by Adam Cece
Kipp crossed his arms. ‘How does having a list of weird genes help anyone?’
‘I’m glad you asked,’ said the creepy scientist and she smiled. ‘Once we were able to identify all the weird genes, we were able to identify people who were likely to become weird, and that meant we could control the spread of weirdness within normal society.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Tobias. He looked like someone had just given him a particularly difficult mathematical equation to solve.
‘I think I do.’ Cymphany had an angry look on her face.
The creepy scientist seemed amused. ‘Do you really, little girl?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Cymphany turned to Tobias and Kipp. ‘Haven’t you always wondered why everyone and everything in Huggabie Falls is weird? And how all these weird people and weird things ended up in the same place?’
‘Coincidence?’ Tobias suggested, convincing no one, least of all himself.
‘No. Don’t you see? The government has arranged all this.’ You could tell from the tone in her voice that Cymphany was furious. ‘It’s like when my parents first decided to move to Huggabie Falls. It was because my dad got this transfer at his work, a big promotion. I remember him saying that he didn’t even realise his work had a branch in Huggabie Falls.’ She scowled at the creepy scientist. ‘I bet that’s because they didn’t. It was the government, wasn’t it? Forcing my dad’s company to get rid of him, setting up the new job here, buying us the new house, and a new car. How could Dad refuse?’ She clenched her teeth. ‘And why? All because he had a slight lean.’
The creepy scientist grinned. ‘You’re an exceptionally smart girl, Ms Chan. I must admit your father was only a little bit weird, nowhere near as weird as some of the other people we’ve sent to Huggabie Falls. But he had one of the thousand identified weird genes, so he had to be relocated here.’
Kipp thought about his family and how weird they used to be. He missed their weirdness.
The creepy scientist continued. ‘You see, normal people just don’t like weirdness around them. The average person can’t handle sitting next to a real live witch on a bus, and parents don’t want their kids going to a school where some of the students are vampires. Weirdness freaks people out! So, many years ago the government began identifying all the children born with weird genes, and monitoring them, and when those people started displaying weirdnesses the government decided to gather them all together in one place, and that’s how Huggabie Falls began.’
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany were silent for a few moments, the way people often are when they’ve just been flooded with unsettling information.
‘That’s terrible,’ Kipp said at last.
‘Is it?’ The creepy scientist chuckled. ‘No one is forced to come to Huggabie Falls, everyone comes of their own free will.’ She turned to Cymphany. ‘Like you said, Ms Chan, your father had a job offer too good to refuse.’
One by one Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany realised that what the creepy scientist had told them was true. Their families had all come to Huggabie Falls voluntarily, and, furthermore, they were free to leave anytime they liked. But despite the fact they had all had been tricked into moving here, they now loved Huggabie Falls and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
‘But the one thing I don’t understand,’ said Tobias, ‘is why all of a sudden everyone in town is turning normal. How is this possible if we are all supposed to have these weird genes?’
‘I’m glad you asked that, Mr Treachery,’ said the creepy scientist. ‘After many years of study, and lots of experimentation, my colleagues and I have managed to develop’—the creepy scientist leaned in close as if she was about to tell the children an exciting secret—‘a cure for weird genes.’
‘A cure?’ Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany said in unison. Then Kipp added, ‘you can’t cure genes.’
The creepy scientist waggled her finger. ‘Correction. You never used to be able to cure genes. But we’ve developed a weirdness cure, which attacks and eradicates weird genes. For the last few months our employee Felonious Dark has been feeding the weirdness cure into the Huggabie Falls water supply. In another twenty-four hours everyone in Huggabie Falls will have consumed a full dose and the weirdness cure will be irreversible.’
‘Irreversible!’ Kipp gulped. ‘You mean, my parents will never be weird again?’
‘Wait, wait,’ Cymphany shouted, waving her hands. ‘But my parents are becoming more weird, not less weird.’
Felonious Dark snorted. ‘Whoops.’
The creepy scientist winced. ‘Yes, a slight miscalculation there. I don’t think we should ever have classified your father’s ‘slight lean’ gene as one of the thousand weird genes. Unfortunately the weirdness cure has had the opposite effect on your father’s genes.’
Cymphany gasped. ‘You mean in twenty-four hours everyone in this town will be normal, and my family will be the jam family—forever?’
The creepy scientist put her hands up. ‘Like Felonious said, whoops.’
Right then, Cymphany was about to explode, but it was at this point that both she and Kipp noticed that Tobias was deep in thought.
‘Tobias?’ Kipp nudged his friend. ‘Are you okay? Aren’t you as outraged about this weirdness cure as we are?’
‘I guess.’ Tobias shrugged. ‘But with all the sunlight in our house my vitamin D deficiency is better, and our neighbours love us now, and we can get a decent night’s sleep without debt collectors banging on the door all night.’
Cymphany’s face dropped. ‘Oh, Tobias, I’m so sorry. Here we were only thinking about ourselves. I never stopped to think that you might actually want this to happen.’
The creepy scientist was nodding. ‘You see, getting rid of weirdness in the world is good for everyone. Kipp, you’ll be happy your parents are normal, once you get used to it.’
‘I guess,’ Kipp said, but he also frowned, as if to say, I don’t think I will at all.
‘And Cymphany,’ the creepy scientist continued. ‘Who cares if your family is going to keep eating lots of jam? Jam is yummy. Surely it’s better than being in the most disliked family in Huggabie Falls. Do you really want your friend to go back to that?’
Cymphany sighed. ‘No.’
‘So why don’t you children run along then, and just enjoy being normal, except for Cymphany, of course. Again, really sorry about that, Ms Chan.’
Felonious Dark nodded. ‘Come on, let me escort you back to town.’
So Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany climbed back into Felonious Dark’s boat and began the long journey back across Misty Lake. And they all agreed that perhaps this cure for weirdness really was the best thing.
But it didn’t feel like the best thing. The only person without a glum look on his face was Felonious Dark. He whistled merrily and sang a few more rounds of the normal song.
They sailed passed the tip of the stranded mast of their old sunken boat, and before long they were back on the Misty Lake jetty.
‘You kids have a nice normal day, now.’ Felonious Dark put extra emphasis on the word normal. Then he laughed and sailed away, disappearing back into the mist.
‘So,’ Cymphany said once they were alone. ‘After all that work to find out what was causing the extremely weird thing, now that we’ve found out, we don’t even want to stop it.’
‘And we were almost killed numerous times,’ Kipp added.
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Tobias. ‘I feel terrible.’
‘Don’t feel terrible,’ Kipp said. ‘It’s great that your family is no longer treacherous, and I’m sure I will get used to my new normal family.’
‘And jam is yummy,’ said Cymphany, in a very non-committal tone.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Tobias said. ‘I guess we’ll all see each other at school tomorrow.’
‘Righto,’ said Cymphany.
‘Sure thing,’ said Kipp.
And the children walked off in separate directions to their homes.
The end.
Okay, sorry about that. A bit of a storyteller’s joke there, I’m afraid. That’s not really the end. Some of you readers might have thought it was and that Cymphany was doomed to be known as the jam girl forever, and that Kipp would never again have his weird family back, and that they would both make this sacrifice for their friend Tobias, so he wouldn’t have to live in a treacherous boarded-up house anymore.
But if you thought that, then you couldn’t be more wrong. Actually, you could be more wrong. For instance, if you thought this book was a small European mountain range, well, that would be more wrong.
But there is more to this story. You still have to learn why Kipp’s family is the weirdest in all of Huggabie Falls. I’ve been keeping that a secret. And we can’t possibly let the creepy scientist win so easily. So we’d better get on with the story and find out what really happens. After you’ve grabbed yourself another peanut-butter-and-salt-and-vinegar-potato-chip sandwich, that is. I wish you could grab one for me, too. But I can’t stop for a sandwich because you need to know what happens next.
Okay, if you’ve got yourself another sandwich now, then I’m jealous, but let’s move onto chapter ten and another account of another one of Huggabie Falls’ weirdest occupants—Ferris Farmelade.
All his life Ferris Farmelade had eaten nothing but French fries. They were the first thing he ate as a baby, and ever since he had never wanted anything else.
Ferris’s parents weren’t too happy with this arrangement. But if they tried to feed Ferris something else, he would clamp his little baby mouth shut so hard you couldn’t prise it open with a crowbar.
Ferris’s parents eventually gave in and started feeding Ferris nothing but French fries, with a variety of dipping sauces, despite doctors’ warnings that Ferris would be unlikely to survive past his first birthday.
Defying medical predictions, Ferris did live past his first birthday. True, by the time he was five Ferris had already had two triple heart bypasses, but he was still alive.
By the age of eighteen Ferris had astounded doctors everywhere by still being alive. At a worldwide health summit, Ferris’s case was discussed and experts theorised that Ferris had eaten so many thousands of tonnes of French fries that his body had actually learnt, inexplicably, how to get all the nutrients it needed from only one food source.
When a twenty-four-hour MegaBurgerWorld that served mega-tubs of French fries opened in Huggabie Falls and offered Ferris a job as chief French fries sampler, Ferris moved to town. And he had lived ever since in a house next door to MegaBurgerWorld, which was, coincidentally, also next door to the Treachery family home.
So, for the past fifteen years Ferris Farmelade had lived next door to the Treacherys and had eaten nothing but MegaBurgerWorld French fries. And not only were the huge amounts of deep fried potatoes he consumed not killing him, but he actually seemed to be in perfect health.
Okay, so now I’ve finished telling you the tale of Ferris Farmelade, another one of Huggabie Falls’ weirdest occupants, we can get back on with our story. You might be wondering why I even told you Ferris’s story. Well, it’s because, on the day that Tobias, Kipp and Cymphany met the creepy scientist who told them about the weird gene cure, Ferris Farmelade was coming home from his shift at MegaBurgerWorld. As ususal, Ferris had a mega-tub of French fries under his arm and a bucket of sweet chilli sauce to wash them down with.
Halfway down his driveway Ferris stopped suddenly. He stared at a small something sitting in the middle of his driveway.
It was a peach.
Now this was not unusual, in and of itself, as there was a peach tree on the corner of the opposite property, and peaches quite often rolled across the road and onto Ferris’s driveway. But what was unusual was that Ferris had a feeling he’d never felt before.
Ferris felt like eating the peach.
He felt like picking it up, taking a bite, and seeing what it tasted like. It was the first time Ferris had ever wanted to put anything in his mouth that wasn’t a French fry.
But now, for reasons he didn’t understand, but you probably do, he couldn’t get one thought out of his head. The thought was, I wonder if that peach is even better than French fries? So Ferris put down his mega-tub, picked up the peach, rolled it over in his hands for a few seconds, and took a bite into its juicy flesh.
Tobias Treachery arrived home half an hour later, having just said goodbye to Kipp and Cymphany on the corner of Digmont Drive.
Tobias couldn’t help but notice there were two ambulances parked in Ferris’s driveway and a crowd of people on Ferris’s front lawn.
‘What’s going on?’ Tobias asked Mateo Mazzine, who lived down the road. Mateo was an Italian painter, which in his case meant he regularly threw paint on unsuspecting Italians.
‘That silly fool Farmelade ate a piece of fruit,’ said Mateo. ‘He’s eaten nothing but French fries for the last forty years and today, for no apparent reason, he decided to try a piece of fruit.’
‘Really?’ said Tobias. ‘Shouldn’t that be a good thing?’
‘You would think so,’ said Mateo. ‘But the paramedics reckon that after forty years Ferris’s body has evolved into a fat-fuelled machine. Whereas most people shouldn’t eat too much fat, Ferris’s body now can’t survive without it. And the sudden impact of eating fruit caused his whole body to go into shock.’
‘Is he going to be okay?’ Tobias asked.
‘Hard to say. They’re rushing him to hospital now.’ Mateo shook his head. ‘I just don’t understand what possessed Ferris to try a piece of fruit after all these years?’
But Tobias knew exactly what had possessed Ferris or, to be more accurate, what had cured him of his weirdness. It was the weirdness cure that everyone in Huggabie Falls was consuming every time they drank from the town’s water taps.
‘What about you, Mateo?’ Tobias asked. ‘How’s your painting going?’
Mateo shrugged. ‘To tell you the truth, this morning for the first time ever I decided I would paint on canvas. I painted a picture of a horse. And I really enjoyed it. I think I might paint on canvas all the time from now on. Actually’—Mateo scratched his head—‘I don’t know why I ever started throwing paint on Italian people in the first place. It really is a bit silly, and the Italians I throw paint on do tend to get quite annoyed.’
Mateo shook his head and chuckled. ‘Isn’t that incredible? The day Ferris decides to eat a piece of fruit is the same day I decide I don’t want to paint Italians anymore? What are the odds of that?’
‘Yes, what an incredible coincidence,’ Tobias said, deadpan.
Tobias left Mateo and began walking up his own driveway. The Treachery home used to be the darkest and dingiest house on the street, all boarded up, with rotten fruit all over the lawn, and, as if even the sky disliked the Treachery family, there always seemed to be gloomy clouds hovering above.
But now the sun shone down on the Treachery house, which was actually a quaint cottage, and the birds chirped in the blue sky above. All the rotten fruit was gone and there were fresh daisies in the garden beds. The white picket fence along the front had been repaired and the letterbox, which used to be crammed full of final-payment notices, had an apple pie sitting on it with a note that said it was from Beryl Bott from number eleven ‘for the Treachery family to enjoy’.
Tobias smiled. The weirdness cure seemed like a very good thing for him, and it was about time something good happened to Tobias.
He knew Kipp didn’t like his new normal family, but he’d probably get used to it, and he might even grow to like it. And Cymphany? Well hadn’t she always wanted a weird family? Now she finally had one, so who was she to start complaining? And jam was yummy. And Ferris Farmelade? It was unfortunate that he was on his way to hospital, but maybe his body would get used to eating fruit now, which had to be a good thing. And Mateo? Well, at least the Italian people in Huggabie Falls no longer had to live in fear of getting drenched in paint.
All in all, To
bias thought, this town might be better off without weirdness.
He couldn’t wait to get inside and see what his new, normal family was up to. Perhaps his father would be throwing another mayoral-campaign party, and inviting the whole street. Or, even better, maybe the Treacherys would just have a nice family dinner together.
But, as it turned out, none of these things were happening inside the Treachery house, because no one was home. The house was silent, and there were three notes on the dining-room table.
Tobias read the first note. It was written on pink perfumed paper, which was the paper Tobias’s sister always used. It read:
After reading the note, Tobias sighed. It would be strange not having Tish around as much anymore. She was a best friend to Tobias as much as she was his sister.
But it was nice for her that she was so popular now. Tobias read the second note. It was written on ‘Mayoral Candidate Theodore Treachery’ letterhead paper. It read:
Tobias frowned. If his dad became mayor of Huggabie Falls then he would probably be even more busy and spend even less time at home.
Tobias felt unsettled. With a shaky hand, he picked up the third note. It had been scribbled so quickly it took him a while to decipher it. It read: After reading the final note Tobias had to sit down. The whole family seemed very happy about their new popularity, but Tobias wondered what the point of being popular was if it meant you never got to see your family? Before the weirdness cure, the Treachery family had spent every night together. Tobias, his parents and his sister would play board games until the late hours, and talk for hours and hours about all sorts of things. Even though they were disliked by everyone else in town, the members of the Treachery family adored each other.