by James Roy
I just nodded. I mean, she’d be the one to know.
‘But,’ she said, raising one of her skinny, knobbly fingers, ‘what we don’t need is someone coming down there for a couple of weeks before losing interest, and then writing some letter claiming that they’re all full of community spirit and altruism.’
‘What’s that? I’ve never heard that word,’ I said, because I hadn’t.
‘Altruism? It’s the desire to do good for others without getting anything in return. Some of the doctors and nurses I’ve known possess it. Anyway, my point is that if you’re planning to put in a couple of shifts, write your letter and leave, we don’t want you.’
‘Okay,’ I said again. ‘So do you want me to come and help or . . .’
‘I do, very much. But your heart has to be in it, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘It is,’ I said, even though I wasn’t sure if it really was.
‘How many days a week? One? Two?’
‘We thought that maybe one morning on the weekend, and one morning during the week,’ I told her. ‘Mum said that was fine.’
‘That sounds perfect. Now, you’ll need to commit for . . . how long is a school term?’
‘I think we’ve got five more weeks in this one,’ I said.
‘All right, I’d want you to do two mornings a week until the end of term. Then I’ll write you a fantastic reference for your principal. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds good,’ I said, because it did.
‘Excellent.’ Miss Huntley stood up, which took a little while. ‘You know where the shop is, don’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Good. If your parents are agreeable, be there at nine o’clock this Wednesday morning. You can do three hours to start with, just to see if you like it. Nervous?’
This made me stop. Why would she ask me that? ‘Not really,’ I said, even though I was, a bit.
‘Very well. See you Wednesday. Don’t be late.’
‘Well, I’m doing it,’ I told my parents when I got back inside. ‘I’m working at the Helping Hands shop this Wednesday, and on Saturday as well if I like it.’
Mum looked up from where she was peeling some carrots. ‘That’s great!’ she said.
‘Yeah, that’s terrific,’ Dad agreed as he turned the page of the book that Richie was trying to eat. ‘Well done, Betty!’
‘It’s a great second step towards responsibility,’ Mum added.
‘Second step?’ I asked.
‘Right, because your first one is to empty this kitchen bin. It’s overflowing.’
CHAPTER 16
Putting out the big wheelie bin each Wednesday night isn’t my only job. I’m also meant to keep my room tidy, unload the dishwasher every morning, bath Muppet once a week, and empty the kitchen bin whenever it gets full. I remember to do most of those things (most of the time) but I do sometimes forget the bins. That Tuesday night, Dad reminded me of the one under the kitchen sink. The problem was that he reminded me just as I’d almost finished getting ready for bed. I know he sometimes gets a bit frustrated that I forget, but I’ve got other things to think about that I reckon are a bit more important than emptying bins. But this night he was actually a bit mean about it, after he saw that I was in my pyjamas and about to go into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
‘Betty, have you emptied the kitchen bin, like your mum asked?’ he said. ‘It’s getting pretty full.’
‘Oh,’ I answered. ‘Can’t I do it tomorrow? I’m already in my pyjamas.’
‘No, I want you to do it now.’
‘But I’m already –’
‘No!’ he snapped. ‘Tonight, please, Lizzie. This happens all the time! We go through this every second day!’
‘It’s not every second day,’ I said.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to talk back, because when Dad’s already grouchy, arguing never ends well.
‘Less of the chat, young lady,’ he said, all snippy. ‘Just do the job, okay?’
‘I will, but it’s not every second day,’ I replied.
Remember how I said that talking back is a bad idea? But did you see how I went ahead and did it anyway? That was because it was my turn to be a bit cross. See, I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t do the bin. I was definitely going to do it. All I wanted him to say was that he’d been wrong, and that I didn’t actually need to be reminded every couple of days. That’s wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
Well, apparently that time it was, because Mum (who wasn’t even part of the conversation) stuck her head out of their bedroom door and said, ‘Lizzie! Not the right time.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Dad asked her, standing there in the hallway with one hand on his hip, like a teapot. ‘What is “It’s not the right time” supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing, Marty.’
‘Well, it wasn’t nothing, was it?’
That was when I decided that taking the rubbish out right away was the best thing I could do, so I ran downstairs, pulled the bag out of the bin (it wasn’t actually overflowing, by the way) and hurried outside.
I went around the end of the house to where the wheelie bin lives. I don’t really like going out there after it’s dark, because that’s the HomeFest side of our yard, and after dark, nothing much happens over there. There are no lights except for the streetlights, no music and no traffic apart from a tiny white security car that drives around all night. It’s kind of creepy, like a ghost town.
That’s why I groaned when I heard Muppet barking from the backyard of the Greengrove 300 next door – it meant I was going to have to go over there and get him. Again. Sometimes he scrambles up on the worm farm and jumps over the fence, but then he can’t get back over, and I have to rescue him.
Luckily there’s a gate between that backyard and ours from a couple of years ago, when both the houses were display homes. The weird thing is, no one has ever thought to lock that gate, so it was as simple as lifting the latch and going through.
Usually, as soon as I was over there, Muppet would come running and I’d carry him home and tell him not to climb over again, but this time he didn’t. Instead, he stood at the far end of the house and kept barking.
‘Muppet! Come here!’ I said, but he completely ignored me. He just kept barking so hard that his front feet were lifting off the ground with each woof.
‘Muppet!’ This time I said it in more of a hiss or a whisper, even though I wanted him to pay better attention to what I was saying. And he kept on ignoring me. Something was making him very excited down at that far end of the house, and I could tell that if I wanted him to come home, I was going to have to walk over there and pick him up.
I didn’t rush straight over, because it was even darker down at his end, and I was a bit scared. So instead, I walked over there carefully and slowly, with my heart pounding like crazy.
‘What is it, Muppet?’ I said. I thought he was barking at something around the side of the house, but as I got closer, I saw that he was actually woofing at the end window. And as I glanced up at that window, I was sure that I saw a thin crack of light between the curtains, just for a tiny slice of a second, as if I’d looked that way at the exact moment someone turned off the light.
Up until then my heart had been racing, but at that moment it totally stopped. So did my breathing. Was someone in the house? How could I be sure unless I knocked on the window? And of course I wasn’t going to do that – what if a face appeared? I’d have dropped dead from fright!
Slowly I let myself breathe again. After all, Muppet was still barking so loudly that no one would’ve been able to hear the sound of my breathing anyway.
‘Come on, Muppet,’ I whispered, and scooping him up, I ran for the gate, swung it open and slammed it shut behind me. Then I slumped to the ground, leaned back against the palings, and tried to catch my breath. Meanwhile Muppet was back on top of the worm farm. He was still barking, and it looked like he was about to leap over into the Greengrove 300’s yard aga
in.
‘No, Muppet!’ I said, grabbing him and plopping him on the ground. Then I pulled the worm farm away from the fence and pushed it against the wall of the house, jumping out of the way of the two sleepy black cockroaches that had been hiding underneath. ‘Muppet, get out of it, you bad boy,’ I growled at him, even though I don’t think he understands any human words except ‘walk’ and ‘dinner’, and maybe ‘bath’.
When I’d finally managed to calm myself down, I went back over to the fence and peeked over the top. I was looking for any signs of life over there, but mostly I was looking for the crack of light that I might have seen in the end window. The angle of the glass made it hard to see, but there was no way I was going over there again to check, and after a while I began to accept that I’d probably imagined the entire thing.
‘What happened to you?’ Mum asked when I came back inside.
I quickly checked myself for scratches or mud or stains, or anything else that would give the hint that I’d been running around in backyards and hiding from imaginary people in empty houses. Apart from a little bit of dirt on the knees of my pyjamas, there was nothing.
‘Lizzie? I asked you a question.’
‘I was emptying the bin, like Dad asked me to,’ I said, which was completely true. Then I went to the bottom drawer, where we keep the bin bags. I thought that maybe if I kept busy she’d forget to ask any more questions.
‘You were ages,’ she said. (She hadn’t forgotten.) ‘You went out there . . . what, about ten minutes ago?’
‘Was it really that long?’ I replied. ‘Well, time flies, doesn’t it? I was just playing with Muppet, that’s all.’ (This was also fairly true.)
‘Playing with your dog? At almost ten o’clock at night? In this cold?’
I decided to come clean. Mostly. ‘He went into the yard next door, so I had to go and get him.’
‘Again? How does he get over there?’
‘He climbs on the worm farm and jumps over the fence,’ I said.
‘Do you think we should move the worm farm?’
‘I did,’ I said.
Mum looked down at Muppet, who was scratching behind his ear with his back foot. ‘Little scoundrel,’ she said. ‘But Lizzie, if you’re going to go outside when it’s as cold as this, can you please put something warm on? Just because you’re doing school at home doesn’t mean you can afford to have lots of days off sick.’
‘Yes, Mum. I’m sorry.’
‘Okay, well, you’d better get to bed now – you’ve got to work at Helping Hands tomorrow, remember?’
‘Oh, I wish you hadn’t reminded me,’ I said. ‘I’m heaps nervous, Mum.’
She gave me a big hug. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘It’ll be heaps fun.’
I screwed up my face. Parents really shouldn’t try to talk that way.
As I passed Dad’s study on the way to bed, I saw him sitting at his desk. This isn’t all that unusual, since it’s where he does all the writing part of his work. Except this time he wasn’t typing anything, and he wasn’t reading anything either. He was just staring. He was just staring straight ahead at the coloured shapes of his screen-saver as they swirled around and twisted and looked pretty.
I cleared my throat, not because I wanted to get his attention that way, but because I was kind of worried that my voice wasn’t going to work. ‘Dad?’ I said.
Even though I was pretty sure he’d heard me, he didn’t turn around. He just put his hand on his mouse, and the bright shapes vanished as his normal programs popped up on the screen.
‘Dad, I’m sorry about the bin.’
He kind of grunted then.
‘It’s done now.’
‘Good. Thanks.’
‘And I’m sorry I talked back to you.’
He still hadn’t looked at me. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Go to bed now – you’ve got a big day tomorrow.’
‘Okay, Dad.’ I wanted to go and get a hug from him, but something told me that I shouldn’t. So I just went.
As soon as I was in bed, I sent Jenni a text to see if she was still awake. She was, and about half a minute later my phone vibrated.
‘Hey,’ I said, really quietly, since I didn’t want to be heard.
‘Hey. What’s up?’
‘I just had a weird thing happen to me,’ I said.
‘Tell me!’
I put my head under the covers so that even if one of my parents was walking past my door, my voice would be too muffled for them to understand. Besides, I didn’t want Dad to get in an even worse mood.
‘Jenni, can you hear me okay?’
‘Yeah. What’s happened? Tell me.’
‘I think there’s someone in the house next door,’ I whispered.
‘What, right now?’
‘Yeah, right now. And no one’s meant to be there.’
‘Why not? Are they on holiday?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘It’s the Greengrove. It’s a display house, remember? No one is meant to be there at all.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, that is weird.’
‘I know, right? What should I do?’
‘Have you told your parents?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Why not?’
I peeked out from under my covers, just to make sure that I was completely alone. ‘They’d freak out. And there’s been enough cranky around here this week.’
‘Why were you even over there?’ Jenni asked me.
‘I was getting Muppet from the backyard,’ I said. Then, because each thing I told her would need to be explained one at a time, I decided to just tell her the whole story from beginning to end.
‘So you didn’t actually see anyone?’ she asked when I’d finished.
‘No.’
‘You saw some light?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You maybe saw some light in the window? But not for sure?’
‘No, not for sure.’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘No.’
‘So you didn’t actually see anything, and you definitely didn’t hear anything?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I admitted.
‘Cool story, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘So you went next door, and you didn’t hear anything, and you didn’t see anything. Wow . . .’
‘Muppet was barking a lot.’
‘Muppet always barks a lot.’
She was right. Yes, she was right, and when she put it like that, I could see how silly my story really was.
‘All right, well, I’m going to sleep now,’ I said. ‘I’m working at the charity shop tomorrow. Hey, you want to come in and visit?’
She paused for a second. Then she said, ‘I’m going to be at school, remember? Boy, you are so lucky!’ Then her voice got all excited. ‘Hey, what time will you finish? Because maybe me and Amanda could come in and see you!’
‘I’ll finish at lunchtime, I think. So I won’t be there after school.’
And you know what? I was so glad that I could say that. The last thing I wanted was Amanda Jenkins going around touching everything and looking at me all sneery.
CHAPTER 17
I didn’t sleep very well that night. There were three reasons for this.
First, I didn’t like that Dad hadn’t even looked at me when I said goodnight.
Second, I was nervous about working at Helping Hands the next morning.
And third, I kept hearing noises. Maybe they were the normal noises that happen at night, like the wind, and possums, and night birds. But even if that’s what was making those noises, every time I heard something, I imagined it was a person. A person living in the house next door. And that person had a face that I couldn’t quite make out, and a beard, and dark shadows instead of eyes, and he didn’t smile. I also imagined that he might even have had crooked teeth and long, dirty fingernails for tapping on the glass of my bedroom window.
I finally got to sleep when it was really, really late, and the next morning, when Mum wok
e me up by shaking me, it took me a few seconds to remember where I was.
‘You all right, Lizzie?’ she asked me. ‘You look pretty rough, my love.’
‘I didn’t sleep very good,’ I told her.
‘You didn’t sleep very well.’
‘I know – I just told you that.’
She sighed, but I wasn’t sure why. ‘So, was it because you were nervous about today?’
‘Yes,’ I said, because this was true. Well, it was half of the truth, but I reckon that’s better than none at all.
That was when Dad walked past my bedroom door with a towel around his waist. He was singing. Loudly. So at least he’s in a better mood, I thought.
And this is what he was singing: ‘Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling lemon pie . . .’
‘Dad!’ I called. ‘Dad, it’s Clementine!’
He stopped halfway along the hall, then came back to my door. ‘What’s that, Betty?’ he asked, looking all confused. And a bit naked, except for the towel.
‘That song – you’re not singing it right,’ I told him.
‘I’m not?’
‘No. It’s “oh my darling Clementine”, not “lemon pie”.’
‘Are you sure?’
I nodded. ‘Definitely. We used to sing it at school.’
‘Huh,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I guess that would make more sense once you get to the next line.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, a girl called Clementine might chew gum, but a lemon pie wouldn’t.’
Mum tilted her head to one side. ‘Marty, what are you going on about?’
So Dad began to sing again, just to show her what he meant. ‘Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you have lost your gum forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.’
I pulled my doona up over my face. He couldn’t be that stupid. Could he?
‘Go and put some clothes on, Marty,’ Mum said. ‘And you, young lady, out of bed and get something to eat. Your dad’s going to drive you to the shop as soon as you’re ready.’