The Oddfits (The Oddfits Series Book 1) Read online

  The boy was clearly and unmistakably oddfitting. Oddfittingness emanated from his every pore; it enveloped him like a cloud; it hung on him and exceeded him as if it were a baggy, oversized T-shirt that came all the way down to his scrawny little ankles. The oddfittingness was so obvious that Yusuf was ashamed to admit that he hadn’t seen it until now. He was obviously out of practice.

  “Boy, would you like an ice cream?”

  The boy looked up at him with an expression that could only be described as mournful. “I don’t have enough.” He stretched out his palm and, lifting it to Yusuf’s gaze, showed him the tarnished pale gold of a five-cent coin.

  “Never mind, boy. Choose which flavour you want.”

  The boy’s face lit up with delight. After another bout of contemplation in front of the ice cream, he made his choice: yam. Yusuf piled a cone high with two purple scoops and handed it to the boy. In a matter of minutes, the boy had lapped and crunched the entire thing into oblivion.

  “Did you like it, boy?”

  The boy nodded, licking his fingers to make sure none of the sticky sweetness went to waste.

  “Secret recipe.” Yusuf tapped his chest proudly. “Came up with it myself. You see these flavours?” Yusuf said as he gestured at the case. “Yam, chocolate, sweet corn, red bean, strawberry, vanilla, durian . . . you can get these flavours from any ice cream shop in Singapore, right?”

  As the Tutti-Frutti was the first ice cream shop the boy had ever been to, he couldn’t say. He looked confused.

  “Well, you can,” Yusuf affirmed. “But this ice cream here . . . the ice cream in this shop, your Uncle Yusuf makes them all from recipes he came up with himself. That’s what you call me, okay, boy? ‘Uncle Yusuf.’”

  The boy nodded.

  That night, Yusuf wrote a letter to his colleagues from his former line of work—a past existence, a different life altogether, it seemed now—notifying them about the boy. He hadn’t written to them since he had retired. He dusted off the lid of the box where he kept his professional writing implements, took out a single sheet of red paper, a magnificent fountain pen, and a pot of peacock-blue ink, and proceeded to tell them of the news:

  Dear Former Colleagues,

  I hope this finds you well.

  Found: One Oddfit.

  Age: Estimated eight to nine years old.

  Will act when time is right.

  Regards, Yusuf

  From that day onwards, the boy became a regular visitor to the Tutti-Frutti, and a friendship developed between him and Yusuf. He came in almost every day, and in exchange for ice cream, the boy would help polish spoons, or put glasses away, or wipe the counters, or whatever other chore Yusuf needed help doing. Every now and then, Yusuf would present him with a special sundae—three scoops of any flavour, whipped cream, raspberry syrup, chocolate sprinkles, cookie wafers, a neon-red maraschino cherry, festooned with the brightly coloured paper parasols in which the boy seemed to take a particular delight.

  Despite the frequency of these visits, they hardly ever exchanged a word. The boy was naturally quiet, and gave only the most minimal of answers to any questions asked of him. Yusuf was also naturally quiet, and although he was mildly curious about many things concerning the boy, he also felt that there would be plenty of time for such things to be made known. Why did the boy’s parents let him roam unsupervised? Did they know he came here every day? Why wasn’t the boy in school? Yusuf wondered these things every now and then, but he was also a very patient man. There was a right time for everything. It simply wasn’t important to know these things now. Although the way his former colleagues had been pestering him since he’d told them about the boy, one would think that there was no time to lose. They had always been in a hurry. The latest letter he’d received had read, all in capital letters:

  INFORM BOY OF THE QUEST.

  WHY WASTE TIME?

  Yusuf had actually been so offended by this last one that instead of storing it in the bottom drawer of his desk where he had stored all the previous letters, he had crumpled this one up and thrown it into the rubbish bin.

  “‘Why waste time?’” Yusuf had repeated angrily. “I don’t waste time. I wait till the time is right. I always did.” Why did nobody else understand that important matters had to be handled deliberately and carefully, and therefore, slowly?

  Weeks turned into months—one month, then two; three months, then four. The boy still visited almost every day, and each visit was spent in happy silence and the briefest of conversations. After six months, Yusuf finally decided that the time was ripe. It was time to show the boy the Great Freezer. And then it would be time to write to his former colleagues, setting in motion the steps that needed to be taken to secure the boy’s safety and future.

  To celebrate the special day (the specialness of which the boy was still ignorant), Yusuf presented the boy with one of the signature Tutti-Frutti three-scoop sundaes, extra sprinkles, extra parasols. After the boy had licked the bowl clean and lovingly tucked the parasols away in his left hip pocket, as was his habit, Yusuf made his move.

  “Boy. Want to see where I keep the ice cream?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Follow me.”

  And the boy, full of ice cream and curiosity, followed Yusuf through the wall in the shop’s corner to the Great Freezer.

  The Great Freezer would come to be the stuff of legend in the More Known World, where news—fact, fiction, or combinations thereof—was necessarily circulated across the settlements and among the Territories by letters delivered hand to hand and by word of mouth. They would say that the exact dimensions of the Great Freezer were never known, that it had flummoxed all the dimension-measuring specialists, who could only come to one maddeningly imprecise conclusion: that the Great Freezer was, at the very least, magnificently expansive, if not downright preposterously gigantic. Possibly the biggest freezer ever to exist in the entire history of both the Known and More Known Worlds. It was also said that those who had discovered it had found it filled with ice cream—shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves and more shelves of it. And not just any ice cream—it was full of the same ice cream that had been appearing inexplicably every now and then all over the More Known World ever since the first settlements were established. A newcomer would find a small case of it left at his or her front door, or a crate of it would arrive at a provisions store in one of the more out-of-the-way Territories. Sometimes containers of it would appear underneath cots in a poorly supplied sick ward. This, it was said, was the source: the Great Freezer.

  What people said had been true, for the truth was so fantastic that it was impossible to exaggerate it. Anyone who would hear these tales in the future would have drooled over the prospect of standing where the boy was standing now. Of all this ice cream, the Known World had only sampled seven flavours—the seven sold in the Tutti-Frutti. In total, there were seven hundred and thirty-six different flavours of ice cream, all concocted by Yusuf himself and lovingly stored here, awaiting their unexpected and irregular distribution throughout the Territories. At this point in time, only three beings had ever seen the interior of the Great Freezer, and two of them were inside it right now.

  The boy was always quiet. This time, he was speechless.

  The freezer was, predictably enough, freezing. As the boy walked alongside Yusuf through the aisles of the Great Freezer, he marvelled at the white puffs of air coming from his mouth. He had never experienced cold weather before. Goosebumps sprung up all over his shivering arms and legs. Yet he felt the blood circulating inside him warmer, thicker, stronger.

  They stopped at the foot of a shaky metal ladder, and Yusuf clambered up its rungs slowly and carefully, retrieved two small tubs of ice cream, and even more slowly and carefully clambered back down. “Look, boy. This one is your favourite.” He pried open the lid of the one marked “Y” to reveal the lavender-hued contents. “See? Yam!”

  Yusuf set the tub down and opened the other, marked “SnR.” The co
lour from the tub bathed their faces in a soft orange, red, and purple light. “This flavour is Sunrise. A lot like Sunset, but backwards and with coffee beans added.”

  They continued on, and the boy saw and sometimes sampled a flavour here and there. There was Quiet (translucent but wondrously rich), Darkness (so intensely black it hurt his eyes), Rainbow (colourful and maddeningly elusive), Chocolate (just for familiarity’s sake), Toasty Toes (as implied, warm in the toes, no sensation in the mouth), and Yusuf’s Super-Duper Taste Sensation (hard to describe: bubbly, tangy, zippy). Just as they were about to exit the freezer, Yusuf stopped at one more shelf, opened one last tub, and held it out.

  “Boy, this is your Uncle Yusuf’s favourite: Stars. Try it.”

  The boy dipped a finger into the container, scooping out a small blob of velvety dark blue and, atop it, a tiny, twinkling, sparkling shard.

  As the ice cream melted in his mouth, the boy felt violets and chocolate and warm honeyed peaches and coconut milk and the spine-tingling sensation that the universe was a very, very vast place indeed. As he bit into the shard, it exploded and he felt his eyes and ears and throat aglow with firelight.

  “Wow,” the boy whispered. He was quite overcome.

  “Not bad, eh?” Yusuf grinned.

  “Do you make all this ice cream, Uncle Yusuf?”

  Yusuf grinned proudly and his eyes flashed. “Yes. All of it.”

  Once they were outside, Yusuf brushed the frost off the boy’s head and shoulders and told him, “Boy, that’s just a little bit of what’s to come. I’m sending word tonight. Don’t worry. Things are underway!”

  The boy, still dazzled from the experience of the Great Freezer, nodded. He had no idea what Uncle Yusuf was talking about. But it sounded very exciting.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Yusuf asked. He had never asked before. It hadn’t been important before now. “I’ll need to include it to send word.”

  The boy uttered something unintelligible.

  “Eh? Come again?”

  “Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd Floyd.”

  Yusuf frowned in perplexity. “Are you sure?”

  Murgatroyd nodded.

  “How do you spell that?”

  Murgatroyd stared at him in panic.

  “Oh, sorry. Uncle forgot you haven’t learned to spell. Never mind.” He gave the boy a pat on the head and chuckled. Don’t look so worried, boy. Uncle Yusuf will take care of everything.”

  Later that evening, after a simple dinner of curried vegetables and rice, Yusuf made his way to his desk. His sat down and took out a sheet of red paper. He stared at the blank red sheet for a while as he composed the letter in its entirety in his head. Then, dipping his pen nib in the inkwell, he began to write:

  Dear Former Colleagues,

  The time has come.

  Please be informed of one Oddfit, ready for retrieval.

  Name: Murgatroyd Floyd

  Location: Singapore

  Course of Action: We will be waiting at the corner of

  Yusuf put down the pen. He felt very tired all of a sudden. Positively sleepy. But this was very important business. It was time, and it was one of those rare occasions when it couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning. He made his way to the kitchen to make himself a cup of instant coffee. After he put the kettle on the stove, he sat at the kitchen table, leaned forward, and rested his head on his folded hands. Just for a little while. The water was almost boiling . . .

  Two days later, a little yellow-haired boy ran towards the Tutti-Frutti, crying and bleeding profusely from the nose. It was Murgatroyd Floyd, and he had just experienced his first day at school. To be fair, his schoolmates hadn’t intended to shed any blood, just rough him up a little. But in such situations, things get out of hand, and when the ang moh (as they called him) curled up into a ball on the ground for self-defence, what was meant to be a harmless foot tap in the face turned into a mighty, bloodletting kick. Being obedient, studious, timid children in all other respects, they promptly fled the scene, leaving their victim to pick himself up and run to the one place he felt most at home in the world: Uncle Yusuf’s Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream Shop.

  The interior was dark. The “closed” sign was hanging in the window. Murgatroyd tugged on the doors. They were locked. He peered inside. The stools and tables had been taken away. Big cardboard boxes were strewn here and there. The ice cream display case was lightless and empty. There was a handwritten sign pasted to the right of the front doors, which Murgatroyd peered at uncomprehendingly, for he didn’t know how to read:

  Dear Respected Loyal Customers,

  We regret to inform that Yusuf bin Hassim, owner of the Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream Shop, has passed away.

  Murgatroyd didn’t need to know the meaning of the words in order to know that something terrible had happened. He collapsed in front of the shop, sobbing uncontrollably. He thumped his fists on the concrete until they were sore and bruised. He let loose a cry of anguish and sorrow and pain—the soul-chilling, excruciating cries that only children are capable of giving shape and sound. And when there were no more tears left, no more strength left, nothing left but the bitter dullness of having had a good cry, he took a deep breath, picked himself up and trudged back to his home. His “real” home.

  CHAPTER 3

  Before Murgatroyd had experienced that terrible first day, it actually had long been his dream that he would one day have the privilege of going to school. In all of his nine years of existence, he had never even so much as stepped foot inside a classroom. He harboured the sneaking suspicion that, like other children his age, he should be wearing a uniform, toting around a knapsack and water bottle, and hanging around bus stops. School uniforms, school chums, knapsacks, and water bottles were conspicuously absent from his own life, he had no idea how to ride the bus, and he was never given money, so he couldn’t take the bus even if he wanted to.

  So disturbed had he been by this disparity between his life and that of other children that one morning, when he was eight, he had dared to break the cardinal rule his family lived by—“Children, especially you, should be seen and not heard.” He approached the dining table where his mother sat drinking a cup of tea and reading the newspaper.

  “Mum,” he had begun tentatively. “Why don’t I go to school like all the other children?”

  Mrs. Floyd had turned to him with a sleepy, weary sort of motion, and regarded her son with a sleepy, weary sort of gaze before answering him.

  “Because you’re too stupid, my darling,” she had said, ruffling his blonde hair in a cautiously affectionate-like way before turning her attention back to the news story she had been reading.

  And so Murgatroyd’s life had continued the way it had ever since he could remember. Every morning, after his parents left for work, he would tidy up the flat as he’d been taught, making the beds, cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping the floors, putting away the clean dishes and washing the dirty ones. For lunch, he would eat a slice of bread with butter or jam and then, more often than not, he would go wandering outside in the wide world of Singapore. He would go as far as his own little legs could carry him and as far as he dared to go. He meandered past community centres and schools and through endless HDB blocks. He strolled through public gardens and parks, and sometimes visited the giant lake near the flat. He often visited a sprawling building complex with gaily painted roofs topped with dragons and many rooms housing great golden statues of seated, serene men. All he carried on these excursions were the coins he would occasionally discover on the street and the key to let himself in and out of the flat.

  But now, at the age of nine years, four months, and three days, he had at long last attained a measure of intelligence deemed sufficient by his mother and father to begin his education. In honour of this momentous and glorious occasion, his father had even given him a haircut the night before, though it had turned out to be a very peculiar one. The fringe on the left side of his forehead remained long and had been combed straight so it nearly cov
ered his left eye, while the fringe on the right side of his forehead had been lopped so short that it jutted out of his scalp like a partial crew cut. While holding the electric razor, his father’s hand had slipped and accidentally shaved off all the hair in the middle of his crown in a neat, circular patch, leaving Murgatroyd looking very much like a juvenile monk who had been attacked by a blind sheep shearer. Murgatroyd’s father had also accidentally shaved off half of one eyebrow.

  “I look funny,” he said, staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  “Well, nothing can help that but plastic surgery later in life,” his father had answered cheerfully. He gave his son a manly slap on the back before accidentally sprinkling a liberal fistful of hair down the back of his son’s shirt.

  The next morning, his mother laid out a frilly pink girl’s blouse and woollen dress trousers for him to wear.

  “Where’s my uniform?” Murgatroyd asked.

  “We’ll get one for you later,” she said.

  “Can’t I just wear my regular clothes?” he asked.

  “Out of the question,” she replied. She opened her mouth as if to explain why, but instead gave a great yawn.

  Murgatroyd tried one more time. “It’s too hot to wear these trousers.”

  “Why are you always complaining?” his mother snapped. “If they’re too hot, just don’t wear any trousers at all.”

  Even without proper schooling, Murgatroyd knew that to go around in one’s underpants was simply unacceptable. With great reluctance, he got dressed.

  Murgatroyd’s first day at school was not actually the first day of the school year. School had been in session for seven weeks, and all the boys had already formed their particular friendships and cliques. But Mr. and Mrs. Floyd had managed to pull a few strings to get their son admitted a little late into the school year at Da Qiao Primary School.