The History of Mischief

by Rebecca Higgie

  I hired a few boatmen and followed the sounds downstream until I found her. She was still holding the waterlogged book when we pulled her broken body out of the Thames. I thought of burying her with it. It seemed right that it would follow her to the grave. But at the last moment, I took it.

  The History followed me all the way to the colonies, to the most isolated city in Australia. I kept it on the shelf, never really thinking about it. It was torn, wrinkled from water damage, and the leather binding was crumbling. Then, as a woman unmercifully old, a young man came along, noticed it sitting there on the shelf, and said he could hear music.

  Jessie

  After Archie’s history, there’s supposed to be another. The contents page and Transcription Note said there was one more, from Henry, the transcriber himself.

  But it’s not here.

  Someone ripped it out of the book.

  ‘Whoever ripped it out didn’t do it very cleanly,’ Kay says, showing me the strips of torn paper attached at the bottom of the book.

  I grab the History and flip through them. There’s still something here.

  I run to my room, grab some paper and a pen, and run back. I can just make out a few words. I start to write them out.

  A. Mischief the Two-Hundred and First

  Perth, Australia 1956–1966

  but it sang to me

  melody was in

  prohibited by

  was allowed whi

  not mix with

  how they raised m

  love libraries but

  so I have to go wi

  quadroon. I

  might as well be

  should be sad

  piano and violin

  music came from

  walked past the hous

  dreamt of that same

  hummed it, tried to pla

  Weeks and we

  old and clever and

  ‘You know,

  I out of tune and

  library was menac

  won’t let me so I

  I was supposed

  every time I visit

  tried to help

  never mentioned th

  just died. Like

  she was old but sh

  magic. I could

  the keys played

  as if possessed

  surrounded by books

  wrote themselv

  time signatures mea

  each history had

  violin string snap

  Pan once said I

  broke into the con

  orchestra. It was

  the cellos and the

  conductor of some

  a mischief never

  realised I would

  nowhere to call

  talent doesn’t get

  worry, it’s okay.’

  Jessie

  I don’t know how to feel. The History’s over. Most of it destroyed, and the last one ripped out. I thought there would be at least one more left. Now it’s just … over.

  So where is the real one? The one that fell in the Thames. The one Chloe fished out.

  On the way to school on Monday, we walk past Mrs Moran on her veranda, drinking tea with Cornelius. She waves and calls out, ‘Morning, dears!’

  I want to scream at her, WHY DON’T YOU REMEMBER?

  Or maybe she does. The vacuuming at night. The dead husband. Maybe it’s all a ruse.

  Theodore’s away for another week. Word about his mum gets around school and some kids cry. I don’t feel angry at them as I did before. I try to distract myself. I search for books on the British Museum and the frost fairs, but don’t find much. Wikipedia says the Thames hasn’t frozen since 1814. Something to do with London Bridge. But Archie freezes the Thames in 1895, so Wikipedia is wrong again. You can’t trust everything you read on the internet, that’s what Mrs Harper says.

  I look into Lou and Chloe again too, wondering how they hunted down the History after it escaped the Paris siege. I feel silly that I didn’t notice that Lou’s history was A. Mischief the Two-Hundredth, while Bezawit and Archie were A. Mischief the One-Hundred and Ninety-Eighth and One-Hundred and Ninety-Ninth. I wonder what other things I’ve missed.

  When Theodore returns, he comes in with a late pass after the bell goes. He gives it to Miss Sparrow and sits down at his desk. Everyone looks at him. He starts crying straight away. Mrs Armstrong takes him outside for a walk.

  At recess, kids ask if he wants to play with them. Kids who teased him weeks ago come up and say, ‘Hey, Theodore, wanna play footy?’, ‘Hey, Theodore, I like your bag’, ‘Hey, Theodore, do you want my lamington? It’s really nice.’ Theodore eats the soggy lamington and cries. There are kids who seem frightened of him too. They don’t say or do anything.

  I don’t know how to make Theodore stop crying. After lunch, when he cries again, this popular Year 6 boy holds his hand and walks with him around the oval.

  All I say to him is, ‘You okay?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘You wanna come over later? Broom and Stephanie can come.’

  He shakes his head. He goes home early.

  The next day, Theodore comes late again, and the day after that. When he starts coming early again, like he used to, he sits down next to me. He doesn’t have his iPod. He doesn’t dance or sing.

  One day, out of the blue, he says to me, ‘I’m a different thing now.’

  I remember what I said when he asked what it feels like when your mum dies, about becoming another thing, a sad, angry, lonely thing.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I still like you.’

  He smiles. I feel warm. This is what Archie must’ve felt when the sparrows came back to life. I need to remind Theodore that even if he’s a different thing, he’s still Theodore.

  I plan my mischief. I ask Kay to help. When I tell her the idea, she says it sounds great.

  ‘You and me, we’re doing mischief together!’ she says.

  ‘No, just me. But I need you to take me to the shops.’

  ‘Okay. But I’m still helping.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’m A. Mischief too.’

  She’s trying to annoy me on purpose.

  ‘You’re only A. Mischief like Archie, keeping the book for yourself!’ I say.

  She shrugs. ‘I’m fine with that.’

  We buy a cheap set of earphones that has a long cord. I watch YouTube all weekend in preparation.

  On Monday, Theodore comes late, so I can’t do my mischief. On Tuesday, he’s early, and there’s no one else around. He sits in the corner of the courtyard, next to the green door that’s always locked. I go over and smile at him. He smiles weakly back for a second, then looks away.

  ‘Stand up,’ I tell him. I try to say it nicely.

  He stands. I take out Kay’s iPod and put one earphone bud in my ear and one in his. I turn the iPod on. Theodore looks confused. It’s playing his favourite song, the POW POW POW one.

  I bob along. I hate dancing but I try to do Theodore’s moves. I take his hands and swing his arms about. It’s only when I start singing the Korean rap part that he smiles. He tries not to, I can tell. But he can’t stifle his smirk at how wrong I’m getting it all.

  ‘Sing the Korean bits!’ I try.

  Limply he sings.

  I sing the English echo back to him, ‘We ain’t playin’, no!’

  His smile gets bigger. He sings the Korean part a little louder.

  I sing my part loud and stupid and over the top. ‘We ain’t playin’, no!’

  He smiles a proper Theodore grin now. We do the ‘Ready! Set! POW POW POW!’ move together. When we get to a part that means ‘Friends, put your hands up!’, I swing his arms up and he laughs. More kids arrive and a teacher walks past. No one says anything.

  Then we get to the part where someone sings in English, ‘We can never die!’

  Theodore stops smiling. His eyes fill with tears. I try to sing the Korean bits really badly to make him laugh, but the ‘never di
e’ part repeats. He bursts into tears and pulls the earphones out.

  I feel terrible. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He just cries.

  When Kay picks me up, I return her iPod and tell her I’m a terrible mischief. But the next day, Theodore comes early and sits with me on the bench outside the office. He smiles and shows me his iPod. We listen together. He wiggles his shoulders a bit. I sing with him. He stops it before the ‘never die’ bit. The next day, we finish the whole song.

  In the mornings, sometimes, Mrs Lornazak puts on music in the undercover area before school starts. Usually the Year 6s practise their graduation dances. I give her Theodore’s iPod and ask her to put on our song instead of her (stupid) music.

  ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘But you have to start participating in dance classes. As of next Wednesday, no more sitting on the bench.’

  I stare at her, annoyed. She smiles. I look back at Theodore. I agree.

  Theodore and I dance around the undercover area to the song. Some little kids from pre-primary join us.

  He’s still sad. I don’t know if the mischief really helped. But he’s talking more now. He tells me about the new space documentary Stephanie bought him and asks if I know the life cycle of the butterfly. He says how sad he is that his grandparents have gone home because he has no one else to speak to in Korean (‘Dad’s almost as bad as you’). He asks me what I do when Kay cries.

  I feel guilty. ‘Nothing. She cries in her room.’

  ‘Dad cries in his room too. When I went in to hug him yesterday, he pretended everything was okay.’

  I don’t know what to tell him but we keep having little chats. Theodore still cries a lot, and I miss Mum and Dad every time. I think this is how it’s going to be for a while. But that’s okay.

  Jessie

  Kay’s been called into work on Sunday again. I have to go too because she doesn’t want to bother Mr Park or Mrs Moran.

  ‘Oh, please, Mrs Moran won’t mind!’ I say.

  I want to search for the History.

  ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t but I bet her grumpy daughter would,’ Kay says. ‘So you’re stuck with me!’

  I sigh. We get on the train and head into Perth.

  Neil’s on the first-floor desk again. Kay still doesn’t trust me in the stacks so I sit with him behind the reference desk. Whenever people come up, they glance at me. One lady says I’m a pretty little thing. I take off my cat ears beanie to show her my scar.

  I have theories about the last history, the one ripped from the book. I googled the word ‘quadroon’. It’s a ‘noun – dated, offensive’ which means ‘a person who is one-quarter black by descent’. I’m guessing the transcriber Henry is one-quarter black, or maybe someone he knows is. Somehow, Henry got the History to reveal the surviving stories after it was mostly destroyed. The Transcription Note at the beginning makes me think he and Chloe worked together. But in the words from the ripped bits of paper, there are mentions of pianos, violins and orchestras. Maybe his mischief had something to do with music. Maybe translating the History involved songs.

  But where is the History, the real one?

  ‘Concentrating awfully hard there,’ Neil says to me.

  ‘Just thinking,’ I say.

  ‘Looks like some frowny thinking.’

  A woman approaches the desk, holding multicoloured request slips. Neil asks for her ‘researcher’s card’ and takes the slips.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Horne, these requests will be delivered to the Reading Room,’ Neil says. ‘Our retrieval team should have your items in the next half-hour.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  She makes her way up the stairs. Kay will collect the slips at 9:30 am, nineteen minutes from now.

  ‘Why are there three slips?’ I ask, peeking at the request.

  ‘They’re for rare items. One slip goes in the shelf, where the item is normally kept, the other is left with the item, and the final one is given to the staff up on Battye so they can find the item for the researcher.’

  ‘Battye’s the third floor, yeah?’

  ‘Yep. WA collection. We have a room up there where researchers can look at old and special things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well,’ Neil says. ‘This researcher has requested two bibles published in 1794 and 1843.’

  ‘Kay gets these, too?’

  ‘Yep, that’s one of the jobs of the Stock and Stack team. They fetch everything.’

  Just like Archie.

  I think about the History. ‘Do you have really old books here?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ he says. ‘We have surveys from the first fleet, we have maps, newspapers, books made entirely of vellum – that’s calfskin, you know!’

  I scowl at him. ‘I know what vellum is.’

  He laughs. ‘Of course you do!’

  I’m annoyed he finds me so funny. ‘Where are the old books?’

  ‘Mainly in the rare book rooms.’

  I remember the dark locked room from when I snuck into the stacks. It needed an ID card to get in. I glance at the ID around Neil’s neck.

  ‘Are there many rare book rooms?’

  ‘On every floor!’

  The History of Mischief could be in one of those rooms. The History always liked librarians, and didn’t the ripped-out history mention a library?

  A man comes to the desk and asks for help with the microfiche, which are mini film reels that show newspapers instead of movies. Neil gets up, points at me and says, ‘Stay put, missy!’

  I watch Neil for a while. It looks like the microfiche machine isn’t working. He has his back to me. I glance at his computer.

  I hop over to his chair and go to the library catalogue. I don’t know what to search so I just type in ‘mischief’. Roald Dahl, some adult novels, and some kids’ books with hamsters. I type, ‘the history of mischief’. A book about student pranks comes up. I’m not surprised. The History would hide better than that.

  Neil returns. I hop off his chair. He raises his eyebrow but says nothing.

  I look at the time. Twelve minutes till Kay comes.

  ‘Neil?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘That researcher will have to wait for ages.’

  Neil glances at the clock. ‘Kay will be here in ten minutes.’

  ‘We should help her.’

  He smiles, glancing at his computer. ‘So, what’s The History of Mischief then?’

  I left my search open.

  ‘None of your business!’

  He shrugs but smiles. ‘Okay.’

  He goes back to his work. Closes my search. Checks his email. Nine minutes till Kay comes.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  He shrugs, as if it was nothing. ‘Is it old?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The History of Mischief.’

  I think for a moment. I don’t want anyone else to find it. ‘It’s a secret.’

  Neil nods. ‘Okay.’

  Lunchtime comes. Kay buys us cheese and salad sandwiches from the café. I ask if she can look in the rare book rooms for the real History.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘No, it’s impossible. There’s no listing on the catalogue and you can’t search every book in the stacks. It would take years, even if you just went through the rare book rooms.’

  ‘You looked it up then?’

  ‘Shut up and eat your sandwich.’

  Neil’s on the Battye desk after lunch. A grumpy librarian complained that I was behind the desk and it was ‘unprofessional’, so he can’t look after me anymore.

  ‘Can I trust you to be in the workroom and NOT go into the stacks?’ Kay asks.

  ‘If you buy me a muffin.’

  She gives me $4.50 and I buy a raspberry and white chocolate muffin. She’s retrieving items on Battye too, she says, but she’ll check on me at random intervals.

  I count to thirty. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

  I leave the workroom. Kay only
said I wasn’t allowed in the stacks.

  I take the stairs up to Battye, practising all the excuses in my head if she catches me. I go up to the desk and find Neil. He smiles at me.

  ‘You’re going to get me in trouble,’ he says.

  ‘Will you help me find The History of Mischief ?’

  He grins. ‘Sure.’

  Neil’s clever. He tells me you can’t go into the rare book rooms without a reason. The ID reader logs who you are and when you went in there. Then you have to write down what you were getting and at what time in a diary, so the bosses can check if you’re doing the right thing. So he waits. He tells the other librarian on Battye that he has a tummy ache and has to go to the toilet a lot. He checks all the floors, gets any rare book requests. Then he gets me.

  The first rare book room we investigate is the one I saw when I snuck into the stacks last time. It’s very cold. He turns the light on and writes down the request details in the diary. He gets the requested book and rips off the yellow part of the slip, leaving it on the shelf where the book lived.

  Most of the books are in green boxes. On the spine of the box, it says the title and the year, all in gold letters. Neil says they are archival boxes.

  I gaze at the shelves. It isn’t what I imagined. Even with the light on, it’s still dark. The books are hidden away in their special boxes, neatly filed in order on the shelves. I thought it would be more, well, like the libraries in the movies with leather books and spider webs.

  ‘The History would probably be hiding in a box that had a different name,’ I tell him.

  ‘Hmm, well, we can’t check every box. Have a quick look and see if anything jumps out at you. If it’s really a history of mischief, I bet it would leave clues.’

  I look on the shelves. I think of the symbol on the History’s title page. Nothing.

  ‘This is mainly science and a bit of history,’ he says. ‘I’ve got another request for a bible. That’ll be in another room. There are much older books in there. Shall we check?’

  The second rare book room is on the other side of the first floor.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ Neil says as he taps his ID on the card reader. ‘Things are being rearranged at the moment.’

  This is more like I imagined. The smell of leather and off honey is strong here. The books are not in boxes. They’re just sitting on the shelves, some in piles. Neil finds the requested book, leaves the yellow slip and notes down what he’s taking in the diary.