Kid Normal

by Greg James

  “Good morning, Lord Nektar,” said Knox smoothly as he sat down and made himself comfortable.

  Although this was only his first day as Nektar’s second-in-command, it didn’t appear that way. Knox gave off an air of confidence and a smell of aftershave that made Nektar’s antennae twitch.

  “I thought we might discuss my—sorry, our plans,” Knox began.

  “Ah yes, number two, the plans . . . ,” said Nektar, greedily rubbing his hands together. “I have an incredibly evil idea.”

  “Go on . . . ,” Knox coaxed him.

  “What is the thing we hate most in the world, more than anything?” asked Nektar.

  “Anyone who stands in our way,” replied Knox.

  “Yes, I suppose we hate them quite a lot,” Nektar conceded. “But what do we really, really hate?”

  There was an awkwardly long pause, as if they were in a video that kept buffering.

  “Well?” snapped Nektar.

  “I’m sorry, your waspishness, I assumed you were about to answer your own question,” said Knox.

  “I WAS about to answer my own question,” said Nektar.

  Nobody said anything for another ten seconds.

  “PICNICS!” said Nektar finally, at the top of his voice.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Knox hesitantly. “It sounded like you said ‘picnics.’”

  “Yes. I did. PICNICS. PICNICS! PICNICS! PICNICS! PIC . . . NIIIIIICS! I just love ruining them. So my evil plan is this: spoil as many picnics as possible!”

  As you might have realized, the wasp DNA that had become fused with Nektar’s brain had begun interfering more and more with his thoughts as the months since his accident had gone by. It had started off with the need to sting people and a great love for fizzy drinks. Then later, he’d found it more and more difficult to get out of an open doorway without banging into the frame. More recently, as the wasp part of his mind had grown yet more powerful, he had started developing an all-consuming obsession with picnics, barbecues, and, indeed, outdoor dining of any kind. The thought of other people enjoying sweet treats in the sunshine filled his whole body with rage.

  “Picnics?” inquired Knox gently.

  “Yes, picnics. That’s my first plan. Ruin all picnics. But that, Mr. Knox, is just the beginning.”

  Thank goodness, thought Knox to himself. That was starting to sound a bit stupid for a moment there. Out loud, he asked, “And so what is the next phase of the plan?”

  “I want to . . .” Nektar gestured with a long, spindly finger to make Knox come closer to him. “I want to . . . GET INTO SOMEBODY’S ICE CREAM! So when they lick, I’ll BE THERE! HAHAHAHAHA!”

  Knox tried to respond by raising a hand, but the loony wasp was clearly on a roll.

  “Not only that! I want to crawl around someone’s glass when they’re having a drink and creep about under a trash-can lid and then pop out when they lift it. ‘HELLO!’ I’d say!”

  “Sir—” piped up Knox, but again to no avail.

  “I want to make a papery house in someone’s attic and live there ALL SUMMER and just buzz around a bit whenever someone pops up to get the suitcases.”

  Knox hoped Nektar was done. “Right,” he said. “Of course, my lord, all these things are achievable. I am with you one hundred percent. However, may I make a small suggestion?”

  “Has it got anything to do with picnics, ice cream, trash cans, drinks, or attics?” replied Nektar.

  “Indirectly, yes. Yes, it does. It involves ALL those things,” said Knox.

  “Tell me more, you smart-briefcased devil.”

  “So,” said Knox, ignoring Nektar’s second odd briefcase-based compliment in as many minutes, “we have mind-control helmets. We have an entire robotics factory at our disposal. We could attempt to take over the country.”

  “Oh. Why on earth would we want to do that?” whined Nektar.

  “Don’t you see, sir? If I—sorry, we—take over the country, I—I mean us, argh—WE then have control of . . . everything.”

  Nektar looked up slowly, his crispy neck clicking as he did so. “Everything?” he asked hungrily.

  “Everything, sir,” Knox confirmed.

  “Even . . . picnics?”

  “Oh yes, sir, especially picnics. Help me take over the country and you can ruin ALL picnics, forever.”

  “And . . . can I get in ice cream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trash cans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Attics?”

  “OH, FLIPPING YES! I mean, yes, sir. Of course, sir,” said Knox, almost losing his composure. But luckily Nektar was too excited to notice. “I will re-task the robotics unit to begin construction of more mind-control helmets straight away. We have Penny Percival’s spy drones all ready to deploy. I can send them out across the area looking for people to mind-control—we can pinpoint the most powerful and intelligent—and use them to begin constructing our own army.”

  “Excellent work, Knox!” said Nektar. “I think you’re right. It’s time to lure a few likely candidates into our little honey trap!”

  “That’s bees,” sighed Knox.

  “Knox, unleash the drones!” yelled Nektar dramatically.

  He found that he’d really enjoyed shouting that. So much so that he said it again, even louder: “UNLEASH THE DRONES!”

  Never one for subtlety, the giant wasp felt like it needed maybe one more.

  “UNLEASH TH—”

  Knox disagreed. “Right away, sir,” he said, sweeping out of the room.

  Nektar wandered over to the window to survey the streets and houses in the distance that would soon be under his control. He nodded to himself, and felt it appropriate to murmur his new catchphrase again, changing it slightly to make it seem more final.

  “Yes, unleash those drones.”

  10

  Hilda’s Cape

  “RIIIIIGHT! SHUUUUT IIIIIIIIIT!” bellowed Mr. Flash.

  Murph was three weeks into his time at The School, and the one thing he had learned conclusively was that Mr. Flash liked to start the day with a really good bellow.

  For the youngest students, every day started with an hour of Capability Training, the one lesson Murph had absolutely no chance of being any good at. He was getting a little bit sick of being reminded of this fact every single morning.

  “So, with the exception of Kid Normal over there, this is the part of the day where we try and hone your Capes and get you ready to play ball, so to speak.” Mr. Flash seemed to think of most things in life as a game or match of some kind. “As I explained during the first week of school,” he continued, “your first year at The School is the only time you’ll be having CT lessons all together. In the summer, we’ll be splitting you into two groups based on how useful your Cape is and how well you can control it. Separating the wheat from the chuff, as it were.”

  “It’s ‘chaff,’ not ‘chuff,’” said a soft voice from the side of the classroom. Murph looked across and saw that Mr. Drench was sitting there. Murph recognized him as the small man he’d seen the evening he and his mom had first encountered Mr. Souperman. He was easy to miss, sitting silently against the wall, his fluffy hair not quite hiding large, slightly pointed ears.

  Mr. Flash paused, looking irritably across at his colleague. “Ah, yes, the chaff, of course. One of your specialities, Mr. Drench.” Mr. Flash turned back toward the class. “By the way, Mr. Drench over here is going to share custody of you lot from now on, and then next year he’ll look after those of you unable to—how shall we say?—spread the mustard. The winners will continue with me,” Mr. Flash declared.

  “It’s ‘cut the mustard,’” said Drench under his breath, unable to get a word in edgewise.

  “Well, Drench, we’ve got quite a few candidates for you here, so why don’t you tell us what your group’s all about?” Mr. Flash continued gruffly.

  “Certainly,” replied Mr. Drench with a fake thin-lipped smile.

  He stood up, although you could
barely tell. He was a mole-like man, short and stubby with rounded shoulders visible underneath his horrible tweed jacket. He pushed a pair of small, round eyeglasses farther up his nose and began speaking.

  “As Mr. Flash was saying, I’ll be taking most of you for CT next year. It’ll be my job to make sure that once you have finished school you are able to hide your Capes as well as possible in real life. The world’s a dangerous place for someone with a conspicuous or volatile Cape—there are people out there who would love to ridicule you publicly, or worse still, use your Cape for evil.”

  Hilda’s hand shot up.

  “Yes, Ms. Baker?” replied Mr. Drench.

  “How will you decide which of us go in Mr. Flash’s class?” she asked.

  “It’s quite simple. It all depends on how you perform in the P-CAT.”

  Murph, baffled, started to hoot, before realizing no one else apart from Mary and Hilda would get the joke. “Whooo . . . who can tell me what the P-CAT is, please?” he said.

  “I can,” said Mr. Flash, jumping to his large feet again. “The P-CAT is the Practical Capability Aptitude Test, and it happens every spring. On that day you’ll be pushed to your absolute limits, and those who prevail will join the highfliers in my class. The ‘remnants,’ as I like to call them, will be with old Drenchy over here, learning how to hide.” He spat the last word out viciously, making it very clear what he thought about the kids that ended up in Mr. Drench’s class. “And that’s all I’m gonna tell you about the P-CAT for now because the first rule of P-CAT is . . . if you ask me about it, I’ll tell you to shut up.”

  Mary was feeling extra mischievous today. “Sir?” she began.

  “Yes?” Mr. Flash snapped.

  “About the P-CAT—”

  “SHUT UP!” he barked.

  Mary put her head down so Mr. Flash couldn’t see her chuckling. As she looked around for an ally, Murph caught her eye and made a face. Meanwhile, Mr. Drench rolled his eyes and slid back down into his seat.

  “Anyway, you little squirts, you’ll find out more about that on the day. Until then, I just need to see that you’re making progress in the way you control your Cape and make sure that you’re able to keep it hidden from prying eyes. Right, then, who’s going to go first today?”

  “I will, sir,” said a rather confident young man by the name of Charlie.

  “Ah yes, Charlie,” replied Mr. Flash, “announce your Cape to the class . . .”

  “Eye-heat beams, sir.”

  “Right. The technical term for Charlie’s Cape is, of course, Visually Controlled Thermal Concentration, or VCTC for short.” Mr. Flash squeaked the letters onto the blackboard as he spoke. “A very handy Cape this, folks. Maybe even one the Alliance might find useful if developed to a really high level. I remember a time when this Cape got them out of a sticky situation. Or, should I say, chilly situation. The Ice Fiend Invasion of ’92 was no match for my old pal Doctor Thermo, who soon saw them off with a couple of stares. Great days . . . great days. Anyway. Anyone got a muffin?”

  What a weird story, Murph thought. But eager as he was to hear more about the Ice Fiends, he suddenly realized that for the first time ever, he could actually contribute something to a CT lesson. Namely, a muffin. His mom had been given a baking book for her birthday, and the best consequence of this so far was the freshly baked break-time muffin she’d given Murph every morning for the past week. This was his chance.

  Murph’s hands shot up in the air, holding the muffin aloft like a baby lion. Although we should point out for legal reasons that it was nothing whatsoever like a scene from the film The Lion King.

  “Chuck it over here, then, Cooper,” barked Mr. Flash, reaching out and catching Murph’s tossed muffin. He set it down on the center of his wooden desk.

  “Let’s see what you’re made of, Charlie,” he said. “Do your worst.”

  Charlie stood up. The class fell silent. He placed a finger on each temple, as if he was about to screw them into his head. He bared his teeth like the evil uncle of a noble lion prince—which, again, had nothing to do with The Lion King. He widened his eyes and stared intently at the muffin.

  Gradually, it began to smoke.

  Murph looked around. The rest of his classmates were openmouthed and expectant. Murph was just annoyed; he’d been looking forward to that muffin. It was a blueberry one.

  The plume of smoke grew larger. There was a sudden loud pop as one of the blueberries burst in the intense heat, and then the whole thing was engulfed in flames as the paper around it caught fire. It was well and truly an ex-muffin.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, how awful for you, young Cooper,” guffawed Mr. Flash, seeing the expression on his face. “Don’t look at me like that”—Murph was looking at him like that—“IT’S MUFFIN TO DO WITH ME!”

  He laughed uproariously and cocked his head at a tall girl in the second row with stark white-blond hair: “Sort it out, Miss Thompson.”

  With a flick of her long hair, the girl got to her feet and gestured toward the flames as if to say “stop.” There was a sharp crackling noise as the muffin was immediately covered in frost.

  “Oh, that’s really coming along, isn’t it. Very nice indeed, Elsa,” Mr. Flash congratulated her. “See that, everybody? True talent, the both of you. I’ll certainly hope to see you in my class next year. And thank you, Cooper, for supplying the muffin. Not a complete waste of space, are you, after all? Just make sure you always bring a selection of pastries from now on.”

  The class all laughed. Elsa, who, we should point out, has absolutely nothing to do with the film Frozen, sat back down with a smug expression. There was a tiny tinkling noise as Murph’s muffin fell to the floor and smashed.

  “Cheers, everyone,” Murph said, deflated. And hungry.

  “Right, you horrible bunch, who’s next? Who haven’t we heard from for a while?” asked Mr. Flash.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Murph noticed a slightly plump arm waving about in the far corner of the classroom. It was Hilda.

  Murph couldn’t wait to see how she got on in CT with her truly unique Cape.

  “Come on, then, Ms. Baker, let’s get this over with,” Flash said.

  Hilda shuffled up to the front of the class, her cheeks glowing as she side-stepped the puddle that used to be Murph’s muffin.

  “Now, the Capes we’ve seen so far today are useful ones,” said Mr. Flash, going back into lecturing mode. “Hilda, however”—he gestured at Hilda, who was hopping anxiously from foot to foot—“has, like many of you at The School, what we describe as an ‘anomalous Cape.’ Or to put it another way, a completely useless one. Hilda, please demonstrate.”

  Murph knew what was about to happen, and he couldn’t wait.

  Undeterred by Flash’s criticism, Hilda sprang into a sort of judo combat stance, with both her palms stretched out in front of her. She screwed her face up in concentration and, with a minuscule whinnying noise, her two tiny horses popped into being and cantered across the tabletop.

  The class erupted with joy, with many students immediately grabbing their cell phones to try and take pictures. Mr. Flash rapidly regained control of the room with the internationally recognized teacher noise, which consists of going “ERRRRRRRR!” at the top of your voice.

  “ERRRRRRRR!” thundered Mr. Flash at a lung-busting volume.

  The class fell silent.

  Mr. Drench had risen to his feet again. “This is exactly what shouldn’t happen,” he told them earnestly in his reedy voice. “We must keep these Capes secret and away from prying eyes. You must NOT take photographs of Hilda’s horses, or anything else you see in this classroom,” he said.

  “Ha!” Mr. Flash cut in. “Imagine what people would say if they saw a picture of a small, round girl producing ridiculous small horses willy-nilly.”

  Hilda’s lower lip began to quiver.

  “They’d lock her up for being a loony!” he roared. “They’d call her a freak! A small, round, horse-producing freak! And th
ey’d be right. That’s what she is!”

  Hilda burst into tears and fled back to her desk, the horses vanishing into thin air with the tiniest of neighs.

  “And that,” continued Mr. Flash, “is why Hilda, and most of the rest of you, need to learn to control your Capes. Not so you can use them, but so you can conceal them. Hilda can live a normal life as long as she doesn’t go producing horses from her hands every time she gets a bit excited!”

  Thankfully, at that moment the bell rang, signifying the end of this onslaught for poor Hilda. Most of the class gathered up their things and disappeared into the hallway. But Murph and Mary packed up deliberately slowly so they would be the last to leave. When the classroom had emptied, they shuffled over to Hilda, who was sitting there with a glum face.

  “Don’t worry about Flash,” said Murph, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I LOVE your tiny horses. He’s just being nasty. And he wasted a good muffin.”

  “Yeah, he’s a big bully. Don’t pay them any mind. Be proud of your Cape,” Mary chimed in. “It makes you who you are.”

  Hilda looked up. Her face was wet with tears, and her nose had been doing a really impressive amount of running at the same time. She wiped her arm across her face, smearing everything into one blob of wet, post-cry slime.

  “Thanks, guys,” said Hilda, or, as she had briefly become, the Snot Monster. “I think it’s the best Cape around. Mr. Flash doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “I agree,” Murph reassured her.

  Hilda smiled. Mary and Murph helped her pack up her bag and gave her a tissue before stopping to clear up two tiny-horse “presents” that had been left on the desk.

  “Right!” said Murph. “Who wants ice cream?”

  “Great idea,” said Mary.

  “And a new muffin for Murph!” joked Hilda.

  “Yeah, and a new muffin. Stupid Mr. Flash,” he replied.

  And for the first time in months, Murph found himself actually laughing as they walked off down the hall in search of treats.