The Astounding Broccoli Boy

  Most of all I felt safe. All right, I was locked up in an isolation ward miles from home and family. At least that meant no one was going to beat me up and eat my sandwiches. For the first time in ages I wasn’t worried or scared. If anything, people would be scared of me. The once-weedy, misunderstood and undersized Rory Rooney was now . . . what? Who was I? Captain Emerald maybe. Dr Emerald perhaps, this being a hospital. Or just The Emerald. The Astounding Emerald. Or what about the Bogeyman – because I’m green like a bogey. No, that’s horrible. The Leprechaun? Was that too kiddy? Or too creepy? I sprawled on my bed, making myself at home, and said it aloud, trying it out. ‘The Leprechaun.’

  ‘I hate leprechauns.’ It was the voice of the duvet.

  I didn’t turn round.

  I stood very still.

  Because I knew that voice.

  ‘Don’t ever call me a leprechaun again.’

  I still didn’t look round, but I knew what was happening to the duvet. Thick, sausagey fingers would be pushing it down. Massive muscular arms would appear from underneath. A huge head would push itself out, like a baby dinosaur headbutting out of its egg. The head would turn towards me, its eyes focusing on me like gun sights.

  ‘Oi. I’m talking to you.’

  I turned round.

  The face of the boy in the duvet was bright green.

  It was also instantly recognizable.

  It was the face of Grim Komissky.

  Revenge of the Nemesis!!

  My first feeling was . . . WHATAMIGONNADO? I’m locked in a tiny cell with my own lethal kick-boxing nemesis!!! I thought I was safe, when what I really am is Dead-in-Two-Minutes.

  My second feeling was Unexpected Disappointment. I’d been enjoying the idea that I was the only green person in the world, so I felt a bit like Santa Claus coming down the chimney and finding another bloke dressed in red with a big white beard putting presents under the tree.

  I could practically hear Grim’s brain beeping as he tried to figure out what I was doing there. ‘Is that . . . no, it can’t be . . . so who . . . Permanent fatal error, please quit your brain and restart.’

  ‘You’re bright green,’ he said.

  I was too scared to say, ‘So are you.’

  In the end he figured it out. I could tell from the way he hurled himself across the room towards me.

  I dived under the bed.

  He grabbed the bed and pulled it towards him so that I couldn’t hide underneath it.

  But . . .

  I had somehow already had the brilliant idea of grabbing the bedsprings and clinging on underneath.

  So when Grim looked at the space where the bed had been there was no me. It looked as if I’d vanished. Ninety per cent of Grim’s brain was so confused it shut down.

  The other ten per cent of Grim’s brain is pure fury. That carried on working fine. When pulling the bed didn’t work, he shoved, dragged, spun and banged it all around the room. Maybe he thought it was all the bed’s fault.

  All the time I clung on underneath, the wires digging into my fingers and grating against my toes. The bed screeched and skidded over the polished floors. It was like surfing but upside down.

  While I was upside-down surfing, I had time to think . . .

  And this is what I thought . . .

  Yes.

  Just like the Hulk and Swamp Thing, I have undergone a strange mutation.

  Unlike them, I have no superpowers.

  I’m as small and weak as ever, but now I look weird too.

  Team Green

  Hospital beds have loads of wires connected to them. These all got wrenched out of the wall once Grim got going. Quite a few chunks came out of the actual wall too, when Grim rammed it with the bed. Alarms were bleeping and howling all over the place.

  The voices of Dr Brightside and Nurse Rock came over the intercom.

  ‘What’s going on in there?’

  ‘Seems like poor Tommy-Lee is having one of his panic attacks. Best wait for him to calm down.’

  ‘No!’ I yelled. ‘DON’T WAIT!’

  ‘That other boy was in there with him. Can you see him?’

  They hadn’t heard me. The intercom was only working one way again.

  ‘Rory seems to have vanished. Maybe he’s in the toilet.’

  ‘No! NO! I’M NOT IN THE TOILET! I’M IN INCREDIBLE DANGER! HELP ME!’

  ‘He seems to be doing a lot of damage. Maybe we should intervene?’

  ‘YES! YES! YES, PLEASE. INTERVENE! HELP ME!!!’

  Dr Brightside couldn’t hear me.

  But Grim could.

  He growled.

  Then everything went quiet for a bit. I stayed still, expecting his head to peep under the bed.

  But no. Grim didn’t peep under the bed. He turned the bed completely over.

  Now he could see me. I was spread out on the springs like a burger on a barbecue.

  But before he had the time to take a bite out of me, the door opened and Dr Brightside stepped in.

  ‘Tommy-Lee Komissky,’ she snapped, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘He made me eat a Chocolate Frisbee and that’s what turned me green—’

  ‘Where? What Chocolate Frisbee?’

  ‘At school.’

  ‘What school? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Perry Barr.’

  ‘Wait. Wait a minute. Are you saying . . . are you trying to tell me . . . that you two went –’ she had that look of exploding happiness on her face that you only normally see on people who’ve just won The X Factor – ‘. . . to the same school?’

  ‘We’re in the same class.’

  Dr Brightside clapped her hands. ‘Oh, oh, oh. This is so the best!’

  Seeing a grown-up so excited about what school we went to was so strange that Grim briefly stopped trying to kill me and I even more briefly stopped being scared.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Dr Brightside clapped her hands again. ‘This opens up so many avenues. You were in contact. I’m guessing you must have been in physical contact. Maybe one of you caught it from the other.’

  Grim rumbled, ‘Yeah, he tried to kill me with a biscuit, and he made me go green.’

  ‘Oh. Poor Tommy-Lee,’ said Dr Brightside. Then she thought for a moment. She did not seem to appreciate that for that moment my life was in her hands. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘You went green first. So if anything, it seems more likely that you made Rory go green.’

  ‘Good,’ grunted Grim. ‘I hope I did.’

  ‘Or perhaps you were both in touch with some third party. Or some foodstuff or chemical or . . . anything. The point is, you are medical mysteries.

  ‘Normally when you get a medical mystery, it’s like Killer Kittens. You get hundreds or thousands of patients coughing or scratching or sweating. Then doctors test all those patients – look at their symptoms, their blood, their wee – and compare the results. That’s how we work out what’s wrong and how to fix it. But when Tommy-Lee turned up here, he was the only person in the world who was green. But now you’re here, Rory. Everything is twice as easy. We’re twice as close to solving the mystery. If we work together . . . if you do what I ask and we work as a team, we can beat this. What do you say? Do we want to beat this?’

  Neither of us said anything, though I think Grim may have made a weird noise in his throat.

  She stuck her hands out and smiled. She was wearing rubber gloves. I wasn’t sure what she wanted us to do. Then she grabbed my hand with her left hand and Grim’s with her right and said, ‘Let’s say it. We are a team and we want to beat this.’

  ‘I hate leprechauns,’ said Grim, ignoring her and addressing me. ‘You are a leprechaun. You’re little and green. I am not little. I’m big.’

  ‘But you are green,’ said the doctor. ‘So you could be the Jolly Green Giant.’

  ‘If anyone ever calls me a leprechaun, I’m going to forget all the anger-management techniques they taught me in the special place.’

  ‘It’s absolute
ly fine for you to raise that objection,’ said Dr Brightside. ‘Now, are we a team and do we want to beat this? Yes, we do! Go, Team Green!’

  Finally we all shook hands. She was still wearing her rubber gloves.

  Inside the Fish Tank

  We had to move to a new fish tank because of the damage that Tommy-Lee had done to the plasterwork. He put a framed photograph of a woman in kick-boxing gear on top of the cabinet next to his new bed. The woman was looking at us over her shoulder, with her back to the camera. On the back of her jacket were the words ‘All-England Female Kick-Boxing Champion’, written out in metal studs. I asked him who it was, ‘That,’ said Tommy-Lee, ‘is my mum.’ He seemed really proud of her. You couldn’t see her face, just her foot, which looked as if it was about to smash into the camera. There are no pictures of my mum doing this. He also had twenty-one ‘I’ve-Been-Brave’ certificates Blu-tacked to the wall above his bed, three rows of seven.

  ‘You’ve been brave a lot,’ I said. ‘What have you been doing? Bullfighting?’

  ‘You’ll find out,’ said Grim.

  After we’d finished moving our stuff, it was time for more blood tests. I gave Dr Brightside my thumb. She took another blood sample. Gave me another I’ve-Been-Brave certificate and trilled that it was Tommy-Lee’s turn now.

  ‘Don’t want to,’ grunted Tommy-Lee.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I need to test your blood.’

  ‘Don’t stick things in my thumb.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be your thumb.’ Dr Brightside smiled. ‘I’m quite happy to stick it in your bum. And if you’re uncooperative, I’m quite happy to call for a general anaesthetic.’

  Very slowly Grim put out his thumb. He looked away while she got the needle ready. When she tried to stick it in him, he yanked his thumb away so quickly she ended up sticking the needle in the back of her own hand.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘See? It hurts, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’ She put a bit of cotton wool over it. ‘Can you hold that in place, Tommy-Lee? While I get a plaster.’

  He put his thumb on her cotton wool, but instead of getting a plaster she whipped out another needle and jabbed it into his thumb.

  ‘Ow! Ow! Ow! That’s cheating.’

  ‘It would be if this was a game. But it’s not. It’s me trying to cure you.’

  ‘If going green hadn’t destroyed all my confidence, I’d’ve thrown you out of the window for stabbing me.’

  ‘Then it sounds as if you’re a much better person without your confidence.’ Dr Brightside smiled again. Then – of all the unbelievable things – she gave him an I’ve-Been-Brave certificate.

  ‘What!?’ I said. ‘He’s getting a certificate for that?!’ I was completely scandalized. How could she give him a bravery certificate when he was crying like a baby? ‘He’s not been even a bit brave!’

  I’d somehow forgotten who I was talking about. When Grim swung his head around and gave me his Bad Look though, I remembered. I stopped talking, but the thought didn’t go away: Grim Komissky is big but he’s not brave. And if someone’s not brave – how can they be scary?

  ‘You weren’t brave yourself,’ said Grim, as if he could read my thoughts, ‘when I chucked you off buses. You screamed and moaned and cried. Want me to do it again?’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Dr Brightside. ‘We are here to fight the problem. Not each other. Tommy-Lee, you have to understand – your best hope of getting better is Rory. And Rory, your best hope of getting better is Tommy-Lee. You need each other.’

  ‘He tried to kill me with a biscuit,’ grumbled Grim.

  I thought about Grim’s gallery of I’ve-Been-Brave certificates – twenty-one of them, Blu-tacked to the wall – and realized they were meaningless. Grim Komissky had never been brave. He had only had some blood tests. Twenty-one blood tests. Did that mean we were going to have twenty-one blood tests per day? ‘How long exactly,’ I asked, ‘have you been here?’

  ‘Two weeks, two days and thirteen hours.’

  ‘Two weeks? And you’re still not better?’

  I’d been thinking that we would be going home tomorrow.

  ‘Two weeks and two days and thirteen hours,’ said Grim.

  The biscuit thing reminded Dr Brightside about allergies. ‘Do you have any allergies, Rory?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want you both to think about food and tell me what your most-favourite and least-favourite foods are. Talk about it together. Let’s see if we can find a pattern.’

  I told her that Grim really liked ham-and-tomato sandwiches, but not cheese and tomato.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Grim.

  ‘When I have ham-and-tomato sandwiches you always take them off me and eat them, whereas when I have anything involving cheese you take them off me and stamp on them.’

  ‘Cheese has traces of nuts, that’s why.’

  I pointed out that if he didn’t want the cheese ones, he could just have let me eat them.

  ‘How about . . .’ said the doctor, ‘. . . I leave you two with this big piece of paper and a pen and you make a list of your favourite foods?’

  ‘Do you have to leave us alone?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got blood to test.’ She waggled the test tubes of our own blood at us.

  At school, whenever one of the teachers asked if we had any questions, Grim would always put his hand up and say, ‘Who would win in a fight between a badger and a rattlesnake?’ or ‘a vampire and a zombie’. It turned out he was the same about food. In Grim’s head all the different foods in the world are at war and you have to choose sides. ‘What about prawn crackers?’ I said.

  Prawn Crackers versus Snack a Jacks took hours and involved him punching the wall and kicking the air.

  The Snack a Jacks versus Prawn Crackers Showdown was nothing compared to the Battle of the breads - Naan versus Pitta.

  Chicken Tikka versus Scampi Wings was more or less the Third World War.

  Custard versus Ice Cream was nuclear meltdown.

  Anyway, here’s the final list . . .

  Thin-and-crispy Pizza with pepperoni

  Chicken Tikka (I couldn’t believe that Scampi lost!)

  Fish fingers

  Special Nut-Free Supplements that help kick-boxers get bigger muscles

  Snack a Jacks (Salt & Vinegar only)

  I’m not saying it took a long time to agree this menu, but it might have been quicker to grow up, go to catering college, then go to sea in a trawler and catch some fish and sail back home and cook them.

  Dr Brightside read the list, nodding her head. ‘This,’ she said, ‘has given me the idea for an experiment.’ The word ‘experiment’ made me think of Magneto firing bullets at various X-Men to see if they were really, really indestructible. Dr Brightside’s experiment was different.

  Ages and ages after we gave Dr Brightside the list, Nurse Rock came in with a food trolley, parked it in the middle of the room and said, ‘Enjoy.’

  The plates had metal covers on. I couldn’t wait. I pulled the cover off mine and underneath was . . . not a pizza. It was something – but it didn’t look like food. Someone must have thought it was food because it had a knife and fork next to it, but it very much did not look like food. In fact it very much looked like frogspawn. Frogspawn with dead beetles on top.

  I tried speaking into the intercom.

  ‘Yes?’ said Nurse Rock.

  She could hear me! ‘I think there’s been a bit of a mix-up.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I ordered pepperoni pizza, thin and crispy.’

  ‘This is a hospital, not Pizza Hut. You don’t order food. Food comes and you eat it.’

  ‘Dr Brightside told us to make a list of our favourite food. Thin-and-crispy pizza with pepperoni came top.’

  There was a sound like bits of paper being rubbed together. I realized after a while it was the sound of Nurse Rock laughing.

  Dr Brightside explained the food situation.

  ‘
What if you’ve got an allergy?’ she said. ‘What if that’s what’s making you green? The best way to find out is to put you on a very simple diet, of food you wouldn’t normally eat. That way the reaction might fade away quite quickly.’

  So that was her experiment – a diet. Not Magneto firing bullets.

  ‘Wait,’ said Grim. ‘You mean if we eat this, we might get better?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  Without even tasting it first, Grim shovelled the frogspawn into his mouth. After the first three mouthfuls he paused and glared at me. ‘Eat your food,’ he growled.

  ‘It looks vile.’

  ‘It tastes vile,’ agreed Grim. ‘Now eat it. Do what the doctor says.’

  At school I always did as I was told. Grim Komissky never did anything unless he wanted to do it. His motto was: ‘No one tells me what to do.’ But here he was, doing everything the doctor told him – even eating frogspawn and cockroaches without asking what they were.

  ‘There is every possibility,’ said Dr Brightside, ‘that your greenness is diet-related. Green turtles are green because all their food is green. The chlorophyll dyes their body fat.’

  I said, ‘Can I just point out that scientifically speaking I’ve been eating pepperoni pizza for years and never once turned green?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Dr Brightside. ‘Good observation. Maybe you’ve eaten so much pizza over the years it’s turned you green incrementally. We have to look into every possibility.’

  By the time she’d answered my question, my plate was empty. Grim was licking his lips.

  Our skin colour had changed but nothing else had changed. He was still bigger than me. He was still eating all my food.

  The frogspawn by the way is called Quinoa. It’s pronounced ‘Keeenwa’. They spell it differently from the way they say it in a pathetic attempt to disguise it.

  The cockroaches turned out to be roasted peppers that had been roasted too much.

  The Night Walker