I Think My Dad Is a Spy

by Sognia Vassallo

  I didn’t realise she had even been speaking to me. I wanted to say, ‘yes, of course I heard you Janice’ but I didn’t want to lie. I was thinking of something to say when all of a sudden I saw Mrs Smith, the deputy principal, arrive on the scene.

  “This ought to be good,” I murmured, rubbing my hands together excitedly.

  “Yoo Hoo! Mr McNabb!” she screeched, “Do you have a moment?” She waddled briskly along the path, past the tall yellow rose bushes.

  Mrs Smith reminded me of one of those WWE wrestlers, like in wrestle-mania. She is quite short but very stocky and when she glares at you with her cold grey eyes it makes you weak in the knees.

  At the start of the year I drew a cartoon of Mrs Smith wrestling with Mr McNabb. Somebody most have got hold of it and photocopied about a million copies because by the end of the day nearly every student had a copy of the drawing.

  Thank goodness I didn’t sign my name on it but unfortunately Mr McNabb recognised my drawing style and I got detention for it anyway. Although he must have thought it was funny too because I saw him smile as he put a copy in his briefcase to take home.

  However today Mr McNabb was quite relieved to see Mrs Smith coming his way and happily waited for her to catch up. As soon as Mrs Smith joined him, she glared up at the twins and told them to shoo off and stop bothering the poor man.

  The girls were infuriated; they huffed loudly and stormed off with their noses high in the air. I made a mental note to myself to draw a cartoon of the ‘Loony twins’ as oversized seagulls being shooed away by Mrs Smith in her wrestle-mania costume. “He, he, he,” I tittered under my breath.

  I like drawing cartoons, writing stories and making short films because one day I am going to be a famous writer and movie producer. Last year in primary school I made a short film documentary about the people living in Orchard Mead. Mrs Bingle thought it was so good she entered it into a nationwide competition; I won first prize. A few people didn’t think I deserved to win because they said I had exploited them.

  Well all I can say is that the camera doesn’t lie. It wasn’t my fault that my hidden camera had caught Mr Hammond visiting Mrs Benning-Finlay’s office late one evening while her husband was out of town. But apparently it was my fault they got divorced because I left that scene in the movie! I only set up the camera in the first place because Mrs Benning-Finlay told me she suspected her secretary was stealing office supplies.

  Journal entry:

  Tuesday, 10:27pm

  During second period Mr Griggs told us to pair up because we were going to do a science experiment called the ‘Pop Test’. Janice pushed and shoved her way through the students who were busily squabbling amongst themselves to see who was going to pair up with whom and barged her way in between Theo and I with a mighty shove. She bowled him out of the way and declared me her new partner.

  “Hey that’s not fair!” Theo shouted from the laboratory floor.

  “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” Janice teased poking her tongue out.

  “NO PUSHING MISS VOYCE. IF YOU CAN’T PAIR UP PROPERLY WITH SOMEONE, I WILL FIND YOU A PARTNER!” scolded Mr Griggs eyeballing her from above his glasses.

  He never missed a trick old Mr Griggs and I suppose he had to be very vigilant trusting a bunch of teenagers with highly explosive and poisonous chemicals. I imagine it must be quite a stressful job.

  “Sorry sir, I didn’t mean to push. I meant to bump into Theo, I slipped,” Janice stuttered.

  “YOU DIDN’t SLIP AND THAT WASN’T A BUMP! YOU BULLDOZED INTO ME,” Theo scowled angrily.

  “Oh and you don’t need to find me a partner, I already have one—it’s Sophie,” Janice said ignoring Theo as she yanked me out from behind the desk as evidence.

  Theo gasped with outrage as he shot up off the floor and brushed himself off.

  I felt sorry for him, not just because his usual neat and carefully parted hair looked terribly scruffy, but because Theo was left without a partner.

  “Okay Miss Voyce,” said Mr Griggs. “But I don’t want to see pushing in my laboratory again, leave it for outside.”

  “HUH! THAT’S IT?!” Theo growled as he stomped his foot hard onto the floor in protest. Theo looked over at me with a ‘I-can’t-believe-that-Janice-got-away-with-it-look.”

  Neither Mr Griggs nor Janice took any notice of his tantrum. Janice was too busy fussing over the seating arrangements and I wondered who Mr Griggs would pair Theo with. I looked around the room to see if anyone else was without a partner. I was kind of hoping that because Janice’s regular lab partner Laurie Holmes wasn’t here today, that Theo could be a trio with us.

  “MR THEODORE RILEY COME OVER HERE PLEASE,” called Mr Griggs, snapping his fingers for Theo to quickly join Dunstan Milfrey at the front of the class.

  Oh no! Theo had been reduced to pairing up with the wedgie-boy, who still had his underwear sticking out above his school trousers. That can’t be comfortable, I thought staring at him with shame.

  “Janice, that was so rude of you to barge Theo out of the way like that,” I said smacking her in the arm. “Just look at him, he looks so miserable at the front of the class with Dunstan. I hope you feel really bad!”

  “You know I actually do. Just think, that could have been me stuck with wedgie-boy,” she said shamelessly. I couldn’t believe Janice’s rudeness sometimes.

  “Okay look, I promise I will make it up to Theo, but I really need to talk to you about your dad and this weird situation you’re in Soph. I think it’s pretty serious,” Janice insisted.

  “Well you’re wasting your time Janice because I can tell you he’s not a spy, it’s just so ridicul…” but Janice cut me off.

  “Ridiculous I hear you say! Far-fetched! Sophie, we see way wackier stuff on the internet these days,” she reminded me.

  I hate to admit it but Janice was right—there’s a whole big wacky world out there where anything is possible.

  Janice would make a great a lawyer someday, I thought. We then spent most of the lesson arguing back and forth about why my father could or couldn’t possibly be a spy, but it was useless arguing with her because Janice made a lot of good points.

  Suddenly our debate was interrupted by an ear-wrenching popping noise…

  Pop! Pop!

  “Ahhhhh!” I screamed with fright. The whole class turned and sniggered at me. I was really getting tired of people laughing at me today.

  Looking around the room I quickly realised that everyone’s science experiments were in full swing—except ours.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  I looked over at the next table to see Diana and Luke’s Bunsen burner heating up a test tube full of clear liquid which had started to bubble all scientific-like. Diana handed Luke some really oversized tweezers and picked up what looked like a small silver stone which he carefully dropped into the bubbling test tube. Diana quickly slapped on her earmuffs but Luke had barely enough time to get his on when their experiment made the loudest pop.

  The whole class began cheering and clapping, but all I could hear was a rrrrringing in my ears.

  Mr Griggs had already started walking around the room to mark our experiments. When he arrived at our table I was busy poking my fingers into my ears and trying to yawn, in the hope I would be able to hear again soon. Janice hadn’t even noticed him; she was too busy scribbling down a list of reasons why my dad was a spy.

  I was hoping Mr Griggs wouldn’t notice our unlit Bunsen burner, our empty test tube, the small vial of hydrochloric acid and the silver stone sitting neatly on the table, just as they had been when we came in. But it was obvious he did notice them because his eyes flitted furiously from the table, over to Janice and then back at me still with my finger lodged deep into my ear.

  He mumbled angrily to himself something about “life being too short to teach teenagers” and then showed us the ‘F’ he had recorded next to our names for our lack of effort. Wow that sucked grapes, and I usually liked Science!

  After Engl
ish with Mrs Crabapple, whose class I loved, it was recess time. Theo was still angry with Janice’s behaviour in Science, even though she’d already apologised a bazillion times. He could be so stubborn.

  Janice was soon bored with trying to smooth things over with Theo.

  “So what do you think about what we were talking about in Science and English, Soph?” Janice asked biting into a big red apple.

  I looked at her with confusion; I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was partially deaf for most of Science and all of English.

  But before I could answer, Janice shoved the list she had written into my lap.

  I began to read it grudgingly.

  1. Mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night.

  * * *

  2. Talking in the pantry.

  * * *

  3. A woman named Tiffany.

  * * *

  4. New York City.

  * * *

  Blah, blah, blah the list went on.

  “So what do ya’ think of it?” Janice said waiting anxiously for my answer. I handed the notebook over to Theo who was still giving Janice evil looks.

  “Yeah I suppose you have a point but I still think you’ve got it all wrong. There’s no possible way my dad is a spy. It just doesn’t make sense, he already has a job; he runs our post office, why would he be a spy as well?”

  “But that’s just it Sophie, don’t you see, it’s the perfect cover. I can see the headlines now, Post office manager captured in Russia as double agent,” Janice announced proudly sounding like a news reader.

  “Oh so now he’s a double agent,” I replied “and not even a good one because he’s been captured in Russia of all places!”

  Journal entry:

  Wednesday, 5:23pm

  I just found out a very disappointing fact about Mrs Green, who owns the asparagus farm.

  Every month or so she orders lots of books over the internet and today I had another three to deliver to her. As I rode my bike down their long dirt driveway, I saw Mr Green working on his tractor down the end by the old shed. As I rode over to greet him he said, and I quote, ‘Afternoon young Sophie, hope those are Mrs Green’s cookbooks’.”

  Cookbooks?!? I thought.

  Can you imagine my disappointment? I honestly thought Mrs Green’s enthusiasm was for genuine literature, but all this time she had been ordering cookbooks over the internet, and not inspiring romance or murder mystery novels at all!

  As I rode back up the dirt road I wondered if all those cookbooks I’d delivered were all asparagus cookbooks? How many could there possibly be? 101 Ways to Boil Asparagus? 101 Ways to Steam Asparagus? 101 Ways to Pickle Asparagus?

  YUCK!

  My idea of Iris Green as the great reader of novels was obliterated.

  Dad’s still been acting really strange again. This morning I caught him talking in code to someone on the phone. I tried to write some of it down on a scrap piece of paper. I showed it to Theo and Janice at school today, but they have no clue what it means either. Janice is meeting me at the big oak tree in the morning and we are going to do some spying of our own. Theo is going to try and make it too but he has a ballet class on Saturday mornings. Hopefully we can figure out what Dad is up to!

  Journal entry:

  Saturday, 9:37am

  “Aaah,” I sighed out loud, as my eyes grew used to the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window. I loved waking up and realising it was the weekend—no school and no mail to deliver. I am so glad we don’t own a post office in America or England because Grandma Georgina told me they get post on Saturdays! Yuck, who wants to work on a weekend? Well, except for those nice people who work at the burger house and Mrs Wong who owns the local deli where I buy my chocolate frogs and of course there’s the cinema in the mall. Oh, and I can’t forget all the people that work in the shopping mall…

  Hmm, I suppose lots of people have to work on weekends. Well I’m glad, so people like me can eat junk food, shop and go to the movies.

  I remembered Janice was sleeping over tonight, but first we were meeting at the big oak tree. I quickly showered and dressed before going to breakfast only to find Dad and Chelsea standing in our kitchen. She was wearing an awful sparkly rainbow-coloured dressing gown; I gathered she had spent the night and she hadn’t driven over here in that hideous thing.

  It looked like I had interrupted something seriously important between them. So I decided not to attempt the giant stack of pancakes with drizzling hot maple syrup and a dollop of ice-cream this morning. Mmmmm…just the thought of it made my tummy rumble. I grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl instead and said I was already late in meeting Janice, and then quickly ran out the back door.

  However I didn’t go to the oak tree as planned just yet. I thought now would be a good time to start my investigation. Besides I had plenty of time before I had to meet Janice.

  I tiptoed around the side of our timber cottage and squatted underneath the kitchen window and waited patiently.

  “So who is this woman?” Chelsea spat furiously, “and how long have you known her?”

  “Uh-oh,” I mumbled under my breath, it sounded like Chelsea had found out about this Tiffany person.

  “I haven’t, I mean I don’t know her, this is the first time…” Dad broke off his words.

  “Well, tell me then what’s her name?” Chelsea ordered him again.

  “Tiffany!” I whispered answering the question for him; but wait I was wrong! Dad didn’t say the name Tiffany at all, he said a whole other name, and I missed it…drats.

  I held my breath in the hope someone would repeat the name again.

  “ZOE WHO?!” Chelsea shouted out the name so loud this time even the neighbours would’ve heard her.

  I wondered who this Zoe person was. I hadn’t heard Dad mention her name before.

  I had been squatting over wet grass under the kitchen window for ages and my legs were starting to ache. I looked around and patted the grass trying to find a dry patch so I could sit and stretch my legs, but the grass all around me was wet and muddy.

  Dad and Chelsea’s argument was getting really loud. I wanted to stand up and take a quick peek through the window but decided not to as I would probably get caught.

  “I don’t really know her, know her; I just know her!” said Dad raising his voice. “Look, I am just doing mother a favour and you are just going to have to trust me Chelsea!” he said in a final manner.

  If you ask me I didn’t think Dad was making much sense and I don’t think Chelsea believed him either. He was definitely acting very strange and secretive.

  “Well Joseph if I don’t have anything to worry about then why were you whispering to this Zoe woman on the phone as I got out of the shower?” Chelsea argued.

  “Oooh, good comeback,” I murmured, trying to pull the creases from my jeans out behind my knees. They were cutting off the blood supply to my legs.

  “I, oh…” stammered Dad.

  “Well then you shouldn’t have any objection if I go with you to the airport this morning. Then we can both pick up this Zoe person together!” Chelsea said with a flourish.

  “NO! YOU CAN’T!” boomed Dad. His outburst so startled me I lost my balance and fell backwards into the long damp grass scraping my arm on the garden tap.

  “OWWW!” I cried loudly as I jumped up rubbing my grazed arm. “OH GRAPES!” I yelled even louder when I realised I had mud all over my brand new jeans.

  Oh why did I wear these jeans to spy in? I thought spinning around so I could get a good look at the huge muddy wet stain on my bottom. It was then that I realised I was standing up outside the window. On the other side was Dad, his face turning purple with rage.

  “SOPHIE! WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING OUT THERE?” he bellowed, his angry breath fogging up the glass.

  I panicked and dropped to the ground, hoping he hadn’t really seen me at all.

  “GET UP OFF THAT WET GRASS AND GET INSIDE THIS INSTANT!” he hollered louder than befo
re.

  My heart was pounding so fast. I looked down at my slightly grazed arm and squeezed it hard to make the bleeding look worse than it was. If I was going to get out of this mess alive, I needed to look like I was on the verge of nearly dying!

  “Ow, Ow, Ow,” I cried crawling on my hands and knees. I then stood up and limped to add a sprained ankle to my list of injuries. Dad and Chelsea were now standing outside on the porch expecting an explanation. With Chelsea in that ugly dressing gown I think I should have been the one asking for an explanation on what on earth made her buy such a hideous robe!

  “So what were you doing under the kitchen window?” Dad snapped tapping his foot impatiently on the wooden deck. I could tell he didn’t believe my sprained ankle routine. If he thought my injuries were serious he would’ve come running. I think my father was growing more unsympathetic as he got older, or more suspicious. Here I was his only daughter crawling around in the wet muddy grass in my brand new jeans, blood gushing out her arm, tears streaming down her face, (they may have been fake tears but they were still tears no less!) and yet…nothing. No sympathy at all.

  I realised I had to do something drastic. I had to make this an Oscar winning performance.

  “Ow, ouch, eeek, oh Daddeeee,” I whined loudly as I held out my bloodied arm in front of him…but still no sympathy!

  “WELL! I am waiting for an answer Sophie and it better be a good one,” he said angrily and still tapping his foot on the deck.

  I wasn’t about to give in just yet. I could be just as stubborn as he was.

  I took a deep breath in and began my story:

  “You see…I forgot my bag so I was running back home as fast as I could to get it and that’s when my ankle gave way and I skidded head first across the lawn and landed underneath the kitchen window. Then that’s when you saw me,” I said quite pleased with myself.