Illustrations by Victoria Assanelli
Guest art by Danielle Estefan
Episode 5: Down the Drain
Hana wished to practice playing her recorder to the accompaniment of a guitar, so one day she hid in her room and made a self-playing guitar out of her dandruff. She tried to model the dandruff guitar’s appearance off her memory of James’ real one, and it seemed to come out almost exactly the same, other than its strangely muted sound. She could not figure out how to get the dandruff strings taut enough, but she was still content as long as the guitar played all of the correct notes, which it managed to do without fail.
She went through several exercises with her recorder until her mother knocked on her door. That was when she dropkicked the dandruff guitar and covered the pile of damaged flakes with a large teddy bear.
‘James is on the phone, Hana,’ her mother called through the door.
‘Thanks, Mom!’ Hana called back, shaking with nervousness. She opened the door to her mother standing by; her mother tried to peer into her room but Hana quickly shut the door behind her.
‘I thought I heard a guitar in there,’ her mother said, looking at the closed door with some suspicion.
‘Oh, I recorded some of James’ guitar playing so I could play along with it,’ Hana explained. She figured it was close enough to the truth for it to not come across as a complete lie.
Before her mother could ask any penetrating questions, Hana slipped into her parents’ room and picked up the receiver. She then shouted that she had picked it up and waited for her mother to hang up the line downstairs.
‘Hi, James,’ she said into the receiver. ‘I was just practicing with my recorder.’
‘Yeah?’ his voice came distractedly. ‘I was just ripping my jeans.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a huge hole in my jeans and I was making it bigger. I think it might’ve been a bad idea. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to do something.’
‘Okay.’
‘That was the fastest you’ve ever answered something. Do you already have something in mind? Because, I mean, if you were thinking of throwing rocks into the river, then that’s exactly what I was thinking of.’
‘I don’t know if I was thinking about throwing rocks into the river. I think I was thinking about walking around and watching the sun set and then you could ride me home on your bicycle.’
‘That sounds kinda girly.’
‘I’m allowed to be girly,’ Hana told him. ‘I’m a girl. And it’s not girly.’
‘Okay, okay; I’ll come over. We’ll walk to the hill.’
‘You mean the hill by the river?’
‘Yeah, but we won’t throw rocks into it, if that’s not your thing today. Just . . . don’t forget your rocks, all right?’
Hana sighed. ‘Don’t forget that this is going to be a nice walk, James.’
‘What? Did you say something about a nice rock?’
Hana sighed again. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said.
‘Okay. I’ll rock on over now.’
Hana remained sitting on her parent’s bed after she hung up the receiver, for she had suddenly become transfixed by the swaying branches of the tree outside their window. The way the leaves rippled on the branches reminded her of the underwater plants she had seen in videos at school. She had seen this tree from this view many times before, but it was only this time that she noticed something particularly peculiar about it: hanging from the branches were little orange balls, each perfectly round and devoid of any texture.
Hana got up from the bed and headed to the window, where she could look at the balls more closely. Each was completely smooth but did not reflect any light, and the closer she looked the more it appeared that the balls were tied to the branches with green thread, almost like Christmas tree ornaments. She wondered if her mother or father had tied the balls there themselves, but the balls seemed to go all the way around the tree. Although she was definitely puzzled by them, she did not find the orange balls to be particularly threatening, so she decided to wait until she was about to leave to ask her mother about them.
First she wanted to make sure she was dressed well enough for a pleasant walk with James. She headed to the bathroom next door and stood on her tiptoes to view her clothes in the mirror: a simple white shirt and light blue shorts. She nodded contentedly to herself. Hana was not the type to willingly wear a dress – or anything remotely ladylike, for that matter – and she doubted James would like her as much if she was. Still, she felt she should make at least some kind of effort, so she brushed her hair, bringing a cascade of dandruff into the sink before her. Then she washed her face, the water dragging clumps of dandruff into the drain.
Seeing the little dandruff slugs slide into the drain made her wonder: she wondered if she could temporarily lessen her dandruff by brushing as much of it into the sink as possible. The last time she had tried something like that, she ended up sending a dandruff rocket across her room. This time, however, she had a better idea of what she was getting into.
The brush lay innocently on the bathroom counter, mostly black with specks of white dotting its forest of bristles. She picked it up again and began stroking her hair until the sink was filled with dandruff. The sight of the huge mound gave her an odd combination of pride and disgust. She then looked in the mirror and saw that nothing had changed: the amount of visible dandruff flakes was the same as always, and the frown she saw with them reflected how she felt.
She went to rinse off the brush but it barely fit in the space between her dandruff pile and the tap. The pile would have to vanish before she could leave the bathroom, so she returned the brush to its spot on the counter and turned the tap on. As the water ran through the cracks in her dandruff, Hana pushed as much of the flakes as she could down the drain, the water sogging her dandruff and making it easier to dispose of. Once all of the dandruff was gone and the drain had gurgled discontentedly at her, Hana wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and exited the bathroom, hoping that none of this would come back to haunt her.
James was coming up the stairs when she returned to the hallway. He had a grin on his face and a large hole in his jeans over his knee.
‘You need to take better care of your clothes,’ Hana told him. ‘Jeans don’t grow on trees.’
James covered the whole with his baseball bat. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Your mom told me you were playing to a recording of my guitar. I don’t remember that happening, but I told her that we did record it, just in case.’
‘Thanks. Are you ready to go?’
James looked at her with a smirk as he bounced his bat against his shoulder. ‘You’re not getting away that easily. Why did you tell that to your mom?’
Hana ground her teeth in embarrassment. ‘I made a dandruff guitar that could play by itself,’ she quickly admitted, wishing to get it over with. ‘I tried to make it look and sound like your guitar.’
‘I don’t think my guitar has ever sounded like dandruff,’ James said.
‘Yeah, I couldn’t get it to sound right, but at least I got it to play, which is the main thing. I think I could start an entire dandruff band if I wanted to.’
‘That would be worse than Jack’s band.’
Hana wanted to be angry at him but she knew that he was right. ‘Okay, let’s go have a pleasant walk now.’
Before they left, Hana quickly ducked into the living room to ask her parents about the orange balls, but they were too engrossed in a crime drama on tv to pay attention to what she was saying.
‘We can have oranges for breakfast,’ her mother said, not once prying her eyes away from the glowing screen.
‘Climbing trees is dangerous,’ her father said distractedly.
Hana rolled her eyes and then left the house with James. Outside, Hana’s sister was looking after the garden.
‘How are your flowers?’ James asked her.
‘They’ve been doing pretty all right since you killed them with your bike,’ she answered, albeit without any malice. ‘Mom was only upset because she doesn’t know much about them. It didn’t take me long to get them going again.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t kill them too badly,’ James said.
He grabbed his bicycle from the side of the house and walked it out of the driveway with Hana. They waved goodbye to Sara and headed in the direction of the sun so they could watch it set. Hana loved seeing the sky painted in purples and pinks. To her it was the most romantic image that nature offered.
‘I should tell you something,’ James said confidentially to Hana once they were some distance away from her house.
‘What’s that?’ Hana asked, her face warming at his seriousness.
‘I was . . . Well, you know how I wasn’t picked for the baseball team again this year?’
Hana nodded.
‘I didn’t even try. I didn’t even go to the tryouts.’
Hana started hitting his head as if it were a bongo drum that was nearly out of her reach. ‘You idiot! You’re supposed to at least try!’
James tried to shield himself from her blows. ‘That kinda hurts,’ he said after she had calmed down. She now walked beside him with her arms crossed and her face hardened in a concentrated pout.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just saw that Henri was picked again and I figured it would be a repeat of last year. I don’t know if I want to go through that again.’
‘But you practice playing every day, you dolt! You’re better than everybody at our school, except for Henri. Your marks should be good enough now that the coach can let you on the team. I can’t believe it! And here I thought you somehow weren’t good enough.’ Then she smiled at him. ‘You’re going to prove yourself wrong. Next year I’m going to force you to try out, and if you don’t then I’m going to fill your guitar with dandruff.’
‘That’s the nastiest encouragement I’ve ever received,’ James told her. ‘Thanks.’
Hana smiled even wider. ‘You’re welcome.’
Light purples gradually began shading the sky and Hana was pleased to see that James was as focused on them as she was, which meant he kept glancing at her. Being looked at so furtively made her forget all about her dandruff problem, for he never once glanced at her hair, only her eyes. When she looked at him now she did not see a delinquent with torn jeans and a misplaced bat, but rather a sweet boy with awkwardness and butterflies in his heart.
‘I don’t know if we can walk all the way to the hill,’ he said. ‘We usually ride there, and it’s a lot further on foot than I thought.’
‘That’s all right,’ Hana told him. ‘We don’t have to walk to the hill. We can see the sky just as well from here, or anywhere. Right now I’m just happy walking.’
‘I think a bug just flew into my jeans,’ James said with a grimace.
‘That’s how superheroes are made,’ Hana said.
Just then there was a random scream coming from somewhere nearby. It was such a shrill, terrified scream that it froze Hana and James in their tracks and caused the hair on backs of their necks to stand on end.
‘Speaking of superheroes,’ James said. ‘Think we should check that out?’
‘I think we better,’ Hana said, scratching her scalp to ready her dandruff.
The scream sounded again, this time from a different location. Hana assumed it was because of how far the person must have run from whatever it was they were screaming at. James mounted his bicycle and motioned for Hana to hop on.
‘I’m pretty sure it was coming from a park just up ahead,’ he said. ‘Let’s go!’
Hana held tightly onto James as he speeded them to the park, the wind rushing past her ears so rapidly that she could not hear anything else. She tried protecting her face from the wind by pressing the side of her head to James’ back, but soon she had to look past him again to see why he was slowing down. They had reached the park, which was just big enough for a playground and a junior baseball diamond. It did not take them long to discover what was causing the screams.
A large, yellowish-white lizard, dripping water from its slick skin, was stomping on the grass and baring its teeth at the parkgoers. For Hana, the lizard’s skin was startlingly familiar. The parkgoers were fleeing in every direction, some running into others in their frenzy. Many of them were children in baseball uniforms. Soon the park was completely emptied out, and the streets as well, for the victims never seemed to stop running.
Hana and James looked at the lizard with more determination than fear. They dismounted the bicycle and James let it fall to the grass. He then slapped his baseball bat in the palm of his hand while Hana took a quick look around to make sure no one else had remained. Once she saw that they were alone with the oversized lizard, she pulled a great big dandruff battleaxe out of her hair. She then nodded to James and the duo began advancing towards the lizard, which pounded the ground twice with its foot and snorted at them.
‘Any idea why it looks like it’s made out of dandruff?’ James asked Hana out of the corner of his mouth.
‘None that I can think of,’ Hana replied. ‘Let’s just take care of this thing now and figure out the rest later.’
James nodded and then they suddenly split from each other, both of them running to either side of the lizard. This forced the lizard to face one of them but not the other, and after a short bout of confusion it decided on James, leaving its tail open for attack from Hana.
James swung his bat upwards to protect himself from the lizard’s teeth, which did not look particularly threatening up close: they looked as dangerous as wet Styrofoam, and a few fell apart whenever it closed and reopened its mouth. While James distracted the front of the lizard, Hana was hacking away at the back of it, severing its tail and carving out large sections of its legs. Soon its mangled dandruff legs could no longer support the rest of its body and it keeled over, landing on the park’s surface with a thud.
Hana caught her breath as she looked at the fallen dandruff lizard in surprise. Then she broke up her dandruff axe and jumped up in celebration.
‘We did it!’ she shouted triumphantly. ‘We saved the day!’
James prodded the lizard’s head with his bat and then toed its torso. Every place he touched crumbled a little.
‘So how did that happen?’ he asked. ‘I thought the only other person who could make things out of their dandruff was Daniel Druff.’
‘I don’t know,’ Hana admitted, ‘but I think we should get out of here before people start getting suspicious. The red bear might like being on tv but I don’t think I’d enjoy it – not if it’s a news story about a dandruff battle in a park.’
Sirens steadily gained in volume in the distance. The pair felt that the worst thing that could happen to them would be trying to explain the scene to the police.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ James said, looking at the lizard one last time before turning back in the direction of his bicycle. He stood it upright and then walked with Hana away from the park.
‘Are we going to keep walking or do you want to head back home?’ he asked.
Hana shrugged. ‘I don’t see why we can’t keep walking,’ she said. ‘The sky still looks really pretty. Not even a dandruff lizard can stop that.’
They walked in silence, as James was preoccupied with thoughts of the lizard and Hana had lost herself in the colours of the sky. A breeze came to wake them, and that was when they noticed an open manhole just up ahead, its cover some distance away on a sidewalk. Clumps of damp dandruff led from the manhole back to the park.
‘Now we have a better idea of where it came from,’ James said as they stood and stared.
Hana seemed to be piecing together something in her head. Then she suddenly smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand, surprising James. ‘Oh my gosh!’ she blurted out. ‘I think it might’ve been made from my dandruff!’
James looked at her incredulously. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said.
‘Before you came over I tried brushing my dandruff into the sink,’ Hana explained. ‘I filled up the entire sink and then pushed it all down the drain! It must’ve gotten into the sewer and turned into a giant lizard somehow.’
‘That means you’re the one who made that monster?’
Hana gulped and nodded. ‘Does that make me a supervillain?’ she asked, trembling with fear.
‘I don’t think so,’ James said. ‘If you pushed your dandruff down the sink but didn’t actually make the lizard yourself, then I think you’re in the clear. Somebody must’ve made that lizard, though. I don’t see how it could occur naturally.’
‘Maybe it just ended up that way after going through all those tubes,’ conjectured Hana.
‘Or maybe somebody in the sewer put it together and sent it up here to scare people. Remember how you could use Dan Druff’s dandruff to make that missile?’
Hana nodded. They stepped timidly towards the open manhole and peered down it, but all they could make out was darkness. The darkness was so hypnotising that Hana nearly fell into it; she was saved by James, who immediately let go of his bicycle and baseball bat to catch her.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Hana held the side of her face as her heart boomed in her chest. ‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling frailly at him. ‘Thanks.’
‘It’s no sweat,’ James said, and then he let go of her when he realised he was still holding onto her shirt. ‘I think we should probably step away from the sewer now.’
‘Yeah, I think we should head back. We should tell Henri about this.’
James picked his baseball bat and bicycle up off the ground. Together they returned to Hana’s house, passing all of the news vans, fire trucks, ambulances and police cars that had shown up at the park. The most curious part of it was that they could not make out the remains of the lizard, as if it had got up and walked away.
Once they were in Hana’s room she put together a dandruff speakerphone so James, Henri and herself could all talk together. The speakerphone resembled the one Henri’s parents had in their office, which was no coincidence – she was around when they had first got it and had flipped through the manual when she tried to help them set it up. She plugged the dandruffphone into the telephone jack in her room and dialled Henri’s number.
Henri’s mother answered the phone and they politely asked to speak with her son.
‘You sound really tinny and far away,’ Henri’s mother said. ‘Did you get a speakerphone?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t think it’s going to last long,’ Hana said.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Here’s Henri.’
‘Hello,’ came Henri’s calm voice.
‘Yo,’ James greeted him.
‘Hi, Henri,’ Hana said. ‘Are you on your portable phone?’
‘Yes I am.’
‘Could you walk away from your mother? Something usual happened that you should probably know about.’
‘By usual, do you mean—’
‘Yeah, something that would be unusual for anyone else.’
‘Okay, just a moment.’
There was a pause as they waited for Henri to find a more solitary environment, wherein James picked up Hana’s teddy bear and looked at the mess of dandruff flakes underneath. He gestured to the dandruff questioningly but Henri came back on the line before Hana could explain that it used to be the self-playing guitar.
‘So what’s up?’ Henri asked.
‘I poured my dandruff down the drain and it crawled out of the sewer as a giant lizard,’ Hana said.
‘A very slimy and gross giant lizard,’ James added.
‘That does sound pretty usual,’ Henri said. ‘But how did your dandruff turn into a giant lizard?’
‘That’s the real mystery,’ Hana said. ‘James thinks it was made by somebody in the sewer.’
There was a short pause as Henri seemed to think about something on the other end. ‘Do you think it has something to do with the red bear appearing on the news?’ he asked. ‘Maybe this is what it was trying to warn us about, if in fact it was trying to warn us.’
‘I don’t know,’ Hana said, and then she looked to James to see if he had come up with anymore ideas. He was still holding onto the teddy bear.
‘I’m sticking to my belief that someone living in the sewer made it,’ he said. ‘I just can’t think of why. It couldn’t be that jerk who keeps following around Hana, since he doesn’t seem to be the sewer type. And it can’t be Scorlax because dandruff is his one weakness.’
‘Yeah,’ Hana agreed. ‘I guess that even though we don’t know why it’s happening, something is happening, so we should watch out for any suspicious activity and let each other know if we see anything.’
‘That’s good thinking,’ Henri’s disembodied voice said. ‘So what happened to the dandruff lizard?’
‘We defeated it,’ James said proudly.
‘It wasn’t much of a challenge,’ Hana added. ‘Its grossness was worse than its bite.’
‘It wasn’t much of a challenge?’ Henri asked. ‘What did you do to defeat it?’
‘We flanked it and beat it like this,’ James said as he swung the teddy bear like a baseball bat. ‘It kind of just fell apart after that.’
‘I see,’ Henri said, despite the fact that he could not actually see what James was doing. ‘I wonder if that means whoever made it is not very skilled at using dandruff. Or maybe they were trying to get attention?’
‘They definitely got a lot of attention,’ James said. ‘There were people screaming and running from the park, and then after we defeated the lizard a billion police cars and news people showed up.’
‘But on our way back here the dandruff lizard had disappeared,’ Hana said.
‘This is all going to give me a lot to think about,’ Henri said. ‘I’m glad you guys are safe.’
‘Thanks,’ Hana said. ‘I guess we’ll see you at school tomorrow.’
‘I’ll let you know if I spot a giant dandruff lizard on my way there. Goodbye.’
‘Seeya,’ James said.
Henri disconnected the call and then Hana threw the dandruff speakerphone on the ashes of the self-playing guitar.
‘I should probably head back home,’ James said to Hana as she got out a plastic bag from under her bed. She swept the pile of dandruff into the bag and tied it.
‘I’ll say goodbye to you outside since I need to toss this in the trashcan,’ she said, holding up the heavy bag.
‘Okay, just please point that thing somewhere else.’
They raced down the stairs until Hana’s mother shouted for them to stop racing down the stairs. After putting their shoes on and stepping outside, the duo headed to the side of the house, where Hana deposited the plastic bag and James grabbed his bicycle. Hana walked with James to the sidewalk in front of her house, and together they looked at the richly-coloured sky.
‘You know, it sure is a lot nicer to look at when there’s not any screaming to distract you,’ James said. Hana nodded in agreement.
James then leaned his baseball bat against his bicycle and reached into his pocket. He pulled his hand out in a loosely-closed fist, as if he was holding something small, and turned to Hana.
‘Here,’ he said, and he held out his closed hand towards her. Hana looked at it in confusion, but James seemed adamant about whatever it was he was doing, so Hana held out her hand under his. He opened it and a few smooth stones fell into her palm.
Hana looked from them to James, still slightly confused.
‘I guess I didn’t need them after all,’ he said, smiling.
To Be Continued In Episode Six: Lizard Attack!
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Volume 1