Spurt

by Chris Miles

  ‘Yeah, but –’ Jack glanced at Nats, and gestured at the bobbing sea of hot-air balloons above the oval. ‘There’s all this …’

  Nats stared at Jack in disbelief. ‘Jack! This is your family we’re talking about!’

  Jack clutched his access pass. ‘But … this is a big deal –’

  Nats stepped away from him, looking disgusted. ‘Hals, I’ll drive you to the hospital.’

  With a final glare over her shoulder at Jack, Nats pulled Hallie after her through the gate towards the car park. The Shieling twins took the opportunity to melt back into the crowd, but not without shooting Jack identical dirty looks first.

  Jack couldn’t believe it. His fake girlfriend had actual dumped him.

  He realised everybody was staring at him. ‘What?’ he said. ‘It’s tough, okay? It’s not easy, balancing work and family.’ He scratched at his neck as his stress rash started to itch. ‘But I’m Mayor for a Week. I’ve got responsibilities. I’m the man of the house, but I’m also the big man in town.’ He pointed over to where the crew had started inflating his race balloon. ‘Someone’s got to fly in Hot-Air Force One.’

  The basket was on its side, tethered to the ground, and the crew was using a large fan to blow air into the nylon balloon.

  Slowly the balloon that Philo had designed and Darylyn had modelled took shape before Jack’s eyes. The balloon seemed to be made up of two segments – two knobbly ovoid shapes – joined together in the middle. The fabric was decorated all over with folds and furrows that made the balloon look puckered and shrivelled.

  Jack realised it was supposed to look like a pair of sultanas. What it actually looked like was –

  ‘A scrotum,’ he said out loud. ‘Hot-Air Force One looks like a massive scrotum.’

  Philo tilted his head to one side. ‘Now that you mention it …’

  The crew lit the gas burner and the scrotum-shaped balloon began a majestic rise into the air. Jack saw the crew stand back to look at it, appraising it properly for the first time. They frowned and rubbed their chins. One of them nudged another. There was chuckling and shaking of heads. A couple of them turned and looked right at Jack.

  Jack rounded on Philo and Darylyn. ‘What the hell? What the hell? How am I supposed to fly in that?’

  Darylyn shrugged. ‘I did try to tell you.’

  ‘You told me it had a bit of a “dried fruit” vibe. You didn’t tell me it looked like a giant pair of baldy-balls!’ Jack turned to Reese. ‘What about you? You were there. You saw them work on this.’

  Reese shrugged. ‘Dude, if I’d said something, would it have made a difference? You’re so wrapped up in your own head all the time. The only reason it took me so long to tell you about me and D was because I knew you’d freak out and start thinking you didn’t “measure up” or something. Everything’s a competition with you. Dude, I’m over it.’

  Before Jack could answer, Philo pointed into the distance and said, ‘We probably should have gone with a design more like that.’ Further afield in the area behind the grandstand, blotting out the setting sun and lit up by great bursts of flame, was a fiery red balloon shaped like a rocket. Its flanks were emblazoned with the Avocado World logo.

  Standing at the base of the balloon, gathered around the basket, was a fluoro-vested crew much like the one that was preparing Jack’s balloon. But this balloon was not generating chuckles among the crew. This balloon demanded solemn, masculine respect. The Bigwigs crew was there too, Jack suddenly noticed. And Delilah was right there with them, interviewing someone.

  Interviewing Oliver Sampson.

  Two balloons, thought Jack. Back at the swearing-in for Mayor for a Week, Delilah had said she needed to organise two balloons. And now he realised: one of those balloons was for Oliver Sampson.

  Just like she’d rigged the selection of Mayor for a Week in Jack’s favour, Delilah must have rigged the lottery so that Sampson would be flying against Jack. She was finding the story. Suddenly Jack realised what that was going to be. His ‘story’ on the Bigwigs reunion special was going to end in a dramatic race between Sampson’s penis-rocket and Jack’s tragic nadgers. Jack’s audition for the Bigwigs Board was going to be a massive joke – with Sampson laughing hardest.

  It was over, Jack realised. The more he’d tried to fake the big time, the smaller he’d become.

  He took off his access pass and dropped it on the ground. ‘I’m out,’ he said. He turned and walked towards the gate.

  ‘Jack!’ Vivi called after him.

  But Jack didn’t answer. He didn’t stop, or turn around.

  Instead, he ran.

  The shuttle bus from the showgrounds pulled up at the Bernadino Mall. Jack was the only passenger. Everyone else was heading towards the festival, not away from it.

  Jack squeezed his way out through the front door as passengers bound for the festival piled on board. None of them seemed to recognise him, or wonder why the Mayor for a Week was leaving the festival when he was meant to be launching it. As far as they knew, the kid leaving the bus was just that: a kid.

  The shuttle bus pulled away, and the mall was left dark and empty. Jack cut a dazed path past the shopfronts, wandering from one end of the mall to the other. All the doors that had seemed open to him just a few days ago were closed.

  Jack crouched in the arcade where he and Nats had rehearsed being girlfriend and boyfriend. He rested his head in his hands.

  And he sat there for a long, long time.

  Nobody had come after him. He wasn’t surprised. Vivi and Reese and Darylyn had been desperate to ditch him since before the start of term. Nothing he’d done since then had changed that. If anything, he’d made things worse. First by still not growing pubes, and then by everything else he’d done.

  He’d half expected Delilah to send her cameras after him, though, to capture a dramatic grab for the reunion show. He imagined her pitching the scene. (‘“See how far a Bigwig can fall.” It’ll be great vision.’) But she’d obviously decided that Sampson deserved the spotlight more than Jack.

  Nats had abandoned him too. Only a couple of days ago she’d put her number in his phone. Who knew where things might have gone from there? But as it turned out, they’d gone nowhere.

  Typical for some family crisis to screw things up. Jack felt a twinge of guilt about his gran, but he pushed it aside. It was all Philo’s fault, anyway. It wasn’t like Jack had asked for the testosterone cream that had turned Marlene into Granzilla.

  Jack sighed and took out his phone. No messages.

  With a feeling of grim satisfaction, he went into his contacts and deleted Nats’s number – smiley and all.

  The next number in the list was Oliver Sampson’s. Jack felt a flash of hot anger. He wished he could delete Sampson from more than just his phone.

  His finger hovered above Sampson’s name, ready to swipe him into oblivion, when a call came through.

  Jack stared at the screen in disbelief as the phone kept ringing and buzzing in his hand. The name that had come up as the caller was the very same one he had been poised to delete.

  What was Oliver Sampson doing calling him? Only Jack’s prepubescent lack of physical strength kept him from crushing the phone in his hand.

  How? he thought. How did Sampson always manage to appear just at the right moment to make things worse? First he’d stolen Jack’s friends, then he’d stolen Bigwigs. What was he hoping to take from Jack now?

  Maybe he was just angry and wanting to give Jack a piece of his mind. Jack had denied Sampson the chance to completely humiliate him in the balloon race. He’d ruined Sampson’s big moment in front of the Bigwigs cameras.

  Jack hit ‘Reject Call’, and then deleted Sampson from his contacts.

  Another call. This time, the caller came up as just a number, with no name attached.

  Jack hit ‘Reject’ again.

  Another call.

  Jack was genuinely tempted to throw the phone away. He didn’t need it. Nobody was ever go
ing to call him again anyway. He hit ‘Reject’.

  Again, like a jab in the arm, the phone rang. Jack hit ‘Answer’ and unleashed his pent-up rage into the phone. ‘What? What do you want? Why won’t you leave me alone?’

  ‘Sprigley?’

  Jack felt the heat rise off him into the night air. ‘Oh, it’s Sprigley now, is it? Not “Sprogless”. Not “baldy-balls”.’

  ‘Jack?’ Sampson’s voice sounded low and quiet. It sounded small.

  ‘Yes! Of course it’s me! What do you even want? Shouldn’t you be breaking records in your knob-zeppelin by now?’

  ‘I’m not at the festival,’ whispered Sampson. ‘I left.’

  Jack presumed it wasn’t out of solidarity, or flattery by imitation. Still, he was mildly curious. ‘You left?’

  ‘I got your address out of that Dawson weirdo and I took a taxi straight from the festival.’

  Jack sat bolt upright. ‘What? You’re at my house?’

  ‘I’m in your bungalow.’

  Bachelor pad, thought Jack, instinctively. ‘What the hell? Are you stalking me?’

  ‘Well, I was pissed at you for spoiling everything tonight,’ Sampson admitted. ‘Like, “I’m Jack Sprigley, I’ve already been on Bigwigs, I can just walk away from the camera whenever I want”. It’s okay for you. You’ve had your chance.’

  ‘What, so this is some kind of showdown? I ruined your starring role on Bigwigs, and so you came to my house to get revenge? Tonight was supposed to be my big moment!’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Jack, I need your help.’

  Jack paused. There was definitely something wrong. Surely Jack was the last person someone like Sampson would ask for help?

  ‘Something’s … happened,’ he said.

  ‘Is it my gran?’ Jack pictured Marlene breaking free of her police guard, hurling hospital staff through the air with her superhuman strength, so she could reclaim by force the bungalow that was rightfully hers. He pictured her towering over Sampson, crouched in terror in the corner, and tried not to feel too gleeful at the idea. ‘Are my mum and my sister there?’

  ‘It’s not your gran. It’s … Sprigley, I seriously need your help.’

  Jack was starting to worry now. ‘What the hell’s going on, Sampson?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. Just come.’

  Jack wondered if it was some sort of trick. Was Delilah going to be there waiting for him, hidden camera-style, for some big ‘gotcha’ moment?

  ‘Why can’t you tell me?’

  ‘Someone might be listening,’ whispered Sampson.

  ‘Who would be listening?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Sampson, his voice almost rising to a whinny. ‘Spies?’

  ‘Spies? How old are you?’

  ‘Just come,’ Sampson repeated. ‘I need you to fix this. I need …’ He paused. ‘I need a Bigwig.’

  Jack turned the corner into his street. There was no sign of his mum’s car in the driveway. There were no lights on in the house. The side passage that led to the bungalow was cloaked in darkness.

  Jack stepped on something squishy and brittle as he passed the window to his old room. He stopped, squinted, and saw that he’d trodden on a bunch of red roses wrapped in paper.

  A phone lay next to the roses, its cheap plastic casing split down the side, its screen shattered. Like the flowers, it looked like it had been dropped.

  Something weird was going on.

  He hurried the rest of the way down the side passage, bounded up the bungalow steps, and threw the lights on as he burst inside.

  The first thing he saw was Oliver Sampson standing in the middle of the bungalow, one finger pressed to his lips, the other pointing at Jack’s bed.

  Lying on the bed, in a baby-blue blazer and pressed slacks, his silver hair in disarray, was Upland’s mayor, Neville Perry-Moore.

  For a moment Jack wondered if this was part of the Mayor for a Week deal that nobody had seen fit to tell him about. Nobody had said anything about the mayor and Jack literally swapping places.

  Then Jack noticed the terrible black bruise around the mayor’s eye.

  ‘I think he’s unconscious,’ whispered Sampson.

  Jack closed the door and moved closer. His first thought was that his gran had attacked the mayor. First a taxi driver, then the mayor – was nobody safe from her testosterone-powered rage?

  But even if that were true, it didn’t go anywhere near explaining what Neville Perry-Moore was doing in Jack’s bed.

  ‘What the – ? Was he like this when you got here?’

  Sampson grimaced. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Wait. You did this? You attacked the mayor?’

  ‘He was creeping around your house!’

  ‘So were you!’

  Sampson put his hand to his brow. ‘I … I thought he was a burglar or something. I didn’t know it was the mayor. Although, technically, he’s not really the mayor at the moment. Right? You are. So it’s actually not as bad as it looks. Right, Sprigley?’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course he’s still the freaking mayor!’ Jack realised Sampson was getting desperate. Not even Darylyn would have argued that technicality. He lowered his voice to a hiss. ‘I can’t believe you punched the mayor in the face!’ Jack’s outrage couldn’t completely eclipse the question of what the mayor had been doing at his house in the first place, but he ignored it for now.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Sprigley. I didn’t punch him. He hit his head on the wall after I tackled him.’

  ‘Oh. Well. That’s probably fine, then. I’m sure the courts won’t consider it assault if it was just a tackle.’

  The mention of assault turned Sampson even paler. ‘But it wasn’t my fault! It was an accident! I didn’t think, I just …’ He looked distressed. ‘I don’t know my own strength.’

  You’ve had two years of living in that fully-equipped man-body, thought Jack. Plenty of time to get to know your strength.

  ‘What was he doing here, anyway?’ said Sampson. ‘And why did he have flowers with him?’

  Jack gasped. Suddenly the penny dropped. The roses. The smashed phone. ‘Oh my god,’ he said. He turned to Sampson, not quite believing that the words he was about to utter could be true. But it all made sense.

  The texting. The secrecy.

  ‘This is going to sound crazy,’ he said slowly, ‘but I think the mayor came here to see my gran. I think …’ He groaned with distaste. ‘Oh my god, I think this was … a booty call.’

  Sampson screwed his face up. ‘Come off it, Sprigley.’

  Jack wondered how long it had been going on for. Was this their first date? Or had they arranged other secret hook-ups – here, under the very roof that Jack’s Bigwigs winnings had helped pay for? Jack felt sick at the thought.

  Fortunately Jack was spared the trauma of imagining their covert, under-the-covers activities in more detail. His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door and the sound of voices outside.

  Sampson looked panicked. ‘It’s the cops!’

  ‘Jack?’ came Vivi’s voice through the door.

  Jack did his best to stay calm. The fewer witnesses to the fact that Sampson had accidentally assaulted the mayor, the better. But then again, having Vivi standing outside calling his name was only going to attract attention.

  He threw open the door and saw Vivi, Reese, Darylyn and Philo on the doorstep. They looked as relieved to see Jack as Jack was to see them.

  ‘We’ve been texting you and calling you for the last half hour!’ said Vivi.

  Jack hadn’t checked his phone since Sampson’s distress call. He looked now and saw a bunch of messages and missed calls on the screen.

  He looked out again at the four faces on the doorstep of the bungalow and took a deep breath. ‘You guys better come inside,’ he said.

  Vivi and the others piled through the door and stood in the middle of Jack’s bachelor pad, staring slack-jawed at the unconscious form of Mayor Neville Perry-Moore.

/>   ‘Dude,’ said Reese, after many seconds had passed. ‘Why have you kidnapped the mayor?’

  Jack glanced at Sampson, who was frantically chewing his nails.

  ‘I guess this explains why nobody could contact him after you bailed on the festival, Jack,’ said Darylyn, wide-eyed.

  ‘Vivi stood in as mayor for the whole thing!’ said Philo.

  ‘What the hell happened here?’ said Vivi.

  Jack had a sudden realisation. ‘Holy crap. Delilah. She didn’t follow you here, did she?’ The last thing he needed was for any evidence of Sampson’s accidental assault of the mayor to end up on camera.

  Vivi glanced at Darylyn, Reese and Philo. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, grinning. ‘We took care of Delilah. It was kind of like a Bigwigs team challenge, wasn’t it, guys?’

  ‘Oh, great,’ said Sampson, hands tucked under his arms to keep from chewing off his fingers entirely. ‘Everyone’s a Bigwig now except me. Meanwhile, what are we going to do about this?’

  ‘You still haven’t explained what “this” is!’ said Vivi. ‘And by the way, Sampson, we’re on to you. Philo told us the things you’ve been saying to Jack.’

  Sampson and Jack swapped glances.

  ‘In the changing rooms,’ said Vivi.

  Jack shrugged. He really wanted to avoid a situation where anyone might be tempted to use the words ‘baldy-balls’. ‘Yeah, I’m not sure we really need to –’

  ‘So what?’ said Sampson. ‘He is a baldy-balls.’

  There it is, thought Jack.

  Reese glared at Sampson. ‘Dude. Watch it.’

  Jack held his hands out diplomatically. ‘Guys. Calm down. It’s just one of those nicknames like when you call a person with red hair “Bluey”. Or when you call a really tall person “Shorty”. When Sampson says “baldy-balls”, what he really means is “Jack has a much higher than average quantity of pubi–”’

  ‘Marleeeeeeeeeeeeeeene … ?’

  Everyone spun around. The mayor was stirring into consciousness.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ hissed Sampson.

  Vivi frowned. ‘Did he say “Marlene”?’ She turned to Jack. ‘As in your gran Marlene?’