I immediately raised my gaze and stared at her eyes. “Sorry, Lauren,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking what I was doing. But yes, very nice view.”
I added that last bit in case she was expecting me to give her a compliment. I still don’t understand women. (And I wasn’t lying. It was a nice view!)
“So it should be,” she said. “They cost your dad a lot of money.”
I guess she must have thought I was looking at her necklaces.
Ha! She thought I had been looking at her necklaces.
I got away with it that time.
Thought for the day:
Lauren’s boobs are my new favourite thing.
PS:
Just joking!
February 24th
Lauren took me to the library. Not the huge big library in the city, but a much smaller one in Albany. Even so, it has thousands of books.
A digression:
There are no books in our house, except for a pile of copies of a book called ‘Rucker Tucker’ which is all about my dad. On the cover it says that he wrote it, which would make him a famous writer too, except he said he didn’t really write it. Someone else did that, he just told them stuff.
I read that book and learned lots of really cool stuff about my dad. Some of the stuff I learned:
•He played rugby for the Northcote Club when he was a boy.
•He was one of the youngest ever to play for New Zealand.
•He played in over a hundred international tests.
•He stopped an Australian rugby player from scoring a try in a very important game in 2004 and we won the game because of it.
•He is a body builder, and a couple of years ago won the national amateur bodybuilding championships for men over the age of forty.
•He is an ambassador for the Child Cancer Foundation and gives up his time to talk at charity fundraising events for them.
•He has also boxed in a charity boxing tournament called ‘Fight for Life’ which raises money for cancer.
There was also a whole chapter on Moma and me, and his decade-long hunt for us. Apparently he spent a fortune on private detectives after the official police search ended. For ten years the search consumed his life, and it has only been in the last five years that he had given up hope of ever seeing me again.
And then I popped up out of nowhere. It must have been an incredible moment for him when Reggie tracked down his phone number and rang him out of the blue.
Lauren saw me reading ‘Rucker Tucker’ and asked me if I liked reading. I told her that it was one of my favourite things.
“I love reading too,” she said.
She pulled a book out of her handbag. She always keeps a book in her handbag apparently, or on her bedside table. It was by an author called Nicholas Sparks. I have never heard of him.
“It’s light and frothy but sometimes that’s what you need to take your mind off your problems,” she said.
I doubt that she has any real problems, but I said, “Yes! Like Mark Twain.”
“You’ve read Mark Twain?” she seemed surprised.
“Yeah mate,” I said.
“I love Mark Twain,” she said. “When I was young, he was my favourite author. After the Brontë sisters.”
“I really liked Jane Eyre,” I said, “but I thought Wuthering Heights was a bit melodramatic.”
“No way!” she said. “Wuthering Heights is beautiful. You know that Charlotte edited the manuscript after Emily died of tuberculosis?”
I shook my head.
“How do you know all these books?” she asked. “Locked away in a forest all those years.”
“Moma used to buy them at the local store when she went for supplies,” I said.
I had to struggle to keep my voice steady. Any mention of Moma was upsetting.
“What else have you read that you liked?” she asked.
So I started rattling off authors.
•John Steinbeck
•Ernest Hemingway
•Alistair McLean
•Enid Blyton
•Roald Dahl
•Margaret Mahy
•Charles Dickens
And so on
It turns out that Lauren loves reading. She said that while reading a book you became a different person, and you lived their life with all its ups and downs.
I agreed. I said that a book was like a different world and once you started reading you lived in that world and forgot about the world around you for a while. I lived in a lot of different worlds over the last fifteen years, even though I never left the forest.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Lauren said she hadn’t read any of those books since she was at school, but now she really wanted to read some of them again, and that’s how we ended up at the library.
I now have a library card, which is like a credit card, and I think it would work at opening locked doors too. With it I can borrow books from the library and I don’t have to pay anything for them, as long as I take them back in a couple of weeks.
I was a bit worried that this was like stealing, but Lauren says it is just borrowing.
I borrowed three books:
•‘David Copperfield’, by Charles Dickens
•‘Around the World in Eighty Days’, by Jules Verne
•‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’, by J.K. Rowling
I don’t know who J.K. Rowling is. I have never read any of his books. But Lauren says it is really good.
Lauren borrowed ‘Jane Eyre’, by Charlotte Brontë. She said she will read it when she finishes the Nicholas Sparks book.
Book I am reading:
‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’.
Thought for the day:
Dad searched for me for ten years. He must have really loved me.
February 25th
My cast came off today. Yay!
I was getting so sick of hobbling around on a crutch all the time. The doctor said it has healed well, but he still wants me to be careful for a few more weeks.
Dad is very concerned about security. I guess Auckland is a dangerous place to live. For our safety he has video cameras in the front of the house, at the back of the house, and in lots of places inside the house so he can see if any burglars or kidnappers come.
Lauren doesn’t seem to like the cameras, I often see her glance up at them and frown. But I think it is cool to be safe.
I asked Lauren what she did for a career. I thought she might be a hairdresser or a beautician or something like that.
I was quite wrong. She is a translator. She speaks fluent Italian and works from home translating novels and scientific texts from English to Italian or from Italian to English.
That explains why she is on the computer so much.
She told me how to say hello in Italian. It is ‘ciao’. This will come in useful when I go to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Perhaps I should also learn how to order pizza in Italian. Ha!
Thought for the day:
I don’t know why I thought Lauren was a hairdresser or a beautician. You should never judge people by what they look like.
Book I am reading:
‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’.
February 26th
I found out why Dad is so big and muscly. He goes to the gym every day – sometimes more than once.
We have a gym at home where he goes and lifts heavy weights and does exercises on machines. But most days he also goes down to another gym in Albany. He says it is more fun working out with other people than just by yourself all the time.
He wants me to come to the gym with him when my leg is stronger, but I don’t think I would be interested in that. I am much fitter and stronger than any of the city kids I have met, and I�
��ve never been to a gym in my life.
I went with him to the gym today to see what it was like. All the people in the gym came crowding around. They wanted me to sign my name on bits of paper.
I don’t know how to ‘sign’ my name, so I just wrote ‘Egan Tucker’ on the bits of paper.
A lot of the people at the gym were using walking machines. I asked Dad about them and he said they are called treadmills. They have a rubber belt that you walk on and electricity makes it go around and around and people walk on it.
I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just go and walk outside.
Thought for the day:
I don’t think I need a machine to do my exercise for me.
Book I am reading:
‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’.
February 27th
My life is getting freako.
Today Lauren took me to the supermarket, which is a really big general store, to buy groceries. She said I could choose whatever I wanted.
There was so much stuff that I couldn’t believe it. For example, there were 17 different kinds of goat’s cheese. We only ever had one kind. Nancy’s kind. (I wonder how Nancy is. I am sure she is fine, wandering around the bush, eating everything in sight!)
While we were in the supermarket some people started pointing at me and whispering behind their hands, which I thought was quite rude. Then a whole bunch of people started following me and Lauren down the aisles as we were shopping.
When we came out of the supermarket there was a huge crowd of people waiting. They were all taking photos with their phones. We had to push right through them to get back to Lauren’s car.
Lauren’s car is made by a German company called VW. It is very quiet and comfortable. But what is really surprising is that she can push a button and the whole roof slides off and disappears into the boot. Then you can drive around without a roof on the car!
We didn’t take the roof off today because of all the people who were surrounding us.
Also because it was starting to rain.
Book I am reading:
‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’.
February 28th
The last day of February.
It has been really sunny up till now in Auckland, but today it poured with rain.
I was really excited and I took all my clothes off and went out the back of the house, near the little forest which is called a Bush Reserve. I ran around in the rain for a while, loving it.
Dad saw and he told me to come inside and put my clothes back on. He said he couldn’t understand what my mother had been teaching me. He was quite angry, which I don’t understand. I was just running around in the rain.
Then Lauren came out too and told him to leave me alone, that it was making me happy, which was true.
Then they had a huge argument about how to ‘raise’ me.
Dad called her some mean names.
I didn’t want them to argue, especially not over me, so I came back inside and put my clothes on and went upstairs and read a book for a while.
Book I am reading:
‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’.
Lauren took me to the library to get it. I really want to know what happens to Harry, Ron and Hermione. I will read the other books later.
Word of the day:
PERVERT
Thought for the day:
Lauren is not a pervert. I looked up on Google to find out what this means. She just wanted me to enjoy myself in the rain. I think Dad was being quite mean to her.
Facebook page update:
839,827 likes.
March 1st
A lady from a publishing company emailed me today. She wants me to write a book.
I was really excited and offered to send her some of my stories and poems. But she didn’t seem very interested in that.
She wants me to write a book about my code. But it’s not my code – it’s Moma’s. And the whole code would only take up two or three pages even if you wrote it in really big letters. So how could you make a whole book about that?
I said I will think about it.
I thought about it.
It’s a dumb idea.
I might send them some of my stories anyway. Perhaps they will like them.
Thought for the day:
A whole book about Moma’s code? What were they thinking?
Word of the day:
OMG
Lauren said this when she saw my Facebook page likes. It is an expression of great surprise.
Book I am reading:
‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’.
Facebook page update:
994,050 likes.
That’s almost a million! I wonder if it will make it to a million.
March 2nd
Finally, a report from the police!
The two detectives came out to the house today. They sat down with us at the dining table. The police have been searching around the Coromandel for two weeks. They have not found anything.
I am very upset about this.
I know their names now too. The bald one is called Detective Sergeant Holland, but everyone calls him Dutch. He asked me to call him Dutch too. I think he thought this would make me less nervous of him. But I wasn’t nervous of him in the first place.
The sticky-hair detective is Detective Constable Parore. He said I could call him Doug.
Dutch said, “We have been interviewing possible witnesses, and there was a security camera in an ATM at the front of the store, but we really don’t have much to go on.”
Doug said, “We have set up a mannequin to represent your mother outside the store, dressed in clothes like you described, and wearing a wig that matches her hair colour and style. We are hoping this might jog someone’s memory.”
Dutch said, “We checked hospitals and morgues but turned up nothing.”
I didn’t say anything.
Doug said, “We did find the blood patch, and initial tests show that it is human blood. That might not be good news, Egan.”
Dutch said, “But the fact that there has been no sighting of her in a hospital or a morgue might be very good news. If she was seriously injured or killed, I am sure we would have found her by now.”
Doug said, “Especially if she was dead.”
Dutch told Doug to shut up.
I was still too upset to speak.
Dutch said, “With your permission, Egan, we are going to compare your DNA sample with DNA from the blood patch, and see if they match.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Doug said, “It will prove whether or not that was your mother’s blood.”
I said, “Then you have my permission.”
The detectives also kept asking me where the hut was, in case she went back there. But I refused to tell them. (I think they have been searching for the hut, but the forest is big and the hut is very well hidden, and away from any tracks. So I don’t think they’ll find it.)
As they were leaving, I said, “Please, please find her.”
Doug and Dutch smiled at me, but they didn’t say anything.
Last time they promised they would find her.
After they had gone Lauren gave me a big hug and I cried on her shoulder so much that she had to go and change her dress. It got pretty wet and snotty. But I appreciated it. I needed it.
Dad tried to give me a hug too, but that just felt awkward.
What if they are right?
What if Moma came home?
What if she is now living in the hut, and wondering where I am? She must be beside herself with worry.
That surely is where she is. I don’t know why she went away for so long – maybe she was sick. But after she got better, she wo
uld go back to the hut.
But the only way to know is to tell the police where the hut is. And then I won’t have it in case I need it.
I need to think about this.
I will decide tomorrow. If Moma is there, then she will still be there tomorrow.
Thought for the day:
Of course that is where she is! Why didn’t I think of this earlier?
Word of the day:
DNA
It’s not really a word, it’s an acronym.
March 3rd
I used my phone and called J.T. today. He answered straight away. “Gidday Egan, how are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay, but not great,” I said. That was the truth.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“The police can’t find Moma,” I said.
There was a moment’s silence on the phone, then he said, “I’m very sorry to hear that, Egan.”
“It’s pretty stink,” I said.
“Is there anything I can do?” J.T. asked.
“Yeah mate,” I said. “The police think Moma may have gone back to the hut, and be waiting there, worrying about me.”
“That’s a good possibility,” J.T. said. “Have they searched it?”
“Yeah nah,” I said. “I won’t tell them where it is.”
He understood straight away. “In case you ever need a bolt-hole,” he said.
“It kept me safe for fifteen years,” I said.
“That is very true,” he said. “Do you want me to go and check it for you?”
“Would you?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“I’ll need to tell you how to find it,” I said.
“Egan …” he paused. “I can’t tell a lie. I learned that from you. I already know where the hut is.”
I was a bit surprised. “How?” I asked.
“I was out hunting one day and I saw you,” he said. “Just out of interest I followed you, and you led me back to the hut. I saw the secret way you get through that hedge and everything.”
I was silent for a moment. I felt that he hadn’t been totally honest about that. But really I think I was more upset that he had been able to track me through the forest without me knowing.
Shooting Stars Page 16
