Paul Jennings' Trickiest Stories Read online

  There’s nothing to worry about any more. Especially when I see what’s happening to me. Yes, it’s happening. Right in front of my eyes. I’m growing another pair of middle fingers. Awesome. I’m stoked.

  7

  All day long at school I keep my new fingers to myself. I’m not going to rush into things. Life could be complicated with drop-tail fingers. So I don’t want anyone to know about them. Not just yet.

  I think about what’s happened. This morning I ate a drop-tail lizard’s tail. And now I’ve grown removable middle fingers. One pull and off they come.

  Okay, so new ones grow straight away. Just like the tail on lizards.

  In one way it’s great. But in another way it’s not. I’m the only person in the world who can grow new fingers.

  Maybe I’m a freak.

  I could be on television. In the papers. Everyone will want to see the teenager who can grow new fingers. People will gawk at me. They might even laugh.

  I don’t want everyone looking at me like I’m the Elephant Man in a sideshow. So I keep my secret to myself. And my hands in my pockets.

  Gumble and his mates can’t figure it out. Now they’re not so sure that they did pull my fingers off this morning. And I’m not telling them anything.

  At lunch time I go into the loo and sit down in one of the cubicles. I take my two spare fingers out of my pocket and look at them.

  Gumble pulled them off and ran away screaming. No wonder. The fingers still give a little wriggle every now and then. They’ve been doing this all morning. I’ve seen people looking at me and wondering what’s going on in my pants. It’s very difficult to explain.

  What am I going to do with these fingers? They’re part of me. I can’t just flush them down the loo.

  I’d like to give them a proper burial. I’d like to say a few words before they’re interred. But I can’t bury them while they’re still wriggling. I’ll have to wait until they are well and truly dead.

  8

  After school I walk home alone with my secret.

  Mum asked me to stop off at Knox City Shopping Centre and buy food for Slurp. I make my way to the pet shop and get some chicken loaf. Then I take the escalator up to the first floor.

  Is it my imagination or are people staring at me? The people on the down escalator seem to be grinning as they go by. I turn around and see them peering back.

  What are they looking at? What’s wrong with me? Do I have a big pimple on my nose or something?

  I touch my face. With my four fingers.

  One of my fingers has gone. It’s fallen off. But where is it? I look down at the escalator. It’s nowhere to be seen.

  It must be back down below, wriggling around on the floor somewhere. I have to find it quickly. If someone picks up a human finger they’ll take it to the police and everyone will know I’m a freak.

  I turn around and start running down the up-escalator. As I go people jump out of the way.

  ‘Disgusting,’ says an old man.

  ‘Aaagh,’ screams a little girl.

  I reach the bottom of the escalator and look around to find that everybody in the whole world is staring at me. Some are laughing but most are just gawping.

  Both hands are in my pockets. I move my fingers around and discover something else. The other finger’s gone too. They’ve both gone and new ones are growing. But that’s not what everyone’s looking at. They can’t see my hands inside my pockets.

  So what are they staring at?

  I race over to a shop window and peer at my reflection.

  Oh, no, no, no. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

  One finger has come off in my earhole. It’s sticking out from my head and twitching around like a bit of live sausage.

  Everyone’s laughing and screaming. One kid’s putting his finger into his mouth, making out he’s going to puke.

  This can’t be for real. I feel like puking too.

  I pull the finger out of my ear and turn and run.

  My nose starts to itch. Right up inside. I’m not thinking clearly. If I was I wouldn’t do the next stupid thing.

  Pick my nose.

  Now the crowds are shrieking with laughter and yelling about how revolting I am.

  I look in the shop window and see the other finger hanging out of my nose.

  I pull it out and bolt out of the entrance.

  9

  It’s a long way home from Knox City and I’m out of breath. My feet hurt and my T-shirt feels like armour around my chest. My underpants are riding up and cutting into me. But I keep running. I just want to get home.

  I bunch up my fists and swing my arms as I run. I can see that my two new fingers have already grown.

  And in my pockets are four spare fingers. They’re twitching and twisting like worms on a hook.

  This thing’s going mad. I have to tell Mum what’s happened. She won’t tell anyone or let it get into the newspapers.

  I hope.

  Finally I reach our street. Home.

  But not quite. Sitting on our front fence is Elaine. She gives me a big smile. Which turns into a grin. Which turns into a laugh. My stomach feels queasy, but it’s not because of her freckles.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I say.

  ‘There’s something sticking out of your bottom,’ Elaine says politely.

  ‘What?’ I say. I feel the blood draining out of me as I realise what’s happened. Oh, please don’t let it be true.

  While I was running I must have scratched…

  I feel behind me. I did. It’s true. The worst thing in the world. Oh, horror. A finger is sticking out of the crack of my backside. It must have come off when I scratched at my tight jeans. I’ve run all the way home with a finger sticking out of my bum.

  I pull my finger out and run inside without a word.

  All I can think about are these stupid fingers. I don’t want fingers that come off. I just want to go back to like I was before with one finger missing from each hand.

  Eight fingers isn’t so bad.

  Outside, Slurp is clawing at the door and meowing. She wants to come in. I throw up the window and yell. ‘Shut up. Buzz off.’

  I’ve never ever spoken to Slurp like that before. I love Slurp. Now I feel guilty because she’s slinking off with her tail between her legs.

  I sit on the bed and stare at my hands. One has five fingers and the other four.

  I wiggle the horrible drop-tail finger. I don’t want it. I hate it.

  I grab the finger. And pull. Splot. It comes off and starts to wiggle around. I throw it angrily onto the bed and pull the other spare fingers out of my pocket.

  I put those five spare fingers on my bed too. Sometimes one or two of them give a bit of a twitch.

  I hold my hands in front of my face. Now they’re both the same. Four fingers on each hand. But for how long?

  I wait for the new fingers to grow.

  Minutes pass. Hours pass. Nothing happens.

  Brilliant. Wow. Oh, yes. No new fingers are growing. I must have used them all up. Even a drop-tail lizard must run out of tails some time.

  Clunk. I hear the front door. Mum’s home.

  I run downstairs, yelling as I go, ‘Mum, Mum, guess what happened.’

  10

  Mum listens very carefully to the whole tale. ‘Very clever, dear,’ she says. ‘You should write it up at school.’

  ‘It’s not a story,’ I yell. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Come on,’ says Mum. ‘Get real. We all know you have a good imagination. But really.’

  ‘I can prove it,’ I yell.

  I run into the bedroom to get the six spare fingers.

  But they’re gone. A breeze blows gently through the open window. I poke my head out of the window. There’s no one there. Not even Slurp.

  So that’s that. Mum doesn’t believe me. No new fingers grow on my hands. Thank goodness.

  Everything goes back to normal.

  Except for one or two things. Gumble stays well away
from me. He never puts a finger up at me again.

  Slurp is different too. She bites at people’s fingers when they pat her. She seems to like the taste. And she grows new ears. But they don’t last for long because she keeps scratching them off. And they get eaten by the dog next-door – the big mongrel with the long tail.

  Cry Baby

  Okay. I shouldn t have done it. I was stupid.

  ‘Who is responsible for that?’ said Mr Kempsy. He was pointing at the pin board.

  ‘Cry Baby,’ said one of the kids.

  ‘Stand up, Gavin,’ said Mr Kempsy.

  He needn’t have asked me to stand up. I’d been standing up all week. I faced the class. Outside the window I could see the desert stretching off into the distance. I wished I was there. ‘Did you do that drawing?’ said Mr Kempsy. He knew it was mine. That’s why he was asking. I nodded my head. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell us how you did it.’

  Everyone looked at the wall where my picture was pinned. I had called it ‘Elephant Ears’ because that’s what it looked like.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Kempsy. ‘We’re waiting.’ He knew how I did it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been asking.

  I breathed deeply. ‘Last week I went into the staff room after school,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he growled.

  ‘Then I pulled down my pants, sat on the photocopier and pressed the button.’

  Well, you have never heard anything like it. The class cracked up. They laughed till the tears ran down their faces. I just stood there feeling stupid. My face was red and so was my burnt bottom.

  Mr Kempsy didn’t laugh though. He suspended me from school for a week.

  Mum didn’t laugh either. She went on and on and on about it. The way parents always do.

  That’s the worst of being a kid. You never know when you are going to cop it. You can get into trouble at any time. One minute everything is fine and then ‘boom’ – you are dead meat. Things can turn nasty just when you least expect it.

  Like what happened the next day after the elephant ears and Mr Kempsy. Let me put you in the picture. I had to stay home from school. Mum wouldn’t talk to me so I moped around feeling awful. After she went out I did a whole heap of jobs without even being asked. I tried to make up for what I had done. When I had finished the washing-up I stood in the lounge and watched T V.

  2

  Mum had left her new writing pad on the coffee table. Now that might not seem like much to you but you have to remember that she had once told me this: ‘Gavin, you are never to touch this writing pad. It was Aunt Nellie’s and there are only a few pages left. They are precious pages.’

  Aunt Nellie had drowned when she paddled her canoe in front of a ship carrying rainforest timber. The boat broke her canoe in half and she was never seen again. Mum kept Aunt Nellie’s picture on the kitchen wall and she often stood staring at it.

  Anyway, like I said, I was standing there watching TV – a movie called The Old Man and the Sea.

  The writing pad was on the coffee table. It was made of delicate, thin paper with a design on the top. Trees – a lovely forest spreading across the top of the page. I wanted a closer look. I didn’t want to write in it. I didn’t want to tear out a page. I just wanted a look. There was nothing wrong with that really. Was there?

  So I picked it up and sat down.

  Now you are going to find out why they call me Cry Baby. See, all week I had been forgetting about my burnt behind. Every time I sat down it hurt so much that tears sprang into my eyes.

  As you have probably guessed, the tears started to flow. Right down onto Mum’s special writing pad. Even though I jumped up straight away the whole thing was drenched. I mopped up the tears but it was no good. The trees were all bent and twisted and the leaves were running off the branches. The paper was wet and stained.

  My heart started to thump. That was it. This was death. I was gone. First the elephant ears and now the paper. Mum was going to kill me. I thought about rushing down the street to buy another pad. But I knew that I would never find one. Aunt Nellie’s pad was as old as the hills.

  My stomach felt weak. Any time now Mum would come back. I went outside to see if there was any sign of her. Grandpop was in the front yard packing up his truck for another venture into the desert. ‘What are you looking for this time?’ I asked.

  He held up a photo. ‘The best one,’ he said. ‘The water-holding frog.’ He was so excited that his hands were shaking. All his life he had wanted to find a specimen of the water-holding frog. His old face was wrinkled with a huge smile. His eyes twinkled. This was going to be the tenth trip looking for this frog. I was scared that he was going to die before he found one. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes because the thought of it was so sad.

  I tried to get my mind off it by thinking of something else. That wasn’t so hard. I just thought about what Mum was going to do to me when she came home.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about the water-holding frog?’ Grandpop asked. I nodded but he started telling me again anyway.

  ‘This frog,’ he said, ‘lives in the desert. Before the summer comes it fills itself up with water and burrows into the ground. It can stay down there for years and years, waiting for the rain. Then, one day the rains come. Water seeps through the sand and wakes up the sleeping frog. It burrows out and sings in the rain. Wonderful. Marvellous.’ He was all excited. His whiskers were fairly bristling with joy.

  Grandpop slammed the door of the truck and took out his keys. ‘Tell your mother that I’ll be back the day after tomorrow,’ he said in his croaky old voice. He jumped into the truck and started up the engine.

  A cloud of dust was approaching in the distance. It was Mum’s Land Rover. I felt sick inside. I couldn’t face her.

  3

  Okay, I shouldn’t have done it. I was stupid.

  But I did. I pulled open the back door of Grandpop’s truck and climbed in. I knelt down and hid under a blanket. I was careful not to sit on my burnt bottom, I can tell you that. The truck was full of exploring equipment. A curtain was drawn across behind Grandpop’s seat. I felt quite safe snuggled down among the tents and pans. The roar of Mum’s Land Rover went by outside.

  I had to stay hidden until we reached our destination. If Grandpop found me before we got there he’d just turn back. The truck bumped and jolted. It was hot and I started to get thirsty.

  Grandpop started to sing. He was making up the words as he went. It was a sad little song about the water-holding frog. It told how the raindrops fell and woke up the sleeping frogs. ‘Oh, what a sight that would be,’ he said to himself.

  Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to help Grandpop find a water-holding frog before he died. Being in Mum’s bad books didn’t seem important at all any more. I was so excited that I even forgot how thirsty I was.

  The truck bumped on and on. I lay on my stomach in the back, dreaming that I would be the one to find the water-holding frog. Grandpop would be happy. Mum would be happy too because she loved Grandpop so much. She probably wouldn’t even go crook at me about running away or ruining the writing pad. I had to find a water-holding frog. For everyone’s sake.

  Just then I heard a blast from a horn. I peeped out of the back and saw two blokes in a hotted-up car. It was a red Ford with big, fat tyres. The driver was trying to make Grandpop go faster. The dirt road was narrow and they couldn’t get past. They were really mean-looking guys. The driver was covered in tattoos. The bloke next to him was picking his nose and glaring at us at the same time.

  Poor old Grandpop. ‘All right, all right,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘I’m going as fast as I can.’ I could hear him through the curtain that he had stretched behind the front seat. He couldn’t see me staring out of the back.

  But the two men in the Ford could.

  Okay, I shouldn’t have done it. I was stupid.

  But I just couldn’t help myself. I bent one finger and held the knuckle up under my nose. It looked like my fi
nger was going right up inside my nostril. Then I twisted my wrist and with my other hand, pointed at the guy who was picking his nose.

  Well, he went right off. His face turned red. The big Ford suddenly lurched off the road and tore past in a swirl of dust. The driver blasted his horn and cut us off. The truck bumped and skidded on the edge of the road. For a second I thought we were going to turn over.

  But we didn’t. Somehow or other Grandpop managed to keep the truck on the road. ‘Idiots,’ he yelled as the Ford disappeared into the distance.

  I sure hoped we weren’t going to meet those blokes again.

  4

  My throat was parched. There was a water barrel in the back but I couldn’t get to it without shifting some boxes. Grandpop might hear me.

  After another four hours the truck stopped. I heard Grandpop get out. I peeped through a window and saw that we were at one of those lonely little petrol stations in the middle of the desert. A big sign said LAST STOP BEFORE ALICE SPRINGS. Behind the sign I saw a red Ford parked in the shade.

  Grandpop started filling the truck with petrol.

  This was my chance to get a drink. The water was in a large drum with a tap at the bottom. I grabbed a mug and filled it up. Boy, was I thirsty. I drank mug after mug full. I was just filling my fourth mug when I heard shouting.

  I peeped outside. The big tattooed guy and his mate were pushing Grandpop around. They had his hat and were throwing it to each other. Poor old Grandpop had no one to help him. Except me. I forgot all about the water that was pouring into the mug. I just dropped every thing and leaped out of the car.

  Grandpop jumped and hopped like a little kid, trying to get his hat back. He was really old and I could see it was hard for him to move. His breath came out in noisy wheezes. Sweat was pouring down his cheeks. Or was it tears?

  Now I’m quite good at basketball, if I do say so myself. I took a flying leap up onto the back of the tattooed one and snatched the hat. He fell down in the dust onto his knees.