The Colossal Camera Calamity (2 page)

“Oh, boy.”

“And also, dude,” Frankie said. “You’re flying low.” He gestured at the zip of my trousers.

And once again I looked down. But this time, Frankie wasn’t kidding. I really was flying low.

Most days I can’t wait to get to art class. I can breathe easy in art class. As soon as I step through that door, it’s like I’m no longer carrying a giant baboon on my back. I don’t have to worry about concentrating hard on words and numbers or feeling bad about not being able to concentrate hard on words and numbers.

My art teacher, Miss Mesmer, is super cool. Sure, she’s a little nutty – not nutty like my insane dentist, but nutty in a super-cool way. She has wild frizzy hair, and all of her clothes are rumpled and stained with cat food and paint. She’s usually playing relaxing music with bells and people chanting really slowly when we come in, and before we start painting, she leads us through stretches and breathing exercises, while telling us how gifted and brilliant we are.

She likes me a lot, too, even though I’m not a good painter. And even though I’m not a good painter, I like painting. I like the way the paint smells, and I like mixing all the colours and the way it feels when you paint, and the way you can get lost in stuff like colours.

Miss Mesmer doesn’t even make us paint anything that looks real. She just tells us to get messy and paint whatever comes naturally. So I make these giant doodles with different coloured blobs that look like clouds of gas, and while I’m painting I’m not even thinking in words. I’m just concentrating on the way the colours feel and the way the brush feels and the way the painting makes me feel.

And I can totally concentrate the whole lesson. I don’t even look up. It must be the freaky bell music Miss Mesmer always plays.

It was major bummer then that we had art class right before the school photo because it meant I couldn’t get into the lesson like I usually did. I didn’t want to risk messing up my special school-photo outfit. And it was a double-bummer-bonus round when I arrived not to the sound of bell music, but the
swoosh
of a fencing sword.

Miss Adolf!

“Find your places, pupils,” she barked. “Miss Mesmer is out today with emotional fatigue, and I can’t blame her now that I see what she has to look at all day.”

She slashed her sword at all the paintings in the classroom, stopping it at one of my paintings of giant gas clouds. “This one here is especially poor. No technique, no content, no recognizable forms.

“Today, pupils, we will be concentrating on the basics. You will make an accurate rendering of the still life I have prepared.” She flicked her sword at a pedestal with three grey balls and one grey pyramid on it. “I want you all to concentrate on your shading techniques.”

As everyone else continued filing in, I started backing out of the door.

“Hey! Where’s Captain Haircut going?” McKelty cried.

Miss Adolf swooped round. “Yes, Henry, where are you off to?”

“To the nurse, Miss.”

“Yes, you do seem to have a bad case of helmet hair.”

“No, it’s cos I’m feeling, uh, emotionally … I’m feeling emotionally flatulent—”

That got a big chuckle from the class. I like to make people laugh, so for one fraction of a second – as long as it takes to snap a picture – I felt all right and easy. But laughter makes Miss Adolf emotionally
flustered
. She silenced the class with a slash of her sword.

“Even if your are emotionally
fatigued
, Henry, I see no need to visit the school nurse. No emotion whatsoever is required of you during this lesson. Now, start rendering geometric solids.”

“Certainly, Miss. I’ll just replace the rubbish bag for you first. I noticed the bin was full.”

“Lovely, Henry. I think that’s a far better use of your time than painting.”

I was keen to empty the bin because I’d had an idea. A few nights previously I’d been watching this movie about an out-of-control killer virus. All the doctors in it wore these full-body spacesuits when they were working with the virus in the clean room. I figured I could create my own suit from bin bags to protect my clothes from paint splashes.

The rubbish bin was actually almost totally empty, but what was in there – plenty of paint-splattered rags and old plastic bags of decomposing fruit – looked very bin juicy. So instead of hauling out the rubbish, I just placed a new bag on top and then I got to work on a DIY bio-spacesuit.

I used five garbage bags and a lot of tape, but when I was done, I was covered from head to toe. There was even a bag covering my head and hairdo, complete with a breathing slit and eyeholes.

Now that I was covered up, I could get on with my painting. I’d just put a red circle in the middle of my paper when I felt icy cold breath over my shoulder. I turned around to find Miss Adolf behind me.

“Explain,” she said. She’d been patrolling the art room, telling people to make their spheres more “spherical” and their shading more “shaded”.

“Well, Miss, I was trying to capture the inner truth of a sphere.”

“No, Henry, I meant your outfit.” Miss Adolf looked me up and down while tapping her chin with the handle of her sword.

“Trying to stay clean, so I’ll look smart for my school photo, Miss.”

“What outrageous vanity,” she said. “If you showed as much dedication to your school work, or your shading technique, as you do to your looks, you could be a perfectly average student.”

She used the tip of the sword to slice through a piece of Scotch Tape on my suit, and my whole biosuit fell to the floor.

“Now, Henry, get into your standard-issue apron,” she said and turned away to tear into the next kid’s geometric rendering.

“Hey, Haircut,” a voice said. “Catch!”

I turned around just in time to see McSmelty launch a fully loaded paintbrush at me.

Time slowed down. I heard my heart beating. I saw drops of black and red paint flying from the rotating brush as it bore down on my perfect uniform.

Noooooooooo.

And I froze, probably wearing the same expression as in last year’s school photo.

But just then, another shape flashed between me and the incoming brush.

Frankie!

In one seamless move, he caught the loaded brush, wrapped it up in his apron and then chucked it across the room to Ashley, who was by the art-class sink. She guided the bundle into the sink and immediately poured water all over it.

Did I mention that I have the best friends in the universe?

Unfortunately, now McKelty knew that I was trying to keep my uniform clean. He knew my fear. And now that he knew, and I knew that he knew, I knew he wasn’t going to give up until he got me, totally. But he also knew that I knew that he knew— Hold on, I’m getting a headache in my eye.

McKelty kept trying to get me. Every time Miss Adolf turned her back, he’d hurl a brush at me, or chase after me with a paint tube, or paint his hands and try to pat me on the back. It wasn’t difficult to avoid him … for the time being. But given enough time, I’d let my guard down and then McKelty would be right there, waiting to nail me. Or paint me.

So I decided to take him down first. While he was pretending to contemplate the inner nature of his sphere, I found his lunchbox.

I couldn’t believe how neat it was inside. Everything was sealed in its own container. No separate food items touched.

For a minute, I was stumped. There was nothing in there I could use. Then I spotted it, lying nestled between thirty individually wrapped grapes – a can of fizzy blackcurrant.

I gave it no less than 143 vigorous shakes. The next time he was thirsty for blackcurrant, he was in for a big surprise.

From the pages of Emily Zipzer’s field notebook…

9:48 a.m., 8th March

I have excelled since birth. I was only seven months old when I spoke my first word: robust. No one heard me. At two years old, I taught myself simple arithmetic with the toy blocks Hank spent his toddler years drooling over. During my fifth year, I became fascinated with falling objects.

I could often be found tossing a football up and down and observing its flight. Just as I was on the cusp of piecing together my theory of gravity, the mother told me that you are not allowed to use your hands in football. “
Kick
the ball to your brother,” she said.

Even though the mother, Hank and, to a lesser extent, the father have tried to thwart me, I have never stopped in my pursuit of excellence. No matter the obstacle, I have proceeded doggedly because I have always known, deep down, that I am destined for greatness.

Today I take the next step towards that destiny in the final interview for the “Leg-Up Future Achievers” Summer Session at the Institute for Scientific Excellence. And nothing will stand in my way. Not even the mother.

Before leaving for school, I lingered in the shadows of the hall and listened to my parents talk over breakfast. As I had feared, the mother had examined the letter from the institute and learned that parents were supposed to come into school for the interview.

The mother has, on several occasions, got into rows with my teachers over trivial matters. For instance, at my last parents’ evening, she told my food-tech teacher that she was using the “wrong” minestrone recipe.

Father is coming with me to the interview today and, although he does not like lying to the mother, he does understand why she can’t come. He is no Sir Isaac Newton, but he does have a scientific mind. More importantly, though, he is less prone to emotional and spontaneous outbursts than the mother, although only slightly.

I fear my dad will not be able to keep his presence at the meeting a secret from the mother. She has a special gift. She knows when the Zipzer men are lying.

Just before I began this entry, the father phoned me on my mobile. “I really don’t feel comfortable lying to her,” he said.

“Just be at school at eleven. Alone,” I told him.

Yes, it is wrong to lie. But my lie serves a higher purpose. My excellence at the institute might alter the course of humanity! Besides, the mother never asks for my opinion about the things in my life. For instance, she never asked me if I wanted to be born…

I made it through art with only a very minor, black paint stain on my left pinkie. That was good. No, that was
great
. Not so great was the queue of kids waiting to have their photos taken. It snaked all the way down the hallway.

School corridors are risky. There’s kids coming and going. Kids stopping to tie their shoes and becoming tripping hazards – and have you seen how dirty those floors are? Kids carrying messy science and art projects. Kids carrying messy science and art projects with untied shoelaces. Kids who are just dirty and messy in general and like to touch. Kids who are mean and say, “Why are you looking at me like that?” and push you into the rubbish bin.

I started tapping my foot and fidgeting and clenching my jaw. I needed my picture taken immediately.

By the time we got to the front of the line, my foot was all tapped out, and I was hearing this clicking sound in my jaw. But we were there. My hair was neat and flat. My uniform was clean. This year my photo would be perfect. The future was mine.

“You don’t mind me cutting in?” asked Mr Love, the school headteacher, stepping in front of me.

“Aw, come on,” I muttered.

“Relax, man,” Frankie said. “That frown’s gonna break the lens.”

“Are you guys sure there’s no paint on me?” I asked as Mr Love took up position in front of the camera. I guessed I might as well use that extra time to make sure I still looked good.

“You look perfect,” Ashley said. “Too perfect. Let me just mess up your hair a bit.”

With ninja speed, I blocked her hand. “No one touches the hair, ’kay?”

The flash popped in the camera booth. “Actually,” Mr Love said, “you didn’t get my best side. Try it again, like this.”

FLASH.

“No. My chin was too high. Again.”

FLASH.

“I think I blinked,” he said.

“I think you winked,” the photographer said.

“Either way, take it again. Wait, let me just … er…” Mr Love took out his pocket mirror. He wet his fingertip and ran it along his eyebrow really, really slowly. This was taking for ever. There was no way I could stay clean and neat much longer.

“This is so unfair,” I said way too loud, and I also slammed my back against the lockers way too loud.

“What’s that, Mr Zipzer?” Mr Love asked, still looking into his pocket mirror.

“How come you,” I said, “get to take as many photos as you want?”

“Because,” he said.

“Because why?” the photographer said.

“Because,” Mr Love said, putting his mirror away, “I’m the public face of this school.”

“But I’m the face of the future,” I said, letting my most private thought out into the unforgiving land of public school.

“Yeah,” said some kid behind us, “with a haircut from Uranus.”

The hallway erupted with laughter. In the space of one hour, my hairdo had become a school-wide joke. It’s totally lame that you can’t ever try something new in school without everyone noticing, and the way they notice is to make fun of you. Maybe I
was
wrong to try to pass myself off as something I wasn’t.

Or maybe, I was the only one who was right.

I mean, look at Mr Love. Was he saying, “It doesn’t matter, it’s only a school photo”? No, he was making the photographer take picture after picture until he got one that was perfect. He clearly knew how important this was for his future. He’s the head, the top dog – if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, who does around here?

Mr Love posed, turning this way and that. He shook his head, unsatisfied, and moved his hands around awkwardly. “I feel like I should be holding something,” he said to the photographer.

“Couldn’t hurt,” the photographer said.

“I have just the thing,” Love said, snapping his fingers. “Be back in two.”

“Next,” the photographer barked.

“Finally,” I said. There was a folding metal chair in front of the camera, and there was no natural way to sit on it. “Should I sit back or lean forward, Mr—”