by Tiffiny Hall
‘Lecky’s gone all magical,’ Chantell says, looking me up and down. ‘She’s like one of those horses with a horn. Hey, you’re not Gate One!’
The mob turns on me. I feel their eyes pierce my skin. With every look flashes the hurt of all those afternoons crying on my bedroom floor because Lecky wouldn’t acknowledge me as her sister at school.
‘Back off,’ Jackson says to Chantell as he pushes his way forwards. She hides behind Krew, Hero’s best mate, who has been hanging around Elecktra a lot lately.
‘Let’s go.’ Jackson takes my hand and I feel the soft cushion of his understanding squeezed between my fingers. I can’t help but smile as I hold the hand of the cutest boy in school. I feel every girl’s eyes on my back as I walk away. When we reach Gate Two territory, I let go of Jackson’s hand reluctantly.
‘Jackson, you don’t have to stay here,’ I say, starting to shiver. ‘You can go back to Gate One.’
‘What’s with all Elecktra’s magic?’ Jackson asks, ignoring what I’d just said and rubbing his arms to get warm.
‘I don’t know. If she can move fruit without any hands, I’m nervous about what else she might be able to do.’
‘It’s hard to believe she could move anything with her mind when she acts like she hasn’t got a brain,’ Jackson says.
I smile guiltily. For a split second I feel like I’m at Gate One. Something about Jackson Axe makes me feel accepted. I’ve noticed that he doesn’t care about the stupid Gate One and Gate Two rules; he’ll talk to anyone.
Jackson walks me to class, telling me how much he wants to teach me to surf one day and how it’ll be a great way to improve the balance of my kicks. I should want to get into a wetsuit right now, but I can’t shake my worry for Elecktra. Jackson’s words rattle around in my head: ‘It’s hard to believe she could move anything with her mind.’ Moving stuff with your mind is impossible, isn’t it? Something is wrong. I know better than anybody when Elecktra is up to something and I haven’t got time to search her mood board for clues. I need to take action, now.
FOUR
‘Lecky, wait!’ I yell as I’m walking home from school. She’s skipping up ahead and I race to catch up with her. At the pedestrian crossing, Lecky looks cross-eyed at the little red man indicating to stay put on the footpath. It flashes to green and she saunters onto the road to the sound of cars screeching to a halt. Elecktra doesn’t flinch. She’s used to stopping traffic. Yeah, she’s that pretty.
‘Hey! How’d you do that?’ I call after her.
‘I’m not talking about it,’ she says.
I know Elecktra. If I can get her to talk, she’ll spill. But I have to get her talking first. I pump my legs a bit harder and finally draw even with her.
‘How’s things in Year Ten? What are you studying at the moment?’ I ask.
‘The invasion of Australia by Captain Hook,’ she snaps.
‘Don’t you mean Captain Cook?’
‘I’m joking,’ she says and speeds up. ‘How dumb do you think I am?’
‘Lecky, I don’t think you’re dumb. You’re just acting dumb by showing people your magic. It’s dangerous.’
Elecktra turns to me, fire burning behind her eyes. ‘You want to be a loser?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I whisper, a bit baffled by her reaction.
‘A real loser like someone who wears a vest?’ We have the choice between a school vest or a jumper. Lecky’s right. Only the real losers at school choose to wear the vest.
‘No. Never,’ I say.
‘Then stay out of my beeswax. You’re Gate Two, remember? What would you know about the demands of being popular?’
I know that I could be Gate One in a heartbeat if I made it rain for school sport. I’d be a class hero — for the wrong reasons. ‘It’s not about being popular. You shouldn’t be using magic at school. Someone will get hurt.’
‘What would you know?’
‘I know,’ I say as firmly as I can.
Elecktra yawns.
‘Lecky, please,’ I beg.
‘Oh no, keep talking. I always yawn when I’m fascinated by what you’re saying.’ She waves her hand in front of her mouth before pushing past me.
‘Wait,’ I call to her, but my breath catches as I feel eyes sink into the back of my head. I turn around slowly. A man revs a motorbike on the other side of the road. He is wearing a black helmet and leather jacket, and strapped to his back are two samurai swords. The bike takes off, zooming towards me. I hear Elecktra shriek as the man draws one sword. At the last moment, I duck and spin away. The motorbike skids to a stop, then revs again. The samurai lifts his sword, the steel blinding in the sunlight. The bike screams towards me. I steady my beating heart and take a deep breath. I leap into the air over the bike, then kick the back wheel. The bike spins away, but the samurai gains control of it and approaches again in a black whir. I close my eyes. I feel the vibrations of the motorbike through the air, pulsating then thickening. I spin once, then jump into the air and hook my ankles around the samurai’s neck to haul him off the bike. I summon the wind to flip the bike safely onto the other side of the road and to land us gently on the pavement. I roll out of his way and the samurai stands slowly.
What is going on? Sure, I’m the White Warrior, and the samurai want me dead so they can have my powers, but the Warrior Peace Code says ninjas and samurai can’t kill each other in Lanternwood. This dude is breaking all the rules!
‘He has just the right amount of leather on,’ Elecktra says, standing next to me with her arms crossed.
Before I can even think what she means by that, I yell, ‘Run! Hide!’
Elecktra leaps behind a wheelie bin. I dump my school bag, seize my ninja star from my pocket and tear off my blazer. The samurai approaches. I turn once and spear my ninja star in his direction. He evades it, then attacks. I block a blaze of hand techniques — chops, hammer fists, punches — and counter with front kicks, side kicks, spinning hook kicks. But with every move, he is stronger.
I summon the speed of wind and punch him twenty times in the ribs, but my punches are dulled by the mesh in his jacket. I pick up my school bag and swing it at his head. He side kicks me and I block his foot with my bag, catching his heel in the arm straps and twisting his leg up into the air. He smashes to the ground. Before I can take another step, he sweeps my feet out from under me with his remaining sword. I land on the ground face-first next to a ‘Stop’ sign — I’m fighting badly today. I flip onto my back — and I’m hiding under my school bag like a coward. This is not a great start to being the White Warrior.
The samurai’s sword slices through the school bag and cuts my arm. The sting makes me scream.
Fire up, Roxy, I tell myself. I use the bag to block the samurai’s spearing strikes. His sword crashes down and slices through the bag again, stabbing my French dictionary. Before I can respond, he lunges again and the tip of the blade glides through my school books and stops at my throat. What kind of White Warrior am I? I can’t let a samurai steal my powers only one day after getting them back.
There’s a red flash in the sky beyond the samurai’s shoulder. I squint. The ‘Stop’ sign floats behind the samurai, whose sword is still at my throat. The sign hovers for a breath, then smashes him across the head. His helmet snaps backwards, his legs flip over, two spins and he crashes to the ground.
Elecktra rushes over as I sit up. ‘I “stopped” him.’ She giggles, then asks, ‘Hey, how come you can fight crazy riders on motorbikes all of a sudden?’
‘You know I’ve been taking lessons with Jackson,’ I answer. ‘How come you can rip “Stop” signs out of the ground?’
Elecktra wraps her school tie around my bleeding arm. It stings.
‘A bit of magic,’ she says.
‘Lecky, have you told Mum?’
‘As if!’
‘You can talk to me,’ I say as Elecktra helps me up. I limp a little and she slings my arm around her shoulder to support me. I don’t need it, but enjoy bein
g close to my sister. Like the times she would give me pool drags at the local pool. I’d clutch her shoulders and she would make me feel safe.
Elecktra shrugs. ‘I don’t think you’d understand either.’
‘Try me,’ I say.
An ‘ay-yah!’ suddenly spins us around. An old lady in a ninja uniform steps out from behind a fence and punches the air fervently with her delicate fists.
‘Don’t mind me, dearies,’ she says in a husky voice. ‘I’m on my way to class.’ As she passes the samurai, she calls, ‘Serves you right!’
‘Thanks, Nanna Ninja,’ Lecky says behind her cupped hand and we giggle. We’re lucky no one else saw the attack. I hope I’ll still be hobbling to training when I have grey hair.
We leave the samurai on the road. It looks like he was in a bike accident, but he’ll be okay — I can see his chest moving.
Then, for the first time in ages, Elecktra walks home with me. And not only do we walk home together, but we walk joined at the hip, like the old days. It makes my cut arm feel worth it.
‘Race you upstairs!’ Lecky yells as we reach our two-storey warehouse apartment and she runs off ahead of me. When I walk into the kitchen, Mum is making Hulk juice at a feverish pace. It’s usually just a morning thing, but recently Mum has been making the vegetable juice day and night. I think she can tell something is up and this is her way of remedying it. I have a glass.
‘Cat, how was school?’ she asks.
Stressful, confusing, lame. I suck at French, all I want to do is spend time with Jackson, I hate Gate Two, my sister’s lost the plot, I was attacked by a samurai bikie and I’m sooo sick of my nickname. My birthmark looks more like a leaping tiger than a stretching cat. Call me ‘Tiger’!
‘Good,’ I say, shrugging. Mum slides her elbows across the bench to listen. I know she hates hearing just ‘good’.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
After a determined silence, I spill. ‘Lecky. She’s acting weirder than her usual weirdness.’
‘She’s going through a hard time. I’ve tried to talk to her, but I think she needs space.’ Mum sighs.
I wonder if I should tell Mum about Lecky doing magic at school, but Lecky would never trust me again if I got her into trouble. After a sigh of my own, Mum ruffles my hair and I head upstairs.
Lecky is singing loudly in her bedroom. She thinks she could make the word ‘snotrag’ sound angelic. But she is totally deluded. She can’t sing; her voice is like a knife scratching glass.
I twist her doorknob, which is frosted with pink diamantes, a blue diamante ‘E’ in the centre, and close the door quietly behind me.
Lecky is seated in front of the dressing-table mirror in a red satin robe with matching slippers. She is applying make-up with no hands. A blush brush strokes her cheeks, a lip gloss massages into her lips, a sponge douses foundation across her freckles.
‘Ouch,’ Lecky says when the tweezers pluck a stubborn hair from her eyebrow. ‘I’m still getting used to this.’
‘How do you do that?’ I gasp. The make-up has taken it to a new level. She can do multiple things at once, all with a single thought.
She shrugs. ‘I think and it just happens now.’
I walk further into the room, stepping over magazines and piles of clothes. I approach her timidly and bend down to inspect the eyeliner currently outlining her inner lid.
‘It’s unreal,’ I whisper.
‘Obviously! I’ve always been HD — High Definition. My powers just had to catch up to my awesomeness,’ Lecky reasons.
She stands up and the make-up falls to the floor. She whisks past me. I’m still bending over in the dressing-table mirror when she grabs my arm.
‘I’m so excited I could high-five in rollerblades, if they were fashionable,’ Elecktra says. ‘Now, arm on hip, shoulders back, like a little teapot. Stand girly for goodness sake,’ she demands.
I try to do the little teapot as she demonstrates, but I can’t do it as well as she can. Her more developed body makes for the perfect teapot. Elecktra assumes the pose and knocks out her hip. She looks so cool in that stance. She’s always telling me that I stand like a boy.
‘I want to tell you something. Something important,’ she says.
I stand in the little teapot position, waiting patiently.
‘After my initial freak-out, I’ve finally come to terms with my superpowers.’ She claps her hands excitedly. ‘And I know we haven’t really been the best of sisters.’ I nod. ‘But as your older sister, I have a responsibility to share with you my magic. It will be our little secret. You will be my magician’s assistant and help me to practise being awesome. And I will bestow on you lessons in popularity. If anyone needs a life coach, it’s you, Roxy Ran.’
I groan dramatically, then shake my arms out of the little teapot and slump down onto her bed. ‘Hey, you never told me how it started,’ I say.
‘Well, last week I really wanted a sweet. I stared at the packet of sweets on Chantell’s desk all class. The next thing I knew, the sweet was floating out of the packet and into my mouth. Then I thought, if I can get the sweet from the packet to my mouth, I bet I can make the school bell ring early. So I concentrated on that and the next thing I knew the bell went off and I was home from school early! It was the best Thursday I’ve ever had.’
‘I remember that Thursday. Everyone was psyched. Um, have your hands disappeared at all?’ I ask, remembering my own experiences of turning ninja.
Elecktra studies me under the umbrellas of her eyelashes, then shakes her head. ‘I’ve caught magical powers, Rox, not craziness. There is a difference.’
‘Can you move that?’ I point to her ladybug night lamp.
Elecktra wrinkles her brow, lifts her hands and goes cross-eyed. Nothing happens. She tries again, this time saying, ‘Abracadabra.’ Still nothing happens.
‘It’s too heavy,’ she sulks. ‘I’m only good with small stuff, like mints, diamantes and buttons. That “Stop” sign was a fluke.’
I summon the wind. A gust bursts through the window and lifts the ladybug lamp, twirls it once and carries it as far as the power cord will allow, then drops it onto the bed next to me. Lecky watches unimpressed.
‘Stupid wind,’ she says, striking the teapot pose again. ‘Now I’m your life coach and you’re my magician’s assistant. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ I mumble. ‘I’m starving. Want to eat?’
‘I could murder a burger,’ Elecktra says.
‘Good luck finding one of those in our apartment. Meet you in the kitchen,’ I say.
Elecktra returns to her dressing table, sits on her hands and proceeds to apply mascara to her eyelashes.
After I have cleaned my wound, luckily just a scrape, Elecktra and I stand inside the fridge’s open doors, absorbing the artificial light.
‘Looks like Art got to the Ninja Meringues first,’ I say, standing on tiptoes to check the top shelf.
‘Typical. Gawd, Mum’s so crazy with the food,’ Elecktra huffs as she opens a brown paper bag. ‘Why does she always store nectarines and peaches with an unpeeled banana?’ she asks, holding up the banana.
‘Something about the banana releasing gas that helps the fruit ripen,’ I say.
‘Fruit farts?’ Elecktra laughs and puts the brown paper bag back in the crisper. Mum stores most of the fruit in the fridge to avoid them bruising in the fruit bowl. Elecktra is always injuring her fruit and will come and find me to swap a beaten-up pear for my pristine apple. The crisper drawer is lined with bubble wrap. I thought everyone did this until Cinnamon came over and laughed at it. When I asked Mum why we wrap up the crisper, she said the bubble wrap increases air circulation to keep the fruit and veg fresher for longer. Cinnamon also laughed at the onions hanging in the legs of old nylon stockings in the pantry. Mum has a very specific way of doing things. Maybe it has something to do with her being a ninja. Art says she’s the only woman he’s ever met who can successfully tame a fitted sheet. Art is the biggest mess, but I
like it because it helps Mum to chill out.
‘Um, what about this organic ketchup? That could be nice with something,’ Elecktra suggests, holding up the sauce bottle.
I agree before turning to inspect the pantry: almond flour, gluten-free tortillas, pitas for healthy pizza, amaranth seeds, quinoa and red lentils.
‘The only yum stuff on our side are these vitamin lollies and fibre jubes,’ Elecktra pouts. ‘I felt sick last time I ate the whole jar.’
Lecky knows better than to touch Art’s side of the pantry. Last time she snuck a chocolate bar, Mum made us both sit through one of her cooking classes to learn how to make a more delicious and healthy alternative. I didn’t mind as I love cooking, but Elecktra hates it.
‘What about toasted cheese sandwiches?’ I suggest. Elecktra lights up and races for the toasted sandwich maker. The only cheese I can find is some sheep cheese that Mum is trying out because she says it has double of the stuff that makes you strong. I take the pita bread over to the bench with the sheep cheese.
‘Party!’ Elecktra giggles as she helps me to lay a bed of bread onto the sandwich maker, then we carve thick slices of cheese. We both eat healthy ninja nutrition like Mum and no one at school understands why I actually like to eat broccoli. I’ve never known any different. Mum says it’s the magic of habit. Elecktra is the only person who understands. She still calls broccoli ‘trees’ like she did when she was two.
Elecktra clamps down the toasted sandwich maker. The heat from it steams into her face, making her skin sparkle. Her eyes are snake brown in the dusky afternoon light. A smile kisses her lips. Only Elecktra can make standing over a sandwich maker look like a Marilyn Monroe moment above an air vent. She seems relaxed and happy, the perfect time for a sisterly chat.
‘So …’ I say. Elecktra turns to me and the smile dies from her face. ‘Talk to me about the magic,’ I finish.
Elecktra casts her eyes down to the sandwich maker. Her grip tightens on the bench. Then she looks up and stares straight at me so I can see myself reflected in the cool brown waters of her eyes.
