The OK Team (3 page)

Now I'm worried. What does that mean? I don't have to wait long because soon we're in North Fitzroy and Dad flicks the left-hand indicator, turning out of St Georges Road into a side street. He finds a park and we all get out. And now I see it.

I briefly consider running, just running, but my brain is having trouble processing everything and I move like a robot beside my parents.

‘The Victorian Society for the Blurred,' I read aloud from the sign above the entrance of the big red brick building on the corner. It looks like a converted church. Mum and Dad climb the steps and open the door.

‘C'mon, son,' says Dad with a surprisingly gentle voice. ‘We only want you to hear what they've got to say. What have you got to lose?'

My sanity, I think but don't say.

Inside the door is a massive hall designed for the days when people actually met to talk about things or gather in groups, for reasons that were not sport-related. Before TV, the internet and games consoles, in other words. A circle of chairs in the centre of the room is filled with some of the strangest-looking people I've ever seen. A lady with a clipboard stands, welcomes us and offers me a chair to her right. Mum and Dad sit somewhere out of sight, at the back of the hall.

LIST OF ATTENDEES
VICTORIAN SOCIETY FOR THE BLURRED
9 APRIL, 8 PM
(Notes by Counsellor Lillian Poindexter)

HUMPHREY SEPIA
Age:
60.
Condition:
entire body is in black & white, as though on an old TV, pre-colour.

DORIS VERTIHOLD
Age:
52
Condition:
A visual wave of her face and body moves up and down her shape, on a sort of loop.

BORIS DISTORT
Age:
28
Condition:
Entire body is static, buzzing and hard to see. (Would an antenna on his head improve his ‘tuning'?)

STEVEN J. FLY
Age:
36
Condition:
Face is divided into four segments with slightly different angles of his face in each section, like a console game in 4P mode.

JENNIFER SYNCHOFF
Age:
15
Condition:
Mouth is on ‘time delay' so you can see her lips moving a few seconds before the sound comes out.

JUSTIN BRYL
Age:
25
Condition:
Smudged hair. Otherwise normal. (Apart from school taunting, is this really a problem?)

MORGAN DEEJAY
Age:
13
Condition:
Talks entirely in radio announcer clichés as though he's a 24-hour radio station on legs. No visual affliction. (Possibility of employment delivering traffic reports during peak hour?)

TROY MURDOCH-QUIMBY
Age:
31
Condition:
Has re-runs of animated program The Simpsons happening in a virtual screen on his forehead.

HAZY RETINA
Age:
13
Condition:
Entirely out of focus. Seems to gain or lose visibility depending on mood and nerves. (NEW MEMBER. Hostile and defensive on arrival – very out of whack visually. Was he born like this or is it some radioactive freak accident thing (again)?)

I'm checking out the woman who is clearly the counsellor in charge of this meeting for the Blurred. She is a small woman with white hair, hunched over in her plastic chair and clenching her hands together as though they are conducting some kind of independent wrestling match. They only stop when she writes notes on a clipboard. She's been going around the circle, asking questions of each person: How they are feeling? Are they are embracing their unique appearance? Does their family embrace them? Do they consider themselves empowered by their ‘specialness'? Stuff like that. I've got her pegged as a flake already.

The bad news is that she is now grilling the kid next to me, so that means I'm up next. He has his hand constantly up to his right ear, as though he is wearing headphones, and can apparently only speak in radio clichés.

It's kind of hard to listen to him, so I watch the guy opposite me who seems to have a re-run of
The Simpsons
happening on his forehead. I watch for a while and realise I've seen it – the one where Bart and Lisa go to Duff Gardens.

Then I hear the kid next to me say, ‘It's twenty-three past the hour and we'll be back with this blurry freak next to me right after this break.'

‘Morgan, that's not very supportive,' says the counsellor.

‘We apologise for that break in tasteful programming and invite you to enjoy the delightful sounds of this kid, whoever he is,' says Morgan.

I give him a glare but I'm losing focus so fast that he probably doesn't see it. I can feel everybody's eyes on me, and worry that I'm about to become invisible. Then again, that might mean I could sneak out.

‘So, Mr Retina,' says the counsellor brightly, as though me fading into a mist is totally normal. ‘Why don't you fill us in on why you're here?'

‘Um, because my parents brought me.'

‘And why do you think they might have brought you here?' She didn't miss a beat.

‘Like, derr. I'm out of focus.'

‘Is that a problem for you?'

I get such a surprise that I can feel myself snap in and out of focus a few times before settling somewhere on the wrong side of very blurry. ‘Hello, Earth to Counsellor Woman? What do you think?'

Her smile doesn't waver. ‘It doesn't matter what I think, Hazy. It's what you think. Would you prefer that your parents hadn't brought you to us tonight?'

‘No offence,' I say.

‘None taken. In fact, I'm very happy that you don't feel a need to be here. You obviously feel that your life is as great as it can be. That's fantastic!'

Of course, it's a trap, but I don't see it in time.

‘I didn't say that,' I mumble.

‘Excuse me, dear? I didn't quite hear that.'

‘I didn't say my life is as great as it can be.' My visibility waxes and wanes again as I get worked up. ‘My life sucks. People can barely see me, I get even worse when I'm scared or nervous or something, and all the kids at school call me Freak or Retard. One particularly nasty piece of work calls me “Fuzzy-Wuzzy Freak Show”. My life is not good.'

‘How do you feel when they call you names?'

‘How do I feel? I hate it! But then again, you know what? They're right. I am a freak. I am a fuzzy-wuzzy freak show, even. I'm a retard. I'm challenged. I'm not all there.'

It comes pouring out of me and I'm surprised to find that I'm standing and shaking. I know that I'm all but invisible.

The silence after my outburst is only broken by Radio DJ boy saying quietly: ‘All new music all the time. And now let's go down to the waterline with Dire Straits.'

‘Morgan, please.' The counsellor's hands have finally stopped wrestling long enough for her to stroke her chin. ‘Hazy, maybe it could be helpful if you stopped thinking of yourself in those terms. What if you start to think that instead of being “challenged”, you're actually “special”? Has it occurred to you that you actually have some very special gifts?'

‘Special because I fall through walls when I'm embarrassed?'

‘Special because you have great qualities and a truly unique appearance. I know there are times I wish I could be invisible, like when my kids are fighting and they want me to make them dinner and I'm tired, for example. I think you're very special.'

Something, the ghost of an idea, sparks in my brain, but I can't quite grasp it. ‘. . . Special?'

‘Very special.' Her hands are grappling again.

‘Do you mean “special” as in “super”?'

‘Super? Well, sure.' She looks uncertain. ‘You're a special boy, and a super boy.'

I'm barely able to breathe. ‘You mean I might be special like a superhero?'

The counsellor frowns. ‘Well, that's not exactly what I meant but OK, if that makes you feel better about how you see yourself, sure. Maybe you do have a special “superpower”.'

Her hands stop wrestling to put the quotation marks in the air.

‘Now you can face the world, feeling proud, instead of embarrassed.'

‘Super,' I whisper, hearing the word on my tongue. ‘How has it never occurred to me that I'm super? That my condition is a superpower? How did I not realise?'

I'm standing again, and shaking, but in a whole new way. I feel like I could even kiss Morgan.

‘Well, umm, we've certainly made some progress tonight,' says the counsellor, nodding enthusiastically to the rest of the group.

‘I'm super,' I say. ‘I'm super.' I say it again, and again. Then I can't help myself. I raise both fists to the sky and yell to the timber cathedral ceiling, ‘I AM A HERO!'

The air feels fresh and new in my super-lungs.

And then I'm aware of the whole group staring at me.

‘Umm, let's break for coffee,' suggests the counsellor.

CHAPTER 5
THE DARK BEFORE THE
DAWN

T
he ride home is tense.

‘I have never been so embarrassed! What were you thinking, Hazy? Pretending you were a superhero in front of all those poor people.'

‘But, Mum –'

‘That was right up there with the first time my cousin, Blinky, went on television as an all-time moment in Retina humiliation,' Dad fumes.

‘Dad, I –'

‘We said we would go to the Vegie Bar on the assumption that you would fulfil your part of the bargain, young man.'

‘What bargain?'

‘Why don't you just go on that new “Australia's Craziest People” TV show and totally embarrass yourself and the family?' Dad says.

‘Keep your hands on the steering wheel, love,' Mum says. ‘But your father is right, Hazy.'

Now I'm getting mad. ‘But Dad, you're the one always telling me people are much worse off than I am, that the condition is nothing to be ashamed of.'

‘That doesn't mean pretending you're a superhero! All I've been saying is you're lucky you weren't born with three heads.'

What do you say to that?

Totally miserable, I watch the suburbs roll past my window.

It never occurs to me to look out the back windscreen and up. If I had, I might have noticed the shadowy figure flying along behind our car.

CHAPTER 6
LEON

B
ack home, I retreat to the safe haven of my bedroom, staring at the face of my all-time favourite superhero, Golden Boy. Actually, I'm looking at criminal genius the Boatman, reflected in Golden Boy's golden eye mask. Released by a leading newspaper as a souvenir of Golden Boy's memorable victory over the Boatman, when he saved Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay from a giant plug-hole three years ago, the poster is huge – two metres by one metre – and has long held pride of place on my wall. That movie had been huge. I love Golden Boy.

I ask the poster, ‘What do I do with my life, Goldy?' But Goldy is silent. Maybe the disaster that is my life is too big a challenge even for the greatest of Heroes.

Mind you, he isn't exactly alone in his lack of ideas. I look around my bedroom, and dozens of the world's best Heroes are equally mute on how I can turn my miserable life around. Apart from one or two patches of actual paint, my bedroom's walls are completely covered in posters, artwork, comic covers and other images of Heroes. I've got a large-format poster of the Ace next to my bed that cost me more than a month's pocket-money on eBay, but it's a beauty, with the Ace flicking giant playing cards at a faceless villain. The Southern Cross is up there too, posing with the medal he won as the southern hemisphere's top Hero for the year before. To his left, I have a poster of central Australia's most famous Hero, Big Red Rock, wrestling a nameless alien monster. The Rock's massive muscles are bulging in his desert-sand red bodysuit a moment before he lands a powerful right hook on the twelve-legged, four-headed, long-fanged creature from the planet Aaarngarn. The Flaming Torch is on the opposite wall, body flaming dramatically as he soars into the sky.

Nothing else can carry me away from the rotten mess that is my blurry life like these Heroes can. For a while, my walls had a couple of Jedis and boy wizards, but I always found myself covering them up with new images of masks, capes, bright uniforms and superpowers. If I was going to be honest, I might admit a guilty truth: that I tend to be pinning up more and more pictures of female heroes, and not just because I admire their superpowers. The inky purple curves of the Vampress; the blonde hair and fishnet stockings of the Black Sparrow; the positively indecent costume of Princess Hussy. I'm starting to find them every bit as interesting as QuasarMan's ability to fire a supersonic sound pulse at his enemies, or the Tiger's capacity for transforming himself into a, umm, tiger.

But no Hero, male or female, can dislodge Golden Boy as my favourite. Golden Boy can do anything, can beat anyone. One day, he'll be in the right place at the right time, and he'll get his chance to save the world. You watch. It's straight bad luck that he hasn't done it five times already. He's super-strong. He can fly like an eagle or a missile, depending on the need. He is smart and funny and clever and brave. I know all this because I have seen all the movies and read all his comics, many times. And he's a local – born and bred in Melbourne, my city.