The Flea Thing

by Brian Falkner

  Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Logo

  Heads I Win, Tails I Win Too!

  The Boy Without a Brain

  The Best Defence

  The Thing

  The Lost Park

  Train Like the Wind

  Mashed Potatoes

  Jenny Changes Everything

  Chai-chop-ski

  Meet the Press

  Quadruple Scooples

  Disaster!

  The Smart Fart

  Growing Down

  The Grand Final

  Sixty Seconds

  Good Friends

  About The Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also by Brian Falkner

  STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING AT GLENFIELD HIGH.

  THIS TIME IT’S DANIEL – THE FLEA – SCOTT’S TURN …

  ‘Daniel, are you excited to be playing with the Warriors?’ What kind of dumb question was that? I resisted the temptation to give a smart answer that would have made me seem like a brat. I also resisted the temptation to answer her in the same silly kind of voice that she asked the question. I simply said, ‘Yes, it’s a great honour to be on the field with players who have been my heroes for many years.’

  Twelve-year-old Daniel wins a place on the New Zealand Warrior’s rugby league team and becomes the youngest ever player in the history of the game.

  How? Well, that’s a secret. A secret which will turn Daniel’s life upside down and inside out, make him a media sensation – a legend in his own time.

  But even being a league superstar has its downside.

  ONE

  HEADS I WIN, TAILS I WIN TOO!

  ‘I want to be a Warrior.’ I looked straight at the large, balding man sitting behind the desk, as if daring him to laugh. He didn’t. But he didn’t understand either.

  ‘That’s wonderful, Danny,’ he said. ‘It’s good to have a goal. Not many kids nowadays have something to set their sights on, and if you practise very …’

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ I said, ’cos it is rude to interrupt adults when they are talking, but I was afraid that Frank Rickman wouldn’t let me get another word in. ‘But I don’t think you understand what I mean. I want to be a Warrior now. This season. I want to play in the NRL.’ I said NRL the way the commentators do on TV, running it all together so it sounds like ‘enerell’.

  This time Frank did laugh, but that was OK ’cos I had been expecting him to. Frank didn’t know my secret. Anyway, it wasn’t a nasty, sneery kind of laugh, just a chuckly, surprised kind of laugh. I carried on quickly. ‘I know it sounds strange. I know I’d be the youngest-ever player in the NRL, but I’d be the best young player you ever had. I play rugby league at school and I’m really good, and I’m really, really, really fast.’

  Frank stopped chuckling and looked at me, but the chuckle was still there in his eyes. He was a huge bear of a man, a little bit plump now, but he still had most of the muscle that had made him a terrifying front rower when he used to play. He was the coach of the New Zealand Warriors and was very good at the job, although, of course, the team had never won the premiership. Frank picked up a pencil from his desk and started sharpening it with a small, metal pencil sharpener that he pulled out from a drawer. I had a pencil sharpener like that last year at school, but I lost it.

  ‘How old are you, Danny?’

  ‘I’ll be thirteen in February. And would you mind very much calling me Daniel? I don’t like Danny because … I just don’t like Danny.’

  ‘I think you’re serious, Daniel, and a serious question deserves a serious answer. But the answer is no. No, I can’t put you in the squad. I can’t even let you try out. You’re much too young. I don’t want to discourage you, and I hope you will be a Warrior one day. But not this year. Not at twelve.’

  He put the pencil and the sharpener down. I smiled. I wasn’t upset with his answer. I’d been expecting it, waiting for it. Frank still didn’t know my secret.

  I said, ‘I thought you’d say no. But there’s something you don’t know. If you knew it, this thing, you’d put me in the team. If you put me in the team, you’d win the premiership this season. There’s something very important that you don’t know.’

  Frank looked at me carefully. That was one of the good things about Frank, I found out later. He listened well, he thought carefully about what was said, and he always took people seriously. After a while he said, ‘I can’t imagine anything that would make me want to put you in the team, whether I knew it or not.’ Then, because that sounded like an insult, he added quickly, ‘Just because of your age, you understand. You could get very badly hurt.’

  I said nothing. I just looked at Frank and kept my mouth tightly shut. Frank looked back at me. After a long moment Frank laughed again, but this was a different kind of laugh altogether. It was a huge, chesty laugh that made his belly wobble. It was the sort of laugh a bear would make if bears could laugh. Maybe they can laugh, I’m not really sure.

  Frank said, ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye. It’s hard to believe you’re only twelve. OK, OK, I give up. I want to know. What is this thing that I don’t know?’

  I smiled again, ’cos that’s what I’d been waiting for. ‘I’ll make you a bet.’ I pointed to the pencil sharpener that was sitting just in front of Frank. ‘You grab that sharpener. I’ll try and beat you to it. If I win, you give me a try-out for the team. If you win, I’ll go home and keep practising till I’m “old enough” to play.’ That sounded a long way away!

  Frank looked at me some more. I folded my arms. It was quite a big desk. The sharpener was just in front of Frank. I’d have to get out of my chair and reach right across the desk to get to it. It wasn’t a fair contest.

  ‘You think you’re pretty quick, don’t you?’ Frank said slowly. ‘That’s good. Are you as quick as Ricky Albany?’ Ricky ‘Road Runner’ Albany was one of the Warriors’ star wingers and everyone said he was one of the fastest players ever.

  ‘Quicker,’ I said, keeping my face really still, although I blinked a couple of times.

  ‘You’d need to be very fast to outrun Ricky. He could have been a world-class sprinter if he hadn’t …’ In the middle of his sentence Frank suddenly slammed his hand down on top of the sharpener. ‘… taken up league instead.’

  He looked sadly at me. At the brave twelve-year-old with the messy black hair and freckles, sitting in the big chair opposite him. He said, ‘I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say I cheated. But I didn’t. I surprised you, and that’s a very important part of the game. Don’t do what the opposition expects you to do. You’ll learn that as you get older.’

  I blinked slowly. Twice. I smiled a small, secret smile to myself, (I didn’t need to get a day older to learn that lesson). I looked up at the big man and said, ‘Lift up your hand.’

  Frank raised a big, grizzly bear eyebrow. Then his other eyebrow followed as I opened up my hand to show him the pencil sharpener. Frank snatched his hand away from the desk as if it was burning hot. The desk was empty.

  I grinned. Frank leaned back in his chair, so far that I was afraid it was going to fall over backwards. He folded his arms, thinking about what had just happened.

  ‘That’s a pretty good magic trick you just showed me. How did you do it?’

  ‘It wasn’t a trick. I told you I was fast. Do I get my try-out? We had a deal.’

  ‘Sorry, Danny, Daniel.’ Frank was just a little bit thrown. ‘Magic tricks won’t get you into the team. Anyway, I never accepted your bet.’

  ‘You accepted my bet the moment you banged your hand down on the desk,’ I said simply. ‘Even if you didn’t say so.’

  Frank sat forward. The sugges
tion of cheating brought a quick response. I just prayed it would be the right response.

  ‘You’re right, Daniel, I’m sorry. And you are far too clever for a twelve-year-old. But I still think it was a magic trick. Do it again and I’ll see if I can spot how you do it.’

  I put the sharpener back on the desk. ‘If I get the sharpener, do I get the try-out?’

  ‘We’re not going to use the sharpener this time; we’ll use a coin. My coin.’ Frank looked carefully at me to see if there would be a reaction. I kept my face blank.

  ‘That’s fine. Shall we make it harder this time?’

  ‘Harder!?’

  ‘You put the coin in the palm of your hand. When you’re ready, just close your hand and grab the coin. Where would you like me to stand?’

  Frank said, with one of those funny grown-ups’ smiles, ‘Outside?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ll just stay in my chair then.’

  Frank rummaged in his pocket and produced a twenty cent coin. He placed it in the centre of his palm, just below the big fleshy bump at the base of his thumb. He nodded.

  ‘Do I get my try-out?’ I asked.

  ‘If you can snatch this coin out of my hand, from where you’re sitting, before I can grab it, then you win your bet. I won’t reneg.’

  I had never heard the word ‘reneg’ before, but it was easy to work out what it meant. ‘OK then,’ I said, ‘whenever you’re ready.’ I blinked twice.

  Frank held my gaze for a few seconds then simply closed his hand. He did it quickly, as if he was afraid that I could do what I’d said I could, and even moved his hand a bit away from me, probably without meaning to. That would have been cheating.

  I sat back in my chair and flipped the coin in the air, catching it and slapping it down on my wrist. ‘Heads I win. Tails … I win too!’

  Frank opened his hand slowly. I could see in his eyes that he couldn’t believe it. His palm was bare. ‘But you didn’t even move!’ He protested.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I said. ‘You didn’t believe me when I said I was fast.’

  I said nothing more. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Somehow I knew when to stop talking. Most kids don’t. Frank looked at me, then smiled and shook his head.

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told me about it. We’re giving a couple of our second graders a run with the first grade squad this Saturday. Bring your boots.’

  I stood up and reached out my hand. It was totally lost in the huge paw of the big, ex-front rower.

  ‘We’re going to win the premiership this year,’ I said seriously.

  Frank shook his head again. ‘It’s a try-out, Daniel. You’re not in the squad, yet.’

  ‘We’re going to win the premiership,’ I said again, without a trace of humour. ‘This year.’

  TWO

  THE BOY WITHOUT A BRAIN

  Going home in the car with Dad was the first time that I actually got excited about my upcoming try-out. I had been so careful to keep my emotions under control in the coach’s office and now all that excitement came fizzing out, like a can of warm soft drink that you’d dropped on the ground before you pulled the tab.

  ‘I got a try-out!’ I bubbled before I’d even closed the door.

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Dad automatically, without an exclamation mark.

  ‘It’s on Saturday.’ If Dad had been more switched on he would have asked that. But Dad wasn’t switched on. Most of the time he was switched right off.

  ‘If I do well at the try-out I could win a place on the team!!’ I said with two exclamation marks, to sort of make up for Dad’s lack of them. It was a bit like talking to a brick. (Or as my friend Jason Kirk put it, like licking a T-bone steak – you might as well not bother for all the good it did you, or the effect it had on the steak.) I kept talking. It was the biggest day of my life, so far. I had to tell someone about it. ‘It’s the best rugby league team in the whole country!’

  ‘That’s good, Danny,’ said Dad. ‘Are they big boys?’

  ‘They’re professional rugby league players, Dad. It’s the New Zealand Warriors.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Besides, they all have three legs, two heads and live at the bottom of Lake Pupuke.’ It was really hard talking to Dad when he was like this. It actually hurt a bit too, but I was used to it.

  ‘Lake Pupuke? Really?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad.’

  ‘It’s nice there.’

  I looked out the window and decided that I was wrong. Maybe I didn’t have to tell anyone about it. Not yet anyway. Wait till I got home and could ring up Jason or Tupai. Or run over next door to see Fizzer.

  It wasn’t really Dad’s fault. Well, it was, of course, but there were reasons why he was the way he was. Everybody had their own problems to deal with and sometimes that made them act in a funny way. The sooner you knew that about people, the sooner you stopped taking it personally.

  Most kids don’t understand that, though. In fact, as far as I could see, a lot of grown-ups don’t understand it either.

  I lost myself inside my own thoughts. Dreaming of wearing the Warriors’ colours and running on to the field against the Sharks, or the Bulldogs. Or even the Brisbane Broncos! The ball in hand, the try line in front of me, just one player to beat. I didn’t like to dream too much, in case the dream did not come true. But it was hard not to. Not when you’d just won a try-out with the Warriors.

  Jason was at Fizzer’s place when we arrived home. He and Fizzer were sitting in the middle of the driveway playing Jun Ben Hoy. That was a Japanese game we had been taught by an exchange student who’d been in Jason and Fizzer’s class for six months. It was almost the same as paper-scissors-stone, but much faster and done to a beat, with some extra bits. It was a lot of fun.

  They kept playing until I got out of the car, ducked underneath the garage door as it closed, and ran over to them. I kept my face perfectly calm and, once I’d brushed through the small line of shrubs that separate the two properties, I slowed down to a walk.

  Jason looked up at me. His eyebrows asked the question. Fizzer voiced it, ‘How’d you go?’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ I said in my most casual voice. ‘Who’s winning?’

  ‘Come on, Daniel,’ cried Jason. ‘Did you or didn’t you?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, drawing out the suspense as long as I could, although I knew the others had guessed by now. ‘Yes. I try out on Saturday!’

  Fizzer whooped with excitement and Jason high-fived me.

  ‘The Warriors! Unbelievable!’ shouted Jason.

  ‘Bags tell Phil Domane!’ said Fizzer.

  ‘The boy without a brain!’ chipped in Jason.

  ‘No …’ I started, although I would have loved to.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got to, you have to,’ Jason and Fizzer chorused together.

  ‘But if I try out and don’t get in, he’ll be rubbing it in for weeks. Don’t tell Phil.’

  Phil Domane was the captain of the Glenfield Giants and was in Area 15 at our school. He was the biggest boy in the team, the biggest in his class, and he was a good rugby league player. He just wasn’t very nice. Jason called him the ‘boy without a brain’. Not ’cos he was thick, he wasn’t, but ’cos he could never be bothered to try hard at school. Compared to Jason, who had to try twice as hard as anybody else to do half as well, it just didn’t seem fair.

  Phil was always hassling me. If I dropped the ball, or didn’t make a tackle, I’d hear about it from Phil for days afterwards. It wasn’t a very captainly way to behave, and he didn’t treat the other players the same way, but he always seemed to give me lots of stick.

  ‘Get over it, Daniel, you sad frog,’ said Jason, who said things like that. ‘How many twelve-year-old kids even get to try out for the Warriors? Phil is going to be spewing!’

  It was true. That was the real reason I didn’t want Phil to find out.

  ‘What are you guys doing now?’ asked Jason, still excited.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.


  ‘Nothing,’ answered Fizzer.

  ‘Grab your bikes. Tupai said he’d meet us at the Lost Park. Let’s cycle over there and tell him the news.’

  THREE

  THE BEST DEFENCE

  Jason came with me on Saturday. I didn’t really want him to, and I didn’t really know why I didn’t want him to. But Jason wanted to come and, as he pointed out, if I didn’t get in the team, this might be Jason’s only chance to see me having a run with the Warriors’ first grade squad.

  Fizzer and Tupai had wanted to come too, but our team was playing Northcote that day and they couldn’t afford to lose so many players.

  None of the kids in my class at school knew. They wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told them. They knew I was a good player, a star even, but the Warriors were grown-ups and professionals. There was a whole universe between the Warriors and the Glenfield Giants.

  But Jason was there, and before long I would be very glad that I had let Jason come. Some of the other kids at school didn’t like Jason very much; they thought he was a bit slow. But I knew that was just his way of talking and that, really, Jason was one of the smartest kids in the school. I also knew that Jason didn’t read or write too well, another reason that some kids thought he was stupid, but it was just a dumb disease called dyslexia. Lots of kids have it, although Jason was the only one in my class. Actually, I wasn’t sure that ‘disease’ was the right word, but I didn’t know quite what else to call it.

  Jason and I were close friends. Not best friends, ’cos boys don’t have ‘best’ friends. That’s something that girls do. But Jason was a close friend, and I didn’t have any friends closer. So that was kind of a best friend in a way.

  My dad took us to the try-out. He didn’t come to watch though. He sat in the car with his briefcase doing his GST Return, whatever that is.

  I had been up since six, too excited to sleep. Then, when we were getting ready to go, I couldn’t find my boots. I had started to panic for a moment, but just then there was a knock on the front door and Jason had shown up with them. He had taken them the previous day without telling me and had cleaned them carefully, every inch of them, with a toothbrush. Then he had polished them blacker than black. When I put them on at the Warriors’ training ground they shone like a pair of brand new boots, not the second-hand pair from the club’s ‘used boots’ shop that they really were. I said ‘thanks’ to Jason, but that didn’t seem like a big enough word somehow.