Squishy Taylor and a Question of Trust (4 page)

After school on Monday, we all catch the tram home. Before I had a bonus family, Mum or Dad picked me up. Now that there’s three of us, we catch the tram. Alice says we can look after each other.

The tram is empty enough to do
Upside-Down-Crazy-Legs
from the handholds, but Vee won’t join me. She’s mad at us for going to the police station without her.

I do twenty-five
scissor kicks
and don’t even let go when the tram stops. ‘Bet you can’t do that,’ I say to Vee, stumbling down to my feet and nearly falling on her.

She does thirty-two and then sits with her back to me.

Jessie rolls her eyes at me and whispers, ‘She’s been like this all day.’

Jessie reminds us in the lift to be quiet going past Mr Hinkenbushel’s door. Not that we were making any noise anyway. I slow down as we pass, but Mr Hinkenbushel’s door is closed and I feel a bit disappointed. Maybe nothing has happened.

I’m ready for snacks and a massive glass of milk, so I open our door with my key and
barge
into the kitchen first.

Then: ‘Whoa there!’ says a familiar voice.

Constable Graham is sitting at the table with Dad and Alice. None of them look very happy. They’ve got the iPad in front of them and when I see what they’re looking at, I feel sick.

It’s the HRC website with our old
revenge
video.

They’ve paused the video halfway through. My face is close to the camera. My nose is wrinkled and my eyes are squinty.

‘Sita,’ Dad says. ‘What were you
thinking
?’ He sounds angry and disappointed and I stare down at the iPad screen.

Constable Graham taps a stumpy finger on the iPad and the video starts playing again. It’s me, talking (but Jessie helped make up the words):
‘So, in conclusion, we swear dire vengeance on Mr Hinkenbushel. Anything we can do to make his life worse, we will. We will strike him down, mess him up and turn his world inside out.’

Then Vee and Jessie squash their faces next to mine.

‘We swear,
’ they both say, pulling
snake-eyes
at the camera.

‘We’re gonna get you, Mr Hinkenbushel!’
I promise.

Then Jessie reaches forward to stop recording. As she does, you can hear us all start to laugh.

There is silence in the kitchen.

Constable Graham says, ‘It was you three who broke into Mr Hinkenbushel’s apartment the other night, wasn’t it?’

Jessie has gone
white
and is shaking her head.

‘No!’ I say. ‘We would never!’

‘Well,
I
didn’t,’ Vee says, and you can already tell she’s going to say something mean. ‘But I don’t know what Jessie and Squish have been doing …’

As if we could have broken into Mr Hinkenbushel’s without her knowing.

‘It really,
really
wasn’t us, Dad,’ I say.

Dad shakes his head and gestures towards the iPad. ‘This video is plenty to get you into trouble, Sita.
It’s a question of trust
. You went and put this online after you
promised
you’d give up that club.’

‘But we did give up the club. This is from before. We haven’t looked at it for
months
. We’d pretty much
forgotten
about it.
Really,
Dad.’

‘It’s true,’ Jessie chips in. ‘It says it on the YouTube page.’

Dad holds up his hand. ‘
Enough
, Jessie. Constable Graham wants to speak with each of you, one at a time. Jessie first. Vee, go sit in your room. Squishy, our room.’

They’re separating us because they don’t
trust
us. They think if we’re together, we’ll make up lies. For some reason that makes me feel worse than anything that’s happened so far. I feel the tears choking in the back of my throat and run before everyone sees.

I lie on Alice and Dad’s bed, crying into my hands. I wonder what the policeman is going to say to me. I hate that Dad thinks we’d lie to him about something this big. I wish Vee wasn’t so mad at us. I wish my mum was here. I look around for the iPad, thinking about skyping her, but it’s busy being evidence in the kitchen.

I roll over and look over Dad and Alice’s balcony to the building opposite.

Boring Lady is in her office. Typing as usual.

I get up and go out onto the balcony. I look along our outside wall. If I lean out far enough, I can almost see into our bedroom. I wish I could talk to Vee, make her understand that we didn’t want to leave her out when we went to the police. Make sure she doesn’t say some dumb lie and get us all in trouble. If I was really desperate, I think, I could swing myself across to our window. I measure the handholds with my eyes as if I was at the rock-climbing gym.

Then Dad calls from the kitchen and I realise I’ve accidentally locked the balcony door behind me. It doesn’t matter, because I can do the
bobby-pin trick
. The locks on these balcony doors are pretty simple because being eleven storeys up is its own security.

I pull a pin out of my hair and click it easily in the lock. But the bobby-pin trick isn’t as fun and satisfying as it usually is. My stomach has dropped down so far it’s pretty much on the floor. I don’t want to talk to the police.

By the time Constable Graham finally leaves, Dad believes that we didn’t break into Mr Hinkenbushel’s apartment. So does Alice. Vee obviously didn’t make up any lies about us, but she’s just as obviously still mad. And Dad and Alice are
really mad
about the website and the video. They talk seriously about online bullying and community spirit.

They should talk to Mr Hinkenbushel about community spirit. He’s the one who shouts and won’t let us play in the corridor. And probably
smuggles illegal diamonds
.

Dad skypes Mum and they talk for ages. Then Mum doesn’t have time to talk to me before she has to race off to her next meeting. That doesn’t feel fair. The one time I really need to talk to her, and Dad gets all the time she has.

I lie in bed in the dark, thinking about Mr Hinkenbushel. I wonder if the police are any closer to figuring out that he’s their man. Probably not. They’re too worried about me and my bonus sisters being criminals. Still.

‘How are we going to catch Mr Hinkenbushel?’ I whisper.

‘Go to sleep,’ says Jessie, in the bunk underneath me.

‘No-one’s going to believe us now,’ I whisper.

‘That’s because you don’t have any evidence,’ Jessie says.

‘Serves you right for not taking me to the police station,’ Vee says, rolling over
sulkily
, making the whole bunk shake.

‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ says Jessie.

There is a pause.

‘It was still
mean
, though.’

‘Well, if you’d done your homework when you were supposed to –’

‘Shut
UP
, Jessie. We can’t all be boring losers,’ Vee half-shouts. I can tell she’s sitting up.

Dad’s voice
growls
warningly from outside, ‘I can hear you, kids.’

The room echoes with offended silence.

‘We just have to find the evidence,’ I say.

But no-one answers.

In the morning, Vee isn’t talking to any of us. Jessie turns on the radio news while we all eat cereal. It’s boring. I try to hold Baby on my lap and eat at the same time, but I
drop yoghurt
on his head and Alice takes him off me.

Then it’s the story we’ve been waiting for.

‘Sources say police are still seeking forged documents that they hope will lead them to the diamond smugglers. Lord Smiggenbotham-Chancery suggests Melbourne Police might not be up to scratch.’

The familiar, lazy voice comes on. He sounds half-amused.
‘The police department is the most bumbling, absurd, inefficient force I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with.’

Then the reporter comes back on.
‘The government says it is not considering
an inquiry into police productivity at this stage.’

Jessie meets my eye over her breakfast spoon. She’s thinking what I’m thinking. Those forged documents might be just the
evidence
we need against Mr Hinkenbushel. She’s smart enough not to say anything in front of Dad and Alice. Also, there’s the problem of Vee.