Spurt

by Chris Miles

  Jack wondered if Delilah really could find a way to fix him up with Nats. She’d already proved she had the power to change reality. Jack clicked his fingers, Delilah transported him to a firing range, summoned up a fishing boat, pulled the strings to make him Mayor for a Week. It just fell into his lap, without him even having to do anything. He was starting to wonder if that was a good thing.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all good. It’s all sorted.’

  From the way Delilah was looking at him, Jack got the feeling she didn’t totally buy it.

  ‘Okay,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I just don’t want any nasty surprises on the night.’

  ‘There won’t be any surprises,’ promised Jack.

  He glanced across the room at Vivi.

  There’d been enough of those already.

  ‘And this,’ said Mayor Perry-Moore, ‘is my office.’

  Jack and Vivi stood in the carpeted corridor outside the mayor’s chambers. Jack had shrugged away the mayoral robes as soon as the swearing-in ceremony was over. They were now being carried by the woman from the council who’d spoken at the school, as the mayor gave Jack and Vivi a tour of the council offices where they’d be spending most of the next week.

  As far as Jack knew, Delilah was off filming Darylyn and Philo and Reese in the computer lab at school, where they were busy designing Jack’s balloon for the festival. He hoped she was going to be back to get plenty of vision of him in junior mayor mode. The producers needed to see him looking powerful and important if he was going to stand a chance of being voted onto the Bigwigs Board.

  Mayor Perry-Moore was about to show Jack and Vivi through to his office when one of his phones buzzed. It was the third text in as many minutes. And just like the other times, it wasn’t the slim BlackBerry in his left jacket pocket that was buzzing; it was the cheap, basic-looking phone he kept in the other pocket.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth as he read the text. ‘Just got to answer this.’

  With that, the mayor disappeared into his office, the door swinging not-quite-closed behind him.

  ‘He might be in there a while,’ said the woman from the council. ‘Can I get anything for either of you? A glass of water?’

  Jack shook his head. Vivi asked for a mineral water. ‘Apple and guava would be great.’

  ‘I’m not sure we –’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Vivi, frowning with junior deputy mayoral disappointment.

  The woman smiled a tight smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Once the woman was gone, Vivi turned on Jack and stood there glaring at him, arms crossed over her chest. ‘I didn’t say this before, because I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of everyone. But now we’re alone, I’m going to call you out for the selfish, self-serving backstabber that you are.’

  Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Okay, that’s kind of harsh …’

  ‘It’s not harsh at all. I was about to do something really cool with this Mayor for a Week thing, and you stole it from me.’ She glanced towards the half-shut door to the mayor’s office, then leant over to Jack. ‘You don’t even deserve it,’ she hissed. ‘You just got it because you cheated.’

  ‘First of all,’ said Jack, lowering his voice, ‘Mayor for a Week is not even that cool.’

  ‘True,’ conceded Vivi. ‘But it was my not-that-cool thing.’

  ‘Second,’ Jack continued, undeterred, ‘you can’t say I stole it. It’s not like you knew for sure you were going to get it.’

  ‘You’re right, Jack. It’s really unlikely I was going to win. I mean, they only went and made me deputy when they couldn’t make me mayor. Upland doesn’t even have an actual deputy mayor. Think about that for a second – I’m a junior version of something that doesn’t even exist!’

  ‘Sure, and you’re the only person in the world who’s ever had to put up with being in second place,’ Jack muttered.

  Vivi frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Jack ignored the question. ‘And you’re wrong about me not deserving it, anyway. I was on Bigwigs, remember? I’ve done this kind of thing before. That’s real world experience, right there.’

  ‘Reality TV is not the real world, Jack.’

  ‘It’s more real than writing an essay,’ he snapped back. ‘And while we’re on the topic of betrayals, let’s talk about you and Reese and Darylyn, shall we? I spent the whole holidays not knowing if we were even friends or not. You guys ditched me. I get that Reese and Darylyn were probably busy “getting to know each other” – and, yes, I mean that in a totally disgusting way. And now it’s pretty obvious that you and Sampson were doing the same thing.’ He swayed his pelvis in a vague attempt to simulate whatever it was he imagined Vivi and Sampson had been doing all holidays. Which, judging by his impression, was a cross between practising the samba and playing the party game of passing oranges to each other with their knees.

  Vivi looked disturbed. ‘That wasn’t … You’ve got it totally wrong. I’d barely spoken a word to Oliver before that soccer match.’

  ‘Well, you’ve definitely been making up for lost time.’

  ‘Now you’re just being gross. But, actually, you’re right. I have got to know him since then. And I think you’re being totally unfair to him.’

  Jack wondered how well Vivi really knew Sampson. Did she know he’d called Jack a ‘baldy balls’ in front of everyone else in the changing rooms? Did she know about his secret identity as ModLSkillz, bad-mouthing Jack on the Bigwigs forum?

  ‘There’s something you don’t know about Oliver,’ said Vivi, stealing the very same words that Jack was gearing up to say. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Oliver sent in an application for Bigwigs, the year after you were on. And they said no. He lost to someone else. Which, I don’t know, might sound familiar? I’m just saying.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jack, rolling his eyes. ‘And that makes me the all-round worst person ever.’

  ‘Bigwigs is like a beehive of bad memories for Oliver,’ Vivi went on. ‘And now you’re poking and prodding at it with this reunion episode thing. You’ve probably undone months of therapy.’

  That was sort of the idea, thought Jack. He’d had to fight back against Sampson’s testosterone firestorm somehow. It wasn’t his fault that Bigwigs was the only weapon he had.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Poor Sampson, with all his freakishly enormous man-parts. I bet that sucks.’ He crooked his elbow into his groin and let his arm dangle forward like an elephant’s trunk, then swayed it from side to side as he honked out the words, ‘What. A. Tragedy.’

  ‘Here’s your mineral water, Miss Junior Deputy Mayor.’

  Jack looked awkwardly over his shoulder as the woman returned and handed Vivi a bottle of pale-green mineral water with a straw in it. He couldn’t think of any way to explain what he was doing, so he just held his pose.

  ‘I won’t ask,’ said the woman.

  ‘I’d struggle for an answer, to be honest,’ said Jack, straightening up again.

  The woman looked into the mayor’s office and said, ‘I think he’s ready for you.’

  Vivi leant towards Jack as they were both ushered inside. ‘I don’t know what your deal is with Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘But if you could give him a job on your team – if you gave him some proper screen time on Bigwigs – then I might not think you’re a totally awful person.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘I’m texting you his number now. So you’ve got no excuse.’

  Jack had no intention of giving Sampson any more Bigwigs screen time. ‘What if he says no?’

  ‘Then I’ll just assume you weren’t trying hard enough. Either that, or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or that you really don’t care what I think of you.’

  Jack couldn’t believe it. The reason all of this had happened in the first place was because he cared what Vivi and Reese and Darylyn thought of him. He was so concerned about their opinion of him that he’d tri
ed to fake puberty to stay friends with them.

  Did he really have it in him to keep up that charade and be a good Samaritan to Sampson as well?

  Jack spent his second day as Mayor for a Week getting in and out of the council limousine and posing for photo opportunities with magistrates, the police chief, fire wardens and other important townsfolk.

  Todd and Brett trailed him the whole time in their minivan, filming the photo ops and small talk. Jack figured Delilah was busy making sure she had everything in place to bring his reunion show clip package to a suitably impressive climax.

  His big ballooning moment was only days away. Soon he’d be standing up in front of the whole town to launch the balloon festival, before soaring through the heavens to victory in his very own mayoral chariot.

  With his official duties finally over for the day, Jack grabbed himself an energy shake and walked home via the Bernadino Mall. All through the day, everywhere he’d gone, he’d been welcomed like a king. Every door in Upland was open to him.

  It was almost enough to stop him thinking about the typically disappointing results of that morning’s pube tally. (Zero.)

  And it was almost enough to stop him thinking about the guilt trip Vivi had laid on him the day before.

  Upland’s newly sworn-in Deputy Mayor for a Week had been sitting in on council subcommittee meetings all day. But Jack figured that was probably Vivi’s idea of fun. She would’ve hated being driven all around town and having to meet and greet the townsfolk, he decided. If anything, he’d done her a favour by making her deputy.

  He thought about calling Sampson, like Vivi had asked him to. He’d been putting it off. He didn’t want Sampson soaking up his precious time on camera. And he definitely didn’t want Sampson standing in the same frame as him, making him look small when he needed more than ever to look big.

  The producers must have had a good reason for rejecting Sampson from Bigwigs in the first place. Jack didn’t see why it was suddenly his responsibility to give Sampson Bigwigs screen time.

  Especially not now, when Jack still had to convince everyone he was Bigwigs Board material.

  Jack’s phone rang. For a moment he was worried it was Vivi, calling to guilt him, but it was Darylyn.

  ‘Hey,’ he answered. ‘Is the balloon ready?’

  ‘It’s done,’ said Darylyn, sounding slightly offended at Jack’s presumption of anything less than a hundred per cent efficiency on her part. ‘I’ve got the 3D file right here on my laptop. But –’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘The design Philo’s come up with. It has what I would call a significant emphasis on dried fruits.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s okay,’ said Jack. ‘That was the plan.’

  It turned out Philo hadn’t got the morning off from the Sultana World stand to help Jack move into his bachelor pad. He’d skipped his shift, and he was in his parents’ bad books, big time. Jack figured that turning the hot-air balloon into a free advertisement for Sultana World might help Philo balance the ledger.

  ‘Just confirming you’re okay with it being so … sultana-focused,’ said Darylyn.

  As long as it’s not covered in pubes, thought Jack. He was about to ask Darylyn to send him through a screenshot of the 3D file, just to be sure, when he spotted a lone figure doing some window shopping further down the mall, causing him to lose his train of thought.

  Former Mayor for a Week and Jack’s-girlfriend-who-didn’t-know-it-yet: Natsumi Distagio.

  ‘It’s all good,’ Jack replied vaguely. ‘Gotta go.’ He hit ‘End call’ and picked up his mayoral stride again. ‘That’s right,’ he barked, pretending to speak into the phone. ‘You tell those pen-pushers at town hall to pull out all the stops. This balloon festival’s too damn important to wrap up in red tape. I don’t want to hear any more “No we can’t”. I want to hear “Yes we can!” You got that?’

  Nats spun around. She clutched the straps of her sequinned slouch bag with one hand, and half a dozen shopping bags with the other. Jack pretended not to see her at first. Then she leant to one side and waved at him, shopping bags dangling from her arm.

  ‘Oh, h-hey, Natsumi,’ he said, aiming for laidback, but not quite managing to keep the tremor from his voice.

  ‘Jack! Who were you talking to just now?’ Nats made a show of looking concerned. ‘It sounded serious!’

  Jack rolled his eyes. ‘Just some official Mayor for a Week business. This phone will not stop ringing. I mean, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. You’ve been there. You know what it’s like, being the big man in town.’

  Nats blushed.

  ‘Big woman!’ Jack corrected himself. ‘You would have been more of a big woman. I mean, you still are, obviously. A big, big woman.’

  He sucked nervously on the straw of his energy shake while Nats stared awkwardly down at her feet.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Jack, quickly moving on. ‘My point is that being Mayor for a Week is cuh-razy.’

  Nats nodded. ‘It’s so rewarding, but it’s a lot of pressure.’

  ‘Totally,’ said Jack. ‘And on top of the usual craziness, there’s the hot-air balloon festival happening on the weekend. I’m even racing in my own special “Mayor for a Week” balloon. I’m calling it Hot-Air Force One.’

  ‘Nice!’ Nats snorted with laughter. Jack felt his confidence creep up a notch.

  ‘And, you know, I’ve also got this film crew following me around the whole time …’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Nats, taking Jack’s bait, just as he’d hoped. ‘The Bigwigs thing! It’s weird, Hals keeps giving me the brush-off whenever I ask about it. I’m like, how can you be so meh about it? It’s TV!’

  ‘It is. It is TV.’ Jack swallowed nervously. ‘And speaking of TV … I mean, if you ever wanted to get in front of the cameras … you know, before they wrap up the shoot …’

  Nats looked at him expectantly.

  ‘I’m just saying, it wouldn’t be hard to organise.’

  ‘Really?’

  Jack stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘The only thing is, we’d need to come up with a good reason why we’d be hanging out together …’

  ‘Well, I’m friends with your sister, so … ?’

  Jack screwed up his face. ‘Yeah, but Hallie’s doing her best to avoid being on camera. I don’t know, I kind of get the feeling she’d bring down the vibe and spoil your big moment.’

  Nats shrugged. ‘Well, we could just pretend we know each other some other way?’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Jack, nodding meditatively. ‘What … sort of thing did you have in mind?’

  A ‘eureka’ look flashed across Nats’s face. ‘I’ve got it! The Mayor for a Week program! I could be your mentor. That way I get to show everyone my serious and intelligent side.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Jack, doing his best to look as though he was giving it serious consideration. ‘Interesting idea. I’m just wondering … What if, instead of that, we tweaked the set-up a little – just a tiny bit – and you, I don’t know …’

  Jack took a deep breath and went for it.

  ‘…pretendedtobemygirlfriend.’

  Nats blinked. ‘Did you just say I should pretend to be your girlfriend?’

  ‘My hot older girlfriend.’ Jack shrugged, as though he’d suggested nothing more controversial than ordering a side of garlic bread with dinner. ‘Just an idea.’

  Nats’s face soured into a look of distaste. ‘I don’t think so, Jack.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he sighed. ‘Bigwigs is going prime time this season, there’s going to be so many people watching it, all across the country … I guess it’d be hard to make all those viewers believe we’re really a couple. You’d need to be, like, a really awesome actress to pull that off.’ Jack could see Nats processing what he’d just said. He waited a moment before playing his winning card. ‘It’d be like … what do they call it when you do an audition in front of a camera?’

  The sourness seemed to fade slightly. ‘A scre
en test?’

  ‘That’s it. It’d be like doing a really big, important screen test.’

  Nats hooked her thumb inside her necklace and ran it up and down the length of the chain as she pondered. ‘Well, when you put it like that … I guess if I thought of it like an acting job …’

  Jack nodded encouragingly.

  ‘And I am between boyfriends …’ Nats went on.

  ‘Does that mean you’ll do it?’ His voice rose up on the words ‘do it’ and wavered out of control for a second, like he’d swallowed a theremin. He put it down to nerves.

  Luckily, Nats didn’t seem to have noticed. She narrowed her eyes. ‘How girlfriend-y do I have to be?’

  Jack tried to look nonchalant. He made sure to pitch his voice low, to keep those nerves from making themselves heard again. ‘Just … you know. The usual stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Jack realised he had no idea. He pictured a pair of ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ bath towels, for some reason. ‘I don’t know … Just enough to make it look convincing for the cameras, I guess.’

  Nats seemed to steel herself. She glanced up and down the mall, then dragged an unresisting Jack around the corner into an arcade. When she seemed sure no-one was looking, she put her bags down on the ground and draped a slender arm over his narrow shoulders.

  Holy crap, thought Jack.

  Nats turned to face an invisible, imaginary camera in the distance somewhere.

  ‘This is Jack,’ she said brightly, pulling him closer. ‘He’s my boyfriend. We’ve been together for … how long now?’

  Jack became a fountain of sweat. ‘Um … a month?’ His face was fully smooshed against her now. Through the thin layer of her cotton singlet he felt the underwire from her right bra cup dig into his cheek. Not even the realisation that something as exciting and mysterious as a bra was held together by something as boring and unsexy as wire could keep his pulse from racing.

  ‘Let’s make it two,’ whispered Nats. She turned back to the imaginary camera. ‘Two whole months we’ve been together!’ With her free hand, she patted Jack gently on the head.