Escape to Australia Read online

  It was the last shot of the day and the most complicated. It was also the most expensive by a mile. Ellie and the rest of the Outsiders had saved up a whole bunch of money for it and managed to buy some fireworks from a movie-prop supplier in Sydney, rent a dry-ice machine to make fog, and prepare buckets of fake blood.

  “This has got to go right the first time,” Ellie said.

  Nico, the director, gave instructions to Mikey and Dingbat, who were playing the two characters. It was up to Ellie to time the fireworks, turn on the dry-ice machine, and throw the buckets of blood. Nico had one camera—the best one—and they gave me a smartphone to film things from another angle, just as a backup. A third camcorder was propped up on a tree stump to film the scene as a long shot.

  “Everyone ready?” Nico said. “Let’s get this right, okay? We’ve got about three minutes of sunlight left!”

  Ellie counted down the scene. “Three, two, one…”

  “Action!” Nico yelled.

  Ellie pressed the Start button on the dry-ice machine, and we began filming.

  Mikey and Dingbat came out of the cane field right on cue, and Ellie started setting off the fireworks. They looked amazing. Ellie smiled and looked over at me. Grinning, I gave her a thumbs-up.

  As Ellie threw the first of the buckets of fake blood over Dingbat, an egg exploded on the ground in front of her. She looked at it, puzzled, and then a second egg hit Mikey on the shoulder, followed by a bag of flour.

  A shower of eggs and flour cascaded down on the set, and then crashing through the sugarcane came the Surf Gorillas, yelling and screaming. Before any of the Outsiders could react, they ran through the set, scattering script sheets to the wind and kicking over the buckets of blood.

  “Losers!” Bradley shouted as they ran off, laughing and hooting.

  “Film this, you geeks!” Belinda screeched.

  The Outsiders stood and watched them go. The shot was ruined.

  As the sky darkened, Ellie walked over to me. She had egg in her hair and an expression on her face that would not have looked out of place in a horror movie.

  “This revenge plan of yours?” she said. “What do you need? I’m in.”

  KELL GOES BARKING MAD

  Life carried on as usual at the Coogans’, which meant that Bradley and Belinda took every opportunity to remind me what a loser I was.

  I didn’t care. Much.

  Let them think they’d gotten away with the Great Cane Field Ambush. Let them think I was too much of a wuss to get revenge. They’d find out soon enough that Rafe Khatchadorian was a force to be reckoned with.

  As would Kell Weathers.

  Kell had let his true nature slip through his fake nice-guy act one night when he came over to pick up my mom for a date. She was busy getting ready upstairs when Kell walked up to me.

  I’d been giving him the silent treatment the last couple of times I saw him. I still remembered his part in the Great Drop Bear Incident, and even though I wasn’t going to try to get revenge on him, I wasn’t ready to let bygones be bygones, either. Neither was he, apparently.

  “You don’t like me too much, do you, Rafe?” He prodded me in the chest. It hurt. I guess geologists have strong fingers from picking up all those rocks.

  I shrugged, trying to ignore the pain. Then Kell jabbed me again.

  “I asked you a question, Rafey.”

  I shrugged once more, and right in front of my eyes, Kell began to mutate into a werewolf.

  Hair sprouted from his face, and his hands curled into vicious-looking claws. His eyes glowed red, and drool dripped from between his fangs and slid down over his bottom lip. He looked a bit like Hugh Jackman’s less handsome Wolverine brother crossed with a rabid German shepherd.

  “If I didn’t like your mom so much, I’d clobber you,” Kell the Werewolf hissed.

  I didn’t even know werewolves could hiss, which just goes to show that you learn something new every day.

  “And if you mention a word of this to her, I’ll deny it all.” Kell threw back his head to howl at the moon. There wasn’t a moon visible, so he howled at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. I guess werewolves can’t always get full-moon access.

  By the time Mom came downstairs looking glitzy, Kell had lost all trace of his inner werewolf.

  “Nice to see you two getting along,” Mom said. She smiled so wide I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her friend Kell was a chest-prodding bully. Plus a mutant werewolf.

  “Best of mates,” Kell said. He looked at me. “Isn’t that right, Rafey?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  Mom and Kell headed out toward the bright lights of Shark’s Bay, laughing and joking like two lovebirds. Seeing Mom all dressed up, I was struck with a horrible thought: Kell Weathers is going to ask her to marry him tonight!

  No one wants a werewolf as a stepfather. I mean, being thisclose to having a bear as a stepfather a while ago was enough to scare me pretty good. Besides, it wasn’t so much Kell being a drooling creature of the night that worried me, although that would be pretty inconvenient. It was him getting super friendly with my mom and what that could mean for my family. The night before, I was using Mom’s laptop and noticed she’d been reading up on Australia’s immigration laws.

  I had no real problem with Australians (other than Bradley, Belinda, and the Surf Gorillas—and Kell, of course), but I wasn’t eager to become one anytime soon. The whole thing was starting to make me depressed.

  I went to my room, rubbing the sore spot on my chest, and sat down on the bed. This was going to require some serious thought.

  TRUE GRIT

  When Mom and Kell got back from their night out, Kell grabbed me “playfully” around the neck and began ruffling my hair.

  I hate having my hair ruffled by someone I like. Having it done by a creep like Kell Weathers almost made me hurl.

  “Ow!” I yelled, rubbing my scalp.

  Mom sighed. “Kell’s just being nice, Rafe.”

  “Don’t blame the little feller, Jules,” Kell said. “The kid just needs some grit.”

  “Oh, you want grit?” I yelled. “I’ll give you grit!”

  I leaped across the room, grabbed Kell around the neck, and threw him at the wall.

  “Don’t hurt me!” Kell squealed as he lay sprawled on the floor.

  “Rafe, stop!” Mom yelled. “He’s only a geologist!”

  “Too late!” I shouted. “Rafe the Chafe takes no prisoners!”

  I leaped from the top rope of the ring and slammed into Kell, hard. Wrapping my sandpapery arms around his head, I gave him the worst friction burn ever experienced on three continents. A grown man in the audience burst into tears. Sandpapering a man’s head is just nasty, but I had been pushed to the limit, and I ruffled his hair even harder.

  “Oh, the humanity!” the commentator wailed. “Won’t the referee stop this madness? No one can take this kind of punishment! The Geologist won’t have a head left if this goes on much longer!”

  He was right. Within a minute, all that remained of Kell’s head was a pile of wood shavings.

  I got to my feet and the referee lifted my arm in the air.

  “And the winner is… Rafe! Rafe. Rafe. RAFE?”

  I opened my eyes. Kell, his head far too intact for my liking, was leaning over me, my mom looking over his shoulder.

  “You must have drifted off there for a minute, mate,” Kell said. Then, with his back to my mom, he mouthed, “Wimp.”

  Yup. Kell Weathers was definitely at the top of the People Rafe Khatchadorian Hates List.

  LET’S GET THINGS STARTED

  The next day, Ellie and I really got moving on Operation ROCK (Revenge on the Coogan Kids). With just over twenty-four hours to go before the big night at the surf club, there wasn’t a moment to waste.

  Ellie built a scale model of the surf club lobby out of cardboard, and we plotted out every step with the rest of the Outsiders.

  “This has got to
be perfect,” I said, pacing the floor of Ellie’s workshop. I pointed my pointy stick (everyone planning something like this needs a pointy stick) at the model. “And top secret. If word gets out to the Surf Gorillas, we’re finished.”

  The Outsiders nodded solemnly. No one was going to snitch.

  Nico and I went out to the club and cased the joint for the best time to get everything inside. We’d had a stroke of luck with our plans—it turned out Nico’s older sister was the club manager I’d seen before.

  “She keeps the key to the building in her purse,” Nico said as we crouched in the bushes across the road from the club.

  “Can you get a copy?” I asked.

  Nico held up a key and smiled. “Way ahead of you, dude.”

  “Tonight?”

  Nico nodded. “Tonight.”

  Operation ROCK was a go.

  THE POINT OF NO RETURN

  It was the big night. We had done all we could. Everything was in place.

  The sketches I’d done for the Outsiders’ shoot were framed and placed on three easels on a small stage at one side of the waterfall. I called the drawings Zombie Movie Sketches because, well, they were sketches of the zombie movie. I’m clever like that. Biff had put up a big banner with the title, which hung over the easels. It made me feel pretty special.

  Last night the Outsiders and I had broken about nineteen billion laws to set up what we needed inside the surf club. We didn’t get much sleep, but we didn’t care.

  Tonight was payback time.

  Ellie and I—she was dressed as Frankenstein’s monster and I went as Igor—arrived around seven o’clock. As we neared the entrance, I could see through the windows that the place was already knee-deep in pirates and princesses, Elvises and Ewoks, superheroes, aliens, and ballerinas.

  Bradley, with about as much imagination as a jellyfish in a coma, had gone as a 1970s surfer, and Belinda was a punk rocker. Kell was a werewolf—spooky, right?—and my mom had gone as what looked like Wonder Woman’s second cousin.

  Just outside the entrance, a gorilla was cooking sausages on a giant grill. As Ellie and I walked by, the gorilla removed his head to reveal a sweating Mayor Biff Coogan, who looked like he was beginning to regret his choice of costume. Maybe he should’ve stuck with the chicken suit, puke stink and all.

  “The star of the show!” Biff said as he saw me. He waved a plate of sausage sandwiches at us. “Sausage sanga, Picasso?”

  I felt my stomach lurch and shook my head. I was so nervous that I was sure anything I ate would come straight back up. “No, thanks,” I said, and darted inside.

  Before I knew what was happening, Mom grabbed me and pulled me toward a man dressed all in black with a gray beard. “This is Frost DeAndrews, the famous art critic,” she said. “He’s come all the way up from Sydney!”

  “Hi,” I said. “What’s your costume?”

  DeAndrews looked puzzled, then pursed his lips. “We don’t do fancy dress in Sydney.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Rafe. The drawings look great!” Mom gushed. “Don’t they, Mr. DeAndrews?”

  “Quite,” DeAndrews said, bending his lips in what I imagined was meant to be a smile. He looked like he had something smelly right under his nose. “I’m sure the folks in Happy Valley would find them utterly delightful.”

  He leaned in a little closer toward me.

  “Didn’t you get time to finish them?” he whispered. He waved his hand at my drawings. “Frankly, from what Mayor Coogan told me, I was expecting a bit more than doodles. Drawings are so passé.” Frost DeAndrews shuddered. “Maybe next time, dear boy, you should try some ideas—proper art. Hmm? Something that knocks my socks off. This whole trip is beginning to look like a complete waste of time.”

  This conversation clearly wasn’t going too well. Before I said something I might have regretted, Biff Coogan’s voice came over the speakers, welcoming everyone to the exhibition.

  Just like his brother back in Hills Village, Biff Coogan liked the sound of his own voice. Next to me, Ellie checked her watch and then pulled me across to a quieter corner of the lobby.

  “We’d better get into position,” she said.

  “You still think this is a good idea?” I whispered back.

  “Why? Are you getting cold feet?” she said.

  “No,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was more nervous than a sackful of turkeys on Thanksgiving. Then I thought of Frost DeAndrews. If nothing else, he would see what I’d really made for the exhibition. I hoped he had good socks on, ’cause I was about to knock them off.

  “Psst!” someone hissed close to my ear.

  I turned to find myself looking at an asteroid.

  A panel in the asteroid slid back to reveal Nico’s face. “Ready?” he asked.

  “An asteroid?” I said. “How do you go to the bathroom dressed like that?”

  “Never mind that!” Nico said. “Are you ready?”

  I was still curious about the asteroid costume and the toilet problem, but I didn’t push it. Nico was right—we had bigger fish to fry.

  “Mikey and Dingbat are on standby,” Nico reported. “Are we a go?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  GO! GO! GO!

  Sal’s job was to cut the lights. She was positioned near the stairwell leading to the basement, where the fuse box was located. I saw her looking over at me and Ellie and Nico behind the curtains, waiting for the final go-ahead, while Mayor Coogan droned on. Sal raised her eyebrows in a question.

  I was about to give the thumbs-up to start things rolling when an image of Principal Stricker suddenly flashed into my mind.

  I’d been given this trip to Australia as a gift from the towns of Hills Village and Shark’s Bay. If we did this thing—if we followed through with Operation ROCK and everyone knew I’d caused so much trouble here—Principal Stricker would not be happy. Nobody would be happy—not Mom, not either of the mayors, not a single one of the good citizens of Shark’s Bay other than the Outsiders.

  But it was the thought of how Principal Stricker would react that sent a shiver of pure fear trickling down my spine. I could feel her disapproval vibrating all the way across the Pacific Ocean.

  At that moment, Ellie reached out and squeezed my hand. She must have known I was wavering. I don’t know how, but she just did, and the quick touch of her hand gave me all the confidence I needed.

  I gave Sal the thumbs-up. She nodded and ducked out of sight, down the stairwell. Stage one had begun.

  “You ready?” Ellie said.

  Before I could reply, all the lights went out in the lobby and we were plunged into blackness. There were a couple of jokey screams and a few people started laughing.

  “Someone forgot to pay the power bill!” Kell shouted.

  “At least it stopped the speeches!” someone else shouted.

  “Initiate stage two,” I whispered to Nico.

  I heard some rustling in the dark as Nico fumbled for a switch hidden somewhere inside the asteroid costume. Nico was the Outsiders’ expert on lighting and sets. Mikey and Dingbat were in their positions in the basement, making sure we had power.

  From under the bubbling water in the pool at the foot of the waterfall, an eerie green light began to glow. A thin mist drifted up from its surface. Green shadows danced spookily across the walls, and the lobby grew strangely quiet. People began to cluster around the edge of the pool.

  “Wow,” I whispered. “That looks great!”

  “I went for the zombie-apocalypse look,” Nico replied.

  “It’s the end of the world!” Bradley yelled, but no one laughed.

  “What on earth…?” I heard Biff Coogan say.

  I saw Forest DeAndrew starting to look interested for the first time all evening. It was all the incentive I needed.

  “Do it,” I whispered to Ellie.

  She picked up her remote control and thumbed the On switch, and we mov
ed to stage three of Operation ROCK.

  I ignored Principal Stricker’s and the Hills Village mayor’s imaginary voices expelling me from the middle school and the town. That’s the great thing about imaginary people.

  Besides, it was too late to stop now.

  FREAK OUT!

  The surface of the pool erupted and Ellie’s bunyip—eyes glowing red and mouth gaping wide to reveal a row of fearsome, razor-sharp choppers—came roaring up from the depths like a creature from your worst nightmare. Believe me, this one was an absolute doozy.

  “AWOOOOAAARGH!” the bunyip bellowed, leaping into the lobby like it had spring-loaded feet. For all I knew, that’s exactly what it did have. Ellie had cranked the creature’s voice up to ear-bleed level, and I could feel the vibrations in the pit of my stomach.

  I’d known exactly what was going to come out of the pool and I still got such a shock that I almost fainted.

  I could only guess what effect the bunyip was having on everyone else.

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “Mommy!” Bradley squealed in a voice so loud and high-pitched that dogs in Sydney started barking.

  Bradley turned and ran like he was being chased by a flesh-eating zombie bunyip, which, as far as he was concerned, he was. In his blind panic, he ran straight into one of the temporary toilets outside, breaking a pipe and sending a geyser of brown goop all over his perfect hair.