‘Okay, we’ve gone off the scale in the uncool zone,’ I say, folding my arms.
‘It’s not about being cool,’ Mum says. ‘It’s about you being safe.’
I gag. ‘I might need another mask to cover the rest of my face.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ Mum says. ‘It’s not like anyone will be out there to see you.’
‘I don’t want to take that risk.’
Mum looks me in the eye. ‘Wear it or else.’
‘Fine . . .’
I follow Mum into the storeroom where we keep all our supplies. Kitchai’s building a fort with the toilet paper packets. I get flashbacks to all those times when Mum made us buy trolley loads full of toilet paper. I thought it was embarrassing back then. But when people started panic-buying toilet paper and supermarkets began to sell out, Mum looked like a genius. If I had a dollar for every time Mum said, ‘I told you so’ to us, I would have a thousand bucks, which would be enough for a four-pack of toilet paper on eBay right now.
‘Kitchai, stop doing that,’ Mum says. ‘We have to make this toilet paper last.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I did the calculations for a maths lesson. We have enough to last us until 2050.’
Mum opens her mouth wide. ‘You told the whole world that we have all of this toilet paper?’
‘Not the whole world, just my maths class . . . and maybe their families. Relax, Mum, nobody knows how much we actually have,’ I say. ‘Well, except for Rajiv who spotted it before lockdown, but he won’t say anything.’ I lean in to her. ‘We can keep him quiet with a few rolls.’
Mum sighs. ‘Just don’t tell anybody else about our stock,’ she says. ‘I don’t want people thinking we are hoarders.’
‘Mum, you were hoarding stuff before it was a thing,’ Kitchai says, sitting on his toilet paper throne.
‘No, I’m a bargain hunter,’ Mum says, fuming. ‘Thanks to those hoarders, toilet paper will never be half price again!’ She storms out of the storeroom.
At 5pm, we’re all set for tonight’s delivery onslaught. The iPad is beeping but the restaurant phone hasn’t rung once for home delivery.
‘Maybe nobody knows about our delivery service,’ I say. ‘Who is going to see our blackboard when everyone’s at home?’
‘I put it on our Facebook page too,’ Mum says. ‘It’s fine, boys. It’s probably for the b–’
The phone rings and it’s Mr Winfree. ‘Hello!’ he booms. ‘I’d like to order some takeaway, please.’
I groan. It’s bad enough that my English teacher visits my place for Thai food, now I have to go to his place. A few more phone orders come through after Mr Winfree and I have four orders in my box, ready to go. Mum sends a route map to my phone. She straps my helmet on tightly. ‘Use your lights at all times.’
I give her the thumbs up.
Kitchai is sulking behind the counter. ‘I wish I could come with you.’
‘We need you to deal with the turtles on wheels,’ Mum says.
I cycle out of the restaurant, getting used to the heavy box on my back. I don’t know how those delivery riders do it. They won’t be getting iso-fat anytime soon. I pedal down to Mr Winfree’s place first. I take his order to the mat, where I’m greeted by one of his teddies, Grumpy Bear, wearing his own face mask. He’s sitting on an envelope with a post-it note. ‘Thought you might need some more help with your spelling. From Mr Winfree.’
I open the envelope and it’s a stack of worksheets. Trust sir to save on postage. ‘Thanks, Grumpy. Tell sir that if he wants extra curry puffs, he’d better stop with the extra homework.’
I head to the next house, Mrs Jenkins. I place the order at the front door and I’m walking away when the door opens. ‘Oh, it’s just the Thai food . . .’
I turn around. ‘You were expecting something else?’ I say.
‘Oh no, we did order this for dinner,’ Mrs Jenkins says. She sounds old, judging from her voice through the screen door. ‘But we’ve been expecting our supermarket order for three days now, and it still hasn’t arrived yet.’
‘Did you need more food?’ I say. I’m thinking I could always ask Dad to make some extra fried rice.
‘We just need toilet paper,’ Mrs Jenkins says. ‘We only buy it when we need it, and now it’s all sold out.’
‘Oh . . . are you completely out?’
‘We’re down to our last roll.’
I gulp. ‘I hope that the supermarket delivery comes soon,’ I say, getting back on my bike. I cycle to the next home and I can’t help asking the next customer, a guy named Fran Bizzarri, ‘Hey, Fran,’ I say from a distance when he comes to his door. ‘Do you need any toilet paper?’
‘We’re down to our last three rolls,’ he says. ‘And there’s no toilet paper coming for days at the shops . . .’
‘Hmmm, okay.’ I drop off the last food order at an apartment before dashing back home.
Mum comes up to me. ‘You have another two orders,’ she says. ‘Are you okay to go?’
I nod. ‘Yep! Just need one more thing . . .’
I duck into the storeroom and grab a stack of toilet paper. Mum stops me in my tracks. ‘What are you doing?’
‘One of the customers needed toilet paper,’ I say.
‘Was it your teacher?’ Kitchai says.
‘No, it was someone else.’
‘Why were you talking to customers?’ Mum says.
‘I accidently talked to her,’ I say.
‘How can you accidently . . .’
‘I’m just gonna give Mrs Jenkins a few rolls on the way to these orders,’ I say.
Mum snatches the toilet paper from me. ‘You’re mad,’ she says. ‘This is our toilet paper.’
‘Mum, we have enough . . .’
‘You say that now,’ Mum says. ‘But when you give it away to everybody, we’ll have none . . .’
‘Mum, we can give everyone in Fairfield a roll and still have some left,’ I say. ‘People out there need it more than us.’
Dad steps out of the kitchen. ‘What’s going on here?’
I tell Dad about Mrs Jenkins and his face sags. ‘That poor lady!’
Mum barges in between us. ‘No, this is our toilet paper.’
‘Darling, Thai-riffic! is an essential service,’ Dad says. ‘If people need toilet paper, then we should give it away with our food . . .’ He turns to us with a smirk. ‘Not that the curries are bad or anything.’
I pretend to yawn. ‘Yeah, I made that joke years ago.’
Dad gazes into Mum’s eyes. ‘Remember where we came from . . . we need to be generous with what we have.’
I turn to Mum. ‘How about this? One free toilet roll with every order over twenty bucks? People will be ordering heaps more food –’
‘No,’ she says.
‘Okay, maybe thirty bucks then . . .?’
She raises her hand and lays it on my arm. ‘You’re right, Lengy. I was just being selfish. Maybe I am one of those silly hoarders after all.’
I finish putting the orders into my thermal box, along with the toilet rolls. Then I give Mum a big hug. ‘No way you’re a hoarder, Mum, you’re just very smart. You were saving up all that toilet paper so we could be kind to others . . .’
Mum smiles. ‘I guess kindness is a necessity these days. Super-essential.’
I drop off the food orders, each with a toilet paper roll, then ride to Fran’s place to drop off a roll before finishing up at Mrs Jenkins’ house. I lay down two toilet paper rolls at the doormat and ring the bell. I head down the path and I’m about to open the front gate to let myself out, when I hear a voice.
‘Thank you so much, Thai-riffic!’ Mrs Jenkins cries out.
I hop on my bike and ride home with a giant smile across my face, zooming down the street as if I have a cape on my back.
Every day after school, Aleks and I buy a slushie at the service station. Sometimes we grab two large slushies if it’s really hot. Today Aleks fills a tray with four slushies, each one
with a different flavour. I don’t blame him. It’s an absolute scorcher out there.
We walk across the road to a nearby park and plant ourselves on a bench in the shade.
Aleks plops his tray on his lap. ‘We are living in the golden age of slushies,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’ I say, sipping on my one slushie.
‘These large slushies are only a dollar each,’ Aleks says. ‘That’s cheaper than water.’
‘Yeah, that’s true.’
Aleks goes in for a big slurp through his straw. ‘How many slushies can you drink in a row?’
I shrug. ‘Maybe three?’
‘I could slam down ten, easy.’ Aleks finishes his first slushie and moves onto the next one.
‘Aren’t you worried about getting a brain freeze?’ I ask.
‘I never get those,’ Aleks says. ‘You’re just soft.’
‘Soft?’ I say. ‘You just never have a brain freeze because your head is empty.’
‘Mate, you can’t get a brain freeze when it’s like a million degrees outside.’ Alek stirs his slushie up until it becomes a liquid and sculls the rest of his second drink. ‘You’re the softest kid in Year Seven, no, in our whole school.’
‘Yeah, well I dare you to drink ten slushies right now.’ I pull out a twenty dollar note from my wallet. It’s two weeks’ pocket money but it’ll be worth it to see Aleks turn blue. ‘If you get a brain freeze, then you owe me lunch for a week.’
Aleks points at me. ‘And if I drink them all without getting one, you have to pour a whole slushie down your shorts.’
I shake his sweaty hand. ‘Deal. I’ll get six more while you keep going with the rest of your slushies. I’m trusting you not to chuck any of it out.’
Aleks holds his hand to his chest. ‘Every drop is precious and delicious.’
I rush over to the service station to get six large slushies. I make sure I get the most slushie possible in each cup by putting the dome lids on first, then filling them up. The guy behind the counter gives me a suss look. I juggle the six large slushies in a tray built for four drinks, wedging two cups in the middle.
The guy at the counter raises an eyebrow. ‘Somebody’s thirsty.’
‘Um, it’s for my friends,’ I say.
Well, one silly friend. I pay for the slushies and hurry back to the park.
Aleks is onto his fourth slushie and whistles. ‘Hurry up, Charlie, I haven’t got all day.’
I grin back at him. ‘I can’t wait to take a photo of your brain-freeze face,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be the best meme.’
‘We’ll see who’s laughing when I’m done,’ Aleks says, grabbing the two slushies from the middle of the tray.
I put the tray down and grab my own slushie, which is now sitting in a sad puddle. I pick it up and scoop the icy bits into my mouth.
Aleks smashes the two slushies as if they were the first ones he’s had today. Then he picks up another two and sucks them dry.
‘This is going to be easy peasy,’ he says through his pale stained lips.
It’s not long before he’s down to his final slushie – number ten! I swallow the last chunk of ice in my one-and-only, feeling it slide down my throat.
Aleks is a freak of nature. Now I’ll have to walk home with ice down my bum. At least I’ll be cool for a few seconds, but it’ll be sticky in all the worst ways.
Alek finishes his last slushie with a big noisy suck on the straw. ‘Hope you like having slushie undi –’
He stops speaking mid-sentence.
I watch his frozen face. ‘Stop mucking around.’
But Aleks doesn’t move. I stare at his face. It’s a total blank. It’s the same look he gives our teacher, Mrs Fry, when she asks him a maths question. I wave my arms in front of him.
‘Seriously man, you win.’ I snap my fingers. I clap my hands. ‘Aleks?’ I shout. I take a few photos of him on my phone. He’s not even fazed by the camera’s flash.
I tap his shoulders, then I shake them, trying to wake him up. But he is as stiff as cheese on three-day-old pizza.
A woman pushing a pram piled up with shopping bags comes over, dodging some of the empty slushie cups on the footpath. ‘Is your friend alright?’
‘Yeah . . .’ I say. ‘He’s just practising to be a mime.’
‘Ah, okay,’ she says. ‘He’s really good.’
‘Yes, he wants to go pro someday.’
The woman drops some coins into the slushie cup that Aleks is holding.
‘Wow. I can barely hear him breathe,’ she says, pushing the pram away down the path.
As soon as she’s out of sight, I switch back into panic mode. I drag Aleks onto the grass, hoping the sun will thaw or even cook him. But he just lies there looking peaceful – like he’s in a coffin.
I sit next to him and bury my head in my hands. What have I done? Aleks was supposed to have ice-cold insides. He could slurp icy drinks all year round, even when it was freezing cold in winter. The only thing that would stop his hand snapping off was his . . .
I rush over to the service station and grab all the meat pies I can find in the oven. The guy behind the counter gives me a look like I’m cuckoo, but I just quickly pay for the pies and run back to Aleks. I rip open the pie packet and pry Aleks’s mouth open, forcing the pie in. The pastry crust breaks and beefy lava slides down his throat. Aleks sits up and coughs some of the pie out. ‘Whoa! That is so hot!’
‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ I ask.
‘I was finishing off the tenth slushie in the brain freeze challenge,’ Aleks says, stretching out. ‘Did I doze off or something? I feel wrecked.’
I scratch the back of my neck. ‘You’ve been in a slushie coma and you needed to lie down.’
‘Ah, so it wasn’t a brain freeze.’
‘More like a whole body freeze,’ I say. ‘You owe me lunch.’
‘You for real?’ Aleks says.
I pull out my phone and Aleks checks out the photos I took of him.
‘Wow. Fine, you win,’ Aleks says. ‘Lunch is on me for the whole week.’ Aleks takes another bite of his meat pie. ‘I could go another one of these.’
I show him my stash of pies. ‘I have six more.’
Aleks rips open another packet and tears into his second pie. ‘How many meat pies could you eat in a row?’ Aleks says. ‘I could do five easy.’
I shake my head. ‘Your body might be moving, but your brain is still frozen.’
‘What’s the one thing that you miss about the city?’
I ask Mum this question as I chomp on my cheeseburger at McDonald’s. We’re halfway through our shopping holiday in Braden. Normally, going to the shops wouldn’t be an adventure. But when you live in a small country town like Megulla, and the nearest big town is two hours away, it really does feel like a getaway. Mum and I do as much stuff as we can and pretend that we live in the city again.
As much as I love visiting my favourite video game store and eating McDonald’s, I’m used to living in Megulla now. I have a few good friends, like Isaac, and I love being the only Asian kid at school (and the whole town). But it’s different for Mum. Whenever I go visit my cousins in what country folk call the ‘big smoke’, you can tell that she wants to stay and breathe it all in.
While I still miss the city, Mum misses it way more. I look at her face as she sips her thickshake, thinking about my question. I’m expecting her to list a whole bunch of things like dressing up and trendy pop-up restaurants – the kind of stuff that she sees all her friends posting about on social media.
‘I miss the chocolates,’ she says.
I roll my eyes. ‘Really?’
Mum leans in. ‘I’m talking about real chocolates, the boutique or artisan brands like Hola or Cocca Black in the city.’
I shrug. ‘So, you mean the expensive kind?’ I say in a deep voice.
‘Is that your best impression of your father?’ Mum says.
I shake my head. ‘How about this?’ I p
ut on a deeper voice. ‘Thao, stop buying too many video games.’
Mum laughs. ‘You would have fooled me on the phone.’
I wipe my hands on a napkin. ‘But Dad and I buy you chocolates for your birthday every year.’
‘I do appreciate them, darling,’ she whispers. ‘Even if they’re always melted.’
‘Melted?’ I say. ‘How can you tell? We put them in the fridge before we give them to you.’
‘I know. They’re just not the same when they’ve been melted first.’ Mum rolls up her wrapper into a ball.
‘Oh . . .’ I feel like trash, like that wrapped up ball of greasy burger wrapping.
I always thought Mum was happy with her chocolate presents, but she was just being nice. You can’t blame Dad and me. We buy the chocolates in Braden and they just don’t survive the mid-summer heat on the way home, even with the air con on full blast.
After McDonald’s, I go to Vooks Game Store and check out the latest Nintendo games on the shelves, but when I look at the cases, all I see are melting bars of chocolate. Then I visit the Candy Store to grab a giant bag of lollies to share with Isaac at school on Monday. I wonder if candy melts? Even if it did, I’d still eat it. Then again, maybe I could tell the difference too, like Mum does with chocolates.
On the long drive home, Mum turns to me. ‘Are you okay, Thao?’
‘I’ve got a headache,’ I lie, with my head against the car’s window. I feel like a melted chocolate. Every year on her birthday, does Mum eat her present in front of us and dream about those special chocolates from the city? Has that been her real birthday wish?
Well, this year, it’s going to be different.
I’m not going to give Mum a box of melted chocolates.
On Monday morning, when I see Isaac at school, I tell him about my dilemma with Mum’s present. Isaac’s a good listener, especially when you feed him lollies.
He grabs a hard candy ball. ‘Wait, so your mum can tell if chocolates have been melted?’ he says.
I nod. ‘Apparently, there’s like a white layer around the chocolate,’ I say. ‘I did a few experiments with some left-over chocolates last night and she’s right.’
‘Gee, your mum is a choc-nut,’ Isaac says.
Brain Freeze Page 12
