Head Spinners, page 6
‘I’m not going to call the police,’ said the cafe owner. ‘But I would like to speak to your parents.’
‘Mum’s at the supermarket,’ said Connor helpfully.
Thanks, Connor.
It was so embarrassing. The owner made me sit out the back, scowling at the stupid sandwich on the bench beside me, waiting for Connor and Mum.
After a while, my face stopped burning quite so hot, and something began to nag at my mind.
Even though I hadn’t taken the sandwich, I had the uneasy feeling that this was a weird kind of punishment I deserved. Maybe it was happening because of what I’d done two weeks earlier – something so bad that I still felt sick just thinking about it.
When Mum turned up with Connor, her face was bright red too. She glanced at me, then started babbling to the owner and pushing a ten-dollar note into his hands.
My heart sank. Thanks a lot, Mum. Thanks for sticking up for me. She just assumed I’d done it, without even asking me.
Then I realised what was happening. Mum knew what I’d done two weeks earlier. So why should she be on my side now? I wasn’t her ‘good little Jamie’ anymore. Since that day two weeks ago, everything had been different.
In fact, stealing a sandwich was nothing compared to what I had done.
At one point, Mum leaned in to the owner and whispered, ‘We have some issues going on at home.’
I closed my eyes and wished I could disappear. Please don’t tell him what I did. Please don’t tell him . . .
When I opened my eyes, they were both looking at me. The owner had his head tilted to the side, as if he felt sorry for me.
I gulped and tried to stop looking guilty.
‘Never again, okay?’ said the cafe owner, and wiggled a fat finger from side to side.
I tried one last time. ‘I didn’t . . .’ I stopped and sighed. What was the point? I looked down and nodded.
As we walked home, Connor hung back so that Mum and I could walk together, but I knew that he would stick close enough to hear what we were saying.
Mum tried to rest her hand on the back of my neck as we walked, but I shrugged her off. I was angry that Mum thought I had stolen the sandwich. I was angry and scared. I wasn’t used to this kind of thing happening to me. Connor was the one who always got into trouble.
At first we said nothing, but Mum kept fiddling with her earring, so I knew she was working up to saying something.
I knew what it would be, too. It would be about Monty.
‘I just don’t understand,’ Mum said eventually.
‘No, it doesn’t make sense, does it?’ I said hopefully, stepping over a puddle on the footpath.
‘You’ve never stolen anything in your life!’ Mum said.
‘So why would I start now?’ I said, but my voice sounded thin. ‘Think about it, Mum. I didn’t steal the sandwich. I promise!’
Mum shook her head sadly. ‘But how did it get into your bag? I mean, no one else could have put it there.’
‘Yeah? Well it wasn’t ME,’ I yelled. I had no idea who had swiped the sandwich, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being punished.
Two weeks ago, Monty died. And it was all my fault.
On the day Monty died, I was home on my own, which didn’t happen very often. I had a long list of things to do – handstands in the hall, computer games in Connor’s room – but first I was going to sneak some ice-cream.
After I waved goodbye to the car, I headed straight to the freezer, grabbing a spoon on my way. Who needs a bowl when you’re home alone? Yum.
That’s when I heard a knock at the door.
It doesn’t take long for your life to change forever.
I will always remember exactly what the man said when I opened the door: ‘Do you own a scraggy black dog? I’m so sorry. We’ve run over someone’s dog.’
For some reason, the way he called Monty a ‘scraggy black dog’ made the whole thing even worse. I loved Monty just the way he was; I loved his curly hair. He had been the family dog, but he had played with me most of all.
At first I was in a daze. As the man carried Monty into our front garden I stayed quiet. It wasn’t until after the man had gone that I realised how it had happened. In my rush to get back inside for ice-cream and computer games, I had forgotten to shut the gate. It was my fault that Monty had run onto the road.
I knelt next to Monty feeling dizzy with guilt. He just lay there, still and floppy. I wanted to shake him, to try to wake him up, but I knew he was dead. Blades of grass rested against his nose, but he didn’t sneeze or move his head.
I loved Monty so much. If only I had shut the gate, then he’d still be alive.
It seemed like hours that I knelt beside him in the garden, sniffling and waiting for my family to come home. But it was even worse when they did.
As they climbed out of the car I started crying, hard and loud. But the words still came out, the words that were spinning around my head: ‘I left the gate open.’
Mum hugged me while Dad and Connor leaned over Monty. After a while, Dad went to dig a grave in the backyard.
I gave Monty one last pat and unbuckled his collar. When Dad came back pushing the wheelbarrow, I turned away. I couldn’t watch.
Monty’s favourite stick was lying on the grass. I picked it up too. The wood was smooth because all the bark had been chewed off. Monty loved playing fetch with that old stick. For the rest of the afternoon I held that stick and the collar to my chest.
None of my family yelled at me or even seemed annoyed. They just looked at me sadly; even Connor said nothing about what I had done.
And that made me feel even worse. I had done something awful, and I deserved to be punished for it – grounded for a year or forced to quit gymnastics. But no one said anything at all.
From then on, the guilt sat inside me like a disease. I could feel it living in me, making my breath smell bad. I could see it in their faces when my family looked at me.
It changed the way I felt inside.
Now, as we walked home from the Big Cow Cafe, Mum asked a heap of questions about my friends and whether I had told them about Monty. ‘What about your friends at gymnastics?’
She seemed to have decided that I had stolen the sandwich because of Monty, as though I had turned to the dark side now. Kill your dog, become a thief – it was all a natural course of events.
But I just felt sick. I couldn’t talk to Mum about any of it. I couldn’t bear to keep thinking about it.
When we got home, Dad looked up from the newspaper. ‘Is everything okay?’ he said as I passed.
But I just kept going straight to my room and slammed the door.
I lay on my bed and buried my face in my quilt, crying until the light blue cover had a dark blue patch around my face. There were a lot of tear-stained patches on my quilt.
Eventually the tears slowed. I sat on the edge of my bed and reached into my gym bag for a drink of water. But as I pulled it out, I gasped and hugged the bottle to my chest.
There, in my gym bag, was the trout sandwich. The one I’d been accused of stealing. But it wasn’t sitting quietly as it had been in the shop.
It was jumping up and down.
I stared at the trout sandwich, too amazed to move. It was flopping around like a fish out of water.
With one massive leap, the sandwich was out of the bag and onto my bed. It started flopping towards me.
Eek! I pushed myself backwards off my bed, hitting the bookcase with a thud and dropping my bottle on the floor. Water trickled out of the bottle and onto the carpet, but I wasn’t worried about that.
The sandwich looked like a freaky ocean beast. Cling wrap flopped around it like a limp fin and lettuce trailed after it like seaweed.
The sandwich flopped onto the floor and jumped towards the bottle I’d dropped. It landed in the wet patch on my carpet and lay there flapping, like a kid splashing in water.
I stared at it with my mouth open. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Was the sandwich somehow alive?
I found a ruler on my bookcase and knelt on the floor. Using one end of the ruler I dragged open the last bit of cling wrap. Then I flipped the top piece of bread over as if I was flipping a pancake. Underneath were slices of tomato, some floppy lettuce . . . and six or seven slivers of shiny trout.
For a moment, nothing moved. Then a single piece of trout started jumping. Flip, flop . . . flip flop . . .
It looked exactly like a fish trying to flip itself back into the water. Except, it was just a piece of fish. A freaky fishy blob.
The trout flicked what looked like its tail-end, flopped itself into the mouth of the bottle opening, slithered down the neck, and was soon swishing around in the water left inside.
The next thing I knew, the other pieces of fish were flipping across my bedroom floor. They looked as if they were having a party, dancing to music that I couldn’t hear.
One by one, they dived into the bottle. The last piece was wider than the others, and wider than the mouth of the bottle. It sat for a while on the carpet. Then it rolled itself into a tube and wiggled into the bottle opening.
I shook my head in amazement. Somehow, those pieces of fish were still alive, and had been searching for water all along. They must have jumped the sandwich into my gym bag.
I lay on my stomach and peered into the bottle. I couldn’t take my eyes off those fish (well, those fish pieces, I guess). They were supremely brilliant. It was as though the universe was giving me a second chance, a way to make up for what I had done to Monty. Here was something amazing and alive that needed my help. If I could help these pieces of trout and keep them safe – then maybe I could forgive myself for Monty.
Water was the first thing my fish needed. A bucketful. The bottle was way too small for them.
I snuck into the laundry and filled an old green bucket with the tap on a quiet trickle. I didn’t want anyone to hear me and start asking difficult questions.
The bucket was heavier than I expected and it bumped against the edge of the laundry trough as I lifted it out, sloshing cold water onto my legs and shoes. But I didn’t mind. It felt good having something important to do.
I opened the laundry door and listened.
Everything was quiet. I could faintly hear my parents talking in the kitchen.
Struggling with the bucket, I started down the hall, but just as I passed Connor’s bedroom, the door opened.
Typical. I stopped, unsure what to do.
Connor leaned against the doorframe, grinning. ‘So what’s the real story with the sandwich?’ he whispered. Then he looked at the bucket of water and my wet shoes. ‘This one’s going to be good.’ He stood back so that I could walk into his room.
I glanced across at my own room, wishing I could get back there without Connor trying to follow.
‘Come on, Jamie,’ Connor said impatiently. ‘I won’t tell.’
I knew he wouldn’t tell, but I still wasn’t sure what to say. I set the bucket on the floor of his room and rubbed the palm of my hand where the handle had been digging in.
Connor shut the door. ‘So, spill the beans,’ he said. ‘Why did you steal the sandwich?’ He leaned against the edge of his desk.
I looked down at the bucket. ‘It’s these amazing fish, see,’ I sighed. The truth sounded so weird . . .
Connor frowned at the bucket. ‘It’s not for some boring school project, is it?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh, shut up, Connor.’ He always teased me for trying at school. Even if I was just reading a book, Connor always said something smart about it. So I looked him straight in the eye, and lied.
‘I was going to hide the fish sandwich in Mr Murray’s desk so that it stank the whole place out.’
There was a long pause as Connor looked at me – curious and impressed. He’d never looked at me that way before.
I held his gaze, almost smiling. It made me feel strong and powerful, as if I was a dark, mysterious criminal. (See that scar on my finger? It’s from wrestling a thrashing killer trout. And see that wild look in my eye? It’s from seeing things that you would never believe.)
After a while, he cracked up laughing. ‘Not bad, not bad . . . I’m impressed.’
Then I thought of something. ‘Actually, I was wondering, when you sell worms up at the cafe, have you ever noticed anything . . . strange about the fish that get caught?’
Connor frowned. ‘Strange in what way?’
‘Nothing. I was just wondering.’
‘That guy buys heaps of worms, though. I think the fish keep stealing them from the hook.’ He shrugged. ‘Lucky there are so many in our backyard. You can help me dig for worms next time if you want,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and picked up the bucket.
Somehow, it didn’t seem quite so heavy anymore.
Back in my own room, I put the bucket on the carpet and rubbed my aching hands again. The fish pieces were still flapping in the bottom of the bottle, right where I had left them.
Gently, I lifted the bottle just above the bucket’s waterline, and tipped. Water trickled from the bottle, but nothing else did. The fish didn’t fall out.
‘Come on.’ I jiggled my bottle, trying to shake out the fish. Nothing moved.
I jiggled again, a bit rougher this time. With a series of sliding plops, all seven pieces slipped into the bucket and began sinking. When they were about halfway down, they shook their tail ends and began to swim. Pretty amazing.
Slowly the fish pieces swam faster and faster until they were bumping up against each other. There was so much action in the bucket that water splashed over the edge. It was hard to see what was going on. A couple of pieces jumped up and landed back in the water.
At one point the whole bucket rocked. I held onto the rim in case it tipped over. Water frothed and bubbled and spilled onto the carpet. My hands were soaking wet.
Suddenly the splashing stopped.
Biting my lip, I peered inside. A single piece of trout floated in the water. It curved itself around one side of the bucket in a crescent shape. It swished its tail end peacefully.
‘Oh . . . wow!’ I could hardly believe it. This fish was magic. It had to be. Somehow it was able to heal itself . . . it was trying to become whole again.
I leaned back against my bed with the bucket in front of me and shook my wet hands. I could see a photo of Monty on my desk. I’d left his favourite stick next to it and hung his collar on a post of my bed. In the photo, Monty was sitting with his ears pricked up. He looked really smart. Not scraggy at all.
‘What do you think, Monty?’ I asked.
I was getting a bit teary, so I peered back in the bucket. I didn’t know how it had managed to reform. But I did know one thing – this fish wanted to live.
All through dinner I stayed quiet, wondering about the trout. Would it grow eyes and a mouth? Would it need food?
Whatever happened, I would look after it. Then, once it was fully re-formed, I would take it to a river and let it go. It would have a new life, swimming free.
That night I went to bed feeling better than I had in two weeks. I snuggled under the covers, listening to the faint swishing of water in the dark.
Maybe I had messed up with Monty and let him get killed, but here was my second chance. I would do anything to help the trout live.
The next morning I woke up early and checked the fish. Had it survived the night? Was it still alright?
But I didn’t need to worry. My trout was more than alright. It was awesome.
In the bucket was a normal, everyday trout. It had eyes, a mouth and a tail. A pretty pinky-orange stripe extended down its side. Its scales shimmered in the water.
‘Hello,’ I said. I wasn’t surprised to see that the fish had re-formed. Not after everything else that had happened. But I was a little disappointed. Now I had to set it free in the river. It was the only right thing to do.
‘Worms,’ I said to myself. I’d feed it some worms. Then I’d take it to the river in the afternoon.
I was pulling on my shorts when the trout jumped into the air. With a flick of its tail it sprinkled water in an arc across the carpet. A few drops made it as far as my desk. The fish landed safely back in the bucket.
I sat on my bed and hugged my knees. What would happen next?
But the fish just swished in the bucket.
Oh well. That was still a clever thing to do. And it gave me an idea. ‘Splash! That’s what I’ll call you!’ A pet needs a name. I scratched my head. ‘But are you a boy or a girl fish?’
Splash kept swishing.
I shrugged again. ‘Let’s just say you’re a girl for now.’ Maybe it was because Monty had been a boy – I don’t know – but I liked the idea of Splash being a girl.
She must have been happy too because she did a single jump in the air. With a clever flick of her tail, Splash sprinkled water over the top of my desk.
Monty’s photo! I didn’t want that getting wet. I went to move the photo out of the splash zone but my hand froze in midair.
Beside the photo, and wet from Splash’s tricks, lay Monty’s favourite stick. Wherever a drop of water had landed, tiny leaves had sprouted. Down one end there were even a few tiny roots.
‘Wow!’ I said. ‘How did you do that?’
Splash jumped proudly and landed back in the bucket.
I picked up the stick and peered at it. Tiny, bright-green leaves had formed on the ends of the twigs.
This was amazing! Splash didn’t just know how to re-form herself; she could bring other things back to life. I’d pulled the stick off an apple tree at my cousin’s farm last year. It had been chewed and chucked around ever since then.
