Alex Sparrow and the Really Big Stink

by Jennifer Killick

  During PALS they all seemed to go into a trance. They sat neatly on the floor, eyes forward, gazing at the screen. Whatever happened around them, they didn’t take their eyes off it. Sometimes people pass around notes during PALS, but if someone tried to pass anything to one of these kids, they were completely ignored. If anyone threw something at one of them, because they didn’t pass on a note, the kid would just carry on sitting perfectly still. One time, Carrie-Anne Clarke got hit hard in the face with half a Jaffa cake, and she didn’t even flinch. It was like she was hypnotised. And all the time they smiled. But their smiles were unnatural, like the way my mum smiles at Nanny Sparrow when she’s telling Mum how to make a better Yorkshire pudding.

  The time when it was hardest to watch them was at breaks. We’d see one or two on litter duty, but the rest of them seemed to disappear.

  ‘They must be going somewhere,’ Jess said. ‘If we knew where, it might give us a clue about what’s happening to them.’

  ‘I’ll find out where. I just need some night-vision goggles small enough to conceal in my hat, an infra-red camera, caretaker’s overalls…’

  ‘Or we could just follow one of them,’ said Jess.

  I looked at her. ‘I’d better be the one to do that.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because I have years of stealth training under my belt.’

  ‘Really? Where did you do that?’ Jess raised an eyebrow.

  ‘At the Awesome Agent Alex Academy. Or as I like to call it: Aaaaaaa.’

  ‘I’m guessing this organisation is based at some top-secret location. Or, as I like to call it, your house.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll never know because you’re not stealthy enough to get in,’ I said. ‘Your dumb boots are the enemy of stealth.’

  ‘They might be the enemy of stealth but they’re best friends with kicking-annoying-people-in-the-shins.’

  ‘Quiet, Jessticles, I’m running through my list of potential targets… I’m pretty sure Carrie-Anne Clarke in my class is one of them; she’s always been a suck-up, but lately she’s taken it to another level. And she doesn’t believe in Frozen anymore. I’ll see where she goes at afternoon break and meet you at the rendezvous point at fourteen-hundred hours.’

  ‘Why are you speaking in that weird voice?’

  ‘It’s my secret-agent voice, obvs.’ Honestly, Jess was so clueless sometimes.

  ‘Right. And the rendezvous point is?’

  ‘The Throne of Whispers in the Isolation Zone,’ I said.

  ‘See you at the Friendship Bench at two, then, Double-O-Dufus.’

  I was super-excited about my first proper stealth mission. I wouldn’t get to use my power, but I could test out some of my other spying skills.

  At the end of class, Carrie-Anne packed her things away, stood up without scraping her chair across the floor like the rest of us do, and tucked the chair under the table. She wasn’t taking much notice of what was going on around her, but this was supposed to be a stealth mission, and I wasn’t going to let her take that away from me.

  I followed her down the corridor, being sure to maintain a safe distance between us. (Twenty metres according to the AAAA handbook. Yes, there’s a handbook.) I tiptoed past the library, where the floor is squeaky (a good agent knows his terrain) and stopped to take a reccy before I reached the IT hub.

  I peeped around the corner just in time to see her turning right towards the art cupboard, so then I had to run to catch up, which wasn’t my stealthiest moment. She started to turn her head, so I had to duck into a classroom, where Mrs Cobb and Mrs Halloway from the school office were eating Hobnobs.

  ‘Sorry, I thought this was the boys’ toilets!’ I said as I hurried out again, leaving them with a bit of a stink.

  Keeping Carrie-Anne in sight, I stayed close to the wall as I slunk, like a panther, down the corridor which led all the way to the far end of the school. To the PALS suite. The PALS suite is a new part of the school that literally popped up over the summer holidays. It was all shiny and colourful and kind of stood out from the rest of the school. It had a classroom, a couple of smaller rooms for quiet reflection, Smilie’s office and the main PALS room. The best thing about it was the giant aquarium in the big room, full of tropical fish and coral.

  Carrie-Anne opened the door and went inside, followed by maybe fifteen other kids. They were from different classes and year groups but they all walked with straight backs, chins up and eyes ahead. There were no hands in pockets or untucked shirts; no flashes of colour under trouser legs from forbidden non-grey socks. None of the girls had bows in their hair.

  I hesitated at the double doors. This was Miss Smilie’s domain. I wanted to see what the kids were doing in there but Smilie was super-strict. Come on, Agent Alex, I thought, you’ll never get into S.H.I.E.L.D. if you’re frightened of opening a door. I reached for the handle, just as the door opened from the inside.

  ‘Alex Sparrow,’ Miss Smilie smiled at me, ‘to what do we owe this visit? Have you come to join us?’

  Don’t panic. Think fast. ‘As much as I’d love to, Miss, I was actually just testing these doors.’

  ‘Testing the doors?’

  ‘Yes. I’m very concerned about health and safety, you see, and I’d heard reports that these new doors had loose handles that are likely to fall off and cause an accident.’ I yanked on the handle and tried to wiggle it a bit to prove my point, hoping I’d somehow acquired a bit of super-strength along with my farting ear. It didn’t budge.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything about faulty door handles, though if health and safety is a priority of yours, perhaps you could do some research on the causes of unpleasant odours. I’ve noticed a bad smell around the school.’

  She looked at me, her eyes cold, and I had to resist the urge to shudder. She couldn’t know about me, could she? It was impossible.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come in?’ she said. ‘The PALS suite is the perfect place for a boy like you. Once you’ve tried it you’ll be coming here every day, I guarantee it.’ It seemed a weird thing to say, because clearly there were a million things I’d rather do than go to the PALS suite every day, but she wasn’t lying.

  I heard a loud nose-blow behind me and Miss Smilie’s smile stretched wider than before. She was wearing red lipstick and for a moment I thought it looked like blood smeared over her lips. Ridic, obviously. It was just lipstick.

  ‘Ah, Marek, you’re two minutes late.’

  ‘Sorry, Miss Smilie.’ It was The Sniffler, looking even paler than he usually did.

  ‘I have plans for you – some quiet reflection on the evils of dropping litter.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Smilie.’

  I felt sorry for The Sniffler but not enough to hang around the PALS suite any longer. Besides, quiet reflection was boring as daytime TV, but it wouldn’t kill him.

  ‘I’d best be off, Miss, so I can investigate this terrible smell. First stop: the staffroom.’

  I turned away.

  ‘Hold on, please, Alex.’

  Bums. I turned back, half expecting Miss Smilie to have grown tentacles so she could wrap them around me and pull me in.

  ‘Yes, Miss?’

  ‘Hats off in the school building.’

  I was so relieved not to be dragged into the PALS suite, that I didn’t argue, just pulled my hat off, stuffed it in my pocket and walked away as quickly as I could without running. I didn’t look back.

  8

  I (Reluctantly) Become The Apprentice

  ‘It’s quite hard at first, but once you’ve got it and have practised a bit, you’ll start doing it automatically.’

  I’d filled Jess in on what happened at the PALS suite and, while we tried to decide what to do next, we had other work to keep us busy. Apparently while I hadn’t managed to get any control over my power, Jess had. So annoying.

  ‘Look, no offence, Jess, but if you managed it, I’m sure I can.’

  ‘Let’s not forget that I’m the one w
ho worked out how to do it, while you ran around stinking up the place,’ said Jess, screwing up her nose.

  ‘Well, excuse me for using my power for something actually fun.’ I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Yeah, that part where you humiliated yourself in front of your whole class sounded like a LOT of fun.’

  ‘Low blow, Jess. You should be glad – if my friends didn’t temporarily hate me, you wouldn’t get to hang out with me.’

  ‘Because I’ve got nothing better to do…’

  ‘Exactly, you’d probably just be drawing skull tattoos on your arms.’

  ‘Better that than spending time with a bunch of kids who only like you if you agree with everything they say.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with joining in, it’s what normal people do.’

  ‘Who wants to be normal?’

  ‘It’s better than being laughed at. Why would you want people to call you a freak?’

  Jess glared at me. For a moment I thought she was going to punch me, but she just sighed and said, in her most bossy voice, ‘Shall we get started?’

  ‘Yeah, alright. Chill out, Jessticles.’

  ‘All you have to do is concentrate. You need to block out the sounds around you so that your ears focus on just the person you’re choosing to listen to.’

  ‘Like a filter?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Just picturing you spasming out in the middle of PALS in front of the whole school.’

  ‘How would it happen in PALS, you idiot? See many cows wandering around in the school hall do you? Monkeys swinging from the beams in the gym?’ Jess glared at me.

  ‘Can my filter be a Jess filter?’

  ‘Do you want my help or not?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Carry on.’

  ‘So what you have to do is imagine your ears being blocked and only allowing certain things through. It helped me to actually visualise a little wall inside my ear.’

  ‘What is your wall made of? Bricks?’

  ‘No. Cloud.’

  ‘You have a wall in your ear made of cloud?’

  ‘Yes, and when I want to let a voice in, the cloud forms a little hole for the sound to squeeze through.’

  ‘Right, got you. But I don’t think I can have a cloud – it isn’t very manly.’

  ‘And you are, without doubt, the manliest boy I’ve ever come across.’

  ‘I know, right? Can my wall be made of something a bit more superheroey, like iron or kryptonite?’

  ‘Whatever works for you.’

  ‘Ok, I’m going with adamantium.’

  ‘Because you’re just like Wolverine.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  ‘OK, so when there are voices around you, imagine the ones you don’t want to hear bouncing off the adamantian wall in your ear.’

  ‘God, Jess, it’s adamantiUM, not adamantiAN. Fancy getting something so important wrong. Next you’ll be calling me Alan and that is clearly not the name of a super spy.’

  ‘It would be perfect for you, then.’

  ‘Ooh, you are extra ragey today! What’s the matter? Did Big Darth D ditch you for a girl who doesn’t just talk about orphans and despair?’

  ‘Can we just get on with this?’

  ‘Fine, keep your wig on. What do I do with the voices I want to let through?’

  ‘You could imagine the adamantium melting to make a gap.’

  ‘Unlikely. Adamantium’s molecular structure is so stable that it can’t be moulded, even if the temperature is high enough to keep it liquified. Your Marvel knowledge is appalling, Jessticles.’

  ‘So how will you let the voices through, geek-boy?’

  ‘My wall will retract.’

  ‘Wolverine’d better watch out – he’s got some serious competition now. Alan and his retractable adamantian ear-wall.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘So now you know how it’s done, you can start practising.’

  We wandered around the playground, passing groups of kids having the usual conversations, which I knew by now were made up of a lot of fibs. Kids’ lies usually fell into one of two categories. The first was denial: ‘I definitely do not want Nadine Skelton to be my girlfriend. She’s so annoying!’ or ‘I never kicked your football over the fence, but I saw Khalil running off – it was probably him.’ The second type was the showing-off lie: ‘I completed the new Lego game in one day.’ You get the idea. There were some kids who seemed to lie all the time, which I would have expected. What surprised me was that pretty much everybody lied sometimes, even if it was not very often. So the playground was a minefield for me – ear-fart bombs exploding at every turn, especially without my hat on. It was a good place to practise.

  ‘I guess Rhys from 6P really does want Nadine Skelton to be his girlfriend, then,’ Jess said, after my ear popped one out for the millionth time. It was so frustrating.

  ‘You mean The Golden Rhys? Yeah, he does, the nutter. She’s so bossy – she’ll have him finger-knitting and making jewellery out of old sweet wrappers before he realises what’s happening.’

  Usually at break we went to the quiet parts of the playground, away from anything that would activate our powers. Having my ear buzzing away constantly was giving me a headache. I suddenly felt tired and sad.

  ‘I’m really not getting the hang of this filtering thing, am I? I totally reek. Sorry.’ I wouldn’t blame Jess if she ditched me.

  She stopped walking. ‘Alex, you have nothing to apologise for. This situation is new and difficult and not your fault. Some people would moan and give up, but you’re trying hard to make the best of it. The smell isn’t even that bad now that I’m used to it.’

  Blimey! What happened to the real Jess? I was going to thank her, but I was distracted by the sight of a familiar person heading our way.

  ‘Oh, man. It’s Jason.’

  ‘Your former best mate? Great.’

  ‘We’re going to walk right past each other. I’ll have to say hi. Don’t do or say anything embarrassing.’

  And there he was, giving a finger swear to a Reception kid who accidentally bumped him with his violin case.

  ‘Hi, Jason.’

  I thought he might just ignore me, but he actually looked happy to see me. Maybe he was going to ask me over for pancakes and PS4. Maybe he had really missed me and wanted to be my best mate again.

  ‘Scuzzo! I was just going to check the bottom of my shoe, thinking I’d stepped in something. Should have known it was you. You smell worse than dog’s turds.’

  OK, maybe not.

  ‘How’s things? Are you going to see the new X-Men movie?’

  ‘I saw that movie ages ago, loser. Nice girlfriend, by the way, she looks like a total freak.’

  ‘Jess is so not my girlfriend.’

  ‘Yeah, she is. Scuzzo’s got a freakish ugly girlfriend!’ (He said that bit in an annoying ‘na na na-na na’ voice.) ‘Best you could do I guess, seeing as you’re a stinking loser.’

  Insulting me was one thing, but saying that stuff about Jess was really making me mad. Jess was precisely the only person at school who was being a friend to me. Well, her and Darth Daver. Jason could be such a massive jerk.

  ‘Shut up, Jason. She’s not ugly and she’s not a freak!’

  ‘Really? What the hell is she doing then?’

  Jess was in the middle of a full-on, hardcore twitch. I’d seen it a few times now, but it was still entertaining and there was always the hope that she might take it to the next level. I had my fingers crossed for her to mutate into She-Hulk and throw Jason over the fence.

  I soon spotted the cause of her outburst: Dexter the pigeon was on the ground beside us, strutting about like a boss. I was a bit annoyed by the timing. I didn’t need to give Jason any more reasons to disown me. But then Dexter hated me because I mocked his disability, so he probably did it on purpose.

  Jason looked horrified. ‘You dropped your tramp hat,’ he said, throwing it at me and walking away. He clearl
y didn’t want to be seen with us. ‘Don’t ever come near me again, Scuzzo,’ Jason shouted. ‘Stupid, stinking freaks!’

  Jess stopped twitching as Dexter flew away, making sure to land a sloppy poo on my head as he left. I was wearing my hat, though, so it didn’t get in my hair. Joke’s on him.

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘He said The Professor wants an update on what we’ve found out so far. Apparently we’re supposed to write it down on a little piece of paper, roll it up and tie it to Dexter’s leg so he can deliver it by the end of lunch.’

  ‘The Professor really needs to get an email address. I didn’t hear you agreeing to anything.’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t. I’m not taking orders from someone who doesn’t have the balls to give them himself.’

  I gasped. ‘You said balls!’

  Jess rolled her eyes.

  ‘So we’re going rogue! Awesome!’ There’s nothing cooler than a rogue agent. ‘Agent Alex and his trusty sidekick, The Living Zombie, throw off the chains of authority and take matters into their own hands.’

  ‘You’re doing another absurd voice. Are you narrating our situation?’

  ‘The Living Zombie hides her respect for Agent Alex under a veil of contempt.’

  ‘Stop referring to me as The Living Zombie.’

  ‘Why? You need a sidekick name and it makes you sound like a bad-A.’

  ‘Think of something else.’

  ‘Aha! So you want a sidekick name!’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You didn’t have to, I think we understand each other,’ I said.

  Jess looked as though she wanted to slap me, so it was the perfect time for a subject change. ‘What else did Dexter say? You were twitching for ages.’

  ‘Something about watching out for dodgy geezers who are giving it the large, and not messing with the boss.’

  ‘Ooh, do you think there’s a band of highly trained gangland criminals on our tails?’

  ‘Because Cherry Tree Lane is full of gangland criminals.’ Jess rolled her eyes.