‘The assignment is wonderful, darling,’ Mum says as Samantha finally closes it. Mum is crazy.
Nanna has cookie sludge stuck in the front of her false teeth. It is brown and squelchy. Yuck. I look at Rob finishing his orange juice. He throws the newspaper onto the couch. ‘Terrorist attacks.’ He scratches his prickly head.
‘Terrorism.’ Mum sighs. Oh, I can see her eyes cloud over. It must mean the start of one of Mum’s talks. She picks up a photo from the wobbly coffee table. It is the one I took of her with a ‘Make Love Not War’ poster at last year’s International Women’s Day. Samantha is in the picture too, doing a handstand and eating a drippy meat pie upside down. Great photograph. Next to it, there is a small one of Mum wearing a flower-power dress. My father used to be next to her, but he has been cut away. No one knows where my father is.
‘It’s about hate.’ Oh, is Mum still talking about it? Hate. For ages I hated my father because he left us and because Mum hated him. She changed her mind later because ‘He gave me you kids. Nothing is better than that.’ Mum says that hating eats a hole inside you, so that you always hurt.
Hate? I don’t hate my father now, because he is nobody to me. A sad feeling quickly comes, then goes. I have Rob. I shake my head. I really know what hate is, though. A big picture of George Hamel looms into my head. Dumb idiot. He made my life rotten last year. ‘Bum Head’ is what he called me. I don’t hate George Hamel any more. He can’t hurt me any more. I’ve got friends and other things to think about. Anna flashes into my mind, then Leo. A chill runs down my back.
The terrorism talk is over. I don’t like thinking about it. The world makes me feel unsafe sometimes, but then I have my family. I’m lucky.
Mum is hugging Samantha. Rob stands and stretches his legs. Washing up duty. He always moans when he does the washing up, but he is just faking it. He likes washing up. We have to clear the table or he gets really angry. I sometimes help with the dishes, but it is really Rob territory. He prepares the detergent and scrubbing brush and makes the water HOT. He doesn’t even wear rubber washing-up gloves.
Mum admires the sparkling dishes. The plates are amazing. You need sunglasses to look at them. Mum starts talking about the holiday. I look at Anna. Wish she could come. Then I look at Nanna. Oh, well. Hey, Anna and Nanna rhyme. I never realised that before. I’ll think up a clever joke about that.
‘We’re staying in an apartment on the Gold Coast. Right across from the beach. It’ll be lovely.’ Mum gets this glow over her face. I’m not sure if it’s because of Rob’s washing up or the beach.
I ignore Mum’s gooey-ness. Have to get to the facts. ‘How many bedrooms?’ I cross my fingers. I don’t want to share a room with Nanna. She snores.
‘Everyone will be there.’ Well, I know that already. ‘There will be a room for Nanna.’ Yippee. ‘Another for Rob and me. There is an alcove for Samantha.’ Mum twirls her hair into a knot. ‘And another room for the boys.’
Boys? I laugh. ‘There’s only ONE boy here, Mum.’
Mum hesitates, looks at Rob. He puts his arm around her. ‘We’re collecting Leo at Port Macquarie,’ she says.
Rob smiles. ‘Haven’t seen him for a while. He’ll like a holiday.’
Why is Rob smiling? Leo? What? Rob just announces that Leo is coming with us to the Gold Coast for the whole holiday.
Mum looks at Samantha. ‘We’ll have a bigger family.’
Family? I don’t even know Leo. This is too fast. Samantha is elbowing me. I roll my eyes at her. Rob is watching both of us. I try to smile. How can Leo fit in the car? Nanna will have to stay home after all. Poor Nanna. No holidays for Nanna. This is bad.
I knew Rob shouldn’t have moved in with us.
Chapter 4
Scorpions and Garbage Fights
Mum tries to tell us that having Leo on our holiday will be fun. At the end of a ten-minute lecture on all the reasons why Leo is a great addition to our family, she suddenly stops. ‘You’re not listening, are you?’ But she isn’t angry when she says that.
‘We are, Mum,’ Samantha hugs her. ‘You want us to like Leo a lot, Mum. A real lot.’
I groan. ‘Yes, a real lot.’
Mum smiles. ‘You kids see right through me, don’t you?’ She waits for a second, then looks at us. ‘I’m not being honest, am I?’
I shrug. What am I supposed to say? She’s been different since Rob, and even worse since Leo.
‘We all have to get used to each other. Sometimes it’s going to be hard.’ Mum takes the daisy from behind her ear and holds it. Suddenly out of nowhere she adds, ‘Leo is twelve like you two, Jack and Anna.’
‘Yes, Mum.’ Samantha nods.
Anna and I smile at each other, because Mum is like that. She just drops random things into the middle of a conversation.
Mum gives us money and tells us to go down to the beach and buy ice creams. As we all climb down the stairs, Anna says, ‘It will be okay with Leo.’
‘I’ve never met Leo. Funny name.’ I shake Mum’s talk out of my head. ‘Let’s hurry up.’ Of course, they are slow. ‘Right, you’re on,’ I roar like a lion, then start chasing them down the street. ‘Leo the lion coming. Leo the lion.’
We’re all panting by the time we reach the shop. Mr Green knows us. Anna buys a butterscotch ice cream. Samantha gets caramel, of course. Mango for me. We are licking, dripping ice cream. Samantha looks like she has a caramel beard. Luckily we’ve got an ocean where we can wash it off. We go to investigate the sea pools on the rock platform at the edge of the beach. Samantha finds a red starfish at the bottom of one of the pools. I find a jellyfish. ‘Jellyfish,’ I shout out. They know the game and start running.
‘Stop it, stop it.’ Samantha laughs. ‘No chasing.’
But I am in a chasing mood. The girls start sprinting, with me charging behind them. ‘Jellyfish, jellyfish. Tentacles will suck out your eyes.’ I chase them all the way to the cliffs at the far end of the beach.
I don’t suck out their eyes, but we climb the cliffs and find our favourite boulder. There is a ship right out at sea. We sit on the edge of the boulder and dangle our legs over it. I like the smell of the ocean spray and the noise of the crashing waves.
We wander back along the beach, shake the sand from between our toes. I jiggle my pocket. Yes, there is enough money left for chewing gum. We reach Mr Green’s shop and insert money into the gum ball machine. Anna blows a huge red bubble. Samantha copies, but her tongue always gets in the way. My bubble isn’t bad. It’s blue. We blow bubbles all the way home.
I bang on our front door. Mum opens it. ‘Hi, Mum. Hi, Nanna. Hi, Rob.’
Rob is standing with his hands in his pockets and leaning against the window. Was he on the look-out for us?
‘We’re here,’ I announce.
Rob smiles. I think he was waiting for us. ‘Now, I’m not sure if anyone is ready for this.’
Hope this isn’t another you-will-like-Leo lecture. Leo probably has two heads and a tail. I smile. At least that would make him a good scientific study.
‘I’ve got something downstairs that you all might like. For our holiday.’
Yep, it’s probably a lion-taming harness for Leo. It will need to have two head braces. I stare at my feet. If I look at Rob, I’ll start laughing.
‘What, Rob? What?’ Samantha runs up to him.
Rob usually has something interesting to show us. He brought home a second-hand surfboard last month. It had a few dings in it but Rob and I patched it up. Rob also likes thermometers. Lots of thermometers. There is one in every room so that we know the temperature variations in every place in our unit. It is much hotter in the lounge room with the afternoon sun. The coolest place is Samantha’s bedroom. She’s lucky in summer. I like thermometers too.
Samantha begs Rob to tell us what the surprise is, but Rob is not telling. Samantha grabs his hand and starts pulling him to the door. She’s too weak. No muscles. But I have plenty of muscles, so I join in and so do Anna and Mum. I c
an see out of the corner of my eye that Nanna wants to push too, but she would topple over. So she just holds Puss to make sure that we don’t squash her as we drag Rob out of the unit.
‘Hey, I’m being captured. Stop, stop.’ Rob is laughing, but we don’t stop. We push him onto the landing and down the first set of stairs, then the next, then the next, until we are right outside. ‘All right, all right. Let go of me or I won’t show you what I’ve got.’
‘Can we trust you?’ I keep my hold on him, but Samantha, Anna and Mum have already let go. Typical.
Rob sticks his finger into Samantha’s stomach, making her giggle. ‘Follow me.’ We follow in line along the driveway into the backyard. Everyone keeps asking questions, but Rob won’t give the answer away.
There is nothing in the backyard except the usual. A few cars parked in the car park, the grassy yard, the basketball ring. ‘So what is it?’
‘Look very hard.’ Rob is enjoying this. Mum hits him on the arm. Samantha copies Mum, of course. ‘All right, all right, you dictators.’ He gets this sad doggy-faced look. (Note the dog joke.) ‘I give up. Defeated, that’s me.’ He walks slowly over to a silver four-wheel-drive Land Rover with shiny chrome bull bars. He gives us a last look, then smiles. ‘Come on, everyone.’ We stare at him. What is he doing? ‘Kids, get in.’
‘What?’
‘It’s ours.’
‘Ours?’ Shock makes me speechless.
Samantha is squealing, since she is never speechless. She starts to jump up and down like a bouncing rubber ball. Mum sneaks a look at Rob. She has known about this all along for sure.
‘Okay, okay.’ Rob gets into the driver’s seat. ‘Get in now. Let’s take it for a spin.’
Crashes, girl giggles, we are in. This is some car. I can smell the newness of it. The seats are so comfortable. Wow. Rob drives slowly past Nanna, whose head is sticking out of our third floor window. We wave and shout. Nanna waves back. Then Rob drives past the Napolis’ Super Delicioso Fruitology Market. The Napolis call out as Rob beeps the horn. Then Rob drives into the main street, over the bridge near our school, and around three roundabouts and two parks. Mum is hugging Rob’s arm even though he is driving. We have never, ever, ever, had a new car. And we have never had a car like this.
I look around. I think about Anna and Nanna. There are SEVEN seats. Enough room for Nanna and Anna, as well as Leo. All of us. It doesn’t take any persuading at all for both Mum and Rob to agree. Anna is allowed to come with us on holiday. Yessss!!!
Anna’s face dimples when I ask her. ‘Holidays. I’d like that.’ Then she stammers, pressing her lips together. She stumbles over the words. ‘I may not be allowed. You know Papa.’
‘We’ll persuade him, Anna.’ I give a confident look and Anna smiles, but I’m not that sure. It’s because Mr Napoli is traditional. That means he sings Italian songs, eats pasta, tells jokes that aren’t funny, works hard and is very strict. He worries about Anna. He would worry about road accidents on the long drive up the coast. He would worry about sharks in tropical waters. He would worry about Anna staying up too late at night.
I get help. Mrs Napoli and Mum talk and talk to Mr Napoli. I’d get a headache if I was him. Mum tries to describe all the safety parts of Rob’s four-wheel drive. It is pathetic. I have to interrupt. Mum knows NOTHING about cars except that you have to put petrol in them and call road service when you have a flat tyre. I explain important technical features like the 4.1 litre engine, huge mag wheels, reserve petrol tank, wrap-around bull bars. But in the end, it is Mrs Napoli who persuades him. She whispers something in his ear that makes his moustache jiggle.
Mum shoves her elbow into my side. ‘How romantic. It’ll be just them.’ I stare at Mr Napoli. ‘Love birds for a week.’ At this point, I have to leave. I don’t want to hear any more. Mr and Mrs Napoli as lovebirds is a horrible thought.
Next morning. Last day of term. The sun is shining and I am smiling. I grab my scorpion assignment. I stayed up all night finishing it. Scorpions are incredible. It is hard to believe that those bugs have such huge stings in their tails. There is one giant-sized type of scorpion that lives in the deserts of America. It is long, hairy and about twelve centimetres long. When I told Rob that last night, he made some disgustingly rude jokes. He never makes those jokes in front of Mum. It is male stuff. I flash my INTERESTING project (not DOGS) at Samantha. ‘Some scorpions can hurt you.’ I give Samantha a hardly-sting-you pinch. ‘Like that, but worse. Much worse.’
Samantha hits me hard. ‘Don’t.’ She rubs her arm.
As if that hurts. I ignore her whingeing and go on. ‘There is one scorpion in California that bites you and makes you froth at the mouth as you twitch and convulse to death.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more.’
But I want to show her more. Samantha squeals when I wave a really big, gigantic picture of a scorpion in front of her. The more she squeals, the more I flash pictures of scary-hairy creepy-crawlies. It’s fun.
I glance out of my bedroom window and notice Anna waiting for us outside the Napolis’ Super Delicioso Fruitology Market. I put away the scorpion project. Anna mightn’t like it. Next term we are doing the Amazon River. That means piranhas. Now, that is a really great topic. I’ve read that red-bellied piranhas can eat a whole man alive.
I stick my head out of the window and Anna waves her cap at us. The sun streams through her dark hair, flecking it with diamonds.
‘Let’s go, Samantha.’ We shout goodbye to Mum and race down the stairs.
Mrs Napoli must have seen us, because she comes out of the Super Delicioso Fruitology Market with three yellow mangoes. ‘Beautiful. Juicy. For your lunch.’ She hands us a mango each, then kisses Anna goodbye.
The school bus is full of kids. ‘Hey, Christopher,’ I call out. He is blowing a big red bubble at me. It bursts all over his face. Samantha slides in between the bus railing and the driver’s seat. She has been getting taller and less chubby since she turned eleven. Anna pushes down the aisle towards her friends. They squish together on their seat to make room for her. ‘Rub-a-dub-dub. Three babes in a tub,’ I shout out over the heads of everyone. There is laughing and Anna shakes her head at me.
‘Just kidding,’ I shout out again.
‘You’re not amusing,’ one of the girls calls out in this exaggerated voice.
The bus suddenly jerks forward, setting off a tidal wave of kids crashing into each other. George Hamel is at the back of the bus. He is being hammered by waves of squashed kids. He doesn’t even move to the side to get less squashed. He is a real meathead. Hamburger for brains. I wish his muscles were hamburger too. He is built like a truck. I don’t get into arguments with him any more, not after last year when he nearly flattened me. But I will stand up to him now if I have to. These days he leaves me alone. I leave him alone too. It’s all good.
The bus slams to a stop outside school. There is racing and shoving. I have to protect my scorpion assignment from the crush, and my mango as well. I stick my hand in my bag. No squashed mango. Phew.
Anna and Samantha head inside the school grounds. I run towards my classroom to check if my teacher is there. Yes, he is working at his desk. I charge through the door, waving my scorpion assignment. He looks up at me. Points to his watch. ‘Last minute, I see.’ I put the assignment on his desk just as the school bell rings. Made it.
Last day of term is always tidy-up mania day. Teachers run around with dusters and buckets and force kids to wipe, polish, mop. Desks are scrubbed clean of sticky stuff. White boards wiped super clean. Gum scraped off the bottoms of chairs. Playing fields cleared of even a trace of rubbish — no old apple cores or empty cans or lunch wrappers.
George Hamel starts a garbage fight in the playing fields. It is like an air raid, with bomber oranges and tomato shrapnel locking into crazy skirmishes. I propel a banana skin into a helicopter spin. It is terrific until it splats at George Hamel’s feet. There’s cheering from my friends.
‘Great shot.
’ Christopher thumps me on my back.
George Hamel smirks at me as he chucks my banana skin back into the battle. ‘Not a bad throw for a beginner.’
‘For sure.’ I laugh. My friends laugh with me. A beginner? As if I am. That spin was scientifically worked out. I look at George Hamel and a joke bursts into my brain.
What is the difference between a Hamel and a camel?
One has a knob on his back. The other is a knob.
I am laughing under my breath. I want to say it to George Hamel but I don’t. Last year George Hamel and his mates hammered me, and everyone else did too. Having a joke with some people is not a great idea. Anyway, everyone saw my throw.
Suddenly Christopher is thumped by a half-eaten orange. He chucks it at Paul. Paul chucks it at me. Yuck, it’s slimy. I look around for a good victim to throw it at when the teacher’s voice belts over the fields. ‘Stop it. NOW.’ I keep hold of the orange, but a few missiles are still in mid-flight. The teacher waits until they land. ‘One more flying object and the whole lot of you will be staying in after school.’ That is a horrible thought. It’s the last day of school and no one wants to hang around. Everyone stops immediately.
We have the longest assembly in the world. The Principal drones on and on about keeping the school clean, returning library books, making sure parents sign permission slips for excursions, completing assignments. I watch a fly trying to land on the Principal’s head. The Principal rubs his bald patch, scaring that fly right out of the hall. Wish I was a fly. Slowly, slowly his droning ends. He finishes with the best words in the whole assembly. ‘Have a great holiday.’ There is cheering and clapping.
Goodbye school. Hello holidays. My bag is loaded with junk to take home. Samantha is struggling under her backpack. I throw it over my shoulder. I am in a great brotherly mood. Anna follows me. The bus is chaotic. Last school bus for the term means near-riot. The bus driver is shouting down some kids down the back. ‘Sit down, you idiots, or I’ll stop the bus.’
Super Jack Page 3
