?’

  ‘Stop worrying about the penguin. We’ve got arch-enemies to fight.’

  As soon as she said ‘fight’, Tommy-Lee was listening.

  ‘Fight? Fight who?’

  ‘Shhhh, listen . . .’ Over the intercom we could hear that Nurse Rock was bickering with someone at the Singing Duck door. The other person was yelling, ‘It just jumped out and ran off. It was wearing a hat.’

  ‘Please step back. This is Isolation. You’re not allowed in here.’

  ‘What have you got in there? What’s going on in there? Little creatures in hats jumping out of the food trolley?! What was it? Is it aliens?!’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ I whispered. ‘What did she see?’

  ‘Aliens,’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘She saw aliens.’

  London in Fear-Quake! Alien Plot to Cancel Christmas!

  ‘That was no alien,’ said Koko. ‘That was our runaway penguin.’

  ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘would she mistake a penguin for an alien?’

  ‘Because she has poor ornithology skills,’ said Koko. ‘And because people have been going on about aliens all week. There are no aliens.’

  ‘What do you mean, people have been going on about aliens all week?’ I asked.

  ‘Where have you been?!’ said Koko. ‘How can you not know about this?!’

  ‘We’ve been in isolation.’

  ‘Well, weird things have been happening everywhere – viruses that come from nowhere, trains being cancelled, shops being closed. Wild animals everywhere. People talking about cancelling Christmas. But it’s just a coincidence. Why would aliens want to cancel Christmas?’

  ‘What do they look like?’ asked Tommy-Lee.

  ‘Who?’

&n
bsp; ‘The aliens.’

  ‘Don’t you ever listen to anything? There ARE no aliens. There’s only talk.’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is exactly what they said about the wolves in the gift shop. But were they right?’

  She stared at me. ‘You’re right,’ she said.

  ‘And turning green,’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘My mum said no one turns green. But I did turn green.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If we’re going to fight aliens,’ said Tommy-Lee, ‘we’ll need rockets and jet packs and lasers.’

  ‘We need a mad scientist!’ said Koko. ‘Someone who can invent a special formula for turning aliens into harmless monkeys or whatever.’ She was very excited about this. She made it sound as if she’d solved all our problems.

  ‘And how exactly do you expect us to find a mad scientist?’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘Are mad scientists even real?’

  ‘When they take samples of our blood and our wee, where do they send them? To the lab. Where you’ve got a lab, you’ve got scientists. Where you’ve got scientists, you’ve probably got at least one mad one. All we have to do is find the Mad Scientist and ask if they’d like to join the team.’

  ‘Ever since the day we turned green,’ I said, ‘people have been trying to find out how it happened, what’s causing it, if it can be stopped, if they can make us un-green. But what I’ve always wanted to know is why. Why are we green? And now we know why.’

  ‘What?’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘I missed a bit. What do we know?’

  ‘Every hero has a nemesis. Batman has the Joker. Spider-Man has the Green Goblin. Superman has Lex Luther. Why do we need heroes? To fight villains? All this time I’ve been thinking, What’s the point of us being heroes if we have no villains to fight? Now we have a reason. We’re heroes because it’s Chaos out there. London needs us. England needs us. The World needs us.’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘We’ll go out there and save London from Chaos . . .’ You could tell from the way he said it that he thought Chaos was a person – like Dr Chaos or Captain Chaos.

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Koko. ‘Then everyone will love us and we can be in charge.’

  ‘Isn’t someone already in charge of London?’ asked Tommy-Lee.

  ‘Yes, but I’d do a much better job.’

  Later on, lying in bed, I was thinking, Does Koko sound less like Xavier and more like Magneto?

  Three Heroes Stand on the Edge of a Skyscraper

  Who knows what dangers, what secrets, the sky above London is hiding?

  When Tommy-Lee sleepwalked that night, there were no diversions to the waiting room or the canteen. He walked quickly, as if he had something that he knew he had to do. We followed. Koko was carrying all the business cards and leaflets they had made.

  As we were about to go up the steep steps to the roof, Tommy-Lee stopped. He stood completely still, listening for something. There was a sound like a tap dripping but getting louder and louder, as though the tap was coming towards us. Suddenly it was a lot louder. Around the corner came the penguin. It must have been hiding, waiting for us. Tommy-Lee stood still till the penguin flip-flopped past him and self-catapulted up the steps one by one. It was on one step and a second later it was on the next. Like teleporting in instalments.

  It waddled across the roof, with Tommy-Lee following and us following Tommy-Lee. It waddled straight into the cradle. I pulled the lever and down we went.

  The minute we hit the ground Koko struck a pose and said, ‘OK, gang. Green is for Go!’

  Peter the Penguin stretched his neck and shook his beak from side to side as if he was joining in.

  ‘Look! He knows what I’m saying. He wants to join the gang.’

  I pointed out that this made no sense. ‘The whole point of the Green Knights was that we are green. How can someone black and white join the Green Knights? Also, keep your voice down. You’re going to wake Tommy-Lee.’

  She said, ‘You’re supposed to say “Green is for Go!” too. It’s our catchphrase.’

  ‘OK,’ I whispered, ‘Green is for Go.’ But I said it really quietly. ‘And stay close to him, otherwise he wanders off.’

  Tommy-Lee had already gone around the corner. He was following the penguin on to the back of a milk float.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ said Koko. ‘We’re supposed to be looking for a police station. Or a police roadblock. So we can give the police these leaflets. Or maybe some alien invaders so we can fight them.’

  The word ‘fight’ was enough to wake Tommy-Lee. His head swivelled around. ‘Fight! What fight? Has it started? Where are we? What’s all this milk?’

  Koko said, ‘The Green Knights/Heroes of London are on a mission! We’re going to find the proper authorities and tell them we’re here to defend the city.’

  ‘On a milk float?’

  There was no sign of a milkman. There was no sign of anyone in fact. So we borrowed the milk float. It was quieter and safer than a bin lorry. Also easier to drive. Basically it’s a big, slow dodgem car. There were a couple of crates of empty bottles on the back. They tinkled as we floated along, like the bells on Santa’s sleigh. There was no one in the streets.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe it’s closed,’ said Tommy-Lee.

  ‘What’s closed?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘I don’t think London closes.’ But it was closed. Silence walked the streets like a panther. Koko said, ‘We’re probably in one of the exclusion areas. When there’s an outbreak of Killer Kittens, they move everyone out for a while. We shouldn’t be here. Oh!’

  ‘What?’ I turned.

  ‘Over there, look.’

  Something was glittering on the side of the road. Little blobs of light floating in pairs. Eyes.

  ‘Wolves,’ whispered Koko. ‘Wolves’ eyes.’

  ‘Wolves,’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘Rory, what do we know about wolves?’

  ‘How would he know?’

  ‘He knows about everything scary,’ said Tommy-Lee.

  ‘Wolves,’ I said, ‘are easy. All you have to do is pick out the biggest one, then run at it, shouting. If you can frighten the big one, the Alpha Daddy, the others will run away.’ That was all in Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared, but I tried to make it sound as though I was always fighting off wolf packs, just so she’d feel a bit safer. Then the floating yellow globules all floated forward at once into a pool of street light. Faces and bodies appeared around them. They weren’t wolves. They were cats. A carpet of cats. It turns out that when the Killer Kittens started, people began dumping their cats in case they caught it from them. The cats had got together and were roaming around the city in big virusy gangs.

  ‘Quick, before they infect us!’ said Koko.

  I put my foot down harder on the milk float’s accelerator, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. It certainly didn’t go faster than cats.

  Suddenly the penguin dived off the van and waddled towards the cats. They yowled and scattered as though they’d been shot at. It seems that cats are penguin-phobic. I don’t know how the penguin knew this, but the minute he’d done his job, he jumped back on board.

  ‘Peter, you saved us,’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘King Peter is now part of the gang.’

  ‘I did suggest that,’ said Koko, ‘but Rory said no.’

  Tommy-Lee gave me his bad look. Exactly the bad look he used to give me in school. I thought he might throw me off the back of the milk float.

  ‘I just said it would be a bit odd, someone who is black and white joining a gang for green people.’

  ‘Are you saying he can’t join just because of the colour of his skin?’

  ‘Nothing to do with his skin. It’s his feathers. And the fact that he’s a penguin.’

  ‘What’s wrong with penguins?’

  ‘Think about it, Tommy-Lee – who was Batman’s biggest enemy, the most frightening villain in Gotham? . . . The Penguin.’

  ‘Are you calling Peter a bad guy?’

  ‘I’m
just saying . . .’ But Tommy-Lee’s attention had wandered. ‘What,’ he gasped, ‘is that?’

  We were at a traffic island, but not a traffic island like any I’d seen before. There was huge white statue of a dumpy woman in the middle, like a wedding cake with a big angry gold angel on top. Behind that was a massive building with hundreds of windows. I seemed to know it from somewhere.

  ‘Is this the police station?’ asked Tommy-Lee.

  ‘This,’ said Koko, ‘is Buckingham Palace.’

  I knew I knew it from somewhere.

  ‘We were looking for the proper authorities,’ said Koko, ‘and now we’ve found them. There’s no need to mess about talking to the police now. Why bother when we can go right to the top. Let’s talk to the Monarch.’

  There are big railings all around Buckingham Palace. Also soldiers in fuzzy hats (we couldn’t see them but we knew they were there from General Knowledge). We trundled the float up and down the railings, but the only way in was a narrow gate which looked very locked indeed. There was barbed wire on top and about a million cameras perched in the barbed wire, staring down like hungry vultures. There was an intercom.

  Koko said, ‘We could just ask. I’m sure if the Queen knew what we were here for, she’d be very grateful. She’d probably give us knighthoods. Then we’d be actual proper green knights. We could sell Green Knight T-shirts and lunch boxes.’

  I pointed out that it was five o’clock in the morning and that if we woke her now she wouldn’t be pleased.

  ‘She might not be asleep. Look. There’s a light on up there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Seventy-third window from the left.’

  There was a light on, but even so . . . Then the gate opened. Slowly, gently, it opened wide, inviting us in.

  I looked at Tommy-Lee and said, ‘Did you do that?’

  ‘Wasn’t me.’

  A voice crackled from the intercom. ‘Morning, Milky. You’re early this morning.’

  They thought that we were the milkman. After all, we were driving a milk float. We trundled over a field of paving stones. The rows of windows stared down. Surely someone would spot that it was three green children and a penguin on the float and not a milkman.