I held up a sign with HELP written on it. I shouted. When he noticed me he looked annoyed and went inside.
Just as well I wasn’t depending on him to rescue me. I had other plans. I decided to see if my sheets were long enough to reach the ground if I knotted them together. I tried knotting them, but they kept coming undone. They were too fat to tie. How do prisoners do it, I asked myself. Maybe I needed something thinner. I ripped one sheet into three and tried to plait it into one rope. I wasn’t any good at plaits. When I’d finished, the rope bent around like a hook and it was far too short. I dangled it out the window. It didn’t even reach the dining-room window below.
Useless. Monster, you need to do some research. I didn’t know the best knots to use for the sheet escape trick and I needed to work on straight plaiting.
But now I was suddenly tired as. I climbed onto my sheet less bed, under the coverless duvet and went to sleep. The last thing I did was set my phone alarm for 5 a.m.
In the morning I was back in bed by six o’clock, having a lie-in before anyone knew I’d been up. I was waiting for sounds of an uproar in our kitchen. I didn’t have to wait long.
‘Yuck! It stinks!’ Sis was yelling and carrying on about the weird smell in the Stuff, Puff, Pop, her favourite breakfast cereal.
Soon she was joined by Dad. ‘Yoww-wwww-owww!’ he howled. He must have found one of the chopped-up chillies I’d added to the box at dawn. They never put enough chopped-up dried apricots into breakfast cereal, do they?
‘That’ll be Monster again,’ blubbered Sis.
‘A whole packet ruined!’ shrieked Mum, marching towards the stairwell. ‘Monster! Get down here.’
Excellent. Looked as though banishment was over. Time to clear out for a spot of gardening, I thought. I jumped into my clothes and rushed out the back door. I could still hear all the yelling way down in Dad’s pride-and-joy vegetable garden. Just because I’d put garlic and chopped chillies in the Stuff, Puff, Pop.
Mr family can’t take a joke at all. It’s times like this I wonder how I came to be part of this family.
When I got back from my spot of gardening, I hid and watched what they were doing. My father was pouring the stinky garlic-flavoured Stuff, Puff, Pop cereal into the compost bucket. Sis was still throwing a fit. My mother was clawing frozen bread out of a plastic bag to make toast.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with him,’ she wailed.
‘Where is he, anyway?’ asked my father.
‘Who cares?’ screamed Sis.
‘Booo-OOOO!’ I jumped out of the pantry wearing a horror mask covered in spider webs from the garage and Mum’s old gardening gloves, all slimy with compost.
When everyone had calmed down and filled up with toast and a fresh pot of apricot jam that I couldn’t have done anything to because the seal was unbroken, Mum asked, ‘Why are your hands covered in soil?’
‘Just weeding the cabbages before breakfast.’
‘That’s a good boy,’ said Mum.
Mum and Dad smiled. They wanted to like me. And I could be so nice when I wanted to be. ‘Thank you, Son,’ they both said.
While I was talking to them, Sis was pinching my back. She had this pinch and twist technique that is painful as. My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t stop it. My eyes are like sinks. They just sit there in my face, and sometimes if someone twists a hunk of my skin real hard, they fill with water. Mum and Dad never believe me if I complain about Sis. So I ignored her.
‘I’ll get changed for school,’ I said. I started to climb upstairs, Saint Monster for about thirty seconds.
Then the phone rang.
‘Hello, Mildred!’ chortled Mum. They chatted on and on. ‘But that’s wonderful!’ she screamed. ‘I’m so surprised—I mean, happy for you. Wonderful!’
When she said ‘wonderful’ her voice went right up like an opera singer. Mum looked as though she was about to explode. ‘I’ll tell everyone,’ she said. ‘Oh, we’re so happy for you!’
When she put the receiver down she smiled at us and said, ‘As you know, Aunt Mildred is coming for Friday’s family conference.’ Mum was gasping. She was wanting to tell us something, but also wanting to hold off from telling us, so we could be there all day waiting for her to tell us what was wonderful.
Dad was just about to ask Mum whether Mildew was bringing her disgusting dog Bloat, when Mum looked out the window.
‘Look! Out there!’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s your pride-and-joy veggie garden!’
‘There’s a volcano in it. It’s getting bigger!’
‘It’s not possible.’
‘The garden’s going to explode.’
‘Maybe it’s oil.’
I smiled to myself. My family were so stupid, so boring. Just a simple putting-together of things from the garage, mixed together with water in the early hours of the morning. Makes a very nice, slow-dribbling, delayed-action volcano. Didn’t they know anything?
Aunt Mildew’s secret was forgotten. The family turned on me. They got really mad. Even though I yelled down the stairs that I wasn’t even there. I’d been reading on my bed all the time, and anyway, what was the use of silly old cabbages, so there.
My usually meek and mild family roared ‘We’ve had enough!’, and charged up the stairs. They were going to get me.
I ran into the bathroom. I didn’t lock the bathroom door. I can be brave when I have to be. They burst in just as I was pretending to clean my teeth with the only toothbrush I hadn’t sprayed with hair spray.
‘Hi, glugooof,’ I said. Toothpaste spattered every where. One little white dot landed ping on Dad’s nose.
‘Excuse ME,’ I bluffed. ‘Go on, just barge in. Fine. Great. I don’t need privacy at all, do I? I’m going to pull my pants down and sit on the loo right now.’ But I didn’t because they didn’t take any notice of what I was saying.
‘You just listen to me,’ Dad began. He sounded as though he didn’t know what I was going to hear because he hadn’t thought of it himself yet.
‘I am fed up with your tricks,’ said Mum. ‘They have to stop. Now.’
‘Tricks? What?’ I opened my eyelids so wide my eyes nearly fell out.
‘You think you’re so funny,’ sneered Sis.
‘Me? What’s the matter?’ I asked, stalling for time. Sis said I ruined her whole life.
‘You haven’t got a life,’ I said.
‘That’s your fault,’ she yelled, and burst into tears and rushed downstairs.
Dad said, ‘You can’t start this trick business again. Shake your ideas up.’
Mum said, ‘Try to straighten yourself out.’
Sis sobbed from downstairs, ‘Pull your head in.’
I said I’d think about what they’d said. I meant it. I was sick of Sis pinching me. It was stressful. She could stunt my growth. I could get a heart attack. And anyway, their advice sounded like a bit of fun.
Dad had said: Shake your ideas up.
Mum had said: Straighten yourself out.
Sis had said: Pull your head in.
Hmm. Possibilities there…
I thought I’d take their advice at school during boring physical education and maths and singing. Anything to stop Sis twisting lumps of my skin like a Minties wrapper.
Now I was back to being the Master Trickster, I couldn’t stop.
4
Physical education is my worst subject. I hate being ordered around, shouted at, and generally being treated as much less important than a little, bouncy ball.
For warm-ups we had to jiggle every part of ourselves. I usually stand around in warm-ups with my arms folded, which is my own patented way of keeping my body heat in. But today I remembered Dad’s advice. ‘Shake your ideas up,’ he’d said. So I shook. I imagined Sis had 125 pinching fingers and I was shaking them off me.
‘Well done!’ roared the instructor, who used to be in the army. ‘Brewster! Keep it up!’
‘Keep what
up?’
‘Great!’
I collapsed in a dizzy heap. Dad’s advice sucked. I spent assembly and playtime in the sick room, trying to get the buzzing out of my head. It was OK as a new mind game, but boring after a while.
In maths we were doing area. Everyone was meant to measure the area of the classroom. Boring as. I decided to straighten myself out instead, like Mum wanted.
I got my mate, Muggeridge, to draw around me while I lay on a sheet of paper from the roll at the back of the room. He puffed and panted all around me with a felt tip pen. I lay there and counted the wad-balls of wet tissues kids had thrown up onto the ceiling during the year. One looked really cool. It hung down with something nasty and greenish in the tip of it. While Muggeridge drew round me, I had a little snooze.
When I got up I looked as though I was in the army because I had a felt pen stripe down the outside of both jeans legs, up both jersey sleeves and across the shoulders. I also had a felt pen stripe running right across my head and down both sides of my neck so I could also have been on the list for brain surgery.
Never mind. At least there was a really great me-shape on the paper. I cut it into bits that were as close as I could get to being straight lines. Like, I made the arms into rectangles. I made the body into a bigger rectangle. Then I put them into one long line so the whole thing made a jigsaw that was vaguely rectangle-shaped.
‘I’ve been watching you,’ said my teacher, Stone Face. Why do people watch me? If I’m so fabulous to watch, does that mean I’m gorgeous? Should I enter America’s Next Top Model?
‘What d’you think you’re up to?’ he boomed.
‘Straightening myself out,’ I said. ‘My mum said—’
‘I see! Area! That’s brilliant! Marvellous maths!’ I was speechless. What was he on about?
He reckoned I’d worked out some great way of measuring my area. It was weird. I began to get the buzzy beehive feeling inside my head again. But I controlled myself. I have total self-discipline.
I got a gold star in maths. A gold star! Ultra-bad for my image. What do you do with one? You’re meant to stick them beside your name on a noticeboard on the wall so everyone can see how many you get. No way. I went to the loos when the bell went and stuck the gold star on my left bum cheek. That way no one would know where it was, but I couldn’t be accused of the most heinous crime at school: throwing away a gold star.
In singing I sat in the back row as usual. I tried to stick my chewing gum on the end of Tina’s ponytail. We were singing a song about the jun-jun-jun-jun-jungle. The teacher had been a preschool teacher before she came to us and she treated us like babies. We hated it. This song went like this:
In the jun-jun-jun-jun-jungle, We’ll swing-swing-swing along, In the jun-jun-jun-jun-jungle, We’ll sing our jungle song.
I mean, how dumb can you get? Worse still, we had to do actions. Actions! When did you last do actions with songs? Apart from when you’re watching an awesome rock video, I mean. That is totally different. These were baby actions. We had to be gorillas in the jungle.
I refused to co-operate. My whole dignity as a human being was at stake. If everyone else wanted to go around being huge, hairy gorillas scratching themselves and chewing their fleas and sticking their bums in the air, they could. I decided instead to try my dear Sis’s advice. I found a quiet corner and tried to pull my head in.
‘Look, everyone. Look at Brewster. He’s doing it wonderfully!’ shrieked the teacher, falling over the kids in the front in her enthusiasm to get to me. She wore high heels. I think she pierced the skulls and lungs of several of the kids on her way to me.
The survivors had to watch me while I demonstrated how to pull your head in by squatting and wrapping your arms around your head.
Muggeridge whispered, ‘Goody-goody Monster, eh?’ I might have known Sis’s advice was useless. And ultra-bad for my image.
After school I stumbled into our garage clutching my head. I still had the buzzing beehive, splitting head ache. I’d had it since the phys-ed warm-ups. I couldn’t think properly. A nice little trick on Sis would get rid of my headache and make me feel like Monster again. I’d had enough of being a goody-good at school.
The garage was the perfect place to peel off the silly gold star and stamp on it. There wasn’t a single mirror in the garage, so Sis never came in here. I pulled down the roller door and shut the side door. It didn’t lock. Nothing in our house worked properly.
I pulled my pants down and twisted around to get the gold star. Suddenly the roller door was flung up and Sis was standing there, with two look-alike girlfriends.
They all screamed with laughter. Fizz. Fizz. Pop. Pop. Cackle. Fizz. Giggle Gaggle.
I almost died.
‘Pervert!’ yelled Sis. ‘Got you! Got you! Got you!’
5
Just at that moment, when I was caught in the most embarrassing moment of my life, I was saved by the cool noise of squealing brakes. A red sports car bounced to a stop outside the garage. Wow! This was something. No one ever visited us who had such style or money. Sis and her gang turned around. I hauled my pants up. Who was going to get out of that car?
The doors opened. My dreaded Aunt Mildew got out of the passenger seat. The driver’s door opened and Sylvie unfolded herself and grinned at me. Sylvie! I’d met Sylvie when I stayed with Mildew…the only time I’d stayed with Aunt Mildew. I called Sylvie the Witch of the Woods because she was like good magic. She saved me from starvation and was the most awesome cook in the world. Maybe she’d save me from punishment? At least we’d eat some decent food.
‘Hi,’ I said.
Mum ran out with her arms open, looking like a scarecrow. ‘Such wonderful news,’ she said.
What news?
‘And so good of you to help,’ she bubbled to Sylvie.
What help was Sylvie giving? Was Sylvie on their side now? ‘I’ve brought dinner,’ said Sylvie.
We sat down to dinner at last. ‘Crunchy chops,’ said Sylvie. ‘It’s to celebrate Mildred’s news.’
Everyone politely murmured congratulations. What was the news? No one told me anything.
‘And it’s because Monster’s about to turn over a new leaf,’ Sylvie said.
‘How many new leaves are there?’ asked Mildew.
Sylvie winked at me.
Dad said, ‘Delicious food.’
We all got into our food. Yum. Yum. Yum. Slurp. Then it was gone.
Sis was the first to start talking again. She told Mildew I was the worst thing in her life.
‘D’you know what I caught him doing in the garage?’ Sis giggled and gaggled in that way she has that always reminds me of a goose. She got so excited she moved on from goose noises to the lemonade sounds that show she’s about to explode. ‘He was, fizzy fizzy, examining, fizz fizz, pop, bubble, bubble—’
‘We can’t understand a word,’ said Mildew.
‘Examining his fizz, fizz, hiccup, splutter, bubble bubble—’
‘You’re hysterical,’ said Dad. Mum slapped Sis on the back. Crunchy chops sprayed around the table.
‘Examining his—him—himself!’ She exploded like lemonade does when it’s been shaken up heaps before you open it.
Sylvie suggested Sis might like to go and put some make-up on for the conference. That got rid of her.
The conference! I’d forgotten it was Friday today! Who else was coming? When would they arrive? What would the punishment be? Lawn mowing? Doing the dishes? Cleaning my room? The worst would be cleaning the loo. I will not ever clean the loo. They wouldn’t dare, would they?
I did the dishes with Sylvie. We talked about food, and her daughter, Adele, who’s a hairdresser, and the film we’d made. Then I asked Sylvie why she was here. Was it to punish me? She laughed. She said it was to help get ready for Mildew’s special day.
I was just about to ask ‘What special day?’ when Dad came in. He looked at the floor and said the words I’d been dreading. ‘We’re waiting for you in the dining
room.’
I slunk around the dining-room door like a slug slithering around a cabbage stalk. I slithered up to the dining-room table. I looked up and there, sitting with Mum, Dad, Sis, Aunt Mildew and now Sylvie, was our new neighbour, Mr Skim Milk!
It couldn’t be! He looked at me. It was. Even his eyes were milky.
Had I got the wrong day? Was this a Neighbourhood Watch meeting? I turned to go out. Dad grabbed me. ‘No, you don’t.’
Mum introduced Skim Milk. ‘Mr Jenkins here has kindly offered to help. He’s our new neighbour and a physical fitness expert.’
Oh, yeah? With the smoking and drinking and doing nothing? You’re kidding. Sis was looking at Mr Jenkins very intently. To her he was an Olympic athlete. I said nothing.
‘I’ve been watching him,’ said Mr Jenkins in a thin, skimmilky voice. He told them he’d seen me at my window and could tell I had initiative, originality, creativity—lots of big words that all added up to sounding like a serious illness to me. Then he took a deep breath and blew it all out in a huge, smoke-smelling ‘BUT’.
Everyone jumped. Had he belched, or what? No one was quite sure. He took another deep breath. We were ready for him this time.
‘But,’ he repeated in a cloud of warm, smelly, recycled bacon-and-cheese breath, ‘all this is misdirected.’ God, they’re going to have to operate, I thought. Appendicitis.
‘Misdirected. Wasted. Put to the wrong ends!’
I had to think about that. There was nothing wrong with my ends! I felt my face going red.
‘If he could turn himself around so he wasn’t wasting his time, and my time, spying on people—’
Spying! I wasn’t a spy. Thoughts whirred around in my brain. The wrong ends? Turning myself around? What did they want me to do now? Suddenly sit down and turn around and bite my bum like a dog after fleas?
‘I think,’ Skim Milk coughed, ‘he needs toughening up.’ I stared at him in horror. ‘BUT!’ he burped out again. ‘He needs expert help.’ The smoke and mouldy-cheese-and-bacon smell settled over the table.
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