Alex Sparrow and the Really Big Stink

by Jennifer Killick

  ‘I’m happy that you’re so interested, Alex. If you like, you can help me with the rest of these posters,’ Carrie-Anne said, loudly enough that everyone heard. ‘As we work we can go through the affirmations and really think about what they mean. But first I’d like to offer you some advice: if you lean, you won’t look keen. You should probably straighten up.’

  My mates started sniggering.

  ‘Hold on a bit, I’m not interested in putting up posters or learning affirmations.’

  ‘Then why were you asking so many questions?’

  ‘Yeah, Alex,’ Jason said, ‘why were you asking Carrie-Anne so many questions? You must really like affirmations or maybe you’re in love with Carrie-Anne.’

  So embarrassing. Think, Alex. ‘I was asking questions because I’m making a film for my YouTube channel called “Ten Things That Suck”. PALS affirmations are at number eight and annoying girls are number one.’ Yeah, it was a mean thing to say and I felt bad. It was also a lie. My ear farted.

  Carrie-Anne looked hurt. ‘Miss Smilie is on lunch duty today. I’m going to report your inappropriate behaviour, Alex Sparrow.’ She walked off.

  ‘Since when have you had your own YouTube channel?’ Jason was dying to make me look bad in front of everyone.

  ‘For ages, since that thing all that time ago, that was ages ago. At the time of that thing.’ Oh, poo.

  Jason sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. And then Miss Smilie came into the room. Perfect.

  Miss Smilie was always smiling, at least her mouth was always smiling, but not her eyes, which were too open and starey, like they were painted on. And her hair always stayed exactly the same, like a Lego person’s hair, even when it was raining, or windy. I reckon there could have been a hurricane and it wouldn’t move. She was like a weird, shiny, plastic person. And not in a good way.

  ‘Can anybody explain what has been going on here? I’ve been advised that people are disrespecting others and, if you can believe it, making fun of PALS! OMG, I thought, I must get the goss on this.’ She smared at us, which, if you didn’t know, is what happens when someone smiles and glares simultaneously.

  ‘I’m not sure, exactly, Miss,’ I said, ‘I was just offering to help Carrie-Anne put up posters and she somehow got the impression that I was being rude. I would never be rude about PALS, or Carrie-Anne because they’re both awesome.’ The fartiest fart exploded in my ear and a flipping terrible smell seeped into the classroom.

  Miss Smilie sniffed and took a step away from me. ‘I’ll accept that this was a simple misunderstanding between chums. In fact, I’ll go and tell Carrie-Anne you’d like to help her with the posters. She’ll be positively thrilled. And you can all run along outside now. The rain’s stopped and I’m sure we could all do with some fresh air.’

  She walked out of the room. Extremely quickly.

  Jason was grinning in a way that made me very uncomfortable. ‘I’m Alex Sparrow: I love Carrie-Anne Clarke and I turn into a scared little girl when I see Miss Smilie,’ he said in a pretend girl’s voice.

  ‘Shut up, Jason.’

  ‘Serves you right. You’ve been acting weird and annoying all day. Not so smug now you’ve just been shown up by Smilie.’ He looked round at everyone else. I sensed this wasn’t going to end well for me. ‘To be honest, I think you must have pooed yourself, Sparrow, because you STINK!’

  And then everyone started laughing – really laughing: jaw-aching, bent-over-holding-their-stomachs laughing.

  Most super-agents would stand their ground: face the danger head on. But most super-agents didn’t smell like a mouldy dog poo. So I did the only thing I could do. I ran away to the one place I knew I could be alone.

  4

  Bossy Girls and Pigeon Poo

  Let me just say that I have never, ever sat on the Friendship Bench before. It’s OK for the Reception kids to go there; they’re small and don’t know anything about life yet. But for a Year 6 kid to resort to the bench? It’s like wearing a sign saying: ‘Hey everyone, check me out – I’m a loser!’ But I was desperate and I stank like the boys’ toilets on curry Tuesdays.

  I sat down on the cold, cold wood and leant forwards, trying to cover my face with my hands so no one would recognise me. What would Nick Fury do in this situation? If only I had a brilliant disguise – some glasses, a fake nose, maybe a moustache – I could conceal my identity while I found a way to get rid of my stupid ear power. I didn’t know exactly how I’d got it in the first place – possibly I’d breathed in a radioactive fart, or I’d been hit on the head by a meteor – the hows and whys hadn’t seemed that important when I was thinking up ways to use it for my own entertainment and great personal gain. I hadn’t realised it was one of those life-ruining lie-detectors you never hear about.

  ‘Hey, dude, you do realise you’re sitting on the Friendship Bench. Are you new or something?’ I looked up to find a girl from one of the other Year 6 classes standing over me. I was pretty sure her name was Jeff, but I’d never spoken to her because she was a bit weird. She was short, with messy blonde hair and blue eyes so bright that they looked like the infinity gem from Loki’s staff in Avengers Assemble. She had the standard school uniform on but it seemed kind of different on her, although I couldn’t work out why. Maybe it was because of the way she was standing, hands in pockets, her mouth doing this frowny-pouty thing, looking at me like I was the biggest moron on the planet. Her mistake, but I’d better own up.

  ‘It’s me, Alex Sparrow from 6C.’

  ‘So you’re not new?’

  ‘What do you mean “new”? You must recognise me. I’ve been at this school since nursery. I’m pretty popular.’

  ‘Maybe. You look kind of familiar.’

  ‘I was the angry badger in the nocturnal animals assembly.’

  ‘Don’t remember it.’

  ‘I won the best dancer award at the disco last year.’

  ‘Didn’t go.’

  ‘I hang around with Jason Newbold.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jason Newbold. I’ve got a really big group of friends.’

  ‘Then why are you sitting on the Friendship Bench?’

  ‘You know, just relaxing, chillaxing…’

  ‘Well, can you do it somewhere else? I’m on bench duty, so if you sit here, I have to keep talking to you. It’s getting cold, there’s a weird smell and I don’t want to waste my time with someone who doesn’t need my help.’

  So I still stink. But, more importantly, this girl has a serious attitude problem. ‘Jeez, maybe you should think about chilling out. I don’t exactly want to be talking to you either.’

  ‘Then get off the bench.’

  ‘How about you get off my case?’

  ‘I’ll get off your case when you get off the bench. There might be kids who are actually lonely and upset and not sitting here because you are. You’re abusing the rules of the bench. It’s selfish and wrong.’

  I was about to tell Miss Bossy Mouth exactly what I thought of her bench police routine when a pigeon swooped really low, about a centimetre away from my face, and landed on the bench beside me. I hate pigeons. My mum says they carry germs and spread diseases like rats, and this one had beady eyes and a toe missing from one of its feet. I would have jumped up under normal circumstances, but there was no way I was moving from that bench. It was a matter of principle.

  ‘Get lost, stupid dirty pigeon!’ I shouted. ‘Get your manky foot away from me.’

  The pigeon just shot me what I could have sworn was a dirty look, if pigeons were capable of having facial expressions. Then it looked at the girl.

  What happened next was weird. I’d seen a lot of weird over the past few days, but this was way-up-the-top-of-the-weirdness-scale weird. The girl started shaking and shuddering, like she was having some kind of fit. It looked kind of like she was trying to dance but had lost control of her body. Her arms and legs sort of jerked in all different directions and her face went through a series of horror expressions. Th
e only time I’d seen anything like it was in games and films and on TV, when people get bitten by zombies. Zombies. Could she be turning into a zombie? Was I witnessing the start of the zombie apocalypse? I know I should have wanted to help her but, to be honest, I was totally freaked out. I was too young to have my insides eaten. Then I realised I could run away to call a teacher. Running away was a good option. I would look like I was helping but really I’d be getting myself to safety and looking for weapons. Win-win.

  I stood and turned, ready to run, but I heard something that made me hesitate. The girl was spitting out random words and short sentences which didn’t make much sense. But then she said, ‘Who is The Professor?’ I froze. The Professor. I bought a lie detector from an internet pop-up sent by someone called The Professor. Could it be a coincidence?

  The girl stopped twitching at the same time as the pigeon took off from the bench. We both watched in awkward silence as he flew away, circled back and dropped a massive, slimy poo on my shoulder.

  ‘Serves you right,’ the girl said. Apparently she hadn’t turned into a zombie.

  ‘Erm, firstly, what the heck just happened to you. And secondly, how, when I just risked my own personal safety to make sure you were OK, does it serve me right that some scabies-ridden pigeon pooed on me?’

  ‘Number one, bench-boy, I had a strange experience at the weekend and it’s given me a twitch. And number two, it served you right for being so rude. Dexter didn’t appreciate being called manky.’

  ‘You’ve named the pigeon?’ The girl was crazy.

  ‘No, I didn’t name the pigeon. It’s his name.’

  Super crazy.

  ‘How do you know? Was he wearing a badge?’

  ‘Because that is the most important question to be asking right now…’

  Why was she looking at me like I was the nut job? I was missing something, but what? Think Agent Alex, think. And then I realised: The Professor! How much did this strange girl know and how could I find out without giving away any of my own secrets? I had to play it cool – I had to play it like a super spy.

  ‘Why were you yelling “who is The Professor?” just now when you were, you know, having some kind of zombie freak-out?’

  ‘Because I want to know who The Professor is, obviously.’

  ‘Are you referring to a specific The Professor? Professor X, maybe, or Professor Snape?’

  ‘I was referring to The Professor who sent me an internet pop-up on Friday night.’

  She must mean my ‘The Professor’! I tried not to let the excitement show on my face. ‘And what was the nature of this “pop-up”?’

  ‘I think you can guess that I bought something from The Professor.’

  I forgot about keeping my calm exterior and not giving anything away.

  ‘Was it a lie detector?’

  ‘No, why? Is that what you got?’

  Damn.

  ‘Well, it might have been. Or it might have been something else…’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So what did you get?’

  ‘I can communicate with animals.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But that’s impossible.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  If what this rather abusive girl was saying was true, then I really did have a power, and it must have come from The Professor and his Pop-Up of Trickery. Not to mention his Recorded Message of Excruciating Pain. This was a Very Big Deal.

  ‘You could be making this up. How do I know I can trust you?’

  She raised an eyebrow again and just looked at me. What was she playing at? It was no time for games.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘You got a lie detector, right?’

  ‘Well, maybe, yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with it.’

  And then it hit me. Oh yeah, I could tell if someone was lying. My ear hadn’t farted once during our conversation, which was, I supposed, a pretty good indication that she was telling the truth.

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry. My bad. So you have to do that freaky zombie-dance every time you talk to animals? That’s hilarious!’

  ‘It’s not the best.’

  ‘So your friends have ditched you too?’

  ‘Because I’ve developed a twitch? Course not. They’re my friends; they wouldn’t disown me because of a twitch. That would be stupid.’ Jeff, or whatever her name was, frowned. Well, frowned even more than before. ‘Is that why you’re here? Did your friends disown you because of your power?’

  I didn’t want her to think I was a loser. ‘No, no, just having a time out, that’s all.’ The lie made an especially nasty odour.

  ‘Right. But you have a side effect too.’

  ‘It’s not a twitch though. It’s a stink.’

  ‘That explains a lot.’

  ‘You two must have something very exciting to talk about, if it means ignoring the bell and being late for registration. Please, do share it.’

  I jumped. Miss Smilie was standing over us, her smile glued to her face. I wondered if she’d had plastic surgery to fix it like that, or had a nasty accident with some acid, like The Joker. Her eyes flicked from me to the girl and back.

  ‘So, it’s Alex, isn’t it? And Jessica? What’s going down with you BFFs?’

  ‘It’s Jess, actually.’ (Oh, Jess!) Jess just stared at her with the most disgusted look on her face. Clearly it was up to me to talk us out of trouble.

  ‘Sorry, Miss, we were just having a discussion about the affirmation of the day.’

  ‘Really? And what were you discussing exactly?’

  ‘Well, I was saying that I preferred Friday’s one, the one about small ripples and leaping fish and all that, but Jess was arguing that today’s is better. She’s really into radiating positivity.’

  I tried not to inhale the farty fragrance that was mingling with the autumn breeze.

  ‘Are you, Jessica?’ Miss Smilie said, hopefully too suspicious to notice the stink.

  She snapped her face back round to Jess, who said, in the most deadpan voice, ‘Yes. I’m radiating as we speak.’

  There was a moment of silence as she carried on staring and smiling, first at Jess and then at me.

  ‘I’m glad you’re taking the affirmations seriously. They really can inspire you to be better people. However, being late for registration is unacceptable. If I catch you loitering again, you’ll be spending your breaktime in the PALS room with me. The world won’t wait for those who are late!’

  Jess managed to look even more disgusted, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

  ‘You’re right, Miss,’ I said, while grabbing Jess’s arm and pulling her towards the main doors. ‘You should hashtag that and make it tomorrow’s affirmation of the day. We’ll be going now.’

  With one last hard stare at each of us, she walked off.

  Jess turned back to me and said in a whiney sort of voice, ‘Yes, Miss, sorry, Miss, we were just discussing affirmations and peace and love and joy.’

  ‘Well, one of us had to say something, and it got rid of her, didn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose, but you could have gone with something slightly more believable.’

  ‘What could be more believable than you radiating positivity? I’ve only known you five minutes and I can already tell you’re like a ray of sunshine.’

  I had loads of questions to ask Jess but we had to get to registration before we got in proper trouble. She obviously thought the same, because she just said, ‘I’ll meet you after school by the main gate,’ and started stomping off down the corridor before turning back and adding, ‘and look out for anything strange’.

  What the fudge was she talking about? Other than the whole lie-detector business, and Darth Daver, the weird kid from 6P, who hardly talks, wears too much black, and pulls his sleeves right down over his fingers, the only strange thing I could see at school was her.

  More importantly, I had my own flipping super-cool superpower. Well, not th
at cool. If I was summoned to some kind of superhero meeting I’d roll up and it’d be like:

  ‘Hi, I’m Electro-Man, I can shoot lethal electric lasers out of my eyes.’

  ‘Hey, I’m Aquaboy, I can swim faster than a shark.’

  ‘Hello, I’m Alex, my right ear farts whenever somebody lies.’

  Maybe I could get some kind of uniform. But then I don’t think stretchy tights are really my thing. I tried on some skinny jeans once and I nearly couldn’t get them off (there was talk of scissors – it was so embarrassing). If I couldn’t change in and out of my costume at the speed of light, I’d have to wear it all the time and that would be a very bad idea. Darth Daver gets so much abuse just for coming in on mufti days with his nails painted black.

  There was so much to think about – names, costumes, gadgets – that I kind of forgot about what Jess had said, and I only remembered I was supposed to be meeting her when we were packing up at the end of the day.

  5

  Darth Daver: My Hero

  At 3:30, I went to meet Jess at the school gate. I didn’t know what to expect, what with her being so strange and bossy, but at that moment she was the only kid in school who actually wanted to talk to me, even if it was just because we both bought special powers with horrific side effects from some evil genius called The Professor. Whether I liked it or not, I needed her.

  Unlucky for me, when I got to the gate she was standing there talking to Darth Daver. I should have known she’d be friends with him; he’s possibly the only person in school weirder than her. Even unluckier for me, Jason, Kyle and Ronnie were just behind me. If I ever wanted to get back in the gang I couldn’t let them see me with her. I crouched down and tried to hide behind a group of kids. They were walking one behind the other in a really neat line, like soldiers or something. It was a bit odd and it made it hard to get in among them so nobody would see me. Good thing I’m a super-stealthy secret agent and can make myself practically invisible. I crept toward the gate, staying close to the ground, congratulating myself on my first-class sneaking skills. Until a pair of stompy black boots stepped into my path. Jess stared down at me, one eyebrow raised.