Head Spinners (3 page)

The way Mrs O'Connor had been speaking made me feel . . . I don't know . . . it made me feel as if I really
did
have brains; as if I was a kid with a bright future. It made me want to work a bit harder at least.

My uncle was, after all, the inventor of a time machine. Who knew what I could do if I tried? Maybe I could be one of those people who
did things
. And I was a bit disappointed about my mark in maths. I could be averaging over eighty? If only I'd put in a bit of effort the test before last . . .

When I got home, I pulled the clock out of the drawer and stared at it.

I sure didn't want to risk going into the future again. But going into the past hadn't been all
that
bad. What if I went back two and a bit weeks to the test I'd messed up? It wasn't as if anyone would think I'd disappeared. What could it hurt?

The biggest downside that I could see to the whole idea would be having to live without a surfboard all over again. But at least I knew I was going to get one for my birthday. And it kind of seemed like a smart plan, an investment in my own future. A chance to really be the bright kid Mrs O'Connor thought I was.

Carefully I slid the batteries in and pushed the button, smiling as the clock hummed back to life. For a few seconds, the humming increased as I guess it checked our location by GPS and set itself at the correct time. It was pretty cool to see it working again.

I tapped the alarm set button gently with the tip of my finger. Then I took a breath and cycled through all the days of the month until I came to tue 8 aug, the day of our last maths test.

I'd finally worked out how to use the time machine properly. Not for skipping boring bits of life, but for fixing things I'd messed up, like sprained ankles and maths test. There didn't seem any harm in using it for that.

I left the clock beside my bed and grabbed my surfboard. One last surf, before I slipped back in time.

It was the strangest feeling, waking up two and a bit weeks in the past. It was more disconcerting than just going back a day. I'd been here before, and yet I couldn't remember much. It all just seemed so . . . freakishly normal.

The first thing that spooked me was rolling over to find that my new clock was gone. Then I realised of course it wouldn't be there. This was two weeks before Uncle Owen had given it to me.

Okay. I just had to wait until Uncle Owen turned up on the Tuesday morning before my birthday. I'd been through that morning enough times to know exactly what was going to happen. He'd have it wrapped in creased, white tissue paper, with a crooked bit of sticky tape . . .

I grabbed a piece of toast and an OJ. Then I hit the books. Even though I was two weeks in the past, I felt somehow fresh and new. Here I was, doing things the way they should have been done. I was still me, but a new improved version. Sam Take Two.

I couldn't remember the maths test very well but I knew what kinds of sums were on it. I looked over the stuff we'd been doing in class and even found one problem that I was pretty certain I remembered from the test. So I made sure I knew that problem back-to-front as well as how to do the others.

Even before we got our marks back, I knew I'd done well. This time round I understood the maths properly, so I knew I'd answered most of them right.

‘Well done, Sam,' said Mrs O'Connor as she handed back my test sheet.

‘Thanks.' I was really pleased with my 92.5 per cent. It wasn't a hundred, but it was pretty close.

The way Mrs O'Connor smiled at me then made me sure my plan was worth it.

After that, it was all just a matter of . . . well,
living
through the next two weeks. I was surprised how much stuff I'd forgotten. Sometimes I felt a bit of déjà vu but most of the time it was no different from normal life. After all, so many days are more or less the same as the day before. Get up. Go to school. Come home. For those two weeks, everything was pretty much life as usual, except with a couple of bad bits removed.

At one point I remembered cutting myself as I sliced through an orange. I could make sure that didn't happen second time round. And I remembered being caught in a freak storm at the park one Saturday. So that was easy to avoid.

Another time Uncle Owen phoned to ask what I wanted for my birthday.

‘A clock!' I said straight away. ‘You know, with an alarm that you can set for a different time each day of the week?' I sure didn't want to miss out on that present. Even though it had taken me a while how to work out how to use it properly, it was still the best gift I'd ever been given.

When finally I made it to the Tuesday before my birthday (for the
fourth
time), I was really excited. This time I was going to say a proper thanks to Uncle Owen for giving me such a great present. After all I was the new, improved Sam now.

I was dressed, fed and all ready to go when I heard the familiar click and creak of the back door opening.

‘Happy birthday, Squirt!'

‘Thanks, Uncle Owen, this is great!' I smiled and took the package. It seemed to have been wrapped a bit neater this time, but he had still used the same creased, white tissue paper.

‘Do you want a quick coffee?' asked Mum.

‘Nah thanks, Sis.'

I tore the wrapping away to find . . .

A box?

‘But . . .' This wasn't right. The box showed a picture of a clock radio and bullet points listing all the things it could do. I didn't need to check whether time travel was one. ‘Hang on.' I flipped the lid, hoping to find wires looped everywhere and buttons on the side.

But inside the box was a normal alarm clock that had come from a shop. It was neat, stylish and just that. A clock.

‘But . . . how . . .' I spluttered. ‘I mean . . . You're meant to
make
a clock.'

For a moment Uncle Owen stared at me. Then he raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘Funny you should say that, Squirt, because I've been tinkering with an old clock for a while. But then you asked for one and I started thinking about what kind of clock you had in mind . . . so I decided to go shopping.'

Shopping! I couldn't believe it.

‘What? Don't you like it?' asked Uncle Owen. ‘She's a beauty.'

I could feel Mum frowning at me:
remember your manners
. But I was too time-travel-looped-out to worry about that. Somehow, by asking for a clock and not a surfboard, I'd set Uncle Owen on a train of thought that had stopped him from making my present . . . that had stopped him from
making my time machine.

‘So, you're still tinkering with the clock at home, aren't you?' I asked.

‘Yeah, well,' Owen sighed. ‘No. Not really. Once I saw all the clocks at the shop, there didn't seem much point. It's amazing all the things that clocks can do these days.' He shrugged. ‘If you don't like this one we can swap it. Anything you want a clock to do, Squirt, we'll be able to buy it.'

If only he knew! I thought quickly. ‘I was hoping . . . maybe . . . you could keep working on the one you were making,' I said. ‘It would be good to have one that can check conditions at The Point . . . you know, with an alarm that goes off when the surf is good.'

Again, Owen stared at me, head tilted in surprise. Then his face broke into a massive grin. ‘Hey, great minds think alike! I've thought of that too. But I'm not sure it's even possible, Squirt. I'd have to find a way to make it read the data at the weather station . . .' He shrugged and stood up.

‘You can do it, Uncle Owen. I
know
you can.'

‘Maybe one day,' he said and ruffled my hair.

This was a disaster. I wasn't sure what else to say.

‘Have a good one on Saturday, Squirt,' he said. ‘Sorry again that I can't make it.'

‘Nah, that's okay. Thanks,' I said.

I watched him walk away, swallowing down a lump in my throat. Not from sadness exactly, more from frustration.

And extreme disappointment.

That was two years ago. We still don't have a time machine.

Last year, I managed to talk Uncle Owen into making another clock, and I even helped him. I learnt a heap about electronics and programming. But even though the new clock looked the same, it didn't work like the old one. I don't know why. Maybe there was a piece missing. Or maybe, the first time round, Uncle Owen had had trouble programming it the way he wanted and thought up a creative solution that didn't happen this time. I've done my head in thinking about it.

When I tried explaining to Uncle Owen what had happened he thought I was totally loopy, talking about a time machine that didn't exist.

‘Time travel just isn't possible, Squirt,' he kept saying. ‘Not the way you're describing it.'

Fair enough. Unless he'd seen the time machine work, he had no reason to believe it was possible.

I've given up on Uncle Owen's clock, but I haven't given up completely. I still don't know how the time travel worked, but I lived through it so I
know
it's possible. The missing piece or the creative solution . . . I know it's out there, somewhere. And I'm going to find it.

I still go surfing, mostly on weekends. It helps me think. But I work really hard at school too. Mrs O'Connor can hardly believe it. I'm going to get good grades, then go to uni and learn as much as I can. Maybe I'll never work out the secret to time travel, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I'll spend my whole life trying if I need to.

Even though it doesn't exist anymore, that time machine completely changed my future.

I first realised
something strange was happening when the back of my arm began to tingle.

It was just one lump, about the size of a mosquito bite, halfway between my shoulder and my elbow. It didn't feel sore or itchy the way a bite might feel, it tingled and was weirdly warm . . .

Maybe it will just go away, I thought, and chose a top with long sleeves to wear.

I had to wear a long-sleeved top the next day, too.

And the next.

For the rest of the week I wore long sleeves, because the lump on my arm didn't go away. It grew bigger.

Whenever I had a moment alone, I rubbed my finger over the lump. Not because it hurt, but because it felt interesting to touch, like getting to know a fresh scar that stretches in weird ways when I move the skin.

Soon the lump stuck out from my arm the way a cheek does when a tongue pushes from the other side.

I was rubbing a finger over my windcheater at the bus stop when my friend Zoe frowned at me.

‘What are you doing?' she asked.

‘Ah . . . nothing,' I said, dropping my hand. Then I changed my mind. ‘Do you want to see something weird?' I rolled up my sleeve.

‘Brooke!' Zoe cried. ‘What is that?'

She peered close, frowning and tilting her head.

‘I don't know,' I said, peering over my shoulder trying to get a better look. ‘It just . . . started growing.'

‘Eww!' said Zoe, and stepped back. ‘You should take that thing to a doctor.'

I pulled down my sleeve. ‘You think?'

Zoe nodded.

But I didn't show the lump to a doctor. After that, I didn't show it to anyone. I knew it looked weird, but I didn't mind how it looked. I was fascinated by the way it felt. It wasn't numb or sore. It was tingly in the mornings and warm at night. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn I could feel different parts forming inside it, like muscle and bone.

I was right.

Two weeks after the lump started to grow, I found that I could make it move. I had to use a mirror at first, looking over my shoulder and back-to-front. If I stared at the lump and concentrated hard, I was able to make it wiggle – up and down, side to side, round and round and round. It was a bit like trying to make my ears wiggle, but so much better . . .

Each time it worked I laughed in amazement. It looked like a short fat finger waving hello from the back of my arm. The lump had to be connected to my brain somehow. Whatever it was, it was part of me.

That's a pretty big thing to find out. It was like the time when Squeak, our guinea pig, had babies and we didn't even know she was pregnant. Something alive had come from . . . nowhere.

I thought about showing my mum. Hey, Mum, look what I can do! But then I imagined what she would say next. I'll book you in to see the doctor, Brooke.

Somehow I didn't want a doctor peering and poking at my lump. I didn't want to think about the way a doctor would look at me.

So I spent more and more time alone in my room. Moving the lump became a bit of an obsession. I especially loved making it move inside my red windcheater, rubbing it soothingly against the soft fabric fuzz.

Soon the lump had grown so big it was difficult to hide. My right arm bulged underneath my baggy school shirt. It was fat now, and long. It looked like two sausages stuck side by side on the back of my arm. I could feel the hard bone beneath the skin of one sausage, then thin flesh connecting them, before the bone in the other sausage.

Then, four weeks after it first appeared, it stopped growing.

Over a few days, the fleshy strip between the two sausages became thinner and thinner until it was paper-thin and dry.

Then, four or five weeks after I first felt the tingle, I woke up in the middle of the night.

Groggily, I rubbed my sausage lumps. As I opened my eyes a raw kind of desperation came over me. I'd never felt anything like it. Absolutely nothing was going to stop me from scratching my lumps. This was the mother of all itches.

I switched on my lamp, grabbed a ruler, and started to rub like there was no tomorrow. Flakes of skin fell away like huge bits of puff pastry. Monster-sized dandruff.

For a while I kept rubbing, soothing, scratching . . .

Then something amazing happened

The two sausage parts split apart, everywhere except the very end. Slowly I was able to stretch it out – an arm with a hinge of an elbow. The movement felt new and natural at the same time.

I lifted it and rubbed the last flakes of dry skin. They fell away to show stubby lumps on the end.

Five of them.

It was the most amazing thing.

Slowly in the lamplight I came to understand what I was seeing. I reached out and touched, felt it respond, realised that I was being touched. I ran my hand along my new right arm, then my old right arm, comparing them, looking for difference. Other than size they were the same. Even the fingers of my new hand were complete with knuckles and tiny fingernails.

At first, I couldn't move the new arm very well. If I tried to do something, my normal right arm moved instead. To get the new arm working, I found I had to move both in tandem – big-arm and baby-arm dancing together. But slowly as the night hours passed, I learnt how to make my new arm move to my command – straightening it out and twirling the hand, playing air-piano with stubby fingers. For those first few hours it was just me and my new arm, hidden by the cloak of night.

The next morning I bandaged my two right arms together, mostly to hide the new one, but also as a reminder not to move it. I was surprised when no one noticed that anything was different; the whole world had changed as far as I was concerned. I'd gone to sleep the old me then woken to find I was different . . . a different version of me.

Of course, I knew what people would say if they saw my new arm. Ugly, awful, freaky, weird . . . But I didn't feel the same. This arm had grown from my body. It was part of me.

As the days slipped past, I became used to keeping it still during the day then coming home and enjoying the relief of being able to stretch and be free. I said no to a couple of things on the weekend and some days I pretended to be sick so that I could stay home from school, but most of the time everything was surprisingly normal. I saw my friends at school and kept up with them online from home, same as always.

Even though my new arm was still a bit weak, I began using it whenever I was alone. It was in exactly the right spot for moving the mouse, keeping my other two hands free for typing.
I wasn't coordinated enough to do things like write with it, but I was good enough to move the arrow where I wanted. Double-click here. Right-click there. Sometimes I just held an apple in my new hand, munching while I typed. After a while, working on the computer with my new arm became so natural that I found it hard to remember what it had been like working with just two hands.

I was chatting online when I received an event invitation. Cool. I clicked straight through.

Zoe Whelan has invited you to her Birthday Party.

Event: Zoe's birthday party

Where: Harrington Leisure Centre

Start time: 2.30pm, Saturday 26 October

Bring: your swimmers!

A pool party? I sighed and looked at my baby hand, resting on the mouse. Could I go? Maybe I could tell everyone that I had a sore arm . . . I can come, but I can't swim.

But that would be a disaster. People would ask questions. What if they wanted to look at my sore arm . . .

I sighed again, and clicked decline.

Seconds later a message from Zoe appeared: ‘What the ???'

‘Soz,' I replied. ‘I'm busy.'

‘BUSY???' sent back Zoe. ‘How can you be busy?'

I turned away from the screen, wondering what I could say. Then I turned back just long enough to log off.

The next day I stayed home from school, even though Mum raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Really…' when I said I was sick.

To be honest, I did feel sick. Sick with fear. The weather was getting warmer; it was only a matter of time before someone asked why I never wore short sleeves.

When Mum came home from work, I was sitting on the couch.

She pulled off her coat and hung it up. ‘Hey Brooke. How're you feeling?'

‘There's something's you need to see.' Slowly, I slipped my jacket off my shoulders and let it fall behind me on the couch. Time seemed to slow down as Mum's lips parted. The only sound was an intake of breath. Everything else about her was frozen in shock.

‘Oh, Brooke . . .' Mum whispered. She lifted my jacket from the couch and draped it over my new arm, covering it up again. She hugged me, hand at the top of my back, chest close, not touching me below the shoulders.

After a while she pulled back, holding my face in her hands. ‘Brooke . . . you poor thing . . . How long have you been hiding this?'

I shook my head, tears welling now that I could see myself through her eyes. I'll never forget the way she was looking at me – so tender, so ready to fix everything. But there was something else in there too.

It made me wonder what it must be like to find out your daughter is a freak.

The next few days were a blur. So many waiting rooms. So many X-rays and tests. Mum spent half her time filling out forms and the other half on the phone. At one point we drove an hour and a half across the city, only to be told by a doctor that his specialty was conjoined twins, not my ‘situation'. And there was no mention of me going back to school.

Some things weren't so bad, though. Now that I'd shown Mum my new arm, I didn't have to hide it anymore. It felt so good leaving it free to move naturally – to grow strong and, I don't know, integrate . . . become a part of who I was.

I was deliberately avoiding the internet and the phone. So there wasn't much to do when we were at home.

One afternoon, for something to do, I made a cake. Mum watched with her ear to the phone, on hold with another doctor, as I poured the thick batter into a cake pan. I held the bowl in two hands and used my third to scrape with a spoon. As I worked I glanced up, anxious to see if she had realised how useful my new arm could be. But she had turned away.

For a few nights I shook salt onto my dinner while still holding my knife and fork. Not because the food needed it really, but just because I could. Each time, Mum kept talking or eating as if she hadn't noticed – as if my third arm wasn't even there.

I knew her better than that, though.

Once when I poked my head into the study, her shoulders jerked and she rushed to close the file she was working on.

‘What are you doing?' I asked.

‘Oh . . . just writing my diary,' she said, her voice pitched slightly higher than normal.

The next time she was out shopping I snuck into the study and booted up her computer. It was password protected but that didn't stop me for long. The password was her birthday then mine. I mean, honestly – she was so predictable.

Most of Mum's diary was a log of all the specialists we'd seen and all the stuff they'd said. But underneath all that was paragraph after paragraph of typing, an outpouring of Mum's thoughts.