by Des Hunt
The conversation was mostly about school. It seemed that nothing much had changed since I’d left: the same teachers were liked or disliked; the same kids were getting into trouble; the same stupid rules still annoyed everyone.
I didn’t contribute much. There wasn’t any need to. Every so often they would remember I was there, and one of them would feed chips to the camera. Dean even wanted to pour a drink into it. Just as well the others stopped him in time, or the session would have been terminated early.
David Steele arrived home after about an hour. He poked his head into the bedroom to check on Dean. If he was surprised by the party, he didn’t show it. Maybe he was too drunk to take in what was happening. After a few minutes he said goodnight and left.
From then on, things wound down until Dean started dozing off. We all said our goodbyes and left, promising to make contact the next day: Cleo, Mark and Aimee would see Dean at school, and I’d go online in the evening.
I had trouble getting to sleep that night as I replayed the events of the day, thinking about families and relationships. The Steeles had never seemed a close family, but when I thought about ours I realized we’d probably seem much the same. We didn’t hug each other all the time or tell each other we loved them over and over. And we did argue, sometimes quite intensely.
But none of that meant we didn’t care for each other. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how devastated I’d be if Mum and Dad ever split. And that was when I made a vow that I would get Dean through this. It would be difficult with us being in different countries, but I was determined to support him in any way I could.
Chapter 15
On the Tuesday after the Steeles broke up, David rang Dad at work. He said he wanted to thank our family for helping Dean out. Then, to Dad’s surprise and embarrassment, he began discussing the break-up of his marriage. As Dad reported it that night, David Steele was full of remorse and was blaming himself. He admitted he’d been drinking heavily, but had now stopped. He had arranged things at work so he could be at home when Dean wasn’t at school. They had even gone out and seen a movie together.
I already knew all of this from the Skype sessions Dean and I’d been having every night. What I didn’t know is what Dad reported next.
‘David thinks that there’s a chance of a reconciliation,’ he said. ‘Everyone seems to have calmed down, and the last phone conversation was reasonably friendly. Sarah is not staying with the other man anymore — she’s moved into a motel.’
‘That’s good,’ said Mum. ‘But why did he tell you all of this? It’s not as though you’re friends.’
Dad gave a crooked smile. ‘All of that wasn’t the main reason why he rang. He was hoping we might let Dean come over here for the school holidays while they try to sort things out.’
Mum’s eyes went wide. ‘You’re kidding?’ she said. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said we’d think about it.’
‘What’s there to think about?’ asked Mum.
‘Well, I didn’t want to refuse straight-off. David’s still not very stable.’
I stared at each of them in turn. ‘What’s wrong with Dean coming here?’ I asked.
In reply Dad took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It was Mum who put their thoughts into words.
‘Pete,’ she said in a pleading sort of voice, ‘your life here has just started to settle down. School’s going well, and with Afi you’ve got a great new friend. Having Dean here would just upset that.’
I struggled to stay calm. ‘He’s changed, Mum. There wouldn’t be any problems.’
‘But aren’t you going to Port Waikato with Afi and his family?’
‘Maybe Dean could come, too?’ I said.
Dad shook his head. ‘No way!’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to let Dean loose on people we’ve only just met.’
My anger surged. ‘He’s not an animal!’
Mum jumped in before Dad could reply.
‘Dear,’ she said, calmly, ‘did you tell David when you’d let him know?’
‘I said I’d give him a call on Friday,’ replied Dad. ‘He was happy with that.’
‘All right,’ said Mum, ‘how about we all think about it over the next few days and discuss it again on Thursday night?’ She turned to me. ‘OK?’
It wasn’t really, but there was no point in arguing further. I nodded.
‘Good,’ said Dad. ‘But in the meantime don’t tell Dean anything about it. David doesn’t want him to know until something definite is settled.’
I’d been keeping Afi up-to-date with all that was happening with Dean, and on the bus the next morning I told him about the latest development. When I said that I might have to skip the holiday at Port Waikato, he gave a little nod without saying anything. It was not the response I’d wanted. I’d hoped he would immediately invite Dean to come as well. But I guess he couldn’t do that without asking his parents first, so I let the matter drop.
Afi’s news was that his father had contacted his policeman friend — Mike Sommerville — and told him about the Redferns’ smuggling. The response there was disappointing as well. The policeman had said he’d enter the information into the police database, but he couldn’t guarantee that anything would happen quickly. If there was already something on the computer, or some more information came to light, then that might trigger some action. Otherwise it would sit in the queue behind more serious crimes. In other words, the Redferns could just keep on with what they were doing.
‘Dad reckons it’s because we’re kids,’ said Afi. ‘If it had been adults who had seen the stuff, then they would have taken it more seriously.’
‘That stinks,’ I said.
Afi agreed. ‘What can we do, though?’ he asked.
‘Collect more evidence,’ I suggested. ‘something that they’ve got to believe.’
‘Where? Here or at Port Waikato?’
I thought for a time. ‘Here,’ I decided. ‘If we can get evidence that smuggled cigarettes are being sold at the school, we could take it to the local newspaper. They’d love a story like that.’
‘It would have to be anonymous,’ said Afi. ‘The school won’t like the publicity. I’m not losing my scholarship because of it.’
‘Newspapers don’t reveal their sources,’ I said.
‘All right,’ said Afi after a while. ‘Where do we start?’
After some discussion we decided to revisit the smokers’ hideout in the bush, where we hoped to collect cigarette butts and maybe some empty packets. We could do it later that day during sports practice time.
Things had been tightened up since that first Wednesday when we’d wandered the school and first uncovered the cigarette mystery. Now, all students who didn’t play for teams had to sign in at the library. If you had work to do somewhere else, you had to get the permission of the librarian. That was easy, as she didn’t really want us in her library anyway.
Our excuse was that we had to study leaf-litter animals for a science-badge project. It was true. The animals had to be collected, identified and named. The bit that wasn’t true was that we had to do it in the bush at the back of the school.
Although we didn’t really expect there to be people smoking at that time, we entered the bush as if we were stalking an animal: ducking from tree to tree like olden-day detectives on the tail of some arch-villain. To find the smoking zone empty was a bit of an anticlimax.
We began with a grid-search of the ground, looking for evidence. There was plenty to find — lots of cigarette butts and filters. Unfortunately, none of them had any labels. If there ever had been one on the cigarettes, then it had gone up in smoke.
Disappointed that we hadn’t found anything to prove that the cigarettes were illegal, we moved to another area of the bush to do our animal study. It was pretty easy really. Afi could name all the creatures we found: pill millipede, veined slug, rove beetle … We also found more evidence of human occupation in the bush. They were the usual sorts of things tha
t people dropped, but we decided they needed animal names too. A cigarette became a dragon muckworm; a band-aid was a plastered leech; and a handkerchief would forevermore be called a snot viper.
We got so carried away with our cleverness that we stopped keeping a lookout for intruders. That was almost our downfall. It was only a smoker’s cough that saved us.
Our search for animals had taken us close to the edge of the bush where it joined with the sports fields. Two boys had taken a rest from doing fitness laps for a smoke. Fortunately they were looking out onto the grounds or they would have seen us for sure. At the sound of the cough, we ducked behind a tree.
Peeking around the trunk, I identified the prefect whom we’d seen smoking before. The cougher was a Year Ten kid. The prefect had a packet in his hand which he was flipping over and over with his fingers. That packet was exactly what we wanted. I looked over to Afi to see if he’d seen it. He nodded in return.
The Year Ten kid was clearly nervous about what they were doing. ‘How long have we got?’ he asked.
‘Plenty of time,’ replied the prefect. ‘Instead of doing five laps, we do four and slip in behind the pack when they come around next time. The coach never notices.’
‘What about the rest of the team?’ asked the kid. ‘Some of them might snitch.’
‘Like hell they will,’ said the prefect confidently. ‘Hotchkins would destroy them. They all know that.’
They smoked silently for a while, watching the team running along the other side of the fields. All the time the prefect was flipping the packet. I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off it — it was almost hypnotizing.
Then, as the team turned to run towards the bush, he dropped the pack and crushed it with his foot. I heard Afi give a little sigh of satisfaction.
‘Are you ready?’ asked the prefect.
‘Yeah,’ said the kid. ‘But what about that?’ he added, pointing to the packet on the ground. ‘Shouldn’t we pick it up? Didn’t Hotchkins say never to leave them around?’
The prefect nodded and bent over to grab the packet. Afi gave another sigh, this one of frustration.
Soon afterwards they stubbed out their cigarettes and left the bush to slot in behind the other runners. A few looked back at them, but no one said anything.
Afi groaned as we watched them running away.
‘We needed that,’ he said.
I was about to reply when I noticed the prefect leaving the bunch to veer off towards the back of the science block. He was heading towards a green rubbish bin.
‘Yessss!’ I hissed. ‘He’s going to dump it in there.’
When he reached the bin, he jogged on the spot long enough to lift the lid and drop the packet inside. Then he was off again.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get it.’
Getting to the rubbish bin undetected was simple enough; extracting the packet from amongst the rubbish was more difficult. Someone had thrown a dead bird inside — it was full of maggots and stank.
When I eventually got the packet out, we stood by the steps into the back of the science block examining it — the brand name was Holiday.
To me it looked like any other cigarette packet. But Afi saw differences.
‘There’s no health warning,’ he said. ‘There are no pictures or anything. That’s illegal in New Zealand.’
‘Does it say where they’re made?’ I asked.
It was then that the door to the science block opened behind us. We looked up and saw June Redfern. She had a mop in her hands which she was about to shake.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, looking as shocked as I felt. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘We’re leaving,’ said Afi, moving in the direction of the dangerous-chemicals store — the quickest route to the library.
Mrs Redfern shook her head wildly. ‘No — not that way! They’re out there.’ She held the door back. ‘In here! Quick!’
We’d just started moving when I heard voices coming from around the corner. We shot inside.
June Redfern followed us. ‘You better hide,’ she said. ‘If they see you …’ She finished the sentence by shaking her head with concern.
I went to the nearest door leading to one of the labs. It was locked.
‘Where?’ I whispered.
She pointed to a door that was slightly ajar on the other side of the corridor.
By then we could hear the voices coming up the steps. Afi opened the door and moved inside. I was close behind. Infuriatingly, the door had a gas closing system which would take forever to work. Afi threw his weight against it, and a moment later I heard a click as the latch locked into place. Then we were in darkness.
It was obvious from the smells that this was the cleaner’s room. June Redfern’s space. Hopefully nobody else would ever come in here.
Within moments, we heard voices from the other side of the door.
‘Who were you talking to?’ asked Carl Redfern’s gravelly voice.
‘I wasn’t talking to anyone!’ said his wife.
‘I heard you. You were outside.’
‘I was singing while I was shaking the mop.’
Carl Redfern snorted. ‘Singing? What have you got to sing about?’
Another voice said, ‘Let’s go, Carl.’ It was Brett Hotchkins. ‘You shouldn’t even be here.’
‘Yeah, yeah, all right, all right,’ said Carl. Then the voices moved down the corridor and became too distorted to make any sense.
After a while I whispered, ‘Do you think it’s safe now?’
‘Yeah,’ replied Afi.
I grabbed the doorknob and turned. Nothing happened. ‘It’s locked,’ I said.
‘Then we wait,’ said Afi. ‘She’ll come back.’
‘I hope so,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t want to be locked in here all night.’
I don’t know how long it was, but it seemed like hours before we heard rattling on the other side of the door. Both of us instinctively moved to the back of the room. For all we knew it could be Hotchkins — he seemed to have keys to everything.
After all that time in darkness, the light blinded us from seeing who was there, so it was a wonderful relief to hear a female voice.
‘You can come out now,’ said June Redfern. ‘They’ve gone.’
‘Thanks,’ Afi said as we moved into the corridor.
It was the first opportunity I’d had to get a good look at her. Although her face was drawn and tired, I could tell that she was Bee’s mother. I think she would have been pretty when younger. Unfortunately, now her face and body looked worn out, as if she’d lost the will to look after herself.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘don’t come around here except for classes.’
‘Why?’ asked Afi.
‘Because things are happening that you shouldn’t know about.’
‘We know what’s going on,’ I said.
She turned and stared at me. ‘Do you?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Do you really think you know what’s going down around here?’
I nodded confidently.
‘No, you don’t,’ she said shaking her head. ‘If you really knew, believe me, you’d keep well away from that boy and my husband.’ She stared at me for a moment longer. Then her face softened. ‘Go! Go on, both of you. Get out of here before you miss your bus.’
Chapter 16
That night Dean was not alone when I Skyped him. Mark Harrison, Cleo’s brother, was also in the room. Back in Wollongong, Mark had been in a different class to Dean and me. We knew who he was, but other than that we were never friendly. All that seemed to have changed because, when I connected, Mark and Dean were joking as if they knew each other pretty well.
I know I should have been pleased about this, because it meant I wouldn’t have to worry about Dean so much. However, I was surprised to feel a little stab of jealousy when I saw how comfortable Mark looked sitting in the room where Dean and I had spent so much time.
‘What’s up, Pelly?’ asked Dean when he
saw me on the screen. ‘What you been doing?’ He was more cheerful than I’d seen him since I’d left Australia.
Up until that time I’d not told him anything about Afi or the things we’d been doing. But something made me tell him that night. I started with the cigarette business at school.
I’d hardly begun when he interrupted with, ‘Afi? What sort of name is that?’
‘Oh,’ I said, in an off-hand way, ‘it’s a fairly common name around here.’
He accepted that without comment.
I continued with the story.
The second interruption came when I mentioned Port Waikato.
‘Where’s this place?’ he asked.
I told him.
‘And you went there with this Afi person?’
‘Yes,’ I said, impatiently wanting to get on with the story and away from Afi.
‘Can you surf at this beach?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does Afi surf?’
‘No.’
That was met with a grunt and then silence. I took the opportunity to get on with the story.
When I’d finished, he asked, ‘So what are you going to do about these people?’ He meant Hotchkins and the Redferns.
‘We’re hoping to get more evidence and give it to the police,’ I said. ‘Either them or a newspaper.’
He snorted. ‘Know what I’d do?’ he asked, pausing until I gave a little shake of the head. ‘I’d make a bomb and blow them all up. I’d blow them away.’
‘Yeah!’ said Mark.
I kept quiet.
Dean continued, ‘Remember that bomb I made to blow up the rat?’
Of course I remembered.
‘I’d make one just like that, but bigger.’
After that the session became one-sided, with Dean retelling exaggerated stories of our exploits. Mark seemed to think they were great, but I found it depressing. Not the stories, but that Dean had to tell them the way he did.
