Don't Call Me Ishmael (16 page)

In the end I was kind of glad I went to the debating final. Of course I had to battle to contain Razza, who tended to be a mite over-vigorous in his support, particularly when a certain blonde-haired speaker was on. But all in all it was a pretty exciting night, and ended with Preston defeating Colmslie College in front of a big crowd.

Afterwards Razza dragged me up and we congratulated the Preston team on their victory. I tried to be a good sidekick by keeping quiet and letting Razza have the floor (not too difficult for me) and laughing at all his jokes. It seemed to work fairly well. After a while, when the rest of the team began to break away and mingle with the crowd, Razza still had his ‘hot blonde' cornered. I took that as my cue to leave and headed out to a big courtyard area and the refreshments. The Year Eight and Year Ten finals had also just finished, and people were still spilling from nearby rooms. I grabbed an orange cordial and found myself a quiet spot to wait for Razza.

I wasn't alone for long.

‘Ishmael?'

I turned in the direction of the voice.

‘Hi, look, you probably don't remember me, but I'm Kelly Faulkner.'

It was Kelly Faulkner. I stared at her. Kelly Faulkner was talking to me. There was Kelly Faulkner and there was me. We were both standing there. Me and Kelly Faulkner. I stared at her. Kelly Faulkner was talking to
me.
It was
Kelly Faulkner!
Why was she looking at me like that?

‘We debated against each other?' She frowned a little and gave a weak smile.

Oh god, she thought I didn't remember her. And no wonder, I'd been staring at her like a moron. I tried to speak, but someone had put my brain in the blender and selected ‘puree'. ‘No … yeah … yes … no … we … I … I did … I do … we did … that's right … you … yeah … that's right … debate … yeah …' No, I wasn't quoting Shakespeare. This was all my own work. What I desperately needed was my own sidekick to help make
me
look good-a trained baboon, perhaps? No, not trained–too much competition.

‘I was going to catch you after the debate but … well … I didn't get a chance.'

The horrible memories of that night came flooding back like sewage into a septic tank.

‘No … I … it … I …' How could I put this? ‘I … was pretty bad.' Have I introduced myself? I'm Ishmael Leseur, master of the understatement. You remember me, I'm the
guy who said Jack the Ripper lacked people skills.

‘Don't say that … it could have happened to anyone.'

‘You really think so?' I asked hopefully.

‘Well … ‘ she said with a crooked grin, ‘maybe not that bit with the peg.'

‘No … it … I … ‘ But that was as far as I got. What possible explanation could make a clothes peg falling from your pants during a debate seem fine and dandy?

‘It looked like … it had a
… face …
drawn on it?' Kelly Faulkner asked delicately, as if she was inquiring as to whether or not I suffered from piles.

I nodded. Perhaps a little trivia would help my case. ‘It was Bingo … from the Beatles.' Yes, well, that explained everything. Of course! Who wouldn't have had a peg figure of the drummer from a nineteen-sixties band shoved up their shorts during a debate? It stands to reason.

‘Oh … right,' she said, with the look of someone who had just found herself alone in a lift with an axe murderer.

‘It got … caught up, somehow,' I tried to explain, ‘… from our clothes line. It's full of the world's most influential people.'

‘Really?' Make that an axe murderer with bad breath and BO.

‘They're my sister's. She makes them.'

‘Does she?'

‘Yes–she's almost a genius.'

‘Really?'

That's right, and her brother's a complete cretin, otherwise he would shut his mouth and realise that he had been making
a much better impression when he was just staring at Kelly Faulkner like a moron. I stared at Kelly Faulkner like a moron.

‘Well, anyway,' she said, stung into action by the power of my moronic stare, ‘I think you did well, you know, stepping in at the last moment. I don't think I could do that. I'd be hopeless.'

‘You couldn't have been worse than me,' I said. ‘I bet you wouldn't have faint …' Suddenly I had a vision of Razza's face leering in at me and saying,
It looked like you were very keen to keep a-breast of the opposition's argument.
Oh my god! How could I have forgotten about that? That's probably why she was there–she was waiting for an apology, or maybe she'd come to inform me her father had a contract out on my life.

‘Look, about the debate … when I … fainted … passed out … they said … they told me … I didn't know …'

Kelly Faulkner frowned and tilted her head on the side as she tried to make sense of the babbling crazy person in front of her.

‘… my hand … when I fell …'

Suddenly her beautiful ice-blue eyes widened and her cute mouth formed into a perfect ‘O'. ‘Oh … oh no … no, don't … it's …'

‘I just wanted you to know that I didn't … I wasn't … I …'

‘Don't … no … you don't …'

‘I just … when I … my hand just …'

‘No … no … really … don't … really …'

‘I'm sorry … there's no way … I wouldn't … I couldn't … I didn't …'

‘No, I know … I know … forget it … don't … it's not …'

‘I just wanted you to know …'

‘No … I know, I know …'

‘I …'

‘I
know'
, Kelly Faulkner said firmly. Now she was staring at the ground and biting the side of her bottom lip. Her cheeks were dark pink blotches.

Something was trying to lever my ribs apart and escape from my chest.

She shook her head slightly. ‘Anyway, look … I really just came … to thank you.'

Thank me? What was she thanking me for, passing out?

‘You would have won anyway'

‘What?' she said, lifting her head.

‘You would have beaten us anyway, even if we didn't have to forfeit because of me.'

‘No … oh no … no. I wasn't talking about that. I wanted to thank you … for helping my brother.'

‘Your brother? But …'

‘My little brother Marty. Some boys were teasing him down by the creek one day. I think you helped him. It
was
you, wasn't it?'

I felt like my head was stuck in the spin dryer. ‘That was your brother?'

‘Yes, and what you did was great.'

‘But I … I really only helped him get his hat thrown in the creek.'

‘I think you did a little bit more than that. Marty told me all about it. He knew you went to St Daniel's but he couldn't
remember your proper name–thought it was something about
mail.
He told me the other boys kept calling you all sorts of things like
Fish-whale …
and something about a
sewer
?'

I guess the look on my face told her it was true.

‘Boys can be so charming,' Kelly Faulkner said knowingly.

I wanted to tell her that some of us could be, we really could, if only we were given the chance.

‘Anyway, that night when I saw your name on the board, I thought it had to be you. I wanted to ask you about it after the debate, but … well … like I said, I didn't get a chance. When I got home I told Marty, and he remembered the
Ishmael
part. I didn't think there'd be too many Ishmaels around the place.'

‘No, it's a pretty stupid name, all right.'

‘Stupid? I don't think so. I wish I had a more interesting name. Kelly Faulkner's pretty plain.'

‘No way … no it's not. It's perfect … it suits you.'

‘Don't know about that,' she said, shaking her head shyly.

‘Well, I'd give anything for an ordinary name. Something like John or Dave,
anything
but Ishmael. I hate it.'

‘Hate it? Why?'

I didn't think that Kelly Faulkner was quite ready to hear all my theories about Ishmael Leseur's Syndrome. ‘I don't know, I just hate it. I wish my dad had never read
Moby Dick'.

‘Moby Dick?
What's that got to do with it?'

‘That's where he got
Ishmael
from. It's the name of one of the main characters in the book–the narrator.'

‘What's he like?'

‘My father?'

‘No –
Ishmael
– the person you're named after.'

‘Oh yeah, right,' I said, feeling like a dork.

‘Well?'

‘What … oh … I don't know what he's like. I've never read it.'

‘Really? You haven't read it? How come? If I was named after someone in a book I'd definitely want to read it to find out what they were like. You know, see if I was like them. I can't
believe
you haven't read it.'

Did I say I felt like a dork? Make that a double-dork.

‘I've read the first line.' Oh, well done, Einstein. How's that Theory of Relativity going? Got the first letter worked out yet?

‘The first line?' she said, curling up her top lip and cranking my heartbeat up another notch.

‘That's where the name comes in,' I explained, desperately trying to perform CPR on what remained of my rapidly fading dignity. ‘
Call me Ishmael.
That's how it starts. It's the first line. Apparently it's pretty famous. And that's another thing I hate about my name.
Call me Ishmael.
For the rest of my life, I know that there will always be some clown who's read
Moby Dick
, and when they hear my name, they just won't be able to resist blurting out
Call me Ishmael!
like they're the first person in the entire universe to think of it, and they'll think they're just so brilliant and hilarious.'

‘It can't be that bad,' Kelly Faulkner said sympathetically.

‘It is. Seriously, the next time someone comes out with that
Call me Ishmael
line, I'll scream. I will. I mean it. The very
next time I get a
Call me Ishmael
I'm just going to scream. I'm not kidding.'

‘I believe you,' Kelly Faulkner said, holding up her hands and pulling one of those beautiful, daggy faces that just kill me. ‘Look, I've got to go. I have to find my little sister. She was in the Year Eight final-they lost, unfortunately. I'm glad I got the chance to thank you. I think it was really brave of you to stand up to those three boys like that and …' She stopped mid-sentence and looked past my shoulder. ‘Do you know that guy?'

I turned around. It was Razza. He was jumping about and shooting his fingers at me like he was one of the Wiggles. His mouth was forming the words
You da man
over and over again.

‘No,' I said, turning back. ‘Never seen him before in my life.'

Kelly Faulkner stared at Razza and wrinkled her nose. ‘But wasn't he in your debating team?'

I followed the line of her eyes. ‘Oh
him
,' I said pathetically ‘Yes, I know
him.'

‘Is he a friend of yours?' Kelly Faulkner said, blinking her eyes in disbelief as Razz attempted his own version of the moonwalk and ended up colliding with a not-very-impressed woman carrying a tray of drinks.

‘Unfortunately, yes.'

‘What
exactly
is he doing?'

At that particular moment Razza was staggering about and grasping his chest as if Cupid had just skewered him with a high-jump pole.

‘It's difficult to explain.'

‘I imagine it would be.'

‘Unfortunately he suffers from a rare brain condition.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, he doesn't have one.'

And then it happened. Kelly Faulkner laughed and her beautiful pale blue eyes melted my heart like ice cream in a microwave till all that remained was an awful empty feeling. That's when I knew. Nothing would ever happen between us. I'd been kidding myself. It just wasn't possible for eyes as beautiful as that to see anyone as ordinary as me. For the first time I didn't feel like a nervous wreck in Kelly Faulkner's presence. What did I have to worry about? ‘When you ain't got nothin' you got nothin' to lose,' Bob Dylan had wailed hundreds of times from my father's CD. Well, no one had more nothin' than me. I looked at Kelly Faulkner and said the first thing that came into my head.

‘Do you want to know a secret? That guy's really a superhero.'

‘Is that right?' Kelly Faulkner said, raising her eyebrows and looking impressed.

‘Yes, but the thing is, in order to keep his identity hidden, he has to pretend that he's a complete drongo.'

‘He's doing a wonderful job.'

‘Nobody does it better.'

She pushed up her bottom Hp and nodded thoughtflüly. ‘I've never seen a real live superhero before. How come you know his identity?'

‘Well, I shouldn't really be telling you any of this … but I'm his sidekick.'

‘Wow, pretty impressive. So you guys go round solving crime, rescuing babies from burning buildings, saving damsels in distress, regular stuff like that?'

‘We do what we can.'

‘And I suppose that you have cool costumes like Spiderman or the Phantom?'

‘Not really–neither of us can sew.'

‘That's a shame. Any super powers, then? You know, to help you combat all those evil villains?'

‘Well, I don't have any personally, but he has the power to talk people to death … and I know from personal experience that his jokes can make you want to throw yourself under a train.'

‘Impressive. And does he have a name–like a proper superhero name, I mean?'

‘Sure. He's the Razzman.'