by James Roy
‘We dared him. As in you and Nerdstrom?’ said Jared.
‘Well, no, just me really. But you know how she wears those clumpy shoes?”
‘Yeah, I know the ones. That’s heaps funny’ Jared said, but he didn’t sound like he thought it was very funny at all. ‘Did you give him a Redskin for doing that?’
I frowned, and I said, ‘No, it was just a dare. Why would I give him a Redskin for doing a dare?’
‘I guess you wouldn’t,’ said Jared. ‘You know what, I have to go. I think I need to go back to bed.’
And he hung up before I could even tell him how Mrs Ween had almost fallen over.
Then I started wondering whether Cameron had any sweets hidden away in his room.
26 THE TREB
That Saturday it was my turn to go to Nerdstrom’s house. Of course I tried to convince Mum and Dad that these sessions weren’t going to fix anything, and that there wasn’t anything to fix anyway, and that I should be able to stay home. But they’re pretty stubborn, my parents, and at about a quarter past nine, right in the middle of one of my favourite cartoons, Mum said, ‘OK, Max, it’s time to go.’
I sighed and turned off the TV (which didn’t make Cameron very happy) and went out to the car with Mum. ‘Ulrika is going to bring you home afterwards,’ she told me. ‘
‘When?’ I asked, and Mum just smiled.
‘Afterwards,’ she repeated. ‘Later.’
While we were driving, Mum asked me how it was going with Triffin.
‘Fine, I guess,’ I said. ‘He’s pretty weird though, Mum. He doesn’t say much.’
‘Maybe he thinks you’re weird too,’ she said, and I should have known that’s what she’d say. Mum looks at things that way. She’s right into this ‘Treat people how you’d like to be treated’ thing, which is fine, I suppose, but it’s not that simple. I mean, Cameron told me about these nut-jobs who like to get spikes stuck through their eyebrows and stuff. That’s how they like to be treated, but I wouldn’t want them to start treating me like that. So that rule stops working straightaway, doesn’t it? So it’s really not that simple.
I just nodded and said, ‘I guess he’s OK. But I still don’t see why I can’t pick my own friends.’
She ignored this, which is a really annoying habit she has, where if she can’t think of an answer she acts like she hasn’t heard the question. Instead she went, ‘Mr Sigsworth says your maths is improving. Triffin must be really helping you.’
I wanted to tell her that it had nothing to do with Nerdstrom, and that I was only working harder so I could stop going to the library twice a week to do maths, but I decided not to say anything. The more my parents and Mr Sigsworth believed that my maths was getting better, the more likely it was that all the tutoring rubbish would stop. And that was what I wanted more than anything.
So I just said, ‘Yeah, it’s fine, I guess. Even though I didn’t think my maths was all that bad to begin with.’
Then Mum gave me this sideways look and chuckled.
As we pulled up in front of the Nordstroms’ house in the bush, Mum opened her door, took a deep breath and said, ‘Oh, I wish I lived in a place like this.’
And I said, ‘Why? It’s in the bush.’
‘I know, Max, but that’s why I love it. It’s so peaceful.’
I opened my door. All I could hear was the sound of birds, screaming like their feathers were being yanked out by the handful. ‘It’s not that peaceful,’ I said. ‘Hear that? Listen. Listen.’
‘Oh, Max,” she said. ‘Come on, quit stalling. This is good for you.’
Yeah, I thought, in the same way that having a leg cut off is good for you, but only if you have gangrene. But I didn’t say it.
Mum rang the cowbell beside the door and Nerdstrom opened it almost immediately.
‘Hello, Triffin,’ said Mum.
He said, ‘Hi’, and then called out, ‘Ulrika, they’re here.’
I heard his mum call from somewhere near the back of the house, ‘Very good, Triffin. So invite them in, dear. Don’t leave them out on the step.’
‘Would you like to come in?’ Nerdstrom said, taking a step backwards into the house and holding the door open for us.
Their house still smelled weird to me. Not horribly weird, just kind of perfumy. Mum and I sat down side by side on the couch, with its bright cushions and rugs, and I guess we looked a bit nervous, maybe. We didn’t have to feel that way for very long, because Nerdstrom’s mum came in a minute later. She was wearing a long flowing skirt, and like always she had bare feet, which were a bit dirty, like she’d been walking around in the garden without any shoes on.
We stood up as she came in, and she walked straight over and gave Mum a big hug, and then she turned to me and looked like she was going to give me one as well. But I just stuck my hand out, which I think might have been a bit of a relief for Nerdstrom, who was standing nearby looking a bit terrified.
‘Hello, Max,’ Nerdstrom’s mum said.
And I went, ‘Hello, Mrs Nordstrom.’
She laughed and said, in a voice that got suddenly quite serious, ‘Listen to me, Max. You’re not to call me that any more, do you understand? You’re not. You’re to call me Ulrika? Yes?’
I felt myself smile, even though I didn’t mean to. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Ulrika.’
She grinned this huge grin, and I saw how white her teeth were, and she clapped her hands. ‘Excellent! Sit back down and I’ll make some tea. Triffin, remember what we talked about?’
And Nerdstrom said, in a tired, weak kind of voice, ‘Would you like to see my room?’
‘Yeah, OK, I guess,’ I said.
And from the look on my mum’s face, you’d think I’d just said something quite thrilling.
So I followed Nerdstrom to his room, which was possibly the strangest room I’d ever seen. There was a really high wall on one side, made out of this stuff that looked a bit like dried mud, and there was a platform built against it, with a ladder going up to it, and I guessed that must have been where Nerdstrom’s bed was. And that was pretty cool, actually.
The wall opposite the dried mud one was all glass, with bush outside, and a big glass sliding door that led out to a kind of porch thing that had no railings. Under the platform where the bed was, there was a desk, with books and stuff all over it, and a bookcase as tall as me, full of those thick fantasy books that Nerdstrom likes. In one corner, on a huge mat, was more Lego than I’ve ever seen. Most of it was in a big pile, but some had been sorted into smaller piles, and there were a few models half-built. There was a Roman ship with all the slaves and oars, and a bridge, and a huge thing that might have been a crane or something.
I used to play with Lego, but I hadn’t for ages. I thought that I should say something mean about Nerdstrom playing with Lego, but I thought that if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to play with it when I got bored later and decided that’s what I wanted to do, so I just went, ‘Lego. You’ve got heaps, huh?’
Nerdstrom looked a bit embarrassed, and he said, ‘I like to relax with it sometimes, which is a bit childish, I guess. But I like it … You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ But the look on his face kind of told me that he knew I could never keep a promise like that. So he shrugged and said, ‘Whatever. It’s just Lego.’
‘Lego’s cool,’ I said.
‘Really? You think so?’
‘Sure,’ I said. I started looking for Nerdstrom’s TV, because as well as having to mow lawns and wash cars, dishes and the dog for the next five hundred years, I’d had my TV privileges taken away again after the Natureway party, and I was really missing it. ‘Where’s your TV?’ I asked.
‘I don’t have one,’ Nerdstrom said. ‘We don’t have one.’
I couldn’t believe this. I went, ‘Not even one? In the whole house? They’re heaps cheap to buy now. Your mum could get a little one for a hundred bucks, maybe even less.’
Nerdstrom laughed. ‘No, we don’t have a TV because we don’t want a T
V’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Except sometimes I wish we did. But Ulrika says … Never mind. We don’t have one … So, do you want to do some maths?
‘No! No way, I’m not … Oh, you’re not serious.’
Nerdstrom was actually laughing at me. I could hardly believe it. Him, laughing at me!
‘Not funny’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ he said, but I don’t think he was.
I turned around and looked at his room some more. As well as the Lego stuff, he had a few models and things on his bookcase, and some posters of stars and planets and other predictable stuff. He also had a telescope over by one of the windows.
I said, ‘I used to have one of those, but Cameron broke it.’
And Nerdstrom just went, ‘Why am I not surprised?’
Then I said, ‘You know what, Nerdstrom? I totally expected that you’d have Star Wars stuff all over the place.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not really into that sort of thing. And I don’t dress up like a Klingon either, before you say that.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ I said, and I really wasn’t. ‘You know what? This room is actually kind of cool. Except it totally needs a TV, but never mind. Apart from that I kind of like it, especially the upstairs bed thing. So what is that thing, anyway?’ I pointed at the crane thing made out of Lego. It was almost as tall as me, with a grey frame holding up a long black beam, which was held into the frame by a kind of axle deal. A container about the size of a box of tissues was hanging from the short end of the beam, also made from Lego. And the whole thing rested on four big black wheels.
Nerdstrom didn’t answer, so I asked him again. ‘What’s this thing?’ I poked it with my finger and the beam rocked a bit.
‘You’re going to think I’m such a dweeb,’ he said.
‘I already do,’ I replied.
‘It’s … it’s a treb.’
‘A what?’
‘A treb. A trebuchet.’
‘What, like a catapult thing?’
‘Yeah, a medieval instrument of war. A siege machine.’
‘Does it work?’
And he said, in a voice that sounded almost offended, Yeah, it works. It’ll throw a golf ball fifty metres or so.’
‘No way! Really?’
‘Sure.’ Then he said, in a kind of hopeful voice, ‘I can show you if you like.’
I suddenly had a thought. If I did something really nerdy like firing a golf ball with a trebuchet made out of Lego, would that make me a nerd like Triffin Nordstrom, or just someone researching nerd behaviour? I decided that it would only make me a nerd if I actually enjoyed it.
So totally determined not to enjoy it, I said, ‘Yeah, well, since you don’t have a Playstation or even a TY I guess we’ll have to do that instead.’
Nerdstrom went over to the sliding door and opened it. ‘We’ll take it out there,’ he said. ‘It’s safer outside.’
‘Really? Safer?’
Nerdstrom smiled. ‘Treb plus golf ball plus window equals glass divided by about a million.’
‘No maths today, remember?’ I said.
Once we got the treb out onto the porch, he said, ‘Hang on a minute, I’ve got to get the counterweight.’ And he jumped down off the porch and disappeared around the side of the house.
I heard the bedroom door open and Mum put her head in. She smiled when she saw me. ‘Where’s Triffin?’
And I thought about saying, ‘I don’t know. He’s totally ignoring me, so you might as well take me home.’ But I didn’t. I just said, ‘He’s gone to get something.’
Mum smiled some more and told me for about the twentieth time that Ulrika would take me home. Then she told me to have fun, as if she’d totally forgotten that this was meant to be some kind of cruel punishment.
‘Yeah, fine,’ I said, keen for her to leave the room before Nerdstrom came back. ‘See you.’
And she closed the door.
Nerdstrom returned a minute or two later with a small bucket of sand. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The counterweight.’
‘Sand?’
‘Yep. It’s nice and dense, which makes it heavy.’
‘What are the wheels for?’ I asked, while he poured the sand into the container and dug around in one of his drawers for a golf ball.
And then I wished I hadn’t asked, because Nerdstrom started talking about how if a catapult is on wheels it soaks up the vibration or something, and how the ones with wheels throw heaps further than the ones without, which seemed all back to front to me, because things that have wheels move and things that don’t don’t. When he started drawing a diagram for me I just went, ‘Whatever. Can we just like fire this thing?’ Even though he was a heaps good drawer.
So Nerdstrom finished loading the treb, and he showed me how to do it and everything, and then we had it all pulled back and ready to go. ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, of course.’ Then he handed me the string that was hooked up to the trigger bit, and he said, ‘Would you like to do the honours? You just have to give it a good yank.’
That was pretty good of him, I thought, so I said I would. Then I took the string in my hand and he counted down from three, and I pulled the string, hard.
Man, that thing was awesome! It reminded me of a video I saw once of a cobra striking a mouse or something, and it was all kind of tight and stretched, then whang! it struck. And the treb was like that. It flung its arm around and up and the golf ball flew around in its little sling, then it was suddenly disappearing into the bush. There was a loud clock off among the trees somewhere, and the treb was just sitting there, its arm pointing straight up and rocking slightly.
I looked at Nerdstrom. He seemed very pleased with himself, and I had to admit that I was pretty impressed. ‘Did you build this yourself?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah, of course. It’s my own design. Do you like it?’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Do you want to fire something else?’
‘If you like,’ I said. ‘Like what?’
‘Rocks. Other stuff.’ He smiled, which was something I hadn’t seen him do very much. ‘Ulrika’s vege rissoles, for example. They’d bring down a small castle on their own.’
Ulrika took me home in the orange Volvo after we’d had lunch. She’d made us salad sandwiches on this dark brown bread, which looked awful but tasted all right. And I didn’t have to drink evil green juice, because we just had water.
Nerdstrom didn’t come with us, because he had to stay at home and do some jobs for his mum. I thought that it would be a bit awkward being in the car with just this strange hippy woman, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. I mean, she talked a lot. A real lot. But she was nice, I decided.
When we were almost at our place, she said, ‘Max, I want to say thanks for agreeing to spend a bit of time with Triffin.’
And I said, ‘That’s OK’, even though it felt like a bit of lie, after all the times I’d tried to get out of it.
And she said, ‘Julianne tells me that your maths is coming along quite well.’
For a second I had to think about who Julianne was. ‘Yeah, it’s not bad, I guess,’ I said.
‘There was another reason that we thought this would be a good idea. You might have noticed that Triffin is very shy. Painfully shy.’
I’d noticed this, of course, so I just nodded.
‘You see, Max, you’re different. You’re a very confident young man, and I was hoping that you could help him find himself.’
If he goes and loses himself, there’s not a lot I can do, I thought. But what I actually said was, ‘What do you mean, exactly?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘It’s nothing specific, Max. Just … I just want him to be confident. A bit like you, I suppose.’
We were pulling up in front of my house by then, which I was pretty happy about, since this conversation was getting weirder by the second.
‘I’ll do what
I can,’ I said as I got out. ‘See you later, Ulrika.’
‘Goodbye, Max. See you next time.’
And when I thought about it, I decided that it hadn’t been such an awful day.
27 JARED KIND OF FINDS OUT
I hadn’t told Jared that I was spending every Sunday with Nerdstrom, but that Monday he kind of found out. I was actually being really careful, because I didn’t want to go blurting about the trebuchet or anything, even though I’d thought about it heaps and had even started drawing a few designs in my homework diary for one of my own. But I wasn’t going to say, ‘Hey, guess what, Jared! Nerdstrom’s got a trebuchet in his bedroom’, because the next question he’d ask would be how I could know such a thing, and then it would get a bit peculiar and probably quite ugly. So I wasn’t going to say anything.
But I didn’t have to, because when me and Jared were putting our bags on the hooks, Nerdstrom turned up as well.
And he went, ‘Max.’
And I went, ‘Nerdstrom.’
Just then a tennis ball came bouncing over from a game of handball that some kids were playing nearby, and Nerdstrom picked it up. He held it and looked at it for a bit, then he said to me, ‘How do you reckon our treb would go with one of these?’
He threw the ball back to the handballers, and I don’t think he even realised what he’d done until he glanced our way and saw that I had this blank look on my face and that Jared was wearing a puzzled frown.
Nerdstrom tried to fix his mistake, which was good. He said, ‘But I guess you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, would you? It’s just that me and my friend have got this thing … this really nerdy thing that we made.’
‘A treb?’ said Jared. ‘As in a trebuchet?’
Then I said, a bit surprised and maybe a bit too excited, ‘Yeah. Do you know about trebuchets?’
And Jared started looking back and forth between me and Nerdstrom, and I think if I’d listened really closely I might have heard the cogs in his brain clicking around. Then he asked, ‘What’s going on?’