I Am (Not) the Walrus (5 page)

There, standing right in front of me, is the girl I bumped into yesterday.

6

Thursday

My whole body screams at me to run, but out of the corner of my eye I can still see the ten-year-old kid. I grit my teeth. I refuse to run away from a five-foot-tall girl in the presence of a bespectacled primary-school geek.

“You know what.” I clear my throat. “You are the one who has the nerve,” I say, and I think I'm going to stop right there, but the words just keep coming, and I can't stop them. “You were out of order yesterday. You saw that car try to run me down, and what do you do? You act all like Miss Goody Two-shoes.” I put on a squeaky voice. “Eww. You touched me.”

Her mouth narrows to a slot.

Maybe I went too far with the squeaky voice.

But, no.

She points at my chest with her very sharp-looking pencil. “I did not say any such thing, and anyway, you call that touched? You want to look up the word ‘touched' in a bloody dictionary?”

I shuffle back a couple of paces, out of range of her sharp pencil, and hold my clipboard in front of my chest like a shield.

“Touched is probably in the dictionary under ‘tore.'” She points her pencil up toward the street. “As in tore my arm out of its socket.” She rolls her right shoulder up and down, then winces.

“I did not dislocate your shoulder.” I lower my clipboard but keep it close at hand.

“You know what?” she says. “I was planning on having a nice game of golf this morning. I wasn't planning on spending a sunny day in this stinking cave.” She points her pencil behind her. “Now I can't lift my arm above my shoulder. I've barely got enough movement to draw.”

“Really?” I say.

“Yes. Really,” she says. “I might never be able to draw properly again.”

“Golf?” I say. “You really play golf?”

“You have a problem with that?” She slumps back down to the floor again and crosses her legs.

“No. No problem,” I say. “I didn't realize I hit you that hard.” I put my clipboard behind my back. “I'm really sorry.”

“You already apologized.” She scoots around to face the shark tank, turning her back on me. “I'm not interested in sorry. Sorry doesn't cut it. What's done is done.”

“I'm still sorry, and I really do feel bad about what happened,” I say. I soften my knees and crouch at her level, but not too close. That pencil is still sharp.

“What. You're sorry you dislocated my humerus?” She glances over her shoulder at me. “Or you're sorry you made an arse of yourself.”

“Both. I think. I did make an arse of myself, but I feel really bad about your shoulder.” I lower myself into a sitting position. “Do you think it'll be okay in a day or two?”

“Well, you'd better hope I'm okay for your sake,” she says without looking at me. “Otherwise my dad will sue the arse off you.”

I lean toward her. “Hi. I'm Toby Holland.” I offer her my hand. “You're probably going to need my name if you're going to sue me.”

She studies my hand for a moment, then looks at my face. “Is this some lame attempt at a pick up, because if it is, Buster, you're going to have about as much chance as one of the minnows they're going to toss into that shark tank in about ten minutes.”

This would be the perfect time to walk away, but somehow my legs won't work. Maybe I really did hit myself too hard with the clipboard.

“I'm not trying to pick you up.” I fold my arms. “My name is Toby, not Buster, and I didn't know it was you when I commented about your picture.” I pull my feet in so I'm sitting cross-legged. “If I had known it was you, I still would have come over and said sorry. And I still like your picture.”

I don't know if it's my imagination, but her glare seems to soften for a moment. “Really?” she says. “You really think it's okay?”

“I really do,” I say. “I wish I could draw that well.”

“Nah. It's rubbish.” She uses the pencil to push her hair behind her ear. “To be honest I wasn't drawing, I was mostly erasing, but there's a problem with these pencils.” She waves the pencil in front of my nose. “The erasers wear down quicker than the leads, so if you're like me and you spend equal amounts of time erasing and writing, then a pencil is only useful as long as the eraser lasts, which isn't very long. I think they should make special pencils for people like me. They would be a long eraser on a very short pencil.” She points to the drawing with a stubby finger. “It's supposed to be a female sand tiger shark, but I've got the anal fins totally buggered up.”

“Anal fins?” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “Anal fins. You have a problem with that as well?”

“I thought that was one of the things you were supposed to avoid in polite conversation,” I say. “You know, politics, sex, religion, and anal fins.”

Her mouth gets small.

Oops. I've gone too far again. I was just getting through to her. Me and my big mouth.

“Are you trying to be funny with me?” She scoots around to face me while still cross-legged. “I have an idea,” she says. “Why don't you leave me alone and go and talk to that ten-year-old kid with the big glasses?” she says. “He looks about the right age to find the idea of anal fins humorous.”

“You know what's funny?” I say. “I already tried that. I told him a joke about anal fins, and he sent me over here as he thought you might appreciate it.”

She scowls at me for a long moment, then scoots back around to face the shark tank. She turns a page in her sketchbook and begins a new drawing. Without looking at me she says, “I'm going to ignore you now, but because you were nice about my picture I'm going to let you know that I'm not ignoring you out of some strategy to hide the fact that I like you.” She draws a few lines, says “crap,” then turns to me and says, “I'm actually ignoring you because I don't like you, I have no interest in you, we have nothing in common.”

With that she tears out the page, scrunches it up, and throws it onto the tiles next to her. She turns to the next page, but it already has a drawing on it, which is of a bird. She flips through a couple more pages and then pauses on a page with a drawing of another bird.

A very familiar-looking bird.

“You know what else is funny?” I say, pointing to her book.

“Nothing is funny.” She turns a few more pages until she comes to blank one. “Funny peculiar maybe. Funny-not-funny maybe. But funny ha-ha. Not a chance.”

“Actually it's funny peculiar.” I switch the arrangement of my legs. Sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor is harder than it looks. “Something else strange happened just before I saw you yesterday.”

“Don't mind me,” she says. “I'm just ignoring you.”

“You know that bird you have a drawing of, three pages back,” I say. “The stocky grey and white one, with the stripey chest. I saw one. It flew right past me.”

She stops drawing, freezes, then looks over at me. “Is this the beginning of some kind of joke?”

“No. Straight up. Dead serious.” I switch my legs again. “I saw one of those birds. Or at least something very like it.”

She turns back the pages, until she comes to it. “This one?” she says. “You saw one fly right by you?”

“Yup,” I say. “That's the one.”

“Which means it probably flew right past me,” she says. She folds up the book and stands to face me. “Sunny Jim,” she says, “or Toby, whatever your name is. I don't know what planet you're from, and I don't really care, but that bird is a Peregrine Falcon.” She taps her pencil on the book. “They are incredibly rare, and the last one that lived in this region was shot just after the First World War.” She twirls the pencil around her fingers. “They have not been seen here since. You probably saw a pigeon or a seagull, and maybe it was carrying something that made it look striped.”

“Look,” I say. “I'm not an opthamologist … ”

“Ornithologist,” she says.

“Ornithologist,” I say, “but I know what a pigeon looks like, and I know what a seagull looks like. This bird flew so close to me I could almost touch it. It was the bird in your drawing.”

“Okay.” She spreads her arms. “Take me to where you saw it. Show me the bird, and I will bring my guidebook to the birds of the coastal regions, and I'll prove to you that it was not a Peregrine. We can go now, if you like.”

“Actually I'm on a school field trip,” I say. “I can't go now, and I'm busy this evening as well.”

“Okay, tomorrow,” she says. “Oh, and before you ask, I'm from Brunswick. We haven't started back at school yet. I forgot that you lot have.”

“Saturday at four o'clock,” I say. “In front of the big statue in Memento Park.”

“Four o'clock it is,” she says.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” I straighten my legs, which have gone numb, so I rub them.

“Okay,” she says.

“I know this is a long shot,” I say, as I stand up, “but what would happen if by some freak chance the bird I saw really was a Peregrine Falcon?”

“I don't know.” She hugs her sketchbook to her chest. “I hadn't even thought about that. You could laugh at me.”

I shake my head. “I'm not the laughing type,” I say.

“No.” She leans sideways and scrutinizes me as closely as if I'm one of the exhibits. “You're not, are you.” She frowns, but then something odd happens. Her frown softens. She doesn't exactly smile, but she no longer looks completely hostile. She says, “Maybe I would let you buy me a cup of tea.”

There's an abrupt scrape and clatter as three women in Wellington boots enter the shark room.

She twists around to look at them, then turns back to me. “Hey look,” she says, and just for a moment she actually smiles. She looks right into my eyes and smiles. “They're about to feed the sharks. You want to watch?” Then, as suddenly as she started smiling, she stops and narrows her mouth back to a slot, as if she's been caught doing something she shouldn't.

“No,” I say. “I think it would make me uncomfortable. I'm feeling a little minnow-like just now.”

The girls laugh as one of them pulls down a ladder from beside the tank.

“You should tell me your name,” I say. “Just so when the court summons arrives I'll know who it's from.”

“Michelle,” she says. “Michelle Frost, if you want the whole thing.”

“Michelle?” I say.

“Please,” she says. “If you can find it in your heart to do one thing for me, then please do not sing my name.”

“No. I had no intention of singing to you,” I say. “I just thought—” I spread my arms. “I remember your friend called you Shelly.”

“Shelly. Michelle,” she says. “It's an abbreviation.”

“See you tomorrow at four.” She glances around at the shark girls, then turns back to face me. “Toby.”

“Prepare yourself for a cup of tea on Saturday.” I back away from her toward the entrance, then say. “Michelle.”

7

Thursday

The first thing I do when I get in from school is to try the bass and make sure my soldering worked. I switch on the amp, turn the volume down, and plug it in.

Fantastic.

No crackling.

No popping.

No cutting out.

With that done, I empty my pockets of the day's accumulated crap. As I do, I find the note. I stare at it for a moment, take it out, smooth it on my knee, and read it again. Am I such a bad person? Michelle obviously thinks I am, otherwise why would she have been so rude to me?

Zack is wrong. This isn't a prank or a scam. Not only was Zack wrong, but Frosty was right. I should have shown the note to Zack at some quiet moment. How could anyone look at this note and not hear a genuine pleading voice? So what if the note was written years ago. Julie McGuire, whoever she is, still deserves to get her bass back. I should call her, and I should call her right now, before I have second thoughts.

I'm not even doing this for the reward. Two hundred pounds isn't going to get me another bass as good as this one. On the other hand, maybe I could negotiate for a bigger reward. One that's adjusted for inflation.

One thing is for sure. If I don't ring I will spend the rest of my life wondering what I should have done.

I reread the number as I head downstairs with the note, but Mom is on the phone.

“Sadly, I heard it was going to cloud over for the next few days.” Mom's voice drifts out of the kitchen door.

She is sitting at the table with a big smile and the phone glued to the side of her head. She glances briefly at me as I walk in, then turns her attention back to the pile of envelopes scattered in front of her.

“It's such a shame,” she says into the phone. “I really thought we might get summer early this year.”

An open can of coffee, a scoop, and a pack of filters surround the coffee machine. She must have been interrupted in the middle of making coffee. I'll be the good son. I take the glass container over to the tap and fill it.

“No.” Mom taps a pen on the table. “I know you can't do anything right now, but I really do appreciate your help.”

I take the container back to the machine and put the filter in. It doesn't fit.

“Thank you, Shirley.” Mom doodles a skull and crossbones on one of the envelopes. “You too. Bye, bye.” She hits end, drops the phone onto the table, and blows out a long, ragged breath. “Bloody imbecile.”

“Friend of yours?” I hold up one of the filters. “I think these are the wrong size.”

She turns toward me as if I've just woken her up. “It's an experiment. I'm using the wrong size filters.” She resumes studying the pile of envelopes.

“Does it work?” I say. “I mean, do you get better coffee?”

“Sorry, darling,” she says without looking at me. “It's a joke. They sold me the wrong size yesterday at Preston's.” She pushes the chair back. “Here. I'll do it. They work. They just need to be squashed down.”

“It's okay. I've got it.” I stuff the filter into its holder. “A perfect fit.” I point to the envelopes. “Anything from Shawn?”

She shakes her head. “Nope.” She picks up the envelope with the skull doodle. “I had a nice note from my credit card company, though.”

“Really? I thought they just sent you bills,” I say.

“Not at all. Listen.” She pulls a page out of the envelope
and unfolds it. “Dear Emily Holland.” She grins at me. “That's nice isn't it?”

“I suppose,” I say.

“Dear Emily Holland, it has come to our attention that your account is now a thousand pounds over your credit limit. Please rectify this matter within five days, otherwise we may be forced to initiate a recovery action.” She studies the top of the letter. “Arrived today, dated ten days ago.”

“Can't you call them?” I switch on the coffee machine.

She presses her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, now why didn't I think of that?”

The coffee machine gurgles.

“Sorry.” I pull two cups off the rack above the sink. “Was that who you were just talking to? It sounded like a friend.” I line up the cups in front of the coffee machine. “Is it all sorted out?”

“Not completely,” she says. “I got transferred to half a dozen different departments, only to be told that I had to speak to the twenty-four-hour service department, and they go home at five o'clock.”

“That makes no sense at all.” I get the milk out of the fridge. “Man. I would have given them some choice language.” I pour the coffee and give Mom one of the cups.

“Thanks,” says Mom. “As your granddad used to say,
Always be firm, fair, and friendly
.” She turns the cup handle toward her, lifts the cup, and takes a sip. “So that was my friendly act. You never know. Sometimes if you're nice to people they're nice back to you. Although on the other hand your grandfather also used to say,
no good deed goes unwasted
.”

“How come you're a thousand in the red?” I say.

“It's all my fault.” She bangs the cup down. “I've been splurging like a drunken sailor.” She blows out her cheeks.

“I thought we were broke,” I say. “What did you spend it on?”

“Oh, you know. Rent, food, electricity,” she says. “Frivolous stuff.”

I lean on the counter and take a sip of my coffee. “Couldn't you ask Shawn?”

“I haven't heard from Shawn for a couple of weeks,” she says. “Anyway he helped out with that monstrous electricity bill a couple of months ago. We have to leave him with something for himself. You know, being a sailor he of all people should be allowed to splurge like a drunken one now and again.”

“There has to be another way we can raise some cash,” I say.

“Of course. I could sell my jewels,” says Mom. “I never wear the tiara anymore.”

“You have a tiara?” I say.

“Sorry,” says Mom. “Bad attempt at humor. Listen, how much do you think all of Shawn's music stuff is worth?”

“But you can't sell Shawn's stuff,” I say. “He'd be devastated.”

“Sweetheart,” she says. “When he helped out with the electric bill he actually said if you get into any more money troubles have Toby sell my music stuff. You should be able to get a grand if you're lucky.”

I shake my head. “The bass is the most valuable thing,” I say. “It's worth maybe three-fifty. The amp, maybe two hundred. The keyboard, a hundred. Then there's all of the mics, cables, and stands. That's maybe another hundred. That makes seven-fifty if we get what we ask for.”

“Enjoy it while you can, Tobe,” she says. “If it comes to a choice of living on the streets and selling Shawn's equipment, then I'm afraid the equipment will have to go.”

“But Mom,” I say. “We have a gig on Monday at the old Jubilee Cinema. It could be the first of many.”

“Keep your hair on, Tobe,” she says. “Hopefully it won't come to that.” She pats my shoulder.

“I thought you could come,” I say. “I could put you on the guest list, and you wouldn't have to pay to go in.”

“I'll have to see if I can get the time off,” she says. “I have a lot of applications for real jobs out there. One of them is bound to work out, and I only need one.”

“We shouldn't have come here,” I say. “I mean, to Port Jackson. It was probably a mistake, wasn't it?”

“I don't know,” says Mom. “It seemed like the right thing at the time. How would you feel if we went back to London?”

“Could we wait a couple of months?” I say.

“Why don't we give it till school ends for the summer,” she says. “That's a month. If I can't get a job that actually pays enough to live on within the next month, then I think it's a fair enough that we go back.”

“Will it be easier in London?” I say.

“There's a job waiting for me whenever I want it back,” says Mom. “Listen, I'm going to watch the news. You go and finish your homework.”