The Astounding Broccoli Boy

  Tommy-Lee must have had the same feelings in his sleep. Because that was the night we finally went outside again.

  The Night City

  . . . fragile as a set of fairy lights on a velvet carpet, just hoping that no one will tread on them. Who takes care of the sleeping?

  I tried to make Tommy-Lee follow me back to the Moonlight Delight, but just as we were about to cross the road a big red bus came past, a London bus, open at the back. I’d never seen one up close before. With the yellow bus light behind them, the people on the top deck looked like faces in a stained-glass window. I was so busy looking at them that I didn’t notice that Tommy-Lee had stepped on to the platform of the bus and was trundling away from me down the street. I had to run, grab the pole and swing myself on, like a Routemaster Spider-Man. There was no one else on the lower deck. Tommy-Lee stood there holding the pole, while the bus breathed diesel in our faces as we wandered around the London streets. Finally we drifted into a park. On one side of the road, everything was dark. On the other was a row of big white houses like massive wedding cakes.

  While the bus was still moving, Tommy-Lee stepped off and walked into the dark. I’d been pushed off moving buses so often that actually jumping off one was easy. I ran after Tommy-Lee and stuck as close to him as I could, even when he walked right through the middle of a hedge. Branches whipped my face and leaves tangled in my hair. On the other side was a muddy bank. I lost my footing and slithered down it into a stream. My toes curled into the warm mud at the bottom. Tommy-Lee stood still in the middle of the stream, like a moose in pyjamas. I thought about saying his name to wake him up, but he eventually slooshed through the water to the other side and grabbed hold of a wire fence to help him out.

  The moment he grabbed hold of that fence, his head jerked back like he’d been shot. A couple of seconds later, another jerk, then another. But he didn’t let go.

  ‘Tommy-Lee,’ I hissed. ‘Tommy-Lee . . .’

  He woke up and said, ‘Ow,’ and then he said, ‘Ow,’ again.

  ‘Tommy-Lee, I think that’s an electric fence you’re holding.’

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘You should probably let go of it, Tommy-Lee.’

  He took his hand off the fence and stopped being in pain.

  ‘I could feel some force. I thought it was coming out of me, not going into me. Where are we?’

  I didn’t know the answer but I knew how to get over an electrified fence. All you have to do is lie something over it that doesn’t conduct electricity – like a log or a piece of carpet – and walk across it. There was a big notice saying ‘Danger: Electricity’ on a wooden stand stuck into the bank. Tommy-Lee yanked it out of the ground and plonked it over the fence. We tiptoed over.

  In front of us was a wide field with two trees at the far end and a big tyre swinging from the lowest branch of one of the trees. Tommy-Lee immediately wanted to use the tyre for kicking practice, but as we got nearer a security light flashed on and the shadows of the branches danced across the grass like claws. We ducked down. In the blaze of the security light we could see there was another, stronger fence, with a gate in it, and beyond that a little house. A man with a bucket slung over his arm came out of the house. He stopped and peered into the bright cone that came from the security light. He didn’t see us though, and after a while he moved off.

  Tommy-Lee walked up to the gate in the fence. There was a keypad next to it, just like the ones in the hospital. He punched a few numbers into it and the gate squeaked open. He didn’t even seem to think that was unusual.

  The little house had a roof of corrugated iron painted blue. Its door was metal – thick and heavy – and it was bolted on the outside.

  ‘Don’t need any superpowers to open this one,’ said Tommy-Lee.

  ‘If you’re on the outside,’ I said. ‘But if you were inside, you’d never get out.’

  We thought for a minute about why you would have a door with a bolt on the outside.

  ‘A prisoner!’ I said. ‘Someone is being held prisoner in here.’

  I didn’t expect Tommy-Lee to be interested in prisoners. I expected him to say, ‘OK, let’s go and find a bank to rob.’ But he didn’t. He started yanking on the bolt.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Setting them free, of course. Rescuing him. Come on. Give me a hand. I hate it when people lock other people up.’

  Tommy-Lee drew back the bolt. We both pulled on the door and a smell of damp smacked us in the nose. Inside it was surprisingly light because the front wall was nearly all window. Moonlight was flooding in. The floor was covered with straw and in the corner there was a huge pile of sliced apples and a bit of banana. I somehow knew that this was what the man had had in his bucket. He’d dumped it here for the poor prisoner.

  The straw rustled. Someone was moving underneath it. Some poor soul, trying to get comfortable on the concrete floor. Some of the straw fell aside and we saw a hairy hand. A very hairy and very massive hand. Long, grey fingers and a wrist as thick as my waist. With my eyes I followed the arm up to the shoulder. There was no neck. Just a huge head with a massive jaw and a frowning forehead.

  ‘We’ve rescued you,’ announced Tommy-Lee. ‘You can come out now.’

  ‘Tommy-Lee,’ I said, ‘that is not a prisoner. That is a gorilla.’

  Just like Tommy-Lee, the gorilla woke up when it heard its name. The second it heard the word ‘gorilla’, it propped its head up against the wall and blew down its huge nostrils – bits of straw and mucus whirred into the air.

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Tommy-Lee.

  Quick as teleportation the gorilla was up, shoulders like a train, head like a cannonball, leaning towards us on its knuckles.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ whispered Tommy-Lee. ‘Shall I kick it?’

  ‘What? No. Who would kick a gorilla?’

  Its lips rolled back like lino, showing big yellow teeth.

  ‘Don’t look at him,’ I breathed.

  ‘How can you not look at him? He’s amazing.’ Tommy-Lee is afraid of the dark but apparently not of a cornered gorilla.

  He was scared of two cornered gorillas though. The second one burst out of the straw behind the first one. It pounded the floor with its jackhammer fists and screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Tommy-Lee made as if to run, but I pulled him back. ‘There’s no point running,’ I hissed. ‘They’ll be faster.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Look at the floor. Look only at the floor. Crouch down a bit. Try to make yourself smaller. Look like you’re not a threat, like you’re giving in.’

  The moment we crouched down, the second one stopped screaming. The first one kept sniffing though, and coming closer to get a better smell.

  Tommy-Lee almost jumped up. I pulled him down again. ‘If you stand up, that’s a threat. Stay down. Do what I do.’

  ‘How do you know? Who are you to tell me what to do?’

  ‘I’m someone who has a lot of experience when it comes to being threatened by creatures bigger than himself. Get down, stay down, shuffle backwards out the door.’

  Tommy-Lee followed me. The gorillas didn’t. We shut and bolted the door, then sank to our knees and looked up at the big fat moon. We could hear the gorillas scuffling around inside, probably going back to bed.

  ‘What were they?’ said Tommy-Lee.

  ‘What do you mean, what were they? They were gorillas. Wasn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Gorillas aren’t real.’

  ‘What? Of course gorillas are real. You just nearly had a fight with two of them.’

  ‘Gorillas are made up. Like dragons and reindeer.’

  ‘Gorillas are real, and by the way so are reindeer.’

  ‘What? There are deer that can fly? Deer with light-up noses?’

  ‘Not exactly but there are reindeer in Lapland and gorillas in Africa.’

  ‘We’re in Africa?!’

  To be honest I didn’t know where we were but I knew i
t wouldn’t be wise to make Tommy-Lee anxious so I just shrugged and said, ‘Teleportation, isn’t it?’

  The gorilla prison turned out to be in the middle of an island. There were trees full of little monkeys, another fence with a gate in it, then a deep stream. Tommy-Lee opened the gate, we waded across the stream and came to a pathway on the opposite bank. We found a small wooden hut at a place where the path split into three.

  The door of the hut was locked, but there was a kind of hatch at the front which we undid and then climbed through. Whoever lived there had unusual priorities. There was nothing to sit on, but there was a freezer full of ice creams and ice lollies. There was no TV, but there was a shelf of sweets and chocolates. No kitchen, but a big fridge packed with cans of Coke and bottles of lemonade It was clearly the home of someone who had made some very unhealthy lifestyle choices.

  ‘Flake!’ said Tommy-Lee, spotting a yellow Cadbury’s box on the shelf. ‘Totally nut free.’ He grabbed a fistful of the bars and started eating. I wasn’t sure we should be eating other people’s sweets, but before I could say anything Tommy-Lee sniffed. A big sniff. Then he rubbed the back of his sleeve over his nose, tucked up his knees and rested his forehead on them. Tommy-Lee was crying. This was so hard to believe that I asked him, ‘Tommy-Lee, are you crying?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Come on, Tommy-Lee. Superheroes don’t cry . . . or Supervillains.’

  ‘Leave. Me. Alone.’ He clambered over the hatch and walked off.

  I tried to go after him. I tried to call him back, but it was too dark to see which way he’d gone.

  In Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared it tells you that if you ever get separated from your party you should stay where you are so that they can come back and find you. If you go after them you might both end up running around in circles, missing each other until one of you falls into the sinking sands or off the terrible cliffs or whatever. So I shouted, ‘Tommy-Lee, I’ll wait here for you!’ then went back into the hut. It probably was wrong to eat so much ice cream without permission, but there really wasn’t anything else to do and I had to stay awake or I might miss him.

  Two Magnums and a Mini Milk later, I was getting anxious. I sat out on the steps of the little hut and looked down the footpaths to see if he was coming. I could hear monkey chatter and strange bird calls. Sometimes something big would flutter past over my head. It felt like Africa. Except that it was shocking cold, plus also when I looked back towards the way we’d come I could see a dark tower rising high above the trees, which looked like the hospital. So maybe we weren’t in Africa, and maybe we hadn’t been to China either. Maybe London was a magical city that had everything you could ever want to see in it.

  Wonderville.

  A shadow strode down the path towards me. For the first time in my life I was pleased to see Tommy-Lee.

  ‘I feel fantastic. Give me a Flake.’ He crumbled a Flake into his mouth. ‘You were right,’ he said.

  ‘Right about what?’

  ‘It’s better to be a hero than a villain. I’ve just been a hero all over this place. All this time I’ve been thinking I’m only good at being bad. But I can be good when I want to.’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘I can, can’t I?’

  ‘You were never that bad really.’

  ‘Wasn’t I?’

  ‘Actually, yeah, you were.’

  ‘Well, now I’ve done some good stuff.’

  I don’t know why, but I found the thought of Tommy-Lee trying to be good a bit worrying. I thought he probably didn’t have the same idea of ‘good’ as most people. ‘Tommy-Lee,’ I said, ‘what have you done?’

  ‘Them gorillas. Think about them – locked up in that little house. Why would anyone do that to them? Why should they be locked away just because they’re big and scary? Big and scary people have hearts too, you know. Big and scary people have feelings!’

  ‘You do know that gorillas aren’t people, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s no reason to lock someone up – just because they’re not a person.’

  A horrible uneasy feeling began to crawl up my back. ‘So . . . what was this good thing you did?’

  ‘I let them out.’

  ‘The gorillas?’

  ‘Opened their door.’

  ‘You opened the gorillas’ door?’

  ‘And let them out. Also there was a little bridge over the water with a gate on it. I opened that too. Now they can be free. We should find whoever locked them up and destroy them.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I feel great. I wish I’d started doing good when I was younger.’

  ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘In a minute. Just a minute.’ He leaned back against the wall of the little wooden hut and closed his eyes.

  ‘Tommy-Lee, don’t go to sleep. Not here.’

  ‘I’m not going to sleep. I’m just resting my eyes.’

  ‘No, Tommy-Lee, no. You can’t go to sleep. Not if there are gorillas on the loose . . .’

  ‘Sssssssssshhhh . . .’

  He was asleep. I tried to tug him to his feet, but he just hedgehogged himself into the corner. I couldn’t move him. I couldn’t leave him. That was probably the worst bit of the whole thing – being alone in the night with an unmovable friend and a gang of gorillas.

  Who Would Win in a Fight Between a Hippo and a Freezer?

  Somewhere in the trees behind me a twig snapped.

  Somewhere ahead of me something rustled in the leaves.

  Somewhere on the path something was walking towards us with heavy squelchy steps.

  All these sounds seemed really loud.

  None of them was loud enough to wake Tommy-Lee.

  Then there was another sound.

  The big, mucousy snores of Tommy-Lee. Snores that shook the little wooden house and echoed off the trees. Snores you could hear for miles around.

  I tried to shush him.

  I held his nose to try and make him stop.

  I was still holding his nostrils together when the snore came again.

  It wasn’t coming from Tommy-Lee.

  It came out of the shadows right in front of me.

  It came again.

  This time I could see what was making it: something big and pale and fleshy and wet – floating in the air – a watery ghost.

  It disappeared. Leaving a horrible compost whiff behind.

  It appeared again. Closer. Now I could see what it was.

  It wasn’t a ghost.

  I shook Tommy-Lee. ‘Tommy-Lee,’ I said, ‘did you let any other animals out?’ Tommy-Lee grunted. ‘The reason I ask,’ I explained, ‘is that there’s a hippopotamus looking right at us.’

  A hippopotamus can run at 40 km/h.

  I know this because that’s exactly what it did.

  I definitely teleported again, because I was somehow instantly back inside the little wooden hut with the freezer full of ice creams.

  The hut wall splintered. The hippo’s head cannonballed through it. Compost smell bombed the room. I was outside again.

  The back end of the hippo was out in the moonlight, steam-shovel feet pushing the gravel. Its front end was jammed into the shattered remains of the hut.

  The hippo was fighting the hut.

  The hut was fighting the hippo – falling planks smacked its back, the fridge full of drinks crashed across its head.

  The hippo whirled around, shoving the freezer, bursting its walls.

  Trampled drinks cans exploded under its feet. Fanta fountains fizzed in its face.

  It must have liked them because some truly horrible slurping noises were coming from inside the ruins of the hut. At least I now know who would win in a fight between a hippo and a sweets kiosk.

  Tommy-Lee finally stood up. He stood up but he didn’t wake up. He Playmobiled off down the footpath. I went after him and we walked back to the hospital.

  The walk home was the most unforgettable journey of my entire life.
First of all it took ages because we were miles away. Tommy-Lee doesn’t remember a thing about it. He doesn’t remember the two gorillas that shambled past us on their mighty knuckles. Doesn’t recall the little antelopes bouncing by so close their speed breezed our cheeks. He can’t even remember the leopard that fell into step with us and trotted along next to us, its tongue hanging out, its breath drumming and smoking. He just kept walking.

  Maybe it was because he couldn’t see them that I survived. If I hadn’t been walking next to him, I would’ve panicked and tried to leg it and the gorillas and leopards would have hunted me down and beaten me or eaten me.

  Instead we got safely back to the hospital, climbed into the window cleaners’ cradle and winched ourselves back to bed.

  Who Will Win in the Fight Between Good and Evil? (Read on . . .)

  When Nurse Rock had taken our blood next morning she said, ‘Interesting. Tommy-Lee just gave me a blood sample without giving me a hard time. No tantrums. No tears. What’s brought about this change of behaviour? Maybe you’re getting better. Or maybe you’ve lost the will to live.’ She sniffed. ‘By the way, you smell of chocolate. Isn’t that interesting – considering you’re not supposed to be eating anything except what we give you? And we would never give you chocolate.’

  She could SMELL chocolate! She really was a bloodhound. It was going to be hard to keep anything secret from her.

  I said so to Tommy-Lee. ‘We’re going to need to think up codes or signals or something.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Is this a meeting? Are we having a meeting?’

  ‘Well . . . I was just saying . . .’

  ‘When a team has got things to discuss, it has to convene a meeting. Like in kick-boxing. Do it properly. Someone write everything down – that’s the secretary. You have to have a treasurer and a special meeting room – like a club room.’

  ‘Superheroes don’t have club rooms. They have secret headquarters.’

  ‘Yeah. We need one of them as well – a secretary, a treasurer and a secret headquarters.’