Maxi and the Magical Money Tree

by Tiffiny Hall

  Kids paw over each other to select either the blue or pink package. I found blue and pink plastic bubbles in a gift store at the mall to house the presents — they float easier on the drone than bags. Kids race up to me and thank me for their goodies.

  ‘What’s tomorrow? Tell us!’ they beg.

  I recline on the bench with my hands behind my head and shrug. ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ I say.

  ‘Maxi rules the skies,’ they sing. Actually they don’t, I imagined that last part. But still. That’s what they would be thinking. All this attention, my many friend requests on social media, my many birthday invites in real life, none of this could be possible without my magnificent tree.

  I close my eyes in the sun and enjoy the rays warming my eyelids. Life couldn’t be any sweeter; I’m more sugared out than my effort at Candy Sphere in the mall. I’m rich, popular, a successful lizard breeder and the Stacey Shovelton wants me to attend her party. Thank you, clouds and whatever magic sits upon you or above you or beams all around you, for helping me to choose my room and discover the magical money tree. Maybe I’ll go to Stacey’s fancy dress party as some sort of tree to honour my luck: a sparkling Christmas tree, a plastic tree car air-freshener, a palm tree or a grand oak tree. A private joke, one she’ll never get.

  After school I wait at the gate with all the Perfs. They hate me standing there because I’m not in their group, but today it’s important they witness me leave.

  ‘Maxi, you’ve really maxed out those pants, haven’t you?’ Stacey laughs, pointing at my shorts. When I ignore her, she asks crossly, ‘Do you have to stand here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. The drone is safe in my bag and I already have an idea for the next drop: baby satchels of popcorn and fairy floss. I’ve ordered it online.

  Stacey glares at me with her glossy blue eyes, then puts on her large oval sunglasses and dismisses me with a hand. Suddenly her BFF Josie wallops her on the hip and they both whip around to stare at the boy leaning against a golf cart shaped like a blood-red Ferrari sports car. The cart has two cream leather seats with my initials embroidered on their backs, headlights and a tiny popup boot. Amazing what the internet will help you to buy these days. I wanted a real Ferrari, but who would drive it? This way we can store it at Nanna’s in her shed. She’ll never know as she can’t walk out the back these days; it’s too far for her now that she’s so frail. The cart flashes in the sun.

  Now to the boy. Let’s break it down. To. Die. For! He has chestnut hair and almond eyes, with an easygoing smile radiating over a very athletic physique. He looks preppy, wearing chinos, a sky-blue polo and Vans, showing just the right amount of cool ankle. When he calls out my name, I hear a huge intake of breath beside me.

  ‘My ride,’ I say to Stacey. ‘My boyfriend just bought me a new golf cart.’

  I can see Stacey’s tonsils shining as her jaw drops to her blouse. For the first time she’s speechless. I know what she’s thinking. He. Looks. Like. A. Model. And she’s right, because he is.

  I walk over to Damian and he kisses me on the cheek. When I’m old and grey, I’ll still remember how thrilling that was.

  ‘Help me into the cart, put an arm around me and wave to those snobs. I’ll pay you when we get to Nanna’s house,’ I whisper.

  Damian does as he’s told. I hear a squeal from the gate. I don’t think Stacey’s gaggle of girlfriends is used to seeing boys this good-looking in real life. When I glance over to them, they are twirling their hair and giggling. But like a true professional, Damian doesn’t lose eye contact with me once, except to wave at them when instructed just before we take off in the golf cart.

  ‘Go faster!’ I squeal. Nanna lives five minutes away. It’s not far to drive.

  Damian is hesitant. ‘You know this is only a golf cart and not a real Ferrari,’ he reminds me.

  ‘Still cost a fortune. Step on it!’ I command.

  He applies pressure on the accelerator; the cart judders under the speed. Damian was not cheap. His model agency was reluctant about the whole ‘picking up from school’ scenario, but I offered them money they couldn’t refuse.

  I feel elated after a successful day at school. Stacey hates me, finally for the right reasons! I’m popular with a hot boyfriend and I’m loaded. The kids look up to me and I can have whatever I want. Be whoever I want. Socrates (the lizard) was right — why not lighten up? As long as I have money, I’m in control. No more hand-me-downs or clothes three sizes too big to grow into.

  ‘Let’s go to the golf course first and show off this baby,’ I say. There are quite a few golf courses in Hatbridge. You’d think no one works. It’s the kind of suburb where people retire early and every day can be golf day.

  ‘I said faster, Damian. Speed up!’

  He indicates calmly and drives into the nearby entrance of the golf course. We slide past trees, elegant lampposts and the club house, then take the path leading down to the manicured golf course.

  ‘On the grass,’ I command. ‘Faster!’

  Damian swerves the cart onto the grass and we travel over the hilly inclines, up and down the rolling green, the world rising and lowering with us. No one is around to flash the cart to. I’m disappointed.

  ‘Faster! C’mon, man!’ I yell at Damian.

  He ignores me as we climb a hill. So when we reach the peak, I slam my leopard-print sneaker over his right foot. Our feet hit the accelerator, the cart swerves and loses control. We take off down the hill. Damian yells. My own scream is trapped in my throat like I’m dreaming. Everything falls into slow motion as I watch Damian tumble from the cart, and as I fly through the air, I think, ‘I’m flyin—’ then blackness.

  Someone clicks their fingers. I blink awake. I’m in a white room. Dad’s there. Mum too. Fleur. Damian is gone.

  ‘You’ve had an accident,’ the doctor says. Hands on my forehead, supportive loving warm hands.

  I begin to panic. Fleur is giving me the eyes. I think they’re saying ‘trust me’, or ‘play along’, or ‘you’ve gone crazy’. I can’t read her!

  ‘It was that boy’s fault, I told you. He offered Maxi a ride home and he was speeding,’ Fleur says.

  Mum and Dad are more concerned than angry.

  ‘Are you sure she hasn’t broken anything?’ my mother asks the doctor.

  ‘Quite sure, but the boy has a bruised rib,’ the doctor says. ‘They were lucky to strike sand, not bitumen. Thank goodness they were being reckless in a golf cart and not a car.’

  Dad purses his lips. ‘Where is that boy?’ he asks.

  ‘He went home with his parents,’ Fleur says, saving me. ‘He’s really sorry. It’s bad enough his father’s golf cart is wrecked. I’m sure he’ll be in enough trouble.’ She leans in to me and hisses, ‘I’m glad you’re okay, little sis. I paid Damian and gave him a bonus.’

  Good one. He’ll never want to be my real boyfriend when I grow up. Not after I nearly killed him.

  ‘Tyler is at home, babysitting the lizards. He’s worried,’ Mum says.

  ‘We all are,’ Dad adds.

  ‘Max, you haven’t been yourself lately.’ Mum moves in. ‘Is everything okay at school? Kids are ringing the house. They’re asking about Drop Zone. What’s that? Some new kind of playground game?’

  I nod, suddenly feeling all the money well up inside me. I nearly killed Damian and myself by being reckless. I’m buying friends, lying to my parents, I’m in trouble so deep I’m drowning, and what’s pulling me under is a big sack of money.

  Chapter 19

  ‘Snack’s ready,’ Fleur says, finding me a couple of hours later crouched under the money tree with a bandage on my head and a few bruises. ‘I reheated spag bol. Mum and Dad have that teacher dinner thingy tonight. They’ve really hit it off with Mrs Halfbottom, which is good for you.’

  I’m staring up into the unfurling wishing well, wanting for the first time to have never found the tree.

  ‘Hey, Maxi, you okay?’ Fleur asks.

  The money is ou
t of control, overflowing, piled up to my knees in places. Ripe buds sparkle with gold coin seeds. The coloured leaves bloom against the ceiling. What were once welcomed flowers have become weeds between my floorboards. I can’t keep up with all this money gardening. Our new stuff is spread out everywhere in a mess of unopened and half-opened abandoned clutter. And yet none of it feels as special as the handmade card and small gift you receive in the Edwards house on your birthday, where the thought counts more than the price tag.

  Fleur walks over to the black garbage bags. ‘What’s all this?’ she asks.

  ‘Money for charity. There’s more money than we can handle or hide. You have to help me drop it into the charity bins tonight,’ I say.

  ‘Can we afford that?’ she retorts. ‘What if the tree suddenly dies and we have nothing left? We should be stockpiling, not giving money away.’

  ‘Are you joking? You’ll bribe kids to do your homework, but you’re concerned about giving money to charity? It’s what Mum would do if she had the tree.’

  ‘So what about the homework?’ Fleur is flustered; I know so because she drops her voice to a murmur. Her voice has been increasing in volume and confidence over the past few weeks.

  ‘I saw you slip a kid some money in exchange for a folder before class the other day,’ I say, scooping more money into a garbage bag. ‘That’s wrong.’

  ‘And buying a Ferrari golf cart, hiring a model to pick you up from school, going for a joy ride and crashing is so right!’ she says a little more audibly, throwing her arms wide in a Disney princess twirl, encompassing the tree and all our money and things.

  She’s got me there.

  Fleur runs over to a beautiful black designer coat with ruby satin lining she bought last week. She puts it on. Then she dresses herself in at least ten or twenty of the necklaces strewn over the standing jewellery box — yes, standing. It’s as big as a mini chest of drawers with necklace cabinets either side. She spins again. ‘I quit my job at the juice bar,’ she sings. ‘I’ll never have to work again!’

  ‘You did what?’ I say.

  ‘I quit, quit, quit! I told them they could go choke on their green smoothies. Honestly, what kind of a person can stomach kale? It’s too fluffy to be a vegetable. I don’t trust anyone drinking kale before 9am on a Sunday. Maxi, going to work was too much trouble.’

  ‘But what will Mum and Dad say? They’ll be suss if you quit and still have extra cash on you. They go on about the importance of honest hard work all the time.’

  ‘All this gardening is hard work,’ Fleur says, smiling.

  ‘Honest work,’ I say.

  Fleur’s eyebrows high-five her hairline. We both stare up at the money tree. It twinkles back at us in a mental handshake. All three of us agree that what is happening here is absolutely unquestionably the very opposite of honest.

  ‘I’ll still contribute. I’ll just prune the tree every week instead of chopping celery,’ Fleur says and shrugs.

  ‘This feels like stealing,’ I whisper.

  ‘From who?’ she asks. ‘As far as we know, the last family fled, leaving Barker all for us.’

  ‘Barker?’

  ‘Named him Barker the tree. Cos his bark shimmers. We have a good time, Barker and me. I pluck some money and Barker gives me more. Using first names makes all this a lot more personal, don’t you think?’ she says.

  Before the tree, I worried about money. I didn’t know where the lizards’ next meal of crickets was coming from. I was about to take the local paper round. Fleur and I were never rich, not even close to comfortable, but at least we weren’t lying, smuggling stuff in, bribing people. Did Barker plant an evil seed within me, forcing me to do bad things, which has now grown into a wild deadly plant I can no longer control, like the Devil’s Cucumber that breeds in thick nests at Nanna’s house?

  ‘Stop stressing,’ my big sister says. ‘There’s nothing to stress about with so much guaranteed money.’

  ‘You left the hatch open and nearly gave us away!’

  ‘Did I?’ Fleur thinks for a moment, then forgets the question as she is distracted by a pile of parcels she ordered online and hasn’t yet unwrapped. I watch her rummage through them with a greedy hunger. I’m no better. I bought heaps of stuff.

  A little voice inside my head, which feels like it’s rising from that seed in my gut, begins to chant:

  First we grew love.

  Then we grew money.

  Now we grow lies.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I say. ‘I’m going out to get my clutch some fresh mealworms.’

  We grow lies, I think. Poisonous lies.

  Chapter 20

  Normally when I arrive home, it’s silent with nothing going on, in the boring way of watching dust settle in daylight or waiting for nail polish to dry, but the day after my accident, the house feels unusually full and alive.

  ‘Hey, chief.’ Dad meets me at the front door. He only calls me that when I’m in trouble. ‘Can we have a word?’

  I figure he must have heard about Stacey being mean and we’re going to have a family therapy session about bullying, like we used to when I was at my old school. I’d be told to be the bigger girl (not literally) and ignore them. Fun times.

  I follow him into the kitchen where Mum is hugging a cup of tea and there is an uncomfortable breath whilst we all take in the kitchen table. A bunch of my things is spread out, neatly arranged in little piles, including a new pair of trainers, an empty PlayStation game case, receipts for lizard stuff I bought, my iPad and my diary. In the middle of the piles of things is a wad of notes, perhaps a thousand dollars.

  This is way worse than an anti-bullying talk.

  ‘You took my diary! Did you read it?’ I shriek, focusing on the little blue notebook that houses all my secrets.

  Mum and Dad sigh in unison. ‘No, we did not read your diary,’ Mum says, looking at Dad through the bumpy awkwardness. If they did read my diary, they’d probably mistake the events for some wild fantasy. How could you believe anything that has happened these past few weeks?

  Fleur walks in, takes one look at the money and drops her hairbrush. Our parents turn to her. Her cheeks flush. I glare at her. The red lie is giving us away!

  ‘You raided my room!’ I squeak. They stop looking at Fleur and turn back to me.

  ‘I was changing your bed and found this stuff under it,’ Mum says.

  I try to catch my breath. ‘I … this is … I can’t believe you invaded my privacy!’

  ‘Please calm down,’ Dad says. ‘We’re not going to interrogate you. All we need to know is how did you end up with all these things? The iPad, the new shoes, the money, all the new lizard stuff?’

  I clear my throat. Don’t overdo it, I remind myself. I steady my hands on the kitchen table. I’m still a little woozy after my concussion yesterday. I place a palm on my head and moan, ‘Oooh.’ No one buys it.

  ‘Okay, the money?’ I say. ‘Well, I was in charge of the class fundraiser. You know, sell-chocolate-frogs-and-raise-money kinda deal. All the kids sold the frogs and I was designated the class financial controller so all the money came to me. It’s my responsibility to count it and deliver it to Amnesty International. Some of the money was already taken by the teacher to make up a hamper for the less fortunate.’

  Mum smiles, the way she does when she’s proud of me, and that hurts. If only she knew I was lying — it would kill her.

  Dad squints at me with a thinking face. ‘The teacher gave all this money to an eleven-year-old for safekeeping?’ he asks.

  ‘No, kids gave me the money. No one expected the frogs would go off. But they did,’ I say. ‘Parents around here bought entire boxes.’

  ‘And the new shoes, iPad?’ he presses. I look at the diary. ‘Don’t worry, we didn’t read your diary. We trust you. But we need to know the truth.’

  The word ‘truth’ echoes around us and triggers something in me that makes my eyes water. Tears follow and with the help of some horrible thoughts about dead
kittens and losing Barker, soon I’m crying.

  Mum wraps her arms around me. ‘There, there,’ she soothes. ‘We didn’t read it, I promise.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that,’ I say through a froth of tears and snot. ‘The hamper for the disadvantaged, the hamper we raised money for …’

  Dad’s eyes narrow. ‘Yes?’ he says and I detect a hint of anger in his voice.

  ‘No, I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ I say.

  Dad widens his eyes and takes a seat at the kitchen table. He picks up the iPad and stares at the screen. Mum steps away from me to give me space to compose myself.

  I smile through the tears that I hope will drown this lie. I can’t stop myself. The lie is perfect.

  ‘The hamper came to us, Mum. The most disadvantaged kids at Hatbridge College. Us,’ I say. As soon as the words fly out of my mouth, I feel them spear my parents’ hearts.

  ‘The school gave you the new shoes and iPad?’ Mum asks.

  I nod. ‘All this stuff was in the hamper.’

  ‘I’ll give this to Mrs Halfbottom,’ Dad says, swiping the money off the table.

  ‘No!’ I scream. ‘It’s my responsibility. The kids voted for me to do it, like I was the most popular, a class captain sort of.’

  Mum and Dad perk up at the ‘captain’ title. They like to think of their girl as popular. My parents’ version of my life is pretty funny. They think I choose to be very selective with my friends … selective down to one.

  Dad hesitates and I can feel him fighting with his responsibility as a parent, but my responsibility as class captain wins.

  ‘I’ll take care of this until you have to hand it over. We’ll keep it in my special place. Not under your bed,’ he says and I know in a minute he will show me his book safe. I can already feel the aching shame that will hit me when I see that his book safe is unable to house as much money as is growing on the tip of a single branch of my money tree downstairs.