Chapter 3: Goddamn Pikachu
Ekl and I screamed, and Frog fell off the desk he was sitting on as the yellow rat-thing landed on the table. Tom jumped off his table, and backed away, swinging his guitar at the rat. It leapt across the tables, getting away from the screams and moving guitar. It paused on the table nearest the door, sniffed the air, allowing us a good look, then ran through, disappearing down the hall, people yelling as it passed them.
"Shit," Frog said. "Holy friggin' shit!" I helped him up, and he dusted himself off.
"Believe me now?" Tom asked. "It was a mutant." Ekl was shaking her head.
"That was no mutant," she said. "That was a Pikachu."
"That can't have been a Pikachu," I said, but even as I spoke, I knew that's what it had looked like. It was mouse-like in appearance, about as long as my arm with yellow colouring and a long tail that widened at the tip with a kink about mid-length. The tips of its long, rounded ears were black, and it had red marking on its cheeks that appeared to be covered in a finer, shorter fur. It even had two dark stripes across its back.
"Pikachu, as in that bloody fat yellow thing on Pokemon?" Frog asked. He was obviously in a bad mood; Frog didn't swear much unless he was really in a bad mood. Ekl, Tom and I nodded.
"Maybe animals are mutating into Pokemon," Tom suggested, blue eyes wide.
"Shut up about the damn mutants!" I yelled.
"Look," Frog said, slightly calmer now. "We should tell someone. Say another one of those rats appeared."
"Maybe you didn't hear us," Ekl said loudly, still sounding stressed. "That was a Pikachu. A. Fucking. Pikachu. A make-believe, goddamn animal."
"Do you think that's what Animal control was out here to catch before?" I asked. Tom nodded, the other two bickering too hard to have heard me.
"Gotta be," he said.
"Yo, guys," I said, trying to shut my friends up a moment.
"What?" Ekl snapped. She obviously hadn't recovered as well as we had.
"We'll shut up about it for now," I told them. "If anyone asks, we won't deny not seeing it, but other than that, we don't say a thing. We don't need to stir up any more trouble. Got it?" The other three nodded.
"I wish I was old enough to drink," Frog said, "I'd love one just about now." I giggled, and Frog grinned at me.
"Yeah, so fucking funny," Ekl swore sarcastically. "Goddamn Pikachu!"
The school was buzzing for the rest of the day about the giant rats. Frog, Ekl and I didn't say a word to anyone about it, but the rumours going around school were amazing. Many of the younger kids, like Tom, believed it was a mutant. I wonder what they had all been reading for them to come to that conclusion. The older kids thought it was an experiment by Mr Albertson, the science teacher, escaped and out for blood. The people who were familiar with Pokemon hadn't seen it, except for Ekl and I, and we weren't saying anything. Frog still wouldn't believe that's what it was.
"How can it be?" he asked on the bus that afternoon. "How the hell can it be a Pikachu?"
Frog and I go home on the same bus. He was a twenty minute walk from my house, and got on in the mornings after me. It was a long trip, well over an hour, but we made it interesting by having competitions with the other kids, such as games of 'Mercy', staring competitions, and occasionally, when we were really desperate for something to do, 'I spy'. Frog was sitting beside me, Tom in front of us, as we discussed what we had seen earlier that day.
"What else could it have been?" I asked. "Anyway, Ekl and I know what we saw. Our theory is no more unreasonable than anyone else's."
"I don't know," Tom piped up. "Mr Albertson has some pretty strange stuff in the science lab."
"Hey," I said, poking Frog in the arm. "You going for a walk today?" Frog nodded. Recently, as a 'Get Healthy' program, the teachers had warned us our year would be having a full day of exercise and games sometime in the near future. Frog had insisted on getting fit for this, although he was already fit. He often asked me to come walking with him, to keep him company. It meant Tom would bug me for hours after I got back, asking if we had kissed or something, but he'd always stop after I threatened to tell Charlotte he liked her.
Charlotte was a girl in Tom's class, and she was the pretty, popular one. Blond hair, blue eyes, most guys fell over their tongues going to talk to her. Tom didn't like her, he said she was shallow and mean, but she adored him. Why, I'm not sure.
"So are you getting off at my place then?" Frog asked.
"Ooooo," Tom cooed.
"Charlotte," I coughed, and Tom narrowed his eyes at me.
"What did you say?" he demanded.
"You know exactly what I said," I replied, staring him straight in the eye. "You can take my bag home, ok?" I put my bag onto the seat beside Tom, and he looked at it sulkily. I leant forward and took my birthday presents from my bag; I didn't want Tom breaking them if he threw my bag down like he did his own.
"What's that?" he asked, eyeing the Pokebelt.
"What's it look like?" I asked, looping it through my pants.
"So, you could have caught that Pikachu, and you didn't?" Tom said, raising an eyebrow. Mentally, I swore, long and loud. To Tom, I just shook my head.
"It probably wouldn't have worked," I said.
"Come on," Frog said, standing up as the bus pulled up to his bus stop. I jumped off behind Frog, and we waited for the bus to leave before crossing the road. "Come in for a drink," Frog said. "Mum should have been shopping today, and we might have lemonade or something." I followed him down his driveway, thinking about what Tom said.
"Do you reckon one of these Pokeballs could have caught that Pikachu?" I asked Frog, pulling one off my belt and looking at it.
"No way," Frog said shaking his head. "It wasn't a Pikachu."
I wasn't so sure.
Frog lives in a reasonably large house, his great grandfather, (supposably called "Snake" Walker) built it a little over sixty years ago. It had four bedrooms, and several rooms that didn't seem to have much of a purpose. Although the Walker's were a small family, they managed to find things to fill with these rooms. Indoor toilets, for example. Before hand, about ten years ago, their toilet had been a long drop, about fifty metres from the house. It had long since been filled in, a flagpole in its place, and I shuddered at thinking about the poor people who would have had to use it in the dead of night.
Frog's mum was in their kitchen when we walked in, humming and cutting out biscuits. If you want food for charity causes, Mrs Walker is the person you go to. She could make nearly anything in her oven, and had made her kitchen into her temple. However, although she cooked, Frog and his father had to share most of the house work. Cooking, it turned out, was the only thing Mrs Walker did, and only as a hobby.
"Hello, Koosh," she beamed at me.
"Hello, Mrs Walker," I said as Frog went straight to the fridge. He dumped his bag beside it, then stuck his head in to search of drinks.
"I've told you, Koosh, to call me June," Mrs Walker said with good humour. I shook my head, knowing she preferred 'Mrs Walker' from kids under eighteen. She had Frog's straight build, with brown hair loosely tied at the base of her neck. Her brown eyes were bright as new dollar coins, and she had a fantastic sense of creativity.
"Coke or Solo?" Frog asked me, holding up two soft drink cans.
"Coke," I said to him. "You know I don't drink Solo." Frog closed the fridge and handed me the red Coke can.
"Going for a walk today?" Mrs Walker guessed. We nodded our heads.
"Might head down towards the river today," he said.
"Watch out for snakes," Mrs Walker said. Frog and I nodded again, and walked out of the house.
"I bet those biscuits will be ready by the time we get back," I said, thinking greedily of the biscuits she'd been making.
"Yeah, I'd rather cake or something," Frog said, taking a swig from his coke.
"Hey kids," someone called out across the back yard.
"Hey Dad," Frog said. A tall man walked over to us, a shovel in one hand. As far as I could tell, Frog's dad had been digging out a small pond for during the warmer months. He had green eyes and short cut dark brown hair. Everyone called him Tad, and he was one of the few Walker's not to have a reptilian or amphibian name, but there were plenty of others. Frog's grandfather, or great uncle, I wasn't sure which, lived in the old folk's home in town, and was known as Turtle. I often saw him during my visits to one of the other old people. Frog had an aunt called Gecko, and I think two of his cousins were Goanna and Skink. It all got a little confusing, but quite fun come Christmas time when they all came to the Walker farm for a get together. I'm not sure where the names had originated from, though I'm sure great grandpa "Snake" Walker had something to do with that, too.
"Hope you've been good today," Tad said to Frog. Frog rolled his eyes.
"Yes, Dad," he said. "I didn't hack into important today."
"Good," Tad said, ruffling Frog's hair up. Frog once got into trouble for breaking into the school's system and getting a few phone numbers and personal details for a year twelve who had threatened to beat him to a pulp if he didn't. Frog was smart and fast, but the year twelver was huge and sneaky.
Frog ducked out of the way of Tad's hand. "There was a problem with a stray animal at school today. We were outside for most of the day, waiting for Animal control, so I didn't get a chance to go on the computer's much," Frog explained.
"Why weren't the parents called?" Tad asked. I shrugged.
"A lot of people like us live pretty far out," I said. "It may have been easier for us to miss just half a day than a full one and have parents waste so much time."
Tad nodded. "Makes sense," he agreed. He walked back to the pond, and Frog and I continued walking, heading for the river.
There's a river that cuts across the back of our properties, and was an excellent fishing spot. Frog and I went camping out there quite often, and even Ekl came sometimes. It's a decent walk away, and usually, when we went camping, we took the Walker's horses. They had three; Snowy, the small grey horse who was quiet as a lamb, Star, a bigger chestnut mare with a white star on her face, and Harry, a dark brown gelding. I would have loved a horse, but Dad hated them. He refused to buy one.
"God, it's been a long day," Frog said. I nodded in agreement. At least the weather had become more agreeable.
"Could have been worse," I said. "It could have been someone's birthday."
"Oh shit, Koosh, I forgot about your birthday!" Frog exclaimed. "Today must have been hell for you."
"Hey, it was fine until about twenty to nine," I said. I shrugged. "No big deal. There's always next year."
"We'll make it up to you, you know," Frog said seriously. "Ekl and me, that is."
"Don't worry about it," I insisted. I bumped into him playfully as we walked. "We didn't know what was going to happen today, and anyway, we couldn't have changed it if we had." We walked in silence until the river, side by side. "Thanks, by the way," I said. "Today could have been worse. You guys made it bearable." Frog grinned at me.
"Good thing you have me as a friend, then," he said, pushing me playfully. I pushed him back and ran away, laughing. He chased me all the way to the river, where we sat and talked about nothing for an hour before heading home.