The Super Freak

by Brian Falkner

  He met up with Phil and another of their mates, Emilio, who was handsome and Spanish and as thick as two short planks. Emilio was carrying a rugby ball.

  I noticed kids avoiding Blocker or turning their backs on him. News was spreading. I wondered how long it would take to reach Johnny Howard, Caitlin’s big brother.

  The three guys sat together to eat lunch, and I crept up close enough behind them to hear Emilio suggest a game of touch rugby.

  ‘Yeah, let’s go,’ Blocker said when he had finished his sandwich.

  What about the hundred dollar note? I suggested to his brain. What about the hundred dollar note?

  He stopped, as if a thought had suddenly struck him. Which it had.

  Don’t want to lose it on the rugby field. Don’t want to lose it on the rugby field.

  I couldn’t see his face, but his back suddenly straightened at that thought.

  ‘I’ll just go an’ shove my bag in the classroom,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to lose my hundred bucks, eh?’

  Emilio laughed. A stupid braying laugh like a donkey. ‘Who’d be stupid enough to steal money from you, Blocker? You’d smash their brains in.’

  Phil was conspicuously silent.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Blocker said.

  Better be safe. Better be safe. Better be safe. I flashed the message as hard as I could at him.

  ‘Better be safe, though, eh? Back in a minute.’ With that, Blocker grabbed his bag and headed for our home room.

  I skirted along the side of the building behind him, keeping out of his line of sight. Home room was ground level on B Block and it was empty. Blocker flung the door open, crashing it against the wall with a splintering sound. Why? No good reason, I guess. He just seemed to enjoy mayhem and destruction. The automatic closer pulled the door shut behind him, and I snuck up to the glass panel set into the door to watch him.

  He was on the far right side of the classroom, stuffing his bag into one of the wooden cubby-holes that lined the wall.

  He pulled the money out from his pocket. A brand new but, by now, slightly wrinkled hundred dollar note, red and weighty with tremendous wealth. He looked around the room for somewhere to hide it.

  I ducked down as he turned towards the door.

  Dare I risk another peek? No. If he happened to catch me looking in, and then the note went missing, he would do a real number on my carcass, Tupai or no Tupai.

  Did my power work through walls? Did it work if I couldn’t see the person I was trying to control? I had no idea.

  I tried to visualise Blocker’s ugly mug. It wasn’t hard to do. The image that was the clearest was that of him a few inches from me, pounding his fist into my face as I lay on the canvas floor of the GWF ring.

  Hide the money under the drunken Buddha. Hide the money under the drunken Buddha.

  The Buddha was a decoration, a remnant of a senior school ball that had somehow found its way into our classroom. It was about a metre high and made of papiermâché over a wood and wire-netting base. The expression on its face was supposed to be one of serenity and peace, but whoever had made it hadn’t done a great job, and it looked like it was drunk.

  It was a great hiding place, nobody would ever think of looking there.

  I rammed the thought home a couple more times. Hide the money under the drunken Buddha, hide the money under the drunken Buddha. When I heard movement, I ducked across the corridor into the toilets, closing the door silently behind me.

  I heard Blocker’s footsteps and then the outside door slam violently as he left. Did he always have to slam doors?

  When I was certain he was well clear, I walked calmly into the room, trying hard not to act sneaky. It was my home room. I had a right to be there. I didn’t have to creep around like some cartoon cat-burglar.

  The Buddha sat on a long table that ran the length of the room near the cubby-holes. The rest of the table was filled with artwork and school projects.

  I lifted the Buddha and, sure enough, there it was, the moustachioed face of Lord Rutherford. One hundred New Zealand dollars. The ill-gotten gains of Blocker Blüchner, now the loot of Super Freak.

  ‘Moo-ha-ha-ha,’ I chuckled an evil villain’s laugh as I pocketed the note and replaced the Buddha.

  Thirty seconds later I was eating my lunch with Ben in the courtyard and nobody had seen me do anything.

  ‘Moo-ha-ha-ha.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  :-)

  Next day at lunchtime I was sitting quietly with Ben, quizzing him about the council meeting the day before, when two things happened.

  I had just found out that the money would be sorted and counted in the records room, before being locked in Principal Curtis’s office for safety. Perfect, I thought, and then my mobile phone beeped with a text message.

  ‘Probably Blocker being a dork again,’ I said to Ben as I pulled it out of my bag.

  I had just enough time to see that whoever the message was from, it wasn’t Blocker, when Phil Domaine marched up right in front of us.

  I braced myself for some kind of abuse, but it wasn’t me he was after.

  He said nothing, just thrust out an envelope towards Ben.

  ‘What is it?’ Ben asked, taking it hesitantly.

  ‘It’s yours,’ Phil said and strode away without another word.

  Ben looked at me and raised an eyebrow, then tore the end off the envelope. He shook out the contents. It was a brand new one hundred dollar note.

  Not Blocker’s, I had that, folded neatly into a back compartment of my wallet. It was Phil’s.

  ‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll give it back to him.’

  ‘Yes, he should,’ I said, quite amazed that he had actually done it. ‘And, no, you bleeding well won’t. It’s yours. You keep it.’

  Ben looked at it for a moment, then shrugged and put it in his pocket. ‘I didn’t expect to be paid for dragging that girl away from the wasps; it was just the right thing to do.’

  At that moment, I was really proud to be Ben’s friend, although I couldn’t help wondering about my silly idea of him being a robot. He didn’t seem to see things the same way as us humans.

  I checked my text message. It was from Erica.

  I hadn’t seen her all day as we didn’t have French, and my heart soared when I realised it was from her.

  SO WHN R WE GOING OUT SMWHERE? she texted and added :-).

  I hadn’t thought about that. Now that we were officially going out, I supposed we needed some place to go out to. Perhaps the movies.

  I started to text her back to suggest exactly that, when my phone beeped again. I eagerly opened the message expecting another gift from heaven.

  But this was from the depths of hell.

  U R DED MEAT.

  I knew the number immediately.

  The truth about Caitlin Howard must have eventually found its way to her big brother because Johnny went for Blocker in a big way after school.

  It was down on bottom field, well away from the eyes of any teachers, and it was almost over by the time Ben and I got there.

  Johnny was a rugby player and a bit of a tough nut, but Blocker was, well, Blocker. Johnny ended up in North Shore hospital with a dislocated shoulder.

  Blocker had put two members of the same family in hospital within a week. I hope he felt proud.

  Johnny never told on Blocker though. He never told his parents or any of the teachers just who had beaten him up. I suppose he couldn’t.

  After all, he had started it.

  TWENTY-THREE

  DUMBO GUMBO

  There were three main groups of kids at Glenfield College: the popular kids, the regular kids and the rest of us. The leftovers.

  Ben and I fell squarely into the third category and so, I suppose, did Erica, although she clearly belonged in the first category.

  But things change rapidly with kids our age, and Ben and I somehow leapfrogged the middle group and jumped straight into the first. Not by choice I
might add, but we were suddenly on the A list.

  There were no secrets at Glenfield.

  Ben sent Johnny an anonymous Get Well card in the hospital, and Johnny must have been surprised when he opened it and saw the money inside.

  But I think Ben would have been even more surprised than Johnny if he had known that the envelope contained not one, but two hundred dollar bills.

  It was all very secretive, but, somehow, whispers echoed along corridors and skimmed across the concrete of the courtyards. Ben was widely applauded, partly for his heroism in rescuing the girl, but mostly for his humility in wanting neither reward nor recognition for his deed.

  All I had done was to take the school bully down a notch or two, but it was enough to award me school legend status. The school grapevine had heard about Blocker’s missing money and, perhaps because of the GWF, guessed I had something to do with it.

  Tom Prebble came up to me in the hall foyer and shook my hand. ‘Good on ya,’ he said, with a knowing wink.

  I started to ask what he was talking about, but he just tapped his nose with his finger and walked on.

  I hoped Blocker wouldn’t come to the same conclusion. Still, that Robin Hood feeling was back and it was pretty cool to be popular. Strange, but very, very cool.

  It caused some problems, though, and I actually found myself regretting all the attention. Here was I, trying to plan the crime of the century and, suddenly, I was an object of attention wherever I went.

  On Friday I asked Erica out to the movies. Not via text (I had decided against that idea) but in person.

  She accepted immediately and seemed very excited at the idea of going to the movies. With me. Jacob John Smith.

  The fact that the most beautiful girl in school was excited at the idea of going on a date with me did wonders for my ego, I can tell you.

  After that, we started texting each other regularly. Never during class though, which would risk having your phone confiscated. And I never kept any of the text messages. I deleted them as soon as I received them, fearing they would fall into the wrong hands.

  I did keep all of Blocker’s texts, thinking that they might one day be used in evidence against him.

  That turned out to be a big mistake, but how was I to know?

  Blocker had his suspicions about the hundred dollar note, I was sure of that, and my fears were confirmed when he suddenly upped the intimidation level.

  I was leaving school on my own, as Ben was at a student council meeting, when I noticed Blocker and Phil standing outside the gates. Waiting. For me.

  I ignored them and walked straight past. Two strides later, I realised they were following me. Not just following, shadowing, half a pace behind. I could almost feel Blocker’s cheesy breath on the back of my neck.

  I tired of this after a few metres, stepped to the side and stopped to let them past.

  They stopped in sync with me, and waited, right behind me. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. I just waited a while, then started off again.

  Phil and Blocker followed, right at my heels.

  It sounds stupid the way I’ve described it, like a kids’ game. But it wasn’t. It was terrifying. I felt that any moment there would be a smashing blow to the back of my head or a paralysing kick to my kidneys.

  I tried to use my power, but it had no effect. Either they were too determined or I was too unnerved to concentrate properly.

  They said nothing until we reached my front gate. Dad was hammering away on some old piece of furniture in the garage and Gumbo came rushing out, barking like a mad thing.

  He jumped up on me, slobbering like crazy, and knocked me back a step. I collided with Blocker, who shoved me off with a grunt.

  ‘What a nice doggie,’ he said, with a mile-wide sneer in his voice.

  I couldn’t help but glance around, and something about the way Blocker was looking at Gumbo sent a chill right through me.

  Gumbo must have picked it up, too, because he took one look at Blocker and growled, a low rumbly sound from deep in his throat. His lips drew back, baring his teeth in a vicious snarl. I’d never seen him do that in his entire life.

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

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Phil said urgently.

  Blocker acted as if he wasn’t scared.

  ‘Come on, Gumbo,’ I said quickly and grabbed him by the collar.

  Blocker began to back away. ‘Gumbo and Dumbo,’ he laughed, as he and Phil retreated cautiously. ‘Dumbo and Gumbo.’

  That was it. That was all it took. Gumbo broke free from my grip and charged at Blocker.

  Blocker and Phil spun around and ran for their lives.

  They sprinted down the road with their schoolbags flying out behind them. Gumbo lunged along after them, barking and growling, and I ran along behind yelling, ‘Gumbo, come back!’ It must have looked quite a sight.

  Gumbo couldn’t catch them; he was old, and his legs tired quickly. Pretty soon I had him, and we walked back home, while Blocker jeered at us and made rude signs from the safety of the far side of the main road.

  Ben rang me about half an hour later, excited out of his brain. ‘You know that photo we took of the lightning strike?’

  ‘The photo you took …’

  ‘Well … yeah. It was entered in the annual Sunday Star Times photo competition and it won the junior section!’

  ‘Fantastic!’

  ‘It’s going to be printed in the paper!’

  ‘Good on ya.’

  ‘It’ll be huge. Half the back page of the first section.’

  ‘Well done, mate!’ I was genuinely pleased for him.

  But I still had a few problems of my own to contend with.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WILL BENDER

  The door opened slowly into a room filled with unimaginable treasures.

  ‘Come,’ had been the single word response to my hesitant knock.

  Mr Saltham’s office was at the back of the old hall, beneath what had once been the stage. School mythology said that nobody had ever seen Old Sea Salt’s office and lived, so I hoped I would be the first. To survive I mean.

  On every available space there were marvels. An antique naval globe shared space with an ancient sextant. A brass compass sat next to a plaque with a photo of a large navy ship of some kind. One shelf held a painstakingly detailed model of a sailing ship, the Victory, according to the name on its side. Hanging on a chain from the ceiling was one of those old-fashioned metal diver’s helmets with the big round faceplates.

  I had to skirt around a huge brass telescope on a wooden tripod to approach Mr Saltham’s desk. As I did, I noticed a photo of a very young Mr Saltham receiving a medal from the Queen of England.

  I didn’t know much about the royal navy, and even less about their medals, but I didn’t have to be a genius to work out that, if the medal was being presented by the Queen, then it was a serious piece of tin.

  I suddenly realised there was a lot more to Old Sea Salt than just the grumpy old guy who ran the Glenfield College gym.

  His desk was covered with more of the same: miniature ensigns; a tiny brass cannon paperweight; and a clock shaped like the steering wheel of an old sailing ship.

  Mr Saltham hadn’t left the navy at all. He had brought it with him.

  ‘Jacob,’ he said, and I was surprised he used my first name. Saltham called everyone by their surname, and I, if he noticed me at all, was usually ‘Smith’.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said nervously. ‘I was hoping for a word.’

  He stared at me and did not invite me to sit, although there was a spare seat in front of the desk.

  I began, ‘I, er …’

  ‘I know what it’s about, Jacob,’ he said. ‘And I was wondering when you’d show up.’

  This was not going as I had expected it to. He sounded almost friendly.

  ‘The other day you said something … I may have heard you wrong �
�� but something that sounded a little like: “Stay out of my head.” I wondered what you meant.’

  ‘You know damn well what I meant.’

  ‘I um …’

  ‘Don’t you try any more of your psychic tricks on me. You only got me that first time because I wasn’t expecting it. I hadn’t seen it for a few years.’

  I sat down in shocked silence.

  ‘You mean there are others …?’

  Saltham began to laugh. ‘So, you thought you were the only one! That’s rich. You all like to think you are so special.’

  ‘How many others are there?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ was Saltham’s testy response. ‘I don’t keep a register of these things. I’ve seen perhaps four or five kids come through the school with your sort of ability. “Will Benders” I call you, because of the way you try to make other people do what you want. Most of them were just like you, although there was one young lady who had an incredible ability.’

  He paused for a moment, remembering, then shot back to me. ‘Let me guess. You can suggest things; you can put thoughts into people’s minds and make them think they’ve thought of it themselves. But you can’t convince someone to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise or if they’re determined not to do it. You couldn’t make someone jump off a cliff, for example. Sound pretty much right?’

  I nodded. As far as I knew he had it right on the button.

  ‘If you’ve seen four or five of us …’ It felt weird saying us. ‘Then there must be others, in other schools, in other countries …’

  ‘Thousands, I’d say.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. We’d have heard about it. It would have been on the news or in Time or CNN or something.’

  Old Sea Salt smiled at me. ‘And how many people have you told?’

  I said nothing. He was right, of course.

  He continued. ‘Besides, I reckon half of them don’t even know they have the power. Not unless they’ve consciously tried to use it.’

  My head was spinning with all this information.

  ‘You can always pick them,’ he was saying. I tried to focus on his words. ‘People in the news, in positions of power, people who seem to have a strange effect on the people around them. Think about it. You’ll come up with a whole list.’