Looking for Trouble

by John Marsden

  EDWARDS, Zacchaeus John; B.Com (U.E.A.), Director of Edwards Holdings, Director of P.H.E. (Aust) Ltd., Son of Z.K. and J.S. Edwards; b. Mar 7, 1953; ed. Linley College, Univ. East. Aust.; Manager, S & D Transport 1979—1982; first General Manager and Managing Director of P.H.E. Holdings, 1984, Chairman 1987; md. May 14, 1978, Pamela, d. T.R. Holden, 2s; recreations: skiing, squash, golf, business; clubs: Federal, Green, Northern Golf; address: 14 Yanco Street, Whitney.

  We didn’t want to ask Mrs Cranston about it because she might realise we were spying on the father of kids at our own school. Besides, adults seemed a bit funny about the Edwards family. So we had to work it out for ourselves. But that was OK. We figured out the important bits. I don’t think Mr Edwards was famous the way Joan Sutherland and Henry Lawson and Simpson’s donkey are famous. I think he was in the book because he was important in business. But that confused me even more. Here he was with all these important positions, so you’d think he’d have heaps of money, and instead he was living in an ordinary house in Rooke Street. It didn’t make sense.

  Tuesday, Feb 18, 10.50 am

  We got some good news last night. Dad’s got two weeks’ work with Wattle Windows because there’s a backlog of orders. He was so rapt. He’s done quite a bit for them before and they like him. It’s clean, light work, and as long as you’re careful not to damage the windows when you tie them on the truck, or when you go over potholes, it’s pretty easy. What I wish is that he could find the Mr Denison who ripped him off so badly that Saturday. To work all day when the temperature’s about 40 degrees, and to pay the tip fees yourself, then to get nothing for it—that’s criminal, I reckon.

  Things are pretty tense here in 6H at the moment. Phil told Helen to shut up; Helen turned round and said to him ‘I don’t shut up, I grow up. And when I look at you I throw up.’ We were put in pairs to do some Science, and Phil was meant to be with Helen, but he did a quick swap so he’s with Fatima. She was happy—she likes Phil. I was with Natasha, who I hardly know. I would have said she’s the shyest girl in the class, but when we were together on our own she was good. She’s got a good sense of humour. We were laughing about Phil and Helen, but not so they could hear—they get really steamed up when they have an argument, and if you say the wrong thing you can really cop it.

  Natasha was telling me how at her last school there was a craze for all these insults when you wanted someone to go away. You’d say to them ‘Why don’t you make like a nut and bolt?’ or ‘Why don’t you make like a tree and leave?’ Another one was ‘Why don’t you make like a pen and run out?’ We started making up our own then, like ‘Why don’t you make like a dog and flee?’ ‘Why don’t you make like a bomb and go off?’ ‘Why don’t you make like a skitten and scat?’

  Natasha’s got little dark eyes that notice everything.

  4 pm

  I just made the worst mistake on the bus. God I’m stupid sometimes. But I was distracted—it was so hot and noisy. Angie Gurstella was screaming at her friends, from one end of the bus to the other. I was sitting next to Mike and he had his little sister Ginger on his lap, and she was whimpering about some kid who had scratched her at school. Ginger said ‘I wish we could go back to Templeton to live’, and I said ‘I thought you guys came from Whitney’, ’cos I remembered that from the telephone directory. Mike just gave me this filthy look, grabbed Ginger, and stormed off to the back of the bus. I felt awful ’cos he’s so secretive about his family, and if he wants any proof that I’ve been spying on him again I guess he just got it.

  Wednesday, Feb 19, 9.15 am

  I put a note in the book, like the girl who’s been writing to me said. But it’s not the note she would have wanted. I just said ‘Now that everyone knows about it I think we should drop this whole thing’.

  3.55 pm

  We’re nearly at the end of the story Mrs Hazell’s been reading to us—A Line to the Top. At the end of their truck ride the kids in the book get caught in a quarry with the crooks, and the crooks each jump in a bulldozer and start chasing them around. The walls of the quarry are too steep to climb and the kids can’t get to the exit road, so things are looking pretty bad. I’ve got a feeling though that something’s going to save them. It’s not the kind of book where the goodies get killed.

  Mike wouldn’t talk to me at the bus stop this morning, or on the bus this afternoon. I feel terrible about it. I want us to be friends. He’s a good kid, I reckon.

  Thursday, Feb 20, 8.10 pm

  We had a meeting of LFT this afternoon, in our office. It went well at first. I called the meeting to order and Phil gave a report of our expedition last Friday night, and how they’ve got all these security arrangements and how the police were outside the front of the house. Then I read out the report from Who’s Who. We made a list of all the evidence so far, and here it is:

  Police have been at their house at least twice in the daytime.

  Police were watching their house last Friday night.

  They’ve installed a big alarm system.

  Mr Edwards used to be important and now they’re living in an ordinary little house.

  Mike doesn’t like anyone finding out anything about his family.

  Our parents go funny when you mention them, and Phil’s been told not to go to their house.

  Mr Edwards has got a barrister.

  So that part of the meeting was good. Then Phil suggested that I should go out each night and see if the police were still watching the house. He said I should tell my parents I wanted to go for a run to get fit, and I could run past the Edwards’ place. I said they wouldn’t let me out at night on my own, especially living around here. He said ‘Well, just sneak out. It’d only take five minutes.’ I admit I’m curious to know if the cops are there every night, but I don’t want to keep sneaking out on my parents. It’s like lying to them really. And also I don’t want to double-cross Mike any more. I still feel bad about it.

  But when I said all that to Phil and Luke I didn’t get a very good reception. Luke could see what I meant but Phil was too impatient to listen properly. Then he said we should talk to the Edwards’ neighbours, but I didn’t want to do that either. Then Phil said ‘Looking for Trouble was all your idea and now you keep chickening out just when we’re onto something. This is the closest we’ll ever get to a real crime.’ I said ‘But when we started I thought it’d be like movies and books, where you can tell who the baddies are, and you chase them and catch them and everyone’s happy. In the books the crims never have kids our age, or babies. It makes it all so complicated.’

  So the meeting broke up without us agreeing on anything, and everyone was in a bad mood. To top it all off I found Jodie had broken my Alien Maze game. I hope tomorrow goes better—it’s Kate’s birthday party, so that should be good.

  Friday, Feb 21, 9.45 am

  Mike turned his back on us at the bus stop this morning, and when Rory, his little brother, tried to show me a drawing he’d done, Mike called him away and told him not to bother me. It’s awful. I’ve got to do something about it.

  There was a letter from the secret admirer, too, in my Spelling Book. It was quite a good letter, really.

  Dear Tony, I’m sorry about everyone knowing, but it’s not as bad as you think. Only two girls really know who I am—the rest are bluffing. I’m sorry that even two of them found out but that was an accident. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me—I haven’t said another thing to those two girls, and I won’t. But I’ll write to you again. Have a good weekend. Hope you enjoy the party.

  I’ve been trying to work out how many people would know about Kate’s birthday party. Quite a lot probably. I still haven’t got Kate a present but Mum’s picking me up after school and we’ll go shopping for one.

  Saturday, Feb 22, 1.45 pm

  This was a busy morning. Mum’s asleep after another night shift, I took Jodie to Netball again, and then I helped Dad with the truck, checking the tyre pressures and the spark plug gaps, and changing a radiator
hose. Dad sure takes care of that truck. He keeps it cleaner than I keep my teeth.

  The Netball was good too. Jodie’s playing Goal Attack now and she scored 14 goals. Her team won easily. They’re really humming, like Dad’s truck. I heard one of the mothers say that Jodie might get picked for District, which’d be hot. Today District, tomorrow State, next week the world. Trouble is, I think it’d cost a lot.

  I like how Jodie’s modest about it though. You can always tell I reckon. If you go up to someone after a match and say ‘How did you go?’ and they say ‘Oh, I got 10 goals’, then that means they’re only thinking of themselves, but if they say ‘Oh we won by three goals’, then that means they’re thinking of the team. It all depends on how they take the word ‘you’. Pretty smart, hey? I worked that out all by myself, speaking of being modest.

  There was this little kid at the Netball, I don’t know his name, but I think he’s Lauren Allen’s brother. He’s only about three years old or something. Anyway, I moved backwards when the umpire got too close to me and I trod on this kid’s foot. And do you know what he said? He said ‘Get off my bloody foot’. I was shocked. I didn’t think kids that young knew any swear words. I know where he learnt it from but. Lauren swears worse than a public toilet.

  Kate’s party was good fun. I’m glad we just had an ordinary McDonald’s meal because I’m sick of their birthday parties and I reckon we’re getting too old for them, a bit. Mrs Burns was there, but not Mr Burns because they’re divorced, but Kate’s at her father’s this weekend, to have another birthday with him. That’d be one good thing about having divorced parents—double birthdays. Mrs Burns is the one who flies around in helicopters looking for unlicensed people doing work on roofs. I told Dad about that and he wasn’t too impressed. ‘More Government interference,’ he said.

  We went to the movie When Harry Missed the Bus, and honestly it was excellent. I’d recommend it to anyone. It shows you how one little thing that you do or don’t do can change everything about your life. It’s clever how it shows you what happens when Harry misses the bus and what would have happened if he’d caught it. Although as Kate said afterwards, it doesn’t show you which one would have been better.

  I sat next to Bianca in the movie, like I’d been hoping. She looked really snazzy, all done up, and she had the best T-shirt, with different buttons all over it, like it had fake pockets and stuff. I thought she might say something about the letters, if she’d written them, but she didn’t even drop a hint.

  The girls look a lot older when they’re dressed up. Bianca looked about fourteen.

  It was a good party. The best one I’ve ever been to was Phil’s tenth, I think, when his parents took us all to the show and shouted us heaps of rides. The worst was Cindy’s ninth, when everyone went animal. We cheated on all the games, like the Mintie hunt, then when the food was served people were crawling over the tables trying to get to it. Someone, I’d better not say who, blew out half the candles on the cake and someone else broke Cindy’s Hungry Hippo. It was terrible. Cindy’s parents complained to the school and we all got in heaps of trouble. I didn’t think that was fair really. It’s not the school’s business. I guess Cindy’s parents had a right to be upset, but on the other hand Cindy did some pretty awful things, like inviting all the girls in the class except Kathryn because she was having a bitch fight with Kathryn at the time.

  I’d love to have a birthday party this year but I know we can’t afford it, so I won’t mention it unless Dad gets a permanent job or something. I was embarrassed that I gave Kate the smallest present of anyone last night—it was a little writing pad thing, but she said she liked it, and Mum wrapped it up so well it looked better than it was.

  Sunday, Feb 23, 1.30 pm

  I stayed at Luke’s last night, not for any special reason, just because I hadn’t been there for ages. Luke and I have been mates for a long time, since we played footy for Emu Field Under 9’s. It was good going to his place again. His mother’s the best cook—she made hamburgers for us, with everything you can think of on them: bacon, eggs, tomato, lettuce, cheese, pineapple, onion. I love the smell of frying onions. Anyway, when Mrs Jackanic put the top of the buns on, the hamburgers looked ginormous. There was no way we were ever going to get our mouths around them. We just had to eat them in any old messy sloppy way we could. I couldn’t even finish mine, and for me that’s pretty unusual. Mum always says I could eat the contents of a zoo. I don’t know about that. I think I’d take a break at the echidnas. And the skunks.

  After tea we mucked around with Luke’s Science stuff. He’s got so much of it now. He’s got all these dead things in bottles, in some liquid that preserves them. He said sometimes when you pour the liquid in, their eyes pop out. It’s disgusting, if you ask me. The latest thing he’s got is this dead mouse that he found on the road, squashed completely flat, like a flower that’s been pressed in a book, or like those animals on cartoons when someone drops a dirty great rock on top of them. But he said the trouble was that when he put it in the bottle he didn’t have quite enough of the liquid to cover it and, judging by the stink, I’d have to agree with him. I told him I wouldn’t sleep in the room unless he put it outside.

  Another thing he had was this tapeworm all coiled up in a jar. He said it was four metres long. He said it came out of a horse on his uncle’s place, and the way they got it out was to starve the horse for a few days, then put a bowl of fresh-cooked hot steaming mince in front of it. The worm was so hungry it came crawling out the horse’s mouth to get the mince. Then they grabbed its head and hauled it out, metre by metre. He said they do that with humans too, when they have tapeworms. Can you imagine how that would feel, having that thing come slithering up your throat and into your mouth? Yuk! I feel sick just thinking about it.

  Luke showed me something else. You take your shoes off and pull your socks up as far as they’ll go, then rub your socks with the palms of your hands, as fast as you can. Then, after a while, you pull your socks off, and all the hairs on your legs are sticking out, like bristles. It looks really funny.

  Luke wants to be a scientist, and I reckon he will be one day.

  7 pm

  Oh boy, what do you do when things go from bad to worse to disastrous to a complete and utter wipe-out? This is what happened. I had to go down the shop to get some oil for tabouli and who should I see outside the shop but Mike, with his baby sister, Adrienne, in a pram. So what should I do but bowl up to Mike and say ‘Mike, I’m honestly not trying to find out anything else about your family and I’m sorry I ever started. I’d rather be mates with you again than end up as enemies.’ And what does Mike do but wheel the pram around like a Formula One driver and charge off up the street, with his face blazing red and his freckles standing out like olives in a pizza.

  I was so embarrassed. But pretty angry, too. Who does he think he is? I hadn’t done anything all that bad, and then I’d apologised, and he was still acting like I was Adolf Hitler. I don’t think he was being very reasonable. First I was in the wrong, but now he was in the wrong, even if I was still in the wrong a little bit, if that makes sense.

  Monday, Feb 24, 10 am

  I’d been asking Bianca about those car magazines her father publishes, so she brought a few of them to school today and gave them to me. I was pretty rapt in that. They sell for $3.95 in the shops. Dad’ll be rapt too—it’s too bad her parents don’t publish a trucking magazine.

  Now that Kate’s friends with Bianca, Bianca’s getting noticed a lot more. For sport last Friday she was one of the four captains, for instance. Also she’s standing out more because of things she does. She’s got the most decorated bag and folders of anyone in the class, with stickers and stars and labels and transfers. This morning before school she told Terry off for being stupid—there’s this dog who lives next to the school, and he comes into the playground sometimes, and Terry had just blown his nose on a tissue and he was trying to get the dog to eat it. That’s Terry.

  2 pm

&
nbsp; Phil and Luke and I had a talk at lunchtime about Looking for Trouble. We can’t agree on what to do. I don’t want to spy on the Edwards any more, but Phil does. Luke’s kind of neutral. Phil said ‘How about if we get friendly with the one in Year 3—what’s his name—Rory?’ I thought that was a bit off, but Phil said I was being stupid. The meeting broke up without us deciding anything.

  Tuesday, Feb 25, 11.30 am

  Oh, that Terry, he’s not improving at all, as far as I can see. That kid is just mad I reckon. His latest trick, for the last week or so, is catching bees in his fist, keeping them in there for a few minutes then letting them go. I don’t know why they haven’t stung him but Terry’s always said they don’t sting when they’re in there, maybe because it’s dark, I honestly don’t know. Well, he won’t be saying that any more. During Recess there was this terrible scream from near the slides. Everyone rushed over, and it was Terry of course, holding his left hand where a bee had finally got revenge. Terry was screaming and swearing. Then Mrs Falzarano got there and got the sting out but it didn’t seem to help much. But the amazing thing was that Terry’s hand started swelling up, right in front of our eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it. It got bigger and puffier and hotter looking till it was about twice its normal size. It was like he was wearing a boxing glove—flesh coloured. It was some reaction. Last I saw of him they were taking him away in a car to the doctor’s. Mrs Hazell says he’ll be all right, and I hope so, but honestly, next week he’ll staple his hand to a table or put his tongue in the pencil sharpener or do a head-plant off the monkey bars. He never learns.