Problem Child

by James Roy

  JAMES ROY spent much of his childhood in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, where he played in creeks, rivers and jungles by day, and read books by night. Then one day, tired of reading books written by dead people, he started writing his own.

  James’ many books include the CBCA Honour Books Captain Mack and Billy Mack’s War, the CBCA Notable books A Boat for Bridget and The Legend of Big Red, the first in his Steampunk alt-fiction series, Ichabod Hart & the Lighthouse Mystery, and a non-fiction title, The ‘S’ Word – a boys’ guide to sex, puberty and growing up.

  James lives with his wife and two daughters in a creaky house in the Blue Mountains. He enjoys playing his guitar, bushwalking and lying in his hammock, his favourite colour is green, and he says he’d spend his last ten dollars on a good DVD and a big bag of Maltesers.

  OTHER BOOKS BY

  JAMES ROY

  Young Adult Fiction

  Almost Wednesday

  Full Moon Racing

  Town

  Younger Readers

  Captain Mack

  Billy Mack’s War

  A Boat for Bridget

  The Legend of Big Red

  Steampunk Series

  Ichabod Hart and the Lighthouse Mystery

  NonFiction

  The ‘S’ Word – a boys’ guide to sex,

  puberty and growing up

  Contents

  Cover

  Author Bio

  Other Books by James Roy

  Title Page

  Dedication Page

  Chapter 1 – Skin Tags

  Chapter 2 – A Worthy Adversary

  Chapter 3 – Miracles of Maths

  Chapter 4 – A Rhetorical Question, And Nerdstorm Doesn’t Throw Up

  Chapter 5 – A Non-Rhetorical Question

  Chapter 6 – Crime and Punishment

  Chapter 7 – Dad Ups The Ante

  Chapter 8 – Doing Time

  Chapter 9 – Nerdstorm Stays Away

  Chapter 10 – The Kid

  Chapter 11 – The Kid Returns

  Chapter 12 – A Little Chat with Nerdstorm

  Chapter 13 – The Big, Stupid Idea

  Chapter 14 – The Bigger, Stupider Idea

  Chapter 15 – Nerdstorm Talks About Attitude

  Chapter 16 – The Recruit

  Chapter 17 – Mr Sigswoth Screws Up

  Chapter 18 – Cameron Learns (Some of) The Truth

  Chapter 19 – The Development of Casey

  Chapter 20 – April Fools Day

  Chapter 21 – Dad Runs Out of Ideas

  Chapter 22 – Nerdstorm Calls

  Chapter 23 – Loyal Casey

  Chapter 24 – Nerdstorm Has A Theory

  Chapter 25 – Jared Gets Sick and Tired

  Chapter 26 – The Treb

  Chapter 27 – Jared Kind of Finds Out

  Chapter 28 – The Poem

  Chapter 29 – Stupid Casey

  Chapter 30 – Nerdstorm Knows It

  Chapter 31 – I Do Some Research

  Chapter 32 – Nerdstorm refuses to Help Himself

  Chapter 33 – We Put the Smack-Down On

  Chapter 34 – Nerdstorm is Stuffed

  Chapter 35 – Casey Gets Lost

  Chapter 36 – We Have Our Stupid Book Assembly

  Imprint Page

  1SKIN TAGS

  That Monday I went to school, I had a pie for lunch and it was nice.

  Really, I should say that my pie would have been nice if that complete idiot Josh Hargreaves hadn’t knocked it out of my hands and onto the ground. He claimed he was just trying to defend himself, but who defends himself with a pie? I mean, honestly! No one, that’s who. And even worse, who defends himself with someone else’s pie? That idiot Josh Hargreaves, that’s who. Which just proves what an idiot he actually is.

  So yes, my pie would have been nice, if I’d been able to eat more than two bites before stupid Hargreaves went and lashed out wildly after I flicked his ear, and knocked my half-eaten pie all over the ground. So I figured I was totally justified in throwing his baked-bean sandwich onto the ground next to my tragically splattered pie and grinding it into the concrete with my shoe.

  Mrs Hinston didn’t see it that way, but she’s practically blind anyway, so what would she know? Not much, since I told her halfway through detention that my irritable bowel syndrome was playing up and that I had to rush to the loo to avoid a very messy accident. She said I could go so long as I came straight back. I went, but I didn’t go back.

  On the way to meet Jared down near the netball courts as planned, I ran into Triffin Nordstrom. Or Nerdstrom to his friends. If he had any. Which he doesn’t, probably partly because of his faintly ridiculous first name and partly because he’s got no interesting aspects to his personality at all. Nerdstrom was sitting on one of the benches near the cricket nets, reading some absurdly fat book, and as I went past I caught him glancing up at me. I wondered if he was about to say something, but he didn’t, probably because he couldn’t think of the right words to use. Elvish, for example.

  I didn’t care, though. Nerdstrom means nothing to me. He’s like a boil on the bum of our school. Actually, that’s not quite right, because a boil is irritating and weepy, like Luke Keynes in 5F Nerdstrom’s more like a little skin tag, like the ones my grandma has just below her ear. Not painful, not really in the way, just there. Only noticeable at all if you know it’s there and you bother to look.

  Yeah, that’s what Nerdstrom is. A skin tag.

  2 A WORTHY ADVERSARY

  That Tuesday I went to school, I had a pie for lunch, and it would have been nice if I hadn’t thrown it against the library window trying to scare some of the Year One kids who were inside pulling stupid Year One faces at me and Jared. Kids these days have no respect. I’ve heard Dad say that, and I reckon he’s right. When I was in Year One I never would have made faces at someone who’ll be in high school next year, or anyone older than me at all, for that matter.

  And I decided something else that Tuesday. I decided that Mrs Hinston holds a grudge. She did notice when I didn’t come back from ‘going to the loo’ the day before, so she added all of Monday’s ‘incomplete’ detention onto the detention for the Meat Pie Meets Window incident, and decided that that added up to three days of lunchtime detention, starting the following week. I’m glad I wasn’t in her class in Year Four, if that’s an example of her maths. Those poor kids wouldn’t have a clue about sums or times tables or anything if she thinks one plus one is three.

  She also said that a note was going to get sent home to Mum and Dad the next time I did something ‘antisocial’. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have worried about that kind of threat, since teachers don’t usually remember those things. But Mrs Hinston had shown herself to be a Worthy Adversary, so I figured I was going to have to be careful.

  3 MIRACLES OF MATHS

  That Wednesday I went to school and had a pie for lunch, and it would have been nice if I hadn’t found a hair in it. I took it back to the canteen and told the lady, and even showed her the hair, and I said that I wanted my money back, or at the very least a new pie.

  She looked at the hair and shook her head. She reckoned it was one of my hairs, and said that if she gave me my money back all I’d do would be spend it on lollies and junk.

  So I said, ‘Fine, just give me another pie.’

  But she said that after I’d eaten two-thirds of the pie I could tell that I would still be hungry when I’d finished, so I’d stuck a hair in it and taken it back so I could get a whole new pie, which would add up to one and two-thirds of a pie for the price of one.

  I said that her maths was good, much better than Mrs Hinston’s, but that she was still wrong. Then I said, ‘Anyway, if that’s true, how come I only eat one pie every other day b
ut I want one and two-thirds today?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how many pies you have every day, Lovey, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if you did eat two pies for lunch every day’ she said.

  That was when I said, ‘We’re lucky to get any pies at all when you’re in the tuckshop.’

  And that’s when she went a bit mad and called one of the teachers over and told him that I’d called her fat. Which I hadn’t, even though I could have, because she was.

  And Mrs Hinston went on to demonstrate yet another miracle of maths by somehow making one plus one plus one equal five.

  I decided then that the next day I’d have a sausage roll.

  4 A RHETORICAL QUESTION, AND NERDSTROM DOESN’T THROW UP

  That Thursday I went to school and had a sausage roll for lunch and it was nice. It would have been nicer if I’d been able to eat it without interruption from several teachers, who were all wondering what I’d been up to, just because I was sitting quietly eating my lunch. One of them, Mr French, was walking past on his way back from the tuckshop, and he said, ‘You’re trouble, Quigley’ as he went past, and he was all sneery and mean. But I didn’t say anything back to him, even when he added, ‘You’ve been up to something, haven’t you?’

  I said (quite respectfully, I thought), ‘No sir, I haven’t.’

  But he just kind of sneered and said, ‘That was a rhetorical question, Quigley. Do you know what that is? It’s a question that doesn’t require an answer.’

  So I didn’t say anything else, because his forehead-veins were starting to bulge, and I already had five days of detention planned for the next week, and I didn’t want to add to them. The way Mrs Hinston’s maths had been going, one more detention was going to turn five lunchtimes into every single lunchtime until the end of the term, plus even a bit of after-school detention maybe.

  Besides, we were going on an excursion to a cake factory on Friday, and Mr Sigsworth had grabbed me before lunch and told me that if he heard one more peep out of me I’d be staying behind and helping Ms Lalor cover textbooks in the library. Which I’ve done before. That’s how I knew it was a fairly useful threat. And it was also why I’d been trying very, very, very hard to be good. Especially good, as Mum would say. Which is weird, because I don’t think you can be a bit good or very good. I’ve always thought you’re either good or you’re not, and if you go past being good and try too hard to be even better, you just end up being a suck-up. Which might look like being good to most adults, but to anyone with any intelligence it looks like what it is. Sucking up. Which isn’t good at all.

  So I’d been trying hard to be good. Just plain good. See, if I’d been trying too hard, I would have jumped up from my seat, run after Mr French and said, ‘Please, Mr French, sir, can I help you by cleaning up the playground today? It’s really messy, and inconsiderate kids have been chucking their papers all over the ground, and it needs cleaning up.’ But then he would have frowned sideways at me and told me that now he definitely knew I was up to something. So I decided that the best thing to do was to just sit quietly, say nothing, and let the teachers believe that I’d been doing something bad, when I actually hadn’t.

  Something else happened that Thursday apart from the sausage roll for lunch and my pretty impressive effort at being good. I was waiting in one of the lunch queues, and Nerdstrom was waiting in the one next to me, and I saw him peek my way. So I said, ‘What are you staring at, Nerdstrom?’

  And he looked away, and I heard him say, ‘Nothing.’ Then he must have decided to get all brave or something, because he said, really quietly, ‘I’m not frightened of you.’

  What was that?’ I asked him.

  And even though he looked like he was about to fall over from being too pale, he said it again. He said, ‘I just want you to know that I’m not frightened of you.’ Which was plainly wrong, because, as I mentioned, he’d gone all pale in the head, and looked like he might even throw up, which would have been heaps funny. Smelly and messy, but still funny.

  But he didn’t throw up, and I said to him, ‘Why would you even tell me that you’re not scared of me?’

  That was when he said, ‘Because I’m not.’

  So I went ‘Boo!’ and sort of stamped my foot a bit towards him, and he flinched like I’d slapped him across the face or something.

  He is such a lamo weirdo.

  5 A NON-RHETORICAL QUESTION

  That Friday we went to a cake factory I ate too many cheesecakes, and then I threw up on the bus. And I bet that Nerdstrom would have laughed at me along with everyone else if he hadn’t still been at the factory trying to get back into the seconds shop through the emergency exit.

  Places like cheesecake and chocolate factories that have schoolkids coming through all the time should have plans in place to make sure that the kids don’t eat too many of the free samples, and that they don’t double back to the end of the queue for another free sample. Several times. And if each person is allowed only one piece of each sample, they should put out only as many pieces as there are people. It makes sense. Otherwise it’s just encouraging kids to take more than one piece then double back, like I said.

  So I was already feeling a bit crook when we got to the seconds shop, which is this shop where they sell pies and cakes and puddings and things that are the same as the ones you buy at the supermarket, except that the label’s been put on the pack crooked, or the pie’s a bit smaller than it’s supposed to be, or the packet says ‘Apricot Danish’ when it’s actually a blueberry Danish. And everything’s heaps cheaper. It’s the kind of place where poor people buy posh food.

  So anyway, Mum was planning for some of her friends to come over for this party where she shows them all these face creams and stuff, and they put on perfume and tell each other how fabulous they smell, so she gave me ten dollars and asked me to get as many cheesecakes as I could, which ended up being five. But once we got on the bus I had to check that I’d bought what I thought I was buying, so I opened one of the packets. And it was what I’d thought it was, which was good, but I couldn’t really give it to my mum opened, so me and Jared ate it, even though after all the free samples I’d eaten I wasn’t really hungry at all, and was actually feeling a bit sick.

  Then we thought we’d better check another one of the packets, and we ate that one as well, just to make sure that it was only in the seconds shop because it was slightly out of shape, and not because they’d put salt in it instead of sugar, which can happen, since salt and sugar look almost exactly the same. But they’d done that one right, because it was really, really sweet, and not at all salty.

  Then we opened another one, and I was feeling heaps sick by then, so rather than actually eating it I just flicked bits of it at some of the girls. They were going to dob, until Jared and I threatened to get them when we got back to school. So they just cried instead. Girls are so stupid, the way they cry so easily.

  By the time we were down to our last cheesecake we were feeling very sick, but I couldn’t go home and tell Mum that we could only get one cake for ten dollars, so we decided to get rid of it. By eating it. That was when I threw up. It was a heaps big spew, that’s for sure, right in the aisle of the bus. You could even see bits of blueberry in some of it, and everyone was squealing and going on about how gross it was, and all the girls that we’d made cry were laughing now, which made me pretty angry. I mean, haven’t they ever felt that sick? If they had, they’d know how awful it is to feel that uncomfortable hotness and coldness, and your throat’s all tight, and your stomach sort of bounces up and down a bit, and how it tastes all different coming up, and bits go up the back of your nose, which stings quite a lot. Jared told the other kids to shut up and stop laughing, and so did Mrs Hale, but it didn’t stop them. In fact, one of the girls still had a bit of cheesecake on her cheek from when we’d flicked it at her, and Mrs Hale thought that I’d thrown up so violently that I’d got her from several seats away. That was funny, especially when she started gagging as well. Mrs
Hale, that is.

  But the funniest thing of all was when we got back to the school. Nerdstrom’s mum was there, and we watched her waiting patiently as the kids filed off the bus. Then she came up to Mr Sigsworth and asked where Triffin was, and he said that he’d been told that she was picking him up early at the factory to take him to his violin lesson. The story was complete bull. That was just what we’d told the teachers when we got on the bus at the end of the tour and they’d done a head count and asked why there was one fewer than there should have been. When Mr Sigsworth had found out that Nerdstrom’s mum had picked Triffin up without telling either of the teachers, he’d been heaps cross that he’d not been told earlier, but he’d told the bus driver to go anyway. Which was the funniest thing about the whole day, because me and Jared had pushed Nerdstrom out one of the exits in the seconds shop, and there was a sign on the door that said THIS DOOR LOCKS FROM THE INSIDE. EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.

  But when Mrs Hale made a call on her phone, and Nerdstrom’s mum went and got into her crappy old orange Volvo and sped off, and Mr Sigsworth started turning in circles going, ‘Where are Max Quigley and Jared Fernmarsh? Where the blazes are Quigley and Fernmarsh?’ (which definitely wasn’t a rhetorical question, judging by the confused look on his face), we knew that the joke was over. And we knew that even Mrs Hinston’s creative maths wasn’t going to explain how long we were about to be put in detention for.

  6 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  I’d really done it this time. Man, were Mum and Dad peed off about the whole Nerdstrom thing! Not that it was all our fault. Nerdstrom had been pretty annoying all day, especially when he told Mr Sigsworth that me and Jared were going back for extra free samples. We saw him do it, and it really irritates me when kids dob. The way I see it, if a teacher isn’t good enough at their job to see what’s going on around them, they should either find another job where they can see everything they need to see without even trying that hard (like standing in one of those freeway toll booths, for example) or just accept that stuff is going to happen. Stuff like kids getting pushed out of emergency exits and left there to find their way around the back of the factory, through a warehouse and between about a gazillion trucks and forklifts.