My Life and Other Exploding Chickens by Tristan Bancks

Author:Tristan Bancks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2016-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

‘Stop right there!’ one of them yells. She is the youngest, has her hair in a ponytail, wears sweat pants and looks like she could be faster than me.

All three librarians have guns, and they point them right at me. Two red laser dots rest on my chest. I feel one on my forehead. This is worse than anything I’d imagined.

The librarians move slowly up the steps towards me, weapons raised. As they close in I realise that their ‘guns’ are actually barcode scanners, the kind they use at the front desk of the library, so I turn and run, praying that Sweat Pants doesn’t catch me. As I do, a large male librarian emerges from the double front doors. He has a forehead so greasy it almost blinds me with reflected sunlight. He’s brandishing a large net, like a dog catcher.

‘Take it easy, buddy.’ He goes to nab me and I run the other way. Two more librarians rappel on ropes from the roof. They are dressed in black cardigans and black pants like Library Ninjas. They land on the ground in front of me, unclip their harnesses and train their barcode scanner beams on my legs.

‘No place to run, kid,’ says Sweat Pants, who is now close enough that I can read her name badge: Sienna Harper-Hill – Head of Youth Services. A librarian with the initials ‘SHH’.

I am surrounded by a narrowing circle of librarians on the front steps. The alarm beeps loudly, the red light flashes, illuminating my face in sickening swirls of light. There’s a crowd building now. Two perfect-looking parents holding library books across the street cover their perfect-looking children’s eyes. People inside the library are lined up at the windows, watching.

And I’m standing here, naked. (Not actually naked. It’s a metaphor for how I feel on the inside.)

‘You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?’ It’s the Head of Youth Services – SHH. She’s actually kind of cute. Beautiful in a Sasha-ish way. This makes me even more nervous. My bladder, all of a sudden, feels full.

‘N-no,’ I say.

‘You did, didn’t you?’

‘No, ma’am.’ I’m not sure why I call her ‘ma’am’. She’s only about twenty-five.

‘You think we’re running a charity here? You think we like chasing horrible little kids to get our property back? You think books grow on trees?’

‘No. Well, technically, they do but –’

‘Don’t get smart with me. How do you think we feel when our books come back half-eaten by a pet cockatoo?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t have a pet c–’

‘Or soaked in cat wee?’

‘Um … not good?’ I say. A little bit of vomit burns the back of my throat. Cat wee has never been one of my favourite smells.

‘Or with a used Band-Aid for a bookmark?’ I shake my head. ‘That’s right. Not good.’

She’s in real close now, and I’d like to say that her breath smells like two dead dogs and that she has sleep nuggets in her eyes and loads of orange earwax … but none of those things is true.

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