by Tiffiny Hall
‘Hi, Maxine. I’m Mrs Halfbottom,’ she introduces herself with a handshake. ‘I’ve heard about you,’ she adds, looking over her glasses. ‘Stacey said she met you earlier?’
I shuffle my feet.
‘Swearwords are not tolerated here at Hatbridge College,’ she says. ‘Consider this a warning. I’ll be lenient because I know you are finding your feet on your first day, but it’s not a great start. You’re lucky I didn’t tell your father. Isn’t he a great man, bringing along gingerbread for the staff?’
‘I helped make them,’ I say.
‘A nice touch.’ She smiles.
Tyler takes a seat in the back row after I explain Dad’s a teacher here. It’s not until I’m settled in beside him that I hear that squawk. I slowly turn around and see Stacey laughing behind me. I’m the only student in the class without a tablet. I pull out a workbook that Mum has decorated with dinosaur stickers. Kids are looking at me, probably asking themselves why my book isn’t a touchscreen.
‘You can use the class iPad for today,’ Mrs Halfbottom says, handing me a tablet. I stare at the screen. I’ve never used one before.
‘Maths,’ she announces, and everyone looks down at their screens and starts tapping icons.
Tyler reaches over and slides his finger across the iPad. ‘Like a phone,’ he explains. But I’m too embarrassed to tell him I don’t have a smartphone either. I press the different pictures as applications open and close, bombarding the screen.
‘Where do you live?’ the girl next to me asks, looking through cool glasses.
‘Number nine Graham Grove,’ I say.
‘Really? You live in that old dump?’ she asks. Kids behind me, including Stacey, lean in.
‘No. The big blue house,’ I say. Tyler is looking at me. My voice dampens with shame.
The girl claps her hands like an excited seal. ‘Yeah, I know that place! Everyone knows it. Definitely the worst house in the neighbourhood. Didn’t the previous family get murdered or something?’
Now I wish I was invisible.
‘The last family who lived there? No,’ I say, ‘they moved out.’ I think of the dirty clothes in the washing machine.
‘They suddenly just disappeared. Think they were murdered. I remember the kid wore a new pair of sneakers to school every week,’ she says.
A boy behind me chimes in. ‘Maybe he was killed for his sneaker collection.’
I shake my head. ‘My house is two storeys, spacious, all the mod cons —’
‘As if,’ Stacey interrupts.
The words knife me. Tyler looks away from my hurt face. I flick my braid forward over my shoulder in defiance and something wet touches my fingers. I look down and the tip of my plait has been dipped in whiteout liquid.
‘That’s for my bag,’ Stacey barks.
I feel like crying, but I steel my face shut. I pick up the end of my braid and blow on it gently, as if the tip were a candle wick. I wait for the whiteout to dry, then place the braid back over my shoulder.
‘I bet you a million dollars she cries,’ Stacey says.
‘Cool. Thanks,’ I say, smiling. Stacey looks at her friends, confused. She has just given me the world’s greatest idea.
Chapter 5
‘How was school?’ Mum asks me from the driver’s seat.
I wave to Tyler as I put my bag in the boot. Tyler seems like a total authentic. Not afraid to be himself. Plus, I realised straight away that both of us had experienced friendless lunchtimes and neither of us were in danger of finding anyone else to hang out with today so we had nothing to lose.
‘How was school?’ Mum asks again, when I don’t respond.
‘Good,’ I say.
‘One word?’ She looks over at the boy waving to me with an insect racket.
I smile. ‘Pretty good.’
‘Two words,’ Mum says, scrunching her nose in the rear-vision mirror.
I slam the boot shut and jump into the back seat through the front passenger door. ‘To answer your question would take hours of backstory and I really need to get home to check on Sibyl,’ I say, but actually I have a plan to hatch. I now know how to find out where my room is in relation to the basement.
Fleur slides in beside me. Her voice cracks a ‘hi’. She looks like she’s had a rough day too. I heard a kid yell at her, ‘What? Speak up!’ and ‘Don’t make me learn sign language!’ Kids aren’t a patient bunch.
It’s obvious we don’t feel like talking. I’ve tucked my braid into the back of my T-shirt so Mum won’t see the white nib. Fleur drops a paper bag onto my lap, then blows me a kiss. We’re good again. I peer into the bag and see a golden smile, a croissant. Mum scores one too.
‘Working hard pays off, doesn’t it?’ Mum says, sinking her teeth into her croissant as we drive off. ‘You appreciate money when you earn it,’ she adds, mouth full, nodding her head towards the girls walking home with designer schoolbags and tablets. Fleur looks at me. We both see in each other the distant dream to one day walk with a tablet in our hands. Forget it, we say silently, shaking our heads. The car stinks of cleaning agents.
We stop off at the op-shop because Fleur has been nagging Mum for some different clothes. Out the front of the shop Mum runs into a lady whose house she cleans. I’ve heard about her. A real Scrooge, trying to get Mum to do all her ironing as well as her cleaning, but for the same price.
Fleur disappears into Budget Buys and before I can blink she’s trying to give me a makeover. She can’t help herself; hidden behind her sharp mathematical veneer is a frustrated stylist.
‘Just try this on,’ she pleads, flapping a T-shirt at me. ‘It’s perfect for you.’
‘It won’t fit,’ I say. She ushers me behind the curtain into the change room and as I predicted, I can’t get the T-shirt over my broad shoulders. I wriggle out of it and pull on my comfy army-green T-shirt.
‘Excuse me,’ Fleur calls out to the teenage boy working in the shop. He doesn’t hear her soft voice and she has to call out three times to divert his attention from a beautiful redhead at the counter dressed in head-to-toe lavender. Fleur waves the T-shirt, then asks, ‘Do you have anything like this but a bit roomier?’
‘We’re not a department store. Tell her to try on a diet,’ he says.
The redhead laughs and the boy’s chest inflates. I cringe behind the curtain. I stare at myself in the mirror, frumpy, frizzy and freckly.
‘Genius, cos she’s really going to be interested in a loser who works here,’ Fleur says, pointing to the redhead. That silences him.
Fleur pokes her head into the change room and sees my watery eyes. ‘Don’t listen to that creep! You’re beautiful. The shirt is cheap and nasty,’ she says.
Fleur finds a floral dress she likes for a bargain of four dollars and a pleated blue skirt for me that I know I’ll never wear but I can’t say ‘no’ to her. She pays for them with juice money, telling me if the coconut berry bliss balls keep going off, she could earn a tip from the boss next shift. The boy gives us two items for the price of one. We’re cool now.
‘I love buying stuff,’ Fleur whispers to me. ‘Wish we could do it more often.’
Back home I race inside to my bedroom, but I’ll have to wait until Mum and Fleur go upstairs before I can sneak down to the basement to investigate. Sibyl is reclined on a branch with her legs swinging overboard. Socrates is curled in his hidey-hole. I take Sibyl out and feel the weight of her, then hold up her tail and check the eggs in her belly. Her stomach is lumpier. I gently stroke the two rows of pearly beads, then place her on my shoulder.
A gust of wind and rain blows my curtains towards me. I walk over to close the window and look out at the street. This street is like a fairytale village, as if Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White all decided to move into the same neighbourhood and settle down happily ever after as neighbours in sparkly castles. Do real people actually live in those mansions? Do they know how lucky they are or is it just normal for them? Like it’s normal for you to eat
dinner at the table with your family and you get the shock of your life when you visit other families who eat dinner on their laps in front of the TV.
The world turns shiny in the rain. I slump down onto my bed to finish my croissant, gently brushing Sybil with the end of my white-dipped braid. Stacey Shovelton is on my mind, with her brown eyelids and death stare, her type compensating for their lack of personality with jabs at my parents’ lack of income. Thank goodness Dad was busy all day with a teacher induction and didn’t check in on me. I would have died.
I stare across my room at the lizard house and slowly chew soft puffs of pastry. I’m running out of crickets for my lizards. I’ll have to ask Mum for money to buy more. If only I hadn’t given Fleur the money I found. My stomach tightens. How can I ask Mum for money when I know she doesn’t have any to spare? I kick off my shoes, then pad over to Socrates in my socks.
‘Ouch!’ I yelp. I look down … and there’s a twig and an orange twenty-dollar note poking up through the floorboards! I crouch down and place Sibyl on the floor beside me. I study the money. The note isn’t old like the fifty I found before but fresh, bright and brand new, attached at the corner to a bud on the twig. I pluck the money and it comes free from the branch with all its corners pristine. I hold the note up to the light and feel my face flame the colour of the money with excitement. I fist pump the ceiling, then run on the spot (PS I never run — that’s how excited I am). As far as I can tell, it looks real. My first instinct is to give it to Mum, but when I consider I could buy three and a half containers of crickets with twenty bucks, I slide the note into my jeans pocket.
Returning Sibyl to her enclosure, I take my torch and beam the light down the crack in the floor, seeing only darkness. I try to stick my finger between the slats of wood, but it won’t fit. I’m anxious to investigate, yet I can still hear the others in the kitchen, so decide to mop to pass the time. In this house, a clean room is a reptile lover’s chance to breed lizards. I fetch the mop from the laundry and close my bedroom door behind me.
In the smooth movements of the wet sloppy mop, I think about school, Tyler and his mosquitos, Stacey and her schoolbag, Mrs Halfbottom and her red boots. I watch the water from the mop seep between the floorboards and wonder what the kids think when they meet me, Maxine in the shabby hand-me-downs. I swirl the mop in figure-eight motions like the infinity symbol on our school crest. I am that infinity symbol, stuck in perpetual motion along the horizontal eight; not good enough then, not good enough now and no idea how to break the cycle. Perhaps Mum is right: the universe is speaking to us. We’re really lucky to have found this house and to have moved into the school zone. Dad is so excited to be teaching at Hatbridge College that he said, ‘They may as well be paying me in sunshine.’ Good luck paying for groceries with sunshine.
The mop snags on something. I lift it up and poking through the same place in the floorboards, speared on that exact same twig, is a fifty-dollar note. I turn around. Swear no one came into my room whilst I went to the laundry. Fleur must be playing a trick on me. I pluck the fifty dollars from the little twig and hold it up to the light. It’s perfect, new as new can be and brilliant canary yellow. It looks like it has never been used before. I pocket it. Where could Fleur find another fifty bucks? I wait a moment for her to jump out from under my bed, but nothing happens. I’m completely alone.
Nervously I begin to mop again. I brush the mop over the same spot to see what will happen, thinking that I’ve never had seventy dollars before in my life when my thoughts halt. The mop snags again. I lift it up and another fifty-dollar note floats from the twig. Carefully I bend down and thread the money out from between the planks of wood. I’m scared if I make any sudden movements, something really bad will happen. I pocket the money in slow motion, then continue to mop as if nothing unusual is going on … that is until the mop catches again in a different part of the room. I lift the handle and peer beneath the strings of cloth dangling from the mophead. Sprouting between the floorboards is another fifty-dollar note. My heart pounds. I pluck it cautiously and fold the money into the pocket of my jeans with the rest. I place the mop by the lizard house and have to stop mid-march to my bed to pluck yet another fifty-dollar note billowing in the draught like a tiny yellow flag.
I dive into my bed and pull the covers over my head, listening to the others’ footsteps. I count to ten, holding my breath. My heart is beating so loud it feels like the sheets are hyperventilating. When I’m certain no one will barge in, I finally take the money out of my pocket and count the notes in my hand. The humidity under the sheets grows thicker with my sweating palms. Five notes. Two hundred and twenty dollars! I’ll be able to feed my lizards gourmet grasshoppers forever on this, or at least for twenty-something weeks! I punch the air in celebration, dislodging my sheets, and collapse back onto my pillow. I hold the notes in the air, then slide my eyes to the floorboards. There, hovering like a bud between the wood, is a green leaf of money: my first one-hundred-dollar note. Then I hear Mum and Fleur walking upstairs to their rooms. It’s time. I pluck one hundred dollars out of the floor and pocket it before collecting my supplies: a bottle of whiteout from my desk, my torch and my raincoat from the back of the door. Then I slip out of my bedroom in a whisper.
Chapter 6
Mum’s brass urn blooms with odd umbrellas she has collected from op-shops over the years. The urn has always been present in my life, but I have never stopped to take it in until now. I often do this, live with stuff for years but never really notice it. The shabby brollies have let themselves go, all spiky and frayed skirts. I listen for footsteps from upstairs in the corridor, wondering why we never call umbrellas ‘bumbershoots’ like my American friend at my old school. I wind a string of my hair around my finger until the tip turns purple. I need at least sixty baby names; ‘Bumbershoot’ is going to be one of them.
Rhythmic creaking above me indicates Mum and Fleur are still walking around upstairs in their bedrooms. With ninja stealth, I creep into the kitchen. My raincoat swishes loudly. Swooping to the floor in front of the fridge, I run my palms over the cracks in the floorboards to find the biggest one. Next to the counter there is a hole that I can stick one of my fingers down.
‘Perfect,’ I whisper, retrieving the whiteout from my pocket. I jump up and find a funnel in the junk kitchen drawer, then lie back down to jam the funnel into the crack between the floorboards. I carefully pour the whiteout liquid down the funnel until the bottle is empty. This could get me into trouble, but then again, someone has to catch me first. I hide the funnel and the whiteout bottle inside a discarded cereal box in the recycling bin, then check the floorboards. I’ve left no evidence, no trace of my scheme. What a pro!
On the balls of my feet I tread into the living room towards the front door. Dad will be home soon so I’ll have to be quick. I reach out a hand to the doorknob. It takes some force to budge the door ajar. My heart jumps when the hinges cough open, then I slip through and drag the door shut behind me.
I scuttle across the verandah on tiptoes, the planks scoffing at my every movement until I’m down the three stairs to the front yard. Wrapping my raincoat tighter around me, I cast my face down to dodge the rain as I run around to the side of the house where the hatch that leads to the basement lies in the ground, waiting to be opened.
I pull on the circular rusted handle. The hatch doesn’t move. I put the torch in my mouth and try once more, as they say in drama class, ‘with feeling’. Nothing. Then I recognise the footsteps meandering up the path. My father doesn’t walk but strolls; he always tells us it helps him to ‘ruminate’ on life’s every detail. Fleur and I used to laugh at that word, but apparently rumination has nothing in common with urination.
The footsteps wander closer. The footsteps! Panicked, I pull on the handle with all my might. The veins bulge in the back of my hands. Dad will see my red raincoat for sure and I have no cover story. I’ve never lied to my parents. If I get caught running around outside on my own without tellin
g anyone, it will be the second time I get into trouble today. I heave the door and feel the strain in my temples, right up into the roots of my hair, as I pull harder. I fall forward as the hatch cracks open and I disappear down the ladder, before I have time to even think about the furry darkness.
But it’s not dark. I was expecting it to be spooky dark, the kind of dark that disorientates you through layers and you can’t see your own nose, but this time something illuminates the room from the far corner. I tug on the string and the light flickers on. The air is humid. That smell from last night and this morning hits me, a punch in the face — the undeniable stench of money. In the middle of the floor is my puddle of whiteout. The white liquid drips from the ceiling, confirming that this room is beneath the kitchen, but stops at the brick wall before it reaches the area below my room. I inspect the brick wall again. Whatever is under my room must be behind this wall. I press my ear against it and listen hard, as I do whenever Fleur is on the phone to a boy. Silence.
Staring into the far corner where the wardrobe stands, it occurs to me that this is the one place I haven’t explored. Boxes barricade the wardrobe. I wade past a baby’s pram, some luggage and a treadmill all caked with dust. I lift the boxes out of the way, lining all nine of them up against the brick wall, then shimmy the washing machine out a little so I can squeeze behind it. I work quickly, knowing Dad will soon want to ask me for ‘more than a one-word answer’ about my day at school. Then I sense something. I’m not alone. I spin around. My heart fills the room.
‘Hello?’ I call out. Nothing. I move closer to the wardrobe. The sensation intensifies. I take space steps; they’re so slow it’s as if gravity has left this place. I float towards the wardrobe and reach out for the handle. Holding my breath, I pull on the knob with force. Unlike the hatch, the door swings open effortlessly, as if it were expecting me. A shower of light warms my cheeks, the soft glowing gleam you see radiating off Christmas trees and candles. I look into the empty wardrobe, but there’s no bulb of any sort that could be shining the light.
