FOR MUM AND DAD.
THANK YOU FOR ALL OF IT.
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
A STORY BEFORE WE BEGIN THE LATEST STORY OF FRANKIE FISH
CHAPTER 1 EXTREME TAKEAWAY
CHAPTER 2 WAY BETTER THAN GHOSTS
CHAPTER 3 MY WAY OR NORWAY?
CHAPTER 4 THERE’S A BEAR IN THERE
CHAPTER 5 THE BOY-MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER 6 ARE THOSE TINY BRAINS?
CHAPTER 7 WE NEED TWO HELMETS
CHAPTER 8 A VERY BAD THING
CHAPTER 9 OH NO, DREW BIRD!
CHAPTER 10 YET ANOTHER GREAT ESCAPE
CHAPTER 11 THE SHED IS FORBIDDEN AGAIN
CHAPTER 12 VALHALLA OR RUMPUS ROOM?
CHAPTER 13 SLEEPOVER WITH A VIKING
CHAPTER 14 BAD NEWS
CHAPTER 15 GRANDAD, WE HAVE A PROBLEM
CHAPTER 16 THE SEARCH FOR BRYNJAR
CHAPTER 17 THE BOY WITH THE SUITCASE
CHAPTER 18 FEAST IS COMING!
CHAPTER 19 THE GREAT ZOMBIE TRAP
CHAPTER 20 HALLO-SCREAM
CHAPTER 21 BRYNJAR AND THE BEAR
CHAPTER 22 A FINAL MYSTERY REVEALED
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THANKS!
COPYRIGHT PAGE
The story you are about to read is a complete fiasco.
It involves Vikings, bears, zombies, slingshots and, of course, time travel.
It involves two time-travelling boys and an old man (with a hook for a hand) who really should know better.
It also involves death.
You have probably realised by now that the boys are none other than Frankie Fish and his one and only friend, Drew Bird. These two scallywags get themselves into more trouble than they know how to handle – it really is one hell of a story.
But where does the story start? Not at the beginning, as you might expect, but way before that – before any of this time-travelling malarkey even began. Although, to get to the start of this story, we need to do a bit of time travelling of our own.
We must go back to before Frankie Fish discovered his grandad had invented a time-travelling machine known as the Sonic Suitcase. Before Frankie and his grandad used the Amazing Freido’s electric eels to escape from 1950s Scotland. And way before Frankie and Drew bottle-flipped their way out of Imperial China.
We must go all the way back to three months before Drew Bird had even started at St Monica’s Primary. It was so long ago that Frankie hadn’t even been crowned Frankie Fish yet – he was Francis Fish Guts to one and all, and he didn’t have a single friend of his own.
Our story begins almost a year ago, on Halloween, when teacher's pet Lisa Chadwick was holding her fourth annual Halloween Parade.
Lisa Chadwick was the class prefect, the captain of the debating team, and the future saviour of the universe (that last bit is a direct quote from the first draft of Lisa Chadwick’s autobiography, simply titled Chadwick). She was also Francis’s arch-enemy, for reasons that will soon become clear.
One of Lisa’s many, many favourite pastimes was raising money for obscure causes. Some of her most recent projects had been:
1. Disco for Dogs with Diabetes.
2. Fun Run for Fiona (an orphaned budgie).
3. Movie Marathon for Meerkats Who Run Marathons.
Francis strongly suspected that Lisa was only involved with these causes because they came with loads of free publicity. Lisa was on the front cover of the local newspaper almost every week – and that was just for starters. When she raised money for Fiona the budgie, for example, a national TV news crew had come to school and filmed Lisa jogging around the oval with the bird on her shoulder.
‘People don’t understand how hard it is for a budgie with no parents,’ Lisa had said into the camera, her voice trembling and a tear rolling down her cheek. ‘I just want to do all I can to help.’
But Francis had seen how everything changed the moment the camera crew had left. ‘Stop clawing me, worm-breath!’ Lisa had snarled at Fiona, swooshing the poor creature off her shoulder and nearly squashing her as she marched away.
The fourth annual Halloween Parade was supposedly to raise money for lactose-intolerant cows, although Francis was pretty sure that people who genuinely cared about cows didn’t usually have an enormous leather pencil case like Lisa did.
Lisa Chadwick’s planning of the Halloween Parade was meticulous, and each year the event got bigger and bigger (or ‘scarier and scarier’, as she liked to promote it). Food vans had begun appearing. Local sponsors had jumped on board, setting up information booths about gym memberships and house-cleaning products. And Evan Fiorelli from grade six had even agreed to DJ under his official DJ name, DJ-4-Eva(n).
Of course, when it came to preparing for her own appearance at her own Halloween Parade, Lisa Chadwick went all out. For some reason, Lisa had a penchant for zombie MASH-ups, which led Francis to believe that she was in fact a member of the living dead (she wasn’t … not that we know of, anyway). Year after year Lisa would be a zombified version of a famous figure.
First annual parade:
Zombified Marilyn Monroe.
Second annual parade:
Zombified Queen of England.
Third annual parade:
Zombified Carmen Miranda, complete with a rotting fruit salad on her head.
Lisa Chadwick had won first prize for Best Costume each and every year of Lisa Chadwick’s Halloween Parade. This wasn’t really surprising. Firstly, even Francis had to admit her costumes were pretty amazing. Secondly, Francis was sure that Lisa’s costumes were professionally made, which wasn’t technically against the rules but really should have been. And thirdly, Lisa’s mum was on the judging committee, and she was nearly as painful as Lisa.
Even Francis’s big sister, Saint Lou, couldn’t seem to beat Lisa Chadwick, though Lou’s costumes were always really good and she made them all herself.
Lou never seemed too bothered, though. ‘Winning doesn’t matter,’ she would say with a saintly smile. ‘It’s just fun being in the parade.’
But Francis didn’t feel like that. Not at all. You see, first prize in the competition was a one-hundred-dollar voucher for the Cocoa Pit – Francis’s favourite cafe.
Francis wanted one of those vouchers so badly. He could imagine himself slurping thickshakes and gorging on giant chocolate-chip cookies after school every day for free. Sure, he’d be snacking by himself, because he didn’t yet have a single friend (remember, this was months before Drew Bird came to St Monica’s Primary). But still! Those cookies were really good and it would give him something to do every day after school.
Sadly, Francis knew his chances of winning the voucher were slim. The fact was, Francis had never quite nailed a costume. Actually, he hadn’t even come close. His parents were always busy at work, which meant Francis had to create his own costumes with whatever he could find around the house – usually about twenty minutes before the parade started. So this is what he’d dressed as:
First year: Ghost (white sheet with holes cut out for eyes). No prize. Not even an honourable mention.
Second year: Ghost (again … white sheet with holes cut out for eyes AND arms, so he could reach out and scare people). No prize. Not even a dishonourable mention.
Third year: Ghost (this time he tried to add a comedy mash-up element and wore a wig, making him a ghost with a big, black, curly mullet). No prize. No kind of mention at all. Not unless you count the time his parents mentioned how annoying it was that so many of their bedsheets had holes in them.
For the fourth annual parade, Francis had stuck with the ghost theme (he had never been one to learn fro
m his mistakes) but added a bicycle helmet and rode his BMX. Surely a bike-riding, safety-conscious ghost would win the day?
SURELY.
But no.
‘Yet another ghost for Francis Fish Guts?’ Lisa Chadwick sneered. She was dressed as zombie Medusa. Francis was sure one of the lolly snakes attached to her wig hissed at him. ‘Not to worry, perhaps I can spare you a marshmallow from my GIANT hot chocolate with extra marshmallows when I win that Cocoa Pit voucher.’
‘I wouldn’t accept a marshmallow from you if it was the last one on earth,’ Francis snapped (although actually he would have – only idiots would turn down the last marshmallow).
The Halloween Parade went as it always did. Parents lined the perimeter of the sports oval, kids ate toffee apples, and people dared to eat whatever was being served up at the sausage sizzle. Every year, there seemed to be more and more people dressed up as zombies. But guess who won first prize for Best Costume?
No prize if you guessed it was Lisa Chadwick in her zombie Medusa outfit.
Francis fumed as Lisa slithered up to collect her fourth (fourth!) hundred-dollar Cocoa Pit voucher from Principal Dawson, who had momentarily taken a break from the grill to announce the winners. And if the sight of that wonderful prize being handed (yet again) to the teacher’s pet and his arch-enemy wasn’t enough to make Francis’s blood boil, then what Lisa Chadwick said next definitely did the trick.
As the crowd’s applause came to a halt and one of the Mosley triplets (the one dressed as Frankenstein’s zombie monster) made fart noises under his armpit, Lisa Chadwick cleared her throat. Delicately swishing her green jelly snake zombie Medusa hairdo, she gushed, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I won Best Costume again!’
‘Yeah, what a surprise,’ muttered Francis under his bedsheet.
‘I want to thank EVERYONE for getting dressed up to raise money for lactose-intolerant cows,’ Lisa went on. ‘Well, except for the lame ghosts,’ she added snarkily. ‘It’s almost like they don’t WANT to win anything with their dirty old bedsheets!’
And with that she sent a sparkling smirk in Francis’s direction and flounced off the stage with her Cocoa Pit voucher.
The crowd was laughing and cheering like crazy – except for one kid, who was standing under his bedsheet costume with a face as red as a sunburnt tomato.
Red with humiliation.
Red with fury.
Seething, Francis decided then and there that somehow, some way, he would win Best Costume at Lisa Chadwick’s fifth annual Halloween Parade, no matter what.
But to find out what that decision led to, you'll simply have to read on.
Leading up to this year’s Halloween Parade, Lisa Chadwick had changed. Yep, she had gone from mildly annoying to completely insufferable. She seemed to think everyone lived in her world – one named Chadwickville. And guess who the Mayor of Chadwickville was? That’s right, none other than Lisa Chadwick.
Lisa simply HAD to be at the centre of everything. Frankie and Drew had taken to eating out each and every lunchtime, just to avoid her commenting on the contents of their sandwiches. Of course, it was strictly forbidden for any student to go out through St Monica’s school gates during breaks, but Frankie and Drew had found a loophole. Technically, they didn’t go through the gates at all. They simply used the Sonic Suitcase to time-travel to wherever they felt like going that day for lunch. Drew called this extreme takeaway.
They had eaten paella at a bullfight in fifteenth-century Spain, gorged on ribs in the American Wild West in the 1860s, and even eaten witchetty grubs with Indigenous Australians forty thousand years ago.
But without a doubt their favourite lunchtime option was pizza in Italy while taking in a show at the Colosseum. They loved it more than penguins love parades. Frankie wished they didn’t have to wear togas every time they went, but Drew maintained it was important to blend in with the locals. And besides, it was a small price to pay to avoid Lisa Chadwick for nearly an entire lunchtime every day. Frankie usually set the co-ordinates on the suitcase so that they returned to school just before the end-of-lunch bell. And he always made sure they came back somewhere well out of view so they could change out of their togas before anyone saw them.
Frankie did this every time … except for today, Friday, the day before Halloween. Today, the boys had been forced to make a rapid exit from ancient Rome. A lion had escaped from the Colosseum’s main stage and, in his haste to get them out of harm’s way, Frankie had accidentally entered the wrong co-ordinates into the Sonic Suitcase. Instead of landing discreetly behind the toilet block, the boys returned SMACK BANG in the middle of the school oval – right near a meeting of the Halloween Parade Planning Committee.
Even worse, they landed with such a bump that the suitcase sprang open. In the past this wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but recently Grandad had added a new ‘feature’ to the suitcase so that whenever it opened, it emitted a burst of rainbow-coloured light. This didn’t seem to have any useful function, but Frankie knew better than to question his cranky-pants grandad about it.
Luckily, Lisa and her faithful followers were too engrossed in their parade-planning to notice Drew and Frankie’s rather surprising multi-coloured arrival – but someone else did. Just as Frankie slammed the suitcase shut and hissed, ‘Let’s get out of here!’ to Drew, one of the Mosley triplets spotted them.
Munching on his jam sandwich, the triplet (no-one could tell which one it was) pointed at Frankie and Drew’s bizarre attire and guffawed. ‘Look who’s getting married!’
His brother (not sure which one) joined the guffaws and then chucked his half-eaten apple at Drew’s head. Yep, the days of Drew and the Mosley triplets being bottle-flipping buddies were well and truly over.
‘I wish I had my slingshot,’ Drew growled. He’d spent an entire weekend loading paintballs into his slingshot and aiming them at the big oak tree in the Bird backyard, and was now quite the marksman (and the tree, along with the surrounding area, was now more colourful than an explosion in an M&M’s factory). He wiped some apple off his forehead, accidentally flicking it onto Frankie’s face.
‘What’s going on over here?’ demanded Miss Merryweather, who was on yard duty. She marched up to the students who were snickering at Frankie and Drew. Staring at the white sheets wrapped around their middles, Miss Merryweather frowned. ‘Why on earth are you two dressed like that?’
‘Um, my school shorts are in the wash?’ offered Drew, smearing mushy bits of apple off his cheeks.
‘Oh, how surprising,’ came the voice of class prefect and future President of the World (according to herself and her mum) Lisa Chadwick. ‘Fish Guts is dressed as a ghost yet again. Only this time, he has a friend!’
The crowd laughed.
‘Please tell me that isn’t your costume for my Halloween Parade, Fish Guts,’ added Lisa loudly.
‘I’ll have you know, Lisa Chadwick, that ghosts are COOL –’ Frankie began, his cheeks burning.
‘Well, you’ll have to do better than that if you want any chance of winning the Best Costume competition,’ Lisa scoffed. ‘You do realise it’s tomorrow, don’t you?’
‘This is just one idea. We have others,’ Frankie insisted.
‘Oh yeah, like what?’ chimed in the third Mosley triplet.
‘Well –’ Frankie faltered.
Drew leapt in like a seal rescuing a drowning ladybird. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ he said boldly. ‘But I guarantee we’ll have cool costumes and we’ll win that hundred-dollar voucher from the Cocoa Pit!’
‘OK, that’s enough drama for today,’ Miss Merryweather said nervously, fearing things were getting a little too heated. The last thing she needed was an uprising like the Grade Four Camp Rebellion of 2014.
‘Everybody make your way to class, now,’ Miss Merryweather added as she marched off, followed by Lisa, who tossed Drew and Frankie a withering look. The other kids trailed along behind – leaving Frankie and Drew alone in their togas.
/> Frankie clenched his fists and glared at Lisa. ‘She’s the worst!’ he muttered.
He could still remember the feeling he’d had underneath that bedsheet last Halloween. How hot he’d felt. How embarrassed. How determined he’d been to win the next competition.
‘Whatever it takes, we have got to win that Best Costume prize,’ said Drew firmly as they put their uniforms back on. ‘Otherwise we’ll be the laughing stock of the school.’
Frankie nodded. Yep, it was time for a new challenger to rise, and quite clearly white sheets – be they togas or ghosts – were NOT going to cut it.
No, if Frankie and Drew were going to eat for free at the Cocoa Pit forever (or at least up to one hundred dollars’ worth), they had to aim high. And little did Lisa Chadwick know just how high they were capable of aiming.
After school, Frankie and Drew raced home, changed out of their uniforms and grabbed their pocket money, then met up at the Cocoa Pit. They definitely needed a sugar hit and they also needed to work on their plan for winning the Best Costume competition.
The owner of the Cocoa Pit, Connie Cole, brought the boys over their usual treat of thickshakes and a giant choc-chip cookie to share. She smiled when she saw Frankie’s notebook, opened to a page headed Costume ideas for the Halloween Parade.
‘I hope you come up with something really great,’ she said. ‘I always used to dress up as a ghost for my school’s Halloween Parade … and I never won anything!’
‘We’re working on it,’ said Frankie, grinning at Connie as she put down their snacks. She always seemed to find the biggest of the giant cookies just for them.
‘Well, good luck!’ said Connie, returning to the counter.
‘Vampires,’ Drew said, as cookie crumbs fell from his mouth. ‘Everyone loves vampires.’
‘If people don’t come as zombies they will probably come as vampires,’ Frankie replied, slurping on his thickshake. ‘We need something more original. How about mummies? We can wrap ourselves up in toilet paper.’
‘If people don’t come as zombies or vampires, they will definitely come as mummies,’ Drew retorted, picking cookie-mush out of his molars. ‘So, no zombies, vampires or mummies … and I imagine no werewolves either, yeah?’ said Frankie.
Frankie Fish and the Viking Fiasco Page 1
