The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler

by Paul Collins

  Milo blinked. That was it. ‘If something bad happened to you, something real real bad, would your father come and rescue you?’

  ‘You threatening me?’ Her face turned pugnacious.

  ‘Sometimes, you know, you’re really weird.’

  Ginger looked so startled that any other time Milo might have laughed. ‘I’m weird? Me?’

  ‘Well, would he? Would he come to rescue you?’

  Ginger appeared to consider this. ‘Maybe. But why don’t you do something “real bad” and see if your mum comes for you.’

  ‘I did,’ Milo said simply. ‘I killed a woman. Twice. But I think if we both did it, it might work. It’d double our chances.’

  Ginger started pacing. ‘Let’s put that on the backburner for now, okay? What else have you tried, aside from killing the neighbours?’

  ‘I put up some posters,’ said Milo. ‘But the council said I was breaking by-law section three-oh-two-one, paragraph 7C. Besides, it rained and the sticky tape came off.’

  Ginger nodded as though she sympathised. ‘How about your mum’s rellies? Surely they know where she is.’

  Milo shook his head. ‘She hasn’t been in contact with them.’

  ‘Yeah, same thing with Dad,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Mum has a post-office box on Dunstall Street,’ Milo said suddenly. ‘I waited outside a couple of times but she never cleared the box.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘She must live nearby if she’s got a post-office box there,’ Milo reasoned. But Ginger was slowly shaking her head.

  ‘That’s why they have redirected mail,’ she said. ‘Your mum could live in Timbuktu and still get her post without coming anywhere near her mailbox.

  ‘Do you need to go to the toilet?’ Ginger asked. ‘You’re wriggling about like you have to go.’

  ‘I’ll be right back.’ Milo raced to the bathroom and immersed his head in cold water.

  Moments later, Ginger suddenly tapped him on the back. He jumped and hit his head on the tap.

  ‘Owww!’

  After he had danced around the bathroom holding his bleeding head, Milo let Ginger apply antiseptic gel with a cotton bud. ‘You should be a nurse,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up.’

  But he couldn’t. The water trick had worked its magic once again. He let out a gigantic whoop, which, in the confines of the bathroom, was deafening.

  Ginger stuffed her fingers in her ears and glared at him.

  ‘I know what we have to do!’ he crowed.

  Nothing ventured, nothing sprained

  Ginger folded her arms. ‘This had better be good.’

  Milo’s first attempt to explain his ‘plan’ didn’t work very well. He was so excited that his words tumbled out in a confusing torrent. Ginger held up a hand and made him take three deep breaths, then led the way down to the kitchen where she made them mugs of hot chocolate while Milo paced back and forth, muttering to himself.

  When the hot chocolate was made they took their mugs out to the back porch.

  ‘Now, slowly, take it from the beginning,’ said Ginger.

  Milo nodded excitedly. ‘Well, remember we were talking about doing something real bad?’

  ‘You were,’ Ginger corrected him.

  Milo ignored this. ‘Well, if something bad happened to one of us, our parents would come back, wouldn’t they?’

  Ginger leaned forward and ripped a weed from the nearest garden bed. ‘How bad? I mean, if I was run over and killed, I’m pretty sure Dad would turn up at the funeral.’ She threw the weed on a pile of compost. ‘Wouldn’t do me much good.’

  ‘But what if he just thought you were hit by a car?’ said Milo, watching her face avidly.

  ‘I have a phobia about cars crashing into me.’

  ‘Okay, what if – what if – what if you went missing? Yes, that’s it! Heaps of kids go missing, and the police send out dogs and helicopters and drag the local rivers, and it’s in all the newspapers and on TV, and everybody hears about it.’

  ‘And your point . . .’ Ginger said slowly.

  ‘You go missing and then we –’

  ‘Why don’t you go missing?’

  Milo shook his head. ‘Won’t work, I’d need somewhere to hide – and I’m not sure my mum would come home . . .’

  ‘So where would I hide?’ Ginger wanted to know. ‘Not in your chook shed.’

  Milo tut-tutted. ‘The fox would get you there. No, in the cellar.’

  Ginger eyed him dubiously.

  ‘There’s a light,’ Milo said hastily. ‘And you could come out during the day for a breather. You could wear my clothes, so even if anyone does see you, they’ll think it’s me.’

  Ginger ripped out another weed, a little more savagely this time. ‘And just how long would I have to live in the cellar? And what about your father?’

  Milo shrugged. ‘Dad never goes down there. There’s no wine left. And it wouldn’t be for long. Missing children are usually on the news the same day they go missing, or the next.’

  ‘Maybe. What about food?’ Ginger asked. Milo noticed that she seemed to be getting interested. ‘We’d need money . . .’

  ‘You just gave me an idea. If you fix up the garden –’ Ginger scowled. ‘What am I, your slave?’

  Milo quickly altered tack. ‘I’ll help, but you’ll need to tell me what to pull out and what to leave in. Anyway, I can say a gardener offered to give us a free trial. If we liked what he did, he’d come by once a week for twenty dollars and keep the place tidy. Then we’d keep the money. That way, I could buy you whatever you like to eat.’

  ‘Twenty dollars wouldn’t pay for my weekly lunch at school,’ Ginger said.

  ‘It’s enough,’ said Milo, not to be side-tracked. ‘Besides, I can use some of our food. And Fluke would help.’

  ‘Fluke?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s real smart.’

  ‘He hides it well,’ she muttered. ‘What happens when we get caught? Your mum and my dad will just run off back to wherever they’ve been hiding.’

  ‘Fluke says, “nothing ventured, nothing sprained”.’

  ‘Gained,’ Ginger corrected him. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But that doesn’t explain what will happen when we’re found out.’

  Milo said slowly, ‘I think that once your dad realises how badly you’ve been missing him, he won’t want to ever leave again. And if that happens, then he’ll have to leave my mum and she’ll have to come back home.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Ginger mumbled. ‘Well, I guess if Anne Frank could hide in an attic from the Nazis, I can hide in a cellar for a few days. I can always bring some stuff over. All right, let’s do it.’

  Milo saw her to the gate. Ginger turned to go, then hesitated and turned back.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about the other day,’ she said in a rush.

  Milo frowned.

  ‘You know, when I slammed the door in your face.’ Ginger was staring off down the street. ‘It was pretty – mean. Mum and Dad had been arguing for, I don’t know, ever . . . he wasn’t coming home nights.’ She wiped a sleeve across her eyes. ‘I knew my mum was lying when she said Dad was doing lots of overtime. I just wanted to believe her. And when my dad was away the arguing stopped, so I was sort of glad. But then all of a sudden he didn’t come home, at all. Mum kept telling me he was working crazy shifts and he was home while I was at school. But when I came home early from school she . . . she lied, said he’d just left minutes before.’ She stopped suddenly.

  Milo didn’t know what to say. Ginger had said more words in the space of twenty seconds than anyone had said to him all year.

  ‘Well,’ he said, for once choosing his words carefully, ‘maybe having some warning helped a bit? I didn’t know anything was wrong, and one morning Mum was just gone.’

  Ginger shrugged. ‘At least you didn’t have to hear them arguing all the time. Knowing your whole life was about to fall apart.’

  ‘But maybe I could have done something.’
/>
  ‘Take it from me,’ said Ginger, ‘there’s nothing you could have done. Your mum and dad would’ve both snapped at you and told you to mind your own business.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Milo.

  Ginger smiled, a little hesitantly. ‘It’s been nice talking to you . . . Milo. That is . . .’ Ginger bit her lip. ‘Toby.’

  Milo blinked. No one except his dad ever called him Toby. How did she know his real name?

  She headed off, walking backwards and giving him a little wave. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow, straight after school.’

  Before Milo could say anything, Ginger turned and hurried off, her arms folded across her chest as if she was hugging herself.

  Fact is mangier than fiction – fiction has to make sense

  Milo had a lot to think about that night. Would his plan to hide Ginger down in the cellar really work? Sitting by himself and thinking about it, it now seemed a little far-fetched, like something seen on the TV.

  ‘Daydreaming again?’ his father asked.

  Milo jumped nearly out of his skin. He hadn’t heard his father come in. ‘No,’ Milo said. ‘I was just thinking about all the kidnapped people in the world.’ Milo mentally kicked himself. He really had to stop saying the first thing that came into his head.

  Mr Chrysler rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. ‘That’s a strange thing to be thinking about, Tobes.’

  ‘I guess. There’s nothing on TV.’

  Mr Chrysler glanced at the TV guide. ‘Thirty channels to choose from and not one thing that we want to watch. May as well cancel the subscription.’

  ‘May as well,’ Milo agreed.

  Mr Chrysler turned his son around to face him. ‘Tell you what, Tobes, I’ve been thinking. I know things are kinda up in the air right now but I reckon it’s about time I handed over some responsibility. I’m going to make you my lieutenant. How’s that grab you?’

  Milo had to think about that one. ‘What does a lieutenant have to do?’

  ‘A fair question,’ Mr Chrysler allowed. ‘Your mum and I shared the captaincy.’ His face clouded for a second. ‘But now she’s no longer around I reckon it’s promotion time. And anyhow,’ he added, looking suddenly rueful, ‘it was her idea. She kept nagging me to let you do more, but I guess I was always too busy to think about it.’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘First up, it’s a position that holds a lot of responsibility. You need to learn how to budget. It’ll be up to you to do a few things your mother did when she was here. So I’ll give you a budget each week for shopping and stuff, and you go out and get it. Go to the local shop like you did with your mum. Remember, she didn’t go for the brand names – the no-frills brands are made by the same people anyway. It’s just a cheaper packaging, so you get the same product as the dearer brands, but pay less. You have to be crafty to come in under budget every week, and not blow it on useless stuff like chocolates and ice-cream.’

  ‘When do I start?’

  ‘There’s no time like the present,’ Mr Chrysler said. ‘I’ll give Mrs Tellsell at the ShopRite a call, and ask her to give you a hand, make suggestions. He took out his wallet and handed Milo three crisp fifty-dollar notes. ‘I’ll give you one-fifty for the first week, since the pantry’s just about empty. Then next Sunday I’ll start giving you a hundred. If we need incidentals during the week, give me a call at work and I’ll pick them up on the way home. Stuff like bread, milk, et cetera.’

  Milo tucked the money away. It was more than he’d ever had at one time. On sudden inspiration, he said, ‘We had a visitor today.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A gardener,’ Milo said. ‘She offered to weed the garden, cut the grass, and do all that sort of stuff. Said she’d give a free trial, no obligation.’

  ‘Gardeners cost a swag,’ Mr Chrysler said, frowning. ‘I don’t really have spare cash for luxuries. Why don’t you and me get out there next Saturday and take a shot at it?’

  ‘But she said she’d give a freebie.’

  ‘And we might come home and find all the good stuff pulled out, Tobes. Just because someone says they’re a gardener, doesn’t mean they know a strawberry from a blackberry.’

  ‘We could give them just a bit of the garden to test them on. A patch where it won’t matter if they pull the wrong things out.’

  Mr Chrysler considered that. ‘Okay, Tobes. It’s your call, as my lieutenant. But it has to come out of the budget that I’ve given you. Which means if your gardener comes for two hours at say, twenty an hour, you’ll be less forty dollars for our weekly food bill.’

  Milo’s shoulders drooped. That wasn’t part of the plan at all. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  Mr Chrysler ruffled Milo’s hair. ‘You do that. In the meantime, I’ll order in from the Asian takeaway. We’ll call tonight an “incidental”, rather than an “oriental”.’

  Milo smiled at his father’s joke. He hadn’t seen his father in such good humour for a long time.

  ‘I feel a seafood laksa coming on, Tobes. Stir-fried chicken and vegetables for you?’

  Milo nodded distractedly. So much for extra money to feed Ginger. He tapped his pocket. A hundred-and-fifty dollars was certainly a good omen, though. All he had to do now was hope that Ginger decided his plan was a good one.

  Fluke told Milo that ‘Fact is mangier than fiction – fiction has to make sense’. Milo discovered this the following school day during lunch break. He saw Ginger sitting on a bench reading a book.

  ‘Hi. Whaddya doing?’

  ‘Not now,’ she hissed. ‘Go away. Don’t speak to me.’

  She had looked up from her book for a brief second when Milo’s shadow had fallen across the page she was reading. Then, her face frozen, she looked down again.

  ‘I just wondered if –’ Milo began.

  ‘Go away.’ Ginger didn’t look up this time.

  Now a shadow fell over Milo. He turned and looked up at Mrs Petersham.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mrs Petersham asked. She looked as though she were about to have a fit.

  ‘Nothing,’ Milo said, scuffing his left foot against the gravel.

  ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Chrysler,’ Mrs Petersham snapped.

  Milo wrinkled his face in confusion. Was he in trouble? Again?

  ‘And you can wipe that smirk off your face,’ she said. She looked around as though she wanted to find something to clobber him with.

  As a precaution, Milo wiped ‘that smirk’ off his face. To be doubly sure he couldn’t be blamed for a thing, he kept his hands in his pockets, and his mouth shut, not allowing one muscle to move. Surely he was safe.

  ‘Mum?’ Ginger said.

  In Milo’s confusion, he thought he heard ‘Hmmm’. In that instant his concentration lapsed and he turned. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t talk to my daughter, you retard!’ Mrs Petersham hissed in a low, deadly voice. ‘Get away from her.’

  Milo stared. Ginger was Mrs Petersham’s daughter? But she’d said her surname was Baker . . . Not fully in control of his limbs, Milo stumbled off across the playground in a daze.

  Of course it made sense later, when he’d had time to calm down and think about it. He’d known Ginger’s mother was a teacher at school; he’d even known she had a Rottweiler; and that Ginger’s father had deserted the family as had Milo’s mother – and who wouldn’t desert if they were married to the Iron Dragon herself?

  No wonder Ginger had warned him off. If only she’d been more specific, like, ‘Here comes my mother, Mrs Petersham, and she really hates you’.

  The rest of the day went by in a blur. No one spoke to Milo. Even the teachers ignored him, as if his nominal ‘leper’ status had come back into full force.

  Fluke was the exception, of course.

  ‘You’re just going through a phrase,’ he said. ‘What did you do to Ginger Petersham, anyhow?’ This was just after school had ended.

  ‘I didn’t do anything to her,’ he said. ‘What doe
s everyone think I did to her?’

  Fluke looked at him cross-eyed, as if that explained everything. ‘A tumour goes in one ear and out many mouths.’

  That one had Milo stumped. He said so.

  ‘You didn’t go up to Ginger and threaten her? And say horrible things and make her cry? And you’re not getting expelled tomorrow?’

  ‘No,’ Milo said.

  ‘Didn’t think so.’

  ‘I hope you said it was all lies.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Fluke. ‘But tumours don’t go backward, only forward. By now, everyone thinks you had a knife and you kicked Mrs Petersham in the shins when she tried to save her daughter’s life.’

  ‘Mrs Petersham doesn’t like me,’ Milo said tiredly.

  ‘She doesn’t like my English, either,’ Fluke said.

  Milo and Fluke stopped at the busy intersection where they always parted company.

  ‘If I were you,’ Fluke said, ‘I’d lay low and keep out of calm’s way. You gotta fall below the radar.’

  But Milo could no more fall below the radar than he could bring poor Mrs Appleby back to life.

  And things were about to get a whole lot worse.

  The best laid plans of lice and men go oft astray

  Milo was so deep in thought when he arrived home he failed to see someone hiding in the bushes.

  ‘Psssst!’

  ‘Wah!’ he yelped, jumping back and falling on his behind.

  His eyes widened as Ginger appeared. ‘Quiet. Do you want the whole neighbourhood to know I’m here?’

  Milo picked himself up. ‘What are you doing in there? I’m supposed to have done horrible things to you.’

  ‘Get a grip on yourself, Toby,’ Ginger said crossly.

  ‘But, what were you doing in there?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Ginger closed her eyes briefly. ‘We agreed that I should do something really, really bad. So bad that my dad would come home. Or did I imagine all that?’

  Milo looked up and down Sidham Drive. No one was about. ‘I thought we’d make plans today. Fluke says “the best laid plans of lice and men go oft astray”.’