Chapter 1

 

Jason Bland often wondered why he was so unpopular. He felt he ticked all the boxes. He was tall and well built, handsome and pretty good at sport.

 

Jason spent most classes observing his classmates, his eyelids hooded like those of an eagle, coolly assessing, monitoring, judging. He would carefully update his ledger, rated their ‘crimes’ out of ten and considered the ideal punishment. It was how he got through the day. Jason was not a people person, and most people were not Jason people.

 

The only person who did like him was Sangita Khandelwal. She had spoken to Jason three times since the start of Year 5 when she’d arrived at the school. And on all three occasions Jason had just grunted at her. He grunted at her because he didn’t like the look in her eye – the look of someone who really wanted to get to know him. Not in a disgusting romantic way. He didn’t really know what way exactly, but his parents had always told him: don’t make friends.

 

If you came up to Jason and said, ‘Hey, Jason, want to hang out and maybe kick the footy around?’, he’d just stare at you until you went away.

 

That is one of the reasons why Sangita found him so fascinating.

 

She also had really good instincts. She could tell there was more to Jason than met the eye. Much more.

 

Canberra is the capital of Australia as you may or may not know and that is where Jason and Sangita lived. Jason’s mother worked for the Government in some high-flying job, while his father stayed at home and looked after the kids. Which was much more than a full-time job because … and make sure you’re sitting down when you read this … Jason was their seventh child. Out of sixteen.  

 

I don’t know if you’re a kid reading this or a full-grown adult. Either way, I think you have to agree that sixteen is a lot of kids. A lot.

 

So Jason was never that keen to come home because home was not exactly peaceful. Here’s why, and I’m going to put it in bullet points so it’s easier for you to digest:
 

• Jason’s siblings were not the kind of kids who sit around quietly reading books or mucking around with Tik Tok. They were boisterous. Seven of them were at the age when they just shrieked and screamed all the time.
   

• Jason’s older brothers and sisters bickered and fought constantly. And when I say fought, I mean physically attacked each other, sometimes very badly indeed.
   

• There were six bathrooms and it seemed to Jason that not a moment went by when someone wasn’t flushing the toilet or using the shower. Whenever he wanted to use one, someone was already in there. And stayed there. For ages.
   

• He shared a bedroom with three of his younger brothers. So he never had any privacy.
   

• His mother was really strict but she was hardly ever there because her job was really demanding.
   

• His father was so overwhelmed by how many kids he had to look after that he was kind of a zombie. Jason really hoped he wouldn’t end up like his dad, and that’s always a sad thing to think.

 

Anyway, one hot November day, Jason came home to the usual craziness and stomped over to his bedroom. Little did he realise this would be the last time he would ever do this.

 

By some kind of miracle, his other brothers weren’t in the room. He closed the door and pulled off his school uniform, then his human skin suit, which always got itchy in summer. He hung both in the wardrobe and lay down on his bed, where he waved his hideous tentacles around to cool his moist, green reptilian skin.