WHEEEEET!!! Janice went. Miss Teo had gone for a toilet break and we couldn’t wait. We were emboldened. The match had to go on.
The ball was in Adam’s hands. As he was looking for his teammate, Janice said in Leonard’s voice, “Adam, here! Pass the ball to me!”
Adam’s hands worked faster than his eyes and he threw the ball in Janice’s direction. Loose ball! Leonard was right at the opposite end of the court. It worked and the Pros lost possession of the ball!
“What did you do? I’m here!” Leonard yelled and scratched his head in bewilderment. He knew someone had imitated his voice but he couldn’t tell who. There were 300 children screaming from all different directions!
Janice did her trick again. When Leonard regained possession of the ball, she yelled in Damien’s voice, “Over here, Leonard, pass me the ball!”
Leonard threw the ball in the opposite direction to where Damien was!
“I’m here, you fool!” Damien yelled. But it was too late, the ball was already in Clandestino’s hand.
“This is getting better, no?” Mundi beamed.
Our opponents were utterly confused. They were throwing the ball in every direction. After a long while, it reached Adam. I took my position where Mundi told me to. I could see Adam aiming purposefully for the three-point shot. “No pain, no gain. No pain, no gain,” I repeated to myself.
I watched for the defining moment when the ball left his hands, and at that moment, jumped as high as I had ever jumped.
Things seemed to move in slow motion as I felt my feet leave the ground. I could feel my hair dancing in the wind. I couldn’t see faces anymore. All I saw were trees and a blur of orange! True enough, the ball came spinning towards me like an asteroid. AGAIN! I curled my fingers and brought my hands close to my face, ready to clasp. Then I shut my eyes tight. The next thing I knew I was down on the ground, without a bloody nose. An orange rubber ball was in my hand!
“It worked!!” I shouted. “I got Adam’s ball!”
“Of course!” Mundi yelled back. “NASA uses Math to c-c-calculate space l-l-launches and landings on the m-m-moon and…”
While he was speaking, Clandestino grabbed the ball from me and did his magic. He scored!
“Huh?” Adam was puzzled. “No one has ever blocked my shot so accurately before.”
We repeated our tactics again and again. Leonard, Justin, Damien and Adam were absolutely befuddled. I got assailed by an incoming ball a few times, but a red nose was worth the winning advantage!
Mundi stood right in the centre of the court, uttering speed formulas and shooting angles. He was also the one who would get his hands on the ball before passing it to Clandestino to shoot hoops. In fact, he didn’t really do the passing. He just stood there and Clandestino would come to get the ball.
Finally, we looked at the score board. The score was 22 : 15. We were in the lead! The crowd went mighty silent. They didn’t know how to react. And they couldn’t bring themselves to cheer us on.
“Come on!” the head prefect shouted. “Whoever reaches 25 points wins!” That was the rule of the unofficial basketball match.
Then all of a sudden, I heard a crackling sound in the distance. Like the crackle of fire. Before I could be certain, we all heard an unmistakable cry, “FIRE!!”
And that was when our world changed.
CHAPTER 4: FLAME OF THE HOTTEST
Fire! Fire! Fire!” It was Mr Grosse. He was running out of the staff room, in his military shoes. Clack, click, clack, they went. Mr Grosse always acted like he was the school’s policeman. As such, his clothes were well starched and his shoes had metal studs on the soles so that his footsteps would sound like a policeman’s. Also, he wore collar pins (I believe to show off his rank) but they looked more like little brooches from far. In fact, they seemed almost feminine.
By the time he made it to the parade square next to the basketball court, panic had punctured the atmosphere. I turned to my friends only to realise that Clandestino had vanished!
Mr Grosse reached for the microphone in the parade square, tapped it brusquely and announced, “Everyone! Keep calm. Please disperse! This match is over! There is a fire in the Venus Building!”
Then he left and marched towards the building like a policeman. Mrs Priya, our principal, emerged from the staff room looking stunned. She looked left and right before deciding to follow Mr Grosse.
“Let’s go, Darryl!” Janice urged. “We need to get there! It may be the same person who vandalised the wall!”
“Are-are-are… you sure… Janice?” Mundi hesitated. He was not a thrill-seeker and definitely not a fire-seeker.
“Janice is right,” I said. “We need to look for Clandestino. He is probably there now.”
From a distance, I could see the orange-yellow glow. All the screams made it impossible to hear anything. Why wasn’t the fire alarm sounding? Janice, Mundi and I raced towards the fire, but we couldn’t go too near it. Smoke and the waves of blazing heat forced us to back off.
“Here, let’s hide here,” Janice said, coughing. She pulled Mundi and me to a classroom. The fire was raging in class 3A and we were in class 3D. Four classrooms away from the actual fire. We stuck our heads out to watch for any clues. The grey fumes were billowing like giant clouds and the fierce flames were licking the door of the classroom. Mr Grosse and Mrs Priya were the only ones closest to the scene. Like us, they couldn’t get too near the flames for fear of their lives. They stood about two classrooms from the fire.
“Darryl, what do you hear? We can’t see very clearly because of the smoke.” Janice puffed as she waved her hands to clear the air in front of her.
“Yes… Darryl, wh-what do you h-hear? We can only stay here for another m-m-minute…” Mundi coughed as he spoke. “Before the smoke suffocates our lungs and…”
“Sssshhhhh…” I said. “Clandestino is there! He has just appeared from the burning classroom, covered in soot.
And the teachers are pulling him away from the scene. He is saying that the fire had cast a shadow on a person leaving the classroom. So he only saw the silhouette of a person from afar. The student was quite small and…”
“Anything else?” interrupted Janice.
“Yes. Wait… They are asking him why he was there at the scene.” I closed my eyes to listen even harder. “He is trying to explain that he can run very fast but they don’t believe him. They think he is involved in the fire too! He is… hang on… Okay, he is explaining that it is impossible as he was at … at … the … the … basketball match… but they are saying… that … that … he is an accomplice to the fire.”
“Oh n-n-n-no! The t-t-t-teachers have got it all wrong!” Mundi yelled, squeezing his shorts.
“I’ve got an idea.” Janice waddled to the window. She took a deep, chesty breath. Her face turned so pink and she inflated beyond recognition – like the biggest, pinkest hot air balloon. Then she opened her mouth wide and swayed back and forth. Before we knew it, a loud siren sound was escaping from her mouth!
“NEE NAW NEE NAW NEE NAW!”
I plugged my ears with my fingers, almost dying from the deafening noise.
Mundi was amazed. “She can do sirens too?”
Mr Grosse look startled. “Oh good, the fire brigade is here. Let’s go!”
The two of them began running.
“Come with us, boy!” Mrs Priya beckoned Clandestino. They ran right past us, and didn’t notice that Clandestino was lingering behind. He was still hanging around the burning classroom, eyeing something on the ground.
“Psst! Over here!” Mundi yelled when the coast was clear. Clandestino spun around and saw us waving frantically. He reached us in a second, his face black, his body layered in soot, and looking downtrodden.
“Hi, guys. Glad you’re here.” He coughed. “Did they announce the winner for the match?”
“That’s not important. What happened, Clandestino?”
“Guess what? I am one of the suspects now!” He wi
ped off some soot from his eyes. “I saw the shadow of the culprit. It was a female student, I think.”
“A feeeeee… m-m-maaaaale?” Mundi repeated.
“Yes, even though I made a few rounds to look for her, I couldn’t find her.” He turned to me. “Your ears would have been helpful here, Darryl.”
“But, wait, was I great? Was I great?” Janice exclaimed, still proud of her siren impression.
“Yes, good job, Janice. Let’s get out of here!” I said. “We can discuss this later!”
“WAAIIIT!” He stopped. Clandestino sped off and vanished again. He returned two seconds later with something in his hand. It was wrapped up in his handkerchief.
“What’s that, Clandestino?”
“Later! Let’s hurry!” he yelled. We ran after him like mad children, adrenaline coursing through our veins. He was so fast that he was soon out of sight.
“Let’s hope the real firemen arrive soon!” I said hopefully. As soon as I had finished my sentence, I could hear the screaming of sirens.
“That’s definitely NOT me,” Janice said. “Someone must have called the fire brigade.”
By then, Mr Grosse and Mrs Priya were already at the car park. I could hear the sirens from miles away. They were getting louder and louder. All the children who had watched the match stampeded through the school gate, crowding the way. (I thought I saw a few girls smiling at us, perhaps because we had thrashed the Pros in the basketball match.)
However, the sight of the fire engine was frightening. Fire drills were carried out periodically in school.
Everybody looked forward to them because that was the only time we had license to drop everything, including our pens, books and test papers, and file out of class. A good one hour was wasted on queuing, head counting and a lecture on fire precautions (which no one paid attention to – everyone was just happy to idle and chit chat with their partners). By the time we got back from the fire drill, the boring part of the day was gone and teachers usually forgot about handing up homework. To everyone, it was a real treat and a pleasant surprise!
But today was different. No one kept to their straight lines, no one was keeping calm and everyone wished it had never happened.
I could hear Mrs Priya and Mr Grosse. There was panic in their voices.
“This is bad! Oh no, the school is going to burn down soon!” Mrs Priya cried.
“Don’t worry, the firemen are here already,” Mr Grosse assured her, even though worry was written all over his face!
The fire truck weaved into the crammed school car park. It was taking forever to park! Mr Grosse was shooing kids out of the way like annoying flies. Mrs Priya was signalling to the driver in the fire truck and waving like a desperate SOS victim. I was waiting for the fire truck to transform into Sentinel Prime, but it didn’t happen. Finally, two firemen disembarked from the red truck and tore towards her.
“Is there anyone stuck in the classroom?” one of them asked quickly.
“No, but a boy was hanging around there, he is tall… his name is Cland… something,” Mrs Priya said. “Please do your best to save our school building!”
“Don’t worry, Ma’am.” They ran off in the direction of the fire.
The other four men strode up to Madam Siti with grave looks on their faces.
“Where is the nearest fire hydrant?” one of them asked.
“Th…There.” Madam Siti hesitated, pointing to a rusty looking pipe. Two men pulled out large hoses from their trucks while another two wrenched the fire hydrant open to connect the water hoses.
“I hope there are no children in there,” I heard one of them mutter. Clandestino was at the bus-stop, hiding behind an advertisement board. He didn’t want anyone to see him in his blackened state.
Finally, the set-up was ready and the four firemen hugged the water hose that seemed to weigh a ton and strode to the burning classroom. By then, thick columns of choking fumes were soaring skywards.
The chief fireman, who had a weather-beaten face, yelled, “Ready, one, two, three!”
Water gushed out from the hose and doused the raging inferno. The force from the water was so strong that we could feel trickles of it on our skin.
“Here,” Miss Teo said tearfully. “First the wall, now this.” She shielded Mundi and me with her umbrella.
The valiant fireman worked hard to battle the fire before it finally gave in to them. By then it was 4 pm and I knew Mom would be worried, if I didn’t get home by 5 pm.
“Shall we make our way home?” I asked.
“But, Darryl, don’t you think more clues can be found inside?” Janice said.
“Not n-n-now, Ja-Janice,’ Mundi explained. “The po-police will b-be-be here any minute and it is st-still unsafe to g-g-go inside. Let’s go to my house first. I think I have a p-p-plan.”
I turned to Janice and Mundi and whispered, “We will come back during the weekend. At night.”
Janice agreed. “Okay then, I will inform Clan.”
“Let’s go! Now, no?” Mundi urged. “The firemen ha-have al-already put out the fire.”
We knew what we had to do. We were elated that we had “won” the basketball match but now our minds were burning with another kind of excitement and purpose. The severity of the situation was something we couldn’t let go of. On top of that, Clandestino was now a suspect.
First graffiti, then fire, what next?
CHAPTER 5: POWDERFUL POWDER
To make sure we were less conspicious, we decided to leave the crowd one by one. Mundi dislodged himself calmly from the crowded bus-stop. A few minutes later, it was Janice’s turn. She tiptoed stealthily up to Clandestino behind the advertisement board and whispered into his ear. The both of them started towards the HDB apartments across the street.
Then it was my turn. I inched my way out from the crowd of school children, making sure no one saw me.
We all made our way to Mundi’s home, which was a stone’s throw away from our school. When I arrived, Janice and Clandestino were already waiting for me downstairs. We were all fired up. This mission was more interesting than finding cheat suspects in school. Furthermore, we had never been to Mundi’s house before!
Knock. Knock. Knock! Clandestino banged on a green door that was poorly finished. He left black palm prints on the door. The paint had been scraped off and the gate was rusty. There were stickers of numbers pasted freely on the door, possibly by Mundi. He had once mentioned that his parents had grabbed the first flat they had found as they wanted a home near Brightstar Primary, even though it was quite crummy.
Finally, the door creaked open and we could see two large black pupils staring at us through the gap in the door. It covered his white irises completely.
“Mundi, it’s us!!” Impatience tugged at Janice.
“Password?” Mundi asked. “Anyone following you?”
“Password?” I said. “How are we supposed to know?”
“Wait, wait… I know. Silhouette.” Clandestino rattled off the biggest word he knew.
“Clever, that’s right.” Mundi was pleased. He opened the door a little wider and scanned the corridor with vigilant eyes. “Make sure no one is following you, no?”
Janice couldn’t wait any longer and she barged into the house, almost throwing Mundi off balance. It was a small three-room flat. The walls were stained with handprints and colour pencil marks that were mostly advanced algebraic equations.
“Whoa, Mundi, you know these equations?” Janice gasped.
“Well, maybe,” he shrugged. There was a distinct smell of fish curry that wafted from the kitchen. A lady with her hair up in a bun and wearing a bright blue sari emerged from the kitchen. She looked pristine, beautifully adorned. Every single hair was in place. She looked like a Miss India to me! Her beauty did not match the poorly-furnished house.
She looked at us, smiled and then said, “No nonsense ah, Mundi. You know better.”
“Yes, Mama,” came the reply. She was Mundi’s mother! Then sh
e pointed to a room where we could hold our secret meeting. Mundi pulled Clandestino and me by the wrist and signalled to Janice to follow.
When Mundi shut the door, Clandestino knelt down and took something from his bag gingerly.
“You see this?” he asked, unwrapping the object in his hand.
“Yup, it’s a tin can,” Janice responded.
“Not just ANY tin can,” Clandestino said. “A Coke can! Our piece of evidence.”
“This was found at the scene of the fire,” he added, holding the can up with a handkerchief like a prize. “Remember, when I told you guys to wait? I had to go in and retrieve this because I knew that was something odd. Why would a can of Coke be in a classroom, in the middle of the floor. It must have something to do with the culprit.”
He tilted the can towards us. “Here, smell this.”
I sniffed, then Janice and finally Mundi. I sniffed again just to be sure. We all looked up in horror.
“Kerosene?” Janice gasped. “This is getting quite addictive.” She wanted to smell it again.
“Don’t be silly, Janice,” I said. “It will kill you.”
So that was what I had heard during the match. The “splish splash” must have come from THIS can and others. Someone must have poured kerosene into this can or cans like this to splash all around the classroom.
At that moment, I was sure he had done the wrong thing. “Clan, you have just been suspected of being one of the arsonists, and now you dare to be found with the evidence? A can from the site? Oh my goodness.”
Janice thought it was so funny, she began to laugh. “Clan! Clan!”
Clandestino shook his head in protest. “I have brains too, you know. I know how NOT to leave my fingerprints everywhere. Hence the handkerchief, hello?”
“Yes, that’s smart, no?” Mundi agreed. “If there are any fingerprints, it wouldn’t be Clan’s. It would be the arsonist’s!” He led us to a brown cupboard and opened it swiftly.
Extraordinary Losers 2 Page 3
