by Jo Simmons
‘Nooo!’ shouted Jonny, throwing his arms wide, trying to create a human shield between Mervyn and the water that was leaping up from the truck’s wheels in a huge wet arc.
The water seemed to move in slow motion. It crashed into Jonny first, then splatted down on Mervyn behind him.
Jonny wiped the water from his eyes and turned. Where was Mervyn?
‘Down here!’ Mervyn said in a squeaky whisper.
He was lying on the pavement, flapping like a fish out of water, in full merboy mode. ‘Cover my tail, quick, before anybody sees!’
Jonny ripped off his top and flung it over Mervyn, but it didn’t cover the tail completely. The pointy end was still in plain sight. Quickly, Jonny lay across it.
‘What are you doing?’ Mervyn asked.
‘Hiding your tail and drying it with my body!’
While Jonny squashed and warmed the tail, Mervyn began rubbing at its sides with the top.
‘Come on, come on!’ Mervyn muttered, as his legs refused to reappear.
Suddenly, Jonny felt a pain in his back. He turned to see an old man, who had just come out of the doctor’s surgery. He had a wooden walking stick, which he was using to prod Jonny.
‘What are you two up to?’ the man asked. ‘Fighting?’
‘No, we’re, we’re – what are we doing? We’re dancing!’ shouted Jonny (it was all he could come up with in the heat of the moment).
‘Funny sort of dance,’ said the man. ‘You’re right in the way. I could have tripped over you! Clear off!’
‘No thanks!’ said Jonny. ‘We’re having too much fun. Besides, we’re in the finals of the national pavement sitting-down dancing competition next week. We need to practise.’
‘Go and practise somewhere else,’ said the old man, and muttered something about how this wouldn’t have happened in his day.
Jonny didn’t get up straight away. He didn’t dare! He couldn’t tell whether Mervyn’s legs had returned. The old man prodded Jonny with his stick again, but Jonny refused to budge. Ted often accused him of being slow, but right now Jonny was in no rush to reveal that his new brother was a merboy. He had to stall the man …
‘Could you just step over us?’ Jonny asked.
‘With my knees?’ huffed the old man. ‘You must be batty! Now come on, clear the path!’
Slowly and carefully, but mostly just slowly, Jonny stood up.
‘About time,’ said the old man. Not ‘Wow, a mermaid!’ or ‘Help! Police! A fish-kid lying on the pavement!’ Thank cheeses! Mervyn’s legs were back.
‘That was close!’ said Jonny.
‘A bit too close!’ said Mervyn, standing up unsteadily. ‘Can we go home now?’
CHAPTER TEN
THE SEA, THE SEA
Mervyn was quiet when the boys got home. Jonny felt sorry for him. Having to worry that his legs were going to turn into a fishtail every time he went out, causing mass panic and major embarrassment, must be hard. But in among all this, Jonny also felt a tiny bit worried for himself too. What if Mervyn went full merboy again? And again? Jonny wasn’t sure he could think up enough clever excuses for why he was lying on top of his brother. The pavement-dancing competition was genius, but what if he couldn’t come up with something as good next time?
These were difficult thoughts, and Jonny wasn’t a fan of difficult thoughts. He preferred thoughts about doughnuts, pugs that wore Superman costumes, or being able to do magic. So, to chase the difficult thoughts away, Jonny suggested a trip to the seaside. Perhaps being near the sea would perk Mervyn up a bit?
His mum agreed to take them. Mervyn looked pleased, Jonny felt excited and Widget the dog … Well, he had no idea where he was going, but he hopped enthusiastically into the back seat of the car and sat between the two boys.
The clouds had blown away by the time they arrived at the seaside, and the boys ran happily on to the sand, with Widget barking and leaping between them. Jonny and Mervyn built a castle with a deep moat, and then went to look for shells to decorate it.
‘The sea is so beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Mervyn, staring at it like he was in a dream.
‘S’pose so,’ said Jonny. ‘Nice and big and wet.’
Mervyn started making those strange squeaking sounds Jonny had heard him make in the bath. Like a dolphin crossed with a piglet.
Jonny threw a pebble into the sea and Widget bounded in after it. Then, suddenly, there was another huge splash. Mervyn had plunged in too.
‘It’s all right,’ Jonny called. ‘Widget can swim!’
But Mervyn wasn’t rescuing the dog. Mervyn was off!
Jonny stared out to sea. Finally, he saw a head surface a long way out and a tiny arm waving. Then, nothing.
‘He’s gone!’ said Jonny, half upset, half outraged. How could he swim off like that?
Then he noticed Mervyn’s corduroy trousers on the sand. He picked them up. There was a note sticking out of one pocket.
Dear Jonny,
If you are reading this, it’s because I have decided to rip off my trousers, jump into the waves and go away to sea. Sorry. I will miss you. You were a great brother. You were kind. You tried to protect me from the spray this morning and even went into a pond to rescue me (which was a tiny bit stupid but kind of mer- vellous!). So, thanks loads. I won’t forget you. If I can help you in the future, just call my name! (By the way, I may not hear you because the sea is very big, but feel free to try …)
Mervyn
Jonny tucked the note into his pocket and walked back to his mum.
‘Where’s your friend?’ she asked.
‘He had to go home,’ said Jonny.
‘Shame,’ she said. ‘He seemed nice.’
He was nice, thought Jonny, feeling a bit sad. But he understood. The call of the sea was too strong for Mervyn. He had to live there. It wasn’t fair for a merboy to live on land. It wasn’t natural. It would be like asking Jonny to live up a tree or underground or in Hemel Hempstead. All wrong!
Then Jonny remembered Sibling Swap and suddenly glowed with excitement. Mervyn may have gone, but there were lots more brothers where he came from. Well, not exactly where he came from. Jonny didn’t want another merboy, but what were the chances of that happening? Zero! No, for sure, the next brother would be happiest on land and – Jonny could feel it – absolutely perfect.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SECOND TIME LUCKY?
Jonny emailed the Sibling Swap offices when he got home to tell them that Mervyn had gone away to sea and to ask for a new brother. He soon got an email back from one of the Swap operatives.
‘Good news, Swapper! We have a perfect match for you. We’re sure this Swap won’t flop! He will arrive at 6 p.m.’
‘Six p.m.?’ said Jonny. ‘That’s two hours away. I better get ready!’
Then he realised that he didn’t really know what getting ready involved, so he went and had a little nap instead. His best friend, George, popped in after that, and the two boys drank some milk together in the kitchen.
‘How’s the new brother going?’ George asked, looking a tiny bit anxious. ‘Has he arrived yet?’
‘Been and gone, I’m afraid,’ said Jonny. ‘Loved your uncle’s fish fingers, though. Ate millions of them!’
‘Good!’ said George. ‘I’m sure I can get you some more. He’s still got a massive load of them at his warehouse. I’m using it now for one of my projects, and there are freezers stuffed with fish fingers there.’
‘Nah, you’re OK,’ said Jonny. ‘I’m over fish fingers. Ooh, is that the time? You’d better go, George. I’ve requested another brother from Sibling Swap. He’ll be here soon.’
‘Can I meet him?’ George asked.
‘Soon,’ said Jonny, ushering George out of the kitchen and opening the front door. ‘Once he’s settled in.’
‘OK, but let me know how it’s going, won’t you?’ said George.
‘Yeah, yeah, sure,’ said Jonny. ‘Bye!’
Then 6 p.m. arrived. The doo
rbell rang, but when Jonny opened the door there was nobody there. Well, nobody on the front step, anyway. There was, however, a tall, skinny boy with small dark eyes standing on Jonny’s garden wall, looking eagerly up and down the street. His arms were hanging down in front of his body, his fingers pointing neatly towards the ground, and his nose was twitching busily.
‘Hello? Were you sent by Sibling Swap?’ Jonny asked the boy.
The boy just squeaked and then half ran, half pounced into the house.
Different, thought Jonny. But different can be good!
He found the boy in the kitchen, standing on a chair, staring out of the window.
‘Not much of a view, I’m afraid,’ said Jonny. ‘Just the back of the houses on the next street. What’s your name?’
The boy squeaked again, jumped down and showed Jonny a tag which was hanging around his neck.
It said, simply, HARI.
‘Hari,’ said Jonny, pronouncing it ‘Harry’.
Squeak squeak. The boy looked irritated.
‘Hah-reee?’ Jonny tried again.
The boy squeaked, then ran happily around the room on all fours.
‘Nice one!’ Jonny said, watching him. ‘I did put on my form that I like messing about, after all, so you’re bang on there. Can I join you? What are we pretending to be? Badgers? I do a great badger impression. Ted hates it! You’d never catch him leaping about like this in full animal mode. Wow, you’re good, but check this out!’
Jonny sprung down on all fours and the two boys scampered about for a while, until Jonny sat down on the floor, puffing.
‘Do you want a drink, Hari?’ he asked the boy, who so far had said nothing. But Hari didn’t seem to be listening. He’d spotted a daddy-long-legs butting itself pointlessly against the ceiling. Quick as a flash he pounced, caught it in his mouth and began munching. One long insect leg poked out. It seemed to be waving at Jonny. This is taking pretending to be an animal a bit far, he thought. It was straying into flat-out weird territory.
‘What are you?’ Jonny asked, staring. Hari rubbed his cheeks with his hands, like a creature cleaning its whiskers, then came and stood next to Jonny. He stood really close and really straight, huddling against his new brother.
‘Are you a human cat?’ Jonny asked. ‘A weasel kid? A badger boy?’
Hari wouldn’t look at him. He just stood there, pressed against him, surveying the room. Then Jonny had an idea. He ran upstairs and grabbed his encyclopaedia of animals from his bookcase. Back in the kitchen, he began flicking through it.
‘Dugongs and manatees, no; great cats, no; lemurs, no,’ said Jonny, flicking quickly. ‘Hang on, maybe you are a lemur, or, I mean, pretending to be one?’
He showed a picture to Hari, who squeaked twice.
‘What does that mean? No or yes?’
Hari began scratching his ear with his foot.
‘Let’s test this out. We need to find a way to speak,’ said Jonny. ‘Hari! Your name is Hari, right?’
Hari squeaked a single squeak.
‘So one squeak is yes, and two is no,’ said Jonny. ‘Are you a lemur?’
Hari squeaked twice.
‘Fine. Not a lemur,’ said Jonny, continuing to flick through the pages. ‘Elephant shrew?’
Two squeaks.
‘European hamster?’
Two squeaks.
‘Crested porcupine? Grey climbing mouse? Botta’s pocket gopher?’
Two more squeaks, then Hari grabbed the book, flicked through it rapidly and passed it back to Jonny.
‘Meerkat!’ shrieked Jonny. ‘Of course! All that standing up straight. It says here, ummm, yes, here we go: “One animal in the group stands on guard as sentinel.” That’s you! You’re on guard, aren’t you?’
One squeak.
‘I get it!’ said Jonny. ‘Or do I?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
RAISED BY . . .
Jonny gazed at Hari for a while, thinking.
‘OK, I’ll admit it, I’m not sure I do get it,’ he said. ‘I mean, sorry to mention this and please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not actually a meerkat, are you?’
Hari blinked.
‘You act like a meerkat, sure, but I don’t see any fur, and you are kind of big for one,’ Jonny went on.
Hari pointed at the picture of a family of meerkats. Then he ran over to the bookshelf where some photos were lined up. Hari pointed at a photo of Jonny’s mum and then at the adult meerkat in the book.
‘That’s your mum?’ said Jonny, trying not to make a ‘you’re frying my brains right now’ face.
‘Squeak!’
‘Were you somehow, maybe, possibly, kind of raised by meerkats?’ Jonny asked.
Another single squeak from Hari, who then rolled on his back happily before hopping up on to the chair and staring out of the window.
Jonny tried to take all this in. He had wanted a new brother, it’s true. Someone quite different to Ted, yes. But there was ‘quite different’ and then there was ‘a boy who thinks he is a meerkat different.’ Yes, it would be pretty mad and exciting to have a boy who was raised by meerkats for a brother, but Jonny couldn’t help thinking that this wasn’t really what he’d signed up for. And before he realised he was speaking aloud, he was speaking aloud.
‘This wasn’t really what I signed up for,’ he said.
Hari didn’t reply. Something had caught his eye outside. The sandpit!
Leaping off the chair, he opened the back door and zoomed out into the garden. Jonny hadn’t played in the sandpit for about a year, and it was full of leaves and, quite possibly, fox poops, but Hari didn’t seem to care. He started excavating with his two hands, spraying sand out through his legs. He was trying to build a tunnel, but every time he climbed down it, it collapsed. He was too big! Jonny guessed that this must have happened back home, wherever Hari came from – meerkat world. He’d got too big for the underground meerkat houses and so here he was, attempting to live in a regular human home.
Jonny joined Hari in the garden and, with a spade, tried to make the tunnel bigger, but there just wasn’t enough sand and they both gave up after a while.
‘Are you hungry after all that digging?’ Jonny asked him. He ran back into the kitchen and brought Hari some bread, but Hari wasn’t interested.
‘You have to eat,’ said Jonny, feeling concerned. ‘All right, I know, let’s go on a bug hunt.’
The two boys poked about in the bushes for a bit. Hari nibbled a worm and Jonny caught another daddy-long-legs and passed it to him. He looked away as Hari gobbled it down.
Quietly, Jonny sat back in the sandpit and built a little castle. Though Hari would probably never do something like that, he definitely needed sand – and lots more than Jonny had – so he could build the tunnel of his dreams. Perhaps it wouldn’t be right for Hari living here. He needed a brother in the desert perhaps. Or one who lived right next to a beach … Jonny went back inside and opened his laptop.
He emailed Sibling Swap, explaining the situation. He liked Hari, he said, but wasn’t sure how they could really be brothers who rode their bikes around and scoffed doughnuts together. Hari seemed to prefer bugs. A Swap operative emailed back.
‘Greetings, Swapper! We’re sorry your latest brother was not massively suitable. We will hop on to arranging a new Swap! A replacement will be with you in the morning.’
Oh well, Jonny thought. He felt a weensy bit guilty about swapping Hari so quickly, but he was impatient to find his perfect brother match. He had to be out there, didn’t he? Of course! Jonny knew it!
Hari didn’t want to come in for dinner (he was snacking on a beetle instead), and Jonny couldn’t persuade him to sleep indoors, so he took him a blanket then went upstairs to bed.
When Jonny woke the next morning, he looked out of his bedroom window. The blanket was lying on the grass. The sandpit was empty. Hari had gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE PAST PARTICIPATING
Jonny star
ed at the empty sandpit for a few moments, and then tiptoed out of his room. It was very early, his mum was in bed, but a sound made him pause on the stairs. It was a burp! A huge one!
He only knew one person who burped like that!
‘Ted?’ Jonny whispered.
Was he home?
Jonny peeped into the kitchen. There was no one there. He felt a tiny flash of disappointment, which was odd. It lasted just a second, though. He shrugged and poured himself some milk.
Back in his room, he was lying in bed with his eyes closed when suddenly goosebumps prickled on his neck. He had the very strong and extremely unpleasant sense that he was being watched.
He told himself that was silly. Hari had left, Ted wasn’t here and his mum was fast asleep. But the unnerving feeling carried on and …
Breathing! Jonny could definitely hear breathing.
Now the goosebumps spread down his arms like a pimply Mexican wave. Slowly, slowly, he opened his eyes and …
‘MEUURRGGHH . . .!’ Jonny said, in a half-screaming, half-choking sort of way.
A huge man was standing next to his bed with hands on hips and legs apart. He had a greyish look about him, but maybe that was just the weak early morning light.
The man leaned towards Jonny, his jewelled cape falling about his broad shoulders. A finger adorned with a giant ruby ring was pointing straight at him. He leaned so close that Jonny could make out a few grey hairs in his gingery beard and see his small eyes glinting angrily. Then Jonny noticed that he wasn’t so much standing as floating, just a few centimetres off the floor.
‘BOO!’ said the man, before laughing so much the feather in his cap joggled. Then he looked around the room as if he had friends with him. There was no one there. Perhaps he was used to an audience?
‘Did you see that?’ he asked. ‘Nearly peed his breeches! Look at him gawking! Come along, young squire! Be a man!’