Illustrations by Alison Berry
Guest art by Joan Casaramona and Victoria Assanelli
Episode 8: Dandruff Girl
Hana spent the day with James, watching him compose, play and record the soundtrack for their school film while she pretended to do homework.
‘Some of these equations are so intricate that they seem like passwords to the entire universe,’ she noted as she shuffled through her papers. James answered by strumming a few chords on his guitar. He had been doing that all day, but Hana tried not to let it get to her – he was working hard on schoolwork, after all.
And besides, she was impressed by his playing, something that he rarely treated her to for reasons she could never quite figure out: he could not be embarrassed by performing in public since he belted out tunes in karaoke all the time, sometimes shoving his way up to the mic. All she could think of was that he simply did not feel confident enough yet in his playing, which to her was ridiculous as well. She did not know much about guitar, but she trusted her ears enough to know when something sounded good or not, and to her ears James’ playing was amazing. And his fingers moved so quickly, too!
From the background came a steady pattering of light rain, supplying intricate percussion to his guitar work and nearly lulling Hana to sleep. She looked out the window at the quick little flashes of raindrops and suddenly realised how late it was getting.
‘Well, I’m finished,’ James said, sighing out of exhaustion. He lay on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, his guitar still strapped to his chest.
‘Do you mean you’re finished in the sense that you completed the project, or in the sense that you don’t think you can do any more and are giving up?’ Hana asked.
James looked at her and strummed his guitar in response.
‘I don’t think I know what that means,’ she said.
‘I’m done,’ he said, smiling.
‘That could still go either way.’
‘Okay, okay – I finished recording. Are you happy now?’
Her eyes went wide with joy. ‘Of course I am! Congratulations!’ she said, and then she helped him up off the floor so she could shake his hand.
‘Well, thanks,’ he said, embarrassed by Hana’s sudden enthusiasm. ‘I guess all I have to do now is email the music files to Henri so he can add them to the movie. It’s hard to believe we actually managed to finish this thing.’
‘Yeah, I’m very proud of you!’ she said, her eyes shining.
‘Come on, don’t act like I did it all by myself. You and Henri probably did more than I did. Way more.’
‘It’s funny to see you being so modest,’ Hana teased.
James picked up his baseball bat and prodded her shoulder with it in retaliation.
‘Why are you prodding me?’ Hana asked.
‘So you know I’m still a tough guy,’ he explained.
She laughed and pushed the bat to the side. ‘I think it’s time for me to call home,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late.’
James nodded, unstrapped his guitar and set it gently on his bed beside Hana’s homework. He somehow managed to use his bat to open the bedroom door and then led her to the phone in the kitchen.
‘Where’s your mother?’ Hana asked as she picked up the receiver.
‘Probably falling asleep in front of the tv,’ James said, shrugging. ‘She spent the whole day handing out grocery fliers so I can’t say I blame her.’
‘Oh. How many jobs does she have?’
‘A lot.’
Hana nodded and then dialled her number. Her sister picked up.
‘Hey sis,’ Hana said into the receiver. ‘Is Mom or Dad around? . . . No? Well, where are they? . . . Really?! Why did they have to go and do that at a time like this?! I don’t want to walk home in the rain! It’s starting to get dark out, too . . . Yeah, yeah. I’ll see if James has an umbrella. Seeya later.’ She set down the receiver and sighed.
‘What’s up?’ James asked.
‘Oh, my mother and father took the car out to rent another monster movie,’ she said. ‘I swear they’re addicted to the things! It’s like they don’t realise they’re all the same movie! Anyway, it means I have to walk home. Unless . . .’ She gave him a hopeful look.
‘Sorry, Hana, but I can’t give you a ride home,’ he told her. ‘My mother is pretty strict about not biking in the rain. I can let you borrow my umbrella, though.’ He then fished around in the vestibule closet for it and handed it to her.
‘It’s better than nothing,’ she said, smiling as she accepted it. ‘Thanks.’
James walked her out onto the porch, though he remained in the dry safety of the doorway. ‘See you tomorrow, Hana,’ he said.
‘Yeah, seeya later, James,’ she said, and then she opened the umbrella.
Well, first she struggled with the button, which refused to push up, and then she manually forced it open. To her surprise and horror the umbrella was riddled with holes. ‘Hey! What is this?!’ she cried.
‘It’s my umbrella,’ James said dryly.
‘It’s swiss cheese!’ Hana exclaimed, and then she threw the umbrella at James, who batted it back into the house.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ he told her. ‘That’s the only umbrella we have.’
‘What about your mother’s?’
‘I lost it.’
Hana sighed as raindrops danced on her head. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she said.
‘Well, why don’t you . . . you know. Make one,’ suggested James.
She shuddered. Was it really going to come down to that? She supposed she had no choice. ‘Okay, just . . . look away, okay?’
James crossed his arms and, holding his bat in his armpit, turned around. ‘I’m looking away,’ he said.
Hana pulled a long, thin, flakey white object from her head and opened it. She was almost proud of herself when not a single raindrop broke through.
‘Okay, you can look now,’ she said, and James turned back around to see her holding a slimy dandruff umbrella in her hand.
‘Jeez! That one really takes the cake,’ James said, utterly disgusted by the sight of it. ‘Are you really going to walk home with that? Haha! Have fun!’
Laughing uncontrollably, he retreated back into his house and closed the front door behind him. Hana could still hear his laughing through the door, however, so she quickly got off his front porch and started for home, plotting her revenge with each step. For a boy who supposedly had like in his heart, he sure was being mean.
Hana’s mood was more sour than the special sourdough bread her mother liked so much, and not just because of James: it was also because she had to splash and splosh through the many puddles on the sidewalk. She made faces as her socks became soggy inside her shoes. Normally she liked rain, but that was because she was typically prepared for it. She did not like rain when she had to walk around with an umbrella made out of her own dandruff and feel like she was walking on a bunch of slugs.
‘Grr,’ she growled to herself. ‘Grr.’
As she walked she began to notice an awful smell, increasing in pungency with each slosh of her feet. It was even worse than the sulphurous stench that had followed around the river monster. With her free hand she squeezed her nostrils shut but it was to no avail: the smell managed to sneak in through the microscopic cracks, infiltrating her nasal passages and setting her brain on fire. She tried not to gag.
Her senses exploding, Hana looked around, trying to find the source of the smell so she could run away from it as fast as humanly possible. She did not like the idea that she was only walking closer and closer towards it. Once the smell seemed like it could not get any worse, a wet feather dropped down from the sky and fell in the puddle before her. The splash sent rainwater all over her legs.
‘Grr!’ she growled at the feather, and then she looked up in case there were more she needed to growl at.
There were. A seemingly infinite amount of them, in fact, all attached to the body of a giant flying chicken that was soaring in the sky. The chicken had big red globs of weirdness flopping around its head, the most ginormous wattles and comb Hana had ever seen, and all of its feathers were drenched in rain, making it the smelliest chicken she had ever come across as well. Judging by the chicken’s distance to the ground, she wagered it was the size of a small house.
She wondered what would happened if it landed, if it would be friendly or if it could talk like the other strange animals she had come across, but as she now knew it to be the source of the awful smell she did not wish to linger long enough to find out. She ran the rest of the way home, leaping over puddles when she could, and did not look back until she was in the warm, dry confines of her house, the door safely slammed behind her. She pushed the tiny curtain to the side and peered up through the door’s small window, seeing if she could spot the chicken in the sky.
Apparently it had flown away, taking the rain with it. Grr! If only she had waited just a bit longer, then she could have avoided the rain and the smell. Oh, and the umbrella, which she was still holding in her hand.
‘Uh oh,’ she said, looking at the dandruff umbrella as it dripped water and flakes onto the vestibule carpet.
‘Is that you, Hana?’ came her sister’s voice from the living room.
‘Y-yeah,’ Hana replied, her heart thundering in her chest.
‘Okay! Wait right there – I want to get the camera so I can take a picture of how wet you are!’
Uh oh. Her sister seeing the dandruff umbrella would be one thing, but having a picture taken of it would be a thousand times worse. Hana hopped anxiously from foot to foot as she tried to figure out what to do with it. Should she eat it? No. No, no, no, no, no. And if she ever thought of something like that again then she would punish herself by hitting herself on the head.
The most obvious thing seemed to be to simply open the door and throw it outside, and since she could not think of any immediate repercussions for this she threw open the door and readied the umbrella like a throwing spear. Her parents stood on the front porch staring at her, her father holding his keys even though he had forgotten to lock the front door. Both parties were completely frozen to their spots.
Then there was a flash and the sound of machinery resetting itself.
‘This one’s a keeper!’ her sister exclaimed from behind her.
Well, there was only one way out now.
‘Blargh!’ Hana cried nonsensically, and then she pushed past her parents with her umbrella in hand, ran out onto the street and threw the dandruff umbrella as far as she could, which led to it ending up in somebody’s yard. Then, completely out of breath and full of dread, she walked back to her house.
‘Do you mind telling us what that was all about?’ her father asked, more surprised than upset.
‘I was, um, imitating one of the, uh, monsters,’ she said, catching her breath as she spoke.
‘Wow! That wasn’t bad!’ her mother said happily as she clapped her hands. ‘I guess your sister told you we were out getting that new monster movie, eh?’
‘Yeah,’ Hana said, smiling weakly. She could not believe that her parents actually believed her, but she supposed stranger things had happened. Much stranger.
‘So what was that thing you were carrying?’ her sister asked once they were all indoors.
‘Oh, that was a paper-mâché umbrella James made for me,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ her sister said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense, but okay.’
Now all she had to do was hover around the camera whenever her parents took it in to have the photos developed. She imagined that if anyone outside of herself or James saw the photo then it would cause a scandal of gigantic flying chicken proportions.
Hana went upstairs to dress into her dry pyjamas and then used the phone in her parents’ room to call James. She wanted to let him know that she had made it home all right, though ‘all right’ meant coming across a giant, wet, horribly smelly flying chicken and having a picture taken of her dandruff umbrella by her sister while her parents watched on.
‘Hello,’ came James’ voice after several rings. He sounded bored.
‘Hey,’ Hana said into the phone. ‘My family almost found out about the you-know-what.’
‘You mean that broken vase you buried in the backyard like a murder victim? The one that contained your uncle’s ashes?’
‘Wow, no. I actually forgot about that myself. I mean they almost found out about the whole dandruff thing.’
‘How’s that?’
‘They saw the dandruff umbrella. Not only that, but my sister took a picture of it! I threw it away as fast as I could and came up with some lies, even though I don’t like lying, and my family believed them. So I think I should be okay.’
‘You didn’t mind lying when you broke that vase.’
‘Forget about the vase for a moment! I’m really worried! I don’t know what might happen if people see the photo. They’ll ask questions and I can’t keep lying forever.’
‘Just steal the roll of film, then.’
‘I can’t. There are photos of a family reunion on it that haven’t been developed yet. Besides, I don’t like stealing. Lying is bad enough.’
‘We’ll figure something out,’ James assured her.
‘I hope so,’ Hana said, sighing.
There was a worried silence for nearly half a minute and then James spoke again.
‘Y’know, I’ve been thinking about something,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. What’s your sister’s name?’
‘My sister?’
‘Yes, your sister.’
‘Oh. She doesn’t have one.’
‘Pardon?’
Hana sighed. ‘Well, see, what happened was that my sister accidentally left her name in her pocket when my mother did the laundry one day.’
‘You gotta be kidding me.’
‘I wish I was.’
‘Jeez, I feel sorry for her.’
‘Yeah, me too. We all do.’
There was another silence then, again broken by James:
‘How about we come up with a new name for her ourselves, then?’
‘Really? Like what?’
‘Well, how about Hana?’
‘But that’s my name!’
‘Oh, yeah, you’re right. Hmm. How about we call her Hana and call you Dandruff Girl from now on?’
‘No!’
‘Okay, okay. It was just a thought.’
Hana contemplated banging the phone against the small table but thought better of it. ‘I think she looks like a Sara,’ she said.
‘Do we know anyone named Sara?’
‘I don’t think so.’
They agreed it was a very good name and decided they would call her it from then on, without any regard to how she felt about the matter.
‘By the way, there was a giant chicken flying around when I walked home,’ Hana told James.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. It smelled even worse than you do after riding around on your bike all day.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ James said proudly.
‘I don’t think you would if you caught a whiff of it. Also, I think it might be following me. Remember when I . . . when we met together on the hill? There were like a hundred feathers all swirling around in the street, but I didn’t see anything they could’ve originated from. Maybe it got knocked away by an airplane, only I think I would’ve heard a thunderous squawk in that case. I dunno.’
‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘And keep happening,’ Hana agreed, ‘over and over and over again. Oh well. I should go downstairs and watch a movie with my family. They probably already started without me.’
‘Okay. Take care, Hana. Don’t let any flying chickens get in through your window.’
‘I won’t. You know, it’s funny when a joke is actually good advice. Catch ya later.’
‘Bye.’
Hana hung up the phone and went downstairs to watch the monster movie with her family. She had been finding them less and less scary lately – the monster movies, not her family. While watching them she would think of ways to stop the monsters if she was there with her dandruff powers: she thought of giant nets, even larger cannons and rocket ships to rocket them into space. She basically came up with whole new movies in her head where she was the star and everyone celebrated her dandruff.
By the time the movie ended she had fallen asleep on the floor, and her mother pulled a blanket over her while she dreamt about fighting monsters. When a giant chicken showed up in her dream she woke up, groggy and alone in the darkened living room, and wondered if that flapping sound she heard coming from outside was just the wind hitting the trees. She hoped so. She went back to sleep.
To Be Continued In Episode Nine: Chicken Attack!
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Volume 2
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