Life in Outer Space

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1: A sort-of dance scene with a dodgy Humphrey Bogart

  Chapter 2: Cartoon hearts and love-struck skunks

  Chapter 3: Samuel Kinnison and the Extremely Gay Weekend

  Chapter 4: How I never played Warcraft again, and other useless resolutions

  Chapter 5: The unforeseen consequences of eggplant casserole

  Chapter 6: Why Princess Leia hair is always a bad idea

  Chapter 7: The X-Men had an invisible chick, but still …

  Chapter 8: Proof that maths and meat cleavers will only ever be metaphorically useful

  Chapter 9: When the theme music from Jaws is completely inadequate

  Chapter 10: When punching people in the face is a great idea

  Chapter 11: The healing power of John Cusack movies

  Chapter 12: The reason they call it a siren’s song

  Chapter 13: Awkward realisations [that should have been fairly obvious]

  Chapter 14: The logical sequence of events that led to the above

  Chapter 15: What is happening to my life?

  Chapter 16: The Undiscovered Country

  Chapter 17: The Miyagi epiphany

  Chapter 18: Why kicking people in the shins is sometimes the best solution

  Chapter 19: Awkward revelations [that apparently were fairly obvious]

  Chapter 20: A sort-of dance scene with fifty billion Marilyn Monroes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  A sort-of dance scene with a dodgy Humphrey Bogart

  I start this Monday by falling flat on my arse. A normal guy might think his day could only improve from here. I seriously doubt this is going to be the case.

  I hear laughter and clapping. Someone cheers.

  Above me, a giant sign hangs precariously from the corridor ceiling: a pink and purple, glitter-encrusted symbol of doom, handmade by the Spring Dance Committee.

  Justin Zigoni takes a flying leap over me and slaps the sign with his hand. A shower of glitter descends from the ceiling and a piece lodges itself in my eyeball.

  I close my eyes.

  I wonder if it’s possible to induce a fatal stroke?

  Justin cheers again, and pumps his fists above his head. A crowd has formed around him – a swarm of non-specific girls, and some guys who all seem to be wearing the same shoes. Assorted Vessels of Wank, gathering their day’s supply of glee from my arse-planting like squirrels storing nuts.

  If there was an award for the world’s best high school cliché, Justin Zigoni would not only win, but they’d name the award after him as well. He would, most probably, gain permanent induction into the High School Arsehat Hall of Fame.

  Judging by the look of pure smug on Justin’s face, I’m assuming he was responsible for what passes for wit at Bowen Lakes Secondary: tipping a bottle of cleaning wax on the floor right in front of my locker.

  ‘Nice trip, Sammy?’ Justin calls. The Vessels of Wank and their various minions laugh.

  No-one calls me Sammy. My mother occasionally throws a ‘Samuel’, but I am, and have always been, just Sam. Sammy is a name for five-year-olds and game-show hosts and Shiny Happy People.

  I am, definitely, not a Sammy.

  Mike is peering down at me with semi-concern. Semi, because a) my best friend’s face rarely shows more than semianything, and b) Mike knows that displaying anything more will only lead to additional torment when I do, eventually, stand. I remain frozen for approximately nine more seconds until Mike holds out a hand and yanks me to my feet.

  Adrian appears beside me, glaring down the corridor. He has his about-to-open-a-can-of-whoop-arse face on. Objectively, Adrian Radley has zero cans of whoop-arse to open. I fear that this day is about to go from bad to epic-level suckage.

  Mike gathers the muesli bars that have spilt from my hoodie pocket. Then he adjusts his glasses and faces Justin with a frown.

  ‘You’re a knob, Justin,’ Mike murmurs.

  ‘What’s that, gay-boy?’ Justin says, hand to his ear like he’s deaf and not just stupid.

  Justin does not know Mike is gay. No-one knows Mike is gay, apart from me, Adrian and Allison. Since I have no means of responding without outing my best friend, I make the logical decision not to react.

  Adrian, however, has other ideas. Adrian barrels past, and it’s only a last-minute survival reflex that makes me reach out and grab him by the hood of his jumper.

  ‘Control the Troll, Sammy,’ Justin says. He’s still laughing, but it’s the laugh that movie supervillains do, right before they release the radioactive sharks.

  Adrian barely comes up to my armpit. He has recently developed a layer of fuzz that stretches from ear to ear across the bottom part of his chin, which he refuses to shave. He has not cut his curly hair in years. He is very slightly overweight. I can see how, to people ill-informed about mythical cave-dwellers, Adrian might be considered somewhat troll-adjacent. Adrian has been known as the Troll since year eight. I’m not even sure if he minds anymore.

  ‘It’s okay, Adrian,’ I mutter.

  Adrian’s face has turned purple. I suspect he is about to launch into a rant peppered with Star Trek references, but Mike distracts him with a muesli bar, and then with gathering my books, which are scattered across the corridor.

  Justin smirks. ‘Seriously, if this loser factory was awarding Losers of the Year, you boys would be up for a Loser Grammy or something.’

  The statement makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter to the Vessels. They laugh. I fantasise about Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre making an appearance in the school corridor. Then the bell rings, and Justin hip-and-shoulders me as he passes. I am taller than him, but he belongs to a more enhanced male genus. I allow myself to be shoved into the lockers.

  The guys follow him, glaring at us. The girls disperse, giggling.

  Adrian and Mike appear at my side. I straighten my jumper. ‘Have I mentioned I hate my life?’

  Mike sighs. ‘Frequently.’ He looks at me blankly. ‘Ready for English?’

  ‘I could so take that guy,’ Adrian growls.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Mike. ‘And then we could take you to Emergency. Rein it in.’

  We stand where we are for nineteen seconds, a silent agreement to wait for the length of time it will take the Vessels to reach our English classroom. We don’t look at each other. But when an appropriate interval of time has passed, we start to walk together.

  •

  I have never been a fan of Bowen Lakes Secondary. If my life were a screenplay, BLS is nothing more than the slug line above the first scene. But lately, it feels like events have been conspiring to turn my vague antipathy into full-blown, resolute detestation.

  Zigoni’s knob-jockey-ness has taken on new life this year. Maybe he fell into a vat of some kind of knob-jockey supervillain juice over the summer holidays. Or maybe his three functioning brain cells are just extra bored.

  In addition – despite the fact that the Spring Dance is nine months away – the Spring Dance Committee has turned the entire school into a fortress of glitter and pink.

  Our walls, once papered with art projects and posters warning about STIs, now hold a sea of Spring Dance detritus. Collages of faces in various lip-joined poses have appeared everywhere, while movie posters have been bastardised in unforgivable ways. I am yet to be convinced that the ‘Glamour of Old Hollywood’ can be replicated on poster paper with art supplies from Target.

  The chess club’s pin board is covered with a Casablanca poster. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman have been replaced by the faces of Justin Zigoni and Sharni Vane, Sharni’s vacuous eyes gazing into Justin’s vacant ones. I have been con
templating whether old-school moustache-and-horns vandalism is too good for them.

  If the Spring Dance Committee stabbed me in the nuts with a blunt pencil, it would be marginally less painful than the selection of this theme. I tend to avoid movies that have anything to do with high school, dancing, or any combination of the above. However – if pressed – my top five all-time greatest movie school-dance scenes are:

  The prom scene from Carrie. Chick goes ape and blows up her school with her brain. How could it not top the list?

  The prom scene from the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for similar reasons as the above, minus explosive ESP but with the addition of bloodsucking vampires.

  The prom scenes from Prom Night, if only for the vague hope that our own end-of-year dance will be graced by a rampaging serial killer.

  The dance scene from the end of the original Footloose, only watched as part of the Extremely Gay Weekend.* It makes the list for sheer lameness, and also because not a single guy in it possessed any sort of rhythmic ability, which is something I can relate to.

  The graduation scene from Grease – a carnival that ends with a flying car. I believe the flying car is symbolic of a journey to the afterlife, which means that Sandy and Danny were probably shoved off the Ferris wheel, or maybe that someone put the muscle-man mallet to proper use. There was only one appropriate end for the smug, semi-brain-damaged jock.

  Mike says it’s possible I missed the whole point of Grease as, apparently, I am dead inside. I choose to take that as a compliment.

  •

  Mike and I have English together now, but Adrian has maths with Mrs Chow. He walks us to our classroom anyway, even though he’ll have to backtrack and will therefore be late.

  Mike shuffles unhurriedly to my left, and Adrian shuffles slowly to my right. Mike adjusts his glasses again, and then flicks my arm casually. Glitter drizzles from my sleeve. Adrian clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. I do the same; another pink-and-purple glitter shower rains over the lino floor.

  It is the closest I will ever come to coordinated movement with the other human beings.

  Suffice to say, I am not going to the Spring Dance.

  * This is not what it sounds like.

  Cartoon hearts and love-struck skunks

  First period. English.

  I hunker down in my usual seat, third row from the front. Mike is beside me, expressionless and silent, as is his MO in any public setting. With his brown hair and brown clothes, Mike blends in to most backgrounds. I’m half-expecting him to develop the ability to change skin colour as well, like a cuttlefish.

  On my other side, Allison Winfield is doodling on her loose-leaf with a chewed-on Hello Kitty pencil. She looks sideways at me and grimaces. She grimaces a lot. I don’t always understand why. But in spite of the Hello Kitty, I know that a habitual grimacer is one of my people.

  Allison is my only female friend. She has the wispiest blonde hair I’ve ever seen, which is constantly statically attached to her face. She’s one of those girls who might hit puberty at twenty-five, if she’s lucky.

  Mike is constantly hinting that in terms of girl-potential, Allison is as good as I’m likely to get. I dunno. I’ve tried, experimentally, picturing her shirtless; I suspect she looks like me when I was twelve. I am happy to report that this does nothing whatsoever for me.

  Allison is chewing on her hair. Mike has shoved two pencils under his lip like tusks and is staring vacantly at the clock above the whiteboard. On his other side, Victor Cho has assumed his standard position, head down on his folder. He will be asleep and drooling in two-point-four minutes.

  Mr Nicholas’s head is buried in his drawer, and the volume of the class is steadily increasing as the clock ticks. Mr Nicholas is okay, if a bit earnest. He lives in a uniform of jeans and vintage jackets, and I know he’s a fan of classic horror movies because I’ve seen him a couple of times at the Astor Theatre, which makes him slightly cooler than every other teacher at this school.

  I’m normally pretty keen on English, but the latest Zigoni incident has left me in zero mood for Macbeth. I f lick to a blank page in my exercise book. I begin an intricate sketch of the Fortress of Solitude from the original Superman movie, which, if I time it correctly, should take me the rest of the class to complete.

  There is a knock on the classroom door.

  The door opens.

  Our assistant principal Mr Faville enters, clearing his nose on his handkerchief in one noisy, gluggy blow. He looks at the contents for longer than is necessary, then squashes the handkerchief and shoves it into his pocket.

  He is followed by a girl.

  In movies – not art-house movies made in people’s backyards, but Hollywood movies where significant events are signposted for the clueless – there are certain tropes that let you know when something is about to change.

  If life was a movie, this is what should have happened when the door opened that Monday morning:

  The music should have swelled – pianos and violins. Maybe a cello.

  A breeze should have blown through the room, bringing with it a flurry of leaves, probably in slow motion.

  The entire male population of the room – minus Mike because he’s gay, and me because I’m dead inside – should have shot cartoon hearts out of their chests, à la Pepé Le Pew whenever he saw that chick cat.

  But this is not what happens. Instead, the noise in the classroom wavers and dies.

  Mr Faville hurries over for a hushed conversation with Mr Nicholas. Mr Faville nods at Mr Nicholas, and nods at the girl, and nods at the class, then hurries out of the room again without saying a word.

  I have no interest in anything that happens at this school. I am, however, a fairly decent observer, like one of those scientists who spend their days staring at microscopic fungus. A new girl means fresh meat, a possible reshuffling of the social order, and maybe three lunchtimes’ worth of drama that I will somehow hear about regardless of how uninterested I am. All pointless, but possibly fodder for future screenplays.

  I drop my pen on my Superman sketch. I poise my mental pencil over my mental social scorecard.

  Mr Nicholas leans against his desk. The class is silent. The girl waits.

  She is wearing a yellow dress that looks like it belongs to a 1950s housewife, and a pair of flat red boots. Her hair is longer than I’d imagine would be practical; it’s parted in the middle and hangs in brown waves almost to her waist. She peers around the room impassively. She doesn’t look terrified. She doesn’t look insanely overconfident, like Adrian that time in year seven when he performed a song as his book report for The Outsiders. Mike and I mark that event as ground zero for the downward social spiral of our group.

  The girl looks neither scared nor full of herself. On the social scorecard, this is a plus one.

  Mr Nicholas smiles at her. ‘So, it seems we have a new addition to our Bowen Lakes family. I trust we’ll make … Camilla … welcome. Tell us about yourself, Ms Carter.’

  Camilla. Unusual name not filled with superfluous vowels. Plus one.

  The girl shrugs, like addressing twenty-eight possibly hostile strangers is no big deal. ‘Well, we’ve just moved here. My dad and I. We’re from here, originally, but we’ve been living all over the place for a while now.’

  She has a British accent. Plus two.

  She is, objectively, attractive. Plus three. Although she is dressed pretty weirdly. I have no idea what girls find acceptable, but I suspect her clothes might be a minus.

  She has a tattoo. An honest-to-god tattoo, a curly thing with blue f lowers on her left shoulder. I do not know a single other year-eleven student with a tattoo. There are a few murmurs around the room now. Plus five.

  ‘Dad’s a writer. A journalist. We lived in London for ages, but he was working in New York for the last year, and, well, we were bumming around the States for a while before that.’ She shrugs again with a half-smile. ‘Guess he was missing home.’

  She’s fr
om New York. With a British accent. Plus twenty.

  Something weird happens to Mr Nicholas’s face. ‘Wait – is your dad Henry Carter?’

  The faint whiff of celebrity is in the air. The energy in the room changes. My mental pencil hovers uncertainly over the scorecard.

  ‘Ah, yeah. You’re a fan?’ she says.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Mr Nicholas stares at her like she’s wandered into the classroom brandishing Shakespeare’s head in a box. ‘Your dad – he wrote that piece on Grand Funk Railroad for NME, right?’

  ‘Yup. Dad loves his old-school stadium rock. Mark Farner’s pretty cool, though.’

  She smiles. It isn’t embarrassed or self-important. It’s just a smile. Plus twelve.

  Mr Nicholas seems to realise that there are twenty-eight other people in his vicinity, because he closes his mouth and packs away the giant man-crush he clearly has for this girl’s dad. He leans against his desk again. ‘What do you know. Class, Henry Carter has to be one of the best music journalists working today. He’s interviewed everyone from Lou Reed to Bowie.’

  There are hushed whispers. Mostly from people who have no idea who he is talking about, but are vaguely aware that they are famous people and therefore worthy of hushed whispers.

  Mr Nicholas rolls his eyes. ‘He also interviewed Kenny Elfin for Uncut magazine.’

  Gasps and a flurry of hysterical murmurs rocket around the room. Kenny Elfin was runner-up on last year’s X Factor.

  New girl just nods, and gives him that half-smile again. So her final score is plus fifteen billion. Another minion for the army of suck that is the A-group.

  Mr Nicholas shakes himself out of his stupor. He gestures to a seat in the second row next to Jackie Nguyen. New girl walks casually to the table. A roomful of eyes are on her, but she moves like she’s in the room alone. Justin Zigoni almost falls out of his chair as he tries to get a look at her legs.

  Mr Nicholas turns his back on us and begins writing on the whiteboard. No-one cares.

  She sits. She pulls her long hair back into a lazy ponytail.