Ben bashed his onion into mine and said, “Cheers.”
I swallowed hard. My mouth knew what was coming because it began to fill with saliva.
Keith bowed at all us competitors, turned to face the audience, and bellowed, “Eat.”
Nobody moved in case they’d misheard.
Keith said, “Well, what are you waiting for? Eat!” And then did another little toot on his trumpet.
We were off!
I took a breath, closed my eyes, and sank my teeth into the onion. For a split second it was okay. In fact, the first crunch was quite satisfying. But as I began to chew, my nose got very hot and my tongue began to tingle. And then my tongue began to throb. My lips pulsated. I began to sweat. My vision became blurred because my eyes streamed. Then my nose started to run. Saliva pooled out of the side of my mouth. My whole body was leaking.
It is a well-known fact that the average human child’s body is sixty-five percent water. I r eckon halfway through my first mouthful of onion, I was down to under thirty-five percent.
Another well-known fact is that raw onion is disgusting.
I wasn’t the only one in onion hell—Ben was struggling too. Like me, he was a snotting, dribbling, crying mess. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was bright red. He gave me a look of such desperation that I wanted to tell him it was okay, he’d tried and he could stop if he wanted to.
Charlie was faring much better. He was plowing through his onion like it was a chocolate orange. He had this look of utter determination in his eyes. He really wanted that win. And I wanted it too. More for him than the money.
I glanced around at the other competitors. Ben and I, at only two bites in, were well out of the running. It was now between Charlie, a tangerine-orange crinkly-faced woman with toilet paper stuffed up each nostril, and a skinny man in a shiny green jacket.
They all had very different techniques. Charlie was going for the chomp and chew. The orange-skinned lady was nibbling it very quickly and spinning it around in her hands like corn on the cob. The skinny man put the whole thing in his mouth at once and was working his way through it. He looked like a snake swallowing an egg.
Anyway, it was all very close. Charlie and the orange lady—who I now know is called Clementine!—raised their hands and opened their mouths almost at the same time to show they had finished. If I’m honest, I think she might have clinched it. Snakey-thin man finished a fraction after them both.
Keith blew on his trumpet and Ben and I dropped our half-eaten onions down on our plates and groaned. My belly was already complaining about the evilness I was making it digest. The lady in the tear-gas T-shirt hurried onto the stage and whispered in Keith’s ear. When I say whisper, it was a loud sort of angry whisper so that everyone on the stage could just about hear what she was saying. I think she said, “We can’t have another draw—not after the largest onion competition. We need a winner.” She glared at Keith and jabbed her finger at her clipboard, then she looked over at Charlie and Clementine and raised her eyebrows very meaningfully.
Keith must have got the message because he nodded somewhat solemnly, then announced to the crowd: “It was a closely fought battle here today at Barry’s 114th Onion-Eating Competition. A ‘well done’ to all the competitors . . . but there can only be one winner.”
Charlie wiped his mouth on his T-shirt and gave the orange lady a sideways look. He must have been thinking the same as me—she’d got in there before him. The fifty quid didn’t look like it would be coming to us. This was completely disappointing.
“There has been another disqualification.” Keith tugged at his collar and waited for the gasps and grumbles from the crowd to die down. “According to rule sixteen, section 1.2a, contestants may not use any of the following: goggles or masks to cover the eyes, pegs or clips on the nose, or any material inserted into one or both nostrils.”
Clementine tried discreetly to remove the toilet paper stuffed up her nose, but she was onstage in front of the whole of Barry. It wasn’t going to go unnoticed.
“This means I am pleased to announce that”—Keith checked the piece of paper that he’d been handed—“Charlie Anderson is the 114th winner of Barry’s Onion-Eating Competition.”
This was totally the opposite of disappointing! I’m not big on rules, but rule sixteen, section 1.2a, is a particularly good one. In fact, in that moment, it was my favorite rule of all time.
Charlie looked like he couldn’t believe it at first.
Ben had to say, “Charlie, dude, you did it—you won.”
Charlie’s whole face stretched into this huge smile. He punched the air, pulled his T-shirt over his head and started running around the stage like he’d just scored the winning goal in the World Cup final. To be fair to him, the people of Barry were cheering like it was the World Cup final.
Afterward he said to me, “I never thought I’d find out what winning felt like.”
10
Where we try and convince Charlie it is a good idea to stay in Barry for the night and he falls for it
Charlie was given his cash prize in an envelope and a bunch of onion-based products in a wicker basket. Honestly, I can’t remember a time he’d ever looked so happy. I had to break it to him that it wouldn’t be practical to carry the basket all the way to St. David’s. He said he’d had enough of onions for a while anyway, so he took the cheese-and-onion chips but gave the rest to Clementine. She turned out to be Big Trev’s mom and the gesture served to smooth over some of the bad feeling.
“It was a well-fought match,” she said, taking the basket. “I’m sorry things got tricky back there with my Trevor. He’s a good boy. Just has a terrible temper sometimes. Shouldn’t dwell. I have to move on and focus on the scarecrow competition. Trevor and I worked night and day on our entry.”
“Which one is yours?” I asked.
“Ones,” she said with a knowing smile. “We did the superheroes.”
“That’s our favorite!” I reckoned they stood a good chance of winning.
By the time Charlie had his photo taken for the Barry Gazette it was getting late. In all the excitement we’d forgotten that we were working in a limited time frame and my anxiety levels were rising. We all called home to let our parents know everything was okay and to keep them from getting suspicious, and then we headed back to the bus stop. But when we got back to Barry Docks there wasn’t any sign of a bus. We checked out the South Wales bus schedule on our phones and discovered that, at six thirty, we weren’t going to make it to St. David’s. So we wouldn’t be staying at Alan’s. Essentially, we were stuck in Barry.
Charlie did not take this information well. In fact, he behaved like a total diva. Just goes to show how quickly one moment in the limelight can affect some people.
“What are we going to do? Mom says I need a full night’s sleep in a proper bed, or I won’t be at my perkiest in the morning.” Charlie said I in a very self-important way.
“We could hitch a lift to St. David’s and still stay at Fred’s new dad’s?” Ben suggested.
“No way—we could be picked up by a murderer or a crazed fan.”
I agreed with Charlie that I did not want our trip to come to murder, but Ben seemed to be taking a far more relaxed view to stranger danger because he said, “I think the chances of that are pretty slim.”
“A murderer or a crazed fan?” I asked, not that it really mattered.
“Both.”
Then a group of older boys walked past, saw Charlie, and started chanting, “There’s only one Charlie Anderson.”
Ben and I looked at them like they’d just dropped out of the Welsh skies. But Charlie, well, he was delighted. He high-fived them all and did the running man on the spot. The older kids cheered some more, and even though they were loud I could still hear Ben mumble something about Charlie having no shame.
Anyway, the fact that there were people cheering for Charlie was enough to convince Ben that there might also be the chance of a murderer lurking around,
so we scrapped the hitchhiking idea.
I was beginning to wonder if maybe I should have planned things a teeny bit more carefully before we set off from Andover. I think one thing I’ve learned from the whole experience is that it is a good idea to have a Plan B or even a Plan C ready for when things go wrong and people—in particular, biological fathers—aren’t where they’re supposed to be. But because I hadn’t done any planning about what would happen if we didn’t find Alan Froggley at Cardiff Analytics, I had to rely on my cunning and wing it. As group leader it was up to me to come up with a solution, and as group leader I decided we basically had two options.
Option 1: we could use Charlie’s winnings to get back to a train station and head home.
Option 2: we could find somewhere to stay in Barry for a night. Get a bus to St. David’s early the next morning, find Alan Froggley, and then get back to Andover before anyone missed us.
Thinking about it now, Option 1 does seem like the more sensible thing to do. But at the time it also felt a lot like quitting. Option 2, however, did not feel like quitting. It felt like a very reasonable suggestion. So I didn’t mention the first idea and said, “As far as I can see, we only have one option. What do you think about staying here tonight?”
Opinion was divided.
Ben said, “I’m okay with that. I’m not fussed about going home yet.”
Charlie’s eyes bugged out of his head and he said, “Stay here?”
“It’s just for one night.”
“But where are we going to sleep?”
It was a good question, but I hadn’t quite figured out that part of the plan yet so I said, “We’ll find somewhere.”
“Somewhere? Does somewhere come with a hypoallergenic pillow?”
“Maybe.” I suspected probably not but thought it best not to hit him with a hard no. “It’s only for one night.”
Ben put his arm around Charlie. “Come on, dude, it will be an adventure. Before you’re sent away to Vegans R Us.”
“I’m not at all sure about this,” Charlie said.
“And you’re sure about avocado-and-wheatgrass smoothies? Look, Charlie, in September we’re going to be in seventh year in a new school. We might not even be in the same classes. Wouldn’t it be cool to have this one last adventure together?” Ben said.
“I guess it would, but so would sleeping in an environment that doesn’t trigger my allergies.”
“Don’t you see, Charlie? This is for Fred. His mom’s dead, his Grams is dead. His dad only has one working leg. He’s got this weird crinkly haircut . . .” Ben lowered his voice when he mentioned my hair like it was the worst thing of all. “We have to do this. Charlie, tonight you ate a whole raw onion in one minute thirty-seven seconds. That’s the fourteenth fastest time the people of Barry have ever witnessed. You, Charlie, are fearless.”
Charlie blushed and said, “Ah, it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. You were magnificent, Charlie. To the people of Barry, you were a hero. To us, you were a hero. And heroes don’t quit.”
“You think I was a hero?”
“Absolutely,” Ben said. “The way you demolished that onion . . . I’ll never forget it. You are a true hero.”
By this point I’d been swept along with Ben’s motivational talk, so I said, “You’re not only a hero, you’re one of the best friends a guy could have.” Which is true. Not everyone has a mate who’ll eat a whole raw onion for them. And I had two.
“You’re a winner, Charlie.” Ben grabbed us both around the shoulders and shouted, “We’re all winners!”
“You guys!” Charlie grinned. “I’m in.”
Ben gave me a wink. His own special blend of emotional blackmail and flattery had done the trick.
Now that Charlie was on board I decided we probably needed to get practical about things. “Where can we stay that won’t cost us anything?”
It was a puzzling question and we all fell quiet for a moment. Then Ben said, “Guys, I’ve had an idea.”
He really was on a roll and, as ideas go, I thought it wasn’t a bad one. Even if it was just a tiny bit illegal.
Looking back now though, I guess it was the start of all the chaos. But we didn’t know that at the time.
11
Where we find Llywelyn-the-Great and have a humongous fight
Ben rubbed his hands together and said, “Which one do you prefer?” like they all belonged to him.
Charlie thought about it for a while and said, “I like Mavis.”
I frowned. “Really? She looks pretty old.”
“Some see old, I see charm and elegance.”
“I think I prefer Diamond. She’s a stunner.”
Ben wasn’t sure though. “I dunno. Don’t you think she’s too flashy? Might attract too much attention. I was thinking more along the lines of Ll-y-wel-yn-the-Great. Is that how you pronounce it? Not too big, tucked out of the way, and in the darkest part of the dock.”
Ben made a good case and as it was his idea for us to become stowaways for the night, it was only right that he got to pick the boat.
“Llywelyn-the-Great it is,” I said, and Ben looked very pleased. Charlie, however, had begun to have doubts.
“Look,” Ben said, “we’re not doing anything really wrong. Llywelyn is just bobbing about doing nothing. We’re only going to sleep on it. We’re not going to sail it or anything like that.”
“Yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?” I said—which I now know was a really dumb thing to say.
We walked up and down the dock a few times, trying not to look suspicious as we scoped out the best way to get onto Llywelyn-the-Great. Everyone in Barry was at some pub for a big karaoke event, so luckily there was no one else around.
There wasn’t a gangplank onto Llywelyn but we reckoned we would be able to make the jump to the ladder. We decided to wait for it to get dark so we could slip aboard unnoticed.
But we got bored of waiting because it was the middle of the summer and it didn’t get dark until about ten o’clock. Ben suggested a trip to the Barry amusement arcade to pass the time. He said he was feeling lucky. And when the son of a lottery scratch-card winner says he’s feeling lucky, you pay attention.
Ben changed five pounds into 250 two-pence pieces and then over the course of an hour we fed them into the 2p machines and turned them into 625 two-pence pieces! We felt like kings. I wondered why I hadn’t gambled more before. It was easy money.
In hindsight, we should have stopped there, but we didn’t. We had the starry eyes and pounding hearts of a slot-machine buzz.
Ben said, “Let’s move up to the 10p slots. We could make enough money to pay for a hotel with hypoallergenic pillows,” and Charlie and I cheered.
It seemed like a foolproof plan. We changed our winnings into 125 shiny ten-pence pieces—and then very quickly we turned them into just two. I couldn’t believe it. We’d spent a fiver and got twenty pence back. It was completely sickening, to be honest. For the first time in my life I understood that saying: how quickly the mighty have fallen.
I vowed I’d never gamble again.
Ben, however, had other ideas. He had this crazed look in his eyes and he kept saying that if he could change another fiver he would win the money back and more. Charlie and I weren’t having any of it.
Charlie pulled rank and said, “I ate a whole onion for that cash.”
Ben couldn’t really argue with that, but that didn’t stop him from sulking when we left. I think he might have an addictive personality. He should probably look into that.
While Ben moaned about how we’d left before “the big payout,” we tiptoed along the docks toward Llywelyn-the-Great. Luckily there still wasn’t a soul around. While it was exciting—I was in a foreign land, on an adventure, with my friends—for some reason I couldn’t get Dad out of my head. I was worried about how he was doing at home without me to fetch things for him.
I wasn’t able to worry about Dad for long though, because soon w
e were standing opposite our lodgings for the night and the gap between the land and the ladder suddenly seemed a much bigger thing to worry about.
“Has it moved?” Charlie asked. “I’m never going to make that.”
“You’ll make it,” I said, but I wasn’t convinced. No offense to Charlie, but he’s not exactly aerodynamic.
What he is, however, is powerful and after a short sprint he made the jump easily. As fifth-year long-jump champion, Ben also had no problem covering the distance.
I, on the other hand, sort of messed it up at the last second. I’d opted for a long sprint to maximize my speed. And my sprint was good. I just didn’t do the important part at the end and actually jump. So I ended up with my feet still on the dock, my hands clinging to the ladder, the sea lapping below, and Ben and Charlie laughing at me.
Ben crouched down so he was level with my eyeballs. “You alright there, mate?”
“Yeah, great, thanks. Now pull me up before someone sees.”
They pulled me up and dropped me on the deck like they’d landed an oversized flounder.
When I was upright again, I had a look around. Truly, Llywelyn-the-Great lived up to the “great” part of her name. My experience of boats was limited to one time in a pedal boat at Paulton’s Park, a two-man kayak on our camping trip, and the Red Funnel ferry to the Isle of Wight. Llywelyn was completely awesome in comparison. Around the edges were cushioned white leather seats and inside the little cabin was a huge steering wheel made of some very shiny wood.
“This is plush,” Ben said and stretched out on one of the benches.
It was plush. We’d managed to get aboard a really nice boat without being caught. We were winners again and things were looking like they might work out.
And they probably would have if it wasn’t for our humongous fight and what happened because of it.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Charlie said. “My mom would kill me if she knew.”
“Don’t reckon my dad would even care. He’s too busy with Becky to worry about what I’m doing.”
“Can you blame him? Becky is lovely. Can’t see why you’ve got such a massive problem with her.”
The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates Page 5