They slipped into the boardroom, one at a time, and closed the shutters so that Abi and Rhamie would not find them. Then they discussed what a bad basketball player Abi was, although, they conceded, now and again Rhamie was an excellent shooter.
Later, they moved on to the Night Owl Pub, where Abi and Rhamie found them and said, “What’s going on?” Toni explained, with a strong but occasionally trembling voice, that she and Tabitha felt betrayed. Abi and Rhamie were shocked, and it turned out it was all a misunderstanding! Because Abi had sent an e-mail around about the A-grade team, inviting Tabitha and Toni to join too. But Tabitha and Toni had both deleted the message, thinking it was that virus going around. So it was nobody’s fault. They all congratulated each other on being such good basketball players, and Toni cried.
Marbie herself was not on the team, so she could be objective, and they thanked her for that, once the dispute was resolved. “You’re so tall,” said Rhamie, as usual. “You’d make a great keeper!” But the others just laughed because Marbie always let the ball slip through her fingers.
At that, Marbie put down her frothy Irish ale and said, “I don’t feel so good.”
“That’s because you had wine before beer,” declared Abi, and then she chanted: “Wine before beer, and you’ll feel queer; beer before wine, and you’ll feel fine.”
“Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true,” said Rhamie, “it rhymes.”
Then Abi and Rhamie remembered their husbands, gathered their handbags, and made a joke or two about basketball.
A moment after they had gone, Marbie gasped with realization, and whispered to the others, “How did Abi know I had wine before beer?” Tabitha and Toni also gasped, for they had kept their meeting in the small boardroom a secret.
After they had analyzed this for a while, Tabitha and Toni had to run to their step class, and Marbie thoughtfully finished her frothy Irish ale. She was just about to pick up her own handbag, so she could get the express train home, when two hairy hands fell on her shoulders.
Remember me?
I’m writing from the 73 bus. There’s a huge, sweaty guy beside me, and his big butt takes up more room on the seat than it deserves. It’s Wednesday, 2 p.m., and I should be at work but I’m not.
Here’s what happened.
Last night, I went to the Night Owl with the girls from work. The girls left—Rhamie and Abigail to their husbands, Tabitha and Toni to step class. I had my drink to finish, so there I sat, and behind me? Leaning over my shoulder, breathing beer into my cheek, two hairy hands on my shoulders?
The aeronautical engineer.
I hadn’t seen him for two weeks, at least. Not since he gave me his visions. I’d almost forgotten him.
But there he was in the Night Owl Pub.
“Hello,” he said, leaning over me, a murmur of a smile around his beery lips.
“I have a suggestion,” he said.
“Not tennis,” I said.
He pretended to look shocked. He mimed a tennis ball hitting him in the stomach, but recovered quickly, and the smile was less a murmur, more a shout.
“All right,” he agreed, “not tennis. I had this idea, is all.”
Then he leaned closer and spoke into my ear: “Come to my house, tomorrow at 3, take the 73 bus, it stops outside my door.” He told me his address. “And you know what we’ll do?” he whispered.
“What?” I whispered back.
Then he winked, spun on his heel, and disappeared.
Here’s the amazing thing. I took the 73 bus, rode through icy streets, saw his house approach, reached my hand to the STOP REQUEST button—and stopped.
I’m not going there. I’m on my way home now, to fix this.
Yours,
Perplexed yet Determined
It was Wednesday, they had made cheese soufflé in Food Technology, and Listen was hopeful. The bell had rung for recess, and they had not even washed up! The other girls groaned, while Listen quietly filled her sink with soapy warm water.
“Never mind, girls!” cried the teacher generously. “Out you all go! I’ll clean this up later!”
Listen pretended not to hear, and concentrated on the cheese chunks in the grater.
“Come on, Listen, I’m sure that’s clean,” called the teacher, ushering the last girls from the room. “Go along and get some fresh air!”
Outside the classroom, Listen checked her watch. It was 10:46. There were still fourteen minutes to fill. She leaned over, untied her shoelaces and retied them, went to the end of the corridor and retied them again. Then she took the long route to the bathrooms, around the back of the building, always hurrying, sighing and checking her watch, so that if anybody saw her she was just rushing off to meet her friends.
In the bathroom, she washed each hand with soap, and dried them at the heaters with great care. Now it was 10:51. There were still nine minutes. She hesitated outside the bathrooms, looking both ways along the empty balcony. One direction would take her into the admin office, where she could pretend she had lost something and fill in a lost-property form. The other took her to the Grade Seven classrooms, where they were not supposed to be. Her eyes wandered the locked doors of 7A, 7B, 7C, and 7D, and then stopped at the next door along. She had never noticed that door before.
It was a darker gray than the other doors and did not have a number or letter. As she watched, it was slowly opening. A school handyman was emerging, his arms stretched wide around a large cardboard box. Once out of the room, he looked both ways, kicked the door closed behind him, and grunted. Then he disappeared down the fire escape. She did not even make a decision. She just strode along the balcony, opened the gray door, and walked inside.
It was cramped, dark, and smelled like mushrooms. She could see the shadowy shapes of boxes stacked precariously, shovels, rakes, and shelves lined with aerosol cans. Also, against the far wall, a tiny bulb illuminated a panel of switches. Fuse box, she thought, and felt pleased with herself. Growing up in a campervan, she had learned how to change fuses, tires, and halogen lights. She had helped her dad install a dishwasher once.
She had a moment of pleasure at that thought, and then the pleasure faded like a pilot light burning out. What if the handyman came back? What reason could she give for being here? She could be practicing her Tae Kwon Do. She could say that she had a grading right after recess, and this was the only place to practice.
For authenticity, she tried a spinning hook kick. As she did, something happened in her mind: I can’t even make friends with the other kids at Tae Kwon Do. They were funny, some of the other kids, and she was always careful not to laugh. She planned to wait until she contributed something of her own before she laughed. But when she thought of funny things she worried, Is it funny enough? By the time she had decided it was, the conversation had moved on. So she never said a word.
I am a lost cause. She swiveled and tripped on a tangle of cords. She fell against the fuse box and slid to the ground with a sound like someone flicking through playing cards. She stood back up in a panic and flashed her eyes over the fuses. Some said OFF and some said ON—which ones had she knocked?
They should probably all be ON. She flicked them all, breathing hard, and backed out of the utility room, closing the door behind her.
There was nobody on the balcony. There were distant sounds of girls laughing and chatting on the lawn. Somewhere, teachers were also chatting, in deeper, more sardonic voices. She used up the last five minutes of recess standing at the bag rack outside 7B, and leafing through the contents of her schoolbag.
Walking home from school that day, hunched against the pale cold sky and the thin waves of rain, Listen thought: Don’t worry, there are only two more days until the end of the week. Also she thought: Don’t worry, soon I’ll find a new group to join.
As she stepped around the edges of muddy puddles, Listen tried once again to go through the different groups of girls in her grade, but instead found herself remembering a particular day
from a weekend a few years back. On that day, she and her dad had taken a ferry ride on the harbor. Alongside a ferry wharf she had seen a large yellow sign, which announced, in black letters: CAUTION: SUBMARINE CABLES.
Reading the sign, she had shivered with delight. There was a submarine right beneath her! She imagined it must be slender and silver, and inside, a group of harried sailors hunched over long, low tables, sipping black coffee and studying maps. The submarine would be tethered to the seafloor with a cable that might trip you up.
Later, her dad explained that submarine just meant “below water.” The sign was saying CAUTION: UNDERWATER CABLES.
As she stepped up onto the apartment porch, Listen thought, There is nothing magic in the world. There are no flying motorbikes, just airplanes. There are no shooting stars, just satellites. There are no submarines, just underwater cables. There are no eternal pacts.
Then, as she found her key in her pocket, she thought, I don’t think I can make it to the end of the week.
Inside the apartment door, she had to stop as the weight of her schoolbag had become too much for her shoulder. There was a noise down the hall. “Hello!” called Marbie’s voice. “Is that Listen or a burglar?”
Marbie was sitting at the kitchen table, and the radiator buzzed at her feet. The room was so warm it was like a velvet hug. “It’s my beautiful Listen!” cried Marbie, leaping to her feet and throwing her arms into the air. “Look, I’ve got you a welcome afternoon tea!” She swept her arms back and forth across the table, which was set with a lace cloth, a chocolate bar arranged in pieces on a saucer, wedges of orange in a bowl, and a steaming cherry pie.
“Wow,” said Listen, dropping her schoolbag. “How come you’re not at work?”
“Do you think you could take the rest of the week off school?” said Marbie, ignoring the question and pushing the saucer of chocolate closer to Listen. “I’m about to call Nathaniel and see if he can close the Banana Bar. Because guess what? I heard on the news that it’s snowing in the Blue Mountains! So I’ve arranged the deluxe package for the three of us at the Hydro Majestic. There’ll be flowers and chocolates on arrival! And there are fireplaces in the rooms! And we can toboggan down gentle slopes, and then we’ll come inside for spa baths, and hot chocolate, and marshmallows, and we’ll all play Pictionary or whatever game you like. What do you think? Would you like to take the rest of the week off school? I’ll write a note and say you’ve got a brain tumor!”
Listen laughed so hard she started crying.
On the train home from the mountains, while Listen was asleep, Marbie and Nathaniel talked again about how remote she was. They decided it was her age. This was the sullen phase, and next it would be drugs and vandalism.
“I thought she might skip adolescence,” Nathaniel reflected.
A lot of things were changing in her life, they realized: new school, new home, new family, new way of spending Friday nights. It was not surprising that she was retreating into such a busy social life with her friends.
Marbie said she thought the best approach was to be as loving as possible. They should praise her constantly. Nathaniel agreed.
The following week, Listen arrived at school with a snow burn, and found that the Grade Seven classrooms had been flooded. Everyone was as excited as if it was a holiday, and they had to take their lessons in the Science labs or even outside on the lawn. The teachers laid plastic sheets on the grass to stop them getting chills in their kidneys.
She sat in the school library at lunchtime, and watched as a fat teacher wearing a caftan and spectacles rolled out a poster for the wall. A lot of the teachers at this school wore spectacles, she realized. Was it just Clareville Academy or was it junior high? Did it cause some kind of eyesight problem for adults?
A group of Grade Seven girls stopped outside the library door. Listen slipped down in her seat so they would not see her. One of them was tipping out another one’s pencil case; one was making a song out of her timetable; one was writing on another one’s schoolbag; one was complaining that she had forgotten a textbook. None of them seemed to be listening to any of the others. All of them were shouting. A librarian sighed and closed the door.
It was a mystery to Listen: Why could she not just walk out the door and shout along with the other girls? Why could she not relax, the way she did when she was with the Zings? Just last Friday, at the Zing dining table, she had told them the topic for her science assignment. “We have to choose two creatures of the sea,” she recited. “They may be mythical creatures, and they need not be fish.”
“They need not be fish,” murmured Grandma Zing, impressed.
“Ocean bream and rainbow trout,” suggested Grandpa Zing at once.
“Mullet and mermaids,” tried Grandma Zing.
“Blowfish and stingrays,” said Listen’s dad.
“Fish and chips!” Cassie giggled.
“Blue-eyed cod and…” Radcliffe clicked his fingers a couple of times.
“Does it have to be creatures of the sea?” said Fancy, looking dreamy. “Can’t it be, I don’t know, dragons and dodo birds?”
“I don’t think so,” Listen said apologetically. “It’s for our Ocean unit.”
It was just as if she lived in parallel universes. In one, with the Zings, she said whatever she liked, and her words became part of a stream of words, and they praised her and found her fascinating. In the other, she was at school or at Tae Kwon Do, and she never said a word.
The first universe must never find out about the second. The Zings would look at her in a completely different way. Their universe would disappear.
Nathaniel reached under the driver’s seat to adjust it back. “You must be shorter than you look,” he commented to Marbie, who was in the passenger seat beside him.
They were driving home after a Zing Family Secret Meeting.
“How was the meeting?” said Listen from the backseat.
“Okay,” said Nathaniel. “How was your movie with Cassie?”
“Fine,” agreed Listen. Passing headlights striped all three in turn.
There was silence in the car, except for the tching of the indicator as they waited in a right-turn lane.
“How’s school anyway, Listen?” Marbie said.
“Fine.”
Nathaniel and Marbie each sighed slightly.
“Looking forward to the holidays?” Marbie tried next.
“Yep,” said Listen. “Oh, did I tell you I’m going to a party at Sia’s place tomorrow night? Is that okay?”
“Of course!”
“You’ve got such a busy social life, Listen,” Marbie said. “You’re a lot cooler than I was at school.”
“Her friends have always loved her,” Nathaniel confirmed. “How is Sia anyway, Listen?”
“Fine.”
Marbie and Nathaniel winced. There was silence from the backseat.
Then she surprised them, as Nathaniel took the corner, by asking, “Marbie, can you tell your swimming-pool story again?”
“Well,” said Marbie at once. “I was five years old, and this was a hot summer day. I was playing on the swing that Dad had hooked up for us, as a good-bye present when he left to go to Ireland, you know, the swing that hangs from the big gum tree down in the back of the yard? So, I was swinging back and forth trying to pick up a breeze to cool me down, so higher and higher I swung, and the higher I went the more I could see: Mummy’s flower beds, our old trampoline, the tops of small trees, the tops of taller trees, and the roof of the garden shed. Higher and higher I swung until I could even see the roof of our own house, and then of course, I started to see the neighborhood—the empty school yard of Bellbird Junior High next door, their basketball court and its goalposts, their tennis courts, their old stone buildings, the sloping lawn at the back of the school, how it falls into scrub and forest, and then, with one final swing of my knees, I went higher than I ever had before. And that’s when I saw the spark of something blue in the bush there.
“That ni
ght, I waited until everyone was asleep, and I climbed out of my bedroom window, and ran down to the back of our house. I found a gap in the fence between our place and the school, and I ran down into the bush, and there were rocks and dried grass that hurt my feet, but I didn’t notice because I wanted to find out what it was. And what it was, of course, was the school’s new swimming pool. I was hot and dirty from running through the bush so I jumped in and swam around a bit. Then I went home and went to bed.”
“And then for the rest of that summer,” prompted Listen sleepily.
“And then for the rest of that summer, every night, after midnight, I would slip through the gap in the fence and go for a swim in the pool. I thought it was my own secret pool. Of course, after a couple of years I stopped being able to fit through the gap in the fence, which is why—”
She turned around to the backseat, but Listen was fast asleep.
It was exhausting having a secret.
Saturday night, Listen sat shivering by the Bellbird Junior High swimming pool. The pool was covered, and the signboards were facedown on the frosty ground.
It was a mistake coming here to hide out. She had thought it would cheer her up, sneaking into Bellbird like she used to with Marbie and her dad, over the summer. Now it was just cold and dark.
She looked up and there was something impossible in the sky. A magical, pulsing, blue light; something enchanted, or maybe a spaceship. Her heart leapt up onto its toes, and she trembled with excitement.
Then she realized what it was. It was a screen advertising cars, on the side of the Goodyear blimp.
On Wednesday, an intriguing pink envelope was tossed onto Marbie’s desk by the mailboy. Her name appeared on the front in swirling purple.
Inside: a large piece of paper bearing two yellow sticky notes. The first sticky note said in scratchy pen, Just wrote this and you came to mind. So here it is for you.
On the large piece of paper, Vision # 1,451 was neatly typed.
The Visions of an Aeronautical Engineer
Vision # 1,451
Deep within the icicles of muddy, cruddy space
The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Page 16
