G'day, America Read online

  NOT AUSTRALIAN?

  It was unthinkable! Ridiculous! Bogus! The dude had a cafe called Gudonya. He spoke with an Australian accent. His name was Sidney Harberbridge, for cryin’ out loud! Kasey must have been barking up the wrong gum tree. That was the only answer.

  When we got home, everyone made a big fuss over Kasey. She’d brought cute little Aussie gifts for all of us: a jar of Vegemite for Georgia, an opal necklace for Grandma Dotty, a book of cartoons by a dude called Leunig for Mom, and a jar labelled “Australian Anti-Tourist Cream” for me. When I opened the lid, a giant pop-up drop bear leapt out. It was supposed to be frightening, but I took it all in my stride.

  “I got you this too,” Kasey said, once I’d stopped quivering. She handed me a hat with a wide brim and corks hanging off the end. “The most daggy hat I could find.”

  I had no idea what “daggy” meant—I figured it was probably Australian for “cool”—but I put on the hat to please Kasey and, when I did, a strange thing happened. As soon as the hat was on my head, I immediately felt Australian.

  “G’day, mates,” I said experimentally.

  Everyone fell about laughing, so maybe the hat wasn’t so magical, after all. I kept it on, though. It was kinda cool.

  “At least it covers up your wig,” Georgia snorted. “That’s something, I guess.”

  “It’s not a wig!” I said. “It’s a—”

  “Clip-on man-bun hair accessory!” Mom and Grandma yelled in unison. They high-fived each other, which I thought was rubbing my nose in it, to be honest. Mom leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. Sorry, she mouthed.

  I remained stony-faced, but I was glad she’d apologized. Mom looked like she regretted joining in with all the man-bun jokes, so I winked to show her we were still buddies and she winked back. I didn’t forgive Georgia so easily and gave her the old Rafe K. Death Stare. C’mon, she’s my sister. What do you expect? She didn’t notice, anyway. The old Rafe K. Death Stare clearly needed work, so I settled into an old-fashioned sulk.

  The thing about sulking and giving people the old death-stare treatment is it’s hard to keep up. Have you ever noticed that? And I had to admit the clip-on man bun was maybe a little funny. I watched my whole family laughing and telling stories and I slowly thawed out. Even with Georgia. By the time dinner was ready, Georgia, Kasey, and Grandma were taking turns trying on the man bun. It suited Grandma Dotty so much I made a mental note to ditch it.

  After dinner, while Mom headed to yoga, Grandma Dotty settled in to watch Celebrity Paintball Partner Island, her fave TV show about semi-famous people on an island trying to get married while playing paintball in bikinis. Georgia disappeared to do whatever it is that little sisters do. Full up with cheese and pasta, Kasey (who’d found out all about Miller’s idea) got me into the garage for a bit of (much-needed) practice.

  “No, doofus, like this.” Kasey moved my fingers on the guitar fret for about the eighteen thousandth time since we’d started. “That’s a C. Try it. Then do the E minor I showed you.”

  I twanged the strings and it sounded like an actual chord. (As far as I could tell.) I shifted my fingers and did a reasonable E minor. With Kasey around correcting my mistakes, I felt like I’d learned more in the past twenty minutes than I had in the couple of weeks I’d been practicing on my own. Maybe this dumb band might just work …

  “Let’s try to write a song,” Kasey suggested. “Any ideas?”

  I figured we could kill two birds with one stone (not that I’m in favor of killing birds with stones …) by digging a bit deeper into the Sidney Harberbridge Mystery while writing a song.

  “Why would a guy try to be someone who is Australi—ooh?” I sang as the chords twanged. I added the ooh part to work in the rhyme. It was a work in progress.

  Kasey rolled her eyes. “How would I know?” she sang back. “Yo, do I look like a mind-reader? Maybe he just needs ta?”

  “Needs ta?” I said, not singing now. “Needs to what?”

  “Rhymes with ‘reader’.” Kasey leaned back against the garage wall and shrugged. “That’s the big question.”

  “If you’re right.” I played three chords without messing up. “Hey!” I said. “Check me out!”

  Kasey nodded, but I could tell she was still thinking about Sid. The verse I’d sung about the Sidney Harberbridge Mystery might have sucked, but it was a good question. Why would anyone pretend to be Australian?

  “Does it matter if he’s not Australian?” I said. “I mean, I’m not saying he is or he isn’t, but even if he isn’t Aussie, what harm is he doing?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Kasey said. “I don’t like it, that’s all.”

  I was about to reply when the door opened and in walked Miller and The Changmeister.

  “GOOD EVENING, HILLS VILLAGE!” Miller shouted, and let out a scream that shook the entire house.

  KASEY AND I let the Sid argument slide for a day or two. And once she’d stopped looking like she wanted to start in with the whole shin-kicking thing, I took her back to Gudonya. Although she wasn’t wild about the idea, in the end she did kind of bury the hatchet with Sid. They were never going to be best buds, but at least we weren’t operating at North Pole temperatures.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  What difference did it make if Sid was laying the Aussie on thick? And so what if Kasey was right about him pretending to be an Aussie? He could pretend to be a space alien as far as I was concerned. Sid was cool to me, from his glossy man bun down to his bare feet.

  As it happened, I didn’t have much time to think about that because Kasey assumed the role of manager of The People. (Miller finally agreed to drop the “Village” part once she convinced him that a band called The Village People already existed.) And she worked us harder than a Marines drill instructor. There were times when the whole band seemed like a total monster pain in the butt. My fingers bled genuine red blood from plucking all those C’s and E minors and whatever the other one is called. Guitar strings are sharp! Who knew?

  But, even though I was literally bleeding for the rock-and-roll cause, being whipped into the shape of a real band by Kasey Moran was roughly 98.65% fun. Before long we started to sound a little less like a runaway train hitting a glass truck carrying bone china and more like a band that wouldn’t make your ears beg for mercy. I’m not saying we were good or anything, but we had definitely left Trainwreck Town behind us.

  The week before Kasey was due to head off to compete in her next roller-derby match, we’d settled into a routine: school (Kasey had to come along as part of her deal about being allowed to tour with the Spitballers, heh-heh-heh), followed by band practice every night at the Hills Village Rehearsal Studios aka the Khatchadorian garage. By Friday, we’d come up with four songs: our punk anthem “Everything Sucks”; the catchy “Parmesan Cheese Smells like Baby Sick”; a ballad called “O, Gail Jenetta” (which was secretly about Jeanne Galletta); and “Fight The Stricker”, a protest song about the injustice of school detentions.

  Between them, The Changmeister and Kasey were getting Miller and me up to speed PDQ on drums and guitar. And for a 400-pound mountain gorilla, Miller was a fast learner.

  “Good rhythm, Millo,” Kasey said. “You’re doing great!”

  Like all Aussies, Kasey liked adding the letter “o” to the end of people’s names. “Millo” didn’t seem to mind when Kasey called him that, but I wasn’t going to risk it.

  “Um flobble, shnumbumble,” Miller mumbled, turning the color of a sunburned tomato.

  The Changmeister looked at me and rolled his eyes, which was about as chatty as Jason got.

  Hmmm. I’d noticed recently that, whenever Kasey was nearby, Miller’s tongue seemed to have trouble forming actual words. It was a bit like me when Jeanne Galletta was within … Wait a minute!

  Questions began circling my brain like bats around a Transylvanian tower.

  Was it possible Miller the Killer had a thing for my shin-kicking Aussie buddy?

&nb
sp; Would I be able to fill the Gudonya wall with totally cool drawings?

  Why does dropped toast ALWAYS land butter side down?

  Did our band really have a shot at the KRMY competition?

  LIKE THE TITLE SAYS, nothing much happens in this chapter except for me getting attacked by drop bears at the bus stop.

  … Obviously, that did not happen.

  But, to be honest, so many weird things involving Australians were starting to happen in Hills Village that the appearance of a mob of psycho koalas wouldn’t have been that surprising. And the week that Kasey headed out of town to play against the Detroit Dee Stroyers was so boring that some drop bears showing up would’ve been a welcome distraction.

  In books and movies and TV, something’s always happening, right? Car chases, aliens, clues, fights, cliffhanger endings, unexpected plot twists. In real life, though, a lot of the time not … much … happens. All I did that week was go to school (where Mr. Mann continued to do his best to bore us into mush), practice with the band (I was starting to get a kick out of saying “the band”), and work at the cafe. And, of course, keep drawing away on Dingbat Wall. That was still one of the most enjoyable things I was doing plus I was making progress with THE MISSION and Jeanne was loving it. Okay, I’m basing this purely on seeing her half-smile when she walked past one day, but that’s good enough for me.

  Sid had got the place going pretty well now and a few more hipsters had begun showing up regularly at the cafe. Hills Village must have had a secret hipster hideout where these dudes grew their man buns and goatees in private.

  Mom continued doing more sweaty yoga, so (duh!) I stayed well clear of the yurt. Apart from not wanting to know any more about what Mom was doing, I really—like, really—didn’t want to see Hairy Harry in action again. Although, I had to admit, Mom seemed to be enjoying the yoga and, if it made her so happy, I guess I could tone down the anti-yoga whining. She seemed to like Sid and that was fine with me. I liked Sid too.

  In other news updates, Grandma Dotty was still being Grandma Dotty, which basically meant watching lousy TV shows and coming up with more weird food combos—burgers with strawberry jelly being the latest brainwave. Junior kept right on eating and pooping and wagging his tail and doing all that general doggy stuff, and Georgia literally never stopped bugging me to be in The People. Yeah, that was totally a thing now even though she had her own band. Little sisters can be like that—plain greedy. Or maybe it was a sign the band was getting better? What made Georgia tick was as baffling to me as Russian poetry or car engines or brain surgery.

  “I can be your singer,” she whined. “I’m a good singer. Puh-leeeeease? I won’t say anything else about your wi—man bun, I promise!”

  This was about the seventy millionth time she’d tried to join the band. So far she’d sneaked into rehearsals disguised as a chair, pretended to be doing a school report about being in a band, tried some good old-fashioned anti-brother screaming, told me she’d hold her breath FOREVER unless I let her join, and attempted to bribe me with donuts. I admit, that last one almost worked, but I held firm. Just like this time. Sometimes a Khatchadorian’s gotta do what a Khatchadorian’s gotta do. There was no way Georgia was joining the band.

  “We’ve already got a singer,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  Georgia didn’t stop laughing until Tuesday.

  I don’t know about you, but my feeling is that sisters are totally overrated.

  KASEY HAD BEEN back a couple of days (Sydney Spitballers won 12–9, in case you were wondering) and we were over at Gudonya catching up on stuff. While I scrubbed and polished the coffee machine like my life depended on it—Sid being real particular about having a shiny machine—Kasey was flicking through some of the records stacked next to the turntable. She picked up The Spiderzz album and started to read the sleeve notes on the back.1

  “So, what happened to them?” I asked. “Did they become big?”

  “Nope,” Kasey replied, bent over her laptop. “It says here they had one hit song and that was it.” She picked up the album again and started looking at the photos of the band. “After ‘Kangaroo Krush’, they kind of disappeared.”

  Although we’d been playing the album nonstop for the past couple of weeks, I hadn’t given The Spiderzz much thought until now. Even with a song called “Kangaroo Krush”, I hadn’t joined the dots to figure out they were from Australia.

  “Whoa!” Kasey gasped. “Double whoa! No, make that a triple whoa with chocolate sprinkles on top!”

  I looked up from the coffee machine. “Triple whoa? With chocolate sprinkles on top? Come on, Kase, nothing’s worthy of a triple whoa with chocolate sprinkles on top.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Kasey passed The Spiderzz album to me. “Check this out!”

  I took it and turned it over in my hands, but couldn’t see anything that would have caused Kasey’s triple whoa reaction. We’d looked at the album a million times already. “So what?”

  “Look at it closely.” She tapped the photo of Niki Blister, lead singer of The Spiderzz and (according to the internet) all-round totally major rock wild man. “Notice anything?”

  I sighed heavily and rolled my eyes. (Hipsters do a lot of eye-rolling and I was becoming an expert.) “Big hair, check. Big screamy mouth, check. Cheesy—but also pretty cool—spandex gear, check. Have I missed something?”

  “The scar on his left cheek,” Kasey said. “It’s real faint because of the makeup, but it’s there all right, or have I got a roo loose in the top paddock?”

  “Roo loose in the top paddock?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re laying that Aussie stuff on too hard.”

  Kasey shrugged. “My dad says it all the time, so I thought I’d give it a spin.” She waggled The Spiderzz album in front of my face. “I still think this needs confirmation.”

  I squinted hard at the photo of Niki Blister. For a second or two, I couldn’t see what it was that had rated a triple whoa with chocolate sprinkles on top and then …

  “Triple whoa!” I looked at Kasey in disbelief. “It can’t be … can it?”

  “It is.”

  There, almost hidden under Niki Blister’s makeup, was an S-shaped scar high up on his left cheek. A scar I’d recently seen in the exact same place on someone else’s left cheek.

  “You know what this means?” I said, and Kasey nodded.

  Mr. Mann was Niki Blister, long-lost Aussie rock god.

  THERE COULD ONLY be one explanation.

  “Body-snatchers,” I said. “From Australia.”

  “Australian alien body-snatchers?” Kasey scoffed. “That’s your theory?”

  “At least it’s a theory.” I held out the back of The Spiderzz album for her to look at again. “What do you think happened? How does Mr. Mann come to have the exact same scar on his face as Niki Blister? Explain that, Captain Smarty-pants!”

  “Coincidence,” Kasey said, and sat back like she’d just invented time travel or something.

  But I wasn’t convinced.

  As usual, Kasey was probably right.

  Wait a sec, what am I saying? Probably? There was no “probably” about it. Of course she was right; this thing had to be one supersized coincidence. I was adding two and two and coming up with a bogus baloney sandwich with cheese on top. Finding out your substitute teacher was a long-lost Australian rock god just didn’t happen, right? The S-shaped scar meant zip. Okay, Mr. Mann looked a little like the missing Aussie rock star, but, now I think of it, there were probably a bazillion other dudes out there who looked like an older Mr. Blister.

  Coincidences do happen. They happen every day. And, right then, as if to prove the point, a coincidence came right along. As I looked up from the album cover, Mr. Mann walked into the cafe. I super-casually nudged Kasey with my elbow. There was a possibility I wasn’t as super-casual as I’d imagined because I knocked her off the table.

  “What the!” she yelped. But, being a roller-derby play
er, Kasey bounced back up without a second’s hesitation.

  I instinctively pulled my shins out of range.

  “Is it just me or has he gotten more boring since the last time I saw him?” Kasey whispered. She’d been so convinced earlier about Mr. Mann being Niki Blister that I was surprised to hear the doubt in her voice. “He doesn’t look like a rock god.”

  I snuck a glimpse of Mr. Mann, who was methodically flicking through the stacks of records. He’d swapped his usual gray suit, shirt, and tie for a pair of gray tracksuit pants and a gray sweatshirt. He looked over at me and waved—one of those half-waves that means “I recognize you but don’t want to talk”. I got that. Being a teacher and seeing kids out of school must be a bummer. After a week of coping with us at HVMS, the last thing you’d want is any interaction with actual kids.

  I gave him a hipster wave. You know the kind when you flick your wrist toward someone and point your index finger at them with your thumb upright? It’s best done quickly and with a click of the mouth. Sid did it all the time.

  Unfortunately, I’d completely forgotten I was still holding The Spiderzz album sleeve. Here’s a tip: for a successful hipster greeting to work, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL you aren’t holding something in the hand while performing the wave. As I flicked Mr. Mann my cool hipster greeting, the sleeve flew out of my hand at twice the speed of light. It streaked through the air like a rocket-propelled grenade (except it was square and made of cardboard) and smacked Mr. Mann right between the eyes.

  Not cool.

  “I AM SOOO SORRY, Mr. Mann,” I said, hurrying over to him.

  And I meant it. Even though he was the most boring teacher ever to walk the halls of HVMS—or the planet—I had nothing against the man and I certainly hadn’t meant to bean him in the head. It wasn’t his fault he was so … gray.