Special Effects: Chicken Pox

their surfaces, so there's a third type of rock in the middle."

"Yeah but its not going to keep going?" I said, "They'll stay stuck in the middle."

"That's right" said Brain, "But if the atoms in the rocks didn't repel each other, the top one would slide right through. Easy!"

"Don't you ever think about ordinary things?" we joked, "Like girls, and sport, and what's for tea?"

"No" said Brain. He meant it too. That was the thing about Brain. Ever since he arrived at school he'd been all by himself. Top of the class in everything. Always asking questions. A real pest to the teachers too. He kept finishing the textbook exercises, all of them, right to the end of the book, before we were up to the second chapter. I reckon he should have been stuck in University or something, but his Mum and Dad wanted him to stay with his own age group. Which was us.

I don't know why he hung around with us either. We were the pits. We never did homework, and we skipped class every few days. School was a joke. Most days we just sat around, waiting for the bell to go.

But Brain seemed to enjoy our company. I suppose we were sort of like the interesting peasants down me road, or maybe specimen animals in a zoo, there for him to examine as examples of lower life. He never criticized us though, or mocked us. He was always sort of politely neutral. It was us who said we were dumb, never him.

And there was another thing about Brain which we talked about sometimes. His house. He lived with his parents in a big old place behind a high, brick wall. We wanted to get into his place and have a look round, but he never invited us. Some days we'd bike with him as far as his front gate, but he never invited us any further.

"Come on Brain," we'd say, "What's the big secret?"

"Yeah. Are you building an atom bomb or something?"

"We're starving! We won't make it home if we don't have a drink and some bikkies!"

"No," he'd say, "I'm not allowed to invite people in. Its not just you, its everyone. Please don't take it personally. It's my Mum and Dad's rule."

Which was the worst thing he could've said, of course, because it made us want to get through those gates even more. That's the funny thing about human nature. If you get told not to do something, it makes you want to do it. And if you're told you must never NEVER do