Squishy Taylor in Zero Gravity (4 page)

After Dad says goodnight I fall straight to sleep, but Jessie’s alarm wakes us up.

‘It’s ten o’clock,’ Jessie says. ‘They’ve gone to bed. Let’s go.’

We tiptoe through the kitchen. Jessie has the telescope, Vee has the tripod and I take the keys from the counter. We’re like
ninja-shadows
in the hallway and up the stairs.

When we reach the roof, I prop the door open with a handy brick, so we don’t get locked out up here.

There are no sparks, and for a second I’m disappointed. But the rocket shape is still there.

‘Look,’ Vee says. ‘What’s that?’

I see a dark shadow moving around the rocket.

Jessie is setting up the telescope in record time and focusing on the shadow. ‘What’s she
doing
?’ she says, almost to herself.

I hop from foot to foot beside her, wanting a turn of the telescope. Vee keeps glancing from Jessie to the rocket and back again.

‘What is it Jessie, is it a rocket?’ I ask. ‘Why is she building a rocket?’

‘It’s hard to tell what it is,’ Jessie says. ‘She’s covering it up with something, a big sheet of plastic, I think.’

‘Because she doesn’t want people to see it when daytime comes,’ I say. ‘She’s hiding something, something big!’

Vee is nodding. ‘Exactly. That’s why she has to work secretly, at night.’

We take it in turns to watch the red-haired lady as she ties the plastic over her rocket and tidies up her tools.

‘Do you think she’s some kind of
renegade astronaut?
’ I ask.

Vee looks away from the telescope. ‘Why else would someone build a rocket?’ she asks.

‘Maybe she’s an alien just trying to find her way home,’ I suggest, and I’m only half-joking. Maybe she
is
an alien.

Jessie
snorts
. ‘It’s not a rocket. Real rockets are way bigger than that.’

‘Yeah, but even
you
don’t know how big an alien rocket is,’ I say. Which is totally true, but Jessie doesn’t think I won the argument. She snorts again.

Vee pulls her eye away from the telescope again. ‘Whatever she is, she’s gone,’ she says.

We pack up slowly and head downstairs.

When we get to our door, I’m actually pushing the key into the lock when Jessie’s eyes widen and she grabs my hand to stop me. She pushes her ear to the door and waves us to do the same. On the other side I hear the muffled sound of Baby crying and Alice walking backwards and forwards in the kitchen.

That was close!
And now we’re stuck out here until Baby goes back to sleep.

‘Phew,’ Jessie says. ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t check our room.’

We slide down against the door.

‘I want to go to bed,’ Vee whispers.

I nod. I’m suddenly really tired. I’m desperate to be in my bed. I almost think we should just open the door and face getting in trouble. But I can’t even be bothered standing up, so I close my eyes.

I wake up with Vee shaking me. My neck feels stiff and my back is sore where it’s been leaning against the door.

‘Get up,’ Vee says. ‘Get up. We fell asleep. It’s morning.’

The hallway has grey early light from the window at the fire-escape end.

Jessie pushes her ear against the door and then shakes her head. ‘They’re not up yet.
Lucky.
OK, we just have to get ourselves into the bedroom before they open their door.’

I ease the key into the lock. ‘Quietly,’ Jessie says. ‘
Quietly
.’

I place the keys as gently as I can on the counter and tiptoe across the kitchen after the others. We close our bedroom door, scramble into our bunks and burst into a fit of muffled giggles.

‘We slept in the hallway half the night!’ I whisper.

‘I can’t believe we just did that,’ Jessie says.

‘How long till breakfast?’ Vee asks.

‘Who cares about breakfast?’ I say, remembering what we saw last night. ‘We
have
to find out more about the rocket.’

Somehow I fall back asleep.

When I wake up, Jessie is rummaging with something right next to my head.

‘Whaaa …’ I ask sleepily, rolling over to see what she’s doing.

Jessie has stuck the iPad to the telescope with black gaffa tape. She’s just opened the iPad camera app. The telescope is tilted down, to the street below.

‘What are you
doing
?’ I ask, more awake now.

‘Porridge is ready!’ Dad calls from the kitchen. Then Baby starts crying.

But I’m staring at Jessie’s new device. She’s filming
through
the telescope. And the telescope is focused on the front door of Spacewoman’s building.

‘
Genius
,’ I whisper.

‘It’s our own spy camera. Now we can see every time she comes and goes from the building.’

‘That’s
so cool
, Jess,’ Vee says, from her bunk.

Jessie nods, a bit smugly. ‘Yep. I’ve even plugged the iPad into the power so it doesn’t run out of battery while we’re at school.’

‘Jessie, you are the
Best Bonus
S
ister Ever
,’ I say.

‘I’m calling it a tele-pad,’ Jessie says and I grin.

Dad calls from the kitchen again. ‘If you’re not up in fifteen seconds, this bucket of ice-water is going over your heads!’

He’d never do that. But it makes us laugh and we climb, jump, flip and scramble out of bed.

‘We want to learn her habits,’ Jessie says, as the tram rumbles us to school. ‘When does she usually leave the building? When does she come home? What does she carry? Stuff like that.’

I jiggle in the seat. I can’t wait to get home and find out what our new spy camera has filmed.

‘I bet she carries wiring and computers and satellites,’ Vee says.

‘Yeah, and
special alien food
, and letters for the president of the galaxy,’ I add.

The others laugh. The president of the galaxy is from
Lightspeed Kids
and we all know he’s not real.

‘I wish we didn’t have to go to school,’ Vee says.

I almost agree. But there’s one reason I
do
want to go to school. ‘If we want to be astronauts, we need to get good at maths,’ I say.

Vee groans. Jessie laughs. Jessie’s already good at maths.

When we get home we rush to the tele-pad. At first I lean in close, watching every second. But there’s nothing for a while. It turns out watching the whole day back is really boring, even in fast forward. I take it in turns with Vee to practise bunk-bed tricks and to look over Jessie’s shoulder.

Nothing happens in real life or in the video, except for people going in and out. None of them are Spacewoman. I’m starting to feel pretty disappointed. Then I realise something.

‘That’s weird,’ I say. ‘Spacewoman
never
leaves the building.’

Jessie shakes her head. ‘She could have left for work before I set it up and not be home yet. We just have to wait a bit longer.’

I don’t want to wait.

Jessie sets up the tele-pad again. ‘The cool thing about the tele-pad is that it does the waiting for us, and we can do other things.’

‘Why don’t we just sneak up to her roof?’ I ask.

Vee does a
Rolling
-
S
pin-Drop
from her bunk. ‘That would be more fun than waiting to see what’s on a camera.’