by Chris Miles
For Nikki, who changed everything.
Contents
Title Page
PART ONE: PUBELESSLY BLUE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
PART TWO: BIGWIGGING
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
PART THREE: BRING BACK JACK
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
Jack Sprigley stared down his pyjama bottoms on the first morning of Term Four and realised that his worst fears had come true.
Nothing had changed.
No last-minute dash to the finish line. No final charge across the battlefield to victory. No champagne cork–popping moment that meant he’d joined the rest of Year 8 in all its hairy, pimply glory.
He snapped the pyjama elastic back.
Time had run out. Another school year was nearly over.
And he was still stranded on Pubeless Island.
Jack sat at the kitchen table with a bigger-than-usual bowl of cornflakes. His mum, Adele, glanced up at him from her morning cuppa.
‘First day back,’ she said.
‘Yep,’ said Jack.
His mum took a sip of her tea. ‘Must be looking forward to seeing everyone again?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Sure.’
Hallie breezed past and grabbed her breakfast smoothie from the fridge.
‘It’s just that you did seem to spend most of your holidays shut away in your room,’ said Jack’s mum, not quite making eye contact. ‘On your own,’ she added.
‘Gross,’ said Hallie from the other side of the fridge door.
‘I was busy,’ said Jack.
‘Gross,’ said Hallie.
Jack could guess what his sister was thinking. A fourteen-year-old boy, alone in his room for days – there were natural conclusions to be drawn.
But that was the problem. Guessing was all he could do. Sure, everything Ms Porter talked about in Health Ed made total sense.
In theory.
‘Anyway,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not like I had zero contact with anyone for the whole holidays. We just … hung out online.’
‘Right,’ said his mum, definitely not convinced. ‘So you hung out with Vivi, Reese and Darylyn online.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Jack said through a mouthful of cereal.
Jack’s gran, Marlene, shuffled into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. ‘Don’t forget to take my script to the chemists today, Jack.’
‘I never have forgotten, Gran,’ said Jack, relieved at the change of subject.
He finished his bigger-than-usual bowl of cornflakes in silence.
So far, Jack had come up with three possible reasons for his freakish lack of progress in the man-parts department:
1) His body was building up to a massive growth spurt. At some point soon he’d turn into an Incredible Hulk of puberty and sprout a pair of really enormous testicles.
2) It was a punishment from the gods for becoming semi-famous in Grade 6.
3) There’d been a mix-up at the hospital and he was actually a girl.
Jack had already ruled out 2. If gods existed, they probably had better things to do than watch reality TV. If it was 3, and he was a girl, the situation was still pretty messed up because he didn’t have any boobs or anything either.
Even if it was 1, and he ended up with gamma-charged super-junk, Jack had a feeling it might be too late. He was pretty sure his friends had already dumped him.
The signs were obvious. Vivi hadn’t called or emailed or even messaged since the end of term. Two whole weeks of silence. To which Jack had responded with … well, to be fair, silence.
No word from Reese either. Not a single link to a dodgy YouTube clip of whichever obscure 60s garage rock band or scuzzy rockabilly weirdos were rotating highly on his playlist that week.
Ditto Darylyn. Not even a reply to Jack’s text asking her to switch his laptop back to how it had been before she’d ‘improved’ it.
Nothing.
His mum was right. Jack hadn’t seen his friends for two weeks.
It wasn’t just the freeze-out over the holidays, though. Some time around the end of Year 7, Jack had started noticing the changes. Darylyn’s pimples. The hair above Reese’s lip and under his arms. Vivi becoming, to the extent that Jack had looked, more ‘boobs-having’.
There’d been other things, too. A week before the end of term, he’d caught Reese and Darylyn whispering to each other when they were all hanging out together at the Bernadino Mall after school. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Now he realised: that must have been the moment they’d started to question if they could really afford to be seen in public with someone who looked more ‘kid brother’ than ‘homie’. At some point the seeds of doubt must have been planted in Vivi’s mind too.
Now everything seemed to have come to a head, like the pus in one of the pimples that everyone but him seemed to have on their faces now. Vivi, Reese and Darylyn had obviously got together as soon as term had ended and decided to ditch Jack. Because that was what happened when you didn’t measure up.
You got left behind.
Jack jammed his laptop into his backpack and stuffed his shorts, Nike Zooms and water bottle in too.
He’d really hoped his growth spurt might hit by the time school went back. Everything Jack had read on forums and message boards over the holidays said his time would come. Eventually his hormones would kick into action and he’d transform from pubeless weirdo freak-boy to socially acceptable, testosterone-packing man-beast.
But Jack didn’t have time for eventually. He’d already passed up his chance to become Mr Popular after being on TV – and now it looked like he’d been ditched by the few friends he did have. Complete social rejection was a mere pube’s-breadth away.
He had to buy himself some time.
That was when Jack thought of Bigwigs. Sure, it had been three whole years since he’d been in front of the cameras. Sure, it was just a dumb game show. But it got him thinking. Bigwigs had been about pretending you were something you weren’t. Teams of kids were sent out into workplaces week after week, doing jobs that adults would normally do. And the better the contestants played at being adults, the further they went on the show.
Pretending. Was the answer as simple as that?
Jack slung his backpack over one shoulder and headed out the back door and down the side passage to the street, spurred by his stroke of genius.
If he wanted to stay tight with Vivi and the others, all he had to do was commit a relatively simple act of deception. All he had to do was convince his friends he had hit his growth spurt.
All he had to do, basically, was fake puberty.
‘Guys!’
Vivi, Reese and Darylyn were just about to disappear through the school gate. As Jack got nearer, he noticed Vivi tighten her grip on the strap of her schoolbag, as if it were a ripcord she could pull to parachute herself out of the situation
.
‘Hey, Jack,’ she said. ‘We were going to wait for you …’
‘No need,’ said Jack. ‘I caught up. T-o-o-tally caught up.’
Darylyn swept her fringe out of her eyes.
‘I got your text about the laptop.’ Darylyn always spoke super fast, as though the act of speech were like ripping off a bandaid. She glanced sideways at Reese, who kept his eyes stubbornly fixed on his black-and-white checked Volleys. ‘It would appear I forgot to reply.’
Jack shrugged. ‘That’s cool. ’Cos, yeah. It turns out I was too busy to use the computer much anyway.’
‘Busy?’ said Vivi.
‘Yeah,’ said Jack, staring manfully into the distance and nodding. He turned back to the others. ‘Sorry if I kind of … dropped off the radar.’
Vivi frowned. ‘What kind of busy?’
‘Just … you know,’ Jack said significantly. ‘Going through a bit of man stuff.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Vivi.
Jack froze. What did he mean? ‘You know. Just your typical guy stuff. Reese, you know what it’s like.’
If Darylyn Deramo was a fast talker, Reese Rasmus was the opposite. He was inclined to think very deeply about things. In fact, sometimes he thought so deeply about things that listening to him speak was a bit like listening to someone trying to invent the whole concept of language from scratch.
‘Um …’ he said.
Jack nodded understandingly in a ‘we’re both in this testosterone thing together’ kind of way. ‘Look, it’s cool if you don’t want to go into detail. You know, with the ladies present.’
‘It’s not that, dude,’ said Reese, frowning. ‘I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Jack sighed. ‘Come on, guys. It’s obvious what I’ve been doing. We’re all perfectly normal teenagers going through all the normal changes that normal teenagers go through at this age. You know?’
Vivi frowned. ‘Not reall–’
‘Masturbating,’ said Jack, desperately.
Vivi’s mouth dropped open. Darylyn took an involuntary step backwards. Reese’s brow crinkled. ‘Dude …’ he said.
Jack faltered. It was clear he’d brought out the big guns too soon. But he was committed now. There was nothing to do but keep firing away. ‘Y-yeah. Just … a whole ton of masturbating, really.’
There was a difficult pause. Jack thought he heard Reese say ‘Dude’ again under his breath.
Jack shrugged and tried to act casual. ‘That’s pretty normal, though. I mean, we’re all growing up so goddamn fast, right? Half the time we can’t even control what our bodies are doing. It’s like … UFOs could land and I’d be concentrating so hard on masturbating myself silly I wouldn’t even notice. I’d look up and be all, “Wow, first contact with aliens. Yeah, I get that it’s important and everything, but this wanking’s not going to do itself!”’
Jack tried to ignore the looks he got from the group of Year 12s who’d overheard him as they walked through the gate. ‘So … yeah. I guess I’ve been pretty busy with all that. H-how were your holidays?’
The electronic chime of the home room bell rang out across the grounds of Upland Secondary.
Saved by the bell, thought Jack.
If the bell had rung at some point before he’d said the word ‘masturbating’.
Reese steered Jack aside as they followed Vivi and Darylyn down the palm-lined main driveway towards the school hall. ‘Dude. All holidays?’
Jack chose to view the question as a positive sign. So far nobody had questioned his biological capacity for a fortnight of fapping. He had to be careful from now on, though. He didn’t want to blow it all by making it obvious he had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jack. ‘Twenty times a day.’ Seems plausible, he thought.
Reese frowned. ‘So … you weren’t hanging out with Vivi, then?’
‘Well, no,’ said Jack. ‘Be a bit weird, wouldn’t it? With all that masturbating going on. I mean, I’m no expert on girls –’
‘Nah, me either,’ Reese said quickly. Then he seemed to catch himself, slowing his voice back down to regular Reese speed. ‘I mean, me either … dude.’
‘Wait,’ said Jack, ‘so you didn’t see Vivi all holidays either?’
Reese didn’t seem to know where to look. ‘Um … maybe? When didn’t you see her?’
‘The whole time,’ said Jack, surprised that Reese even had to ask. ‘The primary reason being the nonstop masturbating.’
‘Dude, can you stop saying that?’
Jack took a moment to review the evidence. Did this mean there wasn’t a conspiracy to ditch him? ‘So, wait … did you see Vivi or not?’
Reese hesitated. ‘S-sure. I guess we probably saw her … around?’
‘We? Meaning you and Darylyn?’
Reese stopped. ‘Huh?’
‘You said “we”.’ Jack noticed Reese looking fidgety. ‘And … now you’re acting weird about it.’
Reese seemed to be wrestling with something inside. He ran his hand through his fauxhawk and screwed up his face. ‘Listen, Jack, there’s something I should –’
‘There he is!’ someone squealed.
Jack and Reese looked up to see three Year 7s in wind-cheaters and pleated skirts racing towards them across the asphalt of the school carpark. They nudged Reese aside and huddled around Jack, sucking noisily on the plastic straws of their dome-lidded smoothie cups.
One of the girls pawed at Jack’s sleeve with her free hand. ‘We’ve been voting for you!’ she squeaked.
Voting for me? thought Jack. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A poll, on the Bigwigs forum,’ said the second girl, so excited she could barely stand still. The other two blew into their straws, making the sickly green smoothies bubble like the contents of a cauldron. ‘We stayed up clicking “Jack, Jack, Jack” until it was time to go to bed!’
The third girl looked up from her smoothie and fixed Jack with a beady stare. ‘Nine thirty-five p.m. on school nights,’ she said in a deadly serious monotone.
‘But … I’m not on Bigwigs anymore,’ said Jack.
The first girl rolled her eyes. ‘It’s to see which finalists they should bring back, dummy!’
‘Bring back – ?’
The girls looked at each other, eyes wide, and shouted, ‘Bring back Jack! Bring back Jack!’ in ear-piercing disharmony. Then they were gone, in a whirl of gingham and fleece.
Vivi waited with Darylyn while Jack and Reese caught up with them again. ‘Fans of yours?’ she asked Jack.
Jack shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
‘They were clearly talking about Bigwigs,’ said Darylyn.
Jack feigned innocence. ‘Were they?’
Darylyn blinked. ‘It’s impossible that you failed to hear that.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Vivi. ‘Why do you always freak out as soon as anyone brings up Bigwigs?’
Jack put on a look of false innocence. ‘I don’t!’
‘You do. Like last year, when they started showing the ads for the new season.’
The show had only been on for two years, but they’d already changed the format and gone all meta. As well as kids going into real-life workplaces to do adult jobs, there’d been a mini-arc where the contestants had to produce an episode of Bigwigs itself. It had basically been the reality-TV equivalent of the movie Inception. Jack could only imagine what new schemes they were planning for the upcoming season.
‘I didn’t freak out,’ he said.
‘You did,’ said Vivi.
Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess I just feel weird about it because it’s a stupid kids show. I’ve moved on. I’ve matured.’ He cast a meaningful glance downwards. ‘Big time.’
Darylyn retreated behind her fringe and stared at the ground. Reese stuck his hands in his back pockets, cleared his throat and looked away into the distance. Vivi just looked kind of puzzled and disappointed somehow.
‘Anyway,’ said Vivi, after a short pause, ‘let’s not go there again.’
Jack was only half tuned in as everyone else started talking about what they were going to get for lunch later on. Mostly he was thinking about what the Year 7 girls had said.
Bring back Jack?
What was that about?
Jack and Vivi sat down next to each other in home room.
Way back at the beginning of Year 8, Vivi would spend Monday mornings telling Jack all about some old subtitled movie she’d watched over the weekend. But it had been months since she’d asked Jack if he’d decided who his favourite classic on-screen cinema couple were. (Apparently King Kong and ‘the lady from King Kong’ didn’t count.)
Obviously she didn’t think he was mature enough to discuss such topics anymore. Obviously, he had to prove her wrong.
He leant over to her. ‘You never said how your holidays were.’
‘They were … good,’ said Vivi. ‘Just, you know, thinking a few things over.’
‘Cool,’ said Jack. ‘I just wanted to check you hadn’t tried to call or anything. Because obviously I was pretty busy with all this goddamn puberty stuff.’
Vivi seemed distracted. She took a deep breath, tucked her hair behind her ears and leant closer to whisper to him. ‘Jack, I need to ask you something.’
‘O-okay,’ said Jack cautiously.
‘I need to ask you if we’re friends. I mean, really … friends.’
It was the same question Jack had been asking himself since about halfway through the holidays. ‘I don’t know. Are we?’
‘Well, do you think that’s what we should be?’
Jack nodded. It seemed like a no-brainer. ‘Oh yeah. Totally.’
Vivi nodded too. ‘So, everything else … that’s all just going to stay the way it is?’
Hopefully not everything else, thought Jack, pondering the depressingly stark tundra that greeted him on his visual safari down into his pyjama bottoms every morning.
‘I guess,’ he said.
Vivi stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment, nodded again, then returned to her side of the table.
Jack was still trying to figure out what had just happened when Mr Jacobs signalled for attention. On the board he’d written ‘Term Four: Stepping Up’.