Jonty caught the look and another memory shot through his mind. He was having so many dreams, memories. Too many. He put his hand his pocket and felt something. It was hard with straight edges, like a shiny stone. He rolled it around in his fingers. It seemed familiar. For the first time in days he felt calm. He pressed it into his hand, took it out of his pocket and stared at it. It was a crystal.
‘Jonty!’ Mr Croxall was looking straight at him. Boris nudged him and rolled his eyes. ‘Jonty,’ Mr Croxall said again quietly. ‘Sit wherever you want.’
Nathaniel faced the front of the room. He had researched concussion to see if there was any way they could help Jonty. Jonty might never remember what had happened. He might never remember what friends they had become. Nathaniel dared not turn round. He could not have borne seeing Jonty and Boris elbowing each other and carrying on. He just wanted the moment to be over and for Jonty to decide who his real friends were.
Looking at the crystal, Jonty paused. He smiled and nodded to himself. Now it all made sense. He looked around at the rest of the class. Everyone was waiting for him to do something.
‘Can I say something first, sir?’ he asked.
Mr Croxall nodded. As far as he was concerned Jonty Townsend could do whatever he liked for the rest of his school life.
‘I don’t remember very much,’ Jonty said, ‘but I remember enough now. Boris, the tomato sauce turned you into a super-intelligent super-nasty jerk. I kept telling myself it wasn’t you, that my mate couldn’t be so feral.’
‘Yeah mate, sorry,’ Boris mumbled, hoping this was the first line of some joke at Prune’s expense.
‘But I guess it was true,’ Jonty continued. ‘The sauce made everyone do some pretty bad things.’
He paused for a moment, swallowed and spoke again. ‘The only difference is, you were acting like that long before the pills. And I was, too. So now that everything’s back to normal and everyone’s themselves, I just want to say sorry.’
He looked around the class and at Mr Croxall.
‘Sorry,’ he said again. He picked up his bag, sat next to Prune, gave her a big hug and put his crystal on the desk in front of him. Boris’s face fell into a scowl as the rest of class burst out clapping.
Mr Croxall waited for the noise to die down. Jonty had soared even higher in his estimation than before. He almost wished he was still allocating seats, so that Jonty could be top of the class. ‘Boris Brockman, perhaps you would like to sit down next,’ he said.
Boris stomped over to the old top-of-the-class position, as far away from Jonty as he could.
Mr Croxall called Mike’s name next.
Boris was relieved. He wouldn’t be on his own for long.
Mike picked up his bag. ‘Can I sit here?’ he asked Nathaniel, pointing to the chair next to him.
Boris slammed his fist on the desk. ‘You idiot!’ he said.
One by one, the rest of the class proved themselves idiots by choosing to sit as far away from Boris as possible, until the seat next to him was the only one left. Since Anastasia was the last to choose, she texted Miranda to say that Mr Croxall was a total dill for making her sit next to Boris.
After school Jonty, Nathaniel and Prune decided to catch up for a drink in the café at Misery Mall. They didn’t care that it was totally uncool. It was their café.
They were supposed to go home in time for 24/7, because the producers of the show had contacted their parents to apologise for getting the story so wrong. Joycasta was being forced to make the first on-air apology in the history of the program. Jonty’s mother was thrilled and had invited all the neighbours round to watch it at their place. Jonty decided that he didn’t want to. He had seen enough of Joycasta to last a lifetime.
‘Nah, she’s boring,’ he had announced that morning.
‘So what’ll we do now?’ he asked his friends in the café.
‘I could read your auras,’ Prune suggested. ‘The retreat I went on really built up my skills.’
Screwing her eyes up and tilting her head from side to side, she stared hard at them through her crystal. ‘Nothing. Sorry — you don’t have auras!’ She laughed.
‘Well, then, I think I know exactly what to do,’ Jonty said.
A few minutes later they were in the shop opposite the café. Nathaniel walked up gingerly to the counter, holding out a scented candle in the shape of angel. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘Could you help me? I was wondering — how much this is.’
The two-dollar shop owner scowled at him. ‘Two dollars,’ he muttered through his teeth.
Prune shrieked with laughter from the far end of the toy aisle. She clapped her hand over her mouth as her eyes danced in delight, looking at Jonty. Nathaniel rushed back, pressing his lips together, determined not to laugh. He was amazed at how much fun such an infantile game could be.
Jonty shook his head.
‘Your turn, Prune.’ He pushed a set of fairy wings into her hand. ‘Remember — if you laugh, you lose.’ She didn’t even make it to the end of the aisle before she burst into hysterical giggles and ran back again.
Jonty shook his head, grabbed the wings and marched to the counter. Prune and Nathaniel crept to the front end of the aisle to watch the master at work.
‘Could you tell me how much this is?’ he said pleasantly.
‘Two dollars,’ growled the shop owner.
‘Really?’ Jonty looked puzzled. ‘It’s not three dollars?’
Prune and Nathaniel watched in awe. Was there anything in the world their brilliant friend couldn’t do?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank: Mark MacLeod, Belinda Bolliger and everyone at ABC Books for their ongoing support and brilliant editing; Andy Coulter, Jeanne Walker and Chris Sims for excellent feedback; Adam Bayes for the brain surgery; and all the students at Newtown Public School and Waitara Public School for their amazing insights on names, characters and covers.
Copyright
The ABC ‘Wave’ device is a trademark of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used
under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.
First published in Australia in 2009
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Bruno Bouchet 2009
The right of Bruno Bouchet to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Bouchet, Bruno.
Trouble with Sauce! / Bouchet, Bruno.
ISBN: 978-0-7333-2502-1 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9536-9 (ePub)
For primary school age.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
A823.3
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The Trouble with Sauce Page 12