The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (21 page)

“It must make you pretty angry though,” her dad persisted. “Being back here. Would it help if I promise I'm going to get us out as soon as I can? We'll find a place to rent for a while. Who needs a mortgage anyway?”

He was collecting pebbles and bark now, choosing eyes and a mouth, maybe thinking that if he got attractive features ready, the snowman would be grateful and appear. Watching her father frown in concentration, Listen felt so sad for him. His mouth trembled a little whenever he said Marbie's name these days, but each time he quickly smoothed out his face into a smile.

And he was so clueless about Listen herself. He had actually thought
that the guys at Tae Kwon Do were “hitting on her.” In fact, they were just talking to each other while she stood nearby. It was true that Carl Vandenberg had spoken to her. He had asked her for the time. She'd held out her wrist to show him her watch. Then her dad had arrived, and that was that.

“Doesn't make me angry,” Listen said. “But you could try to make up with Marbie, couldn't you? I mean, if the fight was over nothing? You could phone her up?”

“I guess there's one good thing,” her dad said, as if he hadn't heard her. “No more meetings at the Zings on Friday nights. You get to go out with your friends instead of sitting with Cassie. Hang on, I think that's the phone.”

He opened the back door of the Banana Bar, stamped his feet on the mat, and went inside to answer the phone.

“Nathaniel, she doesn't dance anymore.”

“Marbie?”

“Yeah. It's me. I have to—”

“Marbie, you can't keep phoning me, okay? I'm sorry but you can't.”

“Okay, but I have to tell you something. Listen doesn't dance anymore. I woke up and remembered she was dancing on Friday afternoon, the day I—the day before you moved out. Remember she was dancing in the kitchen when she got home from Tae Kwon Do?”

“So she does dance. What's your point?”

“But that's the first time I've seen her dancing in weeks. She'd stopped dancing completely, Nathaniel, then the first day of the school holidays she started again. I think it's a problem at school. I think there's something wrong at school.”

“She's fine, Marbie. School is fine. She'd tell me if it wasn't. And if
she's stopped dancing, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it was a nervous habit? I really need you not to call. I'm hanging up now, okay?”

While her dad was on the phone, Listen gave up on the snowman and went back to the campervan to get warm. She almost slid on the aluminum step up to the doorway, and remembered the welcome mat with the picture of a curled up cat at Grandma and Grandpa Zings.

Suddenly she knew what the Secret was.

It was nothing to do with espionage and undercover agent work.

It was the Secret to family life.

The Zings spent Friday nights exchanging recipes and making shopping lists. No. The garden shed was a replica of an average suburban house, and Friday nights were spent redecorating: reupholstering furniture and pasting friezes around the walls.
No.
On Friday nights, they leaned their heads together and discussed the ingredients of love and happiness: how to stay together and keep children entertained. (That's why Cassie was always making jewelery from pink beads.)

Actually, it was more than that.

The Zings were the Keepers of the Family. Friday nights, they painted the stars that children see through bedroom curtains. They curled the smoke from chimneys; they slipped into homes and put dollhouses in corners, cushions on windowseats, place mats on tables, potted plants and lemon-thyme soap in guest bathrooms.

Now that she was back in the campervan, the Zing family were no longer her Keepers.

On the first Friday of the holidays, Fancy visited her parents for morning tea.

“Marbie's still asleep,” explained Fancy's mother, sitting down and taking the teabag out of her cup. “And your dad's in the shed. He's taking it hard, this breakup of Marbie's—you know how fond he was of Nathaniel and Listen—and really, I wonder what Marbie thinks she—”

At that moment, Marbie walked into the kitchen, wearing slippers and her mother's pink dressing gown.

“Hello,” said Marbie, seeing her sister. “Did you bring Cassie?”

Fancy raised her chin toward the kitchen window, and Marbie turned around. In the back garden, Cassie and her friend Lucinda were stamping around in the mud.

“Oh,” said Marbie vaguely. “I felt like talking to her.”

“Never mind, darling. Have some ginger cake with us. It's still warm!”

“Why aren't you at work, anyway?” Fancy wanted to know.

“Well, I phoned Tabitha on Monday, she's my supervisor, and I told her what happened, and she said I should take as much time as I need, and—”

“You can't stop working,” interrupted Fancy, pointing her teacup at Marbie, “just because you've got a broken heart. It's no excuse. It's like when you have a hangover. You have to go to work even then.”

“I would think it'd be pretty quiet at Marbie's office these days,” their mother soothed, “what with this funny weather.”

“Actually, imagine how many claims are coming in with all the skidding cars,” Marbie admitted thoughtfully.

“Cassie and Lucinda have been outside playing every day,” said Fancy. “They've adapted to the cold, and my point is, Marbie, there are some things you just
have
to do.”

“I'm going to have a bath,” Marbie said to her mother. “See if you can find out what's wrong with Fancy. She's gone all right-wing and Protestant.”

“Well,” said Fancy, “if the
children
can get on with their lives…”

“Nathaniel? Is that you? It's me. I'm calling from the bath.”

“Marbie, you'd better stop phoning me, okay?”

Marbie was quiet.

“Marbie? Did you hear me?”

“You prefer me not to call?”

“That's right. Please stop leaving messages. Okay? This is not going to work.”

“I can't even leave messages to say I'm sorry?”

“Not even that.”

“But it makes me feel better.”

“That's not really a concern of mine.”

“How's Listen? Is she dancing?”

“There's not much room in the campervan to dance, Marbie.”

“Oh, God, can I speak to her?”

“No, you can't. She's at the library working on her assignment.”

“Choose two creatures of the sea?”

“That's the one.”

“Is she still doing sea horses and whales?”

“I'm hanging up now, okay?”

“Really?”

“Marbie, I'm hanging up the phone.”

Sea Horses

A lot of people don't know this about sea horses, but they are “monogamous.” That means they stay together with their one true love for their entire lives. Each day, the sea horses link tails and go for walks along the ocean floor. Then the male sea horse gets pregnant.

Whales

It is commonly known that a whale is a mammal, not a fish. Some scientists even think that whales used to live on land, and had legs and fur, like enormous wolves. They waded into water, their legs turned into tails, and their arms turned into pectoral fins. If that is true, it was not the best decision the whales ever made—they can't breathe under water, and they have to spend most of their lives thinking about that.

It's Saturday! So you're allowed to do the next Spell. Well done for waiting! I hope you have been well.

This is
A Spell to Make Someone Find Something Unexpected in a Washing Machine
!

Go for a walk and shout, “HOORAY!” whenever you see something that looks strange, or lovely, or orange.

The Spell will work on a Thursday afternoon in about seven weeks or so. You can do the next Spell next Saturday.

In the second week of the school holidays, the weathermen and—women gave up hope of more snow. But it remained record-breakingly cold.

Fancy and Cassie fell into the habit of sleeping in, then deciding on an outing for the day while eating porridge with brown sugar in the kitchen. They had already seen all the holiday movies in the first week, and Cassie was beginning to complain about Lucinda, so they had to use their imaginations.

Of course, by the time they left the house each day, the Canadian had finished his breakfast and was nowhere to be seen.

Friday night at the Zing Family Secret Meeting, Fancy told Marbie she had run in to Nathaniel at Coles the previous afternoon. He was buying tangerines. He looked sad. He had bleached his hair white-blond with sprouting black roots and a jagged short cut. Also, he was wearing a long black overcoat which floated, moodily, to the laces of his ankle-high boots.

“How terrible,” Marbie said, about Nathaniel's bleached hair.

“No,” said Fancy thoughtfully. “No. It works. It's entirely sexy.”

“Nathaniel? It's me.”

“Oh, hello.”

“Don't hang up, okay? I just wanted to let you know that I'll get the mortgage payments on our apartment, okay? While you're—until you get back, I'll cover them, okay? In case you were worried. You know how it's due next week?”

“Yep.”

“Everyone misses you, you know. The meeting last night was stupid without you, it was so—And Fancy says she saw you at Coles and you've changed your hair, and she says it looks good.”

“Okay. Two things. First, I told your sister not to worry about the Secret, so I'll tell you that too. It's safe with me, okay? Second, in relation to the apartment: When you can afford to refund my half of the deposit, send me a check, and I'll transfer my share to you. Everything else, you can keep.”

He had carved off most of his voice, and the leftover bit was as cold as a dental instrument. Marbie had to close her eyes.

“Uh-huh,” she breathed, with her eyes still closed. “If that's what you think.”

“That's what I think.”

A dwarf pygmy sea horse is only about 3 centimeters long.That's the size of my little finger. A blue whale can grow to a length of 28 meters. That's three times as tall as our school library.

“Hey, Nathaniel, it's me.”

There was silence.

“Nathaniel? Can you hear me? It's me. It's Marbie.”

“I know who it is.”

“I just forgot to say something when I called earlier.”

“What did you forget to say?”

“I forgot to say, um, happy Saturday. It's Saturday today.”

“Yes, Marbie, it's Saturday.”

“Can I speak to Listen?”

“She's busy.”

“I want to tell her good luck at Cassie's school on Monday.”

“She's in the campervan. She didn't want to be disturbed.”

“Nathaniel? Can I see you? So I can tell you how sorry I am?”

“Nope.”

Marbie was still staring at the phone, wondering at its power, when it rang again. It was the aeronautical engineer.

“Come for lunch?” he said. “Today? I've got a picnic!”

“I haven't heard from you for two weeks,” she said.

“I know!”

A Spell to Make Somebody Eat a Piece of Chocolate Cake

1. Take up rock climbing!

2. Stop rock climbing!

3. Take it up again!

This Spell will work on a Thursday afternoon in about six weeks or so.

You can do the next Spell on Friday, seven weeks from now.

The aeronautical engineer greeted Marbie at the door of his house. “At last! I get to see you again! It's been two weeks!” He did not try to kiss her, but kept a respectful distance.

“I have to tell you something,” Marbie said at once.

“What do you have to tell me?” He ushered her into the living room, where he had the following items set out neatly on a picnic blanket on the floor:

pickles

sundried tomatoes

two large radishes

crackers and cheese

bottled water

corned beef sandwiches

boiled eggs

a salad made of spinach, crumbled bacon, and anchovies

“A lot of food,” she said, surveying this.

“What do you have to tell me?” He took her coat.

“I have to tell you about my family,” she said in a breathless rush, and then frowned at the voice in the back of her head, which was saying
companionably,
Marbie, where is your mind?
She would have to speak louder, to drown it.

“I HAVE TO TELL YOU OUR FAMILY SECRET!” she yelled, and he took a step backward. “OKAY, LISTEN FAST, IT'S THIS. We spy on a second-grade schoolteacher named Cath Murphy! WE HAVE A CAMERA INSTALLED IN HER DINING ROOM WINDOW and she
does not know that it is there.
” She quieted down in surprise at herself.

“Wo-ho!” He was grinning, holding both hands to his ears like a comedian, and then gesturing that she should sit cross-legged on the floor, like him.

“Yes, yes.” She did as he instructed. “So, we have a camera in her dining room window and one other camera around the apartment, but it's…anyway, earlier this year, she knocked out the camera when she washed the windows, so we had to go in and replace it. Then she made it go blurry by throwing apple juice at it. So we had to go in again. It slipped
again
two weeks ago, at the start of the school holidays,
so we don't have a clue what she's been doing for the last two weeks.
”

“Marbie! Marbie! Why did I wait so long to call you?”

“And I don't feel like doing a Maintenance Intrusion to fix it.”

“You're a riot and I don't understand a word! Eat, my princess! Dig in!”

“No,” said Marbie, watching as a radish slowly rolled across the blanket. “I have to tell you more about the Secret.”