No one was going to call me alien and get away with it.
That night, while my family slept, I worked harder than I’ve ever done in my life. My trick was to make it look as though an alien had landed by our camp. I filled a cardboard box with river stones and dragged it round in circles. This would have been much easier in zero gravity. Living on Earth is hard. Maybe being an alien would have advantages.
I lit a fire in a baked-bean can and when the can was hot I picked it up with tongs and made scorch circles in one big ring all around the flattened area. I managed it without burning myself and without setting the tents on fire. Then I hurled the can into the bushes.
Next, I put on the pair of wrap-around sunglasses. I crept over to Sis’s tent and peered in the little plastic window. I switched my torch on and held it under my chin so the light shone straight up through my jaw. She didn’t wake up. I ran around to the tent flap and threw a pebble onto her sleeping bag. She stirred.
I peered in the window again and shouted ‘Beep, beep, beep.’ She opened her eyes. She was staring, unblinking, at the lit-up skull with the wrap-around eyes. She screamed loud enough to wake up Mum and Dad. I rushed back to my tent and shot into my sleeping bag. I was fast asleep when Dad barged in and said Sis had nearly been abducted by aliens.
‘You’re joking,’ I said.
He sat heavily on my sleeping bag and raked his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, trembling. ‘She’s genuinely terrified. Reckons there was this alien who—’
‘Spare me the details. I hear it’s terrible what they do to girls,’ I said. Dad shuddered. ‘What was he like?’ I asked.
‘Some creature who glowed and had huge insect eyes, she reckons.’
I was tired. I’d leave their discovery of the flattened and burnt circles for someone else to find in the morning. I fell asleep with such a huge grin on my face it was hard to fit on the pillow.
Next morning the flattened and burnt circles all around us had Sis panicking again, and so Dad phoned the park warden. Sis snivelled away about this alien. She didn’t think he had antennae. He looked like a superior intelligence. (I liked that bit.) He said something to her in his own language. She found it irresistible. She had to follow him.
‘Was the alien male or female, Sis? Did you see—’
‘Booooo hooohooo hoowoohoo.’
The warden arrived with a laptop and measuring tape. Unfortunately he found the baked-bean tin and dared to suggest to Sis that it might have been a hoax.
‘Hoax!’ Mum and Dad yelled. They all looked at me.
The warden complained, packed up and left. I thought it was about time we left, too.
‘I don’t want to go to this camp,’ I blubbered.
‘Come on,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll be late!’
So easy to manipulate, adults.
Sis and I got in the back seat again. Another boring car journey. Our back seat was so cramped—even the SPCA wouldn’t allow animals to be penned up in such a confined space.
‘You can lean against me, Sis.’
‘I’d rather lean against a tree a dog’s peed on,’ she snarled.
Mum and Dad started singing. Sis and I told them their songs were sexist. We sang our fave ads loud to drown them out. Sis told me jokes that were going around her class, but hadn’t reached ours yet. We played the blowfish-on-the-window game. Whenever we were stopped at traffic lights or anywhere with a car next to us, we did massive blowfish on the windows at the people in the other cars. Our lips got sore. Sis had some lip cream we smeared on and that made real gruesome blowfish. It was awesome fun.
We mimed throttling each other when we were held up by a traffic cop directing cars around some road works. The cop stared at us with a look of horror on his face and stopped waving his arms about. A Mack truck gave him a blast on its hooter. The cop leapt up, grabbing his ears and knocking his hat off in the process. All the other cars tooted at him.
Yep. It had to be the best car journey ever. And for once Mum didn’t forget to stock up on Minties and Jaffas, and Dad didn’t forget to keep asking for them to be passed around.
Then Dad indicated left, changed gears, and headed up the steepest four-wheel-drive track. We had arrived at Skim Milk’s camp.
9
Skim Milk came out of one of the huts to greet us. He was wearing as much outdoor gear as it’s possible for one person to wear. His huge, down-filled jacket made him look normal size. Sis sighed deeply. She obviously likes guys gift-wrapped in duck feathers. He was clanking with Swiss Army knives, whistles and a cup dangling from ropes and hooks all over him.
He said it was lovely to see us, looking at Sis, then he said he had a special programme of discipline and physical exercise worked out for me, increasing in difficulty each day. Mum said she hoped she’d packed enough socks.
Dad asked Skim Milk if he led the boys on expeditions into the mountains. Skim Milk chortled away about how he’d actually turned down an invite to climb Everest so he could be in camp with the boys. He was so devoted to saving children, he said.
And lying, I thought.
I couldn’t believe Mum and Dad could be taken in by this garbage. But they had been taken in by the alien scenario: if they fell for my tricks, they would fall for adult tricks as well. When Mum and Dad went into the staff room for coffee, Skim Milk whispered to me, ‘You’re in Cabin 4 with the tough bunch.’
‘If I am, I’ll tell Mum about you and Sis.’
Got him! We glared at each other. I put one foot down slowly, in the direction of the staff room.
He told me to go to Cabin 2. ‘You’ll start your programme tomorrow.’
Cabin 2 was in the late-afternoon shadow of the giant rainwater tank stand. The cabin door creaked open. I was nearly knocked out by the glares of the other kids, and by the pong of shoes, feet and worse. The atmosphere smelt so powerfully of farts that I reckon if you’d lit a match the whole cabin would have exploded.
If these kids weren’t as bad as Cabin 4’s, they were still frightening enough for me. All of them were bigger than me. And real mean-looking. They didn’t want anyone else in their cabin.
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked the leader.
I opened my mouth, breathed in that foul smell, and told them: ‘When I was born, they called me Brewster.’
Complete silence. They all stared at me. I was freaked out. Then the leader rolled off his top bunk, stood over me, and said, ‘That’s your bunk, the cold one by the door.’
It was the bunk no one else wanted. I didn’t complain. The bottom bunk nearest the door suited me perfectly. It meant I could breathe air that wasn’t rotten.
There was complete silence while I unpacked my sleeping bag. I unpacked my first-aid tin. No one wanted to nick anything from it, which was just as well because it was my trick accessory kit as well. Then I unpacked Sylvie’s chocolate, cherry and cream cake.
Without a word someone passed me a long knife. I cut the cake into slices and handed it around. It meant I had to watch the delicious cake being sucked down the throats of all those bullies and I didn’t get any myself. But it broke the silence. The leader said, ‘Awesome cake’, and everyone farted and belched and left me alone.
Skim Milk sent in a messenger to say I was on breakfast duty in the morning. I’m sure he was too scared to come in himself. I don’t remember anything more about that day.
Next morning, when it was still pitch dark, the other kids turfed me out of Cabin 2 to make them breakfast. I went to the toilet first. The toilet block was a cinder-block building with tiny high-up windows and a concrete floor. It was so freezing cold that my feet stuck to the concrete.
There was a row of shower cubicles down one side, with no one in them of course. This partly explained the smell in the cabin. It wasn’t surprising. No one except a polar bear would shower in this temperature.
I found the cookhouse, and chased some rats off the table. By following instructions on the wall I made a huge pot of porridge
. The pot was so big I couldn’t see into it when I poured the porridge in, so I just hoped there were no rats silly enough to be still in it at breakfast time. I filled it with water from the hose, then I lit the huge gas ring under it.
I rang the camp bell and waited for someone to come and eat. No one did. No adults came to see what I was up to, or check I hadn’t drowned in the porridge. Skim Milk had obviously slept in.
Well, if no one wanted breakfast, I’d go somewhere where they did. I grabbed a big jar of honey and took it to the loos. I smeared honey on the toilet seats and squillions of ants arrived for their breakfast. Then I hid and waited. When kids did stagger out of their pongy cabins, they refused to use the loos because they were dark with ants. I complained to Skim Milk that kids were pooing in the bushes and it was a health hazard. He began to look worried then.
He looked even more worried when he squeezed and squeezed his toothpaste tube until it suddenly burst at the other end and toothpaste shot out all over his down jacket. This was because I’d covered the nozzle end of his toothpaste with superglue I’d found in the kitchen cupboard next to the porridge oats.
Some creep from Cabin 4 came up to me and threatened to beat me up if I didn’t take the porridge to the cabin next morning. I had to work out a way of dealing with that: I wasn’t going to be anyone’s slave at this losers’ camp.
Then we all got shouted at by Skim Milk and ordered to set off on a march around the mountain. There was no way I was doing that. If Skim Milk was leading, we’d all get lost. If he wasn’t leading, then who was?
Other teachers arrived and there was no escape. We lined up in the teachers’ car park and then started off. I was wearing the survival socks. I’d nicked a rope from the cabin. It was in my pack. What I really needed was a life-support system spacesuit.
Several times I spied on Skim Milk and saw him taking swigs from a small flask. When we’d gone about the distance from home to school, I tried to lag behind so I could run back to camp when the others were around the next corner. Skim Milk ordered me to get up front.
I changed tactics. I strode along, in the lead, pretending I loved it. Then I ran and got way ahead. I found a tree with branches overhanging the track, whipped out my rope, threw it over a branch, did an expert highwayman’s knot and hauled myself up. Just in time. The first kids came around the corner. They looked down at the track as they passed under me. I scuttled further up into the tree, hiding behind leaves.
I counted the rest of the group go under me, then I shinned down the rope, pulled on the other bit that was dangling down, and the whole knot collapsed. I gathered the rope and ran all the way to a little clearing by a stream we’d passed earlier. That knot book had sure come in handy.
I sat by the stream, watched fantails and tried to think up a plan to get out of the camp and home safely without having to walk across the whole country to get there.
After a few hours, I was talking to the birds. ‘Hey, I wish I had wings like you.’ It was embarrassing.
Then an idea came. Flying! That was the way to get out of this place. And I knew how…
The trampers staggered back soon after I’d finalized all the details of my escape trick. I tagged on behind them. Easy.
That night we built a huge campfire and sat around it telling jokes. I threw some iron filings, left over from my volcano trick, into the campfire when Skim Milk was trying to scare us by telling us no one in the whole world could find us here. It created a diversion. No one knew where the sparks and colours had come from.
When we went to bed, I left a torch in the toilet block so the place filled with moths. No one would go in there. I told Skim Milk I was definitely telling the Health Inspectors. These were just small tricks. My master plan had to wait until midnight.
Midnight. I felt under my bunk and found the first-aid kit I’d watched Mum pack, to which I’d added the blue food-colouring bottles.
I crept out into the mothy, possum-filled darkness. I climbed to the top of the ladder leaning against the water tank stand. I tipped the food colouring bottles into the water.
Plop plop plop plop plop plop plop plop plop plop!
I climbed down. I felt wide awake now, and real happy. I did another little trick, another part of my plan, with Skim Milk’s and the other teachers’ cars. After that I returned to my sleeping bag and pleasant dreams.
Tomorrow, if my plan worked, I’d be as free as a bird.
10
I woke up to pandemonium. Everyone was talking excitedly about Someone.
Someone had got up in the night and filled his plastic mug with water and not noticed the water was bright blue and drunk the lot.
They reckoned Someone Else had drugged the water supply. None of the teachers’ cars would start, because Someone Else Again had undone the oil sump on every one of the cars lined up in the car park.
The boy with the gleaming sky-blue innards had been helicoptered to hospital, just in case.
‘Surely not!’ I said.
‘You slept through the whole lot,’ a kid sneered. ‘You loser. You totally missed out.’
The truth was I hadn’t expected Someone to get up in the night and beat me to the rescue helicopter. The plan now needed a small modification as all the water had been drained from the tank and bottled water was being sent in.
I staggered, mumbled ‘I think I’ve been drugged’, and shut myself in the ant-infested loo with a blue biro.
When I came out I fell on the floor and carefully opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out. My blue tongue.
‘Another victim!’ yelled Skim Milk, his first-aid book flapping in his hand.
I was Bell Jet Ranger helicoptered out of that camp in great style.
Not for me the hardship of canvas beds, walks, cooking over fires outside. I left that camp snuggling in a comfy stretcher bed with soft, thick, red blankets. The helicopter flew up the mountain in ten seconds, the same mountain I should have slogged up yesterday in eight hours. A nurse bent over me and told me I’d be all right. The view was great. I watched the pilot. I reckon I know how to fly helicopters now.
I gave the doctor vivid details about the disgraceful state of the camp loos and the rats in the kitchen. They were sure I had the plague. I stayed in hospital overnight. It was bliss. The nurses were there whenever I pressed the buzzer at my bedside. I had a remote for the TV, and no one to argue with about channel selection.
My parents were a bit annoyed when the blue tongue turned out to be biro and not something deadly. Dad was all for sending me straight back to camp. But the doctor said the camp was being shut down because it wasn’t well run.
I went home. Just in time, too. Sis was cleaning out my room. Checking up what stores Sylvie had given me and where I’d hidden them.
Mildew rang to tell Mum she’d sent some pageboy and brides maid designs by mail. Then, for no reason, she ranted on and on about the missing wedding dress. She was still mad about it, even though that had happened days ago.
Mum told her I was back home. ‘He’s turned over a new leaf and found his feet.’ Ah-ha! So that’s where my missing feet were: under a leaf! I should have guessed.
‘He’s so responsible now. Complained about the—’
‘WHAT HAS HE DONE WITH MY DRESS?’
It was so loud I could hear it across the room.
‘Nothing, Mildred. What would Monster want your dress for?’
Just then Sis came out of my room with the sheet rope I’d hidden under my bed. She was holding it up so we could all admire my rope-making skills. ‘Look!’
Mum looked, dropped the receiver, and grabbed the sheet rope. ‘What is this?’ she whispered, waggling the last bit of the rope at me.
‘That is my majorly awesome rope-making plaiting technique.’
‘Monster,’ she whispered, stepping back from me as though I really did have the plague.
That’s when I understood. That frothy thing Sylvie was sewing must have been Aunt Mildew’s wedding dress.
Both Mum and Sis stared at me with frozen faces. I could hear screams coming out of the phone receiver on the floor. Then Mum said, ‘She’s getting married.’
‘No one told me,’ I said.
Well, it wasn’t the happiest homecoming, but it was nice to get together with Muggeridge after everyone had shouted at me, and tell him all about it.
Muggeridge agreed with me that the camp should be shut down and that no one should get married.
When I got home, a health person was talking to Mum about the disgraceful conditions of the camp.
‘Told you so,’ I said.
The health person said I deserved a medal. Mum said nothing.
Then Sis rushed in with the mail. She ripped open an envelope with Mildew’s scrawly writing on it. She took out two pieces of paper. One she let fall to the ground. The other one she shrieked over. Mum rushed up to shriek over it, too. I managed a peek. It was a drawing of a girl wearing a green dress that looked a bit like a frilly Brussels sprout. ‘It’s gorgeous!’ screamed Sis.
I looked down at the paper on the floor. On it was a drawing of a boy wearing white, shiny shorts and shirt. I grabbed it before anyone could see it and swallowed it.
There was no way I, the great escaper from the most isolated camp in the world, was going to go to anyone’s wedding dressed like that.
11
Swallowing paper is bad.
Finding out you have to dress up is even worse.
But I tell you, wearing that gear in public is the very worst of all. And when I say public, I mean in front of hundreds of people in a big hall.
Mildew and Purple Nose got married two weeks later. Mum and Dad had front-row seats for the show. Sis and I were actually in it. We had to walk down the aisle and stand there, in front of everyone. I promised I would, but when I saw the costume I had to wear—well, there was no way I was walking down that aisle, wearing white silk shorts, being gawped at by all those people. They’d think I’d forgotten to get dressed and was into sexy underwear.
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