The OK Team (2 page)

2006:
Ill-fated attempt at a family portrait, where photographer was unable to make Subject appear ‘in focus'. Subject appear ‘in focus'. Subject reports feelings of
intense humiliation and shame.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS:
See full report, but
Subject often refers to self as ‘a freak'.
Parents (Harold and Iris) report that he spends
many hours in his room, reading comic books and
refusing to go outside. Reports of loneliness at
school. No friends.

HISTORY:
A documented family condition.

According to Harold Retina (father), Subject
is the third known member of Retina family to
have said condition.

The first reported example apparently was
an uncle in Perth, a son to Harold's father's
brother. Not much known - he was ‘kept out of sight' on a family farm in remote Western Australia.

Second known example: ‘Uncle Blinky', the son of Harold's cousin, Gina, born in Sydney. Apparently born with his whole face pixelated, as though digitally distorted into small squares. Embraced condition and gained steady employment at TV stations, filling in for people being tried in the courts, whose faces must be obscured as they come and go from the Sydney Courthouse. Saved a fortune in special effects costs. Now believed to be overseas, living in New York where there is an entire TV channel devoted to court cases.

No known contact with Melbourne branch of the Retina family.

CHAPTER 2
HOME IS WHERE THE
HURT IS

T
he dance rehearsal was three days ago and I haven't left my room since, except to go to the bathroom, and to scavenge some food when my parents are at work or in bed so I don't have to talk to them.

About every hour or so, Mum comes and knocks on my door and asks if I'm all right. And I lie and tell her, yeah, I'm fine, but I want to be alone. I tell her I'm in the middle of a particularly great comic, one where the Southern Cross, an Australian Hero, is taking on an army of what look like alien vacuum cleaners.

All of which is true except for the bit about me being fine.

My mum thinks I need help. Not for the condition. What could anybody do? She says I need to see a counsellor. She says I need to learn to be more comfortable within myself. Hah! How could she know what it's like to be inside what is laughingly called my body, on the occasions my body is actually visible? Dad's even worse. Here's a typical encounter:

SCENE:

TONIGHT AT DINNER. HAZY RETINA IS RELATIVELY STABLE,
MORE IN FOCUS THAN OUT, HAVING A RARE MOMENT OF NOT
ACTUALLY THINKING ABOUT HIS FREAKINESS.

DAD:
Say, Hazy, I've been meaning to tell you . . . did you read about that horse in China that was born with two heads? Apparently they managed to remove one of the heads so it's now more or less a normal horse, although I guess its neck would probably be left at a strange angle.

HAZY stares at DAD, trying to work out which of the nine separate incredibly painful torture techniques he's so far thought of will hurt him the most.

DAD:
Still, I guess that nag won't be winning the Melbourne Cup any time soon, huh?

Cue animation sequence of kebab skewer through the eyeball. That would hurt the most. Even more than electric shocks to his groin . . . although, actually, now Hazy thinks about it . . .

MUM:
(worried, glancing at HAZY's blurred but murderous face): Harold . . . let's talk about something else, dear.

DAD:
I just thought the boy might find that interesting. HAZY slams down his fork.

HAZY: Why? Because it is yet another story of how there are freaky things in the world that maybe, on a good day, might be even freakier than your absolute freak of a son, Dad?

DAD: Oh, err . . . I only said it because I know you like horses, Hazy.

HAZY: I hate horses.

Scene ends in icy silence.

You think I'm being mean and rotten to my old man, but trust me, when you've had to sit through this same conversation 100 or 200 times, with ever more freaky, disgusting subjects for him to compare with me, you'd be contemplating skewers to the eyeballs as well.

I go to reach for another comic but instead grab a book that my father bought me in yet another misguided attempt to make me feel good about my ‘condition'. The book is called
I'm OK – You're OK
and was written years ago by some doctor, Thomas Harris. I can barely make heads or tails of it, apart from the fact that when we interact with other people, there are only four possible situations:

I'm not OK. You're OK.

I'm not OK. You're not OK.

I'm OK. You're not OK.

I'm OK. You're OK.

Options one and two pretty much cover my entire world, but that helps me how?

The book completely fails to mention freak-show children born out of focus, as far as I can tell, and once you rule out ‘I'm OK' under any scenario, how was old Dr Harris looking?

I sigh, drop the book and pick up another comic until eventually Mum launches another sneaky bedroom raid and drags me out for dinner with her and Dad.

CHAPTER 3
CARROT TACOS FOR
TABLE 47

I
should have spotted something was up from the moment she said we were going to The Vegie Bar. Halfway along Brunswick Street, Fitzroy – the coolest street in Melbourne – it's a restaurant that would normally be way too fashionable for the Retina family to consider visiting, but it's become our regular place to eat out. The reasons are simple. One, it is the only place we know of that serves carrot tacos, much loved by my dad as some kind of aftershock remedy to his son carrying the family visibility curse. Two, nobody looks sideways at somebody who is not actually in focus. The locals are either too cool to do a double-take, or they find somebody being out of focus pretty routine. Tonight we're at our favourite table, down the back, near the corridor leading to the toilets.

‘Did you have a go at reading that book I got you, Hazy?' says Dad.

‘Dad, I tried. I really did. But what I need is a book entitled,
You're Not OK, You're Not OK
. Or maybe just
Freak
.'

‘You are not a freak, Hazy Retina!' Mum weighs in. ‘I've told you a million times how much I hate that word. You're just you.'

‘Oh boy,' I say.

Dad says a little too loudly, ‘Guess what!'

‘What?' I reply. Mum looks worried.

‘The way I hear it, if you had a microscope and magnified every centimetre of a person's skin, you'd find millions of tiny, too-small-to-see organisms living there.'

‘Harold, dear –' says Mum.

‘Totally crazy-looking creatures too, with tentacles and scales and lots of legs, eating dead cells to survive.'

I can't keep the edge out of my voice. ‘This story had better not end with how I'm not as strange as I think, Dad.'

Dad looks uncomfortable. ‘All I'm saying is, umm, well, isn't that pretty incredible. Gee, I wonder when we're going to get served?'

He is saved by the arrival of Lurch, my favourite waiter. I call him ‘Lurch' after the servant in the Addams Family because he's got the same tall, gaunt, lumbering look. Lurch walks with a slowness that is completely at odds with The Vegie Bar's frantic kitchen and the other waiters and waitresses who hustle from table to table, delivering burritos, organic vegetarian pizzas and café lattes. He always seems to be on the verge of an important thought, but never quite seems to get there, instead frowning to himself and occasionally staring into the distance. It's as though Lurch is always holding himself back, somewhere deep inside. When he does talk, he rarely says more than one word at a time. And never looks sideways at my blur.

‘Ready?' Lurch asks.

‘Yes, we are,' says my dad, frowning at the menu one last time. ‘Can we order two serves of carrot tacos, please?'

Lurch stares at Dad for what feels like a full minute, eyebrows raised.

‘Fine,' he finally says, scribbling on his notepad. ‘And?'

‘I'll have pizza number seven, please,' says Mum. ‘And a glass of the house wine.'

Number seven is a simple cheese and tomato pizza, known as a Margharita. Our family doesn't have the most expansive tastes when it comes to eating.

‘And a cola,' I say.

‘Sure,' Lurch says, with one last scrawl. Then he looks very thoughtful, gazes at me for a long moment, and drifts off, possibly to eventually place the order.

‘Boy, he creeps me out,' my mother says.

‘I like him. How do you think he got to be so tall?'

‘Ate all his carrots when he was young,' says my father automatically.

‘Yeah, that really helped me.'

Dad is about to launch into some kind of lecture about attitude, I can tell, but suddenly Lurch is back, having somehow silently drifted quite swiftly to our table. He is holding Mum's glass of wine and my cola. As he places them on the table with a long-fingered hand at the end of a long, long arm, I look up and find him staring at me.

‘Gizmo,' he says. He's studying my T-shirt, which features a picture of Gizmo, a Hero said to have a thousand gadgets ready for use in any situation. ‘Faker.'

‘You don't believe in Gizmo?' I ask. ‘Why not?'

Lurch looks at me for a long time. ‘No evidence.'

This is the longest speech I have ever heard from Lurch.

‘Superheroes have to work in secrecy. They deliberately don't let themselves have their photo taken.'

‘That's rubbish, Hazy,' Dad snorts. ‘How many times do we have to go through this? You're saying that with the thousands of video cameras and other surveillance devices available in the world, superheroes have never been caught by one of them, even on the edge of the frame?'

I know it sounds crazy, but Dad doesn't understand that I can't
not
believe in Heroes. ‘What about the out-of-control satellite that was headed for New York recently? What made it explode as it entered the Earth's atmosphere?'

‘The US military must have fired a rocket or something.' Dad shrugs.

‘What if it was IncredoMan, ploughing to the heart of the satellite to blow it up?'

Everybody thought about this.

‘Crap,' says Lurch.

‘What about the avalanche that was all set to swallow Zurich? What melted it at the last second if it wasn't HotBabe?'

‘Evaporation,' Dad sniffs.

‘Global warming,' Mum suggests.

‘Sunspot,' says Lurch.

‘Fine! If you don't want to believe, you won't believe,' I say.

‘Don't get upset, dear. You're starting to fade,' Mum says.

‘All we're saying is that there's no photographic evidence of any superheroes,' Dad adds. ‘You can't deny that.'

‘Maybe they put some kind of invisibility bubble around themselves when they're working,' I say, but even as I say it, I know it sounds far-fetched.

Lurch gives me one last long look. ‘Lucky guess,' he says, and drifts slowly away.

CHAPTER 4
THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY
FOR THE BLURRED

W
e head back to our car, but here's where Mum and Dad pull a massive swifty on me. Full of carrot tacos and soft drink, I fall into the back seat of the car and take a few moments to realise we're not travelling the usual streets towards our place.

‘Where are we going?'

Mum and Dad are silent in the front seats. Dad turns the radio on and some old crooner's voice fills the car.

‘Dad? Mum? Where are we going?'

Finally Mum turns to say, ‘We're going to see somebody, dear.'

‘Who?' I want to know. ‘Friends?'

‘Hopefully they'll be friends. They're certainly good people for you to know.'