Looking for Trouble

by John Marsden

  I was standing there thinking, ‘Crims wouldn’t have nice-looking kids with hearing aids would they?’ when suddenly a voice behind me said ‘What are you doing?’

  Aaaaaghhhh. It was the worst moment of my life. My face was red and the back of my neck was prickling. I turned round slowly. I knew who it was before I even looked. The Grade 6 kid from Mrs Falzarano’s class. I just stood there gulping, looking at him, feeling really bad. He was steaming. His face was so white and his eyes wouldn’t let go of me. I could feel Phil and Luke a few metres away but I couldn’t break my gaze to look at them. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked again. I started saying ‘Just … just …’ I couldn’t quite get the words out. ‘Just looking,’ I said at last. That’s when he hit me. I got such a shock. I seemed to take about three minutes to react, but of course it wasn’t that long. I finally took a poke at his mouth, but too slowly. My left cheek was stinging and burning from his first punch. I hit him in the mouth, but not hard enough to hurt him. He got me again in the same spot, then on the other side of my face, then on the side of my head, higher up. At last I started to wake up, and defend myself. I threw a lot of punches, and about three of them landed quite hard I think. We started circling each other. Phil and Luke were watching, but not saying anything. It was a strange fight in a lot of ways and that silence was one of the strangest things about it. Another strange thing was that I knew I was in the wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a fight like that before. I threw a big punch but missed his face and only got his shoulder. Then he got me with a short hard one, straight to the nose. BANG. It was like a grandfather clock started donging in my head. My whole face stung so bad, and tears poured out of my eyes, not because I was crying but because being hit in the nose always makes my eyes run. It was awful. I put my hands over my face. I guess that was the end of the fight, and obviously I’d lost. I heard the boy opening his back gate and I heard his little sister saying ‘Mikey’ and running over to him, but I wasn’t looking. Then the gate clicked shut and Phil said ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.’ And off we went.

  All the way back Phil and Luke were saying ‘Are you OK? Are you sure you’re all right?’ until I was annoyed with them and snapped ‘Yes! Can you just shut up.’

  We went to the garage and I cleaned myself up and washed my face. My face felt all tender and swollen. That kid really could fight.

  It was funny though, when we started talking about it, Phil and Luke were different to me. I felt so bad about spying on those people, and I didn’t blame the boy, Mikey, for being mad. But Phil and Luke, they didn’t look at it that way. They thought the way he hit me was more proof that something funny was going on. They said ‘He wouldn’t act like that if he didn’t have something to hide’. I said ‘Well, I reckon anyone’d be mad if they came home and found people spying through their back fence’. I just hoped he wouldn’t tell his parents, and they wouldn’t tell my parents. Yikes, it was confusing. Just an awful mess.

  Then Luke said ‘You should have wrestled him instead of punching him’, which was great advice coming from Luke, who couldn’t beat up a guinea pig. He’s never been in a fight in his life.

  As if that wasn’t enough, Dad’s all worried about the bloke he was working for yesterday. He didn’t pay Dad at the end of the job; he told him to come back Monday. Now not only did Dad work for him all Saturday, but he paid the tip fees out of his own pocket as well, ’cos the bloke said he’d fix him up later. But Dad reckons the bloke might do a flit over the weekend—after all, the factory’s empty now. Then Mum said something about how Dad shouldn’t have paid the tip fees, and Dad got angry at Mum, then Jodie stuck up for Mum, then I told Jodie to mind her own business. It’s OK again now but Dad still doesn’t know if he’ll get his money tomorrow.

  It’s partly the weather, I reckon. It puts everyone in a bad mood. It’s funny, in winter you can’t wait for summer to come. You really hang out for those long hot days. Then in summer you want it to get cool so badly. You think it’ll be great, sitting inside all snug, listening to the wind and rain belting away at the roof and trees. Summer, autumn, winter, spring, you always want some other thing. That rhymes! I’m a poet and I know it and I won’t ever blow it.

  My head still hurts though, especially my nose, and all down the left side of my face. Mum and Dad don’t seem to have noticed—that’s the only good news.

  Monday, Feb 10, 9.25 am

  The first thing that happened this morning was that I saw the kid I had the fight with—Mike—at the bus stop, with his little brother and sister. I got pretty nervous, because I’d already been thinking about what I’d say to him. And when I saw him he stared at me like he did yesterday before he hit me. But I just walked right up to him. I’d planned this sentence in my head, which was ‘I’m sorry about looking through your fence but I wanted to see how much it had changed since the Choos left’, but in the end I just opened my mouth and blurted ‘Sorry about yesterday’, and he said ‘That’s OK’, and we shook hands. He said ‘What’s your name?’ and I said ‘Tony’ and he said ‘Mine’s Mike, and my brother’s name is Rory and my sister is really Elissa but everyone calls her Ginger’. I said ‘My sister’s name is Jodie’, and Jodie immediately said ‘But everyone calls me gorgeous’, which was really intelligent, then she said ‘What happened yesterday?’ Luckily the bus came round the corner at that moment, so I could ignore her question.

  I sat next to Mike on the bus, but he’s a funny kid. You get the feeling he wants to be friendly but he seemed sort of hot and cold. About the only time he talked a bit was when I asked about his baby sister. I think he must really like her, because he told me all this stuff about the cute things she does and how he gave her the first solid food she’d ever had—he put some ice-cream on his finger and stuck it in her mouth. He said she didn’t register for a while what it was, but his mother said ‘Wait, she’ll get the taste of it in a minute’. Then suddenly she did and he said she just about sucked his finger off.

  Her name’s Adrienne.

  Anyway, I told Phil and Luke I was friends with Mike now, so they’re going to apologise to him too. But as Phil says, that still doesn’t explain why the police have been to his place twice in the last week.

  11.55 am

  There’s just been another great moment in the ongoing war between Phil and Helen. This is Phil: ‘Helen, what’s the difference between you and a bucket of dog vomit?’ Helen: ‘I don’t know and I don’t care’. Phil: ‘The bucket’. Helen: ‘Aw Phil, go suck an exhaust pipe’.

  2.45 pm

  I’ve been doing my Luxembourg project in the library, with Bianca, the new girl, and Kate, the class brain. Bianca’s doing Canada, and Kate’s doing Thailand, but we’re helping each other when we find bits of information about the other countries. Also, Kate’s done a heading for me.

  I keep looking at them, wondering if one of them’s the one who’s been writing to me. They’ve both been pretty friendly. Bianca’s been telling us about her last school, at South Kendry. She said it was only a two-teacher school and everyone who went there got on so well they were like a family. Her father publishes car magazines, and he used to be able to live in the country and do it, but the business got too big and he’s had to move here.

  Kate’s parents are divorced, and she lives with her mother, who’s got a job I’ve never heard of. She flies around in a helicopter all day, looking at people’s roofs. If she sees someone putting on a new roof, she checks to see if they’re licensed to work on roofs, or something, and if they’re not they get fined. It’d be quite a good job but I suppose everything gets boring sooner or later. Kate said she sees some funny things. She said you’d be amazed how many people sunbake in the nuddy. I don’t know about that. I remember when Mr Ogden lived next door and he used to mow the lawn in the nick. I thought that was pretty strange. Jodie and I used to peep through the fence and giggle.

  One thing I noticed in the library. Cindy had all these name
s written on her arms of who likes who. There was Phil for Fatima, and Luke for Wendy. The annoying thing was, I could see my name at the top of her arm, but I couldn’t see who she had with it ’cos her sleeve was over the other name. And I wasn’t going to show I was interested by asking her.

  Some of the girls, like Fatima and Kerry, hate my guts at the moment because I called Kerry a broomstick. I don’t care. I don’t want a girlfriend anyway. Girlfriends are for when you’re older, I reckon. But towards the end of last year the girls started going crazy with all this stuff about who likes who, and this year they’re even worse.

  5.30 pm

  Everyone’s really upset because the bloke who was meant to pay Dad today looks like he’s racked off. Dad waited there for an hour and a half this morning, then another bloke turned up and said he was owed hundreds of dollars for electrical work. He’d been calling in every day for a fortnight trying to get his money.

  It’s such a rip-off. It’s come at the worst time because the rego and insurance for the truck are due next week and that’s heaps and heaps of money. Jodie and I both told Dad he could have our money boxes, plus we don’t need any pocket money at the moment. Mum’s going to see if she can get some more work at the nursing home, but she’s not too optimistic. Dad’s outside right now, washing the truck. He always does that when something goes wrong. I’m going out to help him.

  Tuesday, Feb 11, 11.10 am

  We just had a good game of Fortunately, Unfortunately. One person has to start a story by saying Fortunately something. Then the next person continues it with an Unfortunately, and you go on like that, taking it in turns. Mrs Hazell started it with ‘Fortunately Mrs Noah saw the flood water coming in plenty of time’. Then it went like this:

  ‘Unfortunately Mr Noah didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Fortunately Mrs Noah went and got the animals herself.’

  ‘Unfortunately the elephants were asleep.’

  ‘Fortunately Mrs Noah had a pin with her and she woke the elephants up.’

  ‘Unfortunately they trod on the ants.’

  ‘Fortunately she found two more.’

  ‘Unfortunately they were both males.’

  ‘Fortunately one of them had a sex change.’

  ‘Unfortunately the other one bit the unicorns, and they died.’

  ‘Fortunately that meant there was lots of meat for the tigers and lions.’

  ‘Unfortunately the tigers and lions were vegetarians.’

  ‘Fortunately there was lots of seaweed for them.’

  ‘Unfortunately they fell in while they were eating the seaweed.’

  ‘Fortunately they could both swim.’

  ‘Unfortunately they swam into a scuba diver.’

  ‘A scuba diver!’ said Mrs Hazell. ‘Fortunately it’s time for Recess. Out you go.’

  You know, I don’t reckon Mrs Hazell’s that bad. You can’t blame her for getting mad at kids like Terry. At least she’s fair, and she listens to you if you think you’ve been ripped off about something. And she has some good ideas for lessons. I mean it’s boring sometimes, but school’s meant to be boring, isn’t it? I know it’s never going to be like Luna Park or Universal Studios.

  1.58 pm

  I’m not meant to be writing in this but I was just thinking: there really are quite a lot of mysteries in life. I mean, for me there’s the police cars at Mike’s place, and the bloke who ripped Dad off, and the girl who’s been writing me those notes. That’s three, for a start. We’re having a meeting of LFT tomorrow after school, so we can talk about two of those things, anyway.

  Wednesday, Feb 12, 6.10 pm

  We had our meeting, starting with a new pass-sentence,

  Happy birthday to you,

  Happy birthday to you,

  Tomorrow you go back,

  To your cage at the zoo.

  Then we had a big discussion about Sunday, and getting caught spying through the Edwards’ fence. Phil and Luke said we shouldn’t give up, especially because they had some new evidence. Phil had asked his parents about the Edwards and he said they got funny looks on their faces and asked him why he wanted to know. Phil said he’d met Mike at school and they said that was OK, but he shouldn’t go to their house, and when Phil asked why, they wouldn’t say. But later Phil heard his father say ‘Zacchaeus Edwards has briefed Melissa Wignell’, whatever that means. Phil had written it down and brought it with him, so we looked at that for a bit. ‘They’re both unusual names,’ Luke said. ‘Maybe the phone book’ll tell us something.’ So we went in the house and had a look. We found an M Wignell, that had ‘Brstr’ next to it, so we wrote that down and had a look for Z Edwards. There was only one, in Whitney. ‘Let’s ring it,’ Phil said. ‘Yikes, no.’ ‘It can’t do any harm. It’d be their old address.’ ‘But what if they’ve taken the number with them? Lots of people do that when they move.’ ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll just hang up.’ Phil started dialling and seeing it was our phone I ended up with it in my hand. I could hear the ringing noise, then after about six rings a woman answered, and said ‘Hello’. ‘Um, excuse me,’ I said, ‘could I speak to Mr Edwards?’ I used my politest voice but she just went mad. ‘Can’t you people give up?’ she screeched. ‘They’ve moved! They’ve gone! They don’t live here any more! All right? Get the message?’ Slam. Beep, beep, beep. That was the end of the call.

  ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘That was amazing. I don’t think she was very happy.’ The others had been listening, and they were quite impressed too. ‘Let’s get their new number,’ Luke suggested. ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know. We should find out everything we can and build up a file on them.’ So we rang Directory Assistance. And that’s when we got our second surprise. ‘I’m sorry, that’s a silent number,’ the operator said. ‘I can’t give that to you:’ ‘How do you mean?’ I asked. ‘It’s a private number,’ she explained. ‘Some people have their phone numbers kept secret—we’re not allowed to give them to members of the public.’ She hung up too.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Luke, ‘I’ve heard of silent numbers. It’s if you’re famous or something, like a movie star. It’s so your fans don’t ring you up all the time and hassle you.’

  Dad came home a few minutes later. He was still steaming about the bloke at the factory who hadn’t paid him, so we got him talking about that. He said the bloke’s name was Denison and he drove a Rover. He said he was quite tall, and had silver hair and wore a lot of jewellery. ‘I should have realised he was shonky,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling about him. But there’s not a lot of work around, and I didn’t like to look too hard into the horse’s mouth. This is all I need after Pedestal.’ Dad and Mum lost $850 when the Pedestal company went bankrupt. ‘They’re all mongrels,’ Dad said. ‘This Denison bloke and the blokes running Pedestal. They’re all mongrels.’

  That was the end of our meeting then ’cos Dad needed Jodie and I to help him put some new guttering on.

  Thursday, Feb 13, 8.50 am

  I was talking to Mike at the bus stop again, and I sat next to him on the bus. There is something funny about them, I reckon. I asked him a few questions about his parents and what they do and he changed the subject so fast. He didn’t look too happy. Maybe his parents really are crims. It’d be amazing if they were. But I feel a bit funny being friendly with him on the one hand and trying to find out stuff about them on the other. It seems kind of hypocritical.

  11.05 am

  Three interesting things just happened, one after another. The first was that when I went to my school bag to get my playlunch I found another anonymous letter. Here it is:

  Dear Tony, Guess it’s time you heard from me again. I saw you put the cross above the date last week, but I don’t think anyone else noticed. If you want me to write again, and you don’t know who I am, put a dot above the three in today’s date on the blackboard. If you want me to write again and you think you know who I am, put two dots. And don’t forget, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. By the way, when’s your birthday? You can write that on the
blackboard too if you want.

  Lots of love,

  Your secret admirer

  Well, I don’t have a clue who it is but I think I’ll put the dot on the blackboard. I just hope it’s someone cute, when I do find out. There’s no one I really hate in this class at the moment, but there’s some I wouldn’t want for a girlfriend. Helen, for instance, and Cindy.

  The second thing was that Kate asked me to her birthday party, on the 22nd. It could be her writing those notes. I like Kate, but she’s so smart I feel embarrassed talking to her sometimes. But her party’ll be good. It’s not exactly a party, just tea at McDonald’s, then we’re seeing a movie, When Harry Missed the Bus. I’ve been wanting to see that. There’s only six of us going—Luke and Phil and me, and Kathryn and Bianca. Kate and Bianca have been hanging around a bit together lately.

  The third thing was that Phil asked if he can stay tomorrow night ’cos his parents are going to a wedding. It’s always good when he stays. We often sleep over at each other’s places and we always have fun.

  4.05 pm

  Fair dinkum, our school bus, you could make a TV series about it. Every day there’s something new. This afternoon there was a bloke from the high school, in Year 9 I think. His name’s Arthur something, and he’s always trying to gross people out. So today, he had this pendant on a chain around his neck, and he was sticking it up his nose then pulling it back out through his mouth. The pendant, with the whole chain following. Everyone was screaming and laughing, then Mr Rylands, the bus driver, stopped the bus and told Arthur he was an idiot and he’d chuck him off the bus if he didn’t behave. I was sitting next to Mike again, and we were cacking ourselves, but it must be pretty unhealthy I reckon.

  I’ve got to go and help Dad with the guttering again in a minute. He’s had no work at all this week, so he’s not in a very good mood. But he’s done nearly all the guttering, and the downpipes too.