The Peacock Detectives

by Carly Nugent

  The more I thought, the more figuring it out seemed impossible. I couldn’t feel Jonas’s feelings like he could. I felt like a bad detective and a bad storyteller. A bad detective because I couldn’t follow clues properly, and a bad storyteller because I didn’t understand Jonas’s story well enough to know what should happen next.

  While I was sitting there feeling sad about Jonas and sorry for myself, Rhea Grimm was walking up and down the tram platform. After a few minutes she said, ‘Why does Jonas like sharks so much?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, they’re not very nice animals. They just swim around all day killing things. They’ve got horrible teeth and gross eyes. I don’t get it.’

  I tried to remember all the facts Jonas had told me about sharks. They can swim twenty-four kilometres an hour. They can smell blood from five kilometres away. They have 300 teeth. They can jump completely out of the water to catch their food.

  These were all interesting facts, but I didn’t think any of them was the reason sharks were Jonas’s favourite animal.

  Then I remembered something else Jonas had told me about sharks. It was lunchtime, and we were sitting on (Jonas) and near (me) The Snake Stairs. It was one of the days after Grandpa went to hospital when we were only telling sad stories and disturbing-but-interesting facts. Jonas had been quiet all day, and we were chewing and not talking. Then suddenly Jonas swallowed and yelled across the path at me—

  ‘Did you know if a shark stops swimming it will die?’

  ‘How do they sleep, then?’ I yelled back.

  ‘Even when they’re sleeping,’ Jonas said. ‘Even then, they have to keep swimming.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or they drown. They just sink to the bottom. And they drown.’

  I pictured sharks falling to the bottom of the ocean like helium balloons that had run out of helium.

  ‘They must get really tired,’ I yelled.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jonas yelled back. ‘But they keep on going. Because they really, really want to stay alive.’

  Jonas didn’t look at me when he said that last part. He was staring into the bushes and his eyes had a funny look, like they had turned around and were staring into himself instead of out into the world. And even though what Jonas had said about sharks was a fact, the way he said it made it feel like it was a story.

  I jumped up from the cold tram-stop bench. ‘I know where he’s gone!’ I cried.

  ‘Huh?’ Rhea Grimm said.

  I grabbed her hand. There was a tram coming, and we needed to get on it. ‘Come on,’ I said, and suddenly I was full of hope again.

  Jonas was sitting on one of those big carpeted blocks in The Fish Bowl. It’s called The Fish Bowl because it has glass walls and a glass ceiling and behind the glass are fish. The water was making wavy shadows across his face, and when a really big fish swam over the top, it was hard to see that it was really Jonas sitting there. His face was coloured-in by fish shadows.

  I sat down on one side of Jonas and Rhea Grimm sat down on the other. This was part of my plan, so if Jonas tried to run away it would be easier to stop him. When Jonas saw Rhea Grimm, his eyes widened for a second in surprise. Then he went back to staring at the stingrays and the nurse sharks and the sea turtles.

  ‘This is for you,’ I said, and I put his birthday present on the bit of block between us. It was a Peacock Detective badge with his name on it and a picture of a peacock feather. There was a safety pin attached to the back. Jonas looked at it, but he didn’t pick it up.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. Then there was silence except for the aquarium soundtrack that isn’t quite music but isn’t quite whale sounds, either. Then Jonas said, ‘I knew you’d find me.’

  I turned to look at him. A groper swam behind his head. ‘How did you know?’

  Jonas smiled the tiniest smile. So tiny that if I had blinked at that second I would have missed it. ‘Because you’re a Peacock Detective.’

  The aquarium soundtrack sounded like dolphins singing. ‘Let’s go home,’ I said.

  A stingray flew over our heads, like a pterodactyl. Jonas’s face went dark.

  ‘Home,’ he said, except it sounded like he was saying a nonsense word. A word like flibbertygizzit or babbleflap. A word with no meaning.

  ‘Mississippi Street, Bloomsbury,’ I said, thinking maybe I could get his attention with specific details. ‘Number twenty-four.’

  Jonas stared at a big school of little fish.

  ‘Left from school, and past the church. Around the corner,’ I tried.

  Jonas still said nothing. An eel went past like a long piece of tree bark.

  ‘The brick house with the really big front yard. There are always weeds in the grass even though Peter picks them out every Saturday. And on the veranda there’s a wind chime that Irene bought in China. It’s shaped like a fish and it makes a noise that you think sounds like fresh air, if fresh air had a sound.’

  The groper again. A nurse shark. Another groper. I was getting desperate. I wanted to shake Jonas, or slap him the way they do in books when people are being unreasonable. ‘Your mum and dad live there!’ I cried finally, in a voice that was too loud for The Fish Bowl.

  ‘They’re not my mum and dad,’ Jonas said, which is what I knew he was going to say, but which I didn’t have an answer for. I closed my mouth and sat in quiet, frustrated silence.

  ‘Why not?’ said Rhea Grimm.

  I was surprised when she spoke. Jonas was surprised, too—I could tell because for the first time he turned his face away from the fish.

  ‘Don’t they look after you?’ Rhea Grimm said.

  Jonas stared at Rhea Grimm, and Rhea Grimm stared back. For a long time Jonas didn’t answer, and there was only the sound of dolphins mixed with clarinet. Then he said, ‘Yeah. They look after me.’

  ‘Do they cook you dinner?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do they buy you school clothes and books and throw you birthday parties?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Rhea Grimm crossed her arms. ‘They’re your parents, then. Parents do all that stuff.’

  ‘They’re not my real parents, though. You know. Scientifically.’

  I was staring at a starfish that had suctioned itself to the glass. Then I remembered something Mum had said: Just because a story’s not true doesn’t mean it’s not good.

  I turned to Jonas. ‘Maybe they’re not your parents in a fact-way,’ I said. ‘But they are your parents in another way. In the way of buying you a laptop, and all those encyclopaedias. And in the way of loving you.’

  ‘But it’s a lie,’ Jonas said, and his voice shook. He turned back to the fish, and I could see tears sitting in his eyes.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s a Metaphor.’

  We all sat still for a long time then, watching the fish. The aquarium soundtrack sounded like waves crashing, with violins. One of the nurse sharks was swimming over our heads, back and forth, never stopping. I counted its belly above me ten times. After the tenth time Jonas picked up his birthday present, and stood up.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can still get the last train.’

  On the way back to the station Jonas pinned his Peacock Detective badge to his shirt.

  ‘You don’t have to wear it,’ I said. ‘You can just keep it in your bag, if you want.’

  ‘I want to wear it,’ Jonas said. Which made me feel happy all the way down to my toes.

  Rhea Grimm was really quiet. And when we were standing at the ticket counter holding hands and pretending to be brother and sisters, she let go.

  Jonas was standing at the counter with his money. The ticket man had a long thin face and wrinkles in his forehead. He was watching us carefully.

  ‘Come on,’ I whispered, with my teeth clenched so the ticket man wouldn’t hear me. ‘We all have to go together.’

  Rhea Grimm’s face crumpled like it was a supermarket receipt about to be thrown in the bin. Then she turned around and ran, faster than I’ve ever
seen anyone run before. She ran right across the station and out the big gaping hole of the Exit. And into the almost-dark street.

  When I first started writing this story I thought that Rhea Grimm was A Minor Character. A Minor Character is someone who has a small part in a story. Minor Characters are only really useful because of their connections to Main Characters (like Tom Golding, because he is connected to Diana) or because they do things that keep the story going (like the bus driver, because she drove the bus so I could get to the city to find Jonas). But while I was standing there watching Rhea Grimm’s shoes disappear out of the train station I thought about all the things she had done. I thought about how she had been crying on the train, and how she had come with me to the Department of Human Services building, and how she had asked me about sharks. And I knew I wouldn’t have been able to find Jonas without her. And suddenly I realised Rhea wasn’t A Minor Character after all—in my story, she was A Main Character.

  Jonas was standing at the ticket counter with his eyes wide and his mouth open. The ticket man had pushed his lips together like he didn’t believe we were brother and sisters at all and was about to call someone and tell on us. I grabbed Jonas and his money and pulled him towards the Exit.

  Out on the street we looked left and right, and I saw Rhea’s messy ponytail darting past a cafe. We ran after her. She was really fast—if someone had been giving out ribbons for running through the city, Rhea would have got the blue one. She ran past a bank and around a corner. Jonas and I dodged a blind woman with a dog, and then almost ran into two men in suits. They yelled at us to ‘Watch it!’ and I wanted to say sorry but we were losing Rhea and had no time. At the next intersection, I wished really hard for the red man so Rhea would have to stop and we could catch her. But the light stayed green and she escaped across the road. Jonas was puffing. I yelled at him to hurry up and then I almost ran into a car that was parked half on the footpath.

  Up ahead was a big park—I could see the tops of bushy city trees and painted pavilions for sitting and reading and having picnics in. Rhea ran into the park and for a moment I thought we had lost her. We ran through the trees, and it felt like maybe we would have to give up and go home without her. Which yesterday I would not have minded at all, but today I really, really did.

  And then we saw her. She was sitting on the grass, slumped against the trunk of an enormous city tree. She looked like she never wanted to get up again.

  Jonas and I were breathing so hard we had to wait a minute before we could say anything. And even when we had our breath back we didn’t know what to say. Rhea was staring at her knees. I sat down next to her and stared at my knees, too. Jonas did the same, but on the other side of Rhea (in case she tried to run away again). And then we were all sitting in the city park, so far away from everything we knew, staring and not-talking.

  We stayed like that until it was too dark to see our knees anymore. Then I stood up, and then Jonas stood up, and then Rhea did, too. We walked back to the station and Jonas paid for our tickets and we got on the train.

  Rhea didn’t tell us why she had run away, and Jonas and I didn’t ask her. We fell asleep on each other’s heads and shoulders, and when we had to change to the bus it felt like we were sleepwalking down the platform.

  When we got back to Bloomsbury it was very dark and very late. We walked home together until just before the hospital, and then Rhea turned down a dark street. She waved goodbye without speaking. I wondered if she was thinking about her Personal thing. While Jonas and I were crossing the bridge he told me about how he had slept in the train station, and about how he had felt when he got to the Department of Human Services building.

  ‘I thought if I went all the way there they would have to take me to my real parents,’ he said. ‘But they wouldn’t even tell me their names. Everything just felt black, after that. Like a universe with no stars.’

  Before Jonas turned left and went home I took his Special Stone out of my backpack and gave it to him. Then I asked him the question I had wanted to ask him for two days.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?’

  For a moment there was only the cold quiet of winter night. Then Jonas said, ‘Because I knew you’d tell me a story that would make me stay. And I had to go.’

  ‘Why did you leave the Special Stone, then?’

  Jonas smiled. ‘Because I also knew you would find me if things didn’t work out.’

  I nodded. ‘I knew I would, too,’ I said, because—deep down—I had.

  We said goodbye and I walked the rest of the way home by myself, thinking how weird it was for someone to want to run away and be found at the same time.

  When I got home I noticed four things:

  1) All the lights were on even though it was almost midnight

  2) Diana and Simon were inside

  3) Mum and Dad were sitting on the couch holding hands, and

  4) My mum is really, really beautiful.

  When I walked in and saw them all like that my stomach twisted into a big knot of guilt and fear and love and hunger and tiredness. For a moment nobody did anything—we all just stared at each other. Then Dad started crying. Mum jumped up and hugged me so hard I thought my eyeballs were going to squeeze out of their sockets. Simon licked me on every bit of bare skin he could find. And Diana said, ‘Everyone thought you were dead, you idiot,’ which in fifteen-year-old language means ‘I missed you’.

  All the way home I had prepared myself for being in big trouble. I explained to Mum and Dad that I couldn’t tell them about Jonas because his clue was just for me (cross my heart), and then I said sorry for the note I had left (the one that said DON’T WORRY!! in capital letters).

  But I wasn’t in trouble. Everyone was too busy being happy I was home to think of a way to punish me. Mum made hot chocolate (with cocoa powder and milk and sugar and marshmallows, and just the right amount of hot) and Dad said I could stay up until one-thirty. Diana stayed inside all night on a mattress on my floor. She talked until I fell asleep about how everyone had been looking for me all day, and about Buddhism, and about how Year Nine was harder than she thought it would be. She didn’t talk about Tom Golding, but I could tell from her pauses (because even though we are three years apart she is still my sister) that she wanted to.

  While I was listening to her I thought about Jonas, and Rhea. I wondered if they had had hot chocolate, too. I wondered if their parents had cried and hugged them until their eyeballs hurt. I knew Jonas’s would have. I wasn’t so sure about Rhea’s.

  Dad said I didn’t have to go to school this morning because I had been missing and I had stayed up so late, but I really wanted to see Jonas and Rhea. Before I left, Dad gave me a giant hug—the kind of hug he used to give before Grandpa got sick and Mum moved out—and for a minute I thought he wasn’t going to let me go. But then he did, and he watched Diana and me until we were all the way to the end of the street. We turned the corner and couldn’t see him anymore, but I knew he was still there.

  Jonas was waiting for me at the school gate.

  ‘I stayed up until one-forty-five!’ I said, as soon as I was close enough for him to hear me. ‘And Mum made hot chocolate. Did you get in trouble?’

  Jonas shook his head. ‘Mum made French toast,’ he said. ‘And I went on the Internet for two hours. Did you know vultures help prevent diseases from spreading?’

  It was good to hear Jonas talking about interesting facts again, and to hear him call his mum Mum, instead of Irene. We went to class and I could tell Mrs Atkinson was glad to see us because she didn’t give us catch-up spelling worksheets for being absent. We did story-writing (I wrote about an explorer who gets lost in a train station) and science (Jonas answered all Mrs Atkinson’s questions about bacteria) and then at little recess we went looking for Rhea.

  To find her we had to cross the downball courts. After going to The City and back, crossing the downball courts wasn’t as scary as it used to be. I felt more twelve than eleven knowing
I had caught a bus and a train by myself. It was also nice to be going to visit someone in secondary school who wasn’t my sister or my dad. As we walked past the lockers I felt less like a small animal in danger of being eaten and more like a medium-sized animal on her way to meet a friend.

  We found Rhea on the basketball courts. She was playing Around the World with her friends—the same friends Jonas had thrown peanut butter and tomato sauce at. She was getting lots of shots in, and she was laughing. She looked like a girl who had never even thought about running away, let alone actually done it.

  ‘She looks all right,’ Jonas said, in a secondary school whisper. ‘Maybe we should leave her alone.’ Jonas hadn’t spent as much time with Rhea as I had. He hadn’t seen her smile at the conductor on the platform, or cry on the train, so he was still scared of her.

  ‘Let’s just say hi,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

  I should have known something wasn’t right when Rhea saw us and stopped laughing. One of her friends grabbed the basketball and the friendly bouncing and hoop-swooshing sounds stopped. Rhea was staring at us. Her friends were staring at us. There was a horrible silence, the kind of silence that happens in a forest when a large predator is about to attack.

  I tried smiling but my smile felt like very weak cordial. ‘Hi,’ I said, and my voice sounded like the voice of a ghost—thin, and not very believable. I could feel Jonas poking the back of my ankle with his shoe. I knew he was trying to tell me it was time to go, but I also knew it was too late.

  ‘What do you want, Andersen?’ One of the girls who wasn’t Rhea said, in a voice like an unpinned safety pin.

  ‘I just…’ I started, but stopped when I saw Rhea’s face. I was going to ask if she was okay, and if she had been allowed to stay up late, and if she wanted to come with me and Jonas to look for the peacocks after school. But then I saw the way she was looking at me. It was the same way Simon looks at his poo when he can’t find enough dirt to cover it up with. It was an embarrassed look. An ashamed look. Except instead of being embarrassed by uncovered poo, Rhea was embarrassed by me.