Doubting Thomas Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  DOUBTING

  THOMAS

  The truth is…

  Thomas has an embarrassing secret.

  Is it a rare and special gift or the worst thing

  that could happen to a boy?

  A story about best friends,

  surprising adventures and

  itchy nipples.

  Also by Morris Gleitzman

  The Other Facts of Life

  Second Childhood

  Two Weeks with the Queen

  Misery Guts

  Worry Warts

  Puppy Fat

  Blabber Mouth

  Sticky Beak

  Gift of the Gab

  Belly Flop

  Water Wings

  Wicked! (with Paul Jennings)

  Deadly! (with Paul Jennings)

  Bumface

  Adults Only

  Teacher’s Pet

  Toad Rage

  Toad Heaven

  Toad Away

  Boy Overboard

  Girl Underground

  Worm Story

  Once

  Aristotle’s Nostril

  MORRIS

  GLEITZMAN

  DOUBTING

  THOMAS

  Puffin Books

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

  250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  Toronto ON M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd

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  Penguin Ireland

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd

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  Penguin Group (NZ)

  67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd

  24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd,

  2006

  Text copyright © Creative Input Pty Ltd, 2006

  Illustrations copyright © Andrew Weldon, 2006

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this

  publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),

  without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of

  this book.

  Illustrations by Andrew Weldon

  www.puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74228-091-2

  For Tilly and Dexter

  1

  Thomas sat in the doctor’s waiting room, trying not to panic about his arm.

  It wasn’t looking good. A red stain was seeping through the bandage.

  Oops, thought Thomas. I think I used too much jam.

  Mum was always saying he put too much jam on his toast. Now he’d put too much on his arm as well.

  Lucky there weren’t any other patients in the waiting room.

  Or flies.

  Thomas gave the bandage a couple of prods. More jam leaked out.

  He glanced at Alisha to see if she’d noticed that his arm was looking less like a stab wound and more like an after-school snack.

  She was busy texting.

  That’s one good thing about big sisters, thought Thomas. They only notice their mobiles.

  ‘You might as well take that stupid bandage off,’ said Alisha, not looking up from her phone. ‘That fake injury’s not fooling me and it won’t fool the doctor.’

  Thomas sighed.

  That was the bad thing about big sisters. Even when they failed year ten science, they still thought they were medical experts.

  Thomas decided to try and sound indignant.

  ‘What do you mean, fake injury?’ he said. ‘I told you, I stabbed myself with the fruit knife trying to open a box of Cheezels. If you hadn’t got home from school when you did, I could be dead by now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alisha, frowning at the phone, thumbs moving fast. ‘Dead from a tomato sauce overdose.’

  Thomas sighed again.

  He should have known he couldn’t fool Alisha.

  ‘It’s jam,’ he muttered.

  She grinned, but didn’t look up.

  Thomas noticed a tingle of something in his chest that felt a little bit like gratitude.

  He had to admit he was pretty lucky to have a sister like Alisha. She probably knew all along it wasn’t a real stab wound, and had still come to the doctor’s with him when he’d asked her.

  I wish I’d been more generous, thought Thomas. I wish I’d bribed her with four jelly snakes instead of just two.

  Still grinning, Alisha leaned over and prodded his bandage. Then she licked her finger.

  ‘Yum,’ she said. ‘Raspberry.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ said Thomas, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Suddenly he wanted to tell Alisha the truth. The real reason he’d faked an arm wound. The real reason he needed to see the doctor.

  But he didn’t. It was too embarrassing.

  Plus he couldn’t speak right now. The feeling in his chest was much stronger, and it wasn’t gratitude. He was having another attack.

  Thomas closed his eyes and tried to stay calm. He tried to remember what number attack this was. The ninth today. Which made it one hundred and fifty-seven since the attacks began two weeks ago.

  After a few moments, as always, his chest went back to normal.

  Thomas opened his eyes.

  Alisha was still looking at him.

  ‘I was eleven once,’ she said. ‘I know what it’s like when your body starts going weird. You don’t have to be embarrassed. It happens to everyone.’

  No it doesn’t, thought Thomas. Not what I’ve got.

  ‘What is it you’re worried about?’ said Alisha.

  ‘Hair in strange places? Rude dreams? Funny-shaped willy?’

  Thomas didn’t know where to look.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Alisha quietly, ‘I can help.’

  Thomas stared at her.

  He’d never heard that concerned and understanding tone in her voice before. Not when she was speaking to him.

  ‘Come on,’ said Alisha gently. ‘What is it?’

  Thomas decided to tell her, even though he’d vowed never to tell a non-doctor anything private about himself ever again.

  Before he could say a word, there was a loud thumping on the waiting-room windows.

  Thomas looked up and his insides sank.

  It was Rocco Fusilli and the boys from school.

  They were pressing themselves against the glass and pulling faces at Thomas and rubbing their chests in a way they obviously thought was hilarious.

  Thomas pretended not to see them, and desperately hoped Alisha hadn’t seen them either.

  She had.

  ‘Cretins,’ she said, glaring at the boys. ‘That school should get the pest exterminator in.’ Then she looke
d at Thomas and her face softened. ‘I’m guessing, seeing those lower life forms out there, that you’re worried about your chest.’

  Thomas blushed. And nodded.

  ‘Itchy nipples,’ he mumbled.

  Alisha stared at him. Then she stared at the front of his t-shirt.

  ‘Itchy nipples,’ she said.

  Thomas could see she was struggling not to smile.

  It’s alright for you, he thought. You’re a girl. You’re allowed to have nipples.

  ‘How itchy?’ she asked.

  Thomas wanted to say very, very, very itchy, but he didn’t because a woman had just walked into the waiting room and was sitting down opposite them. He nudged Alisha to keep quiet.

  Alisha leaned towards him.

  She obviously wasn’t going to keep quiet.

  Thomas glanced anxiously at the woman and tried to look as though he didn’t know Alisha.

  ‘It’s normal,’ Alisha whispered to him. ‘I used to get it. When my boobs were growing.’

  Thomas felt ill.

  He wanted to point out to Alisha that (a) he was a boy (b) his boobs weren’t growing and (c) he hoped they’d stay that way. But he kept quiet because the woman was staring at him.

  Just like she will later on, thought Thomas miserably, if I turn into a girl.

  Alisha was glaring through the window at the boys again.

  ‘How do that lot know?’ she said.

  ‘I told them,’ admitted Thomas. ‘After soccer one day. To see if any of them had ever had it.’

  ‘You idiot,’ said Alisha, about three times louder than she needed to, in Thomas’s opinion. ‘Never tell cretins anything personal. They’ll use it to get you, everybody knows that.’

  Thomas nodded sadly.

  He knew that now. The day after he told Rocco and the team about his itchy nipples, the whole school was whispering and giggling about Thomas Gulliver turning into a girl.

  Alisha stood up.

  ‘I’m just going outside for a sec,’ she said.

  Oh no, thought Thomas.

  He could tell from her face what she was planning to do. Make Rocco Fusilli and the rest of the team wish they’d gone to soccer practice instead.

  ‘Don’t,’ pleaded Thomas. ‘You’ll only make it worse.’

  ‘I’m just going out to use my phone,’ said Alisha. ‘I can’t get good reception in here.’

  Thomas knew that wasn’t true. She’d been getting texts from her boyfriend Garth for the last ten minutes. Thomas had peeked and seen words like ‘lve’ and ‘sxy’.

  He stood up to try and stop Alisha but it was no good. His nipples were killing him again and he needed both hands to scratch them.

  Alisha went out.

  Thomas sat back down and after a few moments, as usual, the itch started to fade.

  He saw that the woman on the other side of the waiting room was peering out the window, watching Alisha yelling at the boys.

  ‘My sister’s just asking those boys to move because they’re affecting her phone reception,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s my fault, I made this appointment at a really bad time. Alisha always has a big backlog of texting to do after school.’

  The woman pretended to be reading a magazine.

  Thomas waited for yet another itch attack to fade, then took his arm bandage off. No point keeping it on now. He didn’t want the doctor distracted from his nipples.

  He stuffed the bandage into his pocket and sucked the jam off his arm. When he’d finished he realised the woman was looking at him again and had gone a bit pale.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Jam’s good for stab wounds.’

  It was a lie, but the woman seemed relieved by the explanation.

  Thomas’s nipples weren’t relieved by the explanation. They started itching again. Thomas couldn’t believe it. This was the fourth attack in the last five minutes. He’d never had so many this close together.

  He clenched his teeth and waited until the woman was distracted again by Alisha chasing Rocco Fusilli across the medical-centre car park. Then he had a quick scratch and tried to feel if he was growing bosoms. He didn’t seem to be, but you could never be sure when it came to medical problems involving puberty.

  A gruff male voice broke into his anxious thoughts.

  ‘Thomas Gulliver.’

  Thomas dropped his hands guiltily from his chest. The doctor was standing in the doorway of the surgery, beckoning to him.

  Thomas stood up.

  The moment had come. The moment he’d been dreading since he first began to suspect something awful and scary was happening to him, round about attack twenty-three.

  Thomas hoped the doctor had warm hands.

  2

  ‘Itchy nipples?’ said the doctor, frowning. ‘What exactly do you mean by itchy nipples?’

  Thomas tried to think how to say it using simpler words.

  He couldn’t.

  ‘My nipples,’ he said. ‘They keep getting itchy.’

  Dr Ling stood up behind his desk, removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and breathed on his fingers.

  ‘Take your t-shirt off,’ he said.

  Thomas took his t-shirt off.

  ‘How often does this itchiness happen?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Lots,’ said Thomas.

  Suddenly he was feeling even more anxious than when he walked in. Doctors didn’t actually operate in their surgeries, did they?

  ‘How many times a day?’ asked the doctor.

  Thomas decided to tell the truth, even though it might result in him being rushed to hospital and given a nipple transplant.

  ‘About ten,’ he said. ‘Or more.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said the doctor.

  Thomas felt encouraged.

  Dr Ling wasn’t ringing for an ambulance, or sterilising any scalpels, or backing away to the other side of the room.

  He peered at Thomas’s nipples and prodded them gently with a fingertip.

  ‘Does that hurt?’

  ‘No,’ said Thomas.

  The doctor’s finger was quite warm, which was a relief. And the doctor wasn’t killing himself with laughter either, which was also a relief.

  ‘How long has all this been going on?’

  ‘Two weeks,’ said Thomas.

  He decided not to add ‘and one day and nine hours and fifty-three minutes’ in case Dr Ling was one of those medical professionals who got stressed by too much information and had affairs, like on ER.

  ‘It’s probably just growing pains,’ said Thomas, desperately hoping the doctor would agree. ‘It’ll probably go once I’ve got more important things to think about, like hair in my pants.’

  Oops, that might have been too much information.

  Dr Ling looked like he was coping.

  ‘Let’s take a closer look,’ he said.

  He picked up a small metal cylinder from his desk. Thomas saw it was a type of medical torch with a magnifying glass at one end.

  Dr Ling switched it on and shone it onto Thomas’s nipples.

  Thomas was tempted to say ‘don’t bother’ because he’d spent hours in the bathroom in front of the mirror with Dad’s car torch. He hadn’t seen a single medical problem with either nipple, not even after he’d given them both a really good wash.

  But he kept quiet because Dr Ling was a trained professional and Mum always reckoned you should respect trained professionals. She was one herself and if people didn’t respect her at the beauty salon they sometimes found themselves having a very painful leg wax.

  ‘Healthy-looking areolae,’ said Dr Ling.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Thomas.

  He hoped healthy-looking was normal.

  ‘They don’t seem dry or swollen or inflamed,’ said Dr Ling. ‘Are your nipples itchy at the moment?’

  ‘No,’ said Thomas.

  He held his breath and tried to make them itchy. It didn’t work. He knew it wouldn’t. He had no control over them at all. These days they were like the Zambian wart bugs he�
��d read about in the National Geographic magazine in the waiting room.

  Foreign and mysterious and scary.

  ‘Do any other parts of your body get itchy?’ asked Dr Ling.

  Thomas thought about this.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not like my nipples.’

  ‘Have you been using a different kind of soap?’ asked the doctor. ‘Or a different washing powder on your clothes?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Thomas.

  Dr Ling switched off the torch and sat down at his desk.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me baffled.’

  Thomas was shocked. He’d never heard a trained professional say that before, not on ER or in Mum’s beauty salon.

  ‘Here’s what I think might be happening,’ said the doctor.

  Please, begged Thomas silently. Please don’t say I’m turning into a girl.

  ‘I think,’ said Dr Ling, ‘you’re experiencing some normal hormonal changes, and possibly a bit of stress. Can you think of anything that might be stressing you?’

  ‘Only my itchy nipples,’ said Thomas.

  Dr Ling nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Can I borrow your nipple torch?’ said Thomas. ‘So I can keep an eye on my nipples at home. Just in case.’

  Dr Ling didn’t seem to know what to say. He looked at Thomas uncomfortably, a bit like the woman in the waiting room had.

  ‘You don’t need to be worrying about that,’ said Dr Ling. ‘Anyway, it’s my, um, only one and I need it here in the surgery.’

  Thomas understood. It was probably a very expensive piece of medical equipment. Dr Ling wouldn’t like the idea of it being in a house where teenage boys often visited and stuck things up their noses to try and impress Alisha.

  Which was why Dr Ling had just lied.

  Thomas stared at the other identical nipple torch on the shelf behind Dr Ling’s head. He wondered if he should tell Dr Ling that he understood, so Dr Ling wouldn’t feel bad later on about not telling the truth.

  Suddenly Thomas stopped wondering and clutched his chest.

  ‘It’s happened again,’ said Thomas. ‘My nipples have gone itchy.’

  Dr Ling grabbed the torch and peered at Thomas’s chest. To Thomas’s relief and slight disappointment he still didn’t ring for an ambulance. He didn’t even give Thomas an x-ray or an ultrasound.