Middle School: Rafe's Aussie Adventure

  They’d stop laughing and then someone would say, “The TV!” and off they’d go once more. If one of them had literally laughed their head clean off their shoulders I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Even Biff and Barb joined in.

  Then Mom arrived. “What’s all the noise?” she asked.

  “Rafe’s making us all laugh,” Barb Coogan said. “He’s quite a joker, isn’t he?”

  Before Mom could reply, Brad turned to one of his friends. “You get that, Lachie?” he said.

  I looked around to see Brad’s friend holding up his phone and nodding. “Every last freakin’ second, Bradster,” he said. He leaned forward and high-fived Brad. “Uploading now.”

  ‘DID YOU SCARE wickle Rafey?’ Brad said in a singsong voice as he scooped the python from my bed.

  Shirley was so big it took all of Brad’s strength to lift the disgusting thing. “I wondered where you’d gone.”

  “Like you didn’t know,” I snarled.

  “Rafe!” Mom cut in before Brad could reply. She put an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t be silly, honey. You’d have to be mad to put a python in someone’s bed.”

  “We-ll …” I muttered, but Mom didn’t hear me. Perhaps it was for the best. She is usually someone who has my back, but she has this weird thing about being nice to people when you’re staying in their home. In her book, being rude to a host is a big no-no. BIG no-no.

  “Shirl wouldn’t hurt a fly, Ralph,” Biff said as Shirley draped herself around Brad’s shoulders and went to sleep. “She’s one of the family.”

  “Yeah?” I sneered. “I’m not a fly and the name’s Rafe, not Ralph. Got it, boofboy?”

  Or that’s what I would have said if I’d had a spine.

  Instead, I just kind of grunted and stared at the floor, wondering when this would be over. I’d used up most of my dignity already, and winning an argument with someone whose TV you’ve just destroyed was always going to be difficult. And Biff probably hadn’t quite forgotten about getting puked on by my mom.

  Also, I was still only wearing my yellow boxer shorts. It’s hard to get angry when all that stands between you and full-on public nudity is a scrap of thin cotton decorated with space rockets. It was chilly, too. A rain-cooled breeze was blowing in from Shark Bay and whistling right up my—

  “Awesome!” Lachie held up his phone. “Seven hundred and fifty-five hits in three minutes. Man, this clip is clocking up some serious action!”

  Everyone whooped.

  Except me—and Mom, although I think I saw the beginnings of a smile around her mouth.

  She patted me on the head. “Go and put some clothes on, sugar,” she said quietly. “Try not to take it to heart. It’ll all seem better in the morning.”

  I nodded even though I knew it wouldn’t seem better in the morning. That was just the kind of thing that moms say. Mom meant well, but she hadn’t looked deep into the shark eyes of the Coogan twins. If those androids had anything to do with it, my life would be worse in the morning. I slunk upstairs, turning back only when I heard them cackling like a bunch of hyenas in a laughing-gas factory.

  Lachie stopped howling long enough to hold up the screen of his phone toward me. “I uploaded the whole clip, man!” he yelled, tears rolling down his face. “You should check it out. It’s on completefails.com. The clip’s called ‘Classic Rafe Khatchadorkian All-Time Snake Fail’.”

  “I wouldn’t read the comments, dude,’ Belinda said, looking up from her own phone.

  I knew Belinda wasn’t being kind. She was just letting me know that no matter how bad I thought the whole snake-screaming, TV-destroying humiliation had been, it was going to be a whole lot worse once everyone else on the planet had a chance to see it.

  I left the room and stood miserably in the hallway.

  A while back I’d seen a thing on TV about a giant meteorite the size of Wyoming being on a possible collision course with Earth. If it’d hit, we’d all have been wiped out in a split second.

  Through a window set into the front door, I looked up hopefully at the Shark Bay night sky. Where was a giant meteorite when you needed one?

  THE NEXT MORNING, it was as if everything that had happened the previous night had been a bad dream. Okay, my eyes felt like I’d been rinsing them with sand, my tongue had been replaced with what tasted like a dead rat, and I had cake crumbs wedged in areas I didn’t know I had areas. But, other than that, I felt pretty good.

  Outside, the sun glinted on waves rolling onto a curving mile of gleaming white sand. Behind the beach, the town of Shark Bay sparkled in the morning sun. The sky was blue and so was the crystal-clear water.

  A pod of dolphins splashed in the surf. It was hot, but nothing like the cauldron of yesterday. Bright-green parrots screeched through the branches of the trees that edged the shimmering pool.

  Other than Brad and Belinda, who were swimming laps, the view was pretty good. This trip might work out after all, I thought.

  “Not too shabby, eh?” Leo said, and I had to agree.

  I could get used to this.

  Other than a crane lifting a Tyrannosaurus Rex off the roof of a house a couple of streets away, there wasn’t a trace of last night’s storm.

  “Back up a little there, cowboy,” Leo said. “A T-rex?”

  I jerked my head back toward the crane and saw that, despite no one in Shark Bay seeming even slightly concerned, it was actually a T-Rex being winched off the roof.

  I was an expert on T-Rexes. By which I mean that I’d seen Jurassic Park and owned a purple plastic dinosaur Grandma Dotty had given me when I was six. Like I said, an expert.

  “Oh, come on,” I muttered. “You gotta be kidding.”

  I HAD JUST opened my mouth, ready to start yelling “T-Rex!”, when my super-spidey sixth sense kicked in and I shut my mouth like a shark on a surfer’s leg. Another split second and I’d have started the day off by making a fool of myself again.

  A T-Rex in downtown Shark Bay? Nuh-uh, don’t think so.

  Not even I was dumb enough to think that Australia still had dinosaurs, no matter how bitey and weird the rest of their animal population was.

  I squinted at the crane and took a closer look. The T-Rex hung lightly from the crane, its arms and legs sticking stiffly out of the cradle wrapped around its belly. It was a fiberglass model from a nearby burger joint called Rex’s Mightee Bites.

  I nodded and wiped my brow. That had been a close call. I didn’t want to lose any more cool than I already had. After last night I had very little reserves of cool left and the last thing I needed to do was blow it all in one false T-Rex panic.

  I got dressed and went downstairs. Mom was sitting on the pool deck drinking coffee with Biff and Barb Coogan.

  “Morning, Rafe,” Mom said, smiling. “Isn’t this place great?”

  “Uh-huh.” It was the best I could do for now.

  Mom seemed to have smoothed things over with Biff. She’s good at that—smoothing things over, I mean. One of her many mom skills. Yesterday she’d hurled chunks all over Biff. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, she was chatting to him like nothing had happened. I couldn’t imagine Belinda being so forgiving with me.

  “You sssssssleeep okay?” Biff asked. “Pillowssss ssssssoft enough?”

  I smiled weakly.

  Mom leaned over and squeezed my hand. “He’s only joking, Rafe. Isn’t that right, Biff?”

  “Yessss,” Biff said. “Sssssssorry, Rafe. I won’t ssssssay another word about ssssnakes.”

  He was telling the truth. He didn’t say a single word about snakes. Instead, he said lots of words about snakes. After about fifteen minutes of lame snake jokes from Biff, I eventually managed to get some breakfast.

  “They’ll get bored of all that snake stuff soon,” Mom whispered to me. “Hang in there, honey. Today will be better, I promise.”

  “Okay,” I said, and turned toward the table which was piled high with breakfast things. I hoped Mom was right. I could
use some “better” today.

  If the day was going to be an improvement on yesterday it didn’t get off to a good start when Biff tried to make me eat something called Vegemate (at least that’s what it sounded like). The stuff looked like puréed dog poop. I opted for a bowl of Wheety Snax and a juice. Call me boring, but I’ve never been a big fan of dog poop on toast.

  “So,” I said through a mouthful of crumbs, “what’s the plan today?”

  I was looking forward to seeing a bit of Shark Bay, maybe getting my toes wet (just my toes), and then taking a look at where I was supposed to be having my exhibition. Just thinking those words—my exhibition—gave me chills.

  The first bit of bad news was that we wouldn’t be going to the exhibition space just yet.

  “They’re still painting the place, Rafe,” Biff said. “Should be finished by tomorrow.”

  Before I could say anything, Brad and Belinda dripped in from the pool, drying their cool surfie hair with cool surfie towels. Their eyes shot cool surfie daggers at me.

  We exchanged nods, and Belinda leaned toward Brad and whispered something. Both of them looked back at me and started giggling. If you’ve ever had that happen to you, you’ll know it feels about as reassuring as finding a bug in your burger.

  Or a snake in your bed.

  I could see that the Coogan kids and I were going to have an interesting relationship, and by “interesting” I mean I flat-out hated them.

  “So,” Mom said, “me and Mr. and Mrs. Coogan are going to walk to the lighthouse. It was built in 1882! It’s the first example of reflected electric light in this part of Australia.”

  I tried to look impressed.

  I failed.

  “Great,” I said.

  Mom smiled. “I didn’t think you’d go for that, so you’re going with Brad and Belinda and all their friends to the beach! Won’t that be great?”

  I spat my Wheety Snax across the table. I’m sure if Brad and Belinda had been eating any they’d have done the same.

  That was the second bit of bad news.

  PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE in Shark Bay was drop-dead gorgeous.

  Or maybe it was just the people who Brad and Belinda hung out with. Either way, ten minutes after leaving the Coogans’ place I found myself heading for the beach with Brad and Belinda and a whole bunch of tall, fit, blond kids who looked like they fell right off a Tourism Australia ad. It was horrible.

  “Pod people,” Leo whispered, but I didn’t reply because I didn’t want the pod people thinking I was onto them. Besides, from painful personal experience, I’ve learned that it’s embarrassing talking to yourself out loud.

  To make matters worse (as if that was possible), my online fame had spread faster than the bubonic plague. In the ten minutes it took to walk to the beach, three kids recognized me from completefails.com. They shouted insults, none of which I can repeat.

  Just as we reached Bloodspurt Beach (I’m not kidding, that’s what it’s called) we passed some kids sitting in the shade of a tree who looked like they were in the wrong movie. For a start, none of them was particularly tall, particularly fit, or particularly blond. They wore clothes that weren’t surfie cool, they had hair that didn’t look like anyone in Brad and Belinda’s crew, and they all looked like they’d just sucked on a slice of lemon.

  I liked them.

  “Look at those sad sacks cluttering up the beach,” Belinda said. “Total drongos.”

  I didn’t know what a drongo was but it sounded bad. I was probably a drongo.

  “The Outsiders,” Brad said. He growled at one of the boys in the group, who jumped back nervously. Brad and his friends burst out laughing.

  A dark-haired girl wearing black-rimmed glasses scowled at me.

  I made a gesture that was meant to say, “Hey, sorry about all that, but I’m not really one of these cool surfie types at all. I’m more of an arty, interesting sort of guy and I’m sure we could be friends if you’d only give it a shot.” But it’s hard to get all that into one facial expression. I ended up looking like I was miming the best way to get the top off a coconut.

  I blushed, and the girl in the glasses lowered the temperature of her already sub-zero stare before turning back to the rest of The Outsiders.

  As the Coogan twins and their entourage headed onto the sand, I fell back. I wanted to hang with The Outsiders. They seemed much cooler than Brad and Belinda’s stupid buddies. They had a cool name, even if it wasn’t one they had chosen for themselves. They looked like they might do some interesting stuff when they weren’t hanging around the beach looking miserable. But from the expression on the dark-haired girl’s face, it was clear that any friend of Brad and Belinda’s was most definitely not a friend of theirs. They didn’t like me.

  Or my shorts.

  I should explain the shorts. Remember how Aussie Airways lost our bags? That meant I had to borrow a pair of boardshorts from Brad. Mom had insisted, and Brad gave me these monstrosities. He must have been keeping them as a practical joke.

  For a start, they were about six sizes too big. More longs than shorts. They could have doubled as a tent. If the wind picked up to anything above a gentle breeze I’d have been hoisted into the air like an empty plastic bag. And they had the nastiest pattern ever produced by humans on them. They were covered in psychedelic day-glo butterflies, rainbows, hearts, and more pukey stuff like that. These shorts were so bright you could probably see them from space.

  My pale Hills Valley winter legs hung from the bottom of them like a couple of straws.

  I turned away from The Outsiders with a sigh and trudged after the pod people and toward Bloodspurt Beach.

  THINGS WENT SOMETHING like this:

  1. Brad and his crew picked up their boards and headed for the water.

  2. I didn’t want to look like a bigger loser than I already was, so I said I’d love to go surfing but unfortunately I didn’t have a surfboard. (See what I did there? This way, I could still look cool without actually having to go surfing.)

  3. They had a spare surfboard.

  4. I went surfing.

  I tried to whip up some courage as we walked to the water’s edge. I mean, I’d seen surfers surfing on TV. How hard could it be? I could swim and I could skateboard, and surfing was really just skateboarding on water, right? I might even be really good at it, I thought.

  And if I was really good at it, later on, Brad and Belinda and all the other cool surfie types would gather around the beach bonfire to hear me talk about taming The Big One. It might turn out to be the best thing I ever did!

  It wasn’t.

  ATTENTION! THIS IS a Rafe Khatchadorian Public Health Warning!

  Don’t be like me. Don’t listen to the voices in your head that tell you things will turn out okay. They won’t. Above all, don’t be dumb enough to go surfing. Trust me, it will end badly. Very badly.

  This is because:

  (a) surfing is VERY, VERY hard to do; and

  (b) surfing absolutely sucks.

  Listen and learn from my mistakes.

  This is what surfing is really like.

  In Hills Valley, where I live, the closest thing to a crystal-blue ocean is the public swimming pool, which isn’t an ocean and is more of a slime-green color. Before I give you the nasty details on what happened out there, it is only fair to say that in Australia the ocean does look awesome.

  That is pretty much the only fantastic thing about it. It looks good but, for some reason, the Pacific Ocean took a dislike to me right from the start.

  The first thing I noticed was that the waves were much bigger close up than they looked from the shore.

  They are, in fact, ginormous.

  The second problem is that getting the massive lump of plastic (aka the surfboard) past the breakers was almost impossible.

  To make matters worse, the thing was strapped to my leg with a rope, which helped it snap back and smack into my head over and over again.

  And by the time I did eventually scr
amble my way past the crashing white foam, I was a total wreck. I’d worked so hard to get to that point that I swear my eyeballs were sweating. My eyeballs! I didn’t even know eyeballs could sweat.

  And all of those problems were accompanied by another, bigger fear—sharks.

  The entire time I was getting knocked about by the waves and gulping down lungfuls of salt water, there was the constant terror that somewhere beneath was a FREAKIN’ HUGE SHARK.

  I swear I could hear the theme from Jaws. Whatever was down there would be so big that I’d be lifted up on a sort of bridge made of water as the FREAKIN’ HUGE SHARK surfaced and I would get my first real look at the creature that was about to eat me.

  It would throw me up in the air like it was tossing a marshmallow. At the top of my arc I would, just for a second, hang in the air above the beast—did I mention it was HUGE?—and see people on the beach running around like ants, screaming and panicking like you would if you’d just seen a FREAKIN’ HUGE SHARK.

  And then I’d be falling down, down, down, right into its gaping red maw.

  Of course, since I’m still here, you’ll have guessed that I didn’t get eaten by a FREAKIN’ HUGE SHARK. But surfing that morning on Bloodspurt Beach was, hands down, no contest, the worst hour of my life—worse than getting beat up by Miller the Killer. Worse than getting expelled. Worse than the worst thing you can think of times six. I almost drowned. I think I swallowed about 8 percent of the Pacific Ocean. It was like being trapped inside a giant washing machine set to SPIN. The ocean played with me for an hour and then spat me ashore like a gorilla spitting out an orange pip.

  After all that, you’d think I’d be grateful to be back on dry land, and I would have been except that when I did get back to the beach I was unconscious.