Live and Let Swim

by Mo O'Hara

  ‘Thanks again for watching Sami,’ Pradeep said as he took Sami’s hand.

  Frankie splashed me from his bucket. He did not want to wait another second to catch Fang and Mark. ‘Let’s go!’ I cried.

  We raced around to the entrance of the audition trailer, just as the person inside was hanging up a sign that read:

  ‘The auditions can’t be closed!’ Geeky Girl protested with her hands on her hips. Boris flapped his wings and cawed.

  ‘We’ve come with our pets to try out for the show,’ I said, holding up Frankie in his bucket.

  ‘Toby is telepopping!’ Sami added, holding out her tortoise.

  ‘I’m sure your tortoise is very good at whatever telepopping is and your pets are very sweet,’ the woman said as she crossed off several items on a clipboard and adjusted the walkie-talkie on her belt. ‘But after an entire day of pets with absolutely no talent at all, we have managed to find the most talented pet I’ve ever seen!’

  ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be talking about a kitten, would you?’ Pradeep asked.

  ‘Not just any kitten. This kitten managed to paint a beautiful French Impressionist sunset while roller-skating, doing magic tricks, eating lettuce . . .’ She paused. ‘I admit, we might ask her to cut the lettuce bit in the televised performance.’ She continued her list. ‘She even blew bubbles in the shape of the Mona Lisa and miaowed the theme tune to Star Wars!’

  Frankie thrashed hard in his bucket and Boris the budgie flapped angrily on Geeky Girl’s shoulder.

  ‘And you know the weirdest thing?’ the woman added. ‘When I looked back at the video it looks like the kitten’s actually doing it all while levitating an inch off the ground!’ She shook her head. ‘It must be an illusion. But it will look amazing on TV.’

  ‘So where is this kitten and her owner now?’ I asked.

  ‘We want to congratulate them,’ Geeky Girl said, rolling up her fingers into a fist.

  ‘They’ve gone through to the make-up trailer to get ready for tonight’s show,’ the woman said. ‘Solomon Caldwell is going to be so happy!’

  Frankie gritted his teeth and squinted at the woman. Then he jumped up out of his bucket and landed with a wet thwap on her face, glaring into her eyes. He was trying to hypnotize her! But his eyes didn’t glow green and the lady didn’t start staring up anyone’s left nostril with one eye or looking at the wall with the other. She didn’t even mumble ‘swishy fishy’ once!

  All she did was yell, ‘AAAAAARGGGGHHHH! Get this fish off me!’

  I scooped up Frankie and dropped him back into his bucket just as two big security guards appeared.

  ‘These kids are banned from the recording of the show!’ she shouted as she wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘I want them out of here, pronto!’

  One of the security guards pointed at the gates. The other just stood there and looked scary.

  ‘Thank you for having us,’ said Pradeep in his best talking-to-a-teacher voice. ‘We were just going anyway.’ He grabbed Sami’s hand and we all walked as fast as we could to the gates with the security guards right behind us.

  ‘OK, let’s get the kitten through make-up and into the school hall for the recording tonight,’ crackled a voice from one of the guard’s walkie-talkies. ‘I want everything ready for when Solomon Caldwell arrives!’

  Frankie stared at me sadly as the guards slammed the gates behind us. He kept squinting his eyes like he was trying to force them into his green zombie stare.

  ‘It was the scanner, Frankie! I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘It scanned your powers into Fang,’ Pradeep added.

  Frankie stopped squinting and stared at us with wide eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get your powers back,’ I said. ‘Somehow!’

  ‘Caw!’ added Boris.

  ‘But we only have a couple of hours before filming starts,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘And even if we can get back in there, Frankie can’t zombify the TV crew into stopping the show,’ Geeky Girl added.

  Frankie sank to the bottom of his bucket and heaved an underwater sigh.

  ‘Don’t be sad, swishy fishy,’ said Sami, patting him on the head.

  ‘Basically, we need to get Frankie’s powers back from Fang before we can stop Mark’s evil plan. If we don’t, Fang will zombify the whole country when the show is broadcast tonight!’ I said.

  Just then I saw Pradeep’s face get that ‘I’m figuring out something really, really complicated in my head and there’s no room for anything else so I’m switching off all unnecessary functions’ look. In other words, Pradeep went blank like there was a power cut to his face. He stayed like that for a full minute – and then suddenly the power switched back on.

  ‘We can’t get Frankie’s powers back from Fang before the show is broadcast,’ he said. ‘But we can get Frankie’s powers back during the show instead.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Geeky Girl said. ‘And I get most things, so it’s kinda bugging me. How can you get Frankie’s powers back during the show?’

  ‘We’ll need to get one of Mark’s scanners on to the stage,’ said Pradeep. ‘We then need to create some kind of “talent-transmission” device, or satellite dish, that we can use to transmit the talents back to the affected pets in a kind of scatter-gun broadcast. All we have to do is get Fang into the scanner and all the pets that have lost their talents into the transmission radius of our device.’

  I stared blankly at Pradeep.

  Geeky Girl frowned.

  Sami hugged Toby. ‘Toby telepop?’ she asked.

  Pradeep sighed, and then pulled a piece of paper and a pencil out of one of his pockets and drew an exact diagram of how it would work.

  ‘If we can catch Fang at the exact moment she is trying to zombify the TV audience and get Frankie directly in front of the talent-transmission device when the scanner is turned on, then the zombification power should go directly to him.’ Pradeep added.

  ‘OK.’ Geeky Girl paused. ‘I get it now. Of course I can help you configure the settings on the scanner and make some kind of talent-transmission satellite dish. How hard can it be? Hey, I bet we could raid the Lost Property room to get some materials for the device.’

  Pradeep was in full brainstorming mode. ‘We need a couple of bits from the inside of some mobile phones, some aluminium foil, a radio and an umbrella.’

  ‘But if you blast the whole room with stolen pet powers, how can you make sure that people don’t end up getting the talents instead of the pets?’ I asked.

  ‘I can calibrate the frequency to resonate at a level that only pets can absorb,’ said Pradeep.

  I looked at him.

  ‘The talent-transmission device will only affect pets, not people,’ Pradeep sighed.

  Geeky Girl smiled and punched Pradeep on the arm again. ‘We make a good team, Brainiac.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Pradeep said.

  I think the social interaction part of his brain hadn’t powered up again yet – or it could just have been Pradeep’s way of saying out loud what his look was saying, which was: ‘I’m really glad that you approve of my plan and can support its implementation with your technological skills.’

  To be honest, ‘Ouch’ was better.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I totally believe that you can get this scanner and talent-transmission satellite thing to work, but how are we going to get back into the school grounds, get the scanner on to the stage and get all the other pets back here for the show?’

  ‘That’s up to you, Tom,’ Pradeep said. ‘I thought up the hard stuff.’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘OK, let’s get into action mode.’

  Pradeep and I immediately took off our ties (our mums had made us wear ties to the audition so we looked presentable) and tied them around our heads, Rambo-style, so we were ready for action. Sami and Geeky Girl looked at us like we were nuts.

  ‘It helps get me into character,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘First, Boris, you need to fly around t
o all the pet owners from today and drop them a note to say that they need to bring their pets back for the recording tonight.’

  ‘Does he need one of those cute little postbags and a postman’s hat?’ Geeky Girl asked.

  ‘I don’t think he does . . . but if he would feel more comfortable with . . .’ I stopped myself. ‘You were being sarcastic.’

  Geeky Girl smiled and said, ‘I’m sure Boris could deliver notes, but if you happened to have everyone’s email addresses I could just inbox them all, telling them to come.’

  ‘Or we could do that,’ I said.

  ‘We need to get the clipboard from that lady who threw us out. I think she was the casting director. Her clipboard will definitely have everyone’s information,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘Boris, can you get the piece of paper with the details of everyone who auditioned today from that clipboard?’ I asked.

  Boris flapped his wings in agreement.

  ‘Sami, I need you to look upset and to tell the security guards that you are lost and need to call home. They’ll open the gates long enough for us to sneak in and get inside the school building,’ I added.

  Sami nodded. ‘I take Toby too,’ she said, hugging the tortoise.

  I turned to Pradeep. ‘Once we’re inside, you and Geeky Girl can sneak into the hall, make your talent-transmission device and get the cables all wired up.’

  ‘Check,’ said Pradeep

  ‘Frankie and I will head up to the lab room. We’ll figure out a way to get one of the scanners down to you in time.’

  Boris flapped into the air towards the audition trailer.

  A minute later we heard a shriek of ‘That bird attacked my clipboard!’ and we saw Boris fly out of a window holding a piece of paper. One of the security guards headed back into the trailer leaving only one guard on the gate.

  Boris landed on Geeky Girl’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, Boris.’ She stroked his head as she plucked the sheet of paper from his beak.

  Sami was up next. The security guard was standing with his back to her. Geeky Girl, Pradeep and I hid in a bush just out of sight.

  Sami tugged on the jacket of the guard through the fence. ‘Mr Guard?’ she whimpered.

  He turned around and looked at her. She snuffled and her bottom lip quivered as she spoke. Man, that kid was good!

  ‘I lost,’ she said. ‘Me and Toby all alone . . .’ She held out her tortoise and I swear that tortoise looked just as sad and pathetic as Sami. I had no idea that tortoises could act!

  The guard opened the gate right away. ‘Of course I can help you,’ he said. ‘You poor little thing. Did your friends leave you all by yourself? We’ll just get to a phone and call your mummy.’ As he led Sami gently by the hand towards the trailers, we all snuck through the gate before it shut.

  ‘Phew,’ I said. ‘Stage One complete. We are in the zone.’

  ‘Check,’ said Pradeep again.

  ‘Are you guys gonna do this mission stuff the whole time, cos I can tell ya right now it’s gonna bug me,’ Geeky Girl said. ‘Let’s just get on with the plan.’

  Pradeep and Geeky Girl headed for the back door of the school hall where they were going to start work on the transmission device and email everyone. Now it was down to Frankie and me to get the scanner down two flights of stairs and across the car park.

  This was starting to feel like the bit of the plan that might not work.

  The door to the school building was still open when we arrived. I carried Frankie up the stairs in his bucket and carefully checked the room to make sure no one was there.

  Mark’s bag was on one of the lab tables.

  I looked inside. ‘Maybe there’s a “How To” manual for the scanners, or a diagram of his evil plan?’ I said to Frankie.

  Frankie rolled his eyes and then pointed a fin at the bag. But there wasn’t a ‘How To’ book in sight. Just some kitten toys, a ball of string, some chewing gum, an issue of Evil Scientist and Mark’s usual anti-hypno stuff, contact lenses, goggles and a strip of photo booth pics of Mark and Fang.

  ‘What?’ I asked Frankie. ‘I don’t get it . . .’

  Frankie flipped into the bag and grabbed something with his teeth. ‘Oh! I see!’ I said, suddenly understanding his plan.

  A few minutes later I walked up to the nearest of the two scanners. It was big and it was heavy. There was no way I could lift it, even with Frankie’s help. It would take two grown-ups, at least, to carry it. Two big grown-ups like . . . the security guards!

  ‘Frankie, we have to get the security guards to carry the scanner to the school hall for us,’ I said. ‘We’ll need one of their walkie-talkies and a bit of help from Geeky Girl.’

  Before we left, I grabbed a few more things from Mark’s bag. Then I turned over Mark’s ‘Scanning Room Closed’ sign and wrote:

  I hung it on one of the scanners and headed down the stairs.

  Frankie and I set up ‘Operation Walkie-Talkie’ just inside the building entrance.

  The first thing I did was to stick one end of the ball of string to the top of the door frame with chewing gum. I tied the other end to Frankie’s tail and left Frankie’s bucket right next to the door.

  ‘Are you ready, Frankie?’ I asked him. He splashed me and winked.

  Next I hid in the shadows behind some boxes, waiting for the security guards to patrol the area. As soon as I heard them approaching, I rolled one of Fang’s toy balls with a bell inside across the floor to attract their attention.

  ‘What was that?’ one of the guards said. They both hurried into the hallway.

  The moment the second guard walked through the doorway, Frankie leaped out of his bucket and managed to flip himself on to the top of the door frame.

  ‘Did you just hear something?’ asked the second guard. ‘It sounded like a fish . . . flipping?’ He looked suspiciously at Frankie’s bucket, but it was empty.

  At that moment, I rolled the second bell ball. While the first guard followed the sound towards the stairs, Frankie swung down past the back of the second guard, grabbed the walkie-talkie from his belt with his teeth and swung up again to land back on top of the door frame.

  Operation Walkie-Talkie had worked like clockwork (if by that you mean like a giant grandfather clock with a goldfish for a pendulum).

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ said the first guard, sounding slightly disappointed. ‘Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’ They both hurried out and started walking back towards the trailers.

  ‘Well done, Frankie,’ I whispered as I held up the bucket for him to jump back into.

  I made sure the coast was clear, then tiptoed towards the back door of the school hall to try and find the others. Inside, I found Pradeep plugging wires and cables into a satellite dish made of stuff they had scavenged from the Lost Property room, while Geeky Girl was tapping away on a computer keyboard.

  ‘Nearly got it,’ Pradeep said, jamming a black cable into place.

  ‘That looks, er . . . interesting,’ I said. I turned to Geeky Girl and explained what I needed her to do.

  ‘Undercover work is my middle name,’ she said. ‘Actually, it’s Imelda, but if you tell anyone that I’ll have to kill you.’ She took the walkie-talkie and barked into it. ‘Security! Casting to Security! Where are you people?’

  Static filled the airwaves then a panicked voice came through. ‘Sorry, we were doing our rounds for the night and—’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Geeky Girl snapped. ‘Go to the science building and get that prop scanner down here for the show, pronto!’

  ‘Pronto?’ I mouthed to Geeky Girl.

  ‘We’ll get it right away. Over.’ They signed off.

  ‘Over and out.’ Geeky Girl said, then tossed the walkie-talkie back to me. ‘Like taking candy from a baby.’

  We hid behind the stage curtains until the guards arrived carrying the scanner.

  ‘She said to put it here,’ one security guard said.

  ‘I definitely don’t want her yelling at me again,’
said the other. ‘I left that little girl sitting at the front gate with the receptionist. She couldn’t remember her phone number, so we’re waiting to see if her friends come back. I’d better go and check on her.’

  I shot Pradeep a look that said, ‘Sami! I’ll go and get her while you and Geeky Girl get the scanner hooked up and ready to go.’

  ‘OK!’ his look replied. ‘I hope this works.’

  I picked up the bucket with Frankie in it and backed away from the curtains, as the guards headed off the stage and out of the hall. Suddenly I bumped into something large and solid.

  I turned around and was face to face – well, more like face to shoulder – with Mark!

  ‘Going somewhere?’ he asked. ‘You don’t want to miss Fang’s TV debut, do you?’

  Pradeep and Geeky Girl must have heard Mark’s voice, as they’d vanished so I couldn’t see them at all. I immediately slapped my hand over the top of Frankie’s bucket so he couldn’t jump out. I couldn’t risk him being caught now. Then the plan would stand no chance of working.

  Mark did an evil laugh, which was frightening enough, but as he stepped into the light I realized his face had turned zombie goldfish orange!

  ‘Mark, have you been in the scanner?’ I gasped. ‘I think it’s done something to your skin. You’ve turned orange!’

  Mark loomed over me like the scary, orange, Evil Scientist big brother he was. ‘It’s the make-up,’ he growled.

  ‘For the TV.’ He leaned closer. ‘You tell anyone and you are soooo pummelled.’

  ‘No one,’ I said, shaking my head.

  Then Fang poked her head out from Mark’s pocket. She was wearing a diamanté cat collar and looked like she had been professionally cat-fluffed.

  ‘Um, Mark . . .’ I started to say, when from behind him stepped Sami, still carrying Toby the tortoise.