Escape to Australia Read online

  Once I had computed the impossible information that there was, in fact, a huge snake in my bed, I levitated so fast that I bounced off the ceiling, spun around in midair, and rocketed out of the room at approximately 926 miles an hour without my feet touching the ground once.

  Did I mention I was screaming?

  Well, I was—loudly and without drawing breath and in a voice so high I was surprised the windows didn’t shatter. As soon as I locked eyes on the reptile in my bed, I screamed like a police siren without an Off switch.

  I screamed as I hurtled down the Coogans’ hallway, I screamed as I clattered down the stairs, and I was still screaming as I sprinted into the crowded living room, tripped over a coffee table, and somersaulted into the TV, which exploded in a totally impressive shower of sparks and smoke. I was left sprawled half over the coffee table, with cake all over me, my butt stuck up high in the air, and my face buried in the carpet.

  It wasn’t a good look.

  See?

  “SNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKE!” I howled, lifting my chin from the carpet. “S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-SNAAAAAAAAAKKKKKE!”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Biff and Barb Coogan looked blankly at me and then at the busted TV.

  “Snake?” I said. My voice went up at the end of the word like I was asking a question. Maybe I was asking a question. Maybe there hadn’t been a snake?

  And then Bradley and Belinda and all their surfy-alien-mutant friends started to laugh. They laughed until tears ran down their perfect cheeks. They would stop laughing for a second and then see my yellow underwear with the stars and start laughing all over again.

  “Stop,” one kid gasped, holding his hands up. “I can’t breathe!” And then he rolled over, his shoulders shaking.

  They’d stop laughing, and then someone would say, “The TV!” and off they’d go once more. If one of them had literally laughed their head right off their shoulders, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Even Biff and Barb joined in.

  Then Mom arrived. “What’s all the noise?” she asked.

  “Rafe’s making us all laugh,” Barb Coogan said. “He’s quite a joker, isn’t he?”

  Before Mom could reply, Bradley turned to one of his friends. “You get that, Danny?” he said.

  I looked around to see Bradley’s friend holding up his phone and nodding. “Every last freakin’ second, Bradster,” he said. He leaned forward and high-fived Bradley. “Uploading now.”

  WHERE’S A GIANT METEOROID WHEN YOU NEED ONE?

  Did you scare wickle Rafey?” Bradley said in a singsong voice as he scooped the python from my bed.

  Sheila was so big it took all of Bradley’s strength to lift the disgusting thing. “I wondered where you’d gone.”

  “Like you didn’t know,” I said.

  “Rafe!” Mom cut in before Bradley could reply. She put an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t be silly, honey. You’d have to be crazy to put a python in someone’s bed.”

  “Well…,” I muttered, but Mom didn’t hear me. Perhaps it was for the best. She is usually someone who has my back, but she has this thing about being nice to people when you’re staying in their home. In her book, being rude to a host is a big no-no.

  “Sheila wouldn’t hurt a fly, Ralph,” Biff said as the snake draped herself around Bradley’s shoulders and closed her eyes. “She’s one of the family.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I sneered. “I’m not a fly, and the name’s Rafe, not Ralph. Got it, you overgrown Ken doll?”

  Or that’s what I would have said if I had a spine.

  Instead, I just kind of grunted and stared at the floor, wondering when this would be over. I’d used up most of my dignity already, and winning an argument with someone whose TV you’ve just destroyed is always going to be difficult. Plus, Biff probably hadn’t gotten over getting puked on by my mom yet.

  Also, I was still only wearing my yellow boxer shorts. It’s hard to get angry when all that stands between you and public nudity is a piece of thin cotton decorated with purple stars.

  “Awesome!” Danny held up his phone. “Seven hundred and fifty-five hits in three minutes. Man, this clip is clocking up some serious action!”

  Everyone whooped.

  Except me—and Mom, although I think I saw the beginnings of a smile around her mouth.

  She patted me on the head. “Go back to bed, sugar,” she said quietly. “Try not to take it to heart. It’ll all seem better in the morning.”

  I nodded even though I knew it wouldn’t seem better in the morning. That was just the kind of thing that moms say. Mom meant well, but she hadn’t looked deep into the shark eyes of the Coogan twins. If those androids had anything to do with it, my life would be even worse in the morning. I skulked toward the stairs, turning around to face them when I heard them cackling like a bunch of monkeys in a laughing-gas factory.

  Danny stopped howling long enough to hold up the screen of his phone toward me. “I uploaded the whole clip, man!” he yelled, tears rolling down his face. “You should check it out. It’s on completefails.com. The clip’s called ‘Classic Rafe Khatchadorkian All-Time Snake Fail.’”

  “I wouldn’t read the comments, dude,” Belinda said, looking up from her own phone.

  I knew Belinda wasn’t trying to help me out. She was just letting me know that no matter how bad I thought the whole snake-screaming, TV-destroying humiliation had been, it was going to be a whole lot worse once everyone else on the planet had a chance to see it.

  I turned around and went up the stairs to my room.

  A while back, I’d seen a thing on TV about a giant meteoroid the size of Wyoming being on a possible collision course with Earth. If it hit, we’d all be wiped out in a split second.

  Through the window, I looked up hopefully at the Shark’s Bay night sky. Where was a giant meteoroid when you needed one?

  T. REX ON THE ROOF

  The next morning, it was like everything that had happened the previous night was a bad dream. Okay, it felt like I’d been rinsing my eyes with sand, my tongue had been replaced with what tasted like a dead rat, and I had cake crumbs wedged in areas I didn’t know I had. But other than that, I felt pretty good.

  Outside my window, the sun glinted on waves rolling onto a curving mile of gleaming white sand. Behind the beach, the town of Shark’s Bay sparkled in the morning sun. The sky was blue and so was the crystal-clear water.

  A pod of dolphins splashed in the surf. It was hot, but nothing like the cauldron of yesterday. Bright-green parrots screeched through the branches of trees that edged the shimmering backyard pool.

  Other than Bradley and Belinda, who were swimming laps, the view was magnificent. This trip might work out after all, I thought.

  “Not too shabby, eh?” Leo said, and I had to agree.

  I could get used to this.

  There wasn’t even a trace of last night’s storm. Other than a crane lifting a Tyrannosaurus rex off the roof of a house a couple of streets away.

  “Back up there, cowboy,” Leo said. “A T. rex?”

  I jerked my head back toward the crane and saw that, despite no one in Shark’s Bay seeming even slightly concerned, it actually was a T. rex being lifted off the roof.

  And I was an expert on T. rexes. By which I mean that I’d seen all of the Jurassic movies and still had the purple plastic dinosaur that Grandma Dotty gave me when I was six. Like I said, an expert.

  “Oh, come on,” I muttered. “You gotta be kidding.”

  BAD NEWS AND MORE BAD NEWS

  I was just about to open my mouth and yell “T. rex!” when my super Spidey sense kicked in, and I shut my mouth like a shark on a surfer’s leg. Another split second and I would have started the day off by making a fool of myself again.

  A T. rex in downtown Shark’s Bay? Nuh-uh, don’t think so. Not even I was dumb enough to think that Australia still had dinosaurs, no matter how ferocious and weird the rest of their animal population was.

  So I squinted at
the crane and took a closer look. The T. rex hung from the hook, its arms and legs sticking stiffly out of the large fabric sling wrapped around its belly. It was holding a sign for Rex’s Mightee Bites. So chances were pretty good it wasn’t real.

  I nodded and wiped my brow. That had been a close call. I didn’t want to lose any more cool than I already had. After last night, I had very little reserves of cool left, and the last thing I needed to do was blow it all in a false T. rex panic.

  I got dressed and went downstairs. Mom was sitting on the pool deck drinking coffee with Biff and Barb Coogan.

  “Morning, Rafe,” Mom said, smiling. “Isn’t this place great?”

  “Uh-huh.” It was the best I could do for now.

  Mom seemed to have smoothed things over with Biff. She’s good at that—smoothing things over, I mean. One of her many mom skills. Yesterday she’d hurled chunks all over Biff. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, she was chatting to him like nothing had happened. I couldn’t imagine Belinda forgiving me that easily.

  “You sssssssleep okay?” Biff asked. “Pillowssss ssssssoft enough?”

  I smiled weakly.

  Mom leaned over and squeezed my hand. “He’s only joking, Rafe. Isn’t that right, Biff?”

  “Yessss,” Biff said. “Sssssssorry, Rafe. I won’t ssssssay another word about ssssnakes.”

  He was telling the truth. He didn’t say a single word about snakes. Instead, he said lots of words about snakes. After about fifteen minutes of lame snake jokes from Biff, I eventually managed to get some breakfast.

  “They’ll get bored of all that snake stuff soon,” Mom whispered to me. “Hang in there, honey. Today will be better, I promise.”

  “Okay,” I said, and turned toward the table. I could use some better today.

  Although, if the day was going to be an improvement upon yesterday, it didn’t get off to a good start when Biff tried to make me eat something called Vegemite. The stuff looked like puréed dog poop. I opted for a bowl of Wheety Snax and a glass of juice instead.

  “So,” I said through a mouthful of flakes, “what’s the plan today?”

  I was looking forward to seeing a bit of Shark’s Bay, maybe getting my toes wet at the beach (just my toes), and then taking a look at where I was supposed to be having my exhibition. Just thinking those words—my exhibition—gave me chills.

  The first piece of bad news was that we wouldn’t be going to the exhibition space just yet.

  “They’re still painting the place, Rafe,” Biff said. “Should be finished by tomorrow.”

  Before I could say anything, Bradley and Belinda walked up to the table, dripping in pool water and drying their cool surf hair with cool surf towels. Their eyes shot cool surf daggers at me.

  We exchanged nods, and Belinda leaned toward Bradley and whispered something. Both of them looked back at me and started giggling. If you’ve ever had that happen to you, you’ll know it feels about as reassuring as finding a bug in your burger.

  Or a snake in your bed.

  “So,” Mom said, “me and Mr. and Mrs. Coogan are going to walk to the lighthouse. It was built in 1882! It’s the first example of reflected electric light in this part of Australia.”

  I tried to look impressed. And failed.

  “Great,” I said.

  Mom smiled. “I didn’t think you’d go for that, so you’re going with Bradley and Belinda and all their friends to the beach! Won’t that be great?”

  I spat my Wheety Snax across the table. I’m sure if Bradley and Belinda had been eating any, they’d have done the same.

  That was the second chunk of bad news.

  THE SHORTS FROM HELL

  Pretty much everyone in Shark’s Bay was drop-dead gorgeous.

  I found myself heading for the beach with Bradley and Belinda and their friends from last night, the ones who looked like they’d fallen right out of an Australian tourism ad. And then there was me, the poster boy for Awkwardsville.

  To make matters worse, my online fame had spread faster than the bubonic plague. In the ten minutes it took to walk to the beach, three kids recognized me from completefails.com.

  Just as we reached Bloodspurt Beach (I’m not kidding, that’s what it’s called), we passed some kids sitting in the shade of a tree who looked like they were in the wrong movie. For a start, none of them was particularly tall, particularly athletic, or particularly blond. They wore clothes that weren’t surf cool, and they all looked like they’d just sucked on a slice of lemon.

  I liked them immediately.

  “Look at those sad sacks cluttering up the beach,” Belinda said. “Total drongos.”

  I didn’t know what a drongo was, but it sounded bad.

  I was probably a drongo.

  “The Outsiders,” Bradley said. He growled at one of the boys in the group under the tree, who jumped back nervously. Bradley and his friends burst out laughing.

  A dark-haired girl wearing black-rimmed glasses scowled at me.

  I made a gesture that was meant to say, Hey, sorry about all that, but I’m not really one of these cool surf types at all. I’m more of an artsy, TrollQuest-playing sort of guy, and I’m sure we could be friends if you’d only give it a shot. But it’s hard to get all that into one movement. I ended up looking like I was practicing the best way to crack open a coconut.

  I wanted to hang with the Outsiders. They seemed much cooler than Bradley and Belinda’s stupid buddies. They also had a cool name, even if they hadn’t picked it for themselves. But from the icy expression on the dark-haired girl’s face, it was clear that any “friend” of Bradley and Belinda’s was most definitely not a friend of theirs. They hated me.

  And my shorts.

  Coincidentally, I should probably explain the shorts. Remember how Aussie Airways lost our bags? That meant I had to borrow a pair of swim trunks from Bradley. And Bradley gave me these monstrosities. He must have been keeping them as a practical joke.

  For starters, they were about six sizes too big. More longs than shorts. They could have doubled as a tent. If the wind picked up to anything above a gentle breeze, I would be hoisted into the air like an empty plastic bag. My winter-pale Hills Village legs poked out from the bottom of them like a couple of bendy straws. And they had the nastiest pattern ever produced by humans—psychedelic Day-Glo butterflies, rainbows, hearts, and more puky stuff like that. These shorts were so bright you could probably see them from space.

  I guess it could’ve been worse. I wasn’t planning on going into the water, anyway.

  With a sigh, I turned away from the Outsiders and trudged after the pod people toward Bloodspurt Beach. And it was only downhill from there.

  LET’S GO SURFING

  Things went something like this:

  1. Bradley and his crew picked up their surfboards and headed for the shark-infested water.

  2. I really did not want to go into that water. There was a reason this town was called Shark’s Bay, right?

  3. I didn’t want to look like a bigger loser than Ialready was, so my plan was to say that I’dlove to go surfing, but unfortunately I didn’t have a surfboard.

  4. They had a spare surfboard.

  5. My plan completely backfired.

  I tried to whip up some courage as we walked to the water’s edge with our boards. I mean, I’d seen surfers on TV. How hard could it be? I could swim and I could skateboard, and surfing was really just skateboarding on water, right? I might even be really good at it, I thought.

  Plus, if I was really good at it, I might even conquer the Beast. And Bradley and Belinda and all the other cool surf types would gather around the beach bonfire to hear me talk about taming the monster wave. It might turn out to be the best thing I’d ever done!

  It wasn’t.

  A FREAKIN’ HUGE SHARK

  Attention! This is a Rafe Khatchadorian Public Health Warning!

  Don’t be like me. Don’t listen to the voices in your head that tell you things will turn out okay. The
y won’t. Above all, don’t be dumb enough to go surfing. Trust me, it will end badly. Very badly.

  This is because surfing absolutely sucks.

  1. SURFING SUCKS SO MUCH THAT YOU COULD STICK A HOSE ON IT AND VACUUM YOUR WHOLE HOUSE IN SIX SECONDS FLAT.

  2. SURFING SUCKS SO MUCH IT COULD DOUBLE AS A BLACK HOLE.

  3. SURFING IS THE LITERAL DEFINITION OF SUCKOSITY.

  4. AND SURFING IN AUSTRALIA IS THE SUCKIEST OF ALL BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS TO GET MAIMED, INJURED, DROWNED, GOUGED, MOCKED, GRAZED, SLICED, DICED, AND ICED.

  Listen and learn from my mistakes.

  This is what surfing is really like.

  The first thing I noticed was that the waves were much bigger close-up than they looked from the shore.

  They were, in fact, ginormous.

  The second problem was that getting a massive wall of plastic (a.k.a. the surfboard) past the huge breaker waves was almost impossible.

  To make matters worse, the thing was strapped to my leg with a rope, so the board would snap back and smack into my head over and over again.