Jinxed

by Amy McCulloch

  I gesture to the thermos, then lift a pair of chopsticks to fill my mouth with cold, slimy noodles for good measure. ‘All good,’ I say, the words muffled by ramen.

  He chuckles. ‘Well, all right then. Don’t stay up too late now.’

  ‘Night.’

  ‘Night.’

  George lets out a series of beeps.

  ‘Wait, did you get your baku today?’ He pronounces it the old way, ‘back-you’ rather than the more modern ‘back-oo’.

  My heart skips a beat. I don’t remember telling him anything about a baku. Maybe George was able to see the cat on the table and showed a picture to Paul and . . . then I remember. The beetle. ‘Oh yeah. I’ll show you tomorrow as I haven’t leashed it yet.’

  Paul frowns. ‘But George says there’s a live baku in there.’ I pause. ‘Oh! That must be Linus. That’s Zora’s new baku. I fixed him up for her and just leashed him to charge.’

  ‘Huh. Always thought you’d be the type to leash yours straight away. Leash it, name it, then take it apart. You’re going to run circles around anyone at that school.’

  ‘I . . .’ I don’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t make it to Profectus. It feels like disappointing too many people in one day. ‘I’ll show you tomorrow,’ I repeat.

  He pauses for a beat, apprising me beneath those bushy brows, but to my relief, he nods and walks away, George leaping on to his shoulder.

  ‘Goodnight, Tinker!’ he calls out as he walks.

  When I no longer hear his footsteps, I hunch back down over the desk. I work on the broken baku for another couple of hours, until I straighten out as much of the creature’s body as I can without resorting to electronic tools. Now I can do a proper damage assessment.

  One of the key finds is that the leash connection is intact. Excitement tingles in my fingers. If this works – if the baku is able to carry a charge, despite the gaping hole in its belly – then that means I might be able to bring it back to life. Holding my breath, I take the leash and plug it into the mains.

  I wait for any sign of life. A light. Movement. A hum. But there’s nothing. Frustrated, I pull open the drawer closest to me and dig around for my multimeter. I attach the probes to various parts of the baku but, despite it being plugged in, I can see no sign of any response. My shoulders slump with disappointment. It’s such a shame. To have something so beautiful go to waste. I pull the leash from the mains, and sigh.

  Then an idea strikes me. It’s a bit of a wild one – there’s no reason why it should work. But bakus are not designed to be charged from the mains. They’re designed to work with people. I have a brand new leash hooked around my ear, ready and waiting. Maybe . . .

  I lift the end of the cat’s leash and hook it up to mine.

  As it syncs, my nose begins to tingle, and I sneeze.

  At almost the exact same time, the baku’s whiskers judder, the first sign of potential electronic life.

  ‘Jinx!’ I say to it, laughing. I think all the work is turning me slightly mad.

  When nothing else happens for a good few minutes, I wonder if I imagined the juddering whiskers. I poke and prod at it, staring at it, willing it to make another move. But nothing happens.

  Eventually, my eyes feel as if they are going to drop out of my head. I slump over my desk, the events of the day hitting me like a punch bag. Slam, rejection. Kapow, forced to buy the beetle. Suckerpunch, humiliated by Carter. Knock-out blow: stopped by those terrifying Moncha guards.

  And then the final kick while I’m down: seeing Tobias’s eagle baku in action and knowing I’ll never own a baku that cool.

  Knowing they’ll be at Profectus but not me.

  That they’ll be living my dream.

  I know I have to let it go. But not before I let one single final thought dominate my brain, my throat, my stomach.

  It’s not fair.

  I don’t even make it to the camp bed before I’m fast asleep.

  A FAINT BEEPING ROUSES ME. IT TAKES A good few seconds to orient myself, and my neck cricks in protest at being moved. I paw for my phone on the desk to check the time, but it’s not there.

  I blink several times, my body awakening to the world. No phone. No phone because I smashed the screen. No replacement phone because I bought myself a baku. But I haven’t leashed it yet, so it can’t function as my clock.

  The beeping grows louder, echoing around the basement, and – when it’s accompanied by loud metallic bangs – I recognize it: the garbage trucks have arrived. And that means I’ve slept the whole night in the locker.

  Crap. Mom is not going to be happy. I quickly pack up my things, unleashing the broken baku and shoving it into a box before throwing it under the desk. Linus is fully charged and a quick selfie proves that his camera and display projector screen are fully functioning. Perfect. His clock read-out shows me that it’s 7:37 a.m. Dammit.

  I grab my dirty cutlery (I don’t want to encourage pests into my locker – especially not if I’m falling asleep down there) and lock up the locker, balancing the armloads of stuff with the skill of a juggler. Then I race to the elevator.

  When I get upstairs to our unit, my heart is pounding in my chest. ‘Mom, I’m so sorry – I lost track of time.’

  But when I enter the kitchen, it’s not Mom I see, but Zora. She’s perched on a stool in the kitchen. ‘Oh, hey! I was just about to come down and get you,’ she says, slurping down a bowl of cereal. ‘How’s Linus?’

  ‘He’s all good! Back to normal, I think.’

  ‘Yay!’ she squeals. I place Linus down on the counter and he scurries over to Zora. She lays down her palm and he leaps on to it, rushing up her arm to the leash on her ear, making delighted squeaking sounds. ‘I missed you too!’ says Zora.

  I bite down on my bottom lip. It’s strange to see Zora so . . . giddy and emotional. The connection she’s developed with Linus – even though she’s only had him for a couple of days – seems so deep. I always knew that people developed attachments to their bakus, but I didn’t think it would happen that instantly. I feel guilty for leaving mine packaged up in his box.

  ‘Oh, here’s your phone back,’ says Zora.

  ‘Thanks!’ I say. I instantly relax when my phone hits my palm, tension I didn’t realize I was holding in my shoulders releasing. It’s crazy to have such a visceral reaction to a phone, but there you go. Maybe it’s not so different with a baku after all.

  ‘What’s your beetle’s unique ID and I’ll store it with Linus in my Favourite contacts,’ says Zora.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t leashed him yet,’ I say. My fingers fly across the cracked screen of my phone, checking updates from social media across different platforms.

  ‘You still haven’t leashed your baku? La-cey . . .’I know that tone of voice from Mom. Sometimes she acts as if I’m an alien creature who’s landed in her living room, as opposed to her own flesh and blood. She just doesn’t get what that baku represents to me: failure.

  I keep on scrolling.

  My breath catches in my throat.

  There’s an email from the Board of Education. It has the same heading as the one a couple of days before. LACEY CHU: PROFECTUS APPLICATION STATUS. There’s probably a bug in their system, emailing me for a double hit of rejection. Great. Like I need that.

  Even though it makes my nose twitch to see the ‘unread’ notification, I don’t open the email. Instead, I scroll through the Flashes from the people I follow. Pretty much all my St Agnes classmates are getting their new bakus in time for the new school year, and even people with the boring level 1 insects seem excited. Suddenly, it’s like my phone is an old, dead object in my palm. Looking up at Zora, who is stroking Linus’s nose as he projects updates on to her palm, or Mom creating a new recipe with Petal describing every step, I realize how silly I’m being. My phone is just a lump of metal, broken glass and plastic.

  I need a baku.

  ‘I left my beetle downstairs. I better go and grab it,’ I say.

  ‘Okay, but y
ou come straight back up here, promise me? You’ve already spent too much time down there. You need more sunshine,’ says Mom.

  ‘You got it,’ I reply.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ says Zora, shovelling the last spoonful into her mouth. ‘If you let me borrow your new baku for a bit, I can upgrade some of your apps as a thank you for saving Linus.’

  I shoot her a grateful smile. I want to fill her in on what happened last night – and get her take on the Moncha guard. I can always count on her logical brain to tell me whether I should be more worried about something than not.

  Then there’s the mysterious cat baku . . . but I don’t know whether I’m ready to tell Zora about that discovery yet.

  We walk over to the elevator as I tell her about my adventures in the ravine.

  Her jaw drops. ‘I’d heard they’d stepped up security in Monchaville, but didn’t realize it was that bad. And I still can’t believe you found him! The probability of that happening was very low,’ Zora says. ‘When I work on your beetle I’ll load him up with some custom apps. I’ve got a few that I’ve coded . . . you’ll love it, I promise. Have you decided on a name yet?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not yet, but . . .’ My phone buzzes in my hand and I glance down at the splintered screen.

  MESSAGE FOR LACEY CHU FROM BOARD OF EDUCATION

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Zora.

  I turn the screen to show her. She kisses her teeth. ‘What do they want?’

  ‘I guess it’s time to find out.’

  My finger hovers over the email app on the screen. Zora reaches out and squeezes my shoulder.

  LACEY CHU: PROFECTUS APPLICATION STATUS

  Dear Lacey,

  We are delighted to offer you a place at Profectus Academy next year. We have registered your level 3 baku on our system.

  Congratulations, and we look forward to seeing you in September.

  Dr Grant

  PRINCIPAL OF PROFECTUS ACADEMY

  ‘WHAT?’ I actually scream out loud after I’ve read the email.

  I close it, then scroll back to find the original – but it’s gone. Deleted. It’s not in my Trash either. It’s as if I never received it. I open the new email again and stare, wondering if the letters are going to rearrange in front of my eyes. But they don’t. I’m in, for real.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Zora asks.

  I try to speak but can’t. Zora grabs the phone from my hand.

  ‘Holy baku,’ she says as she reads the email, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Two days ago—’

  We both start at the same time.

  The rejection must have been a mistake all along. I can hardly believe it.

  For a moment, there are no words I can find to describe how I’m feeling. Then . . .

  ‘I’m in, Z. I’m in.’ Tears shine in my eyes.

  She steps forward, and gives me a hug.

  But then her logical brain takes over and she steps back, holding me by the shoulders. ‘Wait. I thought you hadn’t leashed your baku yet? And it says here they have you registered with a level 3?’

  My heart sinks. She knows as well as I do that I bought a level 1 beetle. Nothing like a level 3. And she’s right, I haven’t leashed it yet. Zora scrunches up her nose, as if she’s trying to hold up the weight of her glasses while she stares down at my phone. She’s realizing – as I am – that this email is actually the mistake. A practical joke. It’s just the kind of thing Carter would do – probably in retaliation for yesterday.

  Then, her eyes open wide. ‘Oh my gosh – maybe they mean they’re sending you a level 3 baku because you need financial aid! It’s a good thing you didn’t leash that beetle after all!’

  Now she hugs me properly.

  I squeeze her back, but my stomach churns with confusion. I know that’s not how it works at Profectus. They would never just send over a random baku. They would have given me grant money to go out and buy my own.

  ‘Look, there’s an attachment,’ she says. Before I can stop her, she opens it up.

  APPLICANT NAME: LACEY JANE CHU

  APPLICANT NUMBER: 651

  BAKU: level 3 cat baku ‘JINX’ (unique ID J1NX89)

  STATUS: INCOMING PROFECTUS STUDENT 2067

  Everything about the form looks perfectly legitimate – and hard to fake. The applicant number in particular – I remember it from when I sent in my application. There is no way that Carter would have been able to guess the correct one.

  The level 3 cat baku statement is what has me chewing my lower lip, however. So many questions buzz into my brain at once, I feel like I’m being attacked by hornets. Yet one thought dominates over all the rest: Could it be referring to the broken baku I found yesterday?

  It seems impossible, and yet . . . if it’s true . . . I can’t let anyone know the baku isn’t really mine.

  Not the Profectus Board. Not my mom. And not Zora.

  ‘You’re in.’ A grin blossoms on Zora’s face. ‘You’re in, Lacey! I knew the rejection was a mistake!’ She grabs my arm and we spin around, bouncing up and down like maniacs.

  For a moment I let the confusion fade. I’m going to Profectus. I’M ACTUALLY GOING.

  Finally I collapse against the wall, my cheeks stinging from how wide my grin is.

  ‘I can’t wait to see your new baku, by the way. I love the name – Jinx. I really want to meet him! Come on, let’s go back in and tell your mom.’ She extends her hand. And reality begins to sink in.

  Including one very big question.

  Who on earth is Jinx?

  NEWS SPREADS FAST IN OUR BUILDING.

  Mom had heard our happy screams and rushed out of the condo to find out what happened. She danced with joy alongside us, but then her face fell.

  ‘Oh honey, I had everything prepared for a proper celebration but then when your rejection came through I cancelled the order because I didn’t want to make you feel even worse,’ Mom said, after processing the news.

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t need any celebrations!’ I’d replied, shifting on my feet. My stomach was still swirling with confusion, and I needed to get down to the basement to make sure my suspicion about the broken baku was true.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you’ve wanted this your whole life. I’m so happy for you.’

  ‘Even with . . . what happened to Dad?’ I’d cringed then. I rarely brought it up. But if there was any moment it felt needed, it was right after getting my acceptance to Profectus. It’s one step away from working at Moncha HQ, just like he did.

  Mom shushed me, but she also turned her face away so I couldn’t see her get emotional. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think, and it definitely doesn’t matter what your father would have thought. Your life is your own, and so are your dreams. I will always support you, no matter what.’ She’d then kissed me on the forehead and ordered me to change out of the clothes I had slept in in my locker. Mom leapt into super hostess mode, Petal darting back and forth between the cupboards, projecting a recipe for a quick celebration cake she could whip up.

  Less than an hour later, our unit is filled with Zora’s family, neighbours from our floor, even Darwin, our porter – all celebrating my achievement. I receive more hugs and kisses than I can process. Paul shows up and he gives me a gruff hug. ‘Knew you could do it! That probably means I won’t be seeing you in the basement much.’

  ‘I don’t know about that . . . there might be one last big project over this summer.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘Anything you need, you know who to ask.’

  ‘Thanks, Paul.’

  ‘I’m proud of you, little tinker.’

  My cheeks burn with a mixture of pride and embarrassment at the same time.

  After way too much cake, I slip out of the front door and edge along the hallway to the stairwell. If I take the elevator, I’m bound to bump into someone I know. Even though everyone is there for me, the noise and the people and the attention is a
ll a bit too much.

  Especially as I’m desperate to get down to my cave and figure out if that broken hunk of metal could possibly be turned into a fully functioning level 3 baku – or else my career at Profectus might be short-lived after all.

  Zora spots me escaping. ‘Want me to run interference?’ she asks, and I’m grateful she doesn’t push to come with me.

  I smile at her. ‘That would be great.’

  ‘Hey – when do you think they’ll send the new baku – Jinx, isn’t it?’

  I play Zora off, even though I hate lying to her. ‘Oh, they just emailed to say they’d send me the baku right before the start of term – something about not wanting me to get too attached.’

  She frowns. ‘That’s odd.’ Then, she shrugs. ‘I guess you know more about Profectus than I do! But does that mean you won’t have a baku all summer long? How am I going to get in touch with you?’

  ‘You live in my building,’ I say, with a grin. ‘We’ll just have to visit each other’s units.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she says. Linus wrinkles his nose in a gesture of solidarity with Zora’s scepticism. ‘I’d better get back to the party and make sure no one asks too many questions about where the guest of honour has gone,’ she says with a wink.

  ‘Thanks, Zora. I owe you one.’

  When I get down to the locker, it’s quiet. Eerily so. I fumble with the lock – it takes me two or three attempts to open – and once I’m inside, I take several deep breaths to calm myself down. When I feel more settled, I slide the box out from underneath the desk and there is the baku: still just as broken and messed up as I left it.

  You can’t just name a baku by saying a word aloud, I remind myself. That isn’t how baku registering works. You have to go through the leashing process and input the name, check that it hasn’t been registered to a similar baku within a certain radius . . . all the things I was going to do with my beetle.

  Another, louder voice says: But this has to be Jinx.

  There’s no way that Profectus would send me a level 3 baku. Which means if I don’t manage to get ‘Jinx’ before the start of term, I won’t be starting school in September, acceptance or not.