Monkey Come Home (3 page)

‘Goodnight everyone.’ I faked a yawn and began climbing the stairs.

‘Barry, make yourself useful and go with Avery to check there’s nobody up there.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll go up with him,’ Serenity said, and followed me. I was eager to see what the monkey had been doing and half expected to find my room wallpapered with fruit skins or that he
had disappeared again. We jostled down the hallway, both wanting to be first to the door. Nothing could have prepared us for the shock we got when I opened it.

The monkey was sitting on my chair, playing my all-time favourite computer game,
Outer Extremity!
He was so engrossed in guiding the spaceship down safely that he didn’t react to our entrance. My room had been tidied and there was a single banana peel in the bin. Serenity was about to blurt something out but I trapped it by putting my hand over her mouth.

The monkey was completing level twenty-seven, the final stage of the game. His fingers danced over the keyboard as he activated the landing sequence. The massive spaceship on the screen made a loud ‘Psshh!’ followed by a ‘Thunck!’ as it touched down on the landing pad. An electro-fanfare blared through the speakers and a crowd of digital people appeared on the screen. Cameramen filmed the five crew members emerging from their ship, the PX7, as fireworks exploded in a zillion different colours above them.

Then the screen went black.

These words scrolled up:

Congratulations! You are the 879th intrepid explorer to return from the Outer Extremity. Please record your name for posterity in the Pan Universal Heroes’ Hall of Glory.

Serenity and I looked at each other, flabbergasted. I was speechless, not daring to imagine what would happen next and wondering what the word ‘posterity’ meant. Green numbers appeared on the screen, counting down from 30. But the monkey did nothing. Maybe he didn’t have a name. When the numbers got down to 20 they turned orange. The monkey still didn’t make a move. He had understood what I’d said earlier, but maybe he couldn’t read. Somehow he’d conquered the game in just two hours. Now he was frozen.

Loud beeping started when the counter hit 10 and the numbers flashed red. 9…8…7…The
monkey looked around the room. 6…5…He turned back to the monitor and reached for the keyboard. 4…3… And then, with two seconds left, he finally tapped in the name:

E-A-R-L

‘
W
hat would you like for breakfast, Sleeping Beauty?’ Mum asked as I dug the crusty bits from the corners of my eyes.

‘Eggs on toast,’ I said.

‘No eggs, sorry.’

‘Just toast then.’

‘Too late. We’ve run out of bread.’

‘Why did you ask me what I wanted then?’ I snapped.

‘Ooh…It seems like Mr Grumpy got out of the
wrong side of the bed this morning.’

Mr Grumpy had slept on the floor. Last night I’d been so impressed by the monkey’s ability to use the computer, that I expected him to be able to answer some of my burning questions. I wanted to know where he came from and how he got here, for starters. But he wouldn’t pay attention to me and thought it was funny to bang all of the computer keys at once, making a meaningless string of letters that looked like this:

saveninapurl-optionxearl-orciapronto

Unless there was someone called Nina Purl, who needed to be rescued, the words didn’t make much sense. I fired more questions at the monkey but he wouldn’t touch the keyboard again. Perhaps it had been a coincidence that he had managed to spell the name Earl in the first place.

I went to sleep after midnight with the monkey at the foot of my bed. Elsie Birkett marched into my first dream dressed in a kilt and playing the bagpipes. As if that wasn’t scary enough, it was
followed by a nightmare about my toy monkey — Earl. He was walking down a long path with a suitcase and I was running after him but my legs were like concrete. Somehow I finally reached him and tapped his shoulder. He turned around slowly, transforming into the real monkey, and bit my nose. I woke in a clammy sweat to find the real monkey had moved right up onto my pillow and was only two centimetres from my face. The floor seemed preferable to a mouthful of monkey hair, so I relocated.

Mum brought me a big bowl of cereal and gave me a hug. Then she started sniffing me.

‘Oh, pong, Avery!’ She recoiled. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You smell a wee bit strange, a wee bit…I don’t know…’

‘Feral?’ Serenity suggested as she came into the kitchen.

‘Exactly!’ Mum said. ‘You smell like an animal. What on Earth have you been doing?’

‘Nothing.’ I sniffed myself, twice.

‘It’s his own rank body odour,’ Serenity chimed in. ‘And they say that a dog can’t smell its own scent.’

‘Well don’t worry, darling. It’s just one of the delightful mysteries of growing up,’ Mum said. ‘Just make sure you ask your father to buy you some deodorant when you go shopping. Who knows? Next week you might be shaving.’

‘
D
on’t forget the pssh pssh.’ Mum mimed the action of spraying under her arm when she got out of the car. Dad and I dropped her off at tennis on our way to the mall. It was cool to be having a ‘boys only’ morning with him, though I was worried about leaving Earl with Serenity. Sometimes Dad could take hours shopping, especially if he bumped into someone he knew and got talking to them. This particular Saturday morning, it turned out to be the beachcomber,
Sam Hurley who Dad spotted in the checkout queue.

‘How are your choppers?’ He asked Sam, who had probably never visited a dentist in his life.

‘Still there,’ Sam said. ‘The old knee’s been giving me all sorts of grief, but I wouldn’t be dead for quids on a morning like this.’

‘Have you found any good stuff this week?’ I piped up.

‘Funny you should ask, young Avery. Just yesterday, I was scanning the beach up near the bombora and my old metal detector just about went berserk.’

‘What was it?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. It was too far down. But it must’ve been big to set off a signal. I started digging but the back gave in before I reached it. I’ll be on the job again tomorrow, though.’

‘Can I come and help?’

‘If it’s okay with your dad.’

‘Sure,’ Dad said. ‘You can help old Bluebeard dig up his buried treasure.’

‘Yo ho ho! Ye never know what me and m’hearty
will discover. Meet me when the clock strikes two, Avery Bloom. And don’t forget to bring ye a spade.’ Sam’s pirate act was kind of funny, except when a bit of spit hit me square in the eye.

Dad dropped me, and five bags of groceries, back home and went to join Mum at tennis. I thought it was a good opportunity to take Earl outside to climb some trees or do whatever it is that monkeys like to do. I left the shopping unpacked in the kitchen and went upstairs. As I approached Serenity’s door, I could hear her talking.

‘That’s just what you needed, isn’t it? A good scrub down followed by a nice long soak in my luxury bathmilk. You look absolutely adorable now. But just wait till we finish your hair and hide those funny lumps on your head.’

I pushed open the door and was mortified to see that Serenity had dressed Earl in one of her old baby doll dresses and was tying a pink ribbon to his hair.

‘What have you done?’ I cried.

‘I gave Earl a bath so that he wouldn’t be
smelly and now we’re playing dress-ups.’

‘Earl is not a girl!’

‘So what? Everybody loves a little pampering.’

‘But Earl is a monkey! I shouted. ‘Not a person. You said it yourself.’

‘Correct,’ she replied calmly. ‘And grooming is a friendly thing that monkeys do. Remember?’