James Munkers: Super Freak

By Lindsey Little

Clumsy, fearful and socially inept, James just wants to get through the day without being beaten to a pulp by the local thugs or embarrassed in public by his big, mad family. He just wants the quiet life.

What he gets is a glowing blue ferret tearing up his English class.

Without so much as a formal introduction, James is thrust into

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lindsey Little
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648285922

Lindsey Little

Lindsey Little is an Australian author and self-publisher of fantasy adventures for young adults. She splits her time between writing books and running a ballroom dancing studio with her husband. They live in the Huon Valley in Tasmania with two Maine Coon cats with Harry Potter-inspired names.

Book preview

1. The Caped Crusader

The door is closed.

Damn. I do the hoppy dance of frustration. Why did they have to close it? I tried my best, I ran all the way. Well, okay, I didn’t run, but I walked plenty fast, and someone goes and does a low-down, miserable thing like close the door? It makes things so much harder.

Mind you, I can hear a racket from the other side, so they haven’t started yet. I still might be able to pull this off.

Mission objective: get to my seat before my English teacher notices I’m late. Again.

I turn the handle and peer inside. Miss Gillam’s back is turned as she writes something on the whiteboard. Everyone else is messing about with books and throwing things at each other.

No one’s looking this way.

I slip inside and start to creep around the back of the room towards my desk. I tiptoe past the poet of the month display, sidle around the old TV stand… almost there…

BANG!

A breeze from an open window has slammed the door shut behind me. I whip around at the sound and knock a pile of books over with my elbow. I cringe as they go clattering to the floor, then peer up at the front of the room.

Miss Gillam is standing there, arms folded, taking me in. Grazed, dirty face. Mud on my trousers. Nacho sauce down my shirt. It’s possible there are crisps in my hair.

Chaos following wherever I walk.

‘James Munkers,’ Miss Gillam says, and manages to fit a world of dissatisfaction into all three syllables. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

I stand there amid a sea of sniggers. Does she want me to answer that?

‘Late again,’ she continues. ‘And just look at the state you’re in.’

Again I don’t answer. I can hardly tell her that it’s a bit hard to turn up to class on time looking dapper when Mickey Oldfield trips you up and dumps a rubbish bin over your head at the end of lunch. No one else in the class seems inclined to tell her this either, although most of them would have seen it happen. Cheers, guys.

Her tiny mind seems to pick up that something might have happened, though. ‘Have you been fighting?’ she asks.

‘No, miss.’ Which is true. I never put up much of a fight.

‘I suppose it’s too much to ask that you have your essay ready to hand in.’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Well, that’s something, at least,’ she says, hand outstretched.

‘No, I mean it is too much to ask, miss.’

She drops her hand and sighs at me as if I’m the most disappointing thing on two legs. ‘Well, you’ll have lots of time to finish it off in detention after school, won’t you?’ she says.

‘Yes, miss,’ I mutter and slouch off to my seat. That’s three detentions in three days. A personal best. And none of it was my fault. It’s not like I meant to set Mr Zarei’s lab coat on fire in science. It’s not as if I wanted to fall headfirst into a cello during music class.

I guess it’s only a matter of time before I have to face up to the fact that I’m a cursed, destructive freak.

At least I’m not a sadist, though. Who the hell opened that window? It’s December, for crying out loud.

I turn up the collar of my blazer and hunker down in my chair. ‘James Bonkers,’ someone whispers behind me, and another wave of giggling washes around the room. I bite my lip so hard I can taste blood. Ever since Mum remarried, kids have been coming up with new last names for me: Monkeys, Bonkers, Plonkers, Punkers, Munted. You don’t even have to change it. Just say my last name in a certain tone and it already sounds like an insult. Munkerrrs.

I really hate my adoptive name.

Miss Gillam ignores the fact that I’m being verbally abused and launches into a lecture about imagery in Tess of the stinking D’Urbervilles. Not that I’m listening. I’m trying to work out how I’m going to explain this spate of detention-getting to Mum and Michael. They’ll put on their hurt faces, like a pair of slapped puppies. ‘James, fifteen is too old to be behaving like this, don’t you think?’ That’ll be Michael’s line. And Peter will back him up. I don’t think Pete’s ever been in trouble – he’s the perfect oldest son. Claire will look superior; Garth will crow, the nasty little sod. In fact the whole family will be…

Will be…

…A glowing blue ferret just jumped onto my desk.

A glowing. Blue. Ferret.

I don’t dare move. It might launch itself at my face and scratch out my eyes with its twinkly blue claws. I just sit there and stare at it.

It stares back. Its tiny eyes flash like sapphires catching the light.

Then it seems to come to the conclusion that I’m a bit dull, and starts sniffing at my pencil case in the hope of something better. Its body shimmers as it moves, changing shades like the sea on a sunny day.

I glance around the room to see how everyone else is reacting to the appearance of a turquoise woodland creature, only to find that no one seems to have noticed. Miss Gillam is still droning on at the front of the room while the rest of my classmates are in different stages of falling asleep. Even the people sitting next to me haven’t so much as blinked. What’s wrong with them? There’s no way they haven’t seen it.

‘Cassandra,’ I hiss at the girl to my right. She turns and scowls at me, clearly annoyed that a slug like me is daring to talk to her in front of other people. I ignore the look and point to the front of my desk, where the ferret thing is sniffing along the spines of my books. Cassandra ignores my desk and its inhabitant and looks vaguely towards the front of the class. ‘What?’ she mouths at me. When all I do is stare at her she goes back to ignoring my existence.

Right. So either someone’s playing a practical joke on me and the whole class is in on it, or I’ve gone mad and started seeing things.

I survey the imaginary thing before me, willing it back into non-existence. ‘Go away,’ I whisper at it. It looks at me, considers my proposal, then starts pulling things out of my pencil case with its front paws.

‘No! Stop it!’ I try to keep the pens from skittering off the desk, but a few clatter to the floor. Miss Gillam stops waffling, looks up and frowns at me. I give her an apologetic look and scoop the pens up. When she starts reading again I glare at the real culprit. ‘You’re not allowed to get me into trouble,’ I tell it. ‘You don’t exist.’ And I wave my hand through it to demonstrate.

As soon as my hand passes through the ferret, though, a tingling sensation shoots up my arm and embeds itself at the back of my nose, like the start of a sneeze. A dry, metallic smell fills the air, and the hairs on my arms and neck start fizzing with static. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to stop the buzzing.

When I open my eyes, I find myself staring at not one little blue creature, but dozens – cats, rats, dogs, lizards, bats, all crawling over the floor, jumping from desk to desk, fluttering at the windows, and one little beggar in the shape of a monkey swinging from the top of the whiteboard. I moan in terror at how quickly my mind is losing its grip. At this rate I’ll be in a padded cell by the end of next week.

Unless nobody finds out. There’s no way they could if I don’t react to what I’m seeing. If I can just develop an instant fascination for the works of Thomas Hardy and block out the blue, shimmering…

A squeak of excitement from my desk makes me look down, despite myself. The ferret pokes its head out of my pencil case, a round metal object clamped between its grinning jaws. I draw in a sharp breath when I see what it is – my dad’s ring. Not his wedding ring, but a different one he always used to wear on his other hand. I haven’t gone anywhere without it for the last eleven years and I don’t intend to start now.

So when the blue ferret jumps off the desk with the ring still in its mouth, I dive after it.

My desk goes toppling as I lunge forward. Pens and books go flying. The ferret skitters along the floor, weaving in and out of the desks, and I go crawling after it, pushing people’s legs out of the way. Girls shriek. Guys yell. Someone stomps on my hand, but I don’t stop. The ferret and I reach the side wall at the same time, but before I can grab it, it turns and runs up to the front of the class. Finally out of the jungle of desks I heave myself to my feet, snagging my blazer on a pin holding a map of the world up. As I tear myself away from the wall half the map comes with me, and flaps behind me like a cape as I belt up the room.

‘JAMES MUNKERS, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?’ Miss Gillam bellows, just as the ferret leaps between her feet. She screams and totters aside as I go charging after it. It then runs round and round Miss Gillam’s desk with me hot on its heels, as students yell and laugh, and the other blue creatures scatter in all directions. Finally it leaps up onto the desk, dashes across its length and launches itself off the far side high into the air. I leap after it and make a grab for the ring.

So there I am. Mid-air, arm extended over my head, paper cape flapping. And twenty-six mobile phones flashing as my classmates capture my superhero moment on camera.

They also capture my landing. I go bowling into a bookshelf which all but disintegrates on my impact, and forty-odd copies of the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary land on my head.

Once they’re done falling, I fight my way to the surface and experience a moment’s pleasure at the feel of my dad’s ring clasped safely in my hand, with not an imaginary blue creature to be seen.

That pleasure coughs feebly and dies as I see the look on Miss Gillam’s face.

I’m going to be in detention for the rest of my life.

* * *

It’s well and truly dark by the time I’m granted parole. I trudge up our road, wrapping my blazer tightly around me and cursing everyone who’s put up blue Christmas lights in their windows. I keep glimpsing them out of the corner of my eye and thinking they’re something else.

After the day I’ve had it should be a relief to be home, but it isn’t. I drag myself up the three flights of stairs to our flat. I don’t go in, though. I just fall against the door, smacking my forehead on the cold wood. I can hear the usual madness inside. The volume’s going to triple when I come in with scratches on my face, sauce stains on my collar and a letter from the headmaster in my bag. I’m not sure I can take it.

I only decide to move when a gust of wind throws sleet onto the back of my neck. I put my key in the lock and push the door open to find my home in utter chaos. There are rubbish bags and boxes against the walls, the furniture is out of place and there are piles of our possessions all over the floor. I knock over a stack of CDs just by pushing the door open.

Winifred, my seven-year-old half-sister, sticks her head out of the lounge. ‘I just stacked all those,’ she says.

‘Well, you shouldn’t have stacked them right behind the door, then,’ I tell her, trying to pile them back up again. My backpack swings on my arm and knocks over some books. ‘Why are they out here?’

‘We’re moving.’

‘Moving what, the lounge room into the hallway?’ I ask, but she’s disappeared again. She’s soon replaced by my half-brother Garth, who comes running down the hall, attracted by the sounds of destruction. If something’s being annihilated, Garth wants in.

‘IN-COMING,’ he yells and bowls a cricket ball at the books I’ve just righted. They go flying in all directions. He zooms about the place with his hands in the air, screaming, ‘Bowled ’im, bowled ’im!’

‘Thanks a lot,’ I say, not bothering to tidy them up again. ‘Why is everything everywhere, anyway?’

‘Because of OOZE,’ he yells over his shoulder, running back up the hallway. ‘We’re going to ooze.’

‘We’re going to ooze what?’ I ask, but it’s no use – I’ve lost his attention. He’s probably in the middle of playing a zombie shoot-’em-up.

Claire storms out of the kitchen area with some milk crates. ‘Where have you been?’ she snaps.

I ignore the question, mainly because I don’t want to answer it. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask instead.

‘It’s the end of our lives,’ she says, and she charges into her bedroom and slams the door behind her. What is it with everyone today? I can hear excited voices at the back of the house and, following them, find Peter moving the chairs away from the dining room table while Mum and my step-dad Michael make an absolute mess of the kitchen. There are appliances all over the bench top and piles of plates on the floor.

‘Hey, Sue, where do you want these?’ Michael’s asking, hefting up a dozen cooking books.

‘Just in the corner there for now. I don’t know whether they’ll go in the kitchen or the library.’

‘Hey, Pete,’ I say quietly, sidling up to him, ‘Mum’s not trying Feng Shui again, is she?’

He laughs. ‘Funny.’

Not really. It was a serious question. Last time I almost broke a toe from walking into all the disarranged furniture.

‘Ah, Jimbo,’ Michael says, looking up and spotting me. ‘You finished, then?’

I jump. Finished what? School? How did he… I haven’t given them the letter yet. Did the school call them?

‘Huh?’ Stalling.

‘Your part of the house.’

‘What part?’ What’s he talking about?

‘The part you were assigned this afternoon when you got home. You remember.’

Oh, for heaven’s sake. ‘I’ve only just got home,’ I tell him. Nice to know I’m an important part of the family.

‘Oh,’ he says, and I wait for the next questions to come. Where have you been? Detention again? What was it about this time? Where’s the letter? But his face breaks into a smile instead. ‘So you haven’t heard the news yet?’

Mum shrieks in excitement and bounces around the kitchen bench to stand arm in arm with Michael. The two of them beam at me. I’m instantly suspicious. When parents are this happy, something is very wrong.

‘We’re moving,’ they say in chorus, and wait for my back-flips of joy.

They may be waiting a while. I look around the room at the boxes, the bubble wrap and the packing tape, and clutch at a chair to steady myself.

‘Moving?’

‘Yes.’

‘Moving away?’

‘Yes.’

‘From the only home I’ve known since I was born?’

‘Yes,’ Mum says happily. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

Wonderful? It’s full of something, but it doesn’t smell like wonder. In fact, it smells a lot like vomit. I swallow several times to keep my lunch down.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

Garth runs in from the hallway. ‘OOZE!’ he screams in my ear.

‘Quit it, Garth,’ I yell back. ‘What is it with you?’

‘That’s where we’re going,’ he says, dancing around me just out of reach. ‘We’re moving to ooze, we’re moving to ooze!’

I look back at my parents in horror. ‘We’re moving to a place called Ooze?’

‘Spelled O-U-S-E,’ Michael says, as if that makes it any better.

‘It’s an old Celtic word for water,’ Mum adds. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’

Oh sure. Just the darlingest thing.

‘And it’s called that because it’s got a river running through it,’ Peter says. ‘And the river’s called…’ He holds a permanent marker out to Garth like a microphone.

‘OOZE!’ Garth screams again, and starts chanting, ‘The river’s called Ooze, the river’s called Ooze.’ Winifred runs in laughing and marches along behind Garth. The two of them yell at the top of their lungs, while Peter sets up a drum beat for them on the table with his markers. They get louder and louder, and twirl faster and faster around me.

A pale stream of blue starts to follow them.

‘KNOCK IT OFF!’ I yell at them, my hands shaking. The noise level drops as they come to a standstill.

‘Jimmy, honey,’ Mum says, coming forward and placing her hands on my shoulders. ‘You’re as white as a sheet. What’s wrong with you?’

Excellent question. Can’t answer. ‘There’s no river around here called Ooze,’ I say instead.

‘Not around here, no,’ she says. ‘It’s way up north.’

What? We’re already about as far north of the city as you can get. ‘How way?’

‘Up in Yorkshire.’

I almost choke on my own tongue. ‘You’re dragging us to Yorkshire?’

‘Yep,’ Michael says, stepping forward and thumping me on the shoulder. ‘Right in the middle of nowhere. It’s going to be great.’

‘Yeah,’ Peter says, coming round the table and slapping me on the back. ‘What a gap year for me. Just think of the miles of countryside.’

‘The wildlife.’

‘Hiking.’

‘Camping.’

‘Gardening.’

‘I can’t wait to feel mud on my hands again,’ Michael says dreamily.

It all sounds god-awful. ‘When was all this decided?’ I ask.

‘Just today.’ Mum smiles as she takes Michael’s hand again. ‘You can’t imagine how fast it all happened.’

‘I’ve got a fair idea,’ I mutter.

Michael suddenly seems to wake up to the fact that I could be happier. ‘Oh, Jimbo, I’m sorry. I know this is all very sudden – you come home and find the house half packed up – but it all just fell into place so quickly. I got offered the job as manager in the Ouse branch of Hardings this morning –’

‘And I got a call at lunch from the agency asking if I would be able to fill the place of secretary to the headmaster at the local school,’ Mum butts in.

‘And we called the real estate people this afternoon, and they said there’s a house available to rent immediately – used to be a pub or something, beautifully redone and lots of room.’

‘Isn’t that great?’ Peter says, poking me in the ribs with his marker. ‘A pub! Every time I practise my guitar, it will be like doing a gig.’

‘It was like the universe was telling us to go,’ Mum says. ‘Like a miracle – all our dreams coming true, all those things happening out of the blue like that.’

My eyelid twitches at the word blue. This is all sounding more like a trap than divine intervention to me. ‘Look, can’t we talk about this?’

Michael looks sheepish. ‘Well, talk fast,’ he says. ‘We leave on Sunday.’

Sunday? I’ve got less than forty-eight hours left of my life as I know it.

‘And there’s lots to do between now and then,’ Mum says in the hearty way she uses when she doesn’t want any arguments. ‘Too much to be bothered with cooking. Who wants fish and chips?’

There’s a general uproar from the kids. I slink out and lock myself in the bathroom.

My backpack is still slung over my shoulder. I let it drop to the floor and splash my face with cold water in the basin. Then I peer at my dripping face in the mirror. Doesn’t look like a psycho’s face. It just looks scared and wet. It’s a face that hasn’t had a good day. First it gets unhinged, then it gets uprooted.

I wonder how long it’ll take the good people of Ouse to rip it to pieces.

My morbid musings are interrupted by a knock on the door. ‘Just a minute,’ I call.

‘It’s me. Open up.’

I unlatch the door and