Six Impossible Things (17 page)

‘No,’ I say.

W
ITH OLIVER’S KEY IN
my pocket, I’ve got a better plan. I suggest Janie hides out at Oliver’s until it’s time to go, Estelle comes out via my attic to avoid her security alarm, and I go with them to the bus depot.

‘We don’t need you to come,’ says Janie.

‘What if you get harassed by a carload of random thugs?’

‘We won’t,’ says Estelle.

But they end up agreeing that it’s not a bad idea to have a tall male and a loud dog in tow wandering the streets in the pitchblack early hours.

As I go over the plan with them it strikes me as dangerous, illegal, crazy and bound to fail. It seems risky to assume that just because their parents never
have
rung up about sleepover arrangements that they never
will
ring. And Janie looks her age – fifteen with too much make-up – so won’t it be obvious to the people running the competition that she’s faked her ID? That’ll blow things out of the water, for sure. And I’m not even half convinced that it’s safe for her to be in Sydney all by herself with nothing on her but a fake ID. What if something happens to her? No one will even know who she is.

They think I’m worrying about nothing and I have to hand it to them, they’ve done their homework. They’re usually not allowed to have school night sleepovers but Janie has been laying the groundwork about the demands of our earth sciences project so she has permission for a Thursday and Friday night sleepover. They’ve timed the walk to the bus depot: twenty minutes exactly. They’re packing lunch and snacks, and have a ten dollar allocation for a takeaway dinner.

Estelle’s mother is in the middle of preparing a catalogue for some exhibition of Asian artefacts. Estelle knows this is a reliably vague and distracted time for her.

We’re still fine-tuning the plan when I realise I haven’t even seen the film. So they show me. It’s a murder mystery. They’ve used stop motion photography with three Barbies and a Ken doll. There are also two Power Rangers in the cast with the disconcerting ability to flip their heads around one-eighty degrees to display either a face or a mask. The final character is played by ‘tongue lasher’, an action figure with the ability to throw out a long, lizard-like tongue. The punch line is that all the suspects have conspired in the murder. It’s pretty funny.

I’m due at Phrenology, so I have to race off at the end of the day. As I leave, Estelle hands me an envelope. I feel the telltale shape of a ‘thank you’ chocolate frog. Nice. I stuff it in my pocket and rush into work with about a second to spare, just avoiding a blast from Ali. He’s keen on punctuality.

I go into the kitchen, dump my backpack and grab one of the black aprons we all wear, and there’s my mother so engrossed in conversation with Anne that she barely registers me. Anne flicks her eyes towards me for half a second: warmth, approval. Big relief. Maybe we’ll avoid getting the essential services cut off after all.

It’s an added bonus, my mother being in the café just now; it means there’s no chance of Estelle and Janie being spotted when they climb the fence and install Janie in the stables. As I clear tables and juggle crockery, I’m hoping they won’t lose the key or forget the alarm code. I’m feeling some qualms about letting them use Oliver’s place. Although it wasn’t something we discussed, he didn’t say I
couldn’t
hide someone in there. In an emergency.

It’s a busy post-school shift, a blur of Smarties biscuits and milkshakes, so I don’t remember Estelle’s envelope until hours later when I’m going to bed and I feel it crackle as I get undressed. Inside the envelope with the chocolate frog, now soft from my body heat, is a note. I eat the frog – a bit yuck because I’ve just cleaned my teeth – and read the note, which says, in Estelle’s backward-sloping writing:

What? My heart is racing. I read it again. I can’t believe my eyes.
Love
? She loves me big time? I know these girls are inclined to a bit of hyperbole. And love doesn’t exactly mean ‘love’, it’s more like ‘I approve of you big time’, or ‘I’m grateful to you big time’, but it’s enough to make me worry again about whether I should ask Estelle to the social. I scan my memory trying to recover the exact words she used that night at her place. ‘I might be taking someone’ . . . ‘I’m probably taking someone’ . . . ‘I think I’m taking someone’. Was she just trying to put me off or had she actually asked someone? What if she hadn’t? Things between us have improved since then, haven’t they? And what about disc boy? Maybe he’s about to do something useful like move base to the other side of the planet.

When the alarm beeps at five to five it is as though my brain has been sitting awake for some time, just waiting for my body to join it. I jump out of bed and pull on track pants and runners. There’s a scraping noise as the manhole cover moves. I put food into Howard’s mouth, as planned, and go into the storeroom. Estelle peers down, then puts herself into reverse and climbs on down the ladder. She gives Howard a pat and beams at me, her eyes shining with excitement. Howard, miraculously, doesn’t bark.

I’ve done my homework, too. I know the fourteenth step creaks. I’ve got a backpack to carry Howard in, and plenty of snacks to shut him up if he’s about to bark. I’ve even oiled the back door, a compulsory Enid Blyton-style manoeuvre for night-time escapades.

As we make our way downstairs I nearly fall over when step number thirteen creaks and groans. Aaaagh! I must have counted the landing as ‘one’. I freeze, teeth chattering, slipping Howard a pre-emptive shut-up snack. Estelle grabs my arm really hard. She’s quaking with suppressed nervous giggles. The step creaks again when we step off it. Estelle takes a couple of deep, calming breaths. I make myself count to ten. When I get to ‘six’, I hear a door open.

‘Dan, is that you?’ my mother says.

Estelle grips my arm again. She carefully moves down one step in front of me so she’ll be hidden if my mother comes to the upstairs landing.

From who knows where, I manage to dig up a sleepy-sounding voice, despite an adrenalin spike that’s nearly blowing my head off.

‘Just taking Howard out.’

‘Do you want me to take him?’

‘It’s okay, I’m halfway there. Night.’

‘Night, darling.’

Following a splodge of mobile phone light, we fly silently through the garden, my heart rate just about returning to nor-mal as we get to Oliver’s door where Janie is waiting for us.

‘Did you lock up?’ I ask.

I sense some eye-rolling as Janie hands me the key.

‘You only reminded me about a hundred times, so, yeah.’

Then we’re out the gate, up the lane, past Mrs Da Silva’s and into the street around the corner. There’s hardly any traffic and no one around except a few people sleeping on benches as we make our way through the park.

Just before we get to the city a police car cruises towards us. I get Howard out of the backpack and hiss, ‘We’re training.’ The car slows and pulls up beside us.

‘What’s he talking about?’ Janie starts to bleat, silenced by a nudge from Estelle.

‘Everything okay here?’ the street-side guy asks.

‘Yep. Just out on a training run. For rowing,’ I say.

‘You’re a fair way from the river.’

‘We do an hour’s circuit before we get to the boatsheds then an hour on the water. Five days a week.’ I shut up, hoping I don’t sound as nervous as I feel. Just talking to a policeman makes me feel as guilty as anything.

The two of them look us over carefully. We are obviously not drunk or otherwise trashed.

They ask to see our backpacks. Janie offers hers for inspection. All she’s got in it is clothes, which could conceivably be to change into after training. What are they looking for? Spray paint? Automatic weapons? Large quantities of class-A drugs?

They exchange a couple of quiet words and even if they suspect something is amiss, they must decide there are bigger problems than us in the throbbing metropolis.

‘Good luck with the rowing,’ the driving one says before they take off.

It’s cost us a few minutes so now we have to run.

The city is busier than you’d imagine at five in the morning when the stars are still out. Deliveries are being made, streets being swept, cleaners roll in and out of buildings. Industrial garbage trucks roar and charge about like armoured beasts. And there are quite a few clubbers on the ugly end of a great night out.

We get to the depot with about a minute to spare and wave Janie off with kisses from Estelle and ‘break a leg’ from me.

Estelle and I walk back home, co-conspirators. We are elated. And starving. It’s still cold and dark and we’re falling over ourselves laughing as we sift through the morning – Howard knew not to bark, what a champ . . . Your mother waking up! I thought we were dead for sure . . . Training? Where did that come from? . . . What were they even looking for? . . . What if they’d asked us anything about rowing? . . . She’d better win, after getting us up before dawn . . .

We cut through the park diagonally, then cross Victoria Parade and run to the closest shops on Gertrude Street. There’s a café taking a delivery from a patisserie van. Pooling our coins, we talk our way into an early coffee and get an escargot to share.

We perch in a tram shelter, knees up, Howard curled between us like a hot water bottle.

‘What’s your credit on the film?’ I ask.

‘Writer, executive producer and special effects.’

‘That was you? The noise when they cut the head off? It was gruesome.’

‘Grade five cello,’ she says modestly.

‘What happens if she wins and they want to buy it?’

‘We haven’t exactly figured that out yet.’

‘They won’t be able to do a contract with her, because of her age.’

‘It’s in the category of brilliantly good problem. We’ll worry about it when it happens.’

I can’t believe my luck, having all this uninterrupted Estelle time. She is utterly beautiful, even more so with her messy hair, slob clothes and not a scrap of make-up. Her eyes are as clear as the lightening morning sky. As usual, I cannot stop looking at her.

She wipes her mouth self-consciously. ‘Have I got froth?’

I want to say, I love you big time too, but I settle for, ‘I’m just admiring your beauty’, which she chooses to take as flippancy.

‘Very funny.’ She brushes a finger along my chin. ‘Crumbs. Come on, we’d better get going.’

It’s still about half an hour before anyone is ever up at my place but she’s right, it’s getting lighter by the second.

I offer her my hand. She takes it.

‘I’m ready for more sleep,’ she says standing up. ‘Too early for running.’

We walk home in silence, stopping in the laneway next to the back gates.

‘You know the social . . .’ I begin.

‘Don’t start about the DJ again. Just because I’m tired doesn’t mean I’ll cave.’

‘Sure – it’s just . . .’

‘Did I tell you I found the best dress to wear?’

‘No.’

Remembering I’m a boy, with all that usually implies about fashion awareness, she looks apologetic. ‘You’re probably not even vaguely interested.’

‘Of course I am,’ I lie.

‘Okay, so strapless, dark grey silk organza with a fitted bodice and the skirt has black netting underneath. It’s gorgeous.’

‘That’s great, I just wanted to . . .’

She is listening. I clench my jaw to stop my teeth chattering and am momentarily distracted by a baby magpie warbling.

‘You just wanted . . . ?’

Howard makes a disgruntled sound. He’s as impatient with me as I am.

I dig about in my pack and find a snack to keep Howard quiet. There’s a bit of fluff-covered courage in there too.

‘I just wanted to ask if you’d like to come with me.’

She looks at me.

‘To the social.’

‘Oh, Dan,’ she says, sounding . . . is it disappointed, or just embarrassed? ‘I’ve already asked someone. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s cool. No big deal.’

‘But thanks. Heaps.’

‘Sure. No problem.’

When we go into the kitchen there’s already something cooking. I hear water running in the downstairs bathroom. Why is my mother up so early?

I hurry Estelle out of the kitchen just as the bathroom door at the end of the hallway starts to open, and manage to bustle her into the front sitting room and start untying my shoes with apparent nonchalance as my mother emerges.