The Super Freak

by Brian Falkner

‘Are there any photos of you as a baby?’ It would be a dead giveaway if there weren’t.

  But Ben said, ‘Yes, just like other kids.’

  ‘And what happens when you go home after school?’ I asked, still searching for clues.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I go home, do my homework, then go to bed and Mum plugs me into the charger for the night, just like other kids.’

  I turned and stared at him in shock, and it took me a moment or two to realise he was joking.

  Then Ben Holly walked alongside me to physics class, and we got to talking a bit more. I kind of liked his sense of humour and realised that I’d better be careful or I’d end up having a friend.

  GWF stands for Glenfield Wrestling Federation. It’s not a federation at all. It’s just a bunch of stupid kids ripping off those wrestling shows on TV.

  The biggest, thuggiest kids in the school run it. Year elevens mainly. I suppose years twelve and thirteen have outgrown the whole wrestling thing.

  They run the wrestling on Fridays after school, in the school boxing ring.

  Not many schools have a boxing ring, so I guess we were lucky, or unlucky, depending on your point of view. Old Sea Salt had been a champion boxer in his day, and he’d somehow persuaded the principal, the Board of Trustees and whoever else needed to be persuaded, that it was good for fitness and self-defence.

  It served just as well as a wrestling ring and the kids who were into that would bash the crap out of each other using moves borrowed from the TV and for some reason think it was fun.

  I heard that they almost had to stop it a couple of years ago when one of them broke his arm. But the kid never told his parents or any teachers what really happened, so they just kept it quiet for a few weeks then carried on as usual.

  And I, stupid, idiot me, was going to get into the ring with big bully Blocker Blüchner, who was hell-bent on my destruction, unless I could find some way to weasel out of it.

  My new friend Ben had some ideas on how to weasel out of things. For a start, this coming Friday was the last day of term so the GWF kids weren’t holding a match.

  That meant it would be at least three weeks before the first GWF match in the new term.

  Ben thought I should spend those weeks at a boxing gym, or karate lessons, learning to defend myself. I felt that I was unlikely to learn enough in two short weeks to defend myself against a monster like Blocker.

  I wondered if there was some way to use my strange new power to win the fight, but I couldn’t see how it would help when he was body-slamming me and smashing me into the floor of the ring.

  As far as I could work out, I had about three weeks left to live.

  SEVEN

  MY DAD

  You know my dad.

  I mean, not personally, but you’d know my dad if you saw him. If I stuck a picture of him here … :-) … you’d go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the guy from the … commercial.’ The word you stuck in the gap would depend on what you were into. If you were into chocolate, for example, you’d go, ‘The guy from the Cadbury commercial.’ Or if you were into rugby you’d say, ‘The guy from the All Black Supporters commercial.’ If you were into dogs you’d go, ‘He’s the policeman from the dog food commercial.’ It’s funny but after that commercial came out, a lot of people thought my dad really was a policeman. He’s not, of course. He’s just a sometimes employed actor. When Mum and Dad are fighting, she calls him an unemployed bum. Which is kind of funny, because you know that ad with the builder who whips off his tool belt and his pants fall down? That’s my dad too. You can’t see his face, but you can see his bum. So I guess he’s not always an unemployed bum. Sometimes he’s a working bum!

  But, back to the dog food commercial. It’s the really funny one where the burglar has stolen a case of dog food and the police dog chases him. Then the burglar drops the case and all the cans spill out but, instead of chasing him, the dog just tries to open one of the cans. It’s really funny.

  I guess you had to be there.

  Dad wasn’t always an actor. When we lived in the South Island he was a radio announcer. That was why we shifted so often. They move around a lot, radio announcers. Then, when the radio station in Wellington where he worked was bought out by some big network and he lost his job, he decided to move to Auckland to make his fortune in acting.

  There were TV commercials, film roles, bit parts on TV shows and, of course, the ultimate for any wannabe actor in New Zealand, the chance of a regular role on Shortland Street. The possibilities seemed endless.

  The reality of Auckland was small roles in several movies, on a pittance of a pay rate (but I’m getting to meet all the important people in the industry!), quite a few TV commercials and a couple of walk-on parts on TV shows.

  Not quite what Dad was hoping for from his career I think. Some of the jobs were well paid. The only problem was they didn’t happen frequently enough. As Mum pointed out whenever they had an argument, he could be earning more each year as a checkout operator at the supermarket. But, as Dad always pointed back, the acting stuff might lead on to something bigger, whereas the supermarket job wouldn’t.

  So, we never had any money and lived in a rented house and had constant fights with the landlord over paying the rent late. We didn’t have a car or new clothes for us kids. But we always ate a good meal. Mum made sure of that. I’m sure she sometimes borrowed money from her parents to buy the groceries, because somehow there was always food in the cupboards.

  I sat on the old sofa in the lounge and stared at Gumbo, thinking thoughts into his brain.

  I don’t know what kind of dog Gumbo was. I don’t think he was any kind of dog really, just a mixture of all-sorts which had resulted in a large, yellow-brown creature with a squat, bear-like face and sorrowful eyes. His fur was long, and his favourite activity was flopping all over people and slobbering on them. He was just a big lovable rug of a dog. A floppy, sloppy dog, and we had had him since I was born.

  Sit! I thought. Sit! Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit!

  He stared at me with his big sad eyes but didn’t even try to sit.

  Ok, I thought, roll over. Roll over, roll over, roll over.

  Gumbo blinked at me and sat.

  I kept trying for the next half hour, but nothing much happened. Then Gumbo did a really bad fart so I sent him out to the garage where his basket was and opened the windows to let in some fresh air.

  I heard Mum’s key in the front door then, which gave me a new guinea pig. I started on her before she even walked into the room.

  Pizza for dinner tonight, pizza for dinner tonight, pizza for dinner tonight.

  It was a bit mean. I knew she’d be tired from a day spent cleaning other people’s houses, and wouldn’t really feel like cooking tea, but pizza is quite expensive. It was a rare treat in our house. So it was a bit unfair of me, I suppose.

  But I really liked pizza.

  Pizza for dinner tonight, pizza for dinner tonight, pizza for dinner tonight.

  I jumped up when she walked in the lounge and gave her a big smile.

  ‘G’day, mate,’ she smiled back tiredly. ‘How was school?’

  ‘Same old,’ I said. Pizza for dinner tonight!

  ‘Where’s your sister?’ Mum asked.

  I pointed to April’s room and made a telephone out of my finger and thumb. We looked at each other and laughed. My sister was always on the phone.

  Mum went into the kitchen without mentioning anything about pizza, but I noticed that she didn’t start cooking anything either.

  Dad came in about 4:30 after a day of doing the voice-over for a TV commercial for shampoo. He looked excited, vibrant, alive. I suppose it was a different kind of work to scrubbing bathrooms and vacuuming all day.

  April finally got off the phone at about 6:15, when the pizza arrived.

  EIGHT

  WHAT I DID IN THE HOLIDAYS

  It was drizzling the first Saturday of the holidays. One of those grey miserable days that make you feel like c
rying even if you are happy. And, lying on my bed trying not to think about GWF (and failing), I wasn’t particularly happy. Every now and then I’d stop worrying about that and start wondering what I was going to do with my strange new power.

  I felt like I could become some kind of superhero, like Batman or the Masked Avenger. Use my special power to save the world. Or at least save a few people. From exactly what I was going to save them, I wasn’t sure.

  When the phone rang, and Mum said it was for me, I was surprised. Nobody rang me up. Except Nana One on my birthday. Sometimes Nana Two, when she remembered. But my birthday wasn’t for ages.

  It was Ben.

  ‘I reckon I know how you can get out of the GWF,’ he said in that flat controlled tone of his. ‘I’ve got a plan.’

  A weasel out plan.

  ‘Do you want to come around?’ I asked. ‘The Warriors are playing at Ericsson this afternoon. We could watch, if you like. Daniel’s playing.’

  Thirteen-year-old Daniel Taylor went to our school and was the youngest ever player on the Warriors Rugby League team. He’d been on the reserves’ bench for a couple of games, but had not yet run on to the field. Maybe today would be the day.

  ‘Um, I’d have to ask Mum,’ Ben said, but arrived on a bicycle, in a bright yellow raincoat, about twenty minutes later.

  ‘Cool posters,’ he said when I showed him my room. I had posters around the walls, mainly of space stuff like a giant close-up photo of the moon on which all the craters were named in small black type, and one of the space shuttle Columbia, inset with photos of the astronauts who died.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You into space?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Since I was ten. I’ve got a really cool poster of Apollo Eleven, the whole rocket, that’s over two metres tall. It stretches from the floor right up to the ceiling.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said enviously, ‘that’s big.’

  We started to talk some more about space stuff, but it all went straight out of the window with a shuffling, scratching noise on the particleboard floor of the hallway, and I braced myself for the onslaught.

  Gumbo, the big floppy, sloppy dog, burst into the room like a tornado and headed straight for Ben. Ben actually shrieked a little with fright as Gumbo leapt up on to him, knocking him backwards on to the bed, and slobbering all over him. Which was Gumbo’s way of saying hello.

  Once Ben had got used to Gumbo, he seemed to like him. And vice-versa, which was strange. I mean Gumbo liked everyone, but they were such opposites: Ben, the neat precise robot-person with his tidy appearance and clinical movements, and Gumbo the … well … the floppy, sloppy dog.

  Ben told me he had always wanted a dog, but his mother wouldn’t allow one in the house. Too smelly. Too messy. Too noisy. I thought those were some of the best things about a dog. But I guess everyone is different.

  After all the commotion died down, I said, ‘So how am I going to weasel out of getting my brains scrambled, mashed and fried, by Blocker the Blockhead in the GWF ring?’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have got yourself in this situation in the first place, if you ask me,’ Ben said, straight-faced.

  I laughed. We both knew that if I hadn’t got myself into this situation he would be a smear on the toughened glass of the G-Block stairwell by now.

  ‘Maybe I could change schools,’ I said. ‘I’ve done that plenty of times.’ I wasn’t serious. Even saying those words out loud made a cold, clawing sensation travel the length of my body. I couldn’t go through the whole new school thing again.

  Ben shook his head, taking my suggestion seriously. ‘Zoning regulations. Your parents would have to move house.’

  ‘Unless I got myself expelled,’ I said, semi-seriously.

  ‘Seems to me you’ve got two choices,’ Ben said. ‘You can fight him …’

  ‘And get pulverised.’

  ‘Or you can spend the rest of your years at high school trying to hide from him.’

  Neither option sounded viable to me.

  I said, ‘So what’s your great plan then?’

  ‘We break your arm.’

  ‘What!?’

  ‘Seriously. If your arm is broken, then you can’t fight him, can you? And by the time your arm is better, he’ll have forgotten all about it.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said sourly. ‘And how do you plan to break my arm anyway?’

  ‘Well,’ Ben said thoughtfully, ‘you could fall off your bike, but I suppose you might end up doing a lot of other injuries to yourself at the same time, and there’s no guarantee of breaking the bone you want to break.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said doubtfully. ‘What if we just pretended to break my arm?’

  Ben shook his head, ‘If your arm wasn’t in a proper cast, Blocker would know you were faking.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Has your dad got a vice?’

  ‘Yeah, he has a whole workshop set up in the garage.’

  When he wasn’t acting, Dad was mending furniture for people; a skill he had picked up somewhere along the way. There was plenty of room in the garage as we didn’t own a car.

  ‘Well, we could stick your arm in the vice, then I could hit it with a sledgehammer,’ Ben suggested cheerfully.

  ‘You have got to be kidding.’

  ‘Be better than getting the pudding punched out of you by Blocker.’

  ‘But how would we explain it to my parents?’

  ‘Well, we could say you fell off your bike.’

  We spent the next half hour discussing ways to break my arm (my left arm, not my right arm, we decided, so that it wouldn’t interfere with schoolwork). Maybe I was chicken, or maybe I just wasn’t sure that Blocker would drop the whole thing if I couldn’t fight him for a few more weeks. Either way, I couldn’t summon up a whole lot of enthusiasm for the idea. Still, it was nice of Ben to try and help.

  A sledgehammer and a vice!?

  Mum was out at a cleaning job. Dad was at his agent’s. So April, my obnoxious big sister, was babysitting me again. She was the one who needed babysitting if you asked me, but nobody ever did. We watched the Warriors’ game, which was a waste of time, because Daniel just sat on the bench for the entire game. Gumbo watched with us. He always liked watching rugby or rugby league on TV; although I don’t think he was too hot on the rules. He just lay there and barked occasionally when the crowd were roaring, and farted a lot.

  Gumbo, the farty, sporty, floppy, sloppy dog.

  By the time the game finished it was six o’clock, so Ben rang his mum and asked if he could stay for dinner.

  April had been left in charge of dinner. That turned out to be cheese on toast. April, sixteen-years-old, only knew how to make one meal, and that was cheese on toast. It wasn’t that I didn’t like cheese on toast, but you would have thought she could have used a little more imagination.

  Straight after dinner she hopped on the phone to her boyfriend, and I knew she’d be there all night.

  ‘Where are your mum and dad?’ Ben asked during dinner.

  ‘Mum’s working and Dad’s gone to his agent’s house for dinner. Dad’s on Crime Time tonight.

  Ben looked blank.

  ‘That TV show where they ask for the public’s help to solve crimes.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Ben asked, wide-eyed.

  I laughed. ‘Nothing! He’s an actor. They’re doing a reconstruction of the robbery last week at the Orewa TAB. Dad’s playing the part of the Hunchback Robber.’

  ‘Cool!’

  I shook my head. ‘You won’t even be able to recognise him, because he’ll be wearing the mask the whole time.’

  The Hunchback Robber had been hitting places for months around the upper North Island: TABs, shops, post offices, even a Plunket collection centre. He was a terrifying sight, apparently, in a gruesome Quasimodo mask, wearing a black raincoat, and his back had a huge hump. Each time the police were on the scene within minutes, yet the robber had somehow vanished. Dad had landed the role of playing him on Crime Time. He wasn’t to
o happy because, while it paid well, it did nothing for his profile as his face would not be seen.

  The afternoon’s drizzle had turned into heavy rain by evening; bucketing down against our tin roof.

  Ben had brought his digital camera around, and we played with that for a while, then played games on his mobile phone until Crime Time started.

  His phone had much better games than my old thing.

  Even April watched the programme, although she stayed on the phone to her boyfriend the whole time, discussing the show so loudly with him that we could hardly hear what the presenter was saying.

  The presenter was a real cop. Or at least an ex-cop. He wore a police uniform, and they called him Sergeant Wilkinson as if he was still on the force. Sternly, he introduced several minor crimes, showing police photos of the offenders, while building up to the main story about the Hunchback Robber.

  Our curtains suddenly lit up as lightning, and then thunder, were added into the recipe of the storm outside. A sudden fuzziness blurted across the TV screen. We had a big flash TV, which did look a bit out of place in our litle house. I explained that Dad needed it for his job. He often had to watch videos of his work, or from some of the acting workshops he went on.

  At the moment the screen was filled with the weather-worn face of Sergeant Wilkinson. He might have been a real policeman and probably a good one but, as a presenter, he was useless. He had this dull dry way of talking that made even the most exciting crime sound like a discussion about floral arranging at some old-folks’ tea party.

  Ben called him PC Plod, and I thought that was outrageously funny for some reason.

  Finally Dad’s item came on the show, and even April stopped talking while she watched, although she didn’t hang up.

  There was another flash of lightning outside and the screen went all fuzzy again, but it came back after a couple of seconds.

  Sergeant Wilkinson droned on for a few moments, surely the only presenter in the world who could make the terrifying Hunchback Robber sound boring. Then Dad came on the screen, in a black raincoat, the hump above his right shoulder and the Quasimodo mask making him look like a demented clown. He raced into the TAB and started waving a sawn-off shotgun around wildly.