The Astounding Broccoli Boy

  You notice everything.

  Now my brain is finally switched on. It sees everything. Knows everything. Probably I could open that gate, step into the air and glide down to the ground.

  Actually probably best not to try that.

  And then the cradle hit the ground, just next to the wheelie bins. And that’s when Grim woke up. I explained about how he had opened locked doors in his sleep, and how I had teleported and how we had jumped off the roof of a twelve-storey building and survived. He looked up at the faraway roof of the hospital. ‘We jumped off there –’ He looked at his feet, safely on the ground. ‘You laughing at me, Rory Rooney?’ He pulled back his fist ready to thump me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can’t have jumped. We’d be dead.’

  ‘But we did jump. And we’re not dead.’ I realize now that I’d missed out a few details – such as that we hadn’t actually jumped seventy metres, more like one really. And that we had not swung down like Spider-Man, more like a window cleaner. But those things didn’t feel important just then. I FELT super. I was tingling with Superness. That’s when I told him my theory. ‘They put us in the isolation ward here at Woolpit Royal Teaching Hospital because they think we’re sick. What if we’re not sick? What if what we are is . . . superheroes?’

  Without saying anything he kicked his right foot up into my face, stopping just short so that his toe was almost touching my nose. He held the pose for a while then snapped his foot back to the ground. ‘You know what, Rory Rooney?’ he said, ‘I believe my confidence is coming back.’ He proved this by kicking his foot right into my face again. Then he jumped back, spun around and did the same thing backwards. ‘I’ve still got my moves.’

  ‘Yeah, you have. Just wondering if you could make them somewhere else.’

  He looked up at the roof again. ‘So how do we get back up there?’ he said.

  The moment he asked me I knew we weren’t going back up there. Not yet. We couldn’t just press the ‘Up’ button and go back to bed and quinoa in the Fish Tank. Dad was right. We had turned green for a reason. Up there they wanted to know what had turned us green. I wanted to know why. Surely the answer lay out there, in the city.

  ‘We are not,’ I said, ‘going back up there. We are going out into the city!’ I pointed to the underpass, which you could just see between the wheelie bins.

  It was as though he had been awaiting my order. ‘Yeah!’ he whooped, and did a kind of flying kick right out of the cradle, yelled, ‘The Green Goblin!’ and off he ran.

  The wheelie bins clattered into each other like skittles, and I thought . . .

  The Green Goblin is not a superhero.

  The Green Goblin – aka the billionaire director of Oscorp, Norman Osborn, nemesis of Spider-Man – is not a superhero. He’s a supervillain.

  He’s not a good guy.

  He’s a bad guy. A very bad guy.

  A Lone Figure Paces through the City Alleys and Underpasses

  When I caught up with him, Grim did his kickboxing stance and a long, loud evil laugh. ‘Fools!’ he chuckled. ‘Little do they suspect . . .’

  I tried to figure out what he was so pleased about. There was a queue of mostly women in sparkly dresses with bare legs and tottery heels. Plus also a gang of lads with their arms around each other, shouting at the girls and bursting into song. I don’t think I’d ever walked around a city at night before. It was much noisier, busier and more exciting than I expected. But I wasn’t scared. I was ready and hoping. Hoping that something crazy and dangerous would happen so that we could sort it out – a runaway train we could stop or a bank robbery we could foil.

  ‘Ha! Perfect!’ laughed Grim.

  ‘What’s perfect?’

  He pointed to the head of the sparkly dresses queue. Two massive men were standing, with their arms folded, outside a big, chunky building with no windows. Across the backs of their silky black jackets was the word ‘Security’ in fluorescent letters. Over the door of the big, chunky building, it said ‘The Bank’ in curly flashing lights.

  ‘A bank,’ said Grim. ‘Let’s rob it.’

  ‘Rob a . . . what? What are you talking about?’

  ‘There’s a bank. Let’s rob it.’

  ‘What?! Why?!’

  ‘For money. Why else would you rob a bank? If the Green Goblin saw a bank, he’d rob it, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he would, because the Green Goblin is not a superhero, he’s a supervillain. Think about the Green Hornet. Think about heroes. Being good. Foiling bank robberies, not doing bank robberies.’

  ‘But I’m not good. I’m bad. Surely you know that. Don’t you remember when I used to throw your bag off the bus?’

  ‘Yes, I do remember.’

  ‘Doing good, it’s just not my thing. I’d probably get it all wrong. Stick to what you’re good at, that’s what my mum says. I’m good at being bad.’

  ‘You were certainly good at being bad to me.’

  ‘I’ve been stuck in that ward for weeks. This is the first chance I’ve had in ages to really go and frighten someone. Come on.’

  ‘There’s a queue.’

  ‘Evil doesn’t queue.’ So he strode right to the front of the queue. I went after him. I felt as if I could stop a runaway train in its tracks, but stopping Grim Komissky was a different thing.

  When I fell off the roof, my brain seemed to notice everything that was happening everywhere – the sound of a bird’s wings, the lights of the city, even how I was falling. It was like I’d had a brain upgrade. Like now my brain was working at 200-per-cent normal capacity.

  Any now my 200-per-cent brain was noticing stuff and asking questions. For instance . . .

  • Do banks usually have flashing neon signs over the door? (No.)

  • Do they usually have loud music pumping out of them like this one does? (NO.)

  • Aren’t banks usually called something a bit more specific than ‘The Bank’ – such as ‘Bank of Ireland’ or ‘The Co-Op Bank’, not ‘The Bank’?

  • And do banks usually stay open in the middle of the night?

  I said, ‘Do banks usually stay open in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever heard of twenty-four-hour banking?’

  I had heard of twenty-four-hour banking – I just never expected it to look so exciting. A lot of the people going in and out were singing and dancing.

  ‘Fools,’ snorted Grim. ‘Soon their laughter will end.’

  I was so surprised to hear how good he was at sounding like a supervillain that I forgot to be surprised that he was robbing a bank. He even had a proper plan. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can teleport. Teleport us to the vault.’

  ‘I can’t teleport teleport, not like that. I just . . . When you fell it was just . . .’

  ‘Don’t say stuff like that. Say, “Yes, Master,” or something.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And don’t say, “OK.” Say, “Copy,” or, “Understood.”’

  ‘Sorry, Tommy-Lee.’

  ‘And don’t call me Tommy-Lee. Telling everyone my name when I’m robbing a bank, idiot. We need supervillain names if we’re going to rob banks. What about the Green Robbers?’

  ‘If you’re going to take robbing seriously, you probably don’t want to tell people in advance that you’re a robber. Better to keep it as a surprise.’

  ‘Oh yeah. What then? Green Kick-boxers? Or the something gang.’

  ‘The Grim Gang?’

  ‘Why Grim?’

  ‘Your nickname. In school. Remember?’ As soon as I said this I realized that probably no one had ever called him that to his face. He looked as if he might cry.

  ‘That’s not very nice,’ he said.

  I tried to change the subject. ‘What about The Broccoli Boys? We could be the Broccoli Boys?’

  ‘Why Grim?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did they call me Grim? Who called me Grim?’

  He looked so sad I said, ‘No one. It was just me. Bec
ause you threw me off the bus. Which was grim.’ He looked less frightening when he was sad, which is how I felt brave enough to say, ‘I’m not going to help you rob this bank. Robbing banks is wrong.’

  Suddenly his supervillain confidence came back. ‘Resistance,’ he roared, ‘is useless.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Resistance is actually really useful. Look, there’s you telling me to rob a bank. And here’s me resisting. And are we robbing a bank? No.’

  ‘That’s just where you’re wrong.’ He grabbed me by the arm and marched towards the entrance. The two massive security guys stepped sideways, into our path. One of them put his hand more or less right in my face. ‘No kids. Over-twenty-ones only.’

  But the other one stared at us. ‘These kids are green,’ he said.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the first one, bending down to get a better look at me. ‘How did you do that? They look like . . . What are they called?’

  I was thinking, Please don’t say leprechauns.

  ‘Munchkins,’ said the second one. ‘They look like Munchkins.’

  The other one disagreed. ‘Munchkins are yellow,’ he said. ‘You mean Oompa Loompas.’

  ‘Oompa Loompas are orange,’ said the first one. ‘It was the Yellow Brick Road that was yellow. The Munchkins were green.’

  ‘It’s definitely not Munchkins.

  My upgraded brain warned me that they might be about to say the word ‘leprechaun’.

  ‘Santa’s Helpers,’ I said. ‘We’re the elves that help Santa.’

  One of them growled, ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  But the other one asked, ‘Is it for charity?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ I said. ‘This is for charity. And it’s Christmas!’

  ‘Why didn’t you say? Go on in. Don’t forget to wipe your feet on the mat.’ We crossed the big, squidgy disinfectant mats and entered The Bank.

  I’d never been in a bank before. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I know it wasn’t loud music and flashing lights. Or people jumping up and down and waving their arms in the air. Putting money in and out of your bank account seemed to be a lot more fun than I would have thought. The women seemed to be mostly in dressing-up clothes. One of them had a long pointy tail, and red horns growing out of her head. She was carrying a big pitchfork and wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Little Devil’, even though she was absolutely huge. Another was dressed as Santa Claus – if Santa Claus was a woman who wore a really short red skirt and massive boots. Quite a few were dressed as cats, with ‘Caution: This Kitten’s a Killer’ written across their T-shirts. I’d had no idea that when Mum or Dad had to go down to the bank they were having such a great time.

  ‘My mum,’ said Grim ‘used to guard a bank. She never said anything about people dressed up as chickens.’

  A little flock of chicken women were dancing around a man with very, very blond hair and a sparkly jacket, who was holding a microphone.

  The music stopped. The man with the very, very blond hair got up and said into a microphone that his name was DJ Iceberg and that this was a very big night for someone called Wendy, who turned out to be one of the chickens. Wendy had a poster on her back that said ‘I am a Hen and this is MY NIGHT’, and she was going to sing for us. DJ Iceberg gave Wendy the microphone and asked everyone to clap before she started, ‘Because you might not feel like it afterwards.’ But before Wendy the Hen could cluck one note, Grim had grabbed the microphone.

  ‘Obey,’ he said, ‘and you will not get hurt. Know that we are . . .’ He paused. He still hadn’t thought of a name. ‘Know that we are . . . here to rob The Bank.’

  Everything went quiet.

  No music.

  No talking.

  My 200-per-cent brain was still taking in lots of details, such as the fact that we were a very long way from the exit, that there were hundreds of people in the room, all of them bigger than me, that we didn’t have any of the advantages of normal bank robbers – for instance, guns.

  ‘Now hand over your money to my henchman,’ said Grim.

  I did try to explain that I wasn’t his henchman, but the microphone didn’t pick it up.

  I tried again to convince Grim to stop, but he only said, ‘Henchmen don’t argue.’

  A woman with a tinsel halo and feathery wings stepped out of the crowd. Her wings were too small. She looked as if she had been in a nativity play when she was a little girl and never taken off the costume. She yelled, ‘Me first!’ and pushed a ten-pound note into my hand. ‘After all, it’s for charity.’ We never said we were collecting for charity. She just assumed we were. She put her arms around Tommy-Lee and asked someone to take her picture.

  ‘No pictures!’ said Grim.

  But no one took any notice. Dozens of phones flashed as all her friends took pictures of her with her arms around Grim.

  The women dressed as Killer Kittens pushed forward, gave me another tenner each and stood one on each side of Grim making Killer Kitten faces.

  Wendy the Hen shouted, ‘I want one!’ and ran over to me, her wings flapping. ‘My purse has got snagged under my beak, look. Can you take some money out for me?’ she clucked. I took a fiver out. She snuggled in between me and Grim and had her photograph taken. We were surrounded by strangely dressed women, hugging us, patting us and, most of all, giving us money. Lots of money.

  ‘This is the easiest bank robbery I was ever in,’ said Grim. Everyone laughed.

  It wasn’t that easy in fact because we had no pockets in our pyjamas. Also we hadn’t brought a bag because we hadn’t known we were going to do a bank.

  A very loud nun in a very short nun-skirt asked if we were collecting for charity.

  ‘No, it’s all for us.’

  She laughed, and when she laughed all the others joined in.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ I pleaded. But somehow this only made them laugh more.

  My upgraded brain could hear bad thoughts and crackling noises going on inside Grim’s head. It also noticed something else – the security guy pushing through the crowd towards us with a big smile on his face. It knew right away what was causing the smile. He had remembered the word he had been trying to think of. He pointed to us, looked at the women and said the word. ‘Leprechauns!’ he said. ‘They’re leprechauns!’

  Grim’s two worst things were happening at the same time: people were laughing. And someone had said the Leprechaun word. His brain was no longer crackling. It was ticking, like a bomb about to go off.

  He suddenly leaned back and kicked the air somewhere just above his head. No wonder he was British kick-boxing champion. As he kicked he shouted, ‘Pow!’ I swear the air went ‘OW!!’

  Everything went quiet. Everyone jumped back.

  Grim turned on his heel and did the kick again, backwards this time, like a donkey – a green donkey in Ninja pyjamas. ‘Kerpow!’ he cried this time.

  He whirled around to kick again. This time when he kicked though, all the chickens kicked too. And they all shouted ‘Kerpow!’ When he stood with his fists raised, they raised their wings. When he turned round to do another backwards kick, everyone – chickens, nuns, Santa Claus and Killer Kittens – they all turned round too. They all tried to kick backwards. They all shouted, ‘Pow!’ They were rubbish at it, but they were having a good time. They were trying to copy every move he made. They thought he was teaching them some kind of dance. He shook his fist, they shook their fists back. He threatened them, but they couldn’t hear him because DJ Iceberg had started playing a record over him. It was called ‘Kung Fu Fighting’.

  I turned round. A Killer Kitten jumped back. She had been looking really hard at the back of my neck. Now she was right in my face. She squashed her head next to mine and took a selfie of the two of us. ‘How did you do it?’ she shouted right in my ear.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The colour?’

  ‘Oh. It’s just a spray. We sprayed it on.’

  ‘That’s never a spray. It’s too smooth . . .’

  She was lo
oking into my eyes now and at my fingernails. ‘I’m a nurse,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly all nurses.’

  I said, ‘We’re not sick.’

  ‘No. But you are . . . green . . . You’re really green, aren’t you?’

  There was trouble coming. I could feel it. I had already noticed the door behind DJ Iceberg. It had a bar across it that said ‘Emergencies Only’. It wasn’t my 200-per-cent brain that noticed this, by the way; it was me – if you’re used to being hunted down by bullies at school, the first thing you look for when you walk into any room is the way out. But it was my 200-per-cent brain that figured out our escape plan.

  ‘This isn’t make-up!’ yelled the Killer Kitten. ‘I’m a nurse. I’m telling you, these kids are actually green, possibly contagious . . .’

  People frowned. The Hen Whose Night It Was screamed and cried and said was it catchy? Was she going to be green on her wedding day? ‘Oh my days, get me out of here! Get them out of here!’

  The Sparkly Nun stared me in the eye. ‘You made Wendy cry on her Big Night,’ she growled.

  Wendy the Hen punched numbers on her mobile, her little wings flapping like angry fingers. I knew she was ringing the police.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I yelled.

  ‘I’m not scared. I can fight all of them.’

  ‘You’re doing a robbery. What do robbers do at the end of a robbery? They get away.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  Vampires, nuns and nurses closed in on us like wolves. I grabbed the money out of Grim’s hand – there was a lot, notes and coins – and threw most of it up into the air.

  Nurses, angels, hens and Killer Kittens saw the cash confetti falling and dived on it.

  For a few seconds they forgot we were there.

  I grabbed Grim, dragged him to the Emergencies Only door and we were out on the street.

  ‘That was fun,’ he said.

  Holy Teleportation, Rory. You’ve Taken Us to China!

  We were in a street, but there were no cars. There were lots of people standing around talking and smiling and waving to each other. The street was mostly cafes with red paper lanterns hanging over their doorways. Some of them had little stalls with boxes of fruit and vegetables outside. There was a big statue of a dragon with a long, sloping back. Some kids were using it as a kind of slide. Everyone looked Chinese. The writing on the street signs looked Chinese. The posters on the wall, the signs above the shops – all Chinese. Even the phone box behind the stone dragon had a pointy, curly roof like a pagoda’s, with four little stone dragons, one guarding each corner.