The Astounding Broccoli Boy

  ‘What’s that shiny thing?’ asked Tommy-Lee, shuffling over to join me.

  ‘That’s the Thames, that you jumped into.’

  ‘It looks cleaner from up here.’ It looked like a glitter-pen scribble. ‘I can’t even swim.’

  ‘What? You jumped in a river when you knew you couldn’t swim?’

  ‘I just wanted to get away from the police. Whenever I’m in trouble with the police, it gives my mum anger-management issues.’

  ‘What? You mean she hits you?’

  ‘No. Course not. She hits the police. I thought if I jumped in the river I’d probably be suddenly able to swim, in a superheroey kind of way.’

  ‘And could you?’

  ‘No. I sank, but I grabbed a penguin. I hid under that jetty for ages. Then I got out of the water and I was just completely lost. I thought I’d know where to go and what to do, but I was completely lost and wet and smelly with mud and everyone was laughing at me. And I didn’t feel a bit super or astounding. I felt like an idiot. Then I saw this building and thought, I’ll get up on top of there and then everyone will see. That’ll show them not to laugh at me. You had to put thirty pounds in a ticket machine to get inside, and I had exactly thirty pounds from when we robbed the bank. Somehow that made up my mind. But once I got up there I realized it was so high up that no one would even see me. Not even birds really.’

  ‘They saw,’ I said. We were passing the observation deck. The Prime Minister, Loud Julie, RSPCA Roger, they were all still standing there, watching us go by. They were so near that we could see the worried expressions on their faces. We waved to let them know we were all right.

  ‘We weren’t really superheroes at all, were we?’ said Tommy-Lee, looking at his white arms and hands.

  ‘What are you talking about!? I just did a daring rescue of you. And look where we are. I don’t remember Spider-Man ever getting this high up.’ I tried to get up to do a superhero pose, but it was like standing up in a rowing boat. The hoist tilted and the penguins scuttled around in fright. So I lay down again and we both looked over the edge.

  I could just feel the slightest bit of warmth from the winter sun on the back of my neck.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘We’re green. Maybe we can photosynthesize?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the green in their leaves that lets plants feed on sunlight. The sun comes in through the leaf and it hits this stuff called chlorophyll, which makes it into oxygen. They eat sunlight. Maybe we can eat sunlight.’

  So we gave it a go. We lay there waiting for the sun to fill us up and I thought about the sun shining on the ocean and filling all the plankton and on the forests and the grasslands.

  ‘Is this working for you?’ asked Tommy-Lee. ‘Is the sun feeding you?’

  I was thinking how all the grasslands and the forests and the plankton were filling the air with oxygen. And everyone breathing the oxygen and going about their business and how all of that could only happen because some things were green. So I said, ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well, it’s not feeding me,’ said Tommy-Lee. ‘I’m starving.’

  Then there came a moment when suddenly you could see things moving. Cars, a train, boats on the river. As though the city had been stopped by some kind of freeze ray and now had come back to life and was running to catch up with itself. And my 200-per-cent brain saw how much of that running was done by heroes – by firefighters putting out fires, ambulances chasing through traffic, doctors and nurses saving lives, bin men emptying smelly bins, mums and dads looking after their kids, young people looking after old people, old people helping young people. Heroes were everywhere. When you thought about it, a city was nothing but heroes. Heroism is everywhere. It’s the petrol that makes a city go. A few minutes later we could hear noises – ships’ horns, traffic and, last of all, cheers. It turned out that our dramatic descent was being streamed live on the Internet. People had been tweeting and texting about us and now there were hundreds of people jammed on to the pavement waiting to see us land. When they could see our faces, they cheered. Tommy-Lee leaned right out so he could see better. ‘Tommy-Lee, don’t!’

  ‘We’re almost on the ground,’ he said.

  ‘We’re still five floors up. It doesn’t look much to us. But it’d be enough to smash us to pieces.’

  But he jumped up and struck his superhero pose – arms on his hips and his face in the air. I got up and did the same. My stance wasn’t as good because I’ve only had that one lesson, but the two of us standing together looked pretty strong, I think. Down below there were a lot of police. We weren’t sure if they were there to protect us from our admirers or to throw us in jail. But just then we didn’t care.

  We were too busy being astounding.

  If this really was a comic, that would be the last picture – me and Tommy-Lee dangling over London. And everyone talking and tweeting and texting about us. They never really stopped talking about us, by the way. There’s a clip on YouTube of us coming down on that hoist and it’s got a gazillion million hits or something. The whole bin-lorry incident has had loads of hits too. Also clips of us dancing with the chickens in The Bank. There’s also a crazy film claiming that we really were aliens and proving it by showing photos of the Prime Minister pushing through the crowd of VIPs to make sure he was the first to talk to us. The crazy film says he was telling us not to tell anyone we were aliens in case it created fear and a possible breakdown of Law and Order. In fact he really did push through the crowd to be first to speak to us, but what he said was, ‘Can I have my phone back now? You know, just in case the nation’s at war or something. Thank you.’

  I said, ‘Sure. You’ve got a load of missed calls, by the way, from your mum.’

  Meanwhile in a Zoo on the Far Side of Town . . .

  So loads of people have seen our faces. In fact, probably nearly everyone in the world saw us that day. But even though this was all just a few months ago, no one recognizes us any more. Because we’ve both changed so much already. I’ve had a growth spurt, probably thanks to the fact that Tommy-Lee no longer steals my sandwiches so I’m finally getting some nutrition. He sometimes even lets me share his – actually he doesn’t, but he sometimes makes Kian and Jordan give me some of theirs. I’m still the smallest in the class, but I’m not THAT small. Tommy-Lee’s got even bigger, but mostly around the shoulders. He’s also got stubbly and his voice now sounds like someone raking cement.

  Also I’m not green. Not any more.

  Ciara was with me when my colour started to fade. She was disappointed. ‘I was hoping you were going to grow gills and maybe webbed feet.’

  I was sort of disappointed too. I liked being the only green boy on Earth. Now I’m just the same as I was before. On the outside. On the inside everything is different.

  Even when we went back to London Zoo to meet up with Koko and visit Tommy-Lee’s penguins, no one recognized us. That was the first time we’d seen Koko since 10 Downing Street. The sweets kiosk that lost the fight with the hippo had been rebuilt and we had ice cream sitting at a table next to it. We gave Koko the Prime Minister’s mobile-phone number – which was still on Tommy-Lee’s mobile – so that she could ring him whenever she thought of an idea for a new law. We thought he’d like that. It’s always good to hear new ideas. There were people at the penguin pool who recognized the penguins. ‘That’s the penguin who was on top of the Shard!’ But no one said, ‘That’s the boys who were on top of the Shard,’ or, ‘They’re the kids who plunged London into a state of panic,’ either.

  Before we left London Dad gave Koko a lift back to Chinatown. We all had braised lamb and pak choi for tea, followed by ice-cream cakes on Tottenham Court Road.

  In the comic book version of our lives there’s still one more chapter.

  In the first picture we’re running down a corridor – me, Tommy-Lee and Koko. Dr Brightside is standing at the door of her secret lab, shouting, ‘Quick! Quick! Before it’s too late!’

  We crash i
nto the lab. We throw ourselves into the chairs and roll up our sleeves. Dr Brightside is sweating with panic as she takes about a million blood samples. She says, ‘If we are to save Christmas, we must act quickly before we lose the last of your greenness!’

  And this is when we truly became astounding . . .

  Official Statement from the Prime Minister’s Office . . .

  ‘We are happy to announce that our concerns about the so-called Killer Kittens virus can now be forgotten . . .’

  The Prime Minister was speaking to a crowd of journalists from the steps of Downing Street. We were all watching it – Mum, Dad, Ciara and me – sitting on the couch in front of the telly the day we finally all went home. We were eating Pringles from a bowl. It was just like things used to be before I turned green. The moment the Prime Minister said that, the journalists all started shouting. Mum pointed at the screen. ‘There’s that nice Dr Brightside, look. Standing with the Prime Minister. And there’s that nurse . . . hang on . . . is she . . . ?’

  We all peered closer at the screen. Nurse Rock was standing just behind the Prime Minister. She looked slightly uncomfortable and . . .

  ‘She’s turned green!’ said Mum.

  She was definitely a light broccoli colour.

  ‘I will now hand you over,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘to Dr Bernadette Brightside of Woolpit Royal Teaching Hospital.’

  Dr Brightside stepped up to the microphone. ‘I have been working,’ she said, ‘with three brave young people who have recently had the traumatic experience of inexplicably turning green. As has my equally brave assistant, Nurse Rock.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Mum.

  ‘She’s talking about you!’ said Dad.

  The journalists were all yelling again but Dr Brightside calmed them down.

  ‘My tests have shown that their green discoloration was in fact an allergic reaction. An extreme allergic reaction, yes, but one that had a good side. Killer Kittens turned them green but it didn’t make them ill. In fact, the very opposite. It made them immune. In the fight against Killer Kittens, they were bullet proof. The children selflessly submitted themselves to a series of rigorous blood and urine tests. (Their urine was incredibly green, by the way – I’ve never seen anything like it.) I have in this way been able to isolate the enzyme that caused this reaction and incorporate it into a live vaccine. The Killer Kitten vaccine can be delivered to the vulnerable and to key workers so that even if the infection reaches epidemic proportions we will be able to keep going as a nation. Britain, possibly the world, owes these children an apology. And a debt. They were branded a problem when in fact they were the solution. These children – Rory Rooney, Tommy-Lee Komissky and Koko Kwok – are heroes.’

  Tommy-Lee got quite excited when he heard this. He thought Dr Brightside’s serum was going to turn everyone green. I explained she was just sharing the bit of us that had been fighting the virus with everyone else. Then he got even more excited.

  ‘Most people spread germs,’ he said. ‘We sneeze superhero power.’

  So Mum was right. When there’s a chance, however small, something can happen. But this was something even my mum couldn’t prepare for. There was a billion-to-one chance that I would have the antidote to the Killer Kittens virus in me. That I would go green. And I was that billion-to-one kid.

  I slightly missed being part of a gang and having a secret headquarters. Sometimes me and Tommy-Lee met up in the geography store cupboard and sat by the model of the West Midlands in the Ice Age. We acted like we had got serious stuff to plan, but mostly we just talked about food. We did show Dad the Map of Treats and he wrote the names of the roads on it for us with a Sharpie, so now we know that after we’ve eaten the Handsworth Chicago Pizza on the A34, we need to take the M6 to the M1 to get to the Watford Hot Chocolate. Then back up the M1 and across on the M6 and M62 to Dafna’s famous Cheese Cake Factory (nut-free recipe).

  The Birmingham Christmas Lights usually go on in November but this year was different. Due to a shortage of manpower caused by Killer Kittens and to fears about the possible cancellation of Christmas, the lights had gone up but stayed dark. Now the crisis was over, the council decided to save the lights until Christmas Eve itself. Dad took us all into town for the Big Switch-On. There were fireworks and people selling chestnuts (which obviously Tommy-Lee couldn’t eat) and even some real reindeer. (‘I still don’t see how they can fly,’ said Tommy-Lee.) We were in the middle of a massive Christmas crowd, but we were sort of invisible. People were wearing Santa hats and tinsel, but no one who looked at us had any idea that we were the Kids Who Saved Christmas. We knew then how it felt to be Peter Parker, walking around New York, with no one knowing he was Spider-Man. It was a good feeling, a superhero feeling. Everyone is good for something. We turned out to be good at saving Christmas.

  When the lights went on, everyone went, ‘Oooooohhhhh!’ And all of their upturned faces went orange, then blue, or red – because of the changing colours of the lights. And I thought, The best thing about people is how different they are. When we went green, people wanted us to stop being green, to be the same as everyone else again. But it was only because we were different that we could be astounding. The thing that makes you different is the thing that makes you astounding. The thing that makes you different from everyone else – that’s your superpower. Like they say in the comic books . . .

  The End.

  Afterword

  There really were green children in England once. A monk called Ralph of Coggeshall told how two green children had turned up in the village of Woolpit during the reign of King Stephen, in the twelfth century. They were found hiding in a pit during harvest time. They were frightened. They couldn’t speak English and wouldn’t eat any food. The lord of the manor took them in and after a week or so they agreed to eat raw beans. Eventually they learned to speak English. They said they had come from a place called St Martin’s Land, where it was always twilight. They had been looking after their father’s cattle when they heard bells ringing. They had never heard bells before. They followed the sound into a cave and came out in England. The little boy died quite soon but the girl grew up and married a man from King’s Lynn.

  I’ve always been haunted by this strange sad little tale. I’m not the only one. Herbert Read told their story in a novel. Kevin Crossley-Holland and Alan Marks made a picture book about them. Some people said the children came from underground. The philosopher Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy said they probably fell from the heavens.

  But the reason I was fascinated wasn’t because they might be fairies or goblins or something from Lord of the Rings, but because I change colour too. I have a strange blood condition that means when I am under stress – for instance late delivering a book – I go bright yellow. Like a walking, talking daffodil. I don’t feel any different when this happens, so the first I tend to know about it is when people stare at me in shops as if I’ve just stepped down from Mars or up out of the grave. When I was a teenager maybe it should have made me feel like hiding, but I always remembered the story of the green children and it made me feel as though changing colour was all right really. Weird and maybe embarrassing, but also mysterious and interesting. Maybe it meant I fell out of the sky.

  The other thing from my life that is in this book is teleportation. I definitely did it once. When our eldest son was little, we were still quite young and silly ourselves. We went on holiday to a farmhouse in France without really checking if it was safe or not. It turned out we would be sleeping in a loft that was reached by a very steep staircase. The gaps between the railings on the banister were very wide – easily wide enough for a toddler to slip through and fall on to the stone floor below. We thought it was romantic and beautiful. It was also extremely dangerous – a sheer drop to a stone floor. One afternoon I was playing with my son up there and got so absorbed in the game that I forgot to keep watch on him. When I looked up he had toddled over to the top of the stairs and – I still can’t even type
this without feeling sick – he was just stepping through the railings into the empty air. The next thing I knew I was holding him by the arm and he was dangling in mid-air over the fatal drop. I have no memory of how I crossed that room. I was in one place. Then I was in another. It’s impossible to cross a room quicker than someone can fall, but I did it. I really did slightly teleport.

  One last thing that is real in this story is Dafna’s Cheese Cake Factory. It’s owned and run by a tiny woman called Mrs Lev. Her superpower is making astounding cakes, but she also once saw off an armed robber just by giving him a very dark look. All of us are superheroes when we really need to be.

  Last of all, this is where I get to thank my inspirational editor Sarah Dudman, who doesn’t rest until I’ve done my best. Venetia Gosling, who protected us. Talya Baker, who wouldn’t let us get away with anything. My thanks too to the remarkable Dr Mary Bunn, who spared a little of her very precious time to tell me all about how viruses work. And above all to Heloise and Xavier, who read every draft (Xavier invented the Chocolate Frisbee), and to my wife, Denise, who sticks by me through pink and through yellow, through two-thousand-word days, and days with no words at all.