“I asked you a question, Rafey.”
I shrugged once more and, right in front of my eyes, Kell began to mutate into a werewolf.
Hair sprouted from his face, and his hands curled into vicious-looking claws. His eyes glowed red and drool dripped from between fangs that slid down over his bottom lip. He looked a bit like Hugh Jackman’s less-handsome Wolverine brother crossed with a German shepherd. The dog, I mean, not an actual shepherd from Germany.
“If I didn’t like your mom so much I’d clobber you myself,” Kell the Werewolf hissed.
I didn’t even know werewolves could hiss, which just goes to show you learn something new every day.
“After tonight, you might not have anything to say about it. And if you mention a word of this to her I’ll deny it all.” Kell threw back his head and howled at the moon. There wasn’t a moon visible so he howled at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. I guess werewolves can’t always get full-moon access.
By the time Mom came downstairs looking glitzy, Kell had lost all trace of his inner werewolf. They’re sneaky like that. Werewolves, I mean, not Australian geologists. Most Australian geologists are probably fine examples of human beings, but Kell wasn’t doing their reputation any favors with me. As far as I was concerned, there was at least one too many Australian geologists stinking up the joint.
“Nice to see you two getting along,” Mom said. She smiled so wide I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her friend Kell was a chest-prodding bully. Plus a mutant werewolf.
“Best of mates,” Kell said. He looked at me. “Isn’t that right, Rafey?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Mom and Kell headed out toward the bright lights of Shark Bay, laughing and joking like two lovebirds. Seeing Mom all dressed up, a horrible thought struck me: Kell Weathers is going to pop THE question tonight!
No one wants a werewolf as a stepfather. It wasn’t so much him being a drooling creature of the night that worried me, although that would be pretty inconvenient. It was him getting friendly with my mom. The night before, I’d used her laptop for something and had noticed she’d been reading up on Australia’s immigration laws.
I had no real problem with Australians (other than Brad, Belinda, and The Surf Gorillas—and Kell, of course), but I’m not anxious to become one anytime soon. The whole thing was starting to make me depressed. I went to my room, rubbing the sore spot on my chest, and sat down on the bed. This was going to require some thinking about.
WHEN MOM AND Kell got back from their night out, Kell grabbed me “playfully” around the neck and began ruffling my hair.
I hate having my hair ruffled by someone I like. Having it done by a creep like Kell Weathers almost made me hurl.
“Ow!” I yelled, rubbing my scalp.
Mom sighed. “Kell’s just being nice, Rafe.”
“Don’t blame the little feller, Jules,” Kell said. “The kid just needs some grit.”
“Oh, you want grit?” I yelled. “I’ll give you grit!”
I leapt across the room, grabbed Kell around the neck and threw him at the wall.
“Don’t hurt me!” Kell squealed as he lay sprawled on the canvas.
“Rafe, stop!” Mom yelled. “He’s only a geologist!”
“Too late!” I shouted. “Rafe the Chafe takes no prisoners!”
I leapt from the top rope of the ring and slammed into Kell, hard. Wrapping my sandpapery legs around his head, I began to chafe like no one has ever chafed before. A grown man in the audience burst into tears. Sandpapering a man’s head is just nasty, but I had been pushed to the limit, and I chafed even harder.
“Oh, the humanity!” the commentator wailed. “Won’t the referee stop this madness? No one can take this kind of punishment! The Geologist won’t have a head left if this goes on much longer!”
He was right. Within a minute all that remained of Kell’s head was a pile of wood shavings.
I got to my feet and the referee lifted my arm in the air.
“And the winner is … Rafe! Rafe. Rafe. RAFE?”
I opened my eyes. Kell, his head far too intact for my liking, was leaning over me, my mom looking over his shoulder.
“You must have drifted off there for a minute, mate,” Kell said. Then, with his back to my mom, he mouthed, “Wimp.”
Kell Weathers was moving up the People Rafe Khatchadorian Hates chart fast.
If Brad Coogan wasn’t around, he’d be number one, no sweat.
THE NEXT DAY, Ellie and I really got moving on Operation R.O.C.K. (Revenge on the Coogan Kids). With less than twenty-four hours to go before the big night at the surf club, there wasn’t a moment to waste.
Ellie built a scale model of the surf club lobby out of cardboard and we plotted every step in miniature with the rest of The Outsiders.
“This thing’s got to be perfect,” I said, pacing the floor of Ellie’s workshop. I pointed my pointy stick (everyone planning something like this needs a pointy stick) at the model. “And top secret. If word gets out to The Surf Gorillas, we’re finished.”
The Outsiders nodded solemnly. No one was going to snitch.
Nico and I went out to the club and cased the joint for the best time to get everything inside. We’d had a stroke of luck with our plans—it turned out Nico’s older sister was the club manager.
“She keeps the key to it in her purse,” Nico said as we crouched in the bushes across the road from the club.
“Can you get a copy?” I asked.
Nico held up a key and smiled. “Way ahead of you, dude.”
“Tonight?”
Nico nodded. “Tonight.”
Operation R.O.C.K. was a go.
IT WAS THE BIG NIGHT. We had done all we could. Everything was in place.
The sketches I’d done for The Outsiders’ shoot had been framed and placed on three easels on a small stage at one side of the waterfall. I’d called the drawings “Zombie Movie Sketches” because, well, they were sketches of the making of a zombie movie. I’m clever like that. Biff had put the title up in a big banner hung over the easels. It made me feel pretty special.
Last night the rest of The Outsiders and I had broken about nineteen billion laws and set up what we needed inside the surf club. We hadn’t got much sleep, but we didn’t care.
Tonight was payback time.
Ellie and I—she was dressed as Frankenstein’s monster and I went as Igor—arrived around seven. As we neared the entrance, I could see through the windows that the place was already knee-deep in pirates and princesses, Elvises and Ewoks, highwaymen, aliens, ballerinas, boxers, and Batmen.
Brad, showing about as much imagination as a jellyfish in a coma, had gone as a 1970s surfer and Belinda was a punk rocker. Kell was a werewolf—spooky, right?—and my mom had gone as some kind of superhero.
Just outside the entrance a gorilla was cooking sausages on a giant grill. As Ellie and I walked by, the gorilla removed his head to reveal a sweating Mayor Coogan, who looked like he was beginning to regret his choice of fancy dress. Perhaps he should have stuck with the chicken, puke-stink and all.
“The star of the show!” Biff said as he saw me. He waved a plate of sausage sandwiches at us. “Sausage sanga, Picasso?”
I felt my stomach lurch and shook my head. I was so nervous that I was sure anything I ate would come straight back up. “No, thanks,” I said, and darted inside.
Before I knew what was happening, Mom grabbed me and pulled me toward a man dressed all in black with a grey beard. “This is Frost DeAndrews, the famous art critic,” she said. “He’s come up all the way from Sydney!”
“Hi,” I said. “What have you come as?”
DeAndrews looked puzzled, then pursed his lips. “We don’t do fancy dress in Sydney.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” This conversation wasn’t going too well.
“The drawings look great! I’m so proud of you,” Mom gushed. “Don’t they, Mr. DeAndrews?”
“Quite,?
?? DeAndrews said, bending his lips in what I imagined was meant to be a smile. He looked like he had something smelly right under his nose. “I’m sure the folks in Happy Valley would find them utterly delightful.”
He leaned in a little closer toward me.
“Didn’t you get time to finish them?’ he whispered. He waved his hand at my drawings. “Frankly, from what Mayor Coogan had told me, I was expecting a bit more than doodles. Drawings are so passé.” Frost DeAndrews shuddered. “Maybe next time, dear boy, you should try some ideas—proper art. Hmm? Something that knocks me out of my socks. This whole trip is beginning to look like a complete waste of time.”
Before I said something I might have regretted, Biff Coogan’s voice came over the mike, welcoming everyone to the exhibition.
Just like his brother back in Happy Valley—I mean, Hills Valley—Biff Coogan liked the sound of his own voice. Next to me, Ellie checked her watch and then pulled me across to a quieter corner of the lobby.
“We’d better get into position,” she said.
“You still think this is a good idea?” I whispered back.
“Why? Are you getting cold feet?” she said.
“No,” I said, lying through my back teeth. I was more nervous than a sack full of turkeys on Christmas Eve. Then I thought of Frost DeAndrews. If nothing else, he would see what I’d really made for the exhibition. I hoped he had good socks on.
“Psst!” someone hissed close to my ear.
I turned to find myself looking at an asteroid.
A panel in the asteroid slid back to reveal Nico’s face. “Ready?” he asked.
“An asteroid?” I said. “How do you go to the toilet dressed like that?”
“Never mind that!” Nico said. “Are you ready?”
I was still curious about the asteroid costume and the toilet problem, but I didn’t push it. Nico was right—we had bigger fish to fry.
“Mikey and Dingbat are on standby,” Nico reported. “Are we a go?”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
SAL’S JOB WAS to cut the lights. She was positioned near the stairwell leading to the basement, where the fuse box was located. I saw her looking over at me and Ellie and Nico behind the curtains, waiting for the final go-ahead while Mayor Coogan droned on. Sal raised her eyebrows in a question.
I was about to give the thumbs-up to start things rolling when an image of Principal Stricker suddenly flashed into my mind.
If we did this thing, if we followed through with Operation R.O.C.K., Principal Stricker was not going to be happy. Nobody would be happy—not Mom, not the mayor, not a single one of the good citizens of Shark Bay other than The Outsiders—but it was the thought of how Principal Stricker would react that sent a shiver of pure fear trickling down my spine. I could feel her disapproval vibrating all the way across the Pacific.
At that moment Ellie reached out and squeezed my hand. She must have known I was wobbling. I don’t know how but she just did, and the touch of her hand gave me all the confidence I needed.
I gave Sal the thumbs-up. She nodded and ducked out of sight, down the stairwell. Stage One had begun.
“You ready?” Ellie said.
Before I could reply, all the lights went out in the lobby and we were plunged into blackness. There were a couple of jokey screams and a few people started laughing.
“Someone forgot to pay the power bill!” Kell shouted.
“At least it stopped the speeches!” someone else shouted.
“Initiate Stage Two,” I whispered to Nico.
I heard some rustling in the dark as Nico fumbled for the switch hidden somewhere inside the asteroid. Nico was The Outsider’s expert on lighting and sets. Mikey and Dingbat were in their positions in the basement, making sure we had power.
From under the bubbling water in the pool at the foot of the waterfall, an eerie green light began to glow. A thin mist drifted up from its surface. Green shadows danced spookily across the walls and the lobby grew strangely quiet. People began to cluster around the edge of the pool.
“Wow,” I whispered. “That looks great!”
“I went for the zombie-apocalypse look,” Nico replied.
“It’s the end of the world!” Brad yelled, but no one laughed.
“What on earth …?” I heard Biff Coogan say.
I saw Forest DeAndrew starting to look interested for the first time all evening. It was all the incentive I needed.
“Do it,” I whispered to Ellie.
She picked up her remote control, thumbed the ON switch, and we moved to Stage Three of Operation R.O.C.K.
I ignored the voices inside my head on account of them being imaginary. That was the great thing about imaginary people.
Besides, it was too late to stop now.
THE SURFACE OF the pool erupted and Ellie’s bunyip, eyes glowing red and mouth gaping wide to reveal a row of fearsome razor-sharp choppers, came roaring up from the depths like a creature from your worst nightmare. And when it comes to nightmares, I’m something of an expert. Believe me, this one was an absolute doozy.
‘AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAARRGH!’ the bunyip bellowed, leaping into the lobby like it had spring-loaded feet. For all I knew that’s exactly what it did have. Ellie had cranked the creature’s voice up to ear-bleed level, and I could feel the vibrations in the pit of my stomach.
I’d known exactly what was going to come out of the pool and I still got such a shock I almost fainted. I could only guess what effect the bunyip was having on everyone else.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
‘Mommmmmmy!’ Brad squealed in a voice so loud and high-pitched that dogs in Sydney started barking.
Brad turned and ran like he was being chased by a flesh-eating zombie bunyip, which, as far as he was concerned, he was. In his blind panic, he ran straight into one of the temporary toilets, breaking a pipe and sending a geyser of brown goop all over his perfect hair.
The rest of The Surf Gorillas weren’t doing much better than Brad. I saw a couple of them flat-out faint while Belinda did her best to climb a large potted palm in an attempt to get away.
Operation R.O.C.K. was working. Brad had been publicly humiliated. Revenge was mine!
Except for one teeny-tiny detail.
When I’d planned this whole thing, the idea was that it would be Brad—and Brad alone—in the firing line. Everyone else in Australia’s Most Fearless Town would quickly see that the bunyip was a joke, wouldn’t they? Ha, ha, ha …?
Australians liked practical jokes, right? Hadn’t Kell told me to lighten up? Rafe Khatchadorian’s Great Practical Joke would be the funniest thing to have ever happened in Shark Bay. Right?
Wrong.
Everyone F-R-E-A-K-E-D.
Not just Brad.
Everyone.
WAILING LIKE A police siren, the astronaut leapt off the lobby balcony, landing heavily on a herd of stampeding Elvis dental technicians from the Shark Bay Dental Clinic.
Nearby, six Salvador Dali’s from the Shark Bay Surrealist Society were trampled underfoot by a bevy of beefy ballerinas from the Bayside Bowls Team. A Viking, a Roman centurion, Frost DeAndrews, and a guy in a giant teddy-bear costume were doing their best to hide under the skirts of a howling Queen Victoria while, to my left, an unconscious Darth Vader was being lifted to safety by a baby with a beard. Biff Coogan shinned up an ornamental pillar, accidentally disturbing a wasps’ nest near the lobby ceiling with disastrous results.
A group of pandas were fighting each other to get out of the emergency exit.
It was pandamonium.
Everywhere was screaming and running and panic and destruction. Things had got out of hand.
“Kill the bunyip!” I shouted to Ellie. “We have to stop it!”
Ellie wrestled with the remote. “I can’t! It’s not responding!”
Nico, Sal, Ellie, and I looked helplessly at the bunyip. Little snakes of electricity ran up and down its body, and sp
arks began shooting from gaps in the creature’s skin. It lumbered across the flooded lobby floor, its roar getting louder and louder with every step.
We had created a monster.
THE ONLY SILVER lining to this out-of-control Frankenstein scenario was the reaction of Kell Weathers.
The very second Kell glimpsed the bunyip, he dropped his glass, let out a scream almost as high-pitched as Brad’s, and hurled Mom toward the creature before turning on his heel and sprinting for the exit.
Mom bounced off the bunyip and came to rest on the soaking-wet lobby floor, her face a picture of anger and disgust as she watched Kell carve a path of yellow-bellied destruction.
I wasn’t happy that my mom had been treated so badly, but I was kind of glad that she had finally seen Kell for what he really was. If I was going to get in trouble for this (and something told me I was going to get in more trouble for this than for anything I had ever done in my life), then Mom seeing Kell’s gigantic yellow streak would go some way to making it all worthwhile. She really did deserve better than Kell Weathers.
As if reading my thoughts, her head swiveled toward me (I swear it rotated 180 degrees) and, although it was absolutely impossible for her to have spotted me in the shadows behind the curtains, she zapped a full-strength laser-beam mom stare in my direction.
In that split second I knew that she knew.
How do they do that? Moms, I mean. Is there a special training school? A secret set of mom skills handed to them when you’re born?
I sank back into the shadows as Mom got to her feet. This was it. I was about to start a life sentence of being grounded.