Spurt (22 page)

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous. He’d woken up with faint red spots – some sort of weird stress rash, he guessed – creeping up his neck. ‘Have you seen Sampson?’ he asked.

Vivi looked him in the eye. ‘No. I haven’t.’

‘I called him,’ Jack insisted. ‘I spoke to him.’

‘And?’

And ever since then I’ve had a very bad feeling about this whole thing
, thought Jack.

Jack’s phone buzzed before he could describe his conversation with Sampson to Vivi. Vivi peered over his shoulder as he checked the message. ‘Oliver?’ she asked.

Jack said nothing. Instead, he looked up from his phone and scanned the area near the gate. There she was, in an expensive-looking black dress and gold jewellery. The crowning detail in Jack’s plan to out-Bigwig the other Bigwigs.

Natsumi saw Jack and waved. Jack couldn’t help noticing the dark look on Vivi’s face. ‘I’m giving Nats her big break,’ he explained with a shrug.

‘And you get a trophy wife for the cameras.’ Vivi clasped her hands to her chest. ‘Or – wait, could it be true love? A love that transcends year levels! A love that transcends her being a ditz and you being –’

‘Me being what?’

Vivi unclasped her hands and scowled, but didn’t answer. She focused intently on her clipboard for a moment.

Jack went over to meet Nats at the gate, waving his access pass at the security guards so they’d let her through. When Jack realised that Vivi had followed him over, he instinctively reached out towards Nats as if to put his arm around her.

Nats shrank away slightly. ‘Um, only for the cameras, remember?’

‘Yeah, right. I get it. I was just … practising.’

‘Ugh,’ said Vivi.

‘Speaking of cameras, I guess we should go and find Delilah.’ Jack leant closer to Nats. ‘She’s my producer.’

‘She’s the
Bigwigs
segment producer,’ Vivi corrected him.

Jack ignored her. ‘They’re going to film us arriving together in a limousine.’

Nats looked confused. ‘But we’re already here!’

‘They’re going to fake it,’ said Vivi, putting on a sarcastically sympathetic smile. ‘Like everything Jack does.’

‘That’s how it works in TV.’ Jack held his hands out in a ‘what can you do about it?’ gesture. ‘That’s showbiz, babe.’

Vivi looked unwell. ‘You did not just call her “babe”.’

In the nick of time, Jack spotted Darylyn, Philo and Reese heading across the oval towards them. ‘Hey, there’s my team!’ He waved them over, then turned to Nats. ‘Before we find Delilah, let’s see if we can go and check out Hot-Air Force One. I’ve been wanting to see this all week!’

‘That’s Natsumi Distagio,’ Darylyn observed, as she and Reese and Philo arrived at the gate where Jack and the others were.

‘Correct,’ said Vivi.

‘Can we see the balloon?’ asked Jack.

Darylyn nodded, with an ever-so-slightly concerned look on her face. ‘They’re doing a test inflation now.’

Reese threw Jack a look. ‘It’s not the only thing that’s getting inflated around here.’ He nodded towards Vivi. ‘Hey, dude, how’s Mayor for a Week treating you?’

‘Reese, you know I’m deputy.’

‘I know who
should
have been mayor.’

Darylyn glanced at Reese, then Vivi, then Jack. ‘I suggest we go look at the balloon.’

Darylyn and Reese led the way through the gate and past the organisers’ marquee, with Vivi and Nats making an awkward second pairing. A crew in fluoro vests was busy laying out a nylon envelope on the grass. A wicker basket lay on its side nearby.

Philo hung back and gave Jack a nudge. ‘So I never asked: did you find that stuff I left for you?’

Jack frowned. ‘What stuff?’

‘The stuff!’

Jack shook his head, frowning. ‘But I asked you about it, remember? You said you didn’t leave anything in the bachelor pad.’

‘I didn’t leave anything in the bachelor pad.’

‘Okay. So …’

‘I left it in your room.’

Jack stopped. ‘Wait, what? The bachelor pad
is
my room.’

‘Is it?’

‘I swapped rooms with my gran. You helped me move my things!’

‘Oh. Right.’ Philo paused. ‘So I guess that means I left it in your
old
room.’

‘My
old
room? But that’s …’ Jack stopped and grabbed Philo by the shoulders. ‘Okay Philo, listen to me carefully. This is important.
What
did you
leave
in my
gran’s room
?’

Philo looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe it doesn’t work on ladies.’

‘Philo!’

‘Okey-doke. So you know how people always seem to do what my family tells them to do? Well, I went to the doctor and made him give me this cream I found out about. Except here’s the brilliant part. It’s not for me. It’s for
you
.’

‘Cream? What sort of cream?’

‘It’s a … wait a minute, I always have trouble with this … It’s a tes-toster-own cream.’

Jack’s eyes widened. ‘A
what
?’

‘It makes your pubes grow! Anyway, I put it right on that little table next to your bed.’

‘
Gran’s
bed!
Gran’s
little table!’

Philo paused. ‘I did wonder why you had a photo of yourself there.’

Jack tried to calm down. Maybe Marlene hadn’t seen it. She kept all sorts of junk on her bedside table. It was possible that Philo’s well-meaning but wildly misdirected gift had gone unnoticed. ‘Okay. Let’s think for a moment. What else was on the table?’

‘Well, it’s funny you should say that, because there were a whole bunch of other creams there too.’

Oh god
, thought Jack.
Other creams. Moisturisers. Cleansers. Face creams
.

‘I think it’ll be fine,’ said Philo, noticing Jack’s panicked expression. ‘I mean, your gran is very old and probably has a lot of pubes already, so she might not even notice.’

Jack did his best to ignore the mental image Philo had just conjured. ‘It’s
testosterone
cream, Philo. It has to do more than just
give you pubes
. I mean, are there any side effects?’

Before Philo could answer, Jack heard someone shout his name from across the showgrounds. Hallie was tearing towards him with the Shieling twins in tow. The security guards at the gate didn’t even stop them to check for access passes, so intense was the look on Hallie’s face. At first Jack was worried she was about to yell at him for stealing Nats away from her – but then he realised she looked more freaked out than furious.

‘What’s wrong? What are you doing here?’

Yasmine crossed her arms over her chest. ‘
We’re
here because we wanted to see Natsumi make a spectacle of herself.’

Hallie didn’t seem to be relishing Nats’s fall from grace the way the Shieling twins were. ‘Jack, I got a call from Mum. It’s Gran. Something weird’s happened.’

Jack glanced sideways at Philo. ‘Yeah, I think –’

‘Jack, she’s in hospital.’

There were gasps. Nats clamped her hand to her mouth.

Jack blinked. ‘What? What happened?’

‘Okay, this is the weird part. Mum reckons she attacked a taxi driver.’

‘
What?

’ ‘Like, actually pinned him down and nearly broke his arm.’

‘Wait, so it’s the
taxi driver
who got injured?’

‘Both,’ said Hallie. ‘Mum says Gran slipped and cut her head open. She’s okay, but there’s cops at the hospital. She reckons the taxi driver’s going to press charges.’

‘Against
Gran
?’ Jack gave a nervous laugh. ‘Nah, Mum must be pranking you.’ He checked his phone. ‘Look, no messages.’

‘Yeah, I guess she figured you were too busy to bother with boring family stuff like
your gran committing assault
.’ Hallie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘But let’s forget about that. I don’t care about that
Bigwigs
stuff anymore. This is more important. Remember Gran going all
Exorcist
the other night? I think she might have stopped taking her hormone tablets.’

‘What hormone tablets?’

Hallie rolled her eyes. ‘The pills you pick up from the chemists for her every month?’

‘They’re
hormone tablets
?’ Jack’s brow crinkled. ‘I’ve been buying
lady hormone tablets
?’

‘It’s not just tablets,’ said Philo. ‘You can get creams as well. Like the tes-toster-own cream I bought for Jack and accidentally left in his gran’s room.’

Everyone turned and stared at Philo.

Hallie blinked. ‘Did he just say he gave
testosterone cream
to Gran?’

Jack put a hand to his brow and groaned. Surely this wasn’t happening. Not now. Not when his audition for the Bigwigs Board was at stake.

‘You know what?’ said Hallie. ‘It doesn’t even matter at this point. Jack, we’ve got to go to the hospital. Mum’s probably stressed out of her head.’

‘Yeah, but –’ Jack glanced at Nats, and gestured at the bobbing sea of hot-air balloons above the oval. ‘There’s all
this
…’

Nats stared at Jack in disbelief. ‘Jack! This is your
family
we’re talking about!’

Jack clutched his access pass. ‘But … this is a big deal –’

Nats stepped away from him, looking disgusted. ‘Hals, I’ll drive you to the hospital.’

With a final glare over her shoulder at Jack, Nats pulled Hallie after her through the gate towards the car park. The Shieling twins took the opportunity to melt back into the crowd, but not without shooting Jack identical dirty looks first.

Jack couldn’t believe it. His
fake
girlfriend had
actual
dumped him.

He realised everybody was staring at him. ‘What?’ he said. ‘It’s tough, okay? It’s not easy, balancing work and family.’ He scratched at his neck as his stress rash started to itch. ‘But I’m Mayor for a Week. I’ve got responsibilities. I’m the man of the house, but I’m also the big man in town.’ He pointed over to where the crew had started inflating his race balloon. ‘Someone’s got to fly in Hot-Air Force One.’

The basket was on its side, tethered to the ground, and the crew was using a large fan to blow air into the nylon balloon.

Slowly the balloon that Philo had designed and Darylyn had modelled took shape before Jack’s eyes. The balloon seemed to be made up of two segments – two knobbly ovoid shapes – joined together in the middle. The fabric was decorated all over with folds and furrows that made the balloon look puckered and shrivelled.

Jack realised it was supposed to look like a pair of sultanas. What it actually looked like was –

‘A scrotum,’ he said out loud. ‘Hot-Air Force One looks like a massive scrotum.’

Philo tilted his head to one side. ‘Now that you mention it …’

The crew lit the gas burner and the scrotum-shaped balloon began a majestic rise into the air. Jack saw the crew stand back to look at it, appraising it properly for the first time. They frowned and rubbed their chins. One of them nudged another. There was chuckling and shaking of heads. A couple of them turned and looked right at Jack.

Jack rounded on Philo and Darylyn. ‘What the hell? What the
hell
? How am I supposed to fly in
that
?’

Darylyn shrugged. ‘I did try to tell you.’

‘You told me it had a bit of a “dried fruit” vibe. You didn’t tell me it looked like a giant pair of
baldy-balls
!’ Jack turned to Reese. ‘What about you? You were there. You saw them work on this.’

Reese shrugged. ‘Dude, if I’d said something, would it have made a difference? You’re so wrapped up in your own head all the time. The only reason it took me so long to tell you about me and D was because I knew you’d freak out and start thinking you didn’t “measure up” or something. Everything’s a
competition
with you. Dude, I’m over it.’

Before Jack could answer, Philo pointed into the distance and said, ‘We probably should have gone with a design more like
that
.’ Further afield in the area behind the grandstand, blotting out the setting sun and lit up by great bursts of flame, was a fiery red balloon shaped like a rocket. Its flanks were emblazoned with the Avocado World logo.

Standing at the base of the balloon, gathered around the basket, was a fluoro-vested crew much like the one that was preparing Jack’s balloon. But this balloon was not generating chuckles among the crew. This balloon demanded solemn, masculine respect. The
Bigwigs
crew was there too, Jack suddenly noticed. And Delilah was right there with them, interviewing someone.

Interviewing Oliver Sampson.

Two balloons
, thought Jack. Back at the swearing-in for Mayor for a Week, Delilah had said she needed to organise two balloons. And now he realised: one of those balloons was for Oliver Sampson.

Just like she’d rigged the selection of Mayor for a Week in Jack’s favour, Delilah must have rigged the lottery so that Sampson would be flying against Jack. She was
finding the story.
Suddenly Jack realised what that was going to be. His ‘story’ on the
Bigwigs
reunion special was going to end in a dramatic race between Sampson’s penis-rocket and Jack’s tragic nadgers. Jack’s audition for the Bigwigs Board was going to be a massive joke – with Sampson laughing hardest.

It was over, Jack realised. The more he’d tried to fake the big time, the smaller he’d become.

He took off his access pass and dropped it on the ground. ‘I’m out,’ he said. He turned and walked towards the gate.

‘Jack!’ Vivi called after him.

But Jack didn’t answer. He didn’t stop, or turn around.

Instead, he ran.