‘Bulldust you were looking for money,’ said Mandy, her voice no longer so calm, so reasonable.
‘Is Dr Chakrabarty still there?’ asked Thor.
‘Yes,’ I said, wondering how the hell he knew about Dr Chakrabarty, the crusty old Classics teacher.
‘He must be at least a thousand years old by now,’ he said, and then I got it: Thor had gone to Grammar. Thor was an Old Boy!
‘At least,’ I said.
‘You rang yesterday, didn’t you?’ said Mandy, moving her wheelchair closer.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘More bulldust,’ she said, grabbing my iPhone.
After a couple of seconds she held up the iPhone to Thor. ‘See, he’s lying, here’s our number.’
Thor now had ClamTop and was turning it around in his hands.
‘What the hell’s this?’ he said.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Mandy. ‘Who sent you?’
Too many questions; my head was starting to spin.
‘Rough him up a bit,’ said Mandy to Alpha. ‘He’ll talk then.’
Alpha moved closer, drew his hand back – a huge hand that turned into a huge fist.
I cowered in the seat, covering my face with my arms.
‘I really don’t think that’s the way we do things,’ I heard Thor say.
‘Whack him!’ said Mandy.
‘He’s a Grammar boy, not some street kid nobody cares about,’ said Thor. ‘You touch him and there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘He’s right,’ I said, looking through a crack in my fingers. ‘Hell to pay.’
Alpha’s fist morphed back into a hand and dropped to his side.
‘Bulldust,’ said Mandy, and she ran over both my feet, my delicate runner’s feet, with her wheelchair.
Small bones crunched and I screamed, ‘You freak!’
‘Why, because I’m handi-capable?’ said Mandy.
‘No, because you ran over my feet, you freak!’
She went to run over them again, but I pulled my feet up.
‘Okay,’ said Thor, putting ClamTop back into my bag. ‘You get out of here now.’
‘But –’ started Mandy, before Alpha cut her off.
‘Thor’s right, we have to let him go.’
Which is what they did, but not before Mandy had removed all the money from my wallet.
‘But that’s stealing,’ I said.
‘And you, Grammar Boy, were trespassing.’
Outside, I hoisted my bag onto my shoulders and started walking. Not very well, because both feet were still throbbing with pain.
I wondered if Mandy had done them any permanent damage.
The door to Coast Home Loans opened and four men, all in suits, walked out towards me. They were deep in conversation, intent only on each other, and didn’t notice me.
The man on the far left I knew pretty well: he was Rocco Taverniti. The man next to him I only knew from the news: he was Ron Gatto, our local state member, the one who had been elected after Imogen’s father disappeared. The man next to Ron I didn’t recognise but he was silver-haired, smooth-looking, older than the others. The man on the end I knew really well: he was my father.
‘Dad!’ I was about to say, but I quickly realised that probably wasn’t the greatest idea, seeing as I was supposed to be at school, so I turned my back on them, pretending to be vitally interested in a brick wall.
Rocco Taverniti said something in a language I now knew to be Calabrian.
Why are you talking to my dad in Calabrian? I wondered, remembering Dad’s words from the other night: ‘I don’t speakka the wog.’
But then Dad answered him in Calabrian. Surely I must be hearing things, I thought, looking up from the brick wall. But I wasn’t. My father, his back to me now, was speaking fluent Calabrian.
The four men disappeared around the corner, and I had this urgent, almost overwhelming feeling that I needed to get out of this town. There was something not right about Nimbin, it was like a malevolent Wonderland, where hippies wanted to punch your lights out and your own father spoke in a strange tongue.
But how was I going to get home without any money?
I couldn’t hitchhike. Not with the possibility that Dad would drive past. Not with the station wagon still out there.
I found the card in my wallet, dialled the number. He answered. ‘Luiz Antonio.’
‘Hi, it’s Dom here. Look, I was wondering if you could pick me up again?’
‘That’s what us taxi drivers tend to do,’ he said.
Yes, yes, very humorous, Luiz Antonio.
‘From where?’ he asked.
‘From Nimbin, just outside the post office.’
A low whistle from the other end, followed by, ‘You sure do get around, don’t you?’
‘Look, can you pick me up or not?’ I said.
‘I’ll see you in ten minutes.’
I was so happy to see Luiz Antonio’s taxi, so glad to slide into the front seat, to be leaving Nimbin, that I didn’t think about the ten minutes.
And all the way home I thought about other stuff.
Like Dad. How he was suddenly a stranger to me. The dad I knew, the dad I loved and who loved me, the dad I had known for my entire life only spoke one language: English. So who was this other Calabrian-speaking dad?
I thought about the Fiends of the Earth. If they were successful, then the lights might very well go out at 20.00 hours. They probably wouldn’t come back on at 21.00 hours, though. Not with a tower down. That would take hours, even days, to fix.
I thought about how it wasn’t just a matter of me putting my plan into action first, either. Because their reckless zealot of a plan was always going to gazump mine. I had to sabotage their plan before it sabotaged mine. But how? If I’d been a proper terrorist, with a mandate from my god, then I could’ve taken the three of them out. If I’d been James Bond with a licence to kill, then I could’ve done the same. But I wasn’t. In fact, the idea of having to take anybody out, even somebody as obnoxious as Mandy, made me feel a bit queasy. And the idea of returning to Nimbin made me feel even queasier.
But as we passed a shopping centre, I had a thought.
‘Do you mind pulling in there?’ I asked Luiz.
‘You’re the customer,’ he said.
Once inside the centre I did some quick googling on my iPhone, mentally adding several more entries to my list.
None of these would be difficult to find, but I knew from what other people had written on the net that it wasn’t a good idea to try and buy them all in one place.
So I traipsed from shop to shop, until I’d acquired all the IED ingredients I needed, and then went back outside to where Luiz was waiting.
It was only much later, when I was in bed, that it occurred to me: what had Luiz Antonio been doing only ten minutes from the Nimbin Post Office?
The logical explanation was that he’d had a fare nearby, but how likely was that?
And what about when he picked me up from the Brisbane River?
He’d been following me.
But why?
And how?
SATURDAY
DELIVERY BOY
Saturday, two hours before Earth Hour, and it couldn’t have worked out better. In the morning Mom and Dad took their flight to Bali, for the renewal-of-the-renewal ceremony. They’d be back on Tuesday, in time for my race on Wednesday. In the meantime, Gus was looking after us.
As far as coaches went, Gus was a disciplinarian. As far as parental figures went, Gus was not. Which meant that Miranda and a whole lot of her nerd friends were up in her room drinking and listening to nerd music really loudly. Which meant that Toby was watching Jamie Oliver Uncut while systematically eating his way through the pantry. Which meant that when I told Gus I was going out he had two responses.
The first one was the non-disciplinarian grandfather’s. ‘Okay, then.’
The second one was the disciplinarian coach’s. ‘Don’t come back t
oo late.’
In my bedroom, I took one last look at Google Earth. I was just about to put ClamTop in my backpack when I stopped. Without ClamTop, without its awesome hacker power, my plan was rubbish, so I decided to make sure, for one last time, that it was working properly. I opened it.
Immediately it went into wi-fi mode, displaying the local networks.
SILVAGNINET, HAVILLAND: they were all there.
Perfect.
But instead of closing ClamTop and packing it away, I kept staring at HAVILLAND, imagining Imogen sitting at her desk, hair cascading over her face, typing away at her computer.
I hacked into the network. Opened SYLVIA, Imogen’s computer, and cloned her desktop. This is crazy, I told myself. Earth Hour is less than two hours away and you’re snooping around somebody’s computer. But I couldn’t help myself. I went to Windows Mail. Went to ‘Inbox’. Scanned the messages.
[email protected]. guns&sixpack@ hotmail.com. And more [email protected]!
I opened the latest message, sent an hour ago.
c u there when its dark!
My immediate thought was that I couldn’t turn off the lights now, not if it meant that I would provide the darkness for Tristan and Imogen to get together. But I soon realised that was crazy.
I picked up my phone, tapped on Imogen’s number.
‘Don’t,’ I was going to tell her.
Don’t meet with Tristan. He doesn’t really love you. He only wants one thing, and one thing only. Don’t go. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t!
But as soon as I heard Imogen’s voice, as soon as she answered with, ‘Dom!’ I knew I couldn’t say it, because then for sure she’d know that I’d hacked into her computer.
‘How did your petition go?’ I said instead.
‘They didn’t even get back to me,’ she said. ‘Fascists.’
I wanted to tell her that I was going to personally turn off the lights. And that it was me, not Tristan, who would do this for her.
But, again, I couldn’t.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘The lights will go off.’
Adopting an English accent, she said, ‘Is that you again, Harry Potter?’
‘No, listen to me. The lights will go off. I promise you that.’
‘Okay, you’re weird again.’
‘And Im?’
‘Yes, Dom?’
Don’t go near Tristan, I didn’t say.
‘I really like you, you know?’
‘And I really like you,’ she said, ‘even though you’ve gone all weird on me.’
‘Actually, I probably love you,’ I said, except I hung up before I’d finished the sentence.
I put ClamTop in my backpack, made sure I had money in my wallet and called a cab.
‘Will that be cash or charge?’ the operator asked.
‘Charge,’ I replied, giving her Dad’s account name.
As soon as I’d done it, I realised how stupid it was – I’d just created a paper trail. And I’d seen enough TV cop shows to know not to leave clues like this.
I got the taxi to drop me off at the cinema and from there I walked back to Big Pete’s Pizzas. I didn’t go in, though. From the other side of the street I watched.
Watched the delivery boys, already wearing helmets, as they came out of Big Pete’s Pizzas, carrying pizza boxes. Watched them load the boxes onto the backs of scooters. Watched them take off. Watched other scooters arriving. Watched as pizza delivery boys got off, not bothering to remove the keys. Watched as they hurried inside, still wearing their helmets.
I checked the time: it was almost seven. Time to stop watching. Time to start doing.
Moving further back into the shadows, I took off my jumper and tracksuit pants and stuffed them into my backpack under ClamTop.
Underneath I was wearing the blue and yellow of Big Pete’s Pizzas.
I put on the motorbike helmet. Now I was sure I looked like any other Big Pete’s Pizzas delivery boy, except for one thing: my size. Yes, I was a fairly big fifteen year old, but a fairly big fifteen year old does not an eighteen year old make. There wasn’t much I could do about that, however.
I put the backpack on and crossed the street. It would’ve been easy just to get on a scooter and take off. But there was one thing missing: a pizza. And if you’re going to impersonate a pizza delivery boy you better have some product to deliver.
I followed another boy inside. There was a row of seats, the first three of which were occupied by delivery boys. The boy I followed took the next available seat, and I took the one after.
‘Halcyon Grove delivery,’ came a voice over the loudspeaker.
The boy in the first seat groaned.
‘No tips, for sure,’ said the second boy. ‘Anybody want this?’
‘No way,’ said the third boy.
‘Not me,’ said the fourth boy.
‘I’ve got it,’ I said, attempting to drop my voice a couple of octaves.
‘It’s all yours, Squeaky,’ said the first boy.
I got up and walked into the next room, to where two pizza boxes were sitting on the counter. I grabbed them, turned and started walking out when a voice said, ‘Hey, you!’
I looked around.
The voice belonged to Bryce Snell. This kid who used to go to my primary school. This bully who used to go to my primary school. One of the reasons I started running in the first place was to get away from Bryce Snell and his Chinese burns.
‘Yes?’ I said.
I was sure I’d been found out, my plan destroyed before it even had a chance to get going.
‘You’ve forgotten the docket, dingbat.’
I took the docket from Bryce Snell and got out of there.
I loaded the pizza boxes onto the nearest scooter and hopped on.
I turned the ignition key – the motor started. I twisted the throttle.
The scooter moved off, this time with no wobble.
Again, it felt pretty weird to be fifteen years old and driving a scooter on the main road, in the middle of traffic. But I have to admit, it felt cool too. Criminal cool.
I drove through Surfers Paradise, through the blaze of lights. I checked my watch. An hour and fifteen minutes until Earth Hour. The car behind me beeped its horn.
Rack off, I thought.
Another beep. I looked around. It was a police car. I didn’t feel so criminal cool now. The policewoman behind the wheel was making an opening and closing gesture with her hand.
What did she mean?
I considered a getaway, a high-speed chase through the city. But when I played that scenario out in my head, it ended with a crash, a broken scooter, a mangled kid and some very messy pizza.
Again, I looked around. The same gesture, hand opening and closing. But this time I got it: it was a blinking gesture. I’d forgotten to turn my lights on!
I switched them on. The policewoman smiled at me and I gave her a thumbs-up.
At the next lights I turned left off the main road, following the route I’d memorised from Google Earth. From here I took back roads, quiet residential streets, until I reached the entry ramp to the freeway. I hesitated – it looked way scary out there.
But I had no choice; there wasn’t really any other way to get to Diablo Bay.
I rolled down the entry ramp, onto the freeway and into the hell that was Saturday traffic.
Engines and exhausts, hissing air brakes, honking horns, all competing to make the most horrendous noise, a sort of Freeway Idol. And the air was toxic with fumes, like a chem lab gone feral.
Terrified, I kept to the edge of the road, following the white line. The cars, the trucks, the buses ripped past, not bothering to change lanes, and I was buffeted this way and that by their slipstreams.
For some reason I thought of another of Coach Sheeds’s quotes, this one from the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi. ‘Mind is everything. Muscle – pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind.’
Okay, I said to myself, you might be
only a fifteen-year-old kid on an 80 cc pizza delivery scooter, but you need to think like a truck.
You’re a Mack, a Kenworth, I said as, big wheels rolling, I moved further out onto the road.
It worked: the other vehicles shifted into the adjacent lane to pass now.
Diablo Bay Exit 2 km, said the sign ahead.
A beat-up car was now alongside me. The window wound down, revealing the Red Bull Ranga.
No, it can’t be. It’s too much of a coincidence. But it was him, alright. With his hideously chubby cheeks, and his hideously freckly freckles, and his hideously red hair.
‘Is that the Supreme with extra anchovies we ordered?’ he said.
I nodded, happy to go along with his excellent joke.
Diablo Bay Exit 1 km, said the sign ahead.
‘You want some Coke to go with that?’ he said.
I didn’t get it – as a representative of a pizza retail organisation it was my role to inquire as to my customer’s beverage requirements.
The Ranga’s arm, clutching a Coke bottle, extended out of the window. The bottle tilted, the liquid flying out.
Now I got it.
Coke sloshed over me. Into my helmet. Into my eyes.
I couldn’t see.
I took my hand off the throttle to wipe the Coke out of my eyes. The scooter slowed.
From behind, the honk of a horn.
A truck was bearing down on me.
Hand back on the throttle, I twisted it hard.
The scooter surged, the honk stopped.
I could see again, but the Diablo Bay exit was behind me now.
I pulled onto the verge to consider my options.
The truck thundered past.
I could’ve taken the next exit, done a loop, but I didn’t have a clue how far that was, how long it would take.
I didn’t see that I had a choice, really. I bumped the scooter around until it was directly facing the traffic. And I took off, staying on the verge, keeping as far as possible to the right.
No longer was I a Mack, a Kenworth; no, I was a tiny little kid on a tiny little scooter.
The cars that were coming at me, with their lights and their grills, looked like predators, like huge metal sharks.
And I couldn’t help thinking that any second I was going to hear the sound of a police siren. Or that a helicopter would suddenly appear overhead, rotors carving the air, just like in the movies.
Turn off the Lights Page 12
