I kept my eyes firmly on the watch and shook my head. ‘No, who was it?’
‘Jean Larstead.’
Adrenaline shot through me but I kept cool. ‘Nope. I dunno.’
‘Oh, well, never mind. Some of these oldies are just looking for an excuse to complain. She probably just imagined it, the old coot.’ He laughed. ‘But listen, you’ll have to deliver the bike and trailer back to the surgery bright and early on the 27th. Or, actually, I could just take it with me today. I’ll put it in the back of the wagon.’
‘No, it’s okay,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll bring it back. It’s kind of fun, riding around with a trailer. ’
Later, as we sat down to Christmas lunch, Bryce’s phone beeped.
‘Excuse me,’ he said as he read the message. ‘What in heaven’s name?’
‘Are you okay?’ Mum asked.
‘One of the patients says that his dentures taste like garbage.’
‘How odd,’ said my mum.
‘Do you know anything about this, Tom?’ he asked.
My mother glared. I shook my head.
I kept quiet as we jammed ourselves with chicken and pavlova. Then Bryce wanted to play table tennis in the garage. I said no but he insisted. I tried to keep him and Mum down the roller-door end, away from the covered-up trailer. I won the first game 21–12. Halfway through the second, Bryce’s phone rang. He groaned.
‘My apologies, you’ll have to excuse me again. For some silly reason I agreed to be on call today.’
My heart missed a beat.
He took the call, wandering around the garage, saying, ‘I see,’ a lot.
I stood there, nervously gnawing on the rubber bit of my table tennis bat.
When the call was over he said, ‘One of the patients that you delivered to yesterday claims to have tyre tracks on his teeth and gums. That’s the third complaint I’ve received. Are you certain that you don’t know anything about this, Thomas?’
I shook my head. My mother started massaging her temples.
‘There wasn’t an accident of any kind, was there? You didn’t drop any of the teeth?’
I shook my head again, but only very slightly.
Bryce narrowed his eyes. My mother clicked her tongue. It was like being in a police line-up, but I was the only suspect.
‘Tom?’ my mother said, almost whispering, knowing that I’d done something wrong.
‘Well …’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘There was a little problem with the trailer.’
I turned to the paint sheet with the trailer underneath. I looked at it for a moment, trying to think of a way out of this. But I was in too deep now. I reached down and slowly pulled the cover off, revealing the trailer in all its twisted glory.
‘You little liar! Give me that watch,’ Bryce said.
‘Hang on a minute. Don’t you call my son a liar.’
‘I just did. He has been totally irresponsible and then lied about it!’
‘Well, let’s talk to him about it and find a solution,’ Mum said.
‘A solution? The solution is that the boy needs a hiding. It’s clear that there’s no discipline in this house.’
‘Excuse me?’ she said.
Uh-oh. That was exactly what you didn’t say to my mum. This was going to get ugly.
I started backing up. I slipped quietly out of the garage and into the house. As I tiptoed down the hall I could hear them shouting. Mum was giving it to him, really standing up for me. Go Mum. I slipped out the back door, grabbed my bike and clipped my helmet. I jumped on and rode down the side of the house, across the lawn and safely out onto the road to Jack’s place.
I ate a second Christmas lunch at Jack’s. I hadn’t heard from Mum. When we were eating dessert – cheesecake with berries – I asked Mrs Danalis, Jack’s mum, if she would adopt me, as a Christmas present.
She said no.
Later that afternoon we were playing classic catches on the front lawn and my mum pulled up out front, ordering me into the car.
‘You’re grounded for the rest of your life,’ she said as we drove off.
‘Even when I’m 35?’ I asked.
‘Even when you’re 35.’
‘Even when I’m 70?’
‘Even when you’re 70.’
I tried to stay quiet and act like I was ashamed of what I’d done, but I couldn’t help myself.
There was something I needed to know. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yes,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘Do you think Bryce will still pay me for yesterday?’
7 am. My alarm clock goes off. I fling an arm over and knock it off my bedside table. But when the clock falls off the table I don’t hear a bang. This is weird. Usually it smashes to the floor and Mum yells at me from the kitchen. I always hear a bang. Today, I don’t hear a thing.
I open one eye, roll over and look down beside my bed. The clock looks like it’s floating about 20 centimetres above the floor. I sit up, swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand.
Something else is weird. My feet aren’t touching the ground. I am hovering. It feels like I’m standing on a very firm, invisible mattress or a sheet of slightly spongy glass.
I look around my room. It’s pretty dark, only lit by the sun squeezing through the cracks at the edge of the blinds, but I can see that my bed is hovering. So is my chest of drawers, my rug and my wardrobe. Three pairs of undies that have been lying on my floor for a week are hovering above the ground. A mouldy sandwich that I threw at the bin yesterday afternoon is hovering.
So is the bin.
Suddenly I get it. I’m dreaming. But I don’t want to wake up. This is so much cooler than most of my dreams. So I pretend not to know that it’s a dream.
I hover-walk over to my bedroom door, looking down at my feet as I go. It’s like there’s an invisible force field between me and the floor. I open my door and step into the hall. I can’t smell toast or coffee, but I can hear something weird in the lounge room.
My soccer ball is hovering in the hall. I kick it softly and it hover-bounces up towards the front door. I grin. I walk into the lounge room. I stop dead in my tracks. The couch is hovering. So is the coffee table, the lamp and the bookcase.
My mum is sitting on the couch. Actually, she’s floating slightly above it. She is listening to Pop’s old battery-powered radio. She must have dug it out of the shed.
‘What’s going on?’ I say.
‘Sssshhhhh!’ She turns the volume up.
A news reporter says, ‘Scientists around the globe are baffled. Some suggest that there has been a rush of negative electrons from the earth into the objects around us, causing electromagnetic repulsion. A leading European scientist posits that a massive, random superstring has wrapped itself around the earth and caused a local distortion of the fabric of space and time. While environmentalists point the finger at global warming.’
Mum turns a dial to another station. ‘In Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul,’ says another reporter, ‘bombs are simply refusing to land. The –’
Mum switches off the radio and drops it onto the couch. It hovers. I laugh. She looks at me. She doesn’t think that this is as cool as I do.
I pour dog food into Bando’s hoverbowl. The food floats in the air above the bowl in little, meaty hoverballs.
‘Bando, breakfast!’
He is up the back in the corner of the yard near the passionfruit vine, crouched, doing a poo. As he hovers away from it he turns and sees that it’s floating and he freaks out. He barks at it like it’s coming to get him.
‘Bando! Stop barking. It’s okay, dude. It’s just … hoverpoo.’
Bando bolts across the yard, up the steps and into the house, top speed.
I follow him up the steps, picking my undies out of my bottom as I go. I think I have my first hoverwedgie.
I can’t make toast because there’s no electricity for some reason. I try to make cereal. The milk hangs over the bowl in marble-sized blobs a
nd the Sultana Bran floats all around it. I put down my spoon and suck up the blobs. I try brushing my hair but I can’t get the brush close to my head and my hair keeps sticking straight up.
‘I’m going,’ I say, grabbing my bag from near the front door.
Mum’s in the dining room talking on the phone. ‘Could you hold on for a moment?’ she says into the phone. Then she calls, ‘Tom, school might not be on.’
‘It will be,’ I say.
‘It might not be. I don’t want you –’
‘I’ll come home if it’s not.’
‘Tom!’ she says, getting annoyed. ‘This is –’
‘I don’t want to interrupt your call,’ I say. ‘Seeya.’
I disappear out the front door.
Outside, I see the old guy who dresses all in white, walking his small black hoverdog.
After he goes by, a cat jumps out of the maple tree on the other side of the street, but it doesn’t land. It hovers, which totally weirds the cat out. It looks around and down at its feet, then it screeches loudly and runs in three quick circles, chasing its tail before disappearing into a hedge.
The only things that still seem to be connected to the ground are the road, the trees, the telegraph poles and the houses. Anything not absolutely rooted to the ground is up. Even our car hovers in the driveway.
‘Woooooooo!’ A Year Three kid from school rides past on his hoverbike, screaming. I think about getting my own bike out of the shed, but then I see the best thing that I have ever seen.
My skateboard.
It’s lying on the edge of the driveway, upside down. It is hovering. I walk towards it and flip it up the right way. It still hovers. I jump on. It feels good. I put my left foot down and push through the air. I glide. I push again. I glide down the driveway. I’m in heaven. It’s like regular skating but smoother, lighter. I’m skating on air. I turn and push again, heading out across the grass.
‘Mum, look!’ She peers through the lounge room window. ‘A hoverboard!’
She’s still on the phone. She tries to smile but I can tell that she is worried about the whole hover thing. She worries way too much. Me? I never worry. This is going to be the best day of my life.
I cane across the grass, hit the edge of the driveway, jump and fall flat on my back. I look up at the sky and wait for the pain, but it doesn’t come. I feel a stab of fear that this might still be a dream. But, somehow, I know that it’s not.
I glide through the school gates and kick up my board. Kids are bouncing basketballs that don’t hit the ground. Girls hoverskip. And I notice that everything is slightly higher than when I first woke up. I feel like I’m maybe 50 centimetres off the ground now rather than 20.
When the bell rings we head to morning lines. Only about half the kids are there. Someone near me starts laughing. I look up to see our hoverprincipal, Mr Ward, coming down the stairs of the main building. His tie is hovering way up over his shoulder. He grabs it and tucks it into his pants, but it untucks straightaway and hovers again. There are giggles. His long moustache hovers slightly at the ends, too. He looks a bit like a circus ringmaster. But the thing that really gets us is that his toupee, a little round wig that covers his bald patch, is hovering. And I don’t think he knows. Maybe the teachers were too scared to tell him. He clears his throat and claps a little rhythm. We clap back. We try to be quiet but there are snorts of laughter all around.
‘Thank you, everybody,’ he says. ‘I realise that this is a somewhat … unusual day, but I expect that everybody will be paying attention to their teachers and focusing on their regular lessons while we wait for this … phenomenon to wear off or …’ He is lost for words. He grabs his tie and holds it down. Jack points at the hoverwig and Mr Ward sees him. The principal reaches up to his floating rug and grabs it. He shoves it into his pocket. Everyone goes wild, laughing. We can’t help it. Mr Ward looks like he’s about to explode, but there are too many of us to put on detention.
‘That will be all,’ he says, barely containing his rage. He turns and hovers back up the stairs, one hand covering his bald spot.
I tip orange cordial out of my drink bottle onto the floor but it hovers in little orange blobs around my shoes.
‘Very interesting,’ Miss Norrish, our teacher, says. She has asked us each to make a short presentation exploring some aspect of the hover thing.
I bend down and flick one of the blobs and it breaks into about 17 smaller splodges.
‘So, Tom, what would be your explanation for the way the liquid is behaving?’
‘Well …’ I have no idea but I make up something and we discuss the possibilities for a while. Jack is the next to give his presentation.
‘Okay, Jack, what are you presenting today?’
‘Hovernits!’ he says.
‘I’m sorry?’ Miss Norrish says.
‘If you look carefully, my nits are hovering!’
A few kids laugh. Sasha points to Jack’s hair and says, ‘OMG, they are!’
It’s true. My best friend has hovernits. His hair is sticking up like everyone else’s, but then there’s a thick brown halo of nits hovering above that. It’s like space junk in orbit around the earth.
Everybody cracks up.
Including Jack.
When the bell rings for recess we bolt outside. Everything is hovering a bit higher. We’re probably a metre off the ground now.
I have a chocolate yoghurt in my lunchbox. When I peel back the lid the choc goo flies out of the container and spatters my face. Jack thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen. We spend recess jumping out of a tree over near the bubblers. No matter how far we fall we never get hurt.
It seriously is the best day of school ever. Nothing is normal or regular or dull. And as things hover higher and higher it’s even more fun. By lunchtime we’re about three metres off the ground. We have to do afternoon lessons in the playground because our desks and chairs are right up near the classroom ceiling.
When the bell rings for the end of school everything is at least ten metres off the ground. We’re way up above the buildings. Mum is waiting for me, hovering above the main school gate. The parents all look totally spooked.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘We’ve got to rescue your nan,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because I’ve been at work all day and she’s clutching the top of a tree in her front yard, that’s why.’
‘Oh.’
Mum’s voice sounds shaky.
‘It’s okay, Mum.’
‘No, it’s not okay, Tom. What do you think is going to happen if everything suddenly falls? Have you thought about that? Or what if we just keep getting higher?’
I try to keep up with Mum as she walks and I think about what she said. She sure has a way of making fun stuff seem not that fun. I look down at the ground and the houses way below me. I feel like I’m walking across a glass-bottom bridge. If we fall right now we’ll be mashed into the footpath. Or what if we keep going up? How high can we go? Skyscraper high? Space? The moon? I laugh. Mum frowns. I stop.
Nan’s place is down near the beach. I can see the tips of the tallest pine trees on the beachfront. There are heaps of people way up in the trees, sitting on branches. Not just kids but whole families with sleeping bags and everything. In case everything falls, I guess.
We arrive at Nan’s. She’s in her own tree.
‘You took your sweet time getting here,’ she calls. ‘I’ve been up this thing for two hours.’
‘C’mon, down you come, you silly old thing,’ Mum says. She slowly coaxes her down out of the tree. Nan’s skirt is hovering up in the air and I can see her giant old-lady undies. I try to turn away but I can’t stop looking. I’m going to be scarred for life. Nan tries to pull her skirt down but it hovers over her head again.
‘That’s something I bet you never thought you’d see,’ she says, giving me a wink. ‘At least I put my nice undies on.’
We head d
own the hill towards the beach. The waves are big. Like, massive. That’s when I see the weirdest thing I’ve seen on the weirdest day of my life. There’s a thick black and silvery layer hovering ten metres above the water. Fish. Thousands of them. Millions maybe. And sharks and eels. Some are still moving but most aren’t. For some reason the ocean isn’t hovering, just the animals. Fishermen are out walking through the blanket of fish, sweeping them up in their nets. It sure makes their job easier but seeing all those fish just floating there, dead, makes me feel really sad.
11.30 pm. I’m staring up at the night sky.
We’re camped out above our backyard. Just me, Mum, Nan and my sister Tanya, sleeping under the stars. But I can’t sleep. I roll over and look out across town. We are about 40 metres above the ground. Nearly half a football field high. The street lights are off. It’s a full moon. There is a patchy blanket of mashed potatoey cloud not far above our heads. It feels like I could almost touch it. The houses and cars, our whole neighbourhood, just hangs there like a thousand flying saucers waiting to crash land.
Nobody has any definite answers. Everything, all over the globe, has hovered for an entire day and nobody knows why.
Some people around town are wearing parachutes. Others are sleeping on piles of mattresses to give them padding if things come crashing down. Only the tips of three or four trees are still above the hoverzone and there have been near-riots with people fighting for space in the trees. Four doors up from our place there’s an old inventor guy with a really messy yard. He’s sleeping on the bonnet of a rusted car, wearing a homemade jet pack. I hope it works.
I hear Mum’s voice.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re not scared are you?’
‘Nah,’ I lie.
‘We’ll be okay,’ she says, but I know she doesn’t believe it. She thinks we’ll all be smashed into a million little pieces in the morning.
‘I love you.’
‘You too.’
My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up Page 7
